Recovery Month Monday

All right, well. Well, Cadre. It is winding down. Recovery month is winding down. So this will be my last recovery month Monday livestream. And yeah, so this is an interesting one for me because today is September 29th, so we're approaching the end of September. And it's always been interesting for me about recovery month, because for the last 30 years, Recovery Month has also coincided with my father's death. And today is the. The 30th anniversary of his death. And what's powerful about it for me is that the way he died, he died tragically from alcoholism and was not able to get sober.

He tried a couple of times. He was a very smart man, perhaps too smart for a simple program like recovery. And it was a very, very difficult relationship. But I reflect on it every September 29th. And interestingly, because one of the things I do as a public speaker, I'm usually. It just works out. I'm usually doing a training or at a conference on September 29th. The. This is one of the first years in a while that that hasn't been the case. And so then I'll often, like, start my talk by just having a dedication to my father.

But it was a very challenging relationship. There was a lot of violence, a lot of abuse, a lot of neglect. And it's also. It's been 30 years. There's been a lot of healing. There's been a lot of growth. There's been a lot of me seeing my father in me, the best of him, and frankly, the worst of him, and seeing how that can show up. So what does that have to do with recovery Month? Well, in my mind, it has everything to do with Recovery month, because left to my own devices, I would more than likely be repeating what I experienced with my father, with my daughter, with my wife.

And I've had my own struggles in sobriety that have told me and taught me that recovery has. Has saved my life, has broken a chain of addiction in my life. And, you know, so when it's September 29th, every September 29th, you know, I just try to reflect and honor my father. And, you know, it hasn't always been the easiest to do that because it was a challenging relationship. But what I've learned, right, What I've learned through recovery is how to see the best of my father. And look, I am not a believer in this.

Your parents did the best for you. BS that's out there in a lot of therapy. And what I mean by that, just to be very, very clear, is there's a lot of therapists and there's a lot of people who. They're like, you know, they don't give themselves any permission to grieve how much their parents failed them. If that's the case now, you know, some people, they think their parents failed them for reasons that may or may not be completely accurate. But I think I can accurately, honestly say there are many ways that my father failed to show up as the father that I needed.

Now, today, after a lot of work and a lot of tears and a lot of pain and. And a lot of healing, can I say my father did the best he could for me? Well, I can. I can say that, but you don't get to just say that. And therapists should never, ever tell a person, just, they shouldn't come to that. That needs to be a conclusion that somebody comes to. It's the period at a long, long sentence as opposed to just a very short exclamation that I hear too often in the therapeutic world. And so today, you know, that's my thing, is honoring my father, honoring who he was, honoring the best of him.

He was a scientist. He was a brilliant man. He was a funny man. He introduced to me some of the music that has been so important to me as a person who plays music professionally. You know, it's like his love of music affected me, his intelligence affected me. His. His acumen and his academic kind of disposition, you know, made a difference for me. He was an artist as well. He just never made peace with all those parts of himself, and I don't think he really knew how. He's also a man that I honor because like so many, that many of us know, he was a man that never got recovery.

He's a man that tried that. We tried to help him get it, but he didn't get it. And so on this day, 30 years ago, he tragically. Well, we found him. He had probably been dead for a day or two, but we found him in our family home because my mom had finally moved out, and he was lying dead. Well, I don't want to get too graphic, out of respect, but I'll just simply say it was a very tragic and horrific death. That happens a lot with alcoholics. Alcohol is the only drug you can die from withdrawal from, and the descent into true alcohol death is.

Is ugly. And unfortunately. And he was only 54. I am 53, three years old now. I'm one year away from being the age he was when he died. I do not feel ready. I do not feel ready for this life to be over. I Feel like I am just getting going in many ways. So it's heartbreaking for me to think about it. I think about the best of him. I was talking to a friend of mine and I can say honestly that, that my. I was 22 when my father died and we probably had had five conversations my whole life. I didn't really even understand what I was missing.

Now as a father of a 16 year old and very engaged in her life and the conversations we have and the connection we have and the laughter we have and the time we have, I'm like, oh my gosh, how much did I miss because of my father's alcoholism? And yet how much did I gain? Because I can also say that he has been an inspiration for my recovery. Whether it was me getting sober at 21 because I was watching him drink himself to death, or whether it was as I have stayed sober, me really, truly experiencing like the example of him and being like, I don't want that, I don't want that.

I don't know how many lies we get. I don't know if this is our only pass through on this crazy a** world. But all I do know is I do not want that. And I don't want to go back to the path that I was on, headed down the same direction as my father. I don't have to live that way today because of recovery. That's the gift to me of Recovery Month and that's what I celebrate. And I think maybe it's a fitting way to end Recovery Month in many ways is that recovery for so many of us is about breaking cycles in our family.

I am far from the one, the only one who can talk about their parent dying of an overdose or some other aspect of addiction and all the relationships that we've lost. And I could name all my family members who have died, complications from addiction and mental health. Whether it's been the suicides, whether it's been my, you know, my cousin suicide, my aunt who never, you know, recovered from being institutionalized and getting shock treatment for months and months, or whether it was my grandfather who while he was drunk killed one of my dad's friends with my dad in the car and never recovered from that, or my uncle who, you know, died of cancer, but clearly it was connected to his alcoholism as well.

And that's just one side of the family. So that's the darkness, that's the ugliness, that's, that's, that's how the story can go when it comes to addiction. But it's not how the story has to go because of recovery. And that's not how the story is gonna go for me and my family and my daughter and my wife and for so many people that I know and love. And that, to me, that's recovery month. And those are the stories that we have to tell, and that's the narrative that we have to rewrite still in this very, very sick society that still makes light of alcohol use and alcoholism and drug use and drug addiction.

I mean, all of it, mental health and trauma, you know, So I think we've got a long way to go, but we've come a long way. And there are so many. There are millions of people like me. And that. That is a wonderful thing, right? I mean, you know, millions of people in recovery, millions of people celebrating recovery. And so I hope it's been a great recovery month for everybody here on Cadre. This theme of safety has been really wonderful as well. Speak Wonder. I love how committed you are to supporting all of the contributors and this community.

And thank you for that very nice comment, and I wish everybody a wonderful October. And, you know, thanks for tuning in and for Cadre for being a community that really supports this.