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Are You There Santa? It’s Me, Margaret… A Holiday Round Robin

by | Dec 19, 2019 | The Band's Guide To Surviving The Holidays | 4 comments

Preface: This is a holiday parody story, to be told Round-Robin Style. I’ll start us off. Please add a paragraph as you see fit in the comments. Let’s make each other laugh for the holidays!

A gift from Kate, Becky, and Stacey for the Holidays.

Happy Holidays

“Dear Santa, it’s me, Margaret” she said on her knees, prayer style because she already couldn’t understand, at 12, how a letter addressed, by snail mail, would reach the North Pole at all – with no zip code or anything, let alone by Christmas (only a week away). Why didn’t Santa publish an email address or have a website anyway? That’s what normal people do..

“Anyway, Santa, if you can hear me, cool, because I’ve been super good this year and only yell at my little brother when he deserves it and I really want a new tablet for Christmas with at least 1 gig of RAM and some Bluetooth headphones that will drown out my mom yelling at me to get off my tablet. Thanks Santa, Amen, or whatever…”

Having been raised a Secular Agnostic by college professors at Bryn Mawr, Margaret knew that the likelihood of Santa existing was probably nil but she *wanted* to believe so badly, she was willing to try anything….Plus her little 7 year old brother had gotten a light saber last year that made whooshing noises and everything even though she knew her parents hated Star Wars so maybe it *was* Santa? The movies all said so anyway.

She went out into the snow and made a snowball directing it at the nearby tree, when out popped something totally unexpected….

I leave it to you, Band, let’s make each other giggle by telling hilarious nonsense regaling Margaret’s belief or non belief in Santa…

This Year *I* Will Be Different

by | Feb 12, 2019 | Addiction Recovery, Faith, Feelings, Health, Hope, New Baby | 4 comments

Aunt Becky challenged me to write an “I Will” post… Here’s my crack at it:

This is a year of major changes for me. The title is paraphrased from a book by one of my favorite authors, Maeve Binchy, who died a few years ago. One of the lessons I’ve taken from her books is that kindness matters and change is sometimes incremental, but the opportunities to change abound.

First the Goals:

  1. Meet Baby (due end of June)
  2. Complete Probation (October, possibly sooner)
  3. Complete the 12 steps (currently on Step 4, which sucks, but I am finding valuable)
  4. Start School (Sign Language Interpreting Program)
  5. Graduate Treatment (possibly this month?)
  6. Move into my own apartment (hopefully by March)

Resolutions:

  1. Stay sober (110 days and counting)
  2. Eat regularly
  3. Practice healthy boundaries – especially removing unhealthy and negative people from my life and saying “no” to things that jeopardize my values/goals/self
  4. Re-engage with Church
  5. Practice gratitude
  6. Learn to manage anger without becoming self-destructive
  7. Stay Present and Enjoy the Journey
  8. Practice Forgiveness – especially of myself
  9. Give back
  10. Never Stop Learning
  11. Make good choices (especially financial ones)
  12. Daily Maintenance (this is a concept from NA – aka The Four Simple Things: 1. pray honesty, out loud; 2. talk to another addict, preferably one sponsor or someone else with more clean time, honestly; 3. read literature daily; and 4. do something nice for someone else).

 

But the Over-Riding Theme?

I Will Become a Better Version Of Myself

Not too tall an order right??? LOL