An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

Work has been in flux for far too long. These days, I find myself in more work related meetings than I want to be doing and the frustration builds on so many levels. First of all, they are phone meetings with multiple people. Under normal circumstance that has its own issues but with severe hearing loss I find that my body hates the meetings even more than I do. More often than not, I get off the phone and just sit and cry. Perhaps to release the tension of the challenges of the meeting, keeping up on current technology and jargon, etc. But also because as time goes on, I struggle more and more to distinguish what is being said and by whom. By the time I hang up, my body is so tense that I am forgetting to breathe. Pushing the red button on my iPhone, I rip the damn earbuds out, take a deep breathe and sob for just a little while. It's ok. I don't beat myself up for it. I am not being dramatic or immature, I am releasing frustration, stress and accepting that ...

It can be difficult to be vulnerable in a room of strangers, until you realize that the bulk of them are present for the same reason....to ease the pain and find a better way to live. ACoA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) has been a godsend to me. Based on the adapted 12 steps of AA, it is designed to help individuals recover from the effects of growing up in dysfunctional households. Dysfunction is an overused word these days but to discount it entirely is a mistake. We are all a product of imperfect people, some mildly and others horrifically. I find that many of the attendees are not children of alcoholics but children of violent, ill adaptive people that did not teach tools for living because they simply didn't have them. ACoA's focus is to learn to love oneself and allowing that self love to help one to navigate life. We learn to make choices, not out of fear of abandonment or lack of approval, but with peace, valuing yourself and your needs and not allowing others to p...