Navigating the Holidays in Recovery

Announcer: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, “Episode 36: Navigating the Holidays in Recovery.”

Casey Arrillaga: How has addiction affected your family?

Female Speaker: It robbed me of my father.

Female Speaker: Addiction's affected my family in absolutely every way.

Male Speaker: It has caused a lot of turmoil.

Female Speaker: It goes back to what I understand is at least three generations.

Female Speaker: It robbed my daughter of her mother. It robbed my mother of her daughter.

Female Speaker: Addiction has made our family quite challenging.

Male Speaker: Addiction has affected my family tremendously.

Male Speaker: It's affected my relationship with my sister where I wouldn't – I'd go for months without talking to her. It's a very difficult thing for everybody involved. It doesn't just affect the one individual. It's a disease that affects the whole family.

Male Speaker: Addiction is spread not only genetically through some of my relatives and I assume ancestors.

Female Speaker: It's generational.

Female Speaker: I think of him every day.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction and the Family. My name is Casey Arrillaga, and I'm a clinical social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and InMindOut Emotional Wellness Center in Texas. I’m the author of the books Realistic Hope: The Family Survival Guide for Facing Alcoholism and Other Addictions and Spirituality for People Who Hate Spirituality.

Kira Arrillaga: I’m Kira Arrillaga, addiction counselor intern and recovery coach at Windmill. Casey and I were in our addictions together for over ten years and have now been in recovery together for almost twice that long.

Casey Arrillaga: I've led hundreds of family workshops, but just as important is that Kira and I have lived the experience of being family to addiction as both children and adults.

Kira Arrillaga: Join us as we offer experience, strength, and realistic hope about how you and your family can find recovery together.

-

Welcome back. Let’s look at recovery challenges during the holidays that come up for everyone. This includes a lot of media and social messages, like images of family togetherness. We’ve all seen all those Hallmark cards, all the Normal Rockwell paintings, all these kinds of images, commercials, everything that sells us this idea of family. For some of us, that can feel heartwarming and make us right at home, but there’s a lot of people for whom those images are just not the truth, and that includes a lot of families that deal with addiction and recovery.

Before recovery, before addiction, before any of this was an issue in your family, maybe you had some of that picture perfect image going on. Maybe that’s what it looked like from the outside from your neighbors, maybe that’s what it felt like in the inside in your family, but for a lot of us, this simply is not true. When it comes down to it, we know that addiction often shows up as what we call a family disease, which is to say that something that affects every member of the family, and even worse, gets passed down in generations. Many of us who deal with addiction in our families recognize that our generation is not the first one to make these things up.

In fact, for a lot of us, we can recognize that addiction has been going on in the family for generation after generation, especially as we recognize that addiction is not just limited to chemical use. If you throw in things like gambling addiction, shopping addiction, codependency, sex and love addiction, food addiction, many of these things actually get hit pretty hard during the holidays, especially things like love addiction, codependency, food addiction, they’re practically encouraged by commercials. We all have to look out for how these images get up in our brains and what they make us think we’re supposed to be doing in holidays, what things are supposed to look like during the holidays, and then we can run into internal conflict, even grief over how different that might be from our experience.

Those of us that have grown up in families where addiction was, if not the norm, certainly a part of everyday reality, the holidays often made things worse. Then we grew up looking at these images from the outside like a kid with their face up to the candy store thinking, oh, my family could look like that if only it wasn’t for the addiction. That’s not necessarily true, but it’s something that we can start thinking to ourselves. Then all those images and social messages and pressures about what things are supposed to be like can really get in the way.

In recovery, we can start to move away from some of these things and move into the simple acceptance of this is what things really are like in my family, and sometimes having to look back even into our childhoods and say, well, this is how it really was versus how I thought it was supposed to be.

As we look at some of these things, and recovery often encourages to look clearly at our present and at our past and then to gain hope for our future, as we look more clearly, then we get a chance to just find acceptance. One thing that comes up as we look at grief is that sadness is sometimes the gateway to acceptance. Allowing ourselves to feel sad about how things should’ve been versus how they were can move us out of anger and towards peace. As we consider this holiday time, whatever holidays you celebrate, if you’re looking at those images of family togetherness, know that that may or may not come as a traditional way for you.

Some of us never find that togetherness in our family of origin or our family of creation, but we may find it through the family fellowship that we find in recovery fellowships. We may find that we can turn to other people in recovery, whether we’re a person with addiction or a family member or someone who loves someone with an addiction. We can find others who’ve been through similar experiences who may have also experienced some grief or difficulty throughout the holidays and find solace and comfort with each other, and ultimately, peace and togetherness.

Another issue that many of us have to face is the pressure to consume. Consumer culture, especially in America, really pushes the idea that the holidays are a time to enjoy but also to take in. That includes food in a big way and knowing that some people do suffer from food addiction, this is kind of a big deal and a red zone in recovery. The holiday season usually involves the idea of lots and lots of food, often lots of high calorie foods, lots of fat, lots of sugar. Now, these things made a lot of sense back in the day when the winter months were ones where we weren’t really sure if we were going to make it.

It’s one of the reasons why so many holiday festivals and festivities center around the winter solstice. It’s the idea of the sun coming back. We think we’re going to make it but we still have cold months ahead. It’s time to consume lots of calories so that we can get through those hard months. The fact is most of us don’t have to worry about that so much. Sure, it’s going to get cold, but our lives are probably not going to be in big danger as a result, although, all of those holiday foods are still going to be put in front of us. Consider that maybe this isn’t the best time to overconsume in that way and just know we’re going to get lots and lots of messages telling us that we should anyway.

Now, another thing that we’re obviously told to consume is products. There’s a lot of pressure around this time of year to have gifts given and gifts received and to look at all these things and say, “Man, I’m obligated to spend a bunch of money.” Now, for those of us especially that are maybe new to recovery and feel like we’re catching up on life, this can seem like a time where we’re going to make up for lost time, whether it’s showering a loved one who’s new in recovery with gifts or being someone who’s new in recovery and feeling like I need to shower my family with gifts but I lost everything. I don’t have a lot of money for that.

Again, this can create internal conflict and pressure. I’m going to encourage you instead to think in terms of selfcare, that gifts don’t have to involved a whole bunch of money being thrown around. In fact, in some families, we look around, including mine, and we decided at a certain point, we’re all adults. We don’t need to just keep buying each other things and spending a bunch of needless money. We can just know that we love each other. We’re going to spend some time together. Let that be enough. One area where this really comes up is the huge sales. All these big events during the holidays, special days like Black Friday that somehow turn out to be a whole week long, Cyber Monday which is another whole week long.

Just when we think we’ve gotten through the obstacle course, we come up on after Christmas sales, New Year’s sales, kick off the New Year by buying a bunch of stuff, get ready for the big game, just all this pressure, again, not just to consume but to spend, spend, spend, and the pressure of this is the one time when we’re going to get this amazing price, which by the way, if you pay attention, is pretty much never true. The reality is, especially if we feel compulsive around these things, and I know I certainly have, there’s an opportunity to take a step back, to turn to recovery support, again, to turn to emotional support and not to give into this idea that this is my one big chance and I have to spend this money. I always say that a great deal on something that I wasn’t going to buy anyway is probably really not a great deal.

When we let go of all that compulsive spending and consuming, sometimes that leaves us sitting with the emotions that we were trying to avoid. I’m going to say do sit with it so feel what you need to feel. Sometimes the grief isn’t just about the difference between what the holiday pictures look like and what our actual family photos look like, or worse yet, the family reality, but sometimes it’s grief over what we thought our life would look like at this point. We didn’t think that someone we love would be addicted. We didn’t think we would be addicted ourselves. All of the interference that that can create in lives, we weren’t counting on that. Some of us roll with this gracefully. Others struggle with it.

One way or the other, I encourage you to be honest with yourself about how you feel, lean into those feelings, share them with others, especially other people in recovery who can really get it, and allow yourself the peace that the holidays promise to actually come true through the power of acceptance.

Now, one thing that can be difficult for many of us to accept is family relationships that just aren’t going that well. That isn’t necessarily about addiction, but addiction can definitely bring out the worst in it. The holidays, with that pressure cooker of having everyone feel like they’re supposed to be together, all the family members that may not hang out or talk that much are all of a sudden put together in one room, told to eat some food and all get along. That’s not necessarily going to happen.

Instead, we’re going to have to face our political and other differences. We may have to deal with hearing the same family stories over and over again. Some of those even include stories about the addiction that maybe we don’t want to hear. Maybe that feels a little tender. Maybe we have that one family member where we’ve just been afraid to or embarrassed to set boundaries. Maybe it’s time to start learning how to do that to be able to say, “I never found that story very funny,” or “I’m not ready to answer those questions yet,” or “This doesn’t really feel like the right setting to have this discussion.” It’s okay to say those things. It doesn’t mean you have to be mean or rude. It doesn’t mean that anyone has to ruin the holiday.

In fact, it may end up making things much better. Sometimes putting everyone together at the holiday table also brings out old unresolved hurts, including things that are directly due to the addiction. One family member or another may be waiting for those amends to come through, waiting for that moment when someone gets down and bends their knees and says, “I am so sorry for how much damage I’ve done in the family or to you in particular.” This may not be the year that that gift comes through. Maybe the family member with the addiction, whether it’s you or someone else, isn’t ready for that moment. Maybe the other family member isn’t ready to gracefully receive the apology.

It’s okay to leave these things for another time. It’s okay to gently explain that we’re not ready. It’s okay to be ready with forgiveness for ourselves and others if these tense moments happen and the preferred resolution doesn’t come through. Whether this kind of conflict and tension happens in full view of everyone or not, there’s often inner conflict and tension due to guilt and shame over the past. The person with the addiction often feels bad for past holidays that we’ve missed or ruined. Whether they admit it or not, I guarantee those feelings are often going on in their hearts.

This can lead people to miss yet another holiday, kind of keeping their head low or full of false vibrato. Sometimes someone new to recovery feels like it’s enough that they’re just staying sober. Why does everyone keep asking anything else of them, whether that’s seemed realistic to the rest of the family or not? Sometimes family members feel bad for the loss of connection or for keeping boundaries, thinking, oh, no, did I do something wrong? Am I going to upset their sobriety? Do I need to watch them? Do I need to walk on eggshells? I’ll just tell you, I’m never a big fan of any of those things. Sometimes the hardest but most beautiful thing is the opportunity to show up genuinely as ourselves, to be able to say I’m still having difficulty with this, no matter what your perspective or which direction you’re coming from.

One of the most difficult things that families can face is having lost someone to addiction and dealing with that empty place, whether it’s at the table or just in their hearts, when the holiday times come around. Especially if multiple family members have dealt with addiction, if we’ve lost somebody already, it can create extra fear in our hearts about those who are still with us and whether they’re going to keep that way. Needless to say, none of us has the power of life or death or the ability to predict such things. I’m going to encourage you instead to really focus on the love of the people who are still around you to make that the gift and the honoring of those that have been lost and to embrace each other and enjoy this moment for what it is rather than trying to make it into something else or grief for what it’s not.

Now let’s look a bit at addiction sobriety during the holidays. One big piece of this is selfcare during the holidays. For those of us in addiction recovery, it can be really important to hit some extra meetings. Now, I know that the holidays get busy and it might be a time to think, oh, you know what? I can skip a couple of meetings and get this holiday shopping done or hang out with the family, stuff like that, but the reality is, this is the time to double down, not the time to cut back. Now, we may sometimes think, well, I’m taking time away from the family and I used to take time away with addiction. Now I’m taking time away with recovery. The reality is that when I come back from a run of addiction, I’m no good to anyone. When I come back from recovery or a recovery meeting or time spent doing recovery fellowship, or even better, being of service to others during the holidays, I bring a better version of myself back to my family.

Now I’ll take a quick moment and tell a true family story. Years ago, when a cousin of mine was getting into recovery and I was over at my aunt’s place to have the Christmas dinner and hang out for a little bit, I thought it would be cool to go hit a meeting with my cousin. We looked some up, found one that was down the street, but it was happening at like 5 o’clock at night. My cousin said, “Oh, man, that’s when we’re going to serve dinner.” My aunt, who seemed to have been hearing all this from the kitchen, piped up and said, “Tell you what. You boys go to that meeting. We’ll eat when you get back.” She knew what was up. It comes back to remembering that a sober me is the best gift I can give my family, so take a little time to go out to that meeting or to help somebody out. That is time well spent during the holidays.

Another aspect of selfcare which I mentioned earlier but is well worth bringing up, especially for people in recovery from addiction, because some of us can drift from one addictive or compulsive behavior into another is to watch that food. It’s not that holiday food is bad. It’s not that eating is bad. It’s not that we can’t eat and celebrate a little bit on some of those feast days, but watching that temptation start to slip out of control, that can be a big deal, partly because it’s just not that healthy for us and eating healthy is an important part of recovery selfcare, but also because sometimes it starts to open the door up a little bit, that part of my brain that says, oh, I want something, let me get that. It’s going to feel good right now, never mind the long-term consequences.

I don’t really want to be encouraging that part of my brain. In this case, I’m going to give myself a really good gift, and that is to eat healthy, to maybe limit how much of those high calorie, high sugar, high fat foods that I’m going to go for, and eat celebratorily but in moderation. This goes hand in hand with making sure that I get enough exercise during those winter months. For me, it’s not as much fun to go out on a walk on a brisk winter day as it is on a warm summer evening, but the reality is my body needs exercise at least as much. Exercise can burn some of those extra calories. It can lead to energy, lift depression, and leave me just feeling better about myself.

A nice side benefit for those of us in addiction recovery is that exercising that part of our mind that says “Let me do a difficult thing that I know is good for me” is kind of the opposite of when we run into and eating those unhealthy sometimes addictive foods. Instead of exercising the part of my mind that gives into temptation, I’m exercising the part of my mind that gets out there and does something that I know is good for me, even though it’s not that exciting or that much fun. That way, winter exercise during the holiday months becomes a win-win for both mind and body.

It’s not enough to just take care of ourselves. We also have to take care of our social connections. This means that it is especially important during these months to get numbers of people and call them in between meetings. It’s one of the many factors that make recovery fellowships work and one of the reasons why people are twice as likely to stay sober if they’re involved in recovery fellowship than if they’re not. It’s also a great excuse during the holidays to call healthy old friends.

Notice I said healthy. This is not the time to look up and see if the people we know are getting drunk are out there getting drunk. Let’s count on them to be doing what they need to be doing for what their lifestyle is while we take care of what we need to be doing for what our new lifestyle is. There are always those people in our lives who we know are really rooting for us. They have our back. They’re not looking for the party. They’re looking for us to do our best. Those people often celebrate our recovery no matter what they’re doing. This is a great time to maybe reach out to some of them, the people you know who are your true friends who want to see you doing well no matter what. We might even run into some of those folks or go with them to holiday events, like parties and get togethers, things like that.

Let’s talk a little bit about how to be safe with those things. First and foremost, whenever you go to a holiday event, have a transportation plan. Know how it is that you are going to leave, whether that’s going to be taking your own vehicle, making sure you ride with someone who’s going to leave as soon as you say you need to leave, no questions asked, no excuses, or just knowing that you’ve got something like Uber or Lyft on your phone ready to go and make sure that someone could pick you up right there if you needed them to.

Some people also like to know what time they’re leaving that party so they just set a limit. They know if the thing starts at 8, they are out by 10. Nothing good is going to happen past that hour for them. They just know that they’ve had plenty of time to give everyone a hug and a kiss, make an appearance, and know that once things start getting drunk at that party, no one’s going to remember if they were there anyway. No need to make an excuse. Just hop in your transport and get on out of there.

An old technique that can help with that sort of thing is called bookending. If you haven’t heard of that, it’s a really simple idea. You call somebody who’s part of your sober support as you’re heading into the event and you make an appointment or kind of date with them that you’re going to call them or contact them as you’re leaving the event. Now, that makes it easier if you’re in the middle of the event to give them a call, but it also sets up some conscious or even subconscious accountability around the event, the idea that I know I’m going to be calling someone on the way out so I want to leave around the time I said I was going to leave and I want to leave in a good condition.

Even better yet, you can simply go to the event with sober friends. It’s never that hard to take a friend to a party and no one really questions it. At the same time, you know and they know that you’re both planning on staying sober through this thing and you can have each other’s back. Doing this eliminates that old thought of “I’m the only one here who’s being sober. What will people think?” Now, to be perfectly honest, in my experience, the only people who actually pay attention to whether or not I’m drinking are people that are really hoping I’m not going to drink or other people with a drinking problem.

Nonetheless, having a sober buddy there takes all that stuff away. This not only helps relieve the idea of social pressure to drink, but in fact creates social pressure to not do those things. That’s the kind of social pressure that we need. Of course, one way to side step this completely is to go to parties thrown by people in recovery. Individuals in recovery often throw parties during the holidays, but a lot of times, recovery groups throw them all by themselves. Your local AA meeting or perhaps SMART Recovery meeting or Celebrate Recovery meeting folks might all be getting together at a certain date around the holidays and throwing a holiday party where nobody needs to worry about alcohol or other drugs showing up.

While people new to recovery may not believe they could have a good time or be comfortable at a party sober, going to one can break that stigma and actually show you the reality that you do in fact somewhere in there know how to socialize without being wasted. If this sounds like a good idea for you and no one in your local group seems to throwing one, consider throwing one yourself. It’s a lot easier than you think. You might find that a bunch of people from the recovery group are willing to show up because they’d like to go to a sober holiday party, too.

It's worth noting that on the actual holidays, such as Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, things like that, a lot of local groups, even in small to medium sized towns let alone larger metropolitan areas, have what they call Alcathons or 24-hour straight meetings. Now, some of the ones that I’ve gone to actually alternate each hour between a meeting and a potluck, then a meeting then a potluck, then a meeting then a potluck, which means that at any hour of the day or night, if you’re feeling squirrely or if that family party is getting weird, you can just go drop in at the local group. They’re either going to be standing around eating food or holding a meeting and you know you’re safe.

Before we dive into the next subject, let’s go ahead and take a quick break and hear from one of our sponsors. Then when we come back, we’ll talk about family recovery during the holidays and the upside of all this.

Let’s look a little bit at family recovery during the holidays. Now, some of this will probably sound kind of familiar because it’ll be similar to the things that help the person with the addiction. However, there are variations to all of these. First and foremost, just like the person with the addiction, if you’re in family recovery, this is a great time to hit extra meetings, but not necessarily for the same reasons. You’re not trying to stay sober or find support so that you don’t drink during the holidays, but you may need to find support so that you aren’t too controlling or too worried or focused on trying to make it the perfect holiday for your loved one.

You may find yourself walking on eggshells. What if they go off? What if I say the wrong thing? What if I do the wrong thing? As we always talk about on this show, when it really comes down to it, there is nothing you can do to screw up your loved one’s sobriety. Short of pouring alcohol in their mouth while they’re asleep or shooting them up with drugs or something like that, you can’t actually make them relapse. By the same token, you can’t keep them from relapsing. If you find that at this time of year you’re really extra worried about these things because of all the temptation they may face, notice where you’re falling for the temptation to try and control.

It's a great time to get to a SMART Recovery family and friends meeting or an Al Anon meeting or a Celebrate Recovery meeting or any flavor of this that works for you. Find what works for you and dig into it extra hard. Just as the person with the addiction might be tempted to skip a few meetings so they can make some extra holiday events, but really should be going to more meetings instead of less, the exact same thing applies for you. In fact, if you’re worried about the recovery, that great pro tip will always work. Take all the energy you wish they were putting into their recovery or you hope that they would put into their recovery or maybe you even see them putting into their recovery, and put at least that much energy into your recovery.

Another great tip, just like the person with the addiction, this is a great time for you to eat healthy. I know it’s hard during the holidays, but it’s not impossible. Just as with the other things, keep it in moderation. It doesn’t mean you have to cut everything out or deny yourself, but just think in terms of, am I turning to food for comfort when I get worried about my loved one? Maybe this is a good time to turn for selfcare for comfort instead. Do some things that don’t just distract you but actually nourish your heart and your soul, whether that’s putting extra time and energy into your spirituality, such as prayer and meditation, taking a walk in nature, finger painting, baking, kind of best of both worlds there, but you don’t have to eat it all, but do something that works for you that lifts you up and leaves you feeling better, not just escapist.

Just as the person with the addiction, this is a great time to get exercise. Take some of that frustration and anger, if you’re feeling those things, and pour it into the gym or into the calm meditative space of yoga and let it go, or find some way to take that extra walk, maybe take the dog out, or just take yourself out for a brisk walk. Look at the scenery. Take it in. Ground yourself and your sense and let all the other things go. Then be sure to get phone numbers and contact information for people that you meet at the meetings so you can talk to them in between meetings.

There’s nothing like that phone call where you can call someone and say, boy, I was worried about my loved one or I found myself following them around the party and trying to make sure that they were staying sober just trying to will them or pray them sober, things that are beyond our control. Being able to talk to somebody else who really gets it, who’s been there, who’s felt those same things and maybe has learned how to let them go or at least can talk you through your issue, just like maybe you can talk through their issue, as I always say, it’s great to turn to somebody who really wants the recovery and pour our energy into helping that person rather than trying to force the help on somebody who may not be as excited or maybe just doesn’t want to hear it from us.

When it comes to holiday parties, one of the big questions a lot of family members run into is, does the whole family have to be sober now that someone is in recovery or you wish they were? This can be another attempt at control to say to ourselves I’m going to make sure nobody drinks around my loved one. Interestingly, a lot of family members never think to actually ask their loved one what they would prefer. Many people in early recovery may be relieved if nobody is drinking around them, and yet, they don’t actually want everyone to change their behavior just because they’re getting sober. In fact, many can take that as a sign of family pity or overly focusing on their recovery as being the central theme of the party or even of who they are.

This is an important thing to remember for a lot of family members. Somebody who is getting sober or perhaps has been in sobriety for a while doesn’t want their addiction and their recovery to be the only thing anyone sees or thinks about around them. They may just want to be treated like a normal person, not somebody who’s fragile. The fact is that we can’t wrap our loved ones in bubble wrap and then steel and then pour concrete around them and then stand guard outside. It just doesn’t work. The fact is it helps to remember that they are responsible for their recovery and you are not. You’re only responsible for your recovery.

Remember, as a family member, your recovery involved letting go of the illusions of control over other people. Simply ask your loved one what they would prefer and recognize that you’re still not even obligated to do everything they ask. They’re simply stating a preference. If you have a relative who is vegetarian all of a sudden, that doesn’t mean that nobody at the party can eat meat. It just means that that one person is making their own choices. If they’re uncomfortable in the environment, they can step out of it. Likewise, your loved one can take a break, go for a walk, and you don’t have to follow them or worry what are they really doing. Maybe they’re just getting a breather. Maybe they’re just clearing their head. Maybe it has nothing to do with addiction at all.

Now, if you’re part of a family where drinking is central to the whole family or perhaps to many members of the family, then that’s something to look out for, not so much that everyone needs to stop or control it, but more noticing if anybody’s forcing the drink on your loved one. Now, really, when it comes down to it, it’s between the two of them if that happens, but I will say that if someone treats a guest or a loved one at my house badly, I’m probably going to step in and say a word. Just as with the vegetarian example, if I have a friend who comes over and eats vegetarian and I have another friend who keeps trying to force meat on them, I’m probably at some point going to say, “Hey, that kind of behavior is not cool at my house.” I’ll do that knowing that I can’t save my loved one, but I can speak up for what is and is not okay within my home environment.

By the same token, I can speak up if I know that my loved one is actively drinking at my house or has relapsed and shows up high, it’s okay to set those boundaries. That doesn’t mean I have to cut them out of my life. I might just say, “Let’s meet at a neutral location at another time. I would still love to see you, but I’m not comfortable with this happening here at my home.” No matter where the holiday event is happening, as a family member, I have to be careful that I don’t start monitoring my loved ones. As I mentioned before, I don’t want to follow them around the party. I don’t want to be eavesdropping on other conversations. I don’t want to be addictively looking at find my phone and figure out where is my loved one right now and what are they doing. Instead of that, I’m going to turn to my recovery program, use the tools that I find in there, talk to others, and help to let go and let my loved one live their life and have a good time, I hope, during the holidays.

Now, for some of us, the holidays bring up painful reminders of past ruined holidays when our loved one may have been out of control, just acting a little funny and we weren’t sure what was happening, or down right missing in action. It’s okay to deal with that grief and to feel those feelings. It’s okay, in an appropriate and kind and gentle way, to be able to talk about those things with our loved one when they feel ready and we feel ready. We don’t have to say, hey, it’s a brand-new slate. It’s a brand-new day. We’re just going to put the past behind us, because to tell you the truth, that’s not actually how human beings work.

Our minds are going to remember past stimuli. They’re going to come up with past reminders and say, oh, what if this new time is just like the old time. We may have to walk and talk ourselves through that. We may have to turn to our higher power. This may be a great time to get some extra therapy or start it up if you haven’t been doing it already. It’s a great time to talk to other people in family recovery who understand some of those painful feelings so that we can walk through them and have the best time that we all can together.

As we touched on earlier in the episode, sometimes this is a time of year where there are painful reminders of those who have been lost to addiction or its effects. This might be a good time to think about starting new family traditions that can honor that loved one and still help the family to move forward. It’s okay to acknowledge the loss in whatever ways are meaningful for you. Some people might set a picture on the mantel or even at the dinner table. Some people might go and visit a gravesite or take a moment and give thanks, especially for those who are still with us. Whatever traditions you establish in your family, find something that works for you to help you acknowledge and feel the feelings, move through the grief, and be able to move forward as a family.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the upside. We’ve talked about all these dangers and pitfalls and things to look out for during the holidays, but remember, these holidays are all about celebration. They’re a celebration of life, the idea of the sun coming out, the days becoming longer, and knowing that, if we all hang in there together, we can be okay. There’s a great opportunity here to find new hope and cheer in recovery, to recognize that there’s a lot of moments in gratitude, even if life doesn’t look exactly the way we want it to look, or it’s not quite there yet, we can still recognize that there are many, many gifts, and that without recovery, we wouldn’t have any of them.

We have the opportunity to stop and really recognize where bridges are being built, where we are finding greater peace in family relationships, and where we may be able to connect in ways that seemed impossible, say a year or two years or three years ago. I know that if I look back to where I first started out in recovery 24 years ago as of this recording, at Christmas time, I had almost no communication whatsoever with my family of origin. The people that I grew up with, they had gotten tired of me.

While they have their part to play in that and their reactions, in recovery, I focus on my part in things. I can recognize where I’ve been a difficult family member, where I’m the one who used to go missing in action and not show up for the family when they really needed me. Ultimately, I’m the one who’s responsible for all of the feelings that I’ve had around that. All that being said, as I sit recording this this morning, this afternoon, I’m going to be jumping on an airplane and flying out to my home state to see that family. The very people that I used to barely talk to, I’m now welcome in their home. I’ll be spending a couple of nights there. We’re going to enjoy this holiday time together.

There’s a moment there where I can really stop and feel the gratitude, recognize how difficult and painful it’s been in the past, and how much more uplifting that makes what is happening today. That’s a great reminder that this is a wonderful time of year to engage in extra gratitude practice. If you make gratitude a regular part of your recovery routine, this is a time to double down and dig in. If you don’t, this is a great time to start. Talk about a gift you can give to yourself and everyone around you.

When we look at this time of year, which can be busy and stressful, through a set of gratitude lenses, we start to see every little wonderful thing about it. That’s really for me what this season is about. It’s a time to be grateful, a time to reflect as we head into a new year, and a time to recognize how wonderful my life is, no matter how much I get caught up in the every day little stressors. One of the things I can be particularly grateful for this time of year is all of the wonderful friends and associations and acquaintances that I’ve made in recovery, all of those people that I’ve met, all of those connections that I’ve made, all of those meetings that I’ve sat in, whether it’s in person or lately in Zoom, just recognizing the huge network of people all over the world who are willing to connect with each other and with me and with you to recover together. Talk about gratitude.

Last but certainly not least, in fact, maybe most, is that this is a time of year that we associate with deepening our spirituality. Now, I recognize spirituality may not feel right for everybody, and as I’ve been not shy about saying, I wrote a whole book about this to help people get through this. Whether spirituality is a small part of your life, feels not existence, or is really a big part, this is a time of year to really lean back into those connections, whether they’re with other people, with the worldwide spirit of recovery, with particular faith or religious tradition, or any way that you connect, the longer nights and cooler temperatures, at least that we have in the northern hemisphere, encourage us to take this time to be a little more meditative, to take extra time with our loved ones, and to take extra time for ourselves to be with our higher power, however we understand that higher power to be.

If you’re a member of a faith tradition that has specific holidays that relate to that, this is a great time to dig into those. If you don’t, maybe just sit down with a warm cup of tea, snuggle up in a blanket, light a candle, grab your journal, or anything else that helps you to feel warm and safe within yourself and expand your sense of connection in whatever way works best for you. No matter what holiday or holidays you celebrate or don’t this time of year, Kira and I want to wish you the very best and we look forward to a New Year full of hope and recovery for all of us. Happy holidays.

Thanks for being with us through another episode of Addiction and the Family. As they say in many recovery meetings, take what you liked and leave the rest. Go out and explore the possibilities for recovery in your life and give your loved ones the space and dignity to make their own choices. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe. It means a lot to us. If you know anyone else who could use what we have to offer, please tell them about Addiction and the Family. If you have comments about this podcast, have a question you’d like answered on the show, or want to contribute your voice, or just want to say hi, you can write to us at addictionandthefamily@gmail.com. We’re also happy to be your friend on Facebook and we can be found tweeting on Twitter.

Kira Arrillaga: Addiction and the Family is produced, written, and engineered by Kira and Casey Arrillaga, with music by Casey.