the ability to accept delay, suffering, or annoyance without complaining or becoming angry:

As you can see by definition, patience is a very hard thing to have.  Patience doesn’t mean that we’re sitting and just waiting, it means we can envision what’s to come and make steps to achieve it. We see a bud and know that with time it will become a beautiful flower. We see the darkness of night and know that in time there will be the light of day. There is a certain timing for everything. Trying to rush is not going to help……patience is the key. We wait, we keep doing the things we need to do, we keep moving forward and we understand that in time we can reach our goal.

Going through recovery as a parent of an addict is confusing to say the least. We just want our loved one to be well, to be healthy, to stop using drugs, to be the person that they once were. Unfortunately I don’t think that they can ever be that person again just as I can’t ever be the parent I was before. My life has been changed forever because of the experiences I have gone through and the things I now know.

There is no right or wrong way to treat your child in recovery. You can ask their goals, their dreams and then celebrate with them when they accomplish them. At the same time you need to think about your goals and dreams because this isn’t just about them. It’s a whole new world now and you have to be patient with yourself and your loved one as you navigate through it. Again the biggest component is patience. It took a very long time to get where you now are so it’s going to take time to get to where you want to be.

There is the cliche – One Day at a Time – but I really think this is such an important way to think about recovery. Each day can bring a different challenge to both myself and my loved one. We both need to have patience with each other. Sometimes I know it will require walking away, calming down and then talking again. This seems to me to be a very volatile time since neither knows our roles anymore. Expectations are there for both sides but neither knows what the other needs or wants.

You see for “X” amount of years as a parent I was the problem solver, the organizer, the negotiator and now I don’t need those roles but my brain is wired to automatically do those things. So my goal is to be to change some of these automatic responses. This won’t happen today or tomorrow since I didn’t get this way yesterday.

So I need to try and take steps to think things through before speaking or acting. Sometimes writing down the pro’s and con’s of a response helps me see both sides. I know this is very time consuming but seeing it on paper in black and white really seems to help me retain this thought process for now. As time goes on I will be able to run these thoughts through my head because I’ve retrained my brain to think in a new and different way. This requires a great deal of patience on my part. I can’t jump to conclusions and I can’t be Wonder Woman and try to save the world. Right now I need to just save me.