Blog for November 20th, 2023
Legacy
In our efforts to get clean, stay clean and live a healthier, happier life, through working the steps we clean up our past wreckage as best we can and strive to live a new life that does not create more wreckage. Or more painful and disastrous consequences for ourselves and our loved ones.
This week I have been reminded of my school days, high school especially and where it all began. My inability to grasp math concepts and how the school system treated me. A math teacher that pretty much told me I was stupid and a counselor that told me the same thing, and that I would not amount to anything in life. I was fifteen years old.
I was living with my mom, who worked nights and since I was the youngest of five children, I was the only one living at home at that time. All my siblings were grown, gone, married with kids. I was left to my own devices most all the time. I turned to drugs. The drugs helped take away the insecurity, low self-esteem, and loneliness.
This last week, I made a special trip to go see my fourteen-year-old grandson who is struggling with school, especially math. He seems defeated and sad. Especially because they take away his phone and gaming. So of course, he is sad, but even with the so called motivation, he cannot do the math. I totally understand.
Years later, after high school, after I got clean at thirty-one years old, I went back to college. I flunked algebra two times but kept trying. With a lot of tutoring, I finally passed. I went on to earn a master’s degree in education of all things, with a 3.9 GPA. I wish I could show that to that ol bitty counselor. Anyway, all that tells me that I know my grandson will be ok, because he is smart in so many other ways. He is a sweet kid and kind and loving. Not to mention adorable, he will go far, damn math!
He is also sad because his low GPA keeps him from playing basketball, which he loves. But after meeting with his counselor, she gave him hope that he could still get on the team this year. We also went to a math tutoring place and hopefully that will help him catch up, we’re doing our best to help and support him, something that was never done for me, or things could have been different? Maybe.
I feel bad to have passed down such a legacy to my kids and grandkids, all of us have struggled with math to certain degrees, expect one. My oldest grandson who is now a doctor, yep, an MD. He is so smart, sweet, brave, and amazing, so is the youngest one, just in different ways. I love them both immensely, both of them have lived with us at some point.
What I am hoping for is a new legacy. Just as I turned my horrible high school math experience and horrible counselors and teachers experience into a success story by getting clean and going back to college and working hard, extra hard in math, ugh! I hope that stands as a testimony to all my kids and grandkids, nieces, nephews, all of them, that it is possible to turn things around and become whatever you want to be in life. I became a drug & alcohol counselor and a teacher.
It isn’t as simple as that, there is a lot of letting go and letting God, surrendering, step work, looking deep down inside of myself to be able to crawl up out of that and find the motivation to go after my dreams.
I’ve told you about how bad I am in math but let me counter that quickly with how good I was in English, writing, history and psychology, dance, track & field. I am an excellent drug and alcohol counselor as well. I do have strengths. We all do.
Let it start by either getting clean or staying clean and letting go and letting God. He will most assuredly help you as He did me and we go on to be good examples, passing respectable legacies down to our children and grandchildren. Love, kindness, caring, giving, helping others and mostly, the love of God are also the kind of legacies I want to leave, not just them, but everyone I meet. Which makes for a much better world, right?
Question of the Week: What kind of a legacy are you leaving for you kids and grandkids, your friends and family?
