Thoughts On a Sunny Day

As time goes by, and the readership of this blog slowly grows, I am receiving more often, emails asking if the writer can please use my blog for their own agenda. They have a book they've written that they want to publicise, they own a recovery facility they want to advertise, they have a blog which doesn't pertain in any way to Al-Anon; the requests are varied, and interesting.

Interesting because if you look to your right, at the top of the page, is a note with the first part of the Sixth Tradition: "Our Family Groups ought never endorse, finance, or lend our name to any outside enterprise..." beneath a title stating that this blog is advertisement free.

Perhaps people don't bother to read that, or they think they have a cause which would be acceptable to me, or they imagine me to be swayed by promises of monetary compensation. Whatever the thinking, I continue to receive requests from people wanting to use my blog for their own ends.

I find it interesting also, because I was raised by a woman who got her own way with the sheer force of her will - she wanted what she wanted when she wanted it, and it was either going to happen, or those involved would suffer the results. She still behaves this way to my brother, her blood child ( I was adopted at the age of six) calling him at all hours of the day or night, with no understanding that he is employed full-time, and cannot always return her calls within a few minutes.

She will call him at 3am, ranting about someone with whom she is having a feud - lots of those - about something from the news, about her medication. She is a woman who does not hear what she doesn't want to hear, and doesn't see what she doesn't want to see. I feel grateful not to have her in my life anymore, and I feel for my brother, who is enmeshed, and cannot seem to break free, or get her to hear him when he protests.

Not having to deal with her is on my gratitude list.

So is having program friends who support and encourage me.

So is a partner who makes me laugh uncontrollably, and is a man of integrity and kindness.

So is life in general. I'm grateful to be alive and feeling relatively healthy on this gorgeous sunny day.