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sat posted: Sat 2017-07-29 18:30:26 tags: healing
Sat Morning Serenity at Living Word
beginner meeting: Chair's Choice, sharing about "creativity"
We may be great at creative production (outwardly-directed), and yet stalled on inward-directed creativity: e.g. creating an inner "safe space" free from habitual self-reproach, etc.

Our family dysfunction taught us to deny feelings, talents, desires, experiences. Part of recovering self-acceptance is learning to honor our own creativity.

The other day I expressed the feeling that if Dad was "just some guy" and not my father, then, knowing what I know of him, I wouldn't want to be friends with him. More recently, while transcribing my 1993 journals I revisited the story arc where, once I realized the woman I was chasing at the time was not interested in dating me, our friendship fizzled. At that age I kept stumbling over that - trying to "make friends" with select women, despite lack of commonality on which to premise friendship.

At Mom's funeral, a theme we all riffed on was her love of literature and the art of storytelling. She passed that love along to me, and it blossomed into a talent for creative writing and a rewarding habit of journaling. I said Mom also imparted a morbid sense of perfectionism - but now, I feel like that doesn't accurately capture what I was trying to say. What I do know is that by junior high, I came to feel chronically unsafe and ashamed. So, coming to the 12 Step program, I learned that there were amazing creative turns my story could take. It became imaginable to genuinely forgive people who had wronged me, be forgiven for my own transgressions, and reframe my childhood shame and fear through self-reparenting. Instead of a story relentlessly driven by vengeance, desperation, or soulless ambition, it can be a story with morals of forgiveness, mercy, self-control etc.

Oftentimes we creative types like to think creativity is an inborn trait. I proposed that creativity is more a spiritual gift from "above", a fruit of connection with Higher Power.

"Regular" meeting - 5th Sat, "chair's choice". The meeting chair passed a bag of folded slips of paper around, each bearing an AlAnon slogan. I drew "Keep an open mind".

As an Episcopalian, I pride myself on being open-minded, so why did my Higher Power call me here to ponder this slogan today? Time and again I recognize how our dysfunctional formation underlies present-day habitual stubbornness (resistance to influence), stemming from a fear of manipulation. Gottman's "7 Principles" promotes "accepting influence" as a primary principle for making marriage work. And indeed, we repeatedly lock horns over "influence" and squabble over whether this or that tactic is "manipulative".

Friends/loved ones of addicts learning to "interact with the person, not the disease"

"Emotional sobriety", i.e. abstaining from the inner pharmacy of fear, anger and shame, one day at a time

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Set up online banking w/CU
Car shopping... Bernie / Palmetto57 re: silver manual Honda Fit?
Well the reason I don't see a used Honda Fit in their inventory is they were trying to sell me a Hyundai Accent. And having drove that local private seller's Accent I think the power is ho-hum. Also the reverse gear being nearly indistinguishable from first would be a starting-line collision waiting to happen.

Went to Miami Car Credit to try to test drive a Ford Fusion, but when we arrived, another couple was already buying that car. D'oh. The salesman referred us up the road to Florida Fine Cars. The salesman there suggested a Fiat 500T Sport. The price was a little higher than I was comfortable plunking down cash for, so Miss Cupcake co-signed to get a not-so-usurious APR and I'll pay it down aggressively and refi in 6 months to tone down the cost of rebuilding credit.