This has been such a rough year. For you and for me.

Nothing has been easy. For any of us.

But I am holding my own and I pray that you are, too.

Tonight I am home alone. And I had no agenda. Frankly, the motivation has been nil, lately. So I grabbed the remote (the one I barely know how to use - yes, I'm that old now) and decided to watch a movie that I hadn't watched yet. Haven't had the chance, haven't take the time, haven't had the courage.

Tonight I watched Ben Is Back. Thank God, I was alone. Thank God, I was not in the theater.

Watching this movie if you don't have a personal connection to addiction, I'm guessing, would be uncomfortable at worst.

Watching this movie with that personal connection ... I don't even know if I have the words. I think I felt every emotion. I was on edge the entire time. I know I was holding my breath at some points. I was encouraging and applauding the various characters. And I was angry with each one of them. Except the little ones ... and the dog. Not them.

But the mother. She was me. I could physically feel her heart. Even though in my own situation, I am the addict's wife, I intimately KNOW every emotion she experienced ... sadness, joy, love, hate, anger, hope, fear. Every. single. one.

And at the end, I cried. No, I sobbed. And it was u.g.l.y. (Hence, paragraph #3.) I'm over an hour out of the final credits and I am still on the verge of tears.

Maybe I needed the cry, the release. Maybe I needed the reminder that addiction is so real and closer than I'd like to recall.

Maybe I needed to come back here and write again. To tell my story. Because it's in the stories that we learn and heal and know how to move forward. And as I wrote at the very beginning of this blog, there is nothing small about one's story when we tell the truth about our broken and beautiful lives.

Share your story.  It WILL reach someone that needs to hear.