Grats

I am grateful:

1. I am getting better with the antibiotic.
2. I remembered my Claritin yesterday.
3. My mother is less or not at all worried.
4. I will take her shopping today, thank God.
5. Morning walk with doggie yesterday.
6. Hearing the birds on that walk.
7. Her enthusiasm.
8. Giving in when the principal said she hadn’t said something she definitely had. She was embarrassed and horrified and I think it was right that I gave in because it was in front of others.
9. Heat
10. Bed
11. Pillow
12. Washing machine in house
13. Dryer in house
14. Freedom
15. Job
16. Foxes
17. Bears that are still alive
18. People who are trying to change things. So we stop expanding and then killing every animal whose habitat we’ve destroyed anyway.
19. People who look deeply.
20. Thich Nhat Hahn
21. G, who introduced me and J to him.
22. That J is functioning. At least he’s not as miserable. I do want that for him.
23. Protein. I always seem to need it.
24. Fruits
25. Celery. Suddenly I like it, yay.
26. Today’s For Today: “There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” George Sand Ouch, but I’m sure it will include more than spouse.
27. And it does: “A sense of loving and being loed is not restricted to one’s spouse, children, parents, friends or associates.
28. “It can be applied to everything and everyone in God’s world.
29. “To love and feel loved is nothing less than to have a reverence for life.” Okay.
30. “Recovery in OA means regaining the freedom to love without conditions and without expectation of return.” Wow.
31. “As a speaker once put it, ‘I love you; I don’t care whether or not you love me!’
32. “To love unconditionally is a difficult concept for many.”
33. “Only spiritual recovery can give us an understanding of what it means. For today: Has my thinking about love changed in OA?”
34. Okay. This makes sense now. Today’s Voices of Recovery: “Before we joined the OA Fellowship our prayers for help might have gone unanswered simply because we were never meant to face this disease in isolation.” OA 12 & 12 p. 15
35. …”I prayed to be think while continuing to eat whatever and whenever I wanted.
36. “Over the years, my ‘prayers’ became please: if you help me stop bingeing, I will always – or never again – do…”
37. …”I wasn’t meant to recover alone.
38. “I needed the OA Fellowship, a power greater than myself, to help me.
39. “So, in fact my prayers had been answered.
40. “I later heard it said that our prayers are always answered positively: either ‘yes, but not now,’ or ‘I have something better in mind.’”
41. Today’s In This Moment: “In This Moment, recovery is a journey.” Oy.
42. “Step One tells me I am powerless over others.” Ouch ouch ouch. But I guess I need to learn this.
43. “Step One tells me I am powerless over others.
44. “Step Eleven asks me to ‘pray only for knowledge of God’s will’ for me and the power to carry that out. This is hard stuff. But they say it is simple so I will continue to do it.
45. “Any power I have comes from God.
46. “For me, recovery has been hard at times, but well worth the effort.” Oh wow, after I just said that.
47. “I believe that recovery is a journey, not a destination.
48. “By understanding myself, accepting others, and trusting my Higher Power, I take that journey every day of my life.”
49. I did NOT want to do this work today. But then I kept remembering the phrase, “in fit spiritual condition,” and knew that I must. Daily.
50. Today’s Language of Letting Go: “Letting Go of Shame
51. “Many of us were victimized, sometimes more than once. We may have been physically abused, sexually abused, or exploited by the addictions of another.
52. “Understand that if another person has abused us, it is not cause for us to feel shame.
53. “The goal of recovery is learning self-care,
54. “learning to free ourselves from victimization, …”
55. “The goal is to arm ourselves so we do not continue to be victimized due to the shame and unresolved feelings from the original victimization.
56. “We each have our own work, our issues, our recovery tasks.
57. “One of those tasks is to stop pointing our finger at the perpetrator, because it distracts us.
58. “Although we hold each person responsible and accountable for his or her behavior, we learn compassion for the perpetrator.
59. “We understand that many forces have come into play in that person’s life.
60. “At the same time, we do not hold on to shame.
61. “We learn to understand the role we played in our victimization, how we fell into that role and did not rescue ourselves.” Yes, but I’m afraid I take TOO MUCH blame.
62. It goes on to say: “But that is information to arm us so that it need not happen again.” Okay.
63. “Let go of victim shame.” Yes but what about perpetrator shame. When * I * was a bitch. I don’t know. I guess live in today. Be the best can today.
64. “We have issues and tasks, but our issue is not to feel guilty and wrong because we have been victimized.
65. “Today, I will set myself free from any victim shame I may be harboring or hanging onto.”
66. And I think for me, getting rid of the regrets and self-blame too.
67. Tv
68. Remote control
69. Electricity
70. Lights
71. Phone
72. Cell phone
73. Car
74. Laughing happy children
75. The kids having fun in science yesterday.
76. Safety
77. Band-aids
78. Gauze
79. First Aide Cream
80. T, my wonderful aide for about an hour in the mornings.
81. Trees
82. My big oak tree
83. My roof
84. Our desk. May J use it again.
85. Showers
86. Baths
87. Bubble bath. That’s a luxury.
88. Doggie having earned her Canine Good Citizenship. J doing that for me and surprising me with it.
89. I hate myself right now. Because I’ve never been good at that kind of thing. I must keep doing gratitudes. Maybe some even about me. Um. I’m fair with the children. I’m grateful for that.
90. I have a sense of humor.
91. I can self-sacrifice for another.
92. I try to improve and grow every day.
93. Doors
94. Art work
95. Jello-mold from the Golden Girls set
96. Wood cabinets in kitchen.
97. The book My Stroke of Insight
98. Honest people
99. People who keep confidences.
100. Inspirational people
101. The book Molokai
102. Hope, when I have it.
103. The five Mindfulness Trainings