Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

unexplainable, ineffable, the vastness and power of the universe.
Some of us call this entity God; others do not. Our spirituality is
what allows us to let go of things over which we have no true
control, such as other people, other people's feelings and love or
lack of it, accidents, tragedies or death itself. Our spirituality
allows us to trust that our lives will make sense and that there is a
purpose to life, which we will discover, paradoxically, if we stop
fighting so hard to find it.
If you have ever stood on the top of a mountain or at the edge of
the sea and experienced a tremendous feeling of power and
connectedness with the universe, while at the same time,
experiencing a feeling of incredible smallness and personal
insignificance, then you have had a taste of spirituality. It is
frightening and incredibly energizing at the same time.

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But spirituality is more than just these momentary feelings that we
have when we commune with nature. It is a feeling of
connectedness with the entire human race with all those who have
gone before us and all those who will come after us. From there, it
is the ultimate relationship with all of creation that becomes our
highest form of spirituality.
Imagine what happens to one's relationship with something more
powerful or unexplainable than oneself, when he or she is the
victim of abuse and neglect. The first "higher power"
(metaphorically speaking) that we experience in life are those who
raise us from infancy usually our parents. If those parents abuse us
and neglect us, they will be teaching us not to trust entities more
powerful than ourselves. We will always be fearful of people in
authority. We will constantly defend against the unexplainable. We
will seek comfort by trying to control everything around us so that
we don't get hurt

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again. And we will be destined to fail, because we are not gods,
and we can never control everything around us.
In our fear and in our damage, we will try nevertheless. In other
words, we will try to become our own gods. This is why so many
of us turn to chemical addictions because chemicals give us the
illusion that we are in control of it all and because they let us feel
connected to the universe for a while, at least until the drug wears
off. It is our spirituality that is perhaps the last part of us that is
reclaimed after we get into recovery. And it, too, comes back in
steps and stages.
Recovery of our spirituality begins when we are truly able to say
that we are powerless over our addictions, symptoms or our family
systems. The paradox here is that at the very moment that we
surrender, we gain back some of our true power. Rather than being
left more vulnerable and defenseless by this surrender, we actually
become less vulnerable, because now we are not operating
according to a self-defeating, destructive logic that depletes all of
our energies trying to control things over which we have no
control. We are also less vulnerable because we are living in truth
and reality instead of in denial and defensiveness. Without the
denial, we can use that energy to make positive decisions about our
life in areas in which we do have a choice.
After this surrender, we are then able to trust others just a little bit,
which begins to restore our relationship with other human beings.
For many people, their "higher power" is initially the members of
their recovery group.
As we experience sharing our Little Child with others in a safe

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setting, we realize that guilt, shame and fear of abandonment do
not necessarily have to happen. We see others doing the same thing
without being criticized or abused. As we experience this gift of
total acceptance, we feel a power in the room the likes of which we
have never felt before. It is a power greater than ourselves. Many
people in 12-step groups simply accept this kind of power as their
Higher Power for years.
For many more people, this ability to be in relationship with a
group of other human beings eventually opens the door to trusting
that it is okay to be in relationship with something even more
powerful than the group. Many people call this entity God. But the
words and labels don't really matter. It is the relationship that
matters, which is why it is God as we understand God, not as
someone else understands God.

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The spiritual healing that takes place during recovery brings us full
circle back to the first stage of life: trust versus mistrust. With the
ability to trust that life is okay, that it will work out in the end even
if it isn't pleasant right now, we have wisdom. We have a sense of
belonging. We have purpose and meaning. We have choices.
And so as we heal deeper and deeper inside of ourselves, our lives
become bigger and bigger and more connected with the lives of
others outside of ourselves. Recovery is thus about the expansion
of the self out into the universe, while at the same time, remaining
humble and grateful that we are sharing in creation.

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POSTLUDE

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20 
Kiss Your Monster On The Nose
Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a village far
from the big city. The village was nestled in a beautiful, sunlit
valley surrounded by a tall snow-capped mountain range.
As the little girl grew older, she began to hike in the foothills at the
base of the mountains. And when she became a teenager, she asked
her parents if she could hike over the mountains to the village on
the other side to visit her grandparents. At first, her parents were
very upset and worried, and they told her that she could not go. But
the little girl pleaded and begged and argued that someday she
would be a young woman, and that she would have to grow up
sometime. After several months of debate, her parents finally
agreed to let her go.
Her father and mother taught her all that they knew about hiking
and camping and surviving alone m the woods. They made her a
backpack out of sturdy canvas, helped her pack, and then they all
knelt down and prayed that she might have a safe journey. The next
day she began her trek over the mountains.
Her first night alone was scary, but she managed to build a good
fire, ate some of the sausage and cheese that her father had packed

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for her, and then fell asleep, covered by the soft quilts that her
mother had made for her. The howling of the wolves frightened her
a little, but she kept her fire burning brightly most of the night,
which made her feel safer. The next day she awoke with the sun,
ate her biscuits and jam while sunning herself on a big granite rock,
then began hiking up the mountains. Late in the afternoon as the
sun slipped behind the tops of the mountains, she reached a fork in
the path. She did not know which way to go. Perplexed, she sat
down and prayed for wisdom.
A few moments later she heard terrible frightening noises coming
from the direction of both paths. Her heart raced and her palms
sweated. Suddenly, from both paths, two monsters appeared. They
were growling, gurgling, grumbling and snorting. The little girl
grabbed her backpack and began to run down the hill, back toward
her village. And then something inside of her told her to stop.
"Other people have hiked over these mountains and returned to tell
about it," she thought to herself. "Maybe I'd better go back and see
what this is all about."
The little girl stopped and turned around. The monsters had
stopped right at the fork in the road, and something told her that
they were trying to communicate with her. Slowly and carefully
she walked back toward the monsters.
As she got closer, the monster guarding the path on the left said,
"Take this path. It is much safer, and much quicker. Take this path
and you'll see your grandparents tomorrow night."
At that very moment, the monster guarding the path on the right
began to screech and howl a horrible blood-curdling howl. Fire

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belched from its mouth; smoke poured from its nose. The little girl
was terribly frightened!
She bolted toward the monster on the left! As she got closer, she
noticed that the monster on the left was not as ugly as the one on
the right; and it was definitely not as scary. The closer she came to
the one on the left, the louder the one on the right howled. She was
so confused that she did not know what to do.
The monster on the left spoke in a soft voice, "Trust me. I am not
as ugly as that other monster. And I do not make those disgusting
noises." With that, the monster on the right screamed and gurgled
and snorted and puffed even more. She began to take the path to
the left, fearful even more that if she did not hurry, the other
monster would chase after her and tear her to shreds.
A few hundred yards down the left path she looked back to see if

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the other monster was chasing her. It was still standing at the fork
in the path, and it was screaming and howling more and more. But
it was not chasing her. And then she stopped. The monster on the
left path was walking a few steps ahead of her, and it just smiled at
her, somewhat condescendingly, as if to say, ''Don't be a fool."
And then something inside of her told her to go back and take the
right path. The closer she came to the fork in the road, the faster
she ran, until only seconds later, she was running down the right
path and up into the mountains. She didn't know why she had made
this choice, but she just kept going. As the last bit of twilight
drifted into the blackness of night, she looked down the
mountainside from whence she had come. She could see the fork in
the path, and she could see the path she had taken as well as the
one that she almost took.
Then she heard a thundering, rumbling, smashing, crashing,
crushing sound that came from the left side of the mountain.
Straining to see in the near-darkness, she saw a huge section of the
mountain break loose and hurtle toward the left path below. Tons of
rock and earth obliterated the left path at precisely the time that she
would have been there had she gone that way. She fell to the
ground and cried, releasing all the anxiety and tension of the past
few hours.
Then, just a few feet in front of her appeared the ugly monster who
had been guarding the right path. She looked up and gazed into its
eyes. It was not howling and grumbling at all. Its eyes seemed
peaceful and deep. Its face had softened into a compassionate gaze.
Without knowing why, the little girl jumped up and kissed the
monster on the nose! The monster blushed, and smiled.

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"My name is Fear," said the monster, "and that other one's name is
Destruction. If you run away from me without listening to what I
have to say, you might end up avoiding something that is important
for you. But if you listen to me just right, and learn to make friends
with me, then you will have Wisdom. As for the monster guarding
the left path, no matter how attractive it seems on the surface,
nothing good ever comes from Destruction."
The little girl completed her journey after visiting her grandparents.
Safely home in her own village, her parents noticed something very
different about her. She was a young woman now, who had learned
to make friends with her Fear, instead of being paralyzed or
destroyed by it.

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References/Bibliography
Adams, K.M. (1987). "Sexual Addiction and Covert Incest." Focus