A Winter Solstice 2011 and The Long Journey Through Alcoholism

What happens to your Energy Field during the darkest part of the year? Like every other rhythm of a season, winter contracts, closes, slows down, goes inside. That is what we humans do too. We look on the inside for our sense of self. We seek the warmth and shelter from the looming darkness.

The Winter Solstice of 2011 is approaching and I am severely feeling the contraction. Needing to go inside. MY self, MY house, and do some housekeeping of sorts. Cleaning up my act from those dusty cobwebs of my inner being and long ago past. This year’s theme has been revolving and evolving within me around how I live with alcoholism. What are the effects it has had on me as an adult child of an alcoholic? I came to understand in the fall of this year how dark it really is for me.

The trigger points have been glaring in my face and there is no escape from them. The smell of it. The memories of the terrible Christmases and feelings of helplessness that arise when someone is drunk in my presence.

It became increasingly harder to keep myself from not registering the impact. So finally, I allow the impact to be felt. To notice how it still feels. Then the memories flood in again and my body reacts. Shuts down…I begin the numbing process. It lasts sometimes a few minutes or an hour. Other times for days. I don’t like how it feels and so I take a bath.

This year 2011 I figured out something BIG. The alcohol and interactions with someone using it gives me an experience of PTSD. Yes indeed I was traumatized over and again by out of control drunks in my early childhood and into adulthood. For the very first time I am acknowledging that I have been traumatized and continue to relive the trauma on those occasions where I am not able to manage myself and the symptoms that occur when someone around me is drinking . The darkness of how I feel sets in. And I shrink, I contract, hide, I get smaller and don’t shine MY light.

Now, this Winter Solstice I will have words to describe it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Realizing and understanding the descriptions of those symptoms is very FREEING and I have become more consciously aware of ME. Of MY FEELINGS! Yes I am traumatized. Yes I am very stressed. Yes I feel a large sense of disorder creeping into my life.

WOW…words to now describe further what it is like to be an adult child. To be an adult traumatized as a child. Being relocated every few months. Dealing with drunks in the middle of the night and cleaning up after them in the morning. Finding my way to school pretending everything is all right. Ahhh the safety of learning…

Learning I have PTSD surrounding alcoholism is a new badge of identification I give myself when I am unable to manage my emotions for a time. I allow myself to be angry, sad, grieve what could have been, numb and slowly recover back to my self and my own joy as I take a long hot bath into the long dark night. Contracting into the womb only to come out more clear and cleansed of the sense of helplessness. Just a little more expanded. It is no longer true that I am helpless and vulnerable. I am now an adult and can make a boundary and say NO where and when it helps me to stay safe and feel good.

As the holiday parties kick into full gear I can keep myself ok, by recognizing who’s around me, what they are doing and how I choose to feel about it. I have the choice to go home, to leave the room and go take a bath. Recovering myself from the fray of disorder. Choose carefully for yourself. Be aware of your triggers. Be gentle and kind to yourself as you wade through the mess from the past and step into the light of a new beginning. A new way to remember who you are.

Peace to you during this often challenging time of alcohol, holiday parties and family challenges.

May the Winter Solstice bring many Blessings to you and all your kin for Recovery, Harmony, Prosperity, Health and Well-Being.