It's Wednesday morning, the alarm is going off for the 2nd time, and the house is cool and comfortable for this time of year. The previous two nights kept me up until the early hours of the morning, watching UFO traffic hoping to make contact. That part is for a whole other blog though. So, this morning was a rare case for me in recovery where I woke up pretty tired and not exactly motivated. And apparently, my four-year-old daughter felt the same way. She was being a typical kid and not wanting to get dressed or even stand or walk honestly. Mom was already frustrated but handling it fine. Then tired Dad walks into the room and decides to start barking orders at Kaylee, telling her everyone is tired, but we have to get going, get up, listen to her mom, stop acting like this, you're not going to get to play with your phone today, blah blah blah. My attitude doing nothing but making hers worse. Not a huge deal in general. Pretty typical parenting fun. But I end up being upset about being "forced" to get upset first thing in the morning when all I wanted to do was walk in the room and get some hugs and kisses and share a laugh before we all head out on our day. Knowing myself well enough before recovery, I know that this situation would have probably ruined my whole day because I basically wouldn't have known how to talk to myself about the situation or even that the situation needed more attention. I would have let it get me off to a rough start and just stayed on that path until I could get drunk about it. Such a small thing really, but I wasn't equipped to handle those things and didn't even realize it. After I had a minute to think about it, it was obvious that the morning didn't go well for any of us and that was regrettable for me. But recovery has taught me to look at what my part of it was. What could I control and how could I have done that better? Well, that was simple in this situation. Be patient and allow my daughter the grace we all deserve as humans to wake up peacefully and start the day right. I'm sure she would have loved some hugs and kisses too and I'm positive I could have found a path to where we all got what we wanted and were able to start a day in a much more beautiful way. Recovery has allowed me to be able to look at myself critically without beating myself up, without the judgment I always saved mostly for myself, and now I can just look at my part, make up for it in the relationship it affected if needed, and hopefully learn how to handle something similar better in the future. And understand that that's about the best we can do and that's just fine. So my point of this story really is that this is kind of the foundation of why I started a Sunday morning recovery meeting called "Recovery Dads". For me, it's just an opportunity to figure these things together. Recovery has been a long tough road but the lessons I've learned have allowed me to be able to continue living and learning and hopefully is going to allow me to be the best man I can be for my family as well. Unfortunately, recovery can't guarantee all of my relationships and hopes and dreams will work out the way I want them to, but it can definitely help me be the best dad and spouse I can be, and that's all I can ask for. Sunday mornings at 10 at the 217 Recovery Center if that's a meeting that sounds beneficial to you. I know I could use other people's experiences in my life.
