Sunday Serenity

Good Sunday evening, Cadre Crew. My name is Jason Lennox. I'm your resident recovery champion. I'm happy to be here with you this Sunday after the holiday, all kinds of food. For me, Sunday was just to sit around and be peaceful and create some serenity. So hoping the same was the case for you. Speaking of family, that's actually what I want to talk a little bit about. Tonight. I had a chance to reflect over a three day affair with different family members, a few really neat traditions that we do every year.

And actually, before Thanksgiving, Wednesday night, I was at a recovery meeting, and the topic was really about family and how we deal with family and just some of the dysfunction and chaos that we sometimes have. So I wanted to, it made me reflect then, as I shared in the meeting, but also reflecting throughout the weekend, I thought of a couple things and a few different phases, I should say, of conflict or interactions that I have with family. And so for me, those started with, we'll call it discord or hey, happy Sunday, Cadre cadres here online.

Thank you. But three phases of relationships and really turmoil. So for me, it started with discord, being disconnected. And, you know, because I had gone through addiction, I had a lot of struggles with family, had a lot of feelings, I had a lot of resentments. And so that was that kind of discord phase. I'm really disconnected, upset, have all these feelings, dysfunction, all those things that we hear about and oftentimes experience if we're in any part of family. Second phase I wanted to talk about is really the clearing this space, or we'll call it integrity, creating integrity.

So discord, integrity. And then a third phase, which I really love to play in, is the responsibility. And so I want to touch on each of those three, walk through those three, and what they mean, what they meant in my life, and perhaps you can relate to that. And then how thinking about ending with how we take action on some of that. So again, the discord phase for me, because I struggled with drugs and alcohol for so long, there was a lot of discord and chaos, and people didn't know what they were going to get with me.

But when I did get into recovery, that didn't mean that that all went away. In fact, I was upset and sore and really had resentments for years into my recovery, and I just continued to do the work and do the work to really come up against that and do something about it. And so as I did that, I was able to get over some of those resentments and realize that my family was doing the best that they could. And I just tend to believe that these days they were doing the best that they could with what they knew.

They didn't understand addiction. It wasn't their job to understand addiction. I'm the one who went down that path, and they just didn't know how to handle it. And so that was the discord and resentment and all those upset feelings, and then it moved to creating this space of integrity. And oftentimes that's me making amends, or maybe it's the other party making amends. And there was some of that to do just to get us to a place where we feel like our sides of the street were clean. And I did a lot of that work early in recovery, but all throughout my recovery, to continue to create that space of integrity.

And that's like nothingness to me. So there's nothing there. There's no bad, there's not necessarily more than that, but at least not less than that. And then there's a third phase. By the way, I think most, most of us go through these, through these phases as a spectrum. And so thinking about discord and all the things that, all the chaos that happens with our family functions and things of that sort, I believe most of us clean it up and get it to a place where we feel like there's integrity, like we can get in the same room, we can spend time with family, we can have the meals and do those things.

The third phase is one that it took me a really long time to explore. And I mentioned that I call that responsibility. And I believe that one of my jobs in life, with my family, really, with all my relationships and all my work and in my life in general, general, is to take response, take full responsibility. And this is what I mean in this context. By taking responsibility, I've gotten through the discord. I've gotten over all the bad feelings, though, again, I swing back to that sometimes. But largely, I moved into a space of integrity.

We're in a good place. There are no hard feelings. We can move forward. We can show up, we can be civil. Then there's taking responsibility for the interactions and the experiences and the relationships that I have. And by taking full responsibility, I don't mean that I'm taking responsibility for other people, but that I'm taking responsibility for the relationship. And I'm showing up in a way that creates space for more than just the nothingness that comes with a space of integrity. And so one of the things that I hear often, too, and I've had this conversation deeply with several people in my life, and I get guilty of this sometimes, too, is we often think as humans, well, I'm not going to put in more effort than my brother, my sister, or my mom or my dad.

I feel like I'm always having to reach out. And, you know, I've heard so many of those comments. And to that, I always say, I feel the same way sometimes. And if I didn't put in the effort, if I didn't take full responsibility, if I didn't work to create meaningful relationships and experiences in my own life, I would be the one missing out. See that? I'm the one missing out. And so sometimes it feels like, yeah, that's a little bit harder. That's work. And why am I putting in the extra effort and the extra time?

But at the end of the day, I come off these three experiences. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Traditions that happen every year that fill my cup is as full as it can be for the next month or whatever Runway that gives me. But I get all that, and I didn't create those experiences, but I get to participate and take full responsibility. And when I do that, when I do that, I benefit. See, I win there, because I have those relationships, I have those experiences. I get to share the love, I get to receive the love, and I get to be with the people that matter most to me.

And most important, most importantly, thank you. Yes, thank you for jumping on Yvonne. Most importantly of all, this is when I go to the grave. At the end of the day, when my time here is done, I'm not living in regret. I'm not living wishing that I would have done more, that I would have done something else. So, again, those three phases, very brief, very high level. But the discord, this is where things are hard, challenging. I'm upset. I have resentment. I can clean some of that up and get to a space of peace and serenity and integrity.

There's just nothing there. There's no bad. But it may not also be anything on the other side, but we can exist, and a lot of us stay there. But I challenge. And this is the call to action as we go into the next month, where we have more family and we have more experiences with relationships. And these holidays, how do we take full responsibility and go out of our way to put in the extra effort to create the meaning and responsibility and the love and the relationships that are so deep for us? And again, that's been my experience is I have such a full and rich life with so much, many relationships that I can't imagine life without it.

And so again, for me, that comes from taking full responsibility for the relationships, and I will continue to do that. I hope you do as well. I look forward to talking with you again soon. And again, call to action. Go out there and think about where maybe the upset and the resentment, where maybe you can turn that into the next phase, which is let's just clean that up a little bit and let's just share what's there for us. Because amazing experiences happen when we can just get in space and clear the air with our loved ones.

And then beyond that, if we can get there, how do we move to the next phase and actually create more of that? Not just sit steady state and continue on as is, but go out of my way, go out of our ways to create those relationships. Look forward to hearing from you. Would love to hear your comments or to have you reach out to share what that's like, any of the past livestreams. I just would love to hear from you and understand how that makes a difference in your life, because that's what we're here to do.

Again, I look forward to continuing this conversation. Thank you for joining along in this journey and I hope you all have a beautiful, beautiful week.