Mothering in Recovery

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Eleanor_R]Eleanor R
It took three days to give birth to Her. She started coming on a Friday afternoon while my mother and I were at the movies watching Kalifornia. It was a bloody, violent movie and I really do not know how we ended up there watching it in the first place. But, about a third of the way into it, there was a vicious stabbing of one of the main characters and suddenly with the reflex of my emotion at exactly that moment when the knife went into the victim, my water broke. A gushing of water came out of me and landed on the theatre floor and all over my gold sandals. It was summer.
My mother stood up from her theatre seat and shouted for someone to call 911. I pulled her to sit back down and made my apologies to those around us. I told my mother that we had 24 hours after my water had broken to get to the hospital. I did not need an ambulance. Knowledge is power. My husband met us at the hospital. I began to go into labor that evening the Friday before Labor day weekend. I did not know then, that the birth would be a marathon of sorts. Of course I would not accept any mood altering drugs because I wanted a clean and sober baby. So I did what I could until the bitter end.
She wouldn't come. She would not leave me. She hung on for dear life, after three days, with a C-section and what looked like a crow bar for a car tire, they wedged Her out of me. She was beautiful. She had the coloring of a Greek Princess and the sparkling eyes of a Buddha....she was perfect. A Goddess was born. I took her home and became her rock.
As you may expect, she changed our lives forever. Going to 12 Step meetings and working the Steps was now even more critical. I was raising a human. I did not want to raise her in the shadows of the twisted and perverse relationships that one finds in most alcoholic/addict homes. My husband and I promised never to squash her spirit. I needed lots of reinforcements there since I was basically raised in a home that required maximum invisibility and emotional contortion with my alcoholic father and my emotionally ill mother. I had to have help.
Because of her I took parenting classes, learned to meditate, read every book I could find on helping a human come into being and worked the Steps with my Sponsor over and over again, remaining current especially on Step 10. I was terrified I would do it wrong, so I always made an effort to do it right. Mostly we kept our word. With both girls we did what we said and we said what we did. They never had to "guess" at my meaning or emotions. I did not raise them with the "coded language" of my very dysfunctional family of origin. Or the subtext of fear, sadness, anger and disappointment that permeated our home for years when I was a child. I raised them with intention and attention to their souls.
The best proof that I was on track was that once while traveling in Israel after a particularly harrowing visit to the Holocaust Museum, the girls began to tell me and their father how difficult their lives had been (they were 12 and 15). I looked at them in shock realizing that all the sadness and trauma of the museum must have stirred up some pretty strong emotions for them. So, I asked them if I had done anything right? She looked at me with great love and innocence and she said, "Mom, your try...............you really try."
Almost 18 years later to the day- I dropped her off at college. Coincidentally, that took a long weekend as well. We started out on a Friday morning with a cross country flight. She told me everything that was on her mind and answered some of my questions about relationships and substance experimentation. We had the time and space to have a long heart to heart conversation. I was not pained as I was at her birth, by any part of this experience. I thought I would be. I thought that the first time I learned that she had tried alcohol that I would combust or disappear out of fear. But, I did not. I thought I would weep at the thought of leaving her. However, my own years in recovery and working the 12 Steps helped me to see it for what it was and not to react out of proportion. I trust her.
She laid her head on my lap for the last 10 minutes of our journey on the plane dissension into JFK. I rubbed her head. I played with her spiky red hair. I loved her with my eyes: her gauges, her nose piercing and her lip piercing. I even loved the multiple ear piercings in the cartilage areas. No heartache? Where did it go? She laid on my lap and I just 100% loved her. She is my beautiful woman Goddess now. She is my teacher and my heart's great love. At that moment, like childbirth, I had no memory of the long nights caring for Her while sick, waiting for her to come home as a teenager, wondering what she would pierce next, the angst of choosing the right schools, the right caretakers and the right parenting style. It was as if I was floating in heaven.
We got there and promptly went to Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy college dorm room stuff. It was pandemonium because Hurricane Irene was afoot. People were buying up everything- water, batteries, canned goods, milk. We just needed a trash can, a desk lamp and some bedding. It was surreal to see and feel the distress of the New Yorkers in what was being billed as a pending State of Emergency. We weathered it together with the subtext of her just now also experiencing the biggest change of her life.
We got to the hotel and went to bed exhausted. The next morning we got up and went to the college. She began to express some of her fears about making friends. We moved her in without fanfare or stress. Once we stepped onto the campus we entered another world. The world of private school academia. As we were walking towards the college She looked at me and she said, "Mom I am so glad that I do not have to worry about being embarrassed by my parent today. I am so nervous, but because you are so beautiful and have so much integrity, I do not have to worry about being embarrassed by you."
I knew at that moment that all of my effort, personal discipline and sacrifice had been worth it. My daughter was proud of me and she could count on me. I had demonstrated a healthy mother in Recovery. I had not expected any of these gifts. Truly I was humbled. She did pay attention. I could see that she respected me very much as she respects herself.
She has gone from my womb to my home and now to Her dream college and soon she will be home for the holidays, the summers and if we are lucky maybe even after college for a bit. This labor of love has been the most rewarding of my life. I imagined the full circle that had just been executed. I imagined the end to the family dysfunction that I had been raised with and how I supported her to make her dreams come true. She did not run screaming from our family home as soon as she was 18 and a high school graduate and vowing to never move back, as I had.
I took her across the country and made sure she had everything She needed and then I let her go. I am truly in awe of how much I have grown up and how the Universe has supported my dream of making her dreams come true. As a woman in Recovery I keep my word and I am there for my children. I can be depended upon. I am the last person my children and husband need to worry about. I am solid. Almost 18 years later, another long weekend of giving birth to a new life, but his time, it was the birth of a strong and powerful woman. She is soaring now and the rock is returning home to provide a soft landing when the time is right.
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Mothering-in-Recovery&id=6527419] Mothering in Recovery