A letter to my granddaughter,start pulling the weeds

"Mary, Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow"....never mind the rest of the nursery rhyme....

Are you the responsible for the garden even if you didn't plant the seeds?

Yes... and what was sown requires weeding, and only you can pull the weeds Weeding is a dirty job but someone has to do it.   Pretending you are not in a garden of weeds is called denial.  I do not believe you are ready to start pulling because you are not ready to work. You would prefer an easier way. Pulling weeds is dirty work and you are not fond of dirty work. Change comes when you cannot go up, down, around, or thru the granite wall in front of you.  You succumb and it comes when there are no other options.  It is not a choice it is a path that opens out of your own desperation.

I have been told that I may not talk to you about this because you do not want anyone to know.  Tough Shit little girl. The only one you are hiding the truth from is yourself.  You are craving attention and the drama that creates is exhilarating, intoxicating and will eventually lead you down a road of destruction that may or may not be fixed.   "There is the truth you tell everyone, there is the truth you tell yourself, and then there is the real truth."  

I know I have been there and my survival was not quick and it was not easy and I too hated the dirty work of pulling weeds. Being an addict is the easy part, you blame the world and you manipulate the idiots around you.  Learning to live without the fix requires you work the process. It involves caring more about what is going to work for you than how to work the people around you who give you what you want because they love you.  When you actually want the solution you do not show up with a suitcase and a blow dryer expecting to go to summer camp.  You show up in tears begging someone to tell you what they did to get what you need.  You jump off the cliff of the unknown and you take it one day at a time until it is habit.  You change everything that caused the behavior and you remember that you can go back to hell anytime you choose. 

You think people hate you, and some probably have good reason.  You have  done things that deserve that and at some point in time you owe them an acknowledgement of your bad behavior.  Right now you need to get with the program and stop thinking how you can skip the hard part. You think you have all the answers.  Hear this one thing if you do not hear anything else.    You are not well enough to think.

Your family loves you in the only way they know, they are intent on protecting you and your feelings and sadly their reputation.  If they really wanted to help you they would have sought help for you six months ago and they would not have tried to hide it from the one member of the family with 29 years of sobriety.   You will learn that they need a program too. Given my experience I suspect it will not happen soon.  
  

If you are blessed you will find the one person who can make you see the answers are right in front of you.  They look stupid but they work.  They have worked for millions of people for over 60 plus years.  Pick up the 30 day chip and hang on for dear life, because that my dear is what is at stake.

Now my dear ...start pulling.