A turn for the better...

Hi. Yes, around two this afternoon I had some rye toast with grilled tomatoes and from that point on I started feeling better. Probably nothing to do with the tomatoes on toast but who knows? The Lord moves in mysterious ways...I actually managed to get quite a lot from reading today, after quite a long period when I haven't really been connecting with books. I stayed in all day except for OA in the evening. Managed to do my MATCH work and write Jasper a letter, enclosing the Serenity Prayer on a card with Shiva and Parvati on it. God knows we need a little divine intervention!

At some point today, having read a bit of the fourth step inventory guide and 'Women who love too much' I started to feel halfway human again. I started to think maybe I didn't have to totally, like, go into one (why am I doing that? I'm not thirteen!) I can actually carry on sanely living my life and working the steps to the best of my ability and just not take complete responsibility for my son, for everything he does and is and for how he turns out. In other words, blame myself and marinade myself in guilt and shame for the rest of our lives. I need to turn Jasper over to the loving care of the same Higher Power that I trust with my own life.

Giving up the control, the deluded sense of power over the situation was what I was wrestling with earlier today and previous days...I didn't have any shafts of sudden enlightenment or owt like that, but the appalling pain just lifted...as if someone, somewhere, had prayed or interceded for me. Some nun in some nunnery somewhere maybe! Maybe I even interceded for myself without realising it.

OA was really good...a really small meeting, but very intense. Three people cried as they shared and I was almost unbearably moved by two of the stories. It was humbling to hear what others had been through. Someone shared her sadness over her mother being bullied, her own feelings of helplessness over it and (probably) the triggering effect (as she had been bullied herself at school). I could relate, because of my own complicated feelings over Jasper being bullied. Horror that he is suffering - also anger and frustration with him for being vulnerable. And the triggering of my own vulnerability to bullying...I felt bullied as recently as this year, when I ended up having to leave my therapy group.

Have to keep praying...it's powerful stuff. Love, Zoe.