Some of you may have read about my complaining when I jumped through all the Google hoops so that I could have NetFlix for an advertiser on my grief site at www.MelodyBeattie.net.  I really wanted movies — and the ease that Netflix makes it possible to rent and return them with.  Then, after hoop-jumping, NetFlix turned me down.

I was bummed.

I’ve learned something over the years.  Twenty publishers rejected Codependent No More.  Six months later, one changed its mind.

I wanted to work at a daily newspaper.  Every week for almost six months I went there, begged for a job as a reporter, and got turned down because I didn’t have a college degree.  Then one day the phone rang.  I got the job.

When I apply for advertisers, I try to be discerning.  I look at advertisers not so much as a way to make money on my sites, but as part of a service.  If one turns me down, I think about it.  Do I really want this advertiser?  How important is it to me?  If it’s a so-so situation, I let it go.  But if it’s someone I really want, I write a letter, ask them to rethink their rejection, and plead my case.  After complaining about my rejection by Netflix, that’s what I did with them.  Without a doubt, I wanted them.  About that much, I felt clear.  So I wrote and told them how badly I wanted them and why.

Today I received an email from NetFlix.  They changed their mind.  I now have them as an advertising affiliate.  I’m thrilled!  Movies helped me so much when I fell into the bottomless pit of grief.  I couldn’t read.  It required a part of my mind that didn’t work.  But movies helped me heal.  Some people are the opposite; Life isn’t one-size-fits-all.  But I wanted NetFlix for people like me who couldn’t read books but liked to be told stories by watching movies that spoke to their hearts.

It also helps me remember something that occurred when I was in treatment for chemical dependency.  As part of the program, I had to inventory myself — the good and the bad.  The latter was a breeze.  Finding anything good about myself?  A huge challenge in 1973.  Finally the clergy person who listened to my inventory list came up with one good point he saw in me:  persistence is what he called it.  (Maybe what he saw was obsession?)  I hung onto that asset for years.

I still do.

For many of our defects, all we’ve done is cross a line.  Take a few steps backwards, or redirect the energy and it becomes an asset.  It’s not that we have to change ourselves, we only need to make a shift in how, when, why, and where we apply our energy.

The trick is (for me) that I have to be brutally honest.  It has to be something I really want and the desire needs to come from my heart.  My motives need to be clear.  Unthought, random obsession doesn’t work.

If you want something — really want it — and you know why and your intentions are good, go for it.  Could be the universe is testing you.  Or maybe the rejection was computer-generated.  It’s hard to know exactly why.

Know yourself.  Know Life.  Then be true to yourself.  Take some of that obsession.  Turn it into persistence and passion.  Then go after what you want. The defect becomes power.

Good luck.  May the Force guide and be with you.  Let me know how it goes.  (The only place this may not work is in relationships.)  If there’s a person you really want to be in relationship with, you may need to change your tactics or you’ll drive him or her away.

Be more subtle.  Don’t just know what and who you want.  Learn to dance with the universe.

Take those defects and turn them into assets.  Surrender to what is.  Going after what we want shouldn’t substitute for denial or refusal to surrender to reality — right now.  Throw in a little “letting go.” Then see how it works.

It’s one recipe for getting what we want from Life. Bah, humbug to that saying, “Be careful for what you ask for because you might  get it.”  If you get what you want, good for you.

You’re learning to tap into essential Power and align with the Plan for your life.

That’s it for today.

Melody Beattie from Desert Hot Springs, CA

No, I’m not blogging about housework. That’s an ongoing thing. I remember once, right after I married the children’s father, when I began counting the number of times I’d need to vacuum, do laundry, cook dinner, go to the grocery store, and so on if I lived to be eighty years old. I got so tired from looking at the list that I hired a housekeeper, even though I was dead-butt broke. Back then, you could get someone for $20.00 a week. (That really dates me, doesn’t it?)

I have an assignment about work on your true home, the house for your soul, your spirit — where you really live. It’s a short blog and a short exercise, but an important one. I’d like each of you to name your favorite thing about yourself and your favorite thing about life.

My favorite thing about me is my flexibility. I can adapt to change with great ease, whether it’s a change in plans, a lifestyle change, or a rite of passage I’m going through (although I wasn’t flexible when it came to losing my son). But usually, I’m extremely flexible and can handle change with incredible ease. My favorite thing about Life is that it’s alive, but yet is doled out in 24-hour chunks. The Universe we live in isn’t just (and this is MY opinion, not necessarily the Truth) rocks, dirt, trees, mountains, and water. It’s like a living play — vital in its response to me and the events it brings. It not only listens, it talks back.

What are your favorite things about Life and You?

Melody Beattie

I’ve been contemplating this blog for a while. I want to post it before Thanksgiving, as it doesn’t seem appropriate to talk about pain on a day devoted to gratitude. So I’ll get it up before midnight (where I am).

PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Many of us have heard that term. Often, we associate it with soldiers, people who have seen horror played out before their eyes day after day. Sometimes the war we fight that leaves us with PTSD isn’t a political one though. It’s not a war between countries. It’s a private war. Life, our path, whatever force in the universe creates personal tragedy — can leave us reeling from the effects of PTSD and with no idea we have it.

It’s Saturday night, almost eight o’clock. My heart begins to race. I pace. A fountain of … of something bubbles up from my solar plexus. I feel afraid. I might be at a play, sitting with a group of friends, or at home alone and this, this thing just rains down on me out of nowhere and seemingly for no reason.

Most of us have heard the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason.” There are two ways to interpret that. One is that there’s a spiritual reason for everything that happens, and that the event is an important part of our destiny. The second interpretation is that there’s a cause and effect for everything that happens, and that even those things that don’t appear to make sense do — when we have all the information about what the cause actually is.

The cause for the fear coming out of nowhere, the Saturday night anxiety that often turns into panic in my life is that my son was killed in a ski accident and I received the phone call about it around eight o’clock on a Saturday night.

The Saturday night terrors is the most obvious effect of PTSD as a result of losing my son. There are many other ways, confusing ways, PTSD affects me and can affect us after a loss or traumatic event. After one of the books I wrote, Codependent No More, hit the bestseller list, I began doing speaking engagements first around the United States, and later around the world. It caught me off balance at first, but I adapted. I was dirt poor still, that first year, as writers get paid after the fact. Sometimes I’d have to buy a dress, carefully wear it to speak in, then quickly return it when I got home. Wrong? Yes. But there wasn’t any money to buy an appropriate dress. I’m sorry I did it, but I never hurt anything. (There I go, justifying.) It was survival. This night, I was at a speaking engagement in Portland, Oregon.

The people putting on the event put me up in a beautiful hotel with white carpeting, and a beautiful white bed spread, and an invitation to help myself to the contents of the mini bar. I chose a small container of cranberry juice, only to find that I either had to suck out the entire box of juice at once, without taking a breath, or the crimson juice would flow nonstop, like gas siphoning out of a car, and stain the carpet, the spread, or something else in that luxurious room. I chose to drink the container without breathing. I was out of my league, running around the room, trying not to make a mess.

Then, when I got to the event, I walked out on the stage. I looked at the audience. It wasn’t a group of fifty, or one hundred, or two hundred people. Five thousand people had showed up that evening to hear me talk. I felt some anxiety, said a quick prayer and asked God to use me to love the people, opened my mouth, and a good time was had by all — including me. Being in the midst of 5,000 people didn’t phase me. Then. Before Shane’s death.

Now, being in a room of twenty people causes my heart to race, my breath to quicken. A feeling something like fear comes over me. I didn’t understand this new phobia that had set in until I stumbled on the information somewhere that phobias such as fear of crowds is a normal part of PTSD  after a sudden loss. One more validation that what we feel — who we are — is normal. Our  normal.

The list of the way PTSD affects us is  long, and I don’t have room to include all the symptoms here.  But for each of you who have lost someone, or had an unexpected tragedy, or maybe have a history of holidays where instead of eating the turkey, a drunken parent threw it across the room, or broke all the dishes, or mom sat in the bedroom and cried because dad went out and didn’t come home and all Mom ever wanted was a family and a loving, happy holiday, know that you probably have your own list and it’s normal — for you.

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude. We can even be grateful for coming from homes plagued by the disease of alcoholism. There is a positive side to (God I don’t want to use this word but I’m going to anyway) codependency. We hold up under stress better than most others. When they fold, we get the job done. We have a strength, a resiliency unknown to people protected and coddled all their lives. We can handle it — whatever it is. We might not like it, but we deal with it. And we deal with it well. Many of us become leaders, once we make peace with our past.

It’s easy to look around and think that almost everyone but us had a happy childhood, has a happy marriage, or has a life relatively free of deep pain, loss, and PTSD. The truth is, people who have been through trauma, people in unhappy marriages, and people with far less than perfect childhoods make up the majority, not the minority, of the population.

You are not alone. We are not alone. You are not different, a freak, nor are you someone who doesn’t fit. You are the norm. Your leftover pain from your past, with those bubbling cauldrons of panic that rise up in your gut, seemingly out of nowhere on Saturday nights or on holidays, is normal too. It’s your normal.

We’re filled with so many illusions about life. By the time they’ve been shattered, we — like the Velveteen Rabbit, usually have all our hair rubbed off and we’re old. Old but wise. Old but compassionate. Old but real.

Finally, we’ve stopped looking for some event or person to make us whole and complete. We’re not looking for anything.

We’ve learned to love.

For that, we can be truly grateful.

The day will come when we’ll see what we can’t see now, understand what doesn’t make sense today, and know the perfection in the path we’ve walked. White light surrounds our destiny, from the second we’re conceived, through our first breath, until our last. It just hurts like hell sometimes.

Breathe. Then say,  “Thank You.”

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, even if it’s not as happy as you want. Should anxiety, panic, fear, or a sudden surge of pain and sadness well up inside you, do your best to relax into it. Where did it come from?

Only you can answer that.

I cannot count the number of times that:  arguments, problems, delays, difficulties, anger, and other unpleasant situations have been caused by one thing, and that one alone:  foggy or unclear communication.

Sometimes, it’s the person doing the writing or speaking who isn’t clear.  For instance, I may assume (no I will NOT use that trite saying about assume) that someone has information he or she doesn’t have and that I’m adding to it, when in fact the person does not have the basic, foundational information.  So when I add to it, they don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

On other occasions, I overlook the basic journalism premise of the five W’s:  who, what, when, where, and why.  For absolute clarity, add a sixth that begins with “h” and include how.

I may be in a hurry and include only parts of what someone needs to know, or I clump three thoughts into one.  Someone reads it, scratches his or her head, and goes, “What in the world is she talking about?”

Sometimes the person erring is the listener, the one on the other end of the communication.  It does take a minimum of two people to communicate.  Even if we’re talking to ourselves, we need to listen to what we say.  But often we may jump to conclusions.  We’re busy, in a hurry, we skim the surface of what we read or heard, make another …. assumption (I’m still not going to say it) and run off in left field in a tangent only to find out that while we may have needed the exercise, all the running and jumping was an unnecessary waste of time and energy.  We listened wrong.  We didn’t hear right.  Or we used what my ex (now deceased bless his soul) used to call “selective hearing.”

Selective hearing is when we hear part of something.  That part usually triggers an emotion — fear, hurt, anxiety.  Or an assumption.  (No.  I will not say it. Too many people have used that tired saying about what happens when we assume for way too long.)  So when we listen selectively, we hear only that part connected to an emotion, and nothing else.  Maybe it triggered low self-esteem, or an issue we’re dealing with, trying to work through.  For whatever reason, what we hear is not what was written or said.  We took a piece of information and went off running into that field again.  Unnecessarily.

What can we do to improve communication?  Here are a few easy ideas.

1.  Make notes beforehand of the important things we want to say or include.  Details.  For years, people have been saying that God is in the details.  So is clear communication.

2.  Take notes during the conversation.  What was said?  What was agreed upon?

3.  Repeat yourself once, to be clear.  “Sorry to bother you, but I’d rather take your time now instead of wasting it later.  Was that 4:00 p.m. tomorrow, or Friday of next week?”

4.  Slow down.  Be present.  If you have your cordless phone next to one ear, you’re texting on your cell phone, and then as soon as you complete the text you move to your computer and whip off an E-mail, you may end up with a mix up.  Or two.  Or four.

5.  Avoid blame.  Would you rather argue to maintain your righteousness, or resolve the problem?  Sometimes a neutral, “I’m sorry for my part in this miscommunication,” can bring welcome peace to an agitated situation unless you’re into your drama addiction, in which case you’d likely rather argue anyway. You may want to suggest the possibility that it could have been you who either communicated or listened wrong, although you’re not certain.  You’re not giving away all your fragile self-esteem but you’re giving the situation the barest possibility that although it’s never happened before, you may have been (cough) wrong.  And if it was your fault, you’re sorry.  Even if it wasn’t your fault — maybe the communication demons scrambled words or Mercury went retrograde or something else occurred — you can still be sorry that the communication problem and any resulting secondary problems happened.  You know you’re growing when you prefer to make peace, not war.  If we can’t make peace with people who are our friends, loved ones, or people we do business with on a regular basis, what are the chances of us doing it with complete strangers?  Minimal, at best.  But — that’s an assumption, and we all know what assuming does.  Which is why I’m not going to say it.

On the other hand, this is an article, sorry a blog, about communication.  I’ve now referred four times to some elusive thing I’m not going to say.  While many of you know exactly what I’m talking about, it makes me look like a donkey to think everyone who reads this knows what I mean, even if I don’t say it, which means I’m not communicating clearly in my blog on clear communication. Quoting someone, “Oh, bother.”

6.  Six ideas make a good number of suggestions for solving a problem.  So I’ll end with this one.  If a communication problem created a secondary problem and people feel angry, hurt, or upset and one of those people happens to be you, deal with your emotions first before attempting the next communication.  If that means putting your hand over your mouth, lying and saying “Oh, someone’s at the door can I please get right back to you?” and then letting that string of epithets roll out of your mouth where nobody can hear them, regaining your peace, and calling the person back after releasing your emotions, chances are good that any communication that occurs now will be better than if you had attempted to talk while in the heat of emotion.  Get centered and clear, calm, peaceful — be that loving and lovely person you truly are — first.  If nothing else, do it for selfish reasons.  Many of us are extremely busy lately.  It will save you from having to make another call later to make amends.  It’s also a good spiritual practice.  Emotions do not have to control us or our communication.

We all make mistakes.  Well most of us do.  I know a couple people who said they haven’t, but I think they were wrong at least once:  when they said that.  Life is precious.  Time is valuable.  So are our relationships.  Talk clearly.  Listen clearly.  If that should not happen, resolve the issue as quickly as you can.

Oh, alright.  I’ll include it.

7.  Don’t assume.  Since I began consciously walking a spiritual path, I’ve heard said, as many others have when someone says, “Well I assumed…..”   The other person clears his or her throat and says, “You know what happens when you assume.  You make, and then they break the word into syllables: an ass/ out of u/ and me/.  Ass-u-me.  Get it?  Thought you would.

I truly despise that saying.

How about this?  Let’s just do the best we can and strive for clear communication.

Have a good day and if you can’t do that, have a day.  We never know when it might be ours or someone else’s last.  Enjoy the gift of life and communication.

Melody Beattie

P.S.  Watch for the blog coming soon on PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how it impacts many of us and our quality of life.

P.P.S. — I completely forgot that the reason I wanted to write this blog on communication is that a previous blog talked about moving blogs to another spot.  I communicated incorrectly.  I’m not moving this blog.  It’s here and I plan to keep it here.  But a duplicate of it is in Google for any of you who are Googlitarians.  Googlites?  Googlers?  Anyway, you can read it either here or there, but Living In the Mystery is staying right here which is all I really wanted to say.

This is just a short post to let you know that I’ve managed, with the help of some generous folk who shared their knowledge (rather one generous man) to import my blogs from my other blog site. After wrestling with it for a few hours, I stopped doing the same thing over and over (even though it didn’t work), wrote down the error code, and sought some help. Voila! There it was — the solution in black and white. And to make things better, the solution offered worked.

Part of this is to let you know that I’ve imported the blogs and comments from the blog site at www.MelodyBeattie.com/blog to http://melodyavatarblog.blogspot.com/ at Google. I haven’t blogged at Google much (as any visitors there know). The other part is a reminder to those of you who have, hmm, tendencies similar to mine and continue to do the same thing repeatedly even though it didn’t work the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and my do we get obsessive. Sometimes I’ll bring that number up to twenty, thirty, or forty times.

Reminder: Here’s a rule of thumb. If you try it three times and it doesn’t work, stop. Get some new information. Ask for help. Perhaps read the instructions? Try something different but for the love of God and all that’s Holy, stop doing what doesn’t work and do something else.

Ahem. More a reminder to me than to anyone else. Not really a post; more of a post-it note to keep in sight.

Have a good one!

Melody Beattie

So often we think of distractions as being something negative but that’s not necessarily true.  Sometimes, when an event pulls me away from what I’m doing (or trying to do), it’s because that event has the next piece.  It holds a lesson I need to learn to move forward.

Then there are those times we need to learn to distract ourselves.  There were times after my son’s death when I felt like I’d fallen into a bottomless pit of pain.  At the end of the fall was a nothingness death, like I was willing myself into an autistic world of pain.  The emotions, the grief, the hurt just got to be too much.  That’s when I began to learn about the positive side of distractions, and that I could distract myself.  Understand, I’m not talking about going into permanent denial.  I’m talking about a coffee break from the real world.

Shortly before Shane’s accident, I’d begun going to kinesiology.  For those not familiar with the practice, it combines chiropractic care with homeopathy, NLP,  and muscle testing.  I may not be getting these terms exactly correct.  But I believe NLP is neuro linguistic programming, a way of muscle-testing the body, or “talking to it” to see what it wants next — what bones it wants cracked, if there’s an emotion that’s stuck (or three of them), or something else holistically that the body needs.

When chiropractic care is done that way, you don’t need to spend half an hour under a heating pad to relax the muscles to get the bones ready to adjust.  By talking to the body and finding out what it wants done, it’s ready to allow those bones to be adjusted (or cracked).  Neuro Linguistic Programming is a way of identifying a blocked emotion, naming it, it’s origins, current trigger, what lesson it’s part of learning,  and then releasing it, all in a matter of seconds.  After a while, a person can blow through ten to twenty emotions in one twenty-minute session.

You learn to identify, go to that vibrational level, feel it, release it, and then go on to the next emotion.  Emotions stop becoming such a big ordeal.  We push through them.  Bap.  Bap.  Bap.  What’s next?  To muscle test, you hold out your arm.  The doctor thinks of a question, asks the body (bypassing our conscious mind).  Then the arm stays strong or goes weak, depending on whether the answer is No or Yes.  Fascinating process but is it snake oil selling?  Well, the emotion that came up and wanted a homeopathic remedy days before Shane’s death?  Deep, overwhelming, heart-breaking grief.  I looked at the paper the chiropractor gave me to accompany the homeopathic remedy my body said it wanted.  This is nuts, I thought when I read it.  I’m not feeling any grief. Until three days passed and Shane went skiing and never came home.

It’s as though our souls know what’s coming next and some therapy works at the level of soul consciousness.  There is a point to all this information, I promise.  As time passed and I continued to use this holistic therapy, one event that came up — a Lifestyle that my body requested — was The Law of Humor. I’d stopped laughing some time ago.  Apparently, there’s a universal law (I don’t know where the codes are hidden or who wrote them) that says we either laugh or die or get sick.  The Universal police give us a consequence if we don’t let up on our pain.  That’s when I learned about distracting myself.

Sometimes it could be as simple as going to a movie, although that can backfire.  At times I’d find myself watching a movie about a child’s death and end up crying harder after the distraction than I did before.  Then I learned to make it even simpler.  Rent the movies I knew would make me laugh.  I may lose a few readers here, but the Earnest movies make me laugh, especially Earnest Goes to Jail.  I giggle as I sit here writing, thinking about some of the slapstick scenes. That’s what I’m talking about.

Another way to distract ourselves is to consciously use the other side of our brain, the rational side, the part that deals with numbers, logic, and facts.  I began doing crossword puzzles.  They’d pull me out of my fall down the emotional death well.  Or I could do something like wear different colors.  Black attracted me much of the time.  It also pulled me down.  By wearing another color, I figuratively and literally lightened up.

Going into another room, taking a shower, going to the hardware store are all things that worked when I needed to distract myself.  The hardware store?  Yup.  It reminded me that there’s a practical way things in this world work, a way to make sense of things.  That comforted me.  I can smell the sawdust even as I write these words, and how good that smelled to me.

Each of us need to experiment to discover what works for us.  There will always be something that we can afford that will  get us out of the emotional side of our brain, or make ourselves laugh.  The humor may be on the dark side, but a dark laugh is better than none.

There’s also PixiePit, an online scrabble game you play on the computer with people all over the world.  Cost?  $12.00 a year.  Affordable to most people.  Watch out for games that harvest for personal information.  Also avoid the online casinos.  You’ll win like crazy when you play for free, but I’ve known people who won so much playing for free they began playing for money.  That’s when they started losing thousands of dollars.  Then they lost thousands more trying to recoup their losses.

Find safe distractions, ones that don’t bring harm to you or anyone else.

When we don’t distract ourselves is when worse accidents or events tend to happen:  physical abuse (abusing someone else or letting someone abuse us); emotionally abusing someone; finding a negative distraction, one that will change our mood.  It’s better to know that there is an area where we do have some control.   Most of us like to feel some sense of control in life and that’s a normal, appropriate reaction.

Intentionally distracting ourselves from pain, taking that coffee break from reality, is one way to do it.  People say that God never gives us more than we can handle. I haven’t found that to be true.  I’ve been overwhelmed by events and found myself plummeting down that bottomless pit.

Any good ideas?  Feel free to share in comments.  Numbers games, jigsaw puzzles, I’m not one for jokes but some people like those too.  But it’s hard, people complain, to switch my mood.  I know we don’t have an on and off switch, but it’s something we can learn to do and we’ll get better at it with practice, especially when we see that it works and gives us a little relief.

If you’re going through a difficult time, better to learn to distract yourself than get tagged by the Universal Police for breaking the Law of Humor.

No situation is so grim that we aren’t allowed to laugh, giggle, or even get to a belly-rumble or roar.  It’s not disrespectful.  It doesn’t mean we don’t care.  It means we care enough about ourselves to want to stay alive.  Even if we don’t (which I didn’t always), we can act as if we do.

Eventually the desire to live on this not-everything-has-a-happy-ending planet will return.  We’ll be someone new.  We didn’t ask for it.  We don’t have to like it.  Neither of those are rules.  But we do need to learn to laugh at ourselves.

It’s the Law.

That’s all for now from Living in the Mystery

by Melody Beattie

I’m still amazed at how old behaviors can  crop up and sabotage me or minimally make me completely miserable.  One of the sneaky little devils that creeps in, in many shapes and forms, is Black and White Thinking. Let me explain what that term means to me.

First I want to preface this Post with how easy  clearly identifying another person’s shortcomings is while glossing over my own.  That could be why some recovery programs suggest taking our own inventory, although taking other people’s makes recovery  much more fun — for a while anyway.

Black and White Thinking is a brother to All or Nothing.  For instance, if I can’t pay the entire bill, I won’t make any payment at all.  Men are often guilty of this.  I don’t know why but it seems to be a male thing.  Women are more prone to see clearly here and make payments while men will patiently wait to win the lottery instead of making monthly payments on a bill.

My All or Nothing (or its brother Black and White) thinking lately connects to work.  I have to get ALL of this project done before I can move on to the next thing.  Then people wait.  I feel guilty, get stressed.  I lose the energy and feeling of the other projects  I’m doing.  In self-defense, some of this comes from writing books.  I’ve not been able yet (and I’ve written eighteen books) to write a book and do anything else but the bare essentials. That includes:  breathe when I have time.  I can hear and be distracted by the sound of someone else breathing 500 yards away.  To write a book, I need  absolute concentration and focus. Nothing short of that will do.

But now I’m working on finishing two web-creating tasks: making  The Gift Shop for The Grief Site, and a new site at www.MelodyBeattie.org.  On that one, I’ll announce a book to be released in November:  Make Miracles in Forty Days.  I’ll also devote part of it to codependency and a workbook coming out next year related to Codependent No More.  I’m thinking a forum where we could discuss issues (not that we still have them) might be helpful. Yes?  No?  What do you think?  I truly care, although I don’t want any of us staying stuck in our, “I’m a sick, hopeless codependent.”  We can work on issues and still align with our essential power.  See — there’s that Black and White thinking again. We don’t have to go around publicly identifying as codependents anymore.  Some things we can keep to ourselves or share with a trusted few.

Changing the subject, it’s a small site and I think I’ve learned to do all the tasks involved with putting it together so I won’t have a learning curve.  The publisher has prepared all the information on the new book release.  I don’t want to give too much away, so writing will be minimal there.

I also have a screenplay that I need to be editing now.  I payed for and enrolled in a class at ScreenwritersOnline.com, a site that guides and teaches me, and for now replaces deadlines.  It also gives me what they call in the industry. (I like using that phrase, the industry. It helps me feel like a professional in the screenwriting biz, a goal I’ve had since I began my writing career in 1979.)  Problem is, I should be working on all three things at once.  Obviously, I can’t.  I can do only one thing at a time.

Recovery programs suggest First Things First. I’m familiar with that phrase.  But what do we do when three things scream, “Me.  Take me first?”  Get stressed?  Come down with pneumonia, like I did?  Maybe there’s a different and better way.  What if it didn’t have to be all or nothing?  What if I could walk and chew gum at the same time?  I could devote half the week (three days) to working on web sites, and the other half to editing my screenplay and starting the next one I want to write (and that I’ve paid for the class for help, support, and notes to write it in)?

Sounds like a Plan.  I recall, right before getting sick, thinking I can’t take all the obstacles and problems anymore.  It’s too much, too hard.  Everything feels like crawling over broken glass; everything I’m doing involves a grueling learning curve. How to get a YouTube Video to open automatically.  Don’t worry.  You can shut it off if you like.  But for effect, I wanted to a) create a small movie for the Gift Shop; and b) have it automatically open when you redirect to the Store’s site — redirecting being something else new I needed to learn.

Everything has been hard and vying for my attention.  This morning at 3:00 a.m. I broke through on two obstacles.  But what if, just what if I did something else innovative and new, like letting go when I get stuck instead of repeatedly doing over and over something that doesn’t work?

I might be on to something, although I’m kidding about letting go being a new concept.  People have written about that subject for a long time.

Isn’t it amazing how well the basics work?

I know what some of you are thinking.  I despise that phrase, too.  It’s actually supposed to be a recovery joke.  “Wanna know how to make God laugh?  Tell Him your plans.”  That sounds so mean.  It’s good to have goals, as long as we’re not overly attached to them.  Who, me?

I’m going to give this a go or a while.  But I think (and the idea occurred just this moment while writing this Post):  What if I prayed each morning for specific guidance about what I’m supposed to work on that day, and then trusted my intuition about what I hear?

Hate to repeat myself.  But isn’t it fantastic that the basics  work?

Reminder to self:  May not have to take the All or Nothing or Black and White routes to reach my goals.  Maybe I  can do two different things in the same week. I’m not writing a book. That reminds me of something else I forgot to do:  write a goal list of what I want and need to get done.

Second Reminder to Self:  Write goals.

Third Reminder:  Remember to stop thinking about praying for guidance and actually ask.  Also stop thinking about meditating and spend some time — even if it’s five minutes –  in meditation.  Talk to my Higher Power and then listen to what He, my guardian angels, and the Universe have to say. Prayer and meditation.  Seems like I’ve heard about  that somewhere before too.

It just might work.  Whoa!  Wait a minute.  Now I’ve got, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7  things to do?  Did I just make Life harder?   How am I ever going to get them …. Melody, for the Love of God and all that’s Holy, stop it!  Let go and breathe.

Yours in recovery,

Melody BeattieAuthor of Language of Letting Go

He put the gun in his mouth.  (Or did he?  Did someone else?)

He was one of the greatest Eastern healers I met.  After my surgery, the doctors recommended three or four different kinds of physical therapy.  Just going to therapy would have left me no time for a life.  He listened to me when I talked.  He took notes, and read them.  I decided on one form of physical therapy:  I’d commit to it, do it three times a week — with him.

I’m glad I did.  It helped bring me into balance after being gutted like a deer and having two artificial discs nailed, then pounded into my back.

He began talking to me early on about his primary relationship.  I knew he wasn’t happy.  He considered me an equal, and sometimes we talked.  Or he talked, and I listened.  Usually he kept our sessions about me.  The point is, I knew he wasn’t happy and no easy answers existed to solve his problem.

We became friends over the years.

When his miserable relationship ended, he became more seriously ill. He’d been sick for a while, but when he talked about it I cried because I knew it was bad, so he wouldn’t tell me about it anymore. Now,  he couldn’t practice, couldn’t heal people. His spirit, willing.  His flesh couldn’t endure it.  He had no place to go, and no money to get there.  California can be brutal when it comes to community property.

Then he stood on the verge of losing the last thing he had left:  his Social Security.  All options would be gone.  Stories don’t always have a happy ending, even the ones that deserve one.  He wouldn’t have been happy in a state-subsidized nursing home, not a Master, Healer, and Teacher like that.  He hated what his life had become. He legitimately ran out of hope.  He  could not take it anymore.

I recognize that feeling.

We were close enough that I feel honored to be  one of only three people he left a goodbye  gift for in an envelope:  a stone to help my heart heal.  But I keep wondering:  How did he feel when he put the gun barrel in his mouth?  How long did he think about it?  How long before he pulled the trigger?  Did it hurt?  Was he scared?  Or did he feel relief about getting the endless pain to stop?

What did the barrel feel like in his mouth?  Cold, unforgiving steel? Did he have any second thoughts?  Was it hard to pull the trigger — physically?

I don’t mean to be graphic and gross but I know he didn’t hurt long.  He knew enough about guns to hit the target.  His brains splattered all over the bathroom walls.  He hurt before, maybe during for a second, but not after.  I feel badly that such a giving life of service ended like that and I keep wondering:  Who really pulled the trigger?  Not who pulled it physically, but who pulled it metaphysically?  It’s not mine to be judgmental, only to love.

I feel him around.  He believed in life after life.  Whenever we discussed the death penalty, he said:  “Death isn’t punishment.  Life in prison without the possibility of parole is.”  When I’d tell him I wanted to be awake, not sleeping when I died because I didn’t want to miss the experience, he told me that death is anticlimactic — like walking into another room.

Sometimes the door we walk through is ugly.

I wish the end of his life would have been as beautiful as he and his life was.  I know I can’t change that.  I don’t think of what he did as committing suicide. The party was over.  Life had left him sitting alone, in a dark room.  He took control over the day, or time, of death.

I miss him.  What he did wasn’t selfish.  Nobody who leaves a stone to help your heart heal  is selfish. I’m sorry he had to hurt.

He cared about me until the end.  He cares about me now.  Did I say how much I missed him?  I’m going to need that stone, but  he knew that. He always knew what I needed.  Another doctor friend died a few weeks ago.  I miss him, but  my heart really  hurts this time.  I know for everything there’s a beginning, a middle, an ending but when you watch a good movie you don’t want it to be over.

Thank you, doctor, for all the healing.   You were and are my friend.  I won’t forget you.  The world changed the moment you pulled the trigger and it won’t be the same without you.  Your prices were too low.  You told people  the truth.  You encouraged, accepted, and  unconditionally  loved them.

When it’s my time, will you be there waiting for me in the room I walk into?   You don’t have to answer any questions or explain.  I  hope you weren’t afraid,  that it didn’t hurt when you did it, and that you don’t hurt now.  You of all people deserve to feel good.

In Light and Love (I know, we both think that’s corny) I remain your patient patient,

Melody Beattie

Thanks for all you taught me.

Although my newest release about making miracles  will be available in November 2010, many of my miracles have had to do with acceptance — although I was metaphorically struck by lightening when I became clean and sober.  When I practice the technique in the book coming out, more of what I truly want and need comes true.  But  when my son died, I didn’t receive the miracle of him being brought back to life.I had to accept the worst.  My miracle was and is a daily surrender to something I don’t like.

I didn’t receive the miracle of my ex-husband, the father to my children, becoming sober.  My miracle came in the form of learning that I was codependent, and then  dealing with that.

But last week I received a multi-million dollar miracle, one that gives me breath and the gift of life.

Backstory:  Since 2005, the medications required to keep me alive and functioning have  ranged in price from $23,000  to about $9,000 a month.  Before then, I never thought much about my insurance policy.  I’ve been in business for myself since 1979.  I bought my own health insurance policy many years ago, one that covered both children and myself.  I don’t remember even looking at things like “ceilings.”  i rarely used Western Medicine.  I preferred to deal with myself holistically and avoided doctors and Western Medicine as much as I could. But I  knew that having medical insurance is wise.  I won’t forget the day when I had either bronchitis or pneumonia and went to the doctor’s office with a high fever.  They looked at my chart  (I was still married then) and said, “You bill isn’t paid.  We won’t treat you.”  I walked out of the doctor’s office sick, untreated, and in tears.

After my divorce, I vowed to provide my family with life’s necessities, things like a car, paying the utility bills, and having medical insurance.  I got sick of playing the guessing game:  does my child have a virus (where there’s nothing the doctors can or will do) or is it a bacterial infection that requires antibiotics?  I was dirt poor for quite a long time.

I thought paying $250 every three months was a high price for a Cadillac policy that allowed me to see the doctor of my choice, with no co-pay after the annual deduction.  I didn’t know and had I known, wouldn’t have known what to do about the million dollar ceiling.  Wasn’t that enough for a lifetime?  Maybe then, but for many of us, or at least some of us, not anymore.

I now pay just over $3,000 every three months for health insurance for  one person:  myself.  But at $23,000 a month, my medical bills ate — devoured –  my health insurance at a hefty pace.  On my mind constantly was the thought:  what am I going to do when my insurance runs out?  Nobody else will cover a “pre-existing condition.”  I tried not to worry, telling myself the mantra I’d used most of my sober life:  My God shall supply all my needs, according to His riches — not mine.  Still, I worried.  As I got closer to the ceiling, the thought that my life would come to an end because I couldn’t get my medication weighed on at least the back of my mind.  I didn’t hear any voices whisper, but in my heart I felt that verse:  My God shall supply all, not some of my needs.  That includes — if I need it — my medicine. No need to worry.

As I came so close to the ceiling that it rubbed  my head, the insurance company E-mailed me.  The date?  September 23, 2010.  “Congratulations.  The cap on your health insurance is now permanently removed,” it said.

This E-mail blew away my assistant, maybe impacted her more than it did me.  This is a miracle and I don’t take it for granted.  I’m filled with gratitude.  The timing could not possibly be more perfect.  But I’ve seen the Red Sea parted by my Higher Power before, in many ways and situations.  That doesn’t mean I’m not blown away too.  I may still be in shock.

I know I’ll die someday, and I don’t know when that day is.  But what I do know now is that it won’t be because I can’t pay for my health care and  medicine.  “it’s a miracle!”  i’ve heard those words used about everything from finding a parking spot to getting a job or someone having their child recover from a serious illness.  It’s not often I hear that in connection with the government.  Except for now.  I know that changes in our health care system have been in process for some time, but now they’ve  begun to happen.  No more ceiling is a miracle.  I don’t have to die because i can’t get my medication.

Thank you God.  A warm thank you to the government.  A thank you to State Farm, who carries my health insurance.  I’m overjoyed.  Thank you everyone.  It’s a miracle,  the kind we dream about. It really happened. While most of us go through some tough experiences, God and Life and at times even the government are benevolent.

I know I am and I feel truly loved and taken care of and that’s the icing on the miracle cake,  not just getting the “thing” that i received.  God knows where we live.  Our Higher Power knows and cares about what we  need.  Right now, every day is Christmas, my birthday, every holiday wrapped into one.  I’ll stop gushing soon (maybe)  but it’s important that I publicly express my gratitude.  I bow in humility and surrender to Life’s blessings.  We do what we can to take care of ourselves.  Life and our Higher Power will take care of the rest by doing for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.

Amen.

And may you get your miracle too.

In the process of switching to a new and improved (and much easier template to navigate), we need to shut down the grief site at www.MelodyBeattie.net for two nights, beginning tonight, and during the day tomorrow (Wednesday, September 22 – Thursday, September 23).  By the daytime, on Thursday, September 23, the site should be operating again.

Everyone who registered will received an email informing them of a changed password.  When the site reopens, use your new password and feel free to change it to the password of your choosing.  Registration will be much easier on the new site — both in terms of actually registering and in the amount of information required.  It will no longer be necessary for you to leave emergency contact information with me.  However, the agreement to not hurt yourself or anyone else will still be something you agree to by virtue of your using the site.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused by closing, but it’s for a good cause.  You’ll finally be able to maneuver with ease around the Grief Club site.

Melody Beattie

Chip Latshaw