There is a Chinese saying that goes like this: Every small or big decision would we make affects the next five generations. I would say that is true.
I grew up in and alcohol, drug and violence free environment. My parents never drank, smoked or hit each other. Despite achieving elementary school as their highest degree, they read a lot and tried to teach us the best values they could. Wait . . .before you ask: is that true? How come? Are you and ET? I am not saying I grew up free of problems. I guess we had more than enough with my mother's asthma, the several miscarriages they had, and poverty. I am just saying I am free from the problems that alcoholic families go trough. Well, at least grew up thinking that way.
Ok, that sounds wonderful, but why I am still choosing partners who have some kind of addiction whether to sex, gambling or violent behaviors? Why I struggled the first 35 years of my life to value myself as a single woman? It is very painful and embarrassing to admit that but I am afraid is true. Ssshhh! It may not look good on my resume tough.
Anyway, those where my questions early this week as I started analyzing my family's patterns and drawing circles to represent women and squares to represent men in a genogram, (a funny draw psychologists scribble to save time in therapy). My alcohol-free pride and my dry soul shacked as I draw squares to represent men of my extended family. I looked back only until my grandparent’s generation, it was too painful to go farther. Boy, it was evident that I am part of an alcoholic culture and still affects me as much as my parents tried to keep dry my soul and as much as I decided to put them out of my life. I found that 99% of men are drinkers, heavy drinkers, and some of them drug addicts! I have a homeless cousin, one who died for an overdoses and another that besides being and alcoholic is a corrupted policeman. Wow, what a family! Ok, I grew up in a macho environment in an extended family where average education is third grade like the rest of my country. My father is the 1% exception there and my sisters and I are the only ones who got further education. Since I am a daughter of this 1%, neither machism nor lack of education explains the decision of drinking to me. I still believe is a personal choice to get out of it.
Well, today after being sure I leave my judgments, I packed my questions and the bits and pieces of alcohol-free pride to attend an AA meeting. It was a school assignment but also part of my personal quest for answers. I am ready to look at my family issues. People there were welcoming which eased my stress. The story of recovery of the young woman guest speaker brought so many memories about my alcoholic cousins, uncles, friends, etc. For some reason no alcoholic women in my family but certainly we are very codependent. I got to feel the pain and the struggle for recovery of people in this meeting. I also realized the painful lives of my alcoholic family members. I learned that to get drunk only takes couple dollars and the need to do it, while the recovery may take a village. I know it takes a village also to suffer the consequences of it. I guess I cannot longer say that I am alcohol-stress free as long as my extended family, my community and my country struggle with it. I do not know how to start but definitively I cannot longer ignore the love I have for my extended family because at the end we all share the same last name and the same struggles.
Cheers. . .well, dry cheers. . . and be safe until the next post!
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