What have you done for yourself lately!!!  The first time someone asked me that you’d think they were speaking a foreign language to me. I don’t know what surprised me more the question or my silence.  I paused and thought and could not think of one thing to say back. Oh sure i could start listing all the things I was doing and managing for my addicts, but for myself my record was empty. I was embarrassed and shocked But that got me thinking. How could I not remember to do something for myself? How could so much time go by without me thinking of me? And why did it take someone else pointing that out to me for me to realize this?
Made me so sad to think my addict children had taken so much of me that I was no more than a passing thought in my own life.
How did I become so unimportant?
Since the first time I was asked this, I’ve been asked many more times and ive had to sit and analyze it honestly. I realized I had shifted in my feelings for myself. I have become second, sometimes not even. Once I downgraded my importance, it wasn’t hard to slip into codependency. I hadn’t realized how being their savior made me feel. How much I learned to depend on that title. It gave me my reason for being. The importance of my life became managing and fixing every catastrophe and event that my addicts found themselves into. My identity was so wrapped up in them; there was no me.
Its no wonder I could not answer that question. I was no more in touch with myself or my feelings than a stranger. And honestly, I was a stranger to myself. I had forgotten who I was.

The next several years have been about reconnecting with myself. The test of this has been hard. I’ve had to learn to let go of my sons to hold onto myself. To separate us so we could learn to survive independent of each other.  In doing that, I have started to see me again. I am not the same person I was when this journey began.
I am forever changed and in some cases, have transformed. Through all the anger, sadness, and despair, I have found the strength I would not have otherwise known I possessed.
I can now recognize beauty in my every day I would not have seen before. I have learned to appreciate my life again. I have acquired a respect for myself I would have never recognized previously.
Now when I’m asked what have I done for myself lately, I can proudly say I gave myself back to myself.  I am encouraged that I have finally done for myself what I hope to see for my sons.

To hang on, we must let go