The confusion, struggles, and stress while loving a child through their own challenges with substance use can claim your energies, your happiness, your peace, right?  We need tools, methods, practices, skills that work.  Read on for some of those! 

For the next few months, I’ll be sharing with you a bit about each of the topics of The Invitation to Change Approach.  The ITC (Invitation to Change) takes the best science has to offer, including compassion, and makes it easy to understand and put into action.
 
It can work for the relationship with your child AND any relationship, even the relationship with yourself.

I invite you to consider inviting change into your heart, into your relationships, into your life.  You may be surprised that “change” is not as hard as one might believe. 
 
When I learn and practice new strategies that actually work (and those are the only ones I share), it brings more peace, it de-escalates tension, it increases my confidence, it strengthens my intention to show up in my life and for my son in ways that help us both.
 
You are invited to more peace. 

Topic #1  ~  Behaviors Make Sense

Behaviors make sense in some way. People use substances because it serves a purpose. You don’t have to like it, probably won’t, but arguing with the reality of it will cause more stress.  Instead, seek to understand.
 
Some reasons why people use substances or engage in related behaviors.  I invite you to consider with compassion and kindness why any of us would reach for anything to accomplish the following:

• To feel less anxiety
• To relieve depression
• To feel connected to something or someone
• To not suffer with physical pain
• To make it through the day
• To get to sleep

People don’t use substances because they’re bad or crazy. They use substances because they work well, they’re fast, they’re reliable, and give a measure of personal control.  They meet a need, they serve at least one purpose.   Good to know, good to understand what's really going on.
 
Why it matters that Behaviors Make Sense:

• It can help you take the behavior less personally and feel more empathy toward your child (yourself and anyone else too).
• It can inspire a path where you’re not arguing with the reality of it.  You’re coming from logic, understanding and compassion instead.
• It can help you to experience the behavior as less random, less of a surprise, and more predictable.
• It can help you start to communicate with your child (and anyone) in a way that helps them feel understood. It’s what we all want really, isn’t it?  And it can lead to deeper compassion and collaboration.  Something I’m thinking we also want. 

 
With curiosity, connecting to your heart, gaining clarity, and communicating from a place of understanding (doesn’t mean easy or in agreement or looking the other way) we can make a difference!
 
I invite you to consider with an open mind, open heart, with compassion how behaviors, emotions, attitudes actually make sense – in others and in yourself. 

Breathe, touch your heart, feel the love in you, send it out to your child, to the world, to anyone who needs it. 

Maybe change is not as hard as we might believe.  And you’re invited to find out.  Let me know how you experience “making sense”.  
 
Love wins here!

To learn more about The Invitation to Change Approach, please click here:  https://cmcffc.org/about

To Peace and Possibility!

Joanne

Loving a child who struggles with substance use is just hard!  And sometimes you may not feel so loving because of it, it's ok!  It's normal, it's human, and you can return to that loving feeling. 

There are so many reasons this could happen. When we consider addiction and the effects of substances, it can get ugly, dark, dangerous, exhausting.  We can be consumed with worry.  Where is love then?  And why isn't it saving my child?, we might ask.

We can learn new ways, try to use new tools and skills as best we can, be kind and patient and still there are times that it may seem a child continues to drift further away, become so symptomatic in mental and chemical imbalance, even violent that it seems impossible to influence or unadvisable to be too near.  Love can still show up and we can reconnect to it.  

In a perfect world, we'd be able to always meet our children as they are with un-conditional love, and the reality is that it's an imperfect world. We do and will place conditions on life itself.  Please live.  Please get better.  Please, because when you don't, this worry is killing me.  I want you to get better.  I need you to heal.  You should do something that helps you.  Conditions.  It's just part of our story. This too needs to be ok.

How when it gets really ugly, do we re-connect to love and that loving feeling?  Because if you're like me, sometimes I easily can and sometimes it takes a whole lot of work to get it back.  How does love win then?  I wonder!

Here's HOW.  I invite you to take the journey from worry to wonder now: 

Step 1:  Breathe into the present.  

• Breathe into the present moment, into your heart, close your eyes, touch your heart and intend to connect to a Love beyond your understanding, a love that may sometimes seem fleeting and begin to wonder that it is not, it could not disconnect from you.
• Do not believe your thoughts and all the images of past and future.  It's imagination, so either it's over or you can not know. Not knowing is probably kinder than those images! Breathe into the truth that you have not known a lot, and you're OK. 
• Join reality as it is, be willing to accept that for now things may seem tough AND you are surviving.  You have learned, grown, established new ways of thinking and being to meet it all and can do it again and again (and no it may not be easy). 
• Bring compassion for yourself and all the thoughts and emotions that are going to arise.  You are human.  Loving a child who struggles with substance use will bring struggle, and you will learn to meet the struggle and learn how to cope, and cope well because of it.  Be gentle with yourself. Breathe.

Step 2:  Re-Connect with who you really are and how you want to feel - Love and Loving

• No matter where and in what condition your child is in, breathe into your heart and send your love out energetically and silently from your heart to their heart.  Be willing to believe it reaches them.  This energy of Love is far bigger than you, it will do it's job.  Love's job is to live itself into the world, to recycle itself, to renew, to shine its light into darkness. And it's choosing you.  Feel it, send it out.
• Be willing to understand and accept that at any point in time and place, you are doing the best you can at the place of understanding and capability you're at currently, and allow it to be good enough, and consider it can change too.  Choose to learn from it and wonder what else is possible when you practice this journey from worry to wonder. 
• Consider repeatedly that your child is doing the best they can also, no matter what it may look like and sound like, they are!  The impact of substance use has its way, and we're opening up creating another way.  It is not out of the realm of logic that when someone has the mental anguish, conditions, or physical, emotional pain that our children experience, a substance relieves it.  It makes sense.  Becoming addicted and seeking the substance makes sense.  You don't have to like it, and it's still happening. 

Step 3:  Live Love

• Learn as much as you can about addiction and family recovery, seek and receive lots of support, practice what you learn so it becomes more familiar to you, and repeat the steps above as needed (if you're like me, they're needed!). This is love. 
• As substance use has its way on your child's brain, body, spirit, mind, realize you need new ways to meet the problems that are just part of the reality of substance use and addiction. Choose to consider love in new ways, out of the box, noticing where you get stuck and looking toward what you can do, what is within your power and without demanding your time and way.  Love will find a way to heal you in your pursuit of it, and that will transfer to your relationship with your child. 
• Grieve and choose life and love.  Yes, all the emotions can co-exist, they are already.  All your emotions have a place.  Choose to feel, choose to heal. 

Love will find you again and again and again, and you will find it.  It has an energy, a power that is beyond our human capacity to truly grasp its enormous generosity.  Our awareness and willingness, our intention to reconnect to Love when we feel disconnected can be one breath away (and then take a few more).  From there, you can send your love out even if silently to your child whether they are in the same room, whether you know where they are or not, or how they are.  Send it in honor and memory of the child that has and will always live in your heart, in honor of Love.

We need this kind of love, we need each other, we need you, you need you, your child and honoring their life needs you.  We may not be able to save a life, and we can save a relationship with that life.  It starts this way. 

I wonder what is possible?  When Love in its purest form resides within us and is shared from our heart to another's, what is possible?  I wonder!  How about you? 

I'd love to hear about your journey from worry to wonder.  Love wins here!

Peace,

Joanne

The horizon becomes so blurry as he sinks deeper into delusions, another bout of using, unrelenting destruction, a seeming in-ability or refusal to seek or accept help.  Here it comes again, the unrelenting desire for him to heal, to choose life.  Here it comes again, the unrelenting pain of arguing with the reality that his is not my ship to steer.
 
He sinks deeper and deeper into the dark, deep raging sea.  It’s all I can do to not go down with him when it feels as if I’m drowning in a sea of bottomless grief – the kind of grief so deep it spontaneously drags me into the waves of sorrow and worry, anger, the desperation, pleading please, please, please make this stop and heal him.

It's so hard to watch as this ship he rides is tossed around in a raging sea, its bows cracking with each wave.  It’s easy to believe it will sink entirely.  Can I absolutely know that’s true?  The mother ship watching the child’s, the not knowing, it is true I can not know it will sink, and I don’t want to either.
 
They go down and it’s all too easy to go right along with them, into our own raging seas.  BUT … AND …

Despite the raging seas, notice how in truth something inside us just does not want to go down with the ship, refuses to drown.  Notice how there is a force in and around you that keeps you reaching for life preservers, keeps trying to restore your breath, tread water, brings you to rest on any buoy that is available.
 
Self-preservation is automatic. It calls for us, this siren of the seas.  It says “Breathe, tread water, swim, rest, do what you can to help you, to help this situation!”  So we breathe, we cry, we moan for relief, we speak the pain, we sit with it, we drop to the floor, we stand back up and suddenly we’re walking again, being moved to something that might resemble walking out of the waves, even if for a respite of time.  We reach for life preservers. 
 
Though we may be in the same seas as our children, we each have our own ship to steer and navigate whatever waters we are in.  In truth, we can not remain on their ship and we can’t steer it for them.  In the midst of those seas, we are afloat, we have not drowned, some how we find ourselves navigating the raging seas, moved by the tide.  The tide is in.  The tide is out.  It’s a force of its own, it will have its way.
 
It's not supposed to be feel good or be easy, how could it be?  But that does not mean we can’t ride these waves even when they rage.  And there are life preservers. 

Ask yourself, seek the answers, and find them:  What supports are available to you?  What supports do you already have that are working for you?  Notice the life preservers in your life.  What life preservers whisper to you to seek out and grab hold of in order to ride the waves and get your head above water again?  Notice how you’re not all the way under and you don’t stay under.  Something moves you back up, treading water, lifted out of the waves, breathing even if gasping for air, breathing again, resting when able so you can continue on.  Is it mother love?  Is it love that finds you to mother yourself? 
 
This love will find us everywhere, in any condition.  It will whisper, it will keep calling us back to itself, and lift us, move us up and forward.  It doesn’t promise easy, just that it loves all of us as is and will inspire. It is the ultimate life preserver.
 
It’s not going to be easy, and there are life preservers.  I invite you to check out the ones listed here.  Just click on any or all:
 

• Helping Families Help  
• Allies in Recovery  
• TAM – The Addict’s Mom Medication Assisted Treatment and Harm Reduction 
• SMART Recovery 
• CMC: Foundation for Change    
• Moms for All Paths to Recovery (MAP)   
• Grace for Grieving Families (loss due to substance use) and Thrive Family Recovery Resources (CRAFT and Faith)  
• Loving Your Child Through Their Addiction  
• Parents of Struggling Children with Drugs and Alcohol (including CRAFT)  
• The Partnership to End Addiction     https://drugfree.org/  1-855-DRUGFREE or 855-378-4373
• SAMHSA - Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 
• National Helpline - https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
• Harm Reduction -  https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/harm-reduction

Love “Em Where They’re At ~ Harm Reduction Works 
Monday @ 4pm Pacific - virtual meeting
 
A specialized HRW (Harm Reduction Works) group for anyone in a parenting role for someone who uses drugs and or alcohol. Everyone is welcome especially parents and guardians who aren’t sure what harm reduction is or whether it can help them. 
 
Join Zoom Meeting 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89083597242... 
Meeting ID: 890 8359 7242 
Passcode: 583656  
 
Love wins!  It shows up.  It shows up in so many ways.  It shows up in you.  It is you, and it will hold you and carry you as you ride these waves, and you may have to steer in different directions, patch up your ship and get in different waters.  So sadly, we may see that some ships will crash, and some may sink.  Don’t be one of them.  Love will lift you again and again, and help you to navigate your course, your path whatever that may be, and however you may choose.

It’s not easy so let’s travel together.
 
Sending you love,
 
Joanne Richards

Just yesterday, and again, it must be 50 times already, at least 3 in the last few months, he's left detox.  In seconds I'm flooded with disappointment, disgust, anger, and then the grief, the deep sorrow, the relentless fears feel all consuming.  I drop to the floor, my body can't even hold itself up.

I am all too familiar with this scenario. I've learned to accept it all in me, welcome it all, let it all have its life, create time and space for the whaling cries, the swollen eyes, the inability or desire to speak.  It's become my sacred grieving. When that all has it's time to be expressed, I question one of my thoughts, "he won't live through the year".  That's the journey, the questioning.  I do The Work of Byron Katie, the simple process of questioning my thoughts.  It holds me in its questions, in my desire to journey, to see. I welcome all of it, and whatever truths I trust are revealed in the process.  Half an hour later, truth finds me.  Peace arrives.  I'm off the floor.  

It might be true that my son may not live through the year with all the using, the other medical conditions he has, living on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back, having zero community, and on an on.  And still, I can't know how long his life will be, how it will be, so I get the hell out of God's business, out of hell, and into my own business of what is within my power.  Anything else just plain hurts! I start to distinguish between my vivid imagination in fear and facts, get into the present moment.  I'm on the floor questioning my thoughts, as far as I know my son is alive somewhere, he's resourceful and unbelievably resilient. Yes, he's left another detox, but my choices are revealed.  Do I continue and deepen my own form of detox or leave the journey of mind detox, leave much needed self care, do I stay withll the things that support my life, or leave?  I stay!

All this fear, when questioned brings me from laying on the floor sobbing, to sitting up, holding my shoulders straight, breathing deeper and slower, the suffocating grief in my throat is relieved.  I am left with utter simplicity, one job, one singular intention as the clarity of not knowing where my son has walked off to and what he will co-exists and sits right beside me.  We're ok there.  I don't know, can't know, and in that not knowing, the awareness of love itself, that energy of love replaces the fear.  I get up, I feel the peace of it, I get moved.  Simple.   

My only job is to love.  How can I return to my job and quickly, the invitation that the stress makes is so compelling. I slow down to question whatever thoughts and beliefs are going to put layer upon layer of confusion into my mind, the physical stress of that, the mental anguish of that, and take me away from my most important job.  With the thought, my son doesn't even make it through five minutes in my mind, I have him dead this year.  With the thought, I am a wreck.  That's all ok, but my soul wants love!  I want love, I need love! That's how I want to live through this year, whether he does or not.  And he needs this from me! I need this from me!  I need to give it because of the situation, because he left detox, because maybe one day he'll call. What CAN I do?  I call me, I call upon love to take me from fear and back into its calm, peaceful, wise guidance. In these scary situations, real or imagined, I know the way out is to go in.  I do The Work. The way is to care for my fears which brings me into the purity and power of love, no conditions, re-connected again, contributing to peace at the very least in me, touching my heart, breathing all that in, imagining hugging my son with that, communicating this love so he has a better shot of hearing it and feeling it if he resurfaces.  I use what I've learned and skills developed.  If my son calls me, it will not be my fear I give.  It will be my love!

Fear just does not communicate what we so desperately want to give, to be, to share, to have.  Love does!  It is the only job that makes the most sense before all others.  And in that deeper truth, my senses know beyond a shadow of a doubt to love him where he's at whether I know where that is or not, in any condition, because he lives, that might last and it might not.  My love, love itself can last! It shows up to guide me, in the questioned fears, this simple process that so profoundly brings me on this journey from the floor in fear to standing in the power of love.  It might not be easy, but it is sure a whole lot easier than before I took the journey.  I become the light in the darkness, having walked into it and out of it, lighter, able to shine on.  This is the journey, take it!  

Drugs don't win here.  Love does!

In gratitude and peace,

Joanne Richards
February 6, 2022

It is sooooo easy, sooooo deep the need to want my son to choose life, that he should choose life as his body, mind, and spirit decompensate, as the desperate need for him to live and live a healthy life envelopes all of me.  He's an 8 hour drive away, I don't have any idea where he is, don't know if he has his own phone or borrowing one, don't know what he means when texting he needs help.  What do you need, I'll drive there, tell me please I feel the desperation of it all.  When will he text again?  More need to know, the needs are falling like torrential rains.  Because I need him to choose life!  How easy it is to have these wants, needs, and shoulds, and how easy it is that the stress of believing them unquestioned grows.  However, what is true is that stress itself  is the invitation, laying out the red carpet for Inquiry.  Is it all true?  

It's nearly impossible to just drop a thought, especially when life hangs in the balance, especially when it's my child. So, I don't try.  I cry.  I let that fear live, and I cry.  It honors all of me, and it honors the situation.  I know I can question it when all my beliefs, and reactions have lived their life too, not so scary anymore, it becomes a sacred experience of grief, of fear, of self-compassion.  Doing this for me helps me hold the space for me, and for others, for my son.  Sacred space, sacred feeling, sacred experience.  The sacred shows up for me, holding me in it all, and holding my son in this too.

In another quiet space, I wonder what else might exist other than the only story of needing my son to choose life as I wait for the next text that he'll go to the hospital. With the thought of needing him to choose life, I'm desperate.  I'm in his business of what he chooses, a place I have zero control, not much influence at the moment even, hours away in another state, phone not working, magical thinking that if I need this enough that somehow energetically it will impact this situation, impact his choice, that somehow this need will help me.  No, I simply and truly do not need this thought to help me, and it will not help my son to be in the stress of it.  

Instead, as I sit in silence, breathe and wonder what else is possible, who I'd be right here and now, in this crisis and without the thought I need him to choose life, there is more space for all of it, as is, as is!  I am breathing, I am questioning my fears for truth.  I know truth liberates me and my son from my imagined nightmares.  I stop arguing with reality.  He is on the streets, his mind and body affected by weeks, months, years of using drugs, does he even have the capacity to choose life when his body aches in pain and need of comfort that a drug can provide?  What life?  The life I think and imagine is best for him?  Am I god here to now know what everyone needs, what their path is, to dismiss the many paths that any life can take, has taken? Who would I be, who am I without the thought of needing him to choose anything?  Available. 

I need to choose life!  For me, and for my son!  This is the truest of all.  Without my clarity, compassion, what I can contribute in peace and support, how I communicate from that place, we're at risk of worse conditions. I need to choose life, and show up in such a way that I am available and on purpose. I choose to welcome the life this fear and grief is apparently moving in me, I choose to question those fears.  I know the truth will be revealed quickly, gently, and it can live in me.  I choose that! I choose to give this renewed heart and mind to my son.  I choose to be prepared if he texts again, to choose the drive to find him, scoop him up and get him wherever he needs to go, if he so allows.  I choose his life if he welcomes my help.  And I choose to understand that for now, he may not be able to choose life the way I think he should.  These stories, assumptions, expectations, wants, needs and shoulds let go of their grip on me, and on my son.  

What remains, always in the revelation of Inquiry is Love.  I love me this way,  I love him this way as is, I send him love from this place, I am available for more love this way without the conditions that he make a choice I think he should make.  I'm here for you sweet boy (because I'm here for myself).  I'm here and we'll figure it out, together.

It is so very true that the truth shall set you free, when you know it.  Is it true that I need my son to choose life?  No.  Would it be nice if he does?  Yes.  What I really, really need more than that is love in the here and now, in the conditions of this reality here and now, to return to it in myself, to share it from this more peaceful place of meeting life as it is.  It's been my experience that fear will most likely show up again, and again.  And Inquiry can bring me directly to the truth where love lives.  I choose that!  Thank you, and so it is, and so it can be, and so it shall be.  I choose life, I choose love.  I choose to give that to my son.  Text or no text, his choice or not, whatever may come.  Drugs will not win here, do not win here.  Love does!

In gratitude,
Joanne Richards
​January 28, 2022 

My son has gone missing again, no phone again, no other contacts, no clue how to reach out to him.  The depression, the addiction, the holidays it seems have swallowed him up, again. My mind so easily goes to thinking and believing this is the time, this is goodbye.

My mother's health is quickly deteriorating. Is this the time, is it time for hospice?   My mind easily thinks and believes I am returning to see her and  this is goodbye.

My mind is lost in the goodbyes, the gasps of breath, the fall of tears, the heaviness in my heart.  My mind has just said goodbye to my son, to my mother, goodbye to hope, goodbye to anything other than sorrow. I have said goodbye to possibility.  Perhaps it is really saying goodbye to possibility that hurts the most. Yes, I think that is it. Lost in grief, I say goodbye to the awareness of love in the mix too.  This I have found to be the most painful, not the circumstances necessarily but the goodbye to Love itself that awaits my awareness of it, again. 

What if it is not goodbye?  What if it is hello?  I bring my mind to that question, and it says hello to the invitation.  Hello.  Without this suffocating and exhausting limp into goodbye, the hello's begin:

Hello breath, hello opening heart to love itself, to the presence of a deeper love and intention to feel it and live it even amidst the grief.  Hello to the possibility of healing - my mother's, my son's, my own.  Hello to that!  Hello to not knowing, not playing god - always a welcomed and comforting hello to that! There is comfort and possibility in simply not knowing, the inability to now know, and to be with the conditions of life now, knowing love finds me, holds me, moves me, continues on, remains.  Hello to that! 

This is hello.  Hello to loving now, from the deepest and wisest most connected parts of me and imagining the heart to heart connection, the energy of love shared through time and space.  Hello to it filling my heart, circulating and bursting out in its lightness, in the light of love. This is hello in this day, and any day.  Hello to that!  

This is hello to more surrender and choice to accept that which I can not change.  And a hello to the next part of that ... It is what it is, for now, and now what can I do? A hello to what is possible, to what I can do, and within my ability.  It is a hello to some challenging times and, therefore, a hello to knowing the deep healing work that invites me, has so abundantly been shared for me along the way, through time, with such special people.  Hello gratitude! 

This is hello to sharing time, love, and peace with my mother who miraculously is growing stronger.  This is hello to creating the inner peace within me this day to share with my son wherever he may be, in whatever condition.  The energy of love, of peace has no concept of time and space, it travels deep and far.  This is hello to do what I can to return to that peace.  This is hello to the wisdom that anything else is a goodbye to a truer connection to love. The very thing that will always hurt, the goodbye to it that is the little bell, even the loud gong, that reminds me to turn the goodbye into a hello.  

Love does not leave, it is I who say goodbye to it when in fear and the imagined fearsome future, when believing thoughts even for brief moments that would shadow all the various ways love can and will say hello. 

If there are to be goodbyes, the hellos are there too.  Can I know for sure that it is goodbye.  No, no I can't.  Even in the earthly goodbyes, the hellos will present themselves, if I say hello back.  Yes, there is grief, and simultaneously the hello enters in.  Hello Compassion.  Hello Peace.  Hello Gratitude.  Hello Love.

To all the possibilities of "this is hello". 

Joanne Richards
​1/8/22

My son called.  Again, he left another sober living home.  Same reasons again.  Same explanation.  Same wants from the world, the staff, even himself, and from me.  That alone feels heavy.  The stories of hearing all his wants that do not yet have solutions grow and grow.  But the day is not yet done.

My sister called.  She wants me to change.  My mother wants and needs me to do this and that.  Work needs me.  A friend wants my time.  He wants. She wants.  They want.  So many wants from so many people, from so many directions, so it seems.  Feeling overwhelmed by not enough time, not enough energy, not enough to give half of them what they want and surely not when they want it.  And it is impossible to give my son what he wants. Now what???? I do The Work, because it works! 

Believing the thought, he wants something from me (that I can't give), is suffocating, I'm immediately on guard.  I notice my ego wants to defend me, give me permission to scream "no!" or "I can't".  The cost of believing this thought and all the stories that come with it is that I disconnect and go into protective mode.  More than that it hurts to make my son the reason when I need him, and he needs me to be connected.  

And without this thought running in the background, being the end all guide of my choices (because it's not!), I become calm, curious, breathe slower and deeper.  I ask him, what is it you really want, need at this time?  I am honest with myself and him if I want to and can give what is being asked, and that is after I clarify what is being asked of me.  Guess what, he's just venting!  He doesn't want anything of me, and even knows I can't make that kind of magic happen.

But that's not it for me.  I really want to understand what this thought is doing to me, to my relationships.  Because when I believed he wanted from me that which I can't give, I'm very stressed out.  And without believing this thought and all the stress of it, I am free to be curious and connected. 

He wants, she wants, they want, when questioned, leads me to be curious, to communicate through it all while connecting to an open mind and an open heart.  Because what I really, really want is to be that and share that part of me.  I want me to show up that way despite the requests for my time and attention.  I want me to take care of me, slow it down and consider if and how I will give.  What I really, really want is to live out the stated intention to be present, build connection and communication, trusting myself to nurture my body, mind and spirit.  It's the only way I'm going to be able to navigate these current and changing circumstances.

Who would I be without the thought "he wants something from me"?  Present, connected, curious, contemplative, communicating, kind, creative.  That's how Love guides.  Being moved from fear to Love, the truth is revealed.  It is less about what another wants, and how Love wants to be lived through me and in me.  As it turns out, it's what I want to. 

As this year comes to a close, what perfect timing to release the overwhelm, to actually have it release me.  And to be thankful for it, as it is the overwhelm that led me to question the thought and stories where the truer story is revealed.  That's the power of doing The Work of Byron Katie.  It shows me a way to easily find these deeper truths within the stress, and to slow down and identify how to live it.  

For today, it is lived by making time for grief, for some tears, for the reality that, at least for now, there is little I can do but work on my own inner peace so I can be available hopefully for another call, for another request.  I look forward to my son wanting something and everything from me.  How else am I going to learn and practice this letting it all just be, and allowing Love to find me and live through me, to come to these deeper realizations that my most important job, my deepest want is just that, to connect with all of this.  

I imagine the next want that is requested of me will remind me of what it is I truly want:  The lived intention, the practice of holding space, breathing, listening, being curious, seeking to understand, inviting his ideas, communicating with care and carefully.  How wonderful he is sharing all his wants with me.  I get to hear him.  I get to hear Love.  

With gratitude,
Joanne Richards
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More anger, blame, raging, unfinished sentences, again.  Is my son ever going to be light, calm, sweet, wise, funny again?  Will he ever learn to forgive, to release the past, move on?  We're on the phone again, I'm listening in silence, feeling bombarded hearing his anger at the world. It's a landmine and my silence seems to prevent escalation, maybe. It's not a conversation, but another dump.  These calls are becoming sad, and tiring truth be told. The thought "he's lost to me" returns, deep inside me, again. The pain returns, again.

How can I know absolutely that he's lost to me?  Breathing in, relief.  I can't.  It's been a long time since I've heard the sweet one, but the truth is I can't know if he's lost the way I'm imagining the future.  When I believe he's lost though, my world stops.  The tears flow immediately, in abundance.  The fear of him living this way is in abundance, the grief once again is in abundance.  There's nothing else to do but sit with it, feel it, it's heavy.  There's a part of me that considers that if I believe he's lost to me, somehow I'll be able to withstand these waves of grief better, be able to navigate these calls better, but the cost of believing this thought (as the only truth of my all knowing how the future will be) is even heavier than the grief. I'm lost in a raging sea that takes me under, and I put my son in there too, losing connection, the very thing that I need desperately, him too.  And I know I can find it again. That's my chosen path, and I know the way. 

What's possible if he's not lost to me?  What's possible if the thought that he's lost might not be all true?  What is it I'm looking for really?  Who I think he should be, how I think he should live his life, how I think he should sound?  That's a whole lot of shoulds!  Who's lost now?  I'm lost in thought and ruling the universe, again. Good to see! The phone call, hearing him this way was not easy but he was there, I was there.  The future doesn't even exist yet. Good reminder!  It will always be lost in its not yet, non-existence, can't know, you've been living in the I don't know the future your whole life, and catching up to that truth.  For today, this call, I found connection, and it sounded like my son that way, me that way, and for now it's good, good enough. I heard his voice after weeks, he's alive. He's thinking, trying, reaching in and reaching out as best he can.  Aren't we all?  

This fear left unquestioned will have me lost in it, and then everything else follows down that dark hole. I've come to know that love will follow me anywhere, all the time, and can lift me up again and again and again.  Found each and every time.  And, I can help it out.  By supporting Love itself, I support me, I support my son, I support the world for more peace. Fear is the invitation, the reminder that I'm lost in some painful beliefs and stories.  Doing The Work is the fast path to greater understanding by slowing down and holding the fear, thought by thought, taking it by the hand, welcoming it to show me the way up and out of the dark hole. 

I find love, I find connection, I find truth, I find freedom.  Or does it find me? This is where I'm going to find my son, as is.  He's not found until I am.  He's not found until my fear is understood and transformed back to love by finding the truth that lies beneath and around the fear.  More gratitude, found. Losing fear, finding truth.  Love, loving, loved, again.  What a phone call!  

Peace,

Joanne