When Life Hands You Lemons, Make....

....Poetry!

Our beloved son checked into rehab 6 weeks ago for problems with alcohol, drugs and severe anxiety, which he was self-medicating with the aforementioned substances.

It has not been a totally negative experience, I am happy to say. He is at a very good treatment center, which specializes in co-occurring conditions, so the anxiety is being treated, as well as the addiction. Also, my dear husband and I attended a fabulous parents' weekend, where we learned a lot about addiction (no distinction is made between alcohol and drugs...it's all addiction) and how to parent a child with this disease. And it IS a disease. All kinds of evidence exists of pre-disposing genes and brain hard-wiring that also makes the addicted brain different from the "so-called" normal brain (is any one of us really normal?).

Of course, writing has kept me sane during this episode in my life. Journaling and writing poetry. It's just what I do. And it does make me feel better, along with prayer and going to Alanon meetings and working my own 12 step program (yes, we parents get addicted to the child who is addicted to a substance). We, too, must learn that we are powerless over substances and our lives have become unmanageable.

Fortunately, my angst over this has yielded some decent poetry. I'll share one poem with you all.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers...and keep writing, you never know when it will really come in handy and save your life...or at least your sanity!

Using

You never said, “I’ll take a shot
of alcoholism on the rocks
followed by a swig of depression,”
when you made your Faustian bargain.

Alcohol was your drug of choice,
mixed with reefer, speed,
Benzodiazapines, even cough syrup.
A crazy cocktail of isolation.

For months, you chased that first high:
A mad marathon of numbing
shades of grey haze,
en route to blackouts.

We pray your soul will still be
at the baggage carousel to reclaim
when you are once again sober.

Blessings,

Anni

I have Been Remiss

...in not writing.

Much has happened since last September when I posted "life without power."

To hit on the highlights:

I have had 6 poems accepted for publication....

A retreat in November went swimmingly.

I attended a writers intensive in England in January...lots of fun and learned a lot.

My Women Writing for (a) Change class in Traverse City last fall nurtured my teaching skills.

In November, I moved back to Cincinnati and took a full time job in Marketing Research due to the economy.

I am still writing and TAKING classes at Women Writing for (a) Change in Cincinnati (the mother school).

Retreats in Michigan will continue to be offered twice a year, in July and November at the Augustine Center in Petoskey, MI.

And that's been my life....

Of course, I am still writing. Here is one of the poems that is being published:

The Apocalypse

We are all tourists,
passing through,
collecting souvenirs:
flamingo toothpick holders
demerits for venal sins.

War is fought daily
over minutiae, fodder
for the wrens’ nest.

Life is not all
black and white,
soon we shall all be
the color of strong
coffee with cream.

God spends her
capital on the
most wretched:
homeless vets
hooked on booze,
mothers who
commit infanticide,
paranoid schizophrenics.

Freed, they will lie on beds of
cottonballs and down
when the final evening falls
as the rest of us succumb to
endless meandering, collecting stuff.

Cheers, please write...

Anni