How The Heck Are You? Roster 5/16//2017

I have been posting almost daily "How The Heck Are You?" reports on the various message boards I participate on and I thought, "What the heck? Why don't I just share them over on my blog at the same time and give some of my old friends over there a chance to chime in with how they're doing too? Kicks me out of the guilt cellar for neglecting my blog and gives me a chance to stay in touch with the first community I joined on this journey. So here goes:

Been down in the dumps for the last few days and can't really pinpoint why. I'm looking forward to getting back to Colorado and the states and kids and grandkids and good beef. I'm going to throw a roast in the oven the minute I walk in the door, we can find steaks down here in MX and hamburger but I've never found a roast. I love the smell of one cooking all day in the oven and it's always cool enough where we live in Colorado that the added heat from the oven will be welcome.

All my kids called on Mother's Day. i know that sounds like it's not that big of a deal, most mother's kids call on Mother's Day, but on Mother's Day seven years ago, I spent most the day convincing myself that it would be okay if my kids didn't call, that I understood, they were busy, I'm hard to get hold of....then, I finally asked myself, "When did I get to the point that I was accepting of the possibility of my kids not calling?" How had my relationship with my kids reached the point that they might not want to call me on Mother's Day? It was on that Mother's Day that I decided no matter what, by the next Mother's Day, I may not be assured that my kids would call, but I would be assured of the fact that I had done everything within my power to return my relationship with my children to the level at which it had once stood, before I let my drinking convince me that it was ok not to put my relationship with my kids first. It was that Mother's Day that I decided that, even if I had to go to AA, my drinking would no longer stand between me and the things I wanted most, one of them being a close relationship with my children. It was that Mother's Day that I took my first "step." I wasn't sober by the next Mother's Day, but I had spent that year wrestling with my drinking problem with all my might and learning and repairing myself. It wasn't pretty, not at all. War never is. War is never won without losing a battle or two or hundred. War is only lost if we surrender.

My youngest son texted me this year, "Mom I love you more than you'll ever know. I'm so thankful for who you are and the mistakes you've made." I'm not sure how to take that. In one way I wish I was the mother whose kids didn't admire her because of her mistakes, in another way, as I replied back to him, if my mistakes made it so my kids feel like they can talk to me about anything, i'm happy.

That Mother's Day seven years ago, was a turning point for me, a day when I said, by next year at this time I will be a different person, a person who is doing everything she can to become a person she wants to be. And, a year later, while it may not have looked like it, even to me, I was becoming that person. This year I am making the same promise to myself. "Next Mother's Day, I may not yet be the person I want to be, but I will know I'm doing everything within my power to become that person.

How the Heck Are You?