Let Me Tell You What You Should Do . . .

 I ran into a woman from my meeting while I was taking my beach walk yesterday.  She's pretty new with a daughter who is, I believe, struggling with her behavior.  She comes to the meeting, too, but I'm not sure what her sobriety status is.  I'm also not sure whether or not the mom has a sponsor or talks much to other women.  She bent my ear during the walk.  I think I was being helpful.  I'm so non-threatening that I wonder sometimes if I'm an asexual, kind of non-gender specific person for women.  That being said I'm glad I have women friends in my recovery.  SuperK will tell me anecdotes about her interactions with other women and it's clear that while men and women share a lot of similarities we really are different in some significant ways.  So it's helpful for me to hear a woman's point of view on different matters.  It makes me ponder circumstances in a way that I might not normally do.

Her daughter is engaging in sexual behavior that she dislikes.  Honestly, I don't find it objectionable at all.  Honestly, I think the mom is pretty religious and she's offended to see her offspring behaving in a way that violates the tenets of her faith.  Avoiding advice-giving like it's the bubonic plague I often point out that a parent's responsibility for an adult child's behavior is really pretty much past the expiration date.  Adult children get to do what they want.  And alcoholic adult children - the daughter, who I know less well, impresses me as being stubborn as hell - imagine that in an alcoholic - are not often receptive to hectoring about matters of morality from religious parents.  I don't know what it is about the tendency of some religious people to focus on bad behavior and not to praise good behavior.  I, personally, don't take well to criticism, justified or not.  Most of us are so hard on ourselves from the git-go that hearing about our faults makes us dig our spiked jackboots even deeper into the mud and muck.  You can show your children (or your alcoholic acquaintances) your vision of good behavior.  They can then decide if that's behavior they want to emulate.  And if the daughter is living with the mother then it's within her rights to lay down some ground rules if the daughter wants to continue living there.  I don't think mom is going to kick her child out so she can either button her lip or continue irritating the living shit out of the kid by haranguing her over and over about behavior that she's clearly going to continue doing.

How much time am I spending on my recovery today?  My spiritual and emotional growth?  A lot?  Some?  Not too damned much?  As much time as I spent feeding my addictions, for chrissake?  Tell me it's that much at least!