“Letting go of my loved one was a hard concept for me to grasp. I was confused about Al-anon’s suggestions to detach, to “Let Go and Lert God,” and to turn my problems over to God. Wasn’t I expected to solve my own and everyone else’s problems, have all the answers, and support the behavior patterns, no matter how destructive? How could I keep my family together?
…The answer lies not in letting go of people but in letting go of my outworn, painful thinking patterns. I can replace them with honesty, openness and willingness to change into a more positive person.”
Excerpt from: Hope for Today, pg. 111
If we love someone and have made a conscious decision to keep that person in our lives it seems anti productive to “let go” of them. Truly we don’t let go of love for them and most times not the person. We come to understand that loving is more than what we understood love to be. Loving is an action. What we let go of is our limited understanding of what love is. Love is not control. Love is not fixing. Have you ever been fixed? or controlled? Do your emotions tell you this is a good thing? This control is the theme of adolescence. We know looking at the power struggle between parents and children that it doesn’t feel good on either end. We let go of our children by allowing them to live their lives and love them more for it. What we want that is most important is not most important to someone with an addiction. Their goal is different. Their goal is to eliminate the pain either physically, mentally or emotionally, usually easiest things first. We all function that way.
What we are learning is what we can model for our children and for our loved ones. What we have control of, what we can change is ourselves, our thoughts, and our way of thinking. That it is our perception and our estimation of a thing that brings pain or frustration or dis-comfort. Because it is our estimation, we can adjust it. That is letting Go. Letting God is knowing that our higher power, the universe, love, light whatever we conceive our higher power to be is there. We release it to our higher power to handle, manage, control and deal with. – Adrienne
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