Allowing ourselves to receive love is one of the greatest challenges we face in recovery.
Many of us have blocked ourselves from receiving love. We may have lived with people who used love to control us. They would be there for us, but at the high price of our freedom. Love was given, or withheld, to control us and have power over us. It was not safe for us to receive love from these people. We may have gotten accustomed to not receiving love, not acknowledging our need for love, because we lived with people who had no real love to give.
At some point in recovery, we acknowledge that we, too, want and need to be loved. We may feel awkward with this need. Where do we go with it? What do we do? Who can give us love? How can we determine who is safe and who isnt? How can we let others care for us without feeling trapped, abused, frightened, and unable to care for ourselves?
We will learn. The starting point is surrendering to our desire to be loved, our need to be nurtured and loved. We will grow confident in our ability to take care of ourselves with people. We will feel safe enough to let people care for us; we will grow to trust our ability to choose people who are safe and who can give us love.
We may need to get angry first -- angry that our needs have not been met. Later, we can become grateful to those people who have shown us what we don't want, the ones who have assisted us in the process of believing we deserve love, and the ones who come into our life to love us.
We are opening up like flowers. Sometimes it hurts as the petals push open. Be glad. Our heart is opening up to the love that is and will continue to be there for us.
Surrender to the love that is there for us, to the love that people, the Universe, and our Higher Power send our way.
Surrender to love, without allowing people to control us or keep us from caring for ourselves. Start by surrendering to love for yourself.
Today, I will open myself to the love that is here for me. I will let myself receive love that is safe, knowing I can take care of myself with people. I will be grateful to all the people from my past who have assisted me in my process of opening up to love. I claim, accept, and am grateful for the love that is coming to me.
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When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. --Eleanor Roosevelt
We need to take note, today, of all the opportunities we have to offer a helping hand to another person. We can notice too, the many times a friend, or even a stranger, reaches out to us in a helpful way. The opportunities to contribute to life's flow are unending.
Our own vibrancy comes from involvement with others, from contributing our talents, our hearts to one another's daily travels. The program helps us to know that God lives in us, among us. When we close ourselves off from our friends, our fellow travelers, we block God's path to us and through us.
To live means sharing one another's space, dreams, sorrows, contributing our ears to hear, our eyes to see, our arms to hold, our hearts to love. When we close ourselves off from each other--we have destroyed the vital contribution we each need to make and to receive in order to nurture life.
We each need only what the other can give. Each person we meet today needs our special contribution.
What a wonderful collection of invitations awaits me today!
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Life is short..Live it sober to the fullest...One day at a time...
wow, that first one is sooo true of me. We used the word 'love' for a lot of things that aren't really love, and it gets us confused. I'd like to post that on the CAS board, but I need to give credit to the author. Please tell us where that is from. thanks
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
thanks... a little more sharing on the topic. Now I just have to figure out what real Love is... so many things get called 'love' that aren't. I'm ready for love. What is it? Is it what a guy says when he wants to get laid? Is it what my codependent needy mom said when she meant dependent? Is it what my controlling friend says when it is that s/he really cares but smothers me with 'helpfulness'? I don't know.
'love' in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
I've read this over and over this morning, thinking about what Love means. What it meant twenty years ago, and what it means now are so different. I guess what Love is, is personal perceptions. It may mean devotion to one person, fire works to another, to be cherished by another, all of the above. I truly believed that love meant pain in my younger days--not because of an abusive childhood, or anything like that. I believe it was just an unhealthy perception of self and others. I mean, I listen to some fifties and sixties music come on the radio, and what is it about? pain and love, love and pain. If it didn't hurt, then it wasn't real. So, I spent years making it "real". As "maturity" and sobriety grew in time, I did a 180 (very slowly) on what I thought love was. When my husband first proposed to me, did I answer him? No, I called my sponsor in Calif. and asked her what she thought. She asked me " why are you afraid to be with someone who may be good to you?". So I thought aabout what she said, and called him back and told him yes.
This was NOT an easy marriage by any means. But what I expected from love had changed so much over the years, that rather than run away when things got tough, I chose to work, and work hard, at them. Once the fireworks die down from those first few years of passion, and the adjustment, truly learning about the person within the person you are with? I have found that tantamount to everything else, I needed a solid friendship. Trust. Honesty. After sixteen years, these things are still being established, we are still working on them, and I finally realized that love can be very quiet, and it absolutely should not hurt on an ongoing basis. Lord knows how many relationships I sabatoged based on that belief....but what Love is, changes as it grows.
So for me Love is understanding, companionship, equality in the home. Pretty peaceful stuff, but then, at 55 maybe I'm just too damned tired for constant fireworks. So, what I'm saying is, I believe Love is what you want it to be. Needs can be adjusted. Wren
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Funny, isn't it, how friends and a Power greater than ourselves can neutralize nightmares?
I'm listening, and those are valid perspectives. They seem to be about romantic love. In other languages there are more than one word for love, which describe different kinds of love... In Greek there are five kinds.. romantic love is one, brotherly love is another, parental sacrificial love yet another. In Spanish we have querer, which nowadays means "I want you", and amar, which a more giving love. There is a kind of love which means to be pleased with someone or something, like "I love your eyes", or "I love chocolate". There is a kind of love which is really need,,, I need you, and can't live without you - dependency, really. Then there is the kind that St Paul tells us about in 1 Cor 13 - Love is patient, kind, slow to anger, not full of self-seeking. And the kind Jesus tells us to do when He said 'Love one another as I have loved you' - mercifully, unconditionally, forever, doing what is best for the well-being of the beloved. I guess I have seen romantic love - people who are 'in love' and how that rises and falls. I have seen need based 'love'. I guess what I didn't see was the kind where one person actually really unselfishly is committed to doing what is really best for another person for any length of time, and that means to people besides one's immediate family,, beyond the current wife and biological children.
Well, and even when a person is theoretically committed to work for the well-being of another, others and self,,, it is so hard to figure out what that means at any particular present moment and situation. I know I try, and goof up a lot. Trying to figure out what is actually the best for all concerned is not easy to do. I guess that is where a lot of people figure they can give advice,,, but,,, do they really know either?
love in recovery,
amanda
-- Edited by amanda2u2 at 17:26, 2006-04-23
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
Mmmm. Well, like most other things in my life, I guess I've reached a point where I just accept it for what it is on a daily basis, and make the healthiest emotional choices accordingly. So much easier than complicating the shit out of it...wren
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Funny, isn't it, how friends and a Power greater than ourselves can neutralize nightmares?
well, what it was was shit for most of my life, certainly all my childhood. I thought I had accepted it for what it was,,, shit. The song 'desperado' was my song. I am a rock , I am an island. love is shit in one form or another. It was only by sorting it all out, and then a real spiritual awakening through AA that I came, at 40 years old, to find out that there really is another kind of Love, that I write with a capital L,,, that is people who really care about other people or themselves at all.
I guess some people have been more fortunate in having some experience of this real Love in their childhoods or as young adults. I'm very glad for them. They can take it for granted. Not me,,, to find out that there is a real Love that is not actually just some ego need or satisfaction is to me amazing.
in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
Oh, no, I don't ever take today's emotions for granted, not ever. I didn't use to have emotions for so long---I had stayed so numb.Today is not twenty years ago when someone "loved me" so much they kept putting me in hospital. I'm only coming from how I experience it now, over the years. It wasn't always like this. I had to, like most of us, go thru the rough first in order to see today. And my loving back was pretty crippled also. I do feel blessed today, because I was able to get out of the cycle. But it took awhile even in this relationship. I guess it's sticking around long enough to learn. Wren
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Funny, isn't it, how friends and a Power greater than ourselves can neutralize nightmares?
Another good point. the question is often asked whether love is an emotion or not. According to some it is an emotion, and we know that emotions come and go, according to pms, what we had for dinner, how we slept last night . The emotion of 'being in love' rarely lasts over 5 years. But the kind of love I consider 'real Love' is something we do in spite of how we feel.. it is a commitment to try to do what is best for the well being of the person loved.
This is a topic that I have wrestled with for many years. I have come to the point where I think it is central to life. I have made a commitment that no matter how I feel I am going to try my best to do the most positive and constructive thing possible and to try to make things 'win-win' situations. I realize that most people do go by feelings and try to avoid unpleasant ones and people and to stay close to people who make them feel good, and sometimes,, often,,, it is the same person that made them feel good yesterday that is being avoided today. In that emotional love is very fickle.
Well,, I guess we have hashed this one out pretty thouroughly, eh? To me it is important enough to do that, and I thank you all for your perspectives on it.
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
