Like many of us, I was born into a normal
family. In my case, I was the oldest of
six children with one brother and four sisters.
The idea of “Default Settings” came to me many years after entering a 12
Step Program.
I am not a trained Therapist or
Psychologist, but this book provides a venue for me to share my experience,
strength and hope with others. If you
are reading this book, like me, you are searching for answers or you might be
struggling with a life-challenging experience.
What I have learned is that, “if it is life-challenging, then it has the
possibility to be life-changing”.
Ultimately, it is up to you.
My Introduction to
the 12 Steps
I entered my first 12 Step meeting in July of
1992. A few days earlier, I had learned
that my wife, who I was separated from, had entered into a new
relationship. I came by this knowledge
quite innocently. My two sons, who were
6 and 8 years old at the time, recanted a story of spending the night at their
mother’s new boyfriend’s home. I immediately
felt a rush of nausea sweep through my entire body and I became physically
debilitated. I couldn’t eat and all I
wanted to do was sleep.
Six months previous, just after New Year’s Eve
1991 and following 3 days of not talking to my wife, I announced in dramatic
style that I was leaving. I packed some
clothes and went to stay at a friend’s home.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was using one of my oldest,
tested, tried and true manipulative tactics to control my wife, except this
time it backfired on me. She actually
learned that she was happier without me (at least it seemed) and I sank into a
deep depression. For some time I had
tried to re-unite with my wife and my broken family, but she resisted. I had already put her through many years of
my drinking and partying, while I enjoyed a career in the nightclub business. She had finally had enough.
So with this as a backdrop, I entered into the
room of my first 12 Step Program. I
recall that I could hardly sit in the meeting without becoming emotionally
distraught. I struggled to fight back my
tears because this public display of emotions was very out of character for
me. Nonetheless, there I was sniffling
and wiping the tears from my cheeks.
What I experienced was that, in the presence of these strangers, I did
not feel ashamed or embarrassed. Week
after week I sat in that room, mainly listening to others who were braver than
me shares their truth, while I continued to seek a salve for my broken heart.
Like the beginning of a rain shower, the
gifts from attending the weekly meetings began to fall; first I felt one drop
and then another until finally the raindrops falling onto me began a cleansing
and recovery process that continues today.
Step 1: One of
the first such raindrops occurred one weekend while I was out walking along the
beach. It was early in my process and I
was struggling with the way my ex-wife was raising our sons. Generally, I disapproved of her behavior and
parenting style with our sons and, because I was no longer living with them, I
couldn’t influence or control what was going on. My belief system needed me to be in control
of what was happening before, in my opinion, she did something that was going
to deeply scar both children emotionally.
As I struggled with this dilemma I repeatedly recited to myself the
first line of the “Serenity Prayer”, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the
things that I cannot change . . . ” I
remember thinking “how in the heck am I supposed to get serene about the stuff
my ex-wife is doing?”
As I struggled intellectually with the things
that I thought I knew, and my frustration over the reality that I could not
control what was happening (especially when I wasn’t there), I slowly began to
get some awareness. I cannot control the
action or behavior of another person. If
I allow myself to be SERENE, then I can learn to ACCEPT that there are many
things that happen day to day that I have absolutely no control over. I can get angry, I can threaten, I can cry, I
can attempt to use any manipulative tactic that I have been taught, but
ultimately, I am POWERLESS over others.
The more I resist this principle, the more the level of peace and
serenity is disrupted in my life.
This awareness brought me to my initial
understanding of Step One.
KS ...
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