Step One

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Journaling prompts from Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps.

There is a lot of addiction in my family.  It's funny, though.. I never really noticed it growing up, or even during my twenties.  I mean, there were a few obvious instances of addiction, but I didn't understand that a lot of my family's weirdness was actually addiction.

Even though this blog is anonymous, I'm not going to say my mom has this, my dad has this, etc.  Instead, I'll lay it out for you like this:  out of twenty-five parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and adult cousins (I'm not counting my kid cousins), eighteen have major addictions.  Four food addicts, twelve smokers, two or three sex addicts, seven alcoholics, nine drug addicts (including one fatal overdose and one HIV death from IV drug use), a workaholic, and more codependents/co-addicts than I can count.  If I include my grandparents' siblings and their parents, we get more sex addiction and alcoholism, and who knows what else.

Like I said, it's only recently that I've been able to see the disease and dysfunction throughout my family.  I never thought that my family was so full of addiction, but it is.  Clearly there is not much education about emotional health, proper coping skills, and life skills in general.  It's reassuring to see that my weight problems and life unmanageability isn't something inherently wrong with me, but that I just never had a chance with such poor role models for healthy behavior.

Obviously, my family doesn't give me a free pass to behave however I want.  I can say "I'm this way because of my family," but I can't say, "I can't do anything about it."  It's helpful to know some of the origins of my behaviors because it helps me move past those behaviors and learn a healthier way to live.

Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.