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Kelsey Brown of Nova Recovery Center contacted me about doing a post on the roles family members often play in an alcoholic family. While there are a few things in this write-up that do not match my point of view, I like what Kelsey has written. Since it's a long write up, this post will be shown in a series of three separate posts. I won't confuse the issue by writing in between the posts. However, when the last one is published, I will write a post giving my feelings / differences with Kelsey's post. PART TWO Guest Post by Kelsey Brown Nova Recovery Center   The Hero: Using Perfectionism to Cope The hero role is very similar to the caretaker of the family, in that the hero spends a great deal of time attempting to restore the balance of the household and maintain the outward appearance that everything is okay . Although this person is often a perfectionist, extremely self-sufficient, and overly responsible, he or she may also struggle with fear, guilt, and shame regarding...

Kelsey Brown of Nova Recovery Center contacted me about doing a post on the roles family members often play in an alcoholic family. While there are a few things in this write-up that do not match my point of view, I like what Kelsey has written. Since it's a long write up, this post will be shown in a series of three separate posts. I won't confuse the issue by writing in between the posts. However, when the last one is published, I will write a post giving my feelings / differences with Kelsey's post. PART ONE Guest Post by Kelsey Brown Nova Recovery Center   Families generally seek balance, even in the chaos of addiction. When a spouse, sibling, or child is suffering from addiction, family members often take on dysfunctional survival roles to reduce stress, conflict, and anxiety at home. In the face of addiction, this roleplaying is a feeble attempt to control the chaos. But in the end, loved ones only end up hiding the truth from themselves, their children, and their fri...

It's that time of year. It's hurricane, tornadoes and cyclones... Below is a post I like to share around this time of year. It's a re-post so please keep that in mind as you read about Riley and I waiting out a tornado. Tornado warning… (5/3/2011) When the Emergency Broadcast came over the television announcing that we were under a Tornado Warning, I gathered my stuff – blankets, pillows, laptop, water, etc – and put it in a secure place in my bathroom. I was ready. Riley was in his rocking chair watching his usual NCIS. I told him we needed to get his bathroom ready in case the worst came about. He just said – “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” And being the good little caretaker that I am – I stocked his bathroom. Both the bathrooms are small and there is really only room for one person in each. As the night wore on, I settled in and listened. Wind, rain, hail, more rain, quiet, wind and more wind – but there was no rumble. I was waiting for the rumble sound of an oncoming trai...

It’s been a pretty busy and heart breaking few months for me. I was told that I could not have the surgery I need for another six months. That’s disappointing since I’ve been working towards having this for more than a year. It would have been life changing at just the right time. It will still be life changing, but at a different time and place. I was forced to move from my big old farmhouse onto a sofa bed in my daughters’ living room. My daughter is working more than 1400 miles away and I am care taking her two pit bulls (who hate my spaniel) while she is off earning a living. I want to move to Florida but my funds have been exhausted because, as a lot of seniors know, my income has been cut in half since the death of Riley. I was in the process of having my teeth fixed when Riley died and I had to stop in the middle due to lack of funds. My best friend of 54 years is very ill and she may not be around long enough for me to go visit her one last time. T O TOP ALL THAT OFF – t...

  Since Riley’s death, I’ve had a hard time focusing on a single goal. I call it “floundering.” There are lots of things than need my attention, but I can’t seem to do one thing to completion, but rather switch back and forth, back and forth. I wake up in the morning and say to myself… “Self, you will do something today that is positive and will set the course for more positive things. Today you will complete just ONE thing.” Self listens to me – for about half a nano-second. Then it’s a little of this and a little of that. Back and forth… back and forth. Back in the day, when Riley went to rehab, and there were lots of those times, I would sit in the empty, quiet house and think about all the things I needed to do. I made a mental list. Followed by a written list. Followed by organizing and categorizing the list thereby creating more lists. I would hold the list in my hand, smooth it out on the desktop, fold it into fourths, turn it over, unfold it, then tell myself I would start ...

There is a place I want to visit. It’s Denial Bay, South Australia. It’s really just a fishing and tourist village on the western side of Murat Bay about 350 miles from Adelaide. This bay and village was named from the “deceptive hope [they] had formed penetrating by it some distance into the interior of the country.” In other words it was suspected that the bay would provide an entry into the interior regions of the country, but instead was simply a bay and not an entrance. Denial Bay is now a stop for tourists who wish to enjoy a change of scenery from the salt bushes. It doesn’t sound like such a bad place to visit. It doesn’t conjure up visions of doom that the phrase “floating up the river of Denial” seems to generate. Let’s take a look at the word “denial”. It can be a verb deriving from the word “deny” or it can be a noun indicating a place called “Denial.” In this case, the real place of Denial Bay and the fictional river of Denial. I think the word “denial” has gotten a bad ra...