Like A Champ

That top picture:

Exhausted.

Weary.

Dirt poor.

Messing up on the hourly!

In love with these children.

The bottom picture.

Exhausted.

Weary.

Dirt poor.

Messing up on the hourly.

In love with these boys.

Here's the thing:

We search for what people are doing wrong all of the time.

We are looking for it.

We are listening to everyone's stories.

We are hearing only what we hear and seeing only what we see.

In fact, we are all exhausted.

Weary.

Messing up all the time.

Maybe not as much as I mess up.

But we ALL mess up.

Even when I was deep into my addiction of validation, the fact that I was in love with my children never changed.

It just looked VERY different.

In fact, it looked like I didn't care about them.

Or love them.

That was not the case.

I was living through addiction.

As I was doing that, my thoughts were SO twisted, so upside down, so empty.

I never stopped loving my children, nor did I love them less.

I was very sick.

About addicts, people say, "WHY are they doing that?" 

"Don't they see what they are doing?"
"They need to stop right now!"

As an addict, I am telling you that to you those questions seem realistic and logical.

To the addict, we don't know why we are doing it.

We quite frankly rarely see what we are doing to others.

WE CAN'T STOP RIGHT NOW.

CANNOT.

ISN'T A THING.

It takes medical intervention, even with a process addiction like mine.

It takes just the right therapist(s).

I have two of them.

Still.

It takes a sponsor who is not going anywhere.

I have the best.

It takes SO MUCH WORK EVERY SINGLE DAY for the rest of the addict's life.

I'm all in.

Again...

I have no doubt that just about everyone has some kind of addiction.

They just don't see it.

OR they are unwilling to see it because they can see that others are worse than them.

Reminder:

What you consider your little sins are no different than what you see as someone else's big sin.

Be effing kind.