Whatever Works For You

What a great week we have had with everything going on here at our place. At the end I will post a link to the Fall Festival pictures.

Our son is still doing wonderfully. He is working. Plus he is going to court for his stuff he committed in the past. I can't help but think that has to be hard. If you're clean and trying to fly straight and have to go and take care of past issues, must be discouraging but he doesn't complain and he always takes money with him to satisfy the judge and PO that he is taking care of his obligations.

I went and spoke to a group of parents last week. A parent expressed her happiness about her son had been clean 62 days. We all felt great for him and expressed our joy to her. But for myself that was exactly the topic I had recently been deliberating on concerning recovery, the "day count."

I am a very goal oriented person so I very well understand the nature of keeping track of progress and goals, Gant Charts are not considered foreign language for me. But as I focused on my son's "day count" which I really don't know, I begin to feel conflicted. What exactly is a day count. I have spent countless hours of trying to accept the way this disease works, the minute by minute struggle for an addict at times. But in recovery it becomes day count. I was ask in the meeting about my son. My response was that he was clean today. My attitude today is that his sobriety is his business and the most important day in the world to me is today.

Now I may be upsetting to some about that kind of attitude. I read about and hear from others about their day count and their anniversaries. Despite what I said, I honestly feel joy for them and their day count. The most important thing for anyone is, whatever works for you, works for you and I'm happy about that.

I'm not a NA or Anon 12 step person. I went to meetings but they did not work for me. I've done the counselor thing, but likewise I'm not a person that does the counseling thing. I'm not a church or prayer person. But I'm going to tell you I advocate for all of these things. The most important thing in all of this for a parent or an addict is "what works for you." And, if it ain't working find something that does.

Hope that doesn't sound conflicting to others but the old saying, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Each of us must skin our cat our way. My trouble for quite a few years was that I was trying to skin my cat and his too. That doesn't work. Plus I was trying to skin my cat just the way everyone else was doing it and my cat isn't exactly like your cat, our cats may be similar but no two cats are exactly alike. Each of us must skin our cats the way best for us, but the most important lesson I learned was to I could only skin my cat.

As I have mentioned before and wrote about for the Intervene site I find lifeboats invaluable. One of Mom and Dad's lifeboats is entertaining. One of our big events of the year is Fall Festival. Fall Festival was last weekend and if you want to see the pics you can find them here:

Fall Festival 2010