Strengthening My Recovery: Meditations for Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families

“Most of us agonize over mistakes because we internalize the error.”

Today, we nurture ourselves by deciding what we want the universe to send us, because we’re open to the possibility that we can have those things. We allow ourselves to swim around in the scent of promise. We deserve it. We realize that wanting something is not bad; it’s a healthy part of being human. We allow our minds and hearts to wander because

But we mistakenly believed there were some benefits also – a sense of belonging, except that we didn’t even know who we were outside of this role.

We learned to keep our thoughts and yearnings to ourselves out of fear.

Many of us grew up with one parent who was an abuser and one who was our caretaker. The first abandoned us in the midst of their addiction, whether it was alcohol, sexual acting out, workaholism or something else that took them from us. The other parent seemed to hold things together, and we were grateful. But we were often drawn into their addicti

“An adult child is someone who responds to adult situations with self-doubt, self-blame, or a sense of being wrong or inferior – all learned from stages of childhood.” BRB p. vii, footnote

I am proud of how hard you are working to break the cycle of shame.”

As adults, we found relationships where we could continue to do what we did best: wait. We waited in fear for the addict, for the abuse, for anything to go wrong.

I understand that when I make a mistake, I don’t have to perpetuate my childhood abuse by beating myself up.