My dad has said about his mother, “She has Italian Alzheimer’s: she forgets everything but the grudge.” My dad has strong Sicilian ancestral background – famous for it’s criminal, territorial, resent-full, vindictive mafia. I can be the same.

It is also said that the Welsh side of that family tree is “the crazy” side…

All this adds up to I’m a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

I hold grudges so hard because my communication skills frustrate me. There are people with whom I can speak and, where heart is concerned; it’s understood. There are people with whom I cannot speak – my sister who died; that boss, whose husband fired me; that ex-boyfriend. I cannot because someone chooses “can’t” – or won’t. Will not.

When I can’t talk to them, I can talk to God. I can imagine what this imaginary friend might bestow: gentleness and nurturing, kindness. I did this with myself naturally as a child, and then I forsaket/forsook the skill, and then I grasped it back – after torturous desperation, D’Arcy’s suicide and utter powerlessness over my life and my responses to it.

I had been to five therapists in the first two years after she died. Then my art therapist suggested Al-Anon.

That was the better part of twenty years ago. I still get totally lost. But we help each other in Al-Anon. We learn what boundaries are and how important it is to keep trying.

I feel the Mafia-proportion tension when I cannot connect with someone that feels like resentment. My brain starts to spin out. Negative self-talk and then I stop breathing, over a long period of time. My brain gets thirsty for air and hungry for fat absorption, my mood starts to change and then I start making weird and sometimes bad decisions based on this chain of events. It fucking wrecks me.

I get wrecked. So I keep hold of the line as it tows me along. I remember God, and serve everyone, and I love everyone. I go to Al-Anon. It got really ugly in here.

Since the New Year, absolution has come: loose ends meet. And what a relief because that bitter is poison.

My conscience and consciousness had to shift around forgiveness. It came from three sentences in the daily reader called One Day At A Time In Al-Anon, page 120, April 29:

“We are asked to forgive those who have injured us. Unless we have first judged and condemned them for what they did, there would be no reason for us to forgive them. Rather we would have to forgive ourselves for judging.”

I pray for loving tolerance for myself as I pull away, as you pull away. For you. For me and for you. If that happens, as that happens. Loving Tolerance.

I am friends with Krishna Das, the singer, on Facebook. He has livestreamed concerts and lectures a lot over the holidays, for free. His teacher’s motto was “Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.” His teacher was Neem Karoli Baba.

Thank God.

AUM