GRIEF AND CHILDHOOD
July 23, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“Genuine grieving for our childhood ends our morbid fascination with the past and lets us return to the present, free to live as adults. Confronting years of pain and loss at first seems overwhelming.” BRB p. 83
“We may have been going to meetings for many years, lamenting the slings and arrows of our recovery life. Perhaps we thought we were “Living life on life’s terms,” – doing the best we could. But often progress seemed to come in dribs and drabs. This left us with a sense of frustration at the little spiritual progress we had made, despite our best efforts.
But what may have been missing was the willingness to genuinely grieve for our lost childhoods. Grief work is not about just learning to tell our story, but about starting to discover and express the underlying trauma and emotions. Doing this level of work is the true path to freeing ourselves.
When we are no longer held in place by the disembodied stories and the undercurrent of repressed feelings, we can begin to take positive action, change our life’s terms, find joy in the present, and feel alive for possibly the first time.
On this day I will tell the real story of my childhood trauma. In doing so, I will free my True Self and enjoy this day my Higher Power has given me.”
My Experience:
In Step Ten, it is said that you have to walk into the darkness in order to find the light! When I read that, I completely understood why I wrote “A Gladiator’s Journey.” I went deep into the abyss of darkness. It was painful, it was heart wrenching, it was eye opening, it was me reliving those pains from the past. But in review of that time as I wrote poem after poem, I now know that my Higher Power directed me to write them, was walking with me side by side and even carried me when I needed in order to get me through. It was like they say in military training, they break you all the way down in order to build you back up. The build up makes you even stronger. I can feel my strength coming back, not in that anger filled way, but in a way that allows me to walk through life with much more joy, much more appreciation, and much more love. Have the courage to walk into the darkness. As you do always remember, “YOU SURVIVED THE ABUSE, YOU ARE GOING TO SURVIVE THE RECOVERY.”
The Abyss
In my life the pointless fight has always been remiss
Attempting to keep my mind out of the void of the abyss
Depression is what some might call by another name
But like Hawk said, fancy name, same thing
During these times my focus was oh so askew
So that means that I couldn’t concentrate on you
It may have looked outwardly as though I didn’t care
But really all my energy was focused on this stare
I could feel myself scratching and clawing this gravitational pull
Sometimes I succumbed and was in its orbits full
For how long though I never really knew
That is when my isolation was in full view
You may have thought wondrously, he does not love me
But I couldn’t share with you because I could not see
But now that I do I am sorry you had to endure
The mood swings, the meanness and all the other obscure
Just know then and now I needed you much
So much so that I craved your tender touch
For now I write this because you probably need to hear this
Because of you I will forever fight to stay out of the abyss
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