How was your Holiday Weekend??? Ours was really good. We had lots of family time, boating, eating, playgrounds, parades, and ice cream. Here’s a playground picture of me and my little buddy. He loves the swings and his little laugh every time Craig pushed us is a sound I will never tire of hearing. It was all good, but our Olivia is still in Africa and we missed having her with us over the holiday. Also, who else is glad we don’t always listen to the Weather Man? It was a beautiful weekend for sure.
I cannot believe it has been a month ago already that I went to the SheRecovers conference in New York. Time has flown again! May is gone. June is here. I can’t believe it but it is. Bring on summer, I am always up for that! Thinking summer is so short - it’s going to go by too fast. I’m that person always looking ahead too far. Really, Sherry, stay here in the moment or at least the month!
Anyway, back to the SheRecovers weekend. At the SheRecovers conference, they had a tag line, “Because we all are recovering from something.” Yes, us alcoholics took the prize for most members in attendance. There is so much more in life to recover from besides addiction however. Things like depression, abuse, gambling, rejection, low self esteem, codependency, death, and tragedy. Just about anything you could think of because we are all in recovery from something. I’ve got a list a mile long I wasn’t even aware of. Not kidding! So, why are women drawn to an event like this? I believe it is about community and we as women love community, don’t we?
There is something about being in a room with 500 women who all know what it’s like to have to rebound from life’s hurts and bad habits. The speakers all challenged us in some way and we felt connected to them because they were sharing their hearts and how they found healing. Most of this information led back to one, big word that I thought I knew a lot about, but found out I did not. Codependency.
I'd planned to write about codependency this week and as I dug into what I had learned at the conference, I could see there was so much more to it than what I was aware of. I kept reading instead of writing so when my deadline came, I had all kinds of notes and three hours set aside to put it together for this week's blog.
Then life happened. My server was down and after an hour on the phone with our internet provider, I was down to two hours left to write. I settled back in only to have this blaring siren noise come from my computer with a big warning that I was a victim of Ransomware. (There is a reason I do nothing technical and pass my writing each week on to my IT girl, Lieza, to post.)
So, like any computer illiterate grandma does, I shut the stupid thing off. I thought it was gone but it wasn’t. So much for handling it on my own! Long story short, two hours later it was gone and I had a new virus protection program installed, but no time left to write. The week after the holiday is a short one and it caught up with me!
I decided to take a cue from the Good Lord on this one and just be honest with you and say life happened this week. Sorry, but I do not ever want to put words out there just because I am supposed to. Thanks for understanding it was not in my control and I had to accept that.
Next week, I still plan on talking about codependency and wanted to leave you with a thought about codependency to ponder until then.
As I learned at the conference, codependency has many faces. It’s a big word with many definitions. You can be codependent on a person and/or a habit, which was news to me. I always thought that this was only about the spouse of an addict. Often called the enabler.
What it comes down to is control. Are you trying to control something or someone in your life? I challenge you to google some definitions this week of codependency and learn more. I have and can certainly see where some of these characteristics have kept me stuck for quite a while.
This quote is part of a definition from Wikipedia on codependency:
“Among the core characteristics of codependency, the most common theme is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and a sense of identity and a desire to rescue them.”
Interesting, right? Here's what the Bible has to say about the desire to rescue:
“A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again… Let angry people endure the backlash of their own anger; if you try to make it better, you’ll only make it worse.” - Proverbs 19:19
See you next week.
Peace on your weekend,
Sherry