Monday 15 December

[Guest]

Hi people.
Just a quick one for today. I want to give you a heads up that xtexan has made 3 years sober today. I have posted for him on long term abs which is where he usually posts.. but for those of you beginning out and continuing on I wanted you to know that some people continue and stay the course and xtexan is one of those people.

And a thought for today that was a gift to me from my mum.. she said that insight is better than hindsight. I guess with hindsight I'd have tackled this earlier!!! hum.

Brigid

[Cinders]

Monday 15 December

Brigid,

Thank you for starting the thread in Long Term Abs.

I really love your mom's gift. It comes down to thinking about what we are doing NOW. Considering our paths and our actions before and as we take them not after.

This was a very good post to wake up to this morning....

Love,
Cindi

[4theboyz]

Monday 15 December

Good Morning Abbers,

I'm back! *OUCH*

Have a great day today!

[charlee]

Monday 15 December

Morning all
Brigid, thank you for starting the thread..your mum's words are very wise.
Hi Cindi, still in Omaha I take it.....this trip seems to be a longie!!!
4tb, Good to hear from you...Ouch.....Hop back on board, we are here for ya..

Off to work, will check in later....everyone have a good Monday!

[retteacher]

Monday 15 December

Hi Everyone:

I'm still struggling w/this cold + fever. It's when I as the mom (& g-ma) come down w/something like this that I realize how much hinges on my being well. I must say that my husb stepped up this AM w/the g-sons. I'll be back when I feel a little better. Mary

[retteacher]

Monday 15 December

4theboys: Glad to see you back. Mary

[AAthlete]

Monday 15 December

Good morning all and happy Monday to everyone. Brigid, thanks for getting us started today! I swear, all parents have at least one nugget like this and just wait for the right opportunity to use it!

Insight was something that was in short supply when I was drinking, as I could never 'discern the true nature of a situation,' which in my case was my drinking problem. In fact, it was probably the exact opposite - I did anything I could not to have to own up to what was truly happening in my life. I would tell myself that 'I could stop if I wanted to', or 'that I wasn't hurting anyone' - you all know the routine.

So, all I had was the ability to see things in hindsight, and when I spent all my time doing that it was usually in morbid reflection. 'I can't believe that I drove drunk last night'; 'I promised myself I would only have one (or two or three)' and I would feel so remorseful that the only way to get over it was to drink again. For me, hindsight was never 20/20 because even though I KNEW what the right thing to do next time around was, I never did it. I could only learn to live in the present and grow as a person when I let go of the past in the 'morbid reflection' sense. It is okay to look back and learn from your mistakes - it is not okay to focus only on those mistakes at the expense of life around you. Took me a long time to learn that...

Thanks for the excellent topic and Cinders I hope things are going okay in Omaha for you. I know you miss your family and I'm sure they miss you even more.

[DogLvr]

Monday 15 December

Hello from around the world

Good Morning all - I've been away from the site for a few weeks - am actually travelling for work in Asia - and cannot wait to get back home for Christmas. I hope everyone has been hanging in there - I've been good - and I echo the comments about the Insight.
Be well!!

[Miss Behaving]

Monday 15 December

has got to Tuesday here ........ is 5am but I woke early (man, the birds are so noisy this morning!!) and cant sleep and decided to do some reading and posting since I haven't had much time to do it over the last couple of days.

wow - 3 years sober! That's awesome! I've been thinking about having an AF year in 2009 but it feels a bit scary and I'm not quite sure why. The day to day, 30 days stuff feels quite manageable, but a whole year just feels a lot bigger (and that would be because it is!!) Hope to get some resolution on this before Dec 31!!

[Determinator]

Monday 15 December

Happy hangover-free Monday ABeroooos!

ATT wonderful to have you boot us into the week with the great news of XTex, what a magnificent success story indeed.

4thboyz, you ok? glad to see you back bro.

Doglover, great to see you back. Asia? I'm sure you have some grand tales to share.

The high today will be 32 degrees and the roads are a total mess, so I'm hoping I don't have to leave the house at all.

AAth, I really enjoy your words about living the 'now moment'. it's such a joy to live in the now. it's almost like having a totally new life when we start to be present and not living in fear of the unknown (future) or regret and remorse of the past.

be well everyone and all to come

[LVT25]

Monday 15 December

Det--enjoy your heat wave out there! :H When I got up it was -12 here. Yesterday the wind was blowing so the wind chill index was at least 30 below!!! BRRRRRR!!!

[A Work in Progress]

Monday 15 December

Quick check-in from me. It was zero degrees when I got up this morning... Fortunately I have no appointments or work that I can't do out of my home office, till 3pm, and I'm hoping it will have warmed up a LOT by then.

I have been going through old letters my mother and grandmother saved, some of them nearly 100 years old... It is proving very enlightening, and bringing my family into life for me in a strange way. We were not the kind of family that sat around and told stories... none of them ever seemed to want to talk about family history stuff. So I am learning a lot about who they were and how they saw things, from the early years of the 20th century, up into the 60's.

One thing I learned is that my mother's first husband... the one she bitterly regretted (and would never stop going on and on about it) having divorced, also had an apparently serious alcohol problem. My mother, with her own heavy drinking and being "wild" (as is often mentioned in the letters), was attracted to men who were alcoholic (for a short time, she was married to a third man who was also alcoholic); and then, the marriages went sour. Amazing, eh?

Insight, and understanding. They can bring sadness, along with forgiveness and the beginnings of wisdom.

[on my way]

Monday 15 December

Brigid your mom is very wise. Thank you for sharing it with us.

4the, I am so glad to see you :-)

Cindi, home yet? Soon, I hope

Mary, hope you feel better soon!!

All the rest of you guys (except mame) get those long undies out!!

I am running out of time, argh kids will behome soon, I have a ton of stuff still to get done. Gotta go

nat

[Miss Behaving]

Monday 15 December

WIP - I dont know what systems there are in the US for saving letters for posterity, but i think our her-stories are really important. They point us to why we are who we have become. As my mother has got older (she is now 84) she has become a little more open and I learn more about the history of alcoholism in our family (on hers as well as on my dad's side) I have started to feel a little pissed off about the fact that the wider family have never discussed this - it has been such a big issue for me and my siblings and I think it would have been good for us to have understood this earlier. I certainly talk about it very openly with the 2 of my nieces (of the 15 of the next generation) who I am sure have inherited our alcohol gene.

[spottydingo]

Monday 15 December

Hallooooo ABers! A quick check in for me too. This week will be busy as we leave for the East Coast a week from today and of course I have left everything for this week!

Mary, I hope you feel better soon. Do you take zinc lozenges? I always take them as soon as I feel like I'm coming down with something, and continue taking them until I get better. They seem to make the whole ordeal be over with much more quickly. You can usually find them in the vitamin section of the supermarket, or a health food store. Try to get those rather than cough drops with zinc as they're a lot more potent ... and usually taste pretty foul! Other than that, rest!

They can bring sadness, along with forgiveness and the beginnings of wisdom.

WIP, this is so true. A few years ago my sister and I went through boxes of old family photos at my parents house and found lots of letters. Through reading them we discovered that both my grandmother and uncle may have been molested by a family friend (the letters were from the family friend and they were really creepy), and also hints that my grandfather was actually gay (something I always suspected). Very disturbing, this, but it actually explained SO much and allowed me to look at my grandmother (who I always thought of as a huge bitch) in a very different light and did hasten forgiveness. I just wish I had known this while she was still alive, though she probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about it as she had rewritten her family history to the point that there was no place for these truths. I hope that reading the letters helps you.

Well, we had our first big storm last night and the electricity went off for a few minutes, making me realize I'm in no way prepared for storm season. Gotta find the flashlights and candles and radio. We also thought it blew the computer which REALLY freaked me out as I haven't backed it up in a while and we've been having really bad luck with electronics lately: in the past 2 months both my husband and I spilled liquids on our respective laptops and fried them, and I dropped my cellphone at the beach and got the battery all wet!!! But, luckily it started up fine this morning! Phew!!! That will teach me for not having a surge protector on it.

Anyway, have a great AF week everyone!

Cheers