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.
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