Over the past 27 years, I’ve been walking the family recovery path. Perhaps you’ve been walking it with me.
If you have, you know that sometimes the walk feels more like a trudge – like wading through mud in the dark. The situations facing me during those times involve family members struggling with issues I can’t help them with. Inner demons that threaten their lives. And all I can do is watch and pray and hope.
Other times, the walk feels more like a glide. They may or may not be holding their demons at bay, but, I am dealing with mine. For family members, our demons include fear, anger, distrust, resentment. We live and breathe these emotions and often do a great job of sharing our rage with our struggling loved ones.
Over the years, to increase the glide and decrease the trudge, I’ve sought out and put into practice a number of recovery principles and tools. I’ve found these in 12 step programs, meditation programs and teachings, spiritual books and teachings, coaching materials, and self-development classes. I’ve held on to these rafts of wisdom like my life depended on them, because it did. The 12 Steps of Recovery impacted my life so profoundly in their simplicity, their wisdom, the way they compacted thousands of years of wisdom into 12 statements.
After studying religion for many years, I was stunned by the way in which the steps took three essential relationships, that with spirit, self and other, and provided a path to heal and develop one’s ability to BE in each. As a school principal in a religious private school setting, I saw the simplicity that an emphasis on these three relationships could bring to the many action requirements of daily religious life and took every opportunity to emphasize how those actions fit so neatly into one of the three categories of relationship.
Inspired by the simple wisdom of the 12 steps, I was able to see the complexity of religion in a new light: as a path to peace. Then, one day, while reading a religious book, I found a quote by an ancient Rabbi which reinforced what the steps had already taught me.
He said, “A person who has mastered peace of mind has gained everything. To obtain peace of mind, you need to be at peace with the people in your environment. You need to be at peace with yourself; your emotions and esires. Furthermore, you need to be at peace with your Creator.”(Alai Shur, p. 195, Gateways To Happiness by Zelig Pliskin)
This quote, along with hundreds if not thousands of 12 step meetings over the years, brought together two worlds, helped me to gain greater insight and understand more cl early what I had to do to gain the peace I so desperately sought as a family member affected by the addiction of a loved one.
I made my step work a priority in my life, which provided a very simple format for the implementation of these three relationships, and this work helped me to glide more than trudge. For the past few years, as a family recovery coach, I’ve worked with families struggling just as I did.
Not all of them are willing or interested in taking the path of step work or going to meetings. Some tell me they find the meetings confusing or they don’t understand why the family members keep focusing on themselves when the addict is the problem or that everyone else in the meeting seems so far ahead of them. Some don’t see the simplicity in the steps, or the relevance. Frankly, it can take time to ‘get’ their profundity. And of course, they don’t speak to everyone in the same way.or some, it takes a great deal of other input, stated in a variety of ways to get to the glide.
In order to save my clients and students the hundreds of hours of reading, searching, and attending meetings that I had to go through until the inner light came on, I’ve sought to develop a system to simplify what I’ve learned. This work that I do does not eliminate the need for work on the client or student’s part, but it does simplify and shorten the length of the beginning of the work and for those who have been on the path for awhile, it serves as a booster, a reminder, a clarifier, a well needed shot in the arm.
So, I put together these Twelve Keys to Sanity, which culminate in Being a Loving Mirror (BALM), to provide you with a road map to recovery, an additional support on your recovery journey to help YOUR journey move from trudge to glide as often and as quickly as possible.I'm taking a year to outline and explain the keys in a series of free teleseminars and blogs that I started providing in June for you to peruse. You can find those blog posts at www.12stepfamily.com and you can listen to past teleseminars and read past posts by going to http://forms.aweber.com/form/97/632206997.htm .
For those of you looking for a venue in which to deeply practice and grow in this work, of course there will continue to be individual and group coaching opportunities as well. I look forward to sharing this journey with you as we move forward together for the next 27 or more years on our lifelong journey on the recovery path! Stay tuned to my blogs as well as my website at www.beverlybuncher.com, for more information on the many offerings available.
Best to you and yours,
Coach Bev
Beverly A. Buncher, MA, PCC, CTPC
ICF Professional Certified Coach
Recovery - True Purpose - Career - Life
786 859 4050 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 786 859 4050 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
"Imagine a world where every addict has the opportunity and support needed to build a sober lifetime one moment at a time, and every family has the benefit of a coach to help them blaze the trail to sobriety in their home. Imagine a world without relapse."
Join an ongoing coaching group and practice your Loving Mirror skills. Go to www.beverlybuncher.com/lovingmirror/ to register today!
Author of the forthcoming book Chaos to Sanity: Transform Your Life with the 12 Keys to Sanity
If there is a using addict in your life, download my free e-book on how to transform the chaos to sanity at www.theempowermentcoach.net and read my blog at www.12stepfamily.com
Enjoy my weekly newsletter Life Purpose in Recovery delivered right to your email and gain access to materials on the 12 Keys to Sanity for Family Members! Sign up here: http://forms.aweber.com/form/11/885999311.htm
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