Blog for July 20th, 2026
Other people’s problems
This week was spent closer to home, with a couple of meet ups and appointments throughout the week. Of course, being summer and all, it’s hot! I do not have central air, so it can be a bit warm here. Which is a good motivator for me to make lunch dates in cool restaurants with sponsees and friends. Plus, a haircut on another day and shopping too.
Meanwhile, a friend that is on my regular morning zoom meeting was not doing well, and I thought he was stroking out, we prayed for him for days. The same day I got a text from a good friend who’s eighteen-year-old daughter that has been helping me around my house and yard, had been hit by a crazy driver, she rolled the car, it is totaled and her hand was badly hurt along with bumps and bruises all over her.
She had been air flighted to a hospital about seventy miles away to have surgery by a specialist. After she got home, I went to see her and took her some tacos, poor girl, it is so sad. I pray she heals quickly and completely, amen. Besides these things the days were hot and slow. I kept up regular routines with just a bit of housework before the heat came on. I don’t do too well in the heat. When I say heat, we are talking about 108 degrees. It’s pretty tough to cool down from that with a swamp cooler. But we are doing our best to cope.
After having a couple of weeks of low tolerance and being tired of it all, I am bouncing back, slowly, but bouncing back. I have had some internal moments of the feeling that all is well and will be ok. I am grateful for that feeling. What’s really amazing is the growth for me is to feel it even when people around me that I care about are having difficult times. I used to own other people’s problems and issues, way too much. Being an empath can take toll on a person. Feeling for other people can be heartbreaking and a continual heavy feeling that can weigh you down. The hardest of which is my husband and kids, the people we are most connected to. I also felt that way about my sisters when they were ill and dying, but now they are all gone. – to heaven that is.
I have a good friend, someone I’ve sponsored in the past and she is very dear to me. Over our years together she has relapsed a couple of times.The first time around she stayed clean for five years and then relapsed with a guy she had started dating. She came back, for a few months, relapsed again, and ended up in jail. When she got out, she came to my house. I did not want to sponsor her anymore, but we continued to stay close and share nearly every aspect of our lives with each other. She quit going to meetings and the whole recovery process after a year I think, she stayed clean ten years or so on what she’d learned in her time in recovery before that.
We had a lot of good and memorable times during her clean time, I watched her and her husband buy their first house, fix it up and buy new cars, motorcycles and ATV’s. They took big trips, had celebrations and reconnected with other members of their families. They both had pretty good jobs, until she quit one to go to a better one, supposedly. Her past record came back to haunt her, due to the job being on a government installation, they do deep dives into perspective employees past records.
Eventually, she ended up back at the old job, but by then she had been hanging with the wrong people too much and started getting loaded. I don’t think she even lasted a week back at the old job, they fired her. My sweet friend has just about lost it all, she has drained their accounts, not made car payments and is MIA. Her husband texted my husband today and said she has about wiped him out and he’s selling motorcycles and trying to raise money to keep his car and pay utilities.
It is so sad to see this happen to them. I have kept my distance from her ever since I figured out she was using again. Her frame of mine is not something I am able to contend with. Another life lesson I have learned and grasped. I cannot keep taking on other people’s pains and problems. I can certainly pray for her and I do, daily. I still love her and care about her immensely.
Let me add the fact that my husband sponsored her dad and when he was dying from lung cancer, he had asked me to watch out for her. I said I would. She was actually using back then too, and I do not like to be around people who are using drugs like that. But when she went to jail, I would send her necessities and things, and I would write to her too.
Although I am not taking on other people’s pains and problems, I still care and I can still help and pray. I will do what I can, like taking tacos to a hurt girl, taking her mom- who is in recovery- to NA events and little trips. I will share my own experience, strength and hope when asked. But the best thing of all I can do, is give them all to God.
Question of the Week: Do you take on other people’s problems?
