In this, our final podcast and post of this journey, we wrap up this nine-week multi-media experience about Dr Marry’s fall into alcoholism and our shared path back to sobriety. But mostly, this podcast is about gratitude. Gratitude for the doctors, nurses and staff of Sanford; the insurance worker at Sanford who eased my mind and the woman on the phone from MN Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The Prairie St John’s staff and residents. Former students, friends and strangers who wrote to lift us up, to share their own journey, to say thank you. Grateful for the friends and colleagues who helped us conceive of this format. Grateful to…
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9b video)
Shame. To be ashamed. How many people’s lives have been ruined because of shame? Because the fear of being shamed or of having to name your shame or the curse of bringing shame to yourself, your family, your… keeps you silent and trapped. That’s addiction. At least that has been our experience with addiction. How could a highly intelligent, affable, tender-hearted, inquisitive, happy go lucky Irishman fall down the hole of addiction so profoundly that at 47 years old, he literally stared death in the face before turning his life around? How could a feisty, articulate, challenging, fierce advocate for those she loves wife watch this happen and not find…
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9a)
Dr Marry and I started talking about doing this series of posts about his alcoholism and our journey through addiction together in November of 2019. The truth is, the great majority of people in our lives had no idea that this happened or that Dr Marry continues to this day to be an alcoholic enjoying sobriety, because for the rest of his life, he will be an alcoholic. But I also believe fervently that he will, for the rest of his life, be sober. I don’t say that glibly or without the understanding that there are people who are sober for decades who, for some reason or another, fall off…
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Two Voices of Hope: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on ’til Morning… (8c podcast)
This week’s podcast wraps up Dr Marry’s final week’s post. I”m not sure why Dr Marry starts the podcast with “antibacterial,” but at least it’s a timely, topical word for the global pandemic we are in. 😬 Dr Marry and I take a meandering stroll through all kinds of things–some alcohol-related and some not. Side note, Dr Marry chose the underscore music, “Dance of Felt” this week because it felt the most “Jane Austen-like” of our options. LOVE it! Ultimately, I finally landed on the words I haven’t been able to articulate about what Dr Marry has done in these posts. I am grateful for having found them. I also…
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Two Voices of Hope: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on ’til Morning… (8b video)
Little needs to be said about Dr Marry’s video read of his final post because his post said it all so beautifully. I (cursorily) apologize if anyone is tired of hearing me say this, but sharing this journey with Dr Marry has truly given me such a profoundly different sense of appreciation for him, for where he was and for where he has arrived to after clawing his way back from the brink. I suppose I almost discounted his side of this story before we put it down in writing because he never talked about it in these deep ways (or maybe I never encouraged him to talk about it…
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Two Voices of Hope: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on ’til Morning… (8a)
For the next three weeks, I went to treatment every weekday and two AA meetings a week. We poured in our sand, shared and continued to learn from each other. Also, I got caught up about what was going on in the residential house I used to be in. This interesting group of people, some in their sixties, some twenty-something mothers, and others young teenagers – all joined by a disease that made us all the same – truly helped me on the correct path of working on the treatment for my disease, thus making my graduation day much more solemn than I thought possible. When you graduate from JoAnn’s…
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Two Voices of Hope: Three Years, and I’m Still Counting My Blessings (7c podcast)
Tonight’s podcast wraps up my final blog post in this journey. It’s incredible to consider how fast this time has gone and how much has happened in the past seven weeks. When we began, there was no global pandemic, we had not been to England for Dr Marry’s 50th birthday, spring break was just going to be a one-week respite, the economy was still booming, my job was clicking along nicely and so much more. Also, I was way off in my story about the author. It wasn’t Tom Wolfe, it was Philip Roth. So much for “off the cuff” conversation. Good grief! In case you want to watch the…
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Two Voices of Hope: Three Years, and I’m Still Counting My Blessings (7b video)
This week’s conversation is pretty short and sweet, but you will learn a surprising fact about Dr Marry that I bet many of you didn’t know! This is being posted during the midst of the Covid-19 global pandemic. It’s hard to focus on much else while we all watch and wait, seemingly suspended in midair. Actually, that’s just about exactly how I felt in those weeks while Dr Marry was in the hospital and rehab. The news was hardly ever good, and I was left to watch and wait. Wait over my husband as he was fighting this internal battle to survive while appearing externally calm in his medically-induced coma.…
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Two Voices of Hope: Three Years, and I’m Still Counting My Blessings (7a)
Journal entry: Sunday, February 19 We moved you to Prairie St. John’s on your birthday (Feb. 16). Let me just say that I put in a terrible Valentine’s Day—I got the flu of the century, and you also decided not to go in to residential treatment but to do outpatient instead. Never let it be said that you’re a pushover, sir! I slept much of the day as much to get over the flu as to try to push the reality of your decision out of my consciousness. I just don’t want to do this again—ever—and I needed you to make the deepest commitment you could. Later You did…
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Two Voices of Hope: Progress (6c podcast)
This week’s podcast conversation of this week’s blog post goes in to Dr Marry’s lightbulb moment that found him determined to climb out of the hole he had dug by taking the hands that were offered instead of pushing them out of the way. We also discussed what I have since uncovered was really going on behind the trip across the street to get a glass of wine no more than 75 minutes after I picked him up from rehab. Oh dear! Dr Marry noted that he has been surprised by all that he has learned about himself in this blogging/videoing/podcasting process, and I have to agree that this has…
