Saturday Night, June 21, 2008

Don't go through life, grow through life. Author unknown
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Hi y'all. Hope all is well out there in the blogosphere. Today has been an up and down day for me, swinging in and out of depression. Had dinner with Rick and Daave at El Paraiso and then went to the speaker meeting at Lambda Center. Tonight's speaker related the violence in her home growing up culminating with the suicide of her mother by gun. This just really completed my downward spiral into depression. Whamo - all the crap from my own violent upbringing just reared its ugly head. My first reaction was to leave - run, get out. But I have a rule to stay seated and try to wait it out. I did and I listened and in listening to her I saw how our stories were interwoven with so many similarities. She also talked about how she was going to be 54 next month - the same age her mother was when she committed suicide. She had been warned by many counselors that the year would be rough as it was a significant anniversary. However, she said that she compared her place in her life vs her mother's place in her life at that time and the two were incomparable. She had her 18 years of sobriety, a sound support group, a good balanced life. Her mother had none of these. So she felt like she could meet 54 head-on and make it. As she talked, and shared her experience hope and strength about her life in sobriety, my depression lifted somewhere in the middle of that. To me it was a God shot. If I had left when my run for my life anxiety kicked in, I would have left 5 minutes before the miracle that we hear and read about. Thank you God, it just doesn't get much better than that.

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Tonight I am grateful for:

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God, my Higher Power.

My sobriety.

Mamie, my schnauzer.

My Sponsors, past and current.

The spiritual experience of God working in my life tonight.

My friends.

The amazing strength and power of the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

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Y'all be pretty now, ya heah.