It was in the forecast, so I knew to expect it. Yesterday, it was slated to rain during the annual county fair parade my daughter had her heart set on attending.
Still, I started from a place of denial. I went about my morning at work thinking, The meteorologists got it wrong. The weather will be fine.
Meanwhile, gradually, the rural backdrop took on a definitive shade of gray.
By mid-afternoon, I had changed tactics and was trying to figure out a scenario that included rain but did not include me getting soaked at a parade. Maybe the parade would be cancelled! Concern about soggy floats might prevail, never mind about drenched children.
I checked the official website for fair-related events, and saw that the parade would not, in fact, be cancelled.
Hmmm. Maybe my daughter would forget it was on the schedule? (Yeah, right.) Maybe I could fabricate a working-late excuse and ask her to forgive me? (She surely would, but the image of the disappointment in her face was enough to make me cross that one off the list).
Eventually, 90 minutes before the parade and with rain pummeling the windshield of my car, I thought, "OK. A parade in the rain. There have to be ways to make the best of this."
And I actually came up with some. The long rain coat for my daughter rather than an umbrella, so she would not get wet sitting on the curb. The plastic bag for her soggy candy, since rain would certainly not detour her from scrambling to get some. An umbrella and comfortable clothes for me.
Relapse prevention work is like this. If you're trying to stay clean and sober, there are avoidable triggers. Stay out of bars. Avoid the high-stress family reunion where others will be drinking and/or drugging. Forgo, at least initially, the leisure activities which are paired so completely with substance use in your mind and experience that you can't imagine doing one without doing the other. In other words, if the goal is recovery, avoid avoidable triggers and high-risk situations. Don't set yourself up.
Some things, though, you can't avoid. And then the task is to figure out how to navigate them while still accomplishing your main goal. Maybe you bring a long-time sober friend as a support person to a family function where people will be drinking. Maybe you turn down the offer for a ride to that big event and choose to drive yourself, so you can leave immediately if you're feeling tempted to steer off-course.
In my case, avoiding the parade altogether would have meant a deeply disappointed daughter. But I also didn't want to go and be terrible company for her because of a terrible mood, which seemed like a distinct possibility when I thought about parade-watching in the rain. So I took steps to minimize our discomfort, worked on reframing my negative thoughts, and tried to pay attention to the novelty aspect, as we were surely making a memory of The Year it Rained on Our Parade.
In the end, we had a pretty good time. We both got pretty wet. Much of her candy was indeed soggy. But I was not cross and negative, and she was in great spirits.
Sometimes it does rain on our parade! Sometimes it's even in the forecast-- we see it coming.
And still it can all be okay.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Monday, September 7, 2015
We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post...
"Summer ends, and we wonder where we are..." singer-songwriter Dar Williams
Dear friends,
Today I'm taking a detour from my usual blog post to tell you more informally what I've been up to recently, and also about a new direction my blogging will be taking this fall.
The transition from summer to fall is always an interesting time for me. It may be a state of mind, at least in part, left over from childhood, when this time of year meant back to school, autumn leaves crunching underfoot. There is a sense of new-ness, a sense of sadness, and almost always for me, a sense of get-down-to-business-ness.
For the past several months, this blog has been trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. It has been a place to talk about everything from single parenting experiences, to my opinion on what's happening in the news, to comments on the writing life, as well as my work and interests in the mental health and addiction treatment fields. You might say it has been the catch-all drawer sort of blog.
Those of you who know my clinical work are aware that over the years, while I've had different jobs in different settings (hmmm- a catch-all drawer sort of work life, too?), my primary focus has been around trauma and addiction, together or individually. The past year and this new academic year have found me intensifying my focus in both areas: as Addiction Guide at ESME.com, in private practice, and, most recently, in embarking on a year-long certification program in Trauma Informed Treatment.
As a result of my work in addiction and trauma, I have both been learning things I want to share and coming up with all kinds of questions I want to explore. So, I will soon be a launching a new blog, called Helping Better, which will be home to most or all of my blogging on these topics.
I will continue to blog here, focusing primarily on posts related to parenting, creative writing, and other catch-all drawer stuff.
My hope is that in dividing the two blogs, I can give people a chance to read more of what they like in one place. If you end up wanting to read both, that's fabulous, but I'm aware that people who are interested in, say, how to create a daily writing practice around a busy schedule, are not necessary interesting in reading about PTSD treatment or heroin overdose.
If you have subjects you'd like me to write about, I would be thrilled to hear about them-- since this is a blog and not my diary, I obviously want to write about things that people want to read.
Last but not least, thanks to every single one of you who've read, "liked", commented, or contacted me privately about a blog post. There is not enough room in cyberspace to convey how much I appreciate it.
Warmly,
Susan
Dear friends,
Today I'm taking a detour from my usual blog post to tell you more informally what I've been up to recently, and also about a new direction my blogging will be taking this fall.
The transition from summer to fall is always an interesting time for me. It may be a state of mind, at least in part, left over from childhood, when this time of year meant back to school, autumn leaves crunching underfoot. There is a sense of new-ness, a sense of sadness, and almost always for me, a sense of get-down-to-business-ness.
For the past several months, this blog has been trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. It has been a place to talk about everything from single parenting experiences, to my opinion on what's happening in the news, to comments on the writing life, as well as my work and interests in the mental health and addiction treatment fields. You might say it has been the catch-all drawer sort of blog.
Those of you who know my clinical work are aware that over the years, while I've had different jobs in different settings (hmmm- a catch-all drawer sort of work life, too?), my primary focus has been around trauma and addiction, together or individually. The past year and this new academic year have found me intensifying my focus in both areas: as Addiction Guide at ESME.com, in private practice, and, most recently, in embarking on a year-long certification program in Trauma Informed Treatment.
As a result of my work in addiction and trauma, I have both been learning things I want to share and coming up with all kinds of questions I want to explore. So, I will soon be a launching a new blog, called Helping Better, which will be home to most or all of my blogging on these topics.
I will continue to blog here, focusing primarily on posts related to parenting, creative writing, and other catch-all drawer stuff.
My hope is that in dividing the two blogs, I can give people a chance to read more of what they like in one place. If you end up wanting to read both, that's fabulous, but I'm aware that people who are interested in, say, how to create a daily writing practice around a busy schedule, are not necessary interesting in reading about PTSD treatment or heroin overdose.
If you have subjects you'd like me to write about, I would be thrilled to hear about them-- since this is a blog and not my diary, I obviously want to write about things that people want to read.
Last but not least, thanks to every single one of you who've read, "liked", commented, or contacted me privately about a blog post. There is not enough room in cyberspace to convey how much I appreciate it.
Warmly,
Susan
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