In Gratitude and Sadness

I found out last night that one more beautiful young woman has been taken by this disease of addiction.

One more beautiful young woman who forgot – or maybe never had the chance to learn – that she really did deserve to live an amazing life.

I didn’t know her well, but I can picture her smile and as I think of her right now, I see her laughing. I saw her at various meetings last year and I spoke with her a handful of times. I know that I hugged her.

I’ve been doing this recovery thing for a long time. And I have seen a lot of beautiful women die, so many more than I could count. I am sad. And I am furious. And as always I find myself asking, what more, if anything, can I do?

I don’t have the answer. Yet.

But for today I am going to continue to shed these tears that fall upon my keyboard. I’m going to pray for this particular young woman’s family and friends. I’m going to pray for all of the other women in my community, and in the world, who are struggling in their addiction today. I’m going to thank my higher power that I and so many people in my life have found our way into this thing called recovery. I’m going to pray that the policy makers and the powers that be wake up and work harder to find ways to offer all suffering addicts a pathway to recovery. I’m going to pray that we all become more open to the fact that there is no “one way” to recover.

Do me a favour? Just reach out to one person today who you know is struggling? Remind them that they are beautiful, worthwhile, and amazing. Do it in honour of all of the beautiful young women who didn’t learn that about themselves and/or didn't get the help they needed in time to save their own lives.

Rest in peace, sweet girl. Rest in peace.

~Dawn~

Here I am Again

So I actually transferred this blog over onto my She Recovers web platform some time ago - but it hasn't done anything for getting me to blog more. So I'm coming home to Blogger with a commitment to start writing again.

I don't really know why I stopped - other than I had a few other creative projects taking over my life.

So here I am. Back. And I can't wait to start blogging again.

But first - I have to keep packing to leave for a two-month trip back to Mexico.

Have I mentioned that life has gotten pretty good since I was laid off a year ago today?

I love my life. And I love you. Whoever you are.

Dawn

How to Launch a Website

Well, you launch it with a hope and a prayer, some pride and a great deal of gratitude.

We are all recovering from something, and you are all warmly invited to Tulum this November.

A Sacred Pause: Yoga and Recovery on the Beach.

Be there.

Love,
Dawn

Change

I haven't blogged in a long while and I couldn't for certain tell you why.

Not sure why today is the day I decided to start blogging again. Okay...that's a lie. I decided to start again because there is a hell of a lot going on in my life and I feel like I need to start writing again to help process and keep track. As I wrote a few posts ago, getting laid off in November was a very painful shock, but it's been a good thing. Going to Mexico a few days after my lay-off for three weeks, then home for Christmas and then back to Mexico for the month of February was pretty flipping cool. Taking life coach training has been provocative and dare I say, exhilarating. Still, over the past six months I have ended up rather emotionally vulnerable. Not vulnerable as in snot dripping down to my knees crying (although been there, done that a few times in the past year) but vulnerable in the sense of so much has been shifting for me...that I'm never positive of what state I am really in. Proud and stressed to the max was the state I found myself in last month when Yoga Kid decided to get married and gave us approximately five minutes to plan the affair. Okay, it was five weeks. Pictures to follow. Happy is a state I often find myself in these days. Tired is another common state. Grateful as much of every day as possible. The usual, plus the vulnerability.

Anxious would be the state that best describes this particular day. For good reason. Tomorrow night I am launching my new website and inviting the world of recovering women to come to our Yoga and Recovery Retreat in Tulum this November.

Anxiety. Fear. I could use a week on the beach right about now. The retreat will be awesome. A complete decompression, a pause, a week of relaxation, yoga, swimming in the turquoise sea. Downward dogs all over the place and moon salutations on the beach under the full moon. I have the proverbial and common fear associated with this and so many things that I do. Kind of...what if you threw a big damned party and nobody came thing. This is not going to be a big damned party. I'm inviting the world (facebook) but we only have room for 19 women. 

Hell, I guess the worst case scenario is we'll have the whole resort to ourselves.

With Gratitude

Dear Sweet Friend and Mr Bee,

It’s Tuesday morning and I am sitting on the veranda drinking an Americano from Ah Cacao and reflecting on what an amazing month I have just experienced here in Playa. I want to tell you both, I will be forever grateful for the time I have spent living with you at Las Olas (the “waves”). The name of your home is very appropriate when I consider the never-ending waves that have washed over me this past four weeks. I loved the ocean waves (of course), but the waves of extreme gratitude, of love and friendship, awareness, and of healing – these were the strongest waves of all. Gracias.

The month has also been about reconnecting with one of the very dearest friends of my heart. I won’t ever forget the night that we met at a recovery meeting back in the day, Sweet Friend. I shared in that meeting that Soul Mate and I were brand new in our beautiful new town. I shared that moving there was a culmination of years of hard work and years of dreaming, but that the dream was tempered with a little bit of fear because I had arrived in our new life with a diagnosis of stage three colon cancer. I was scared. I shared that we had left our kids and family behind and I didn’t know anybody and that I really, really needed a friend. You came up to me at the end of the meeting Sweet Friend, and I knew when you hugged me and I looked into your beautiful green eyes that you would be a friend for life, however long that life was going to be. And so it is.

Here are just a few of my favourite Playa moments and things: 

• Starting each morning with tropical fruit, yogurt and granola
• Tuesday excursions to Xpu-Ha to lie on the beach (whoops, kind of burned myself up a bit yesterday)
• Friday night recovery meetings
• Tacos at “Tacos on Juarez” after Friday night meetings (Ten pesos each, I mean seriously)
• My nearly daily walks to and through the Mega store (can you really ever buy too much hot sauce?)
• Morning meetings with Bruce, solving world peace and other minor issues
• Fish filet dinners, at home or out
• Working on my course work for Recovery Coaching and learning that I am going to love being a coach
• Learning that I like Kundalini yoga
• The many laughs shared three ways
• Shrimp tacos
• A Valentine’s Day trip to Tulum with my Sweet Friend
• Shrimp ceviche at El Camello in Tulum
• Planning the She Recovers retreat that we will hold later this year
• Getting over my fear of walking down Fifth Avenue (the vendors really can’t make me buy stuff)
• The zillions of hours that Sweet Friend and I spent pondering the meaning of our lives and recommitting to our dreams
• A wicked massage on the roof, under a full moon
• More tacos 

So today I start my journey home. I have a lot to go home to. I will be extremely happy to see Soul Mate, First Born, Yoga Kid, and all of the other girls and people in my life. I lead an extraordinary life, and am blessed to have extraordinary people in it. Thank you both for your generosity, and for everything that you have taught me this past four weeks. We are all going to be beyond okay. Skype you soon. 

The next time you are both walking down the beach in Playa, think of me, okay? Oh, and have a taco for me on Friday night after the meeting. Or better yet, have three.

Love

Dawn

Soul Mate at Twenty Three Years of Recovery

My Darling Husband,

Tonight will be the first time that I have ever missed one of your recovery milestone celebrations. I won't be there in body, but I am pretty sure you know that I will be there with you in spirit. I wish I could be there tonight, but of course I am rather preoccupied tending to my own recovery over here in the Mayan Riviera. I know I have said this a million times, but thank you again for being happy for me, for your generous attitude about my taking this time and this space to really settle into my new reality. Our new reality. It's going to be awesome - this next part of our lives. Hard to believe that it can get any better, hey?

I could write for hours about our life in recovery this past several decades. But this blog is for you. And here is what I know about you, and your recovering life:

• Your Higher Power works wonders when mine does not, which is extremely useful
• A Narcotics Anonymous convention in June 1989 was an amazing turning point in our recovery and our lives
• More than anything, I believe, you have recovered the Soul Mate who is at his very best a father, a son, a husband, a friend, and a brother to more than just Car Dude and Sled Dude (though they must always keep the biggest slice of your heart)
• You take recovery very seriously, but only if you can have a lot of fun while doing it
• You love the boys and girls in recovery, but you completely underestimate just how very much they love you
• The last two sets of steps (both completed in the past four years) were maybe (but not quite) as profound as the first set twenty some years ago
• You treasure the early years, when we were all stumbling around like idiots with control issues - because back in the day - control issues were fun
• You have truly come to realize that how other people work their program, or don't - and whether they stay or go - is none of your business, you just love 'em anyway

What else do I know about you, and your life? Well let's just go through a few things that you have survived or experienced with joy...clean:

• Watching your two boys grow up and become absolutely remarkable men
• Your own bout with cancer
• Becoming a grandfather to the Three Adorables
• My cancer
• Blending a family of the "least likely to blend" specimens
• Supporting me through my mother's death from cancer and my grief from same
• Owning a business and letting it go
• Making a home in the same house for 15 years
• Making another home in the same house for 4 years and counting
• Being there for your Dad and Mom after his accident
• Being there for two teenage girls and a teenage boy, even when they each had lost their minds
• Always (quietly) being there for anybody in your family who might learn from your experience
• Developing a passion for fishing and following it through
• For being open to going on amazing amazing amazing trips to beautiful places
• Moving to Paradise, and still realizing with great wonder "We live here"
• Persevering at a job that is pretty difficult at times, but works for our lifestyle
• Learning how to love a woman who always had great potential, but was broken in a few spots for a few years
• Building a family, a home, a life, and a future - because you know you are worth it.

I don't know much else to say that I would want to share here, there is a lot that I would and will tell you in private.

For today, I just want you to know that I think that 23 years of recovery, for a boy like you (I knew you "when," after all) is an absolute miracle. Thanks so much for sharing it with a girl like me. I love you. Enjoy tonight.

~ Dawn ~

Onward and Upward

Being laid off can suck.

Or it can rock.

My experience is clearly turning out to be the latter. Having a severance package helps, of course. Getting laid off and losing pay and benefits would definitely fall in the *suck* category. I am extremely blessed. Not only do I have full pay and benefits for what seems like a long time, but I don't have to pay $140 a month for parking. I mean really, it's like I've been given a raise if you think about it.

Going to Mexico for three weeks just 11 days after I got axed also helped turn this into a pleasant experience. Having beach time to contemplate not only my navel but my future was a true gift. I have a lot to think about. A lot of different directions that I can move in. It is sometimes overwhelming. Anxiety-provoking. Freaky. Mostly, I am increasingly fascinated by the fact that knowing that my dreams likely will come true is at least a hundred times more scary than it was to think…that they probably would not.  

How fortuitous for me that just over a year ago at this time I hit the wall with some occupational (and life) burnout. (see previous post on Denial) How lucky for me that I was forced to do some deeper work to remind myself what I had previously learned once or a hundred times already in my not particularly short life - that what I *do* is not who I *am.* Definitely a good thing that I remembered that my fancy pants job did not define me before I lost the darned thing. 

It’s weird to be on the edge of this…whatever this is. I have been doing recovery for 24 years. In July it will be 25 years. I saw something written the other day that talked about how one day, things just finally start to come together, to integrate into something that finally starts to look like more of a whole. I recovered my brain with thirteen years of schooling, I am working on my physical realm through yoga (and today for the first time I did Zumba - it was fun but I think I broke my left cheek butt). My emotions are...emotional - just the way they are supposed to be. And my spirit - well this is a spiritual awakening like none other I have experienced. This is God or the Creator or Bugs Bunny telling me, yes Dawn – this is your time. Take it and do something extraordinary with it. 

Okay. I will try.

But first I am going back to Mexico for a month.

There really is nothing about being laid off that sucks.