Each Day a New Beginning: June 24th

If you attach yourself to one person, you ultimately end up having an unhealthy relationship.
—Shirley MacLaine

Needing people in our lives is healthy, human and natural. Needing a single person to love at a very deep level, is also soothing to the soul's well-being. Love and attachment are not synonymous, however. They are close to being opposites. If we "attach" ourselves to others, our movements as separate individuals are hampered. Attachment means dependency; it means letting our movements be controlled by the one we are "hooked" to.

Dependency on mood-altering chemicals, on food, on people, means unmanageability in our individual lives. Many of us in this recovery program, though abstinent, still struggle with our dependency on a certain person or a certain friend.

The tools we are learning apply in all cases of dependency. It is healthy independence we are striving for-taking responsibility for our own lives-making choices appropriate for our personal selves. Loving others means letting them make their own choices unhampered by our "attachment."

Are my relationships attachments or are they based on love? I will take an inventory of them today.

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation

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When I depend on mood altering substances, I am purposely detaching myself from God, my Higher Power.  When I think I can 'go it alone' is when I'm deceiving myself, and apt to revert to old coping mechanisms to get by.

 

When I rely on God to 'get by', I am on the right path to spiritual fulfillment. NO amount of 'using' can ever provide me with what I truly need to thrive.

 

Depending on others to make ME happy is also a mistake. If I try to control someone else, I fail miserably.  Seeking personal fulfillment from someone else never works. I find such fulfillment from within, and reliance on a Power greater than myself.

 

When I detach with love from another's issues is when I know I'm working my plan properly.  I can't fix the world, nor do I strive to do that.

 

I am a separate person, a single Being, and while I love many people in my life, I am not attached to them at the hip.  I recognize their need for independence, as well as my own need for independence. 

 

My mood is not reliant on my loved one's mood. If they are miserable, they can own it, not me. If I take on THEIR misery, I make myself miserable and then we ALL suffer.

 

For today, may I continue to detach with love from other people's problems. May I continue to live in the peace & serenity of abstinence & sobriety, one day at a time.