Most parents hear it at one time or another.  Some variation on the universal theme of parent awfulness: "I hate you. I wish you were dead. I don't like you.  I'm not going to be your child anymore.  I want a new Mommy/Daddy.  You're the worst parent ever."  These pronouncements are usually inspired by something truly terrible we've done, like forbid our child from diving head first off a playstructure onto concrete.  (Actually, a lot of people married to addicts (for whom the rest of this story may also resonate) hear that kind of thing too, and usually for the same reasons.)  And those words can hurt, even when we know they're just a passing storm of anger and frustration.

But yesterday, when Austen screamed, "I don't love you!" it made me feel, well, loved.

Austen is autistic, and it comforts him when the little details of his world are neatly in place.  One of these details is the need to have all words printed neatly in capital block letters; no lower case letters and no script allowed.  If one of us should write something using any lettering that is offensive to Austen's discriminating eye, he will not rest until he has fixed it for us.  Grocery lists can be found with each item crossed out and correctly rewritten above.  Signatures on birthday cards are blacked out and bear neatly printed versions of the name instead.  If you want to keep a document safe from Austen's pen, you should generally keep it out of his sight.

I've recently been reading over some old journals and letters while doing some 12 Step work, and my daughter Janie has enjoyed having me read to her about what I used to do when I was a child.  Yesterday, I was reading to Janie when (and you can see where this is going, I'm certain) Austen, mistakenly thought to be safely occupied with something else, noticed that (shockingly) I didn't not print every item in my childhood diary in capital block letters.  And this was an outrage.  A crime.  An atrocity.  Austen wanted to fix that journal for me right away.

Of course, the answer to that was no.  No, you cannot cross out every word in my precious junior high diary and rewrite it.  I took the journal and locked it up safely in my room.  At which point Austen told me to please walk away and not look at him.  Nothing to see here. Move along.  He'd just be over here trying to pick the lock.  Just ignore him.

So, being the sharp and totally onto-him mother that I am, rather than walking away, I stopped and said, "Buddy, I really can't let you have that diary.  I wrote it when I was very young and it's the only one I have.  It's a part of who I was and who I am, and it's very special and important to me.  If you cross out the words, you'll be damaging it, and I'll be sad and angry and hurt. I'll feel like you would feel if I wrecked up your electronics collection, which I know is really special and important to you."

And that's when the screaming started.  "No!  You must let me have it!  Promise?  You have to let me destroy it!"

"No, I can't do that, buddy."

"Yes, you can!"

Austen's anger usually comes from anxiety, so I took a guess as to what he might be anxious about and tried to reassure him.  "I love you no matter what.  I know I said I would be angry if you damaged something that is important to me, but I would still love you, always and always."

"Well, I don't love you!" he shouted.

"Do you feel that way because you're angry at me?" I asked, trying to help him label his emotions.

"No," he said, through tears of frustration, "Because I have to destroy your diary, and it will hurt you.  And if I love you, I don't want to hurt you.  But if I don't love you, it's ok.  And I really need to destroy it, because it's WRONG in lower case!  So, I don't love you!"

Oh.  Wow.  I'd really misunderstood and misjudged: the level of his need, the level of his empathy the level of his emotion.  But all I could think right then was that this was the best "I don't love you" I'd ever received.

A friend called me last night. She's in the midst of some very messy office politics at work. She thinks her coworkers are being difficult. They think she's being unreasonable. Her boss thinks they're all wrong and they all think the boss is wrong. "Do you think I'm being unreasonable? Am I crazy or are they?" she asked. And I paused, because I've seen a whole lot of crazy at this point in my life and I've gotten a pretty secure grip on two things: the first is what I think is and isn't crazy, and the second (and more important) is that it totally doesn't matter.

She wanted to know the answer to the first part, and if I left out that second part, it was easy enough for me to answer: no, I didn't think she was being unreasonable or crazy in her interactions with her colleagues. I thought she had some pretty healthy boundaries and was sticking to them. But I didn't want to tell her that, because what I think doesn't matter.

I know because I've been in that place before: tallying up the yes and no votes in my favor. Sure, I could tell her she wasn't crazy. But her coworkers friends were busy telling them they weren't crazy either. So, she'd go in to work the next day and say, "My friend Mary says I'm not being unreasonable," and her coworker would say, "Yeah, well, my friend Tom says you are." And then she'd have to ask someone else in order to continue having the balance fall in her favor.

To really feel better, I've found that I have to be ok with where I am, regardless of how the score stands. So, what I really wanted to tell her, more than that she was being reasonable in this particular situation, was that it was reasonable for her to have her own boundaries, regardless of whether or not I (or anyone else) agreed with any given boundary at any given moment. But I found myself unable to articulate that part. Sure, it seems easy now that I have time and a keyboard, but it's a different story when I'm fumbling for words on the phone. And it seemed so hard at the time to put what I wanted to say into a nice neat little sentence, rather than launching into a really long philosophical treatise. So, what I actually said was the ultimately unhelpful external validation thing, "No, you're not crazy."

Then I thought, "But it doesn't matter what I think! Oh, wait. There's a program slogan, 'What other people think of me is none of my business.' That's what I want to say!" That's never been one of my favorite slogans, but it did state the crux of the issue in a nice simple little sentence. Oh. I guess that's why we have slogans in 12 Step. They're pithy and easy to remember.

I've had my share of frustration with slogans. They can feel canned. They can be tiresome. But some of them inspire me. Some I repeat daily. And some, even the ones that aren't my favorites, can come in handy sometimes.

I wavered a little over whether it was more morally wrong to skim the book in the store without buying it (is that the literary equivalent of downloading music without paying?) or to actually buy the book, in essence rewarding the author for his cheesy charlatanism (however entertaining).  After a quick look at the first chapter, I decided it would definitely be more wrong to buy the book.

Like many books of the self-help genre, the first few chapters contain don't actually contain any helpful information, but are instead dedicated to telling you (aaaatttt gggrrreeeaaattt lllleeennngggttthhhh) how much helpful information you will find later in this book if you just keep reading.

This is to discourage people like me from doing what I was doing.  Most people just break down buy the book after skimming the introductory marketing material.  Only the persistent skimmer will stick through those self-promotional first few chapters about how Al-Anon is wrong and you are not powerless and you totally can change people if only you follow the four easy steps laid out in this book, which, trust me, are coming, right after a few more of these chapters about how this book is right on the money.  (And speaking of money...  But I bravely pressed on, both because I was eager to see where I had gone wrong on the whole fixing-my-husband's-sex-addiction thing and because knew this was totally blog fodder.

It turns out that the right thing to do is to gather together people who love the addict and stage an intervention.  You are all, unlike what those suckers in 12 Step tell you, to use lots of "I" language to communicate your message.  (Oh, "I" language is a fundamental part of 12 Step? Well, ok, moving on...) The message you are supposed to communicate is that you really love and are concerned about the addict, so much so that you want this person to enter recovery, which includes 12 Step meetings (in spite of the fact that powerlessness is for suckers).

At this point, by the way, your loved one is supposed say yes, you're supposed to set some very non-12 Step boundaries (damn, that's 12 Step too?), your loved one is supposed to enter rehab and — with continued loving detachment (oh, wait, loving detachment is a 12 Step concept too?) — is fixed forever.  Ta da!  You've effected change!  See how awesome you are!

Of course, there's this little, tiny section, buried somewhere deep in the book about what to do in the (really, very highly unlikely event) that the addict refuses to admit to having a problem and says "no" to recovery or storms out or tells you you're crazy.  (But really, don't worry too much about that, because addicts almost never do that kind of thing.  That's why this section is one 200th of the entire book.  The chances are that small.  But you know, just in case.)  The answer?  Keep trying.  Eventually, one day, if you keep at it, your addict will enter recovery.  Because you are powerful, and you can change people.  Don't give up!  If it's not working, you're probably just not doing it right and should study the book harder.

It's as simple as that.

Or is it? It's probably not entirely fair for me to mock this book for repackaging powerlessness as powerfulness and selling it. After all, it does trick people into reading about some concepts that they might not otherwise be willing to explore. Maybe it's the codependent version of putting a free beer sign on the door of an AA meeting. It's false advertising, but it still gets them through the door.

The interesting thing about the show from a recovery perspective is that Mark Benford is a recovering alcoholic, sober for seven years and active in AA.  And the show actually gives a better perspective on what 12 Step recovery is like than most.  Mark has a sponsor, goes to meetings regularly and makes phone calls (well, to his sponsor at least).  And he isn't fixed.  He hasn't had a drink in seven years, but he's still working his recovery and still sees, quite literally, the possibility of a slip: he sees himself drinking in his flash forward.

However, his wife, Olivia, is not working an Al-Anon program.  She doesn't go to meetings or have a sponsor, but she does keep tabs on Mark's sobriety, including anxiously questioning his sponsor for details.  In one of my favorite scenes so far, Mark's sponsor, Aaron, is at the Benford's home helping with a repair while Mark is out of town.  Olivia overhears part of the conversation and then stays to listen in as Aaron encourages Mark to make time to find and attend a meeting during his trip.  Mark is stressed out about his work and he's away from home (both triggers for drinking), so a healthy check-in with his sponsor and a reminder to go to a meeting are just perfect; it's one of the most realistic moments in TV recovery I've seen.  But Olivia, like a lot of people outside of 12 Step recovery, sees meeting attendance as something that happens to fix what has already happened, not as positive preventative maintenance, and is scared that this means Mark is drinking again.

For the most part, it seems that she's counting on him not to drink, and as long as he doesn't, everything is fine.  She has sworn she will leave him if he ever drinks again, and the twist is that, while he's drinking in his flash forward, in hers, she's living with another man.  (I suppose we can assume she held to her boundaries.)

What's missing from the show, and is not something I'd expect to see on TV because it's not charged with drama, are the changes that come to all areas of our lives in recovery.  The people I know who have worked a 12 Step program for as long as Mark and his sponsor have become steeped in program language and ideas.  The longer recovery goes on, the more (for the most part, for most people) there seems to be talk of things like God, gratitude and faith, and the less there seems to be of blame and anger.  But serenity is not nearly as much fun to watch as addict drama like throwing chairs or storming out of rooms (which the show has aplenty).  So while Flash Forward may show an accurate picture of some parts of recovery, it still fails to show its heart and soul.

A little less than a year ago, I moved my blog to its own URL, and when I did so, I had the opportunity to reread many of my old posts as I updated broken links (still not all fixed, by the way). As I did, I noticed that, whether I wrote about them explicitly or not, I could see the phases I went through, like rings on a tree: here was the fire that burned my bark; here was a season rich with rain; here was mild and pleasant weather; here was the drought that left me parched. With each ring, my focus became a little bit more clear and I got a little bit better at knowing what material I could share with a large and diverse audience in a healthy way.

When I first started blogging, I shared much more broadly than I do now. I wrote about my extended family and my friends (most of whom didn't know about the blog). I wrote about situations I was struggling with and people with whom I was angry. I shared my opinions about politics and celebrities. I speculated about sex addiction in the news. I tried to answer any and all questions ("try" being the operative word, as I'll admit that some of those questions are still sitting in my inbox, waiting).

But gradually, as more people started reading and as I grew and changed myself, my focus changed. I felt less comfortable putting friends and family members out there without their knowledge, even when I was focusing on my own response to them or telling my story as it related to them. And I found it less and less helpful and healthy to share my current struggles, emotions or opinions in such a broad forum. I still do from time to time, but I do it less often and less pointedly than I once did.

I began to recognize that when I get a tight feeling in my chest as I'm writing — when I vent, or rant, or try hard to get a good laugh, or struggle to find a way to change people or force them to understand me — I'm likely to feel awful afterwards. I started to key in to when I heard that critical little voice in my head saying "but..." or "you're wrong" or "you're crazy." I'd notice how I'd fuss and fuss to get the words right so that people wouldn't "misunderstand" me, knowing what I really wanted was to be able to use my words to bully any difference into submission. And almost inevitably my anger or uncertainty or sarcasm or desperate need to have everyone agree with me would trigger someone, which would in turn trigger me.

In 12 Step we talk about sharing our "experience, strength and hope." That is: what happened to us in the past, how we got through it and the hope and faith we now have for the future. And as I look at those tree rings of writing drawing in over the years, I notice that the focus I'm moving toward is exactly that: experience, strength, hope. When I'm able to share from that place, even if I'm ashamed of what I've done and scared (often very much so!) of how people will perceive me, I'm able to feel good about what I'm doing. In moving away from focusing on others or on my resentment and anger or on the things (and people and opinions) I can't change, I'm more likely to be of service to others, to make progress myself and to do no harm.

But never fear, since I'm about progress, not perfection, I'm still likely to slip up and be a smart ass or gossip or boss people who are being wrong (that is, anyone who doesn't agree with me). You know, just to keep things entertaining.

That's right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we're talking about Ben, "do no harm" means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What's more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn't always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

"For crying out loud, Kate," I mock-yelled at the TV, "It's hard to say no! Respect Jack's boundaries!" Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I'm getting better at the saying no part, at the "this is as far as I'm willing to go and as much as I'm willing to do" part. I'm just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!