Billiette Calling! Why Was I Born?
WHY WAS I BORN? Seven years ago, on an April day, I asked that question of God. I could not live with myself, nor was I fit for myself to know. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I asked mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of then all?” And there before me stood the witch that alcohol had created. I hated myself for the things I’d done to my family and to myself. I couldn’t hide myself from me any longer. I could see that others could never see, and I hated what “me” had become.
My search for me was found when I began to know my brother and sister alcoholic. They shared themselves with me – their fears, their anger – their hurts – their very inner selves – their gut level feelings were mine, and mine were theirs and theirs were mine. What a wonderful awakening to know I could find myself through others who were lost like me.
What has seven years of sobriety brought me? I have tried to make up for the hurt I caused my family and the rewards have been great. They love and respect me when I once gave my drinking problem to God and regularly attend AA. Events in my life started to change. Many recall that four years ago I started going to col1ege. On May 24th’ I’ll be graduating – something that I consider a miracle for this 52-year-old “has-been drunk”.
July 1st I go to Valley Hope Treatment Center in Norton, Kansas for my training to become an alcoholic counselor.
My seven years of sobriety have not been a ‘bed of roses”. However, this I know, I have had a peace and contentment within, even though the storms I had had to face. I know that my serenity is the result of faithfully trusting and accepting God’s plan for me even though I could not understand “why at the time”. I do know now that through each trial and tribulation I have suffered, I have grown and become stronger.
I look to the future with confidence and I know I can’t lose as long as I have God and AA. In seven years, I have learned there is strength in faith. There is power in humility and there is happiness in helping others.
I am still learning to overcome myself, for it is not the difficulties of life that I have to conquer, but my own selfishness. Keeping sober is the most important thing in my life for without it, all I have gained in the last seven years would be lost. I am totally convinced that my whole life depends on my not taking that first drink. Nothing in this world is more important to me than my own sobriety. Everything I have or will have, or ever hope to have depends on my sobriety. Can I afford or can you afford to ever forget this?
Thankful I was born? You bet I am! I consider it an experience that I wouldn’t have missed for all the world! Billiette S
Receiving Billiette’s Call! Why was I born?
So, for me this is on one level an easy question – I was born because my mother and farther decided to get it on with having me – I had no say in this transaction. The Normandy Landing was exactly 3 months away from when I came into our war-torn World. And it is when I am depressed, more likely it is that I am anxious about something, that the question “why was I born?” surfaces. I also think that this is a question often for the second half of one’s life, say after 40. In the first 40 years we are too busy just living life. It is often in the second half that we realize we have reached the noontime of life and are headed into the evening of life and death. The issue for me, now 76 years young, is have I left behind a handprint like early cavemen did telling us that they lived. This is what I am doing here, telling you stories of my life’s experiences in hopes that someday they will be read.
The Johari Window has four areas as seen in the diagram below: Arena where you and others know about you; Façade area are items know by you but not by others; Blind Spots facts not know by you or by others about you; and Unknown areas not know by yourself or others. The object of the exercise is to expand the Arena quadrant by exchanging information about yourself with others in your group. The Johari Window process, in my experience, is how AA Chapter meeting operate. During the operation of the Johari Window process, it is suggested take one takes notes on what is revealed in each quadrant, and then write about what you have learned about yourself. Graphing the sharing of Self within a relationship offers a simple and quick explanation of this cube. There are many other YouTube clips available to enhance one’s experience of sharing views of each other.
Johari Window: A Useful Tool for Understanding Self – YouTube.
See if the Johari Window is useful and fill in the 4 areas as best you can. You might ask a friend to help you with parts of the Window. Now in your Journal write something about why you were born, who have you become, what remains for you do do, and what are you planning to accomplish, what are you dreaming – tend to them? Steven
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