I started to change how I dealt with these obligations.  First thing I did was change my mindset: these events might be obligatory, but there is no point in me meeting an obligation if it threatens my sobriety.  People might be upset, but over time, as they see your life get better, they will be more forgiving.  If they aren’t, oh well – you aren’t good to anyone if you do something that puts your sobriety at risk.

One of my challenges was that I had two ways of dealing with things: confrontation or stewing. There was no in-between.  These family gatherings really forced me to look at how I handled conflict and learn how to handle it more gracefully.  The first part of that is forgetting the idea that somehow as you get better your family will too.  No such luck.

While it might seem like a cliche the truth is: you can only control your behavior. So don’t spend a lot of energy trying to get your family to treat you differently. Instead, what I did was set boundaries that I knew were critical to my sobriety. Then, without judgment or hostility, as kindly as I could, I enforced those boundaries.  I understood that no matter how delicately I handled this I might hurt someone’s feelings, but as long as I was kind and not just trying to shove my family’s character defects down their throats, I pushed through and did what I needed to do.

I remember being home for a holiday one year – this was always a challenge because it meant an expensive plane ticket and my finances weren’t that great in early sobriety. When I got home it was the usual. I thought I was strong enough, but it became clear that the relentless criticism and disapproval was really dragging me down. I was crying myself to sleep at night.  I explained how I felt – and what I needed – which was met with the customary, “Get over yourself.” Now when you’ve been hearing that since you were five years old, it is pretty painful.

I decided to move my return ticket up. I did it first, before explaining what I did, because I knew this was what I needed to do.  When I told my mother she was furious. I very calmly explained to her: I’m in a huge transition right now. Maybe you think I’m being a baby, and maybe I am being a baby, but the truth is this is what I need to do right now. It isn’t about you at all – it’s about what I can handle and not handle right now.

She let it go after a few hours – and I think it helped to tell her it wasn’t about her. Parents can be so defensive when you are in early recovery!  “Oh, I bet you’re telling that therapist how horrible we were and blaming it all on us!”

The truth is this: it wasn’t about her, because in reality, I could never and would never be able to change her perspective on life.  It was about me, because I wasn’t strong enough yet to accept her as she was.

A few good things came from this event.  In the future when I came home to visit my parents made a very real effort not to turn my week into a what’s-wrong-with-our-daughter marathon. Frankly, they really loved me and wanted to see me. And some part of them recognized that I wasn’t a child anymore who was captive to their verbal abuse. If they wanted a relationship with me it had to be mutually respectful.

Of course, this also meant changes on my part as well. Complex relationships are never a one-way street. I had to learn to be less sensitive and less defensive.  I had to have enough sense of self that I wasn’t devastated by every little off comment.  I’m not going to say this happened overnight, but certainly over the first five years of sobriety things got much better.

The big thing here that struck me was how his granddaughter had taken on the responsibility of helping her grandparents, yet their sons (father and uncle) had done little to support her. There were fractious relationships throughout the family, but it reminded me that in the end those issues mean little.  This pair had made a point of creating strong relationships, so that even though they had outlived most of their contemporaries, their funerals were well attended and many heart-felt speeches were made. They had, in fact, created new families.

I think the ones who lost in this story were the children who decided they could not let go of their resentments. The granddaughter loved her grandfather (and incidentally, he was her grandfather by marriage, not by blood) and made sure he was comfortable. He also had a wonderful brother a few years younger who was a virtual pit bull when it came to his care – making sure he got what he needed, when he needed it.

It was a sad day, but also a day of introspection and reflection. It reminds me that family is something precious and that you can create new families throughout your life.

I remember one time going to dinner with my father – he had decided to get sober when I did because when I told him what was going on he though, “Heck, that sounds a lot like me.” It was pretty cool because it seemed to be making him a less angry, more emotionally available person.  I knew not to hang my sobriety on his – because that’s never a good idea.

Anyway, this was a dinner about three years into my sobriety – and I was down visiting my parents for the holidays. We went to this little Italian restaurant they loved and the waitress came over to take drink orders. I ordered my usual favorite – sparkling mineral water (I just love Perrier – and it’s healthier than soda).  My dad looked up and ordered a beer.  Oh man. You can well imagine what my stomach did at that moment. It literally felt like the floor fell out from under me. I’m sure I turned red.

But what do you do?  It was clear by the way he ordered it that he had been doing it for a while, and my history with my father had been anything but warm and cuddly. I honestly didn’t think I could do anything but bite my tongue.

My father died a couple of years ago due to bile duct cancer. For years he had horrible pains in his gut and would pace the floor all night, unable to sleep.  I always wondered how much alcohol abuse may have contributed to whatever degenerative process that triggered cancer. Who knows.

All I can tell you for sure was that he wasn’t happier drinking again.