Respect the Path: A Recovery Companion for Women in Crisis

By Michele Noel

Respect the Path is a gritty truth-telling companion book to any 12-Step Addiction Recovery effort for women. It is also a must-read for any woman who lives with or loves an addict and has suffered the abuses involved in such a relationship. Generally focused on the broad diversity of the Christian community, Michele pushes back on traditional Christian judgments about the "good or bad" direction anyone's path is currently taking.

Working with women in over a thousand group and individual meetings has taught Michele that even the most depraved addict or the most horribly abused woman can find health and healing for her body, mind, and soul. "The Recovery path is grueling, exhausting, powerful, and glorious. Truth is, gloriousness can only come from growing out of that deprivation. Every path is simply a valued, vital part of uncovering the magnificence that already existed within every woman. Work the path--believe that your path has value, no matter what! Yet valuing the path does not grant permission to stew in the juices of self-pity, blame, or self-righteous rationalizations. Rather, we dig deep for that dormant power of Queenship and go to work. We change ourselves and the world one day at a time. Respecting the path requires us to open our minds to new concepts and ideas about how we think about what we are thinking about."

Michele has seen just as many lives brought to the brink of destruction by repetitive negative thinking patterns as by the ravages of any substance or behavioral addiction. Addiction patterns and negative thinking patterns can be overcome because the brain has a God-given healing power. God is in this work!

Michele uses the term addiction in a broad non-condemning sense because ownership and accountability are essential to healing and finding the joy of Recovery. "The term addiction becomes our friend, our instructor--not a shame label--and it certainly does not define who we are. Rather, it is merely the path we have trod." Michele's favorite self-title is Addict-in-Recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638607793

Book preview

Respect the Path

MICHELE NOEL

Copyright © 2022 Michele Noel

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 978-1-63860-778-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63860-779-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1. Addiction and Honesty

Understanding the Term Addiction

Aggressive Honesty

2. Two Minds and Thought Control

Thought-Control

Thought-Work

3. A Brain Disease

4. Pornography

5. Hope, Shame, Ego

Shame

Ego-Work

6. Codependency

Suicide

Inherited Codependency

7. Trauma

PTSD, Betrayal Trauma, Incest Trauma

Angry Elephants

8. Backloaded Abuse

9. Trauma’s Healing Path

The War

Kill Zone

Trigger-Work

10. Angst, Resistance, Surrender

What Is

Surrender

11. Boundaries

Detach with Love

Boundaries—How-To

12. Seek Truth, Confess, Ask

Confess

Be Ready, Then Ask

The Work of it!

13. Forgiveness, Restitution, Accountability, Godly Sorrow

Reconciliation for the Abused or Traumatized

Restitution

Godly Sorrow

Daily Accountability

14. The Healed Heart

Appendix

Helpful References and Resources

Citations

About the Author

Introduction

During the sharing part of an AA-based 12-Step group meeting, I said, Hi, my name is Michele. I am a prescription drug addict and raging codependent. I am twenty-one years drug-sober and sober from codependence—about twenty minutes. I have been in Recovery nine years for both. My perspective is one of a God-loving, longtime prescription drug addict and codependent in Recovery. My path is not vastly different from so many other Christian women, though the type and degree of addiction may vary. The tension between what I am, what I was, and what I will become provides a viewpoint that I hope helps other women along their path.

I believe that in the days to come, the way we meet in Recovery groups will change. We have learned that while in-person gender-specific groups are the gold standard, online efforts have helped us reach many in need of Recovery. We will also face addiction in a new way; we will study these things and communicate more online, hopefully in addition to in-person groups. I hope this book will be an asset to that study and facilitate full Recovery for those who desire to get right with God. Those who have ears to hear will know that it is time to move from the sludge of addicted thinking into the rivers of light offered by Jesus Christ. My hope is that this work will promote hope and the needed how-to on that path.

Each path of Recovery is unique, and it is essential that we respect such singularity. We respect the path because it promotes the concept that whatever is, is alright. Even when this goes against what we claim to want now, it is the only way things can be due to the choices, thoughts, interpretations, decisions, strengths, weaknesses, and spirit that we are now embracing or have embraced in the past. We do not decide now where the path of another will lead in the future, nor do we know what our current path will bring. If we are wise, we will surrender to the fact that only God knows these things. God watches everyone’s path. We will also surrender or accept that we are who we have become thus far in our journey. This surrender does not condone our past or present bad behaviors, thought patterns, or sorrows inflicted by others; nor does it permit us to stagnate where we are. Angst about where we are causes confusion and more angst. Surrendering to what is will calm the angst and give our spirit-self the needed space for healing.

If our current path is full of pain, sorrow, or confusion, we should seek a better direction. A path to Christ’s healing is grueling yet not confusing, nor is it effortless. We are mortal. We are on a path that includes pain so that we can learn and become the magnificent women God intended. A painful path is a teaching tool of the Gods. If we let Them have Their way, we will eventually thank Them for the pain and the path.¹

Life gets very confusing when our pain is entwined with a loved one’s life choices. When addiction is added to the mix (our own or another’s), devastating hopelessness is usually the result. If an addict is going in the wrong direction while employing the whole gambit of horrific self-inflicted damage, then we must learn to choose to allow their pain to bring them to Christ. This may require us to get out of the way of the pain process. When we trust Christ in the lives of our loved ones, He will do His work. He is the Savior! He is the Healer. We can assist where the Spirit clearly directs, but in the world of addiction, that usually requires us to get out of God’s way. Who are we to decide that anyone’s path will ultimately lead to damnation or more sorrow and pain? We may know that their way will be hard, yet we must accept that their refining pain is vital to God’s perfect tutoring. We neither decide nor predict these things; Christ watches everyone’s path. So the call is to respect God’s work in perfecting others in their path, even if it includes pain for us.

Respecting the path requires us to open our minds to new concepts, ideas, and a new understanding of what it means to help others. If we surrender to these new truths, we may encounter the truth that we also may need a better path. The world of addiction and overcoming sorrows is a dimly lit and hard place to look at, but it is full of joy in the Recovery and outcome. There is great urgency in this work of seeking truth and Recovery, and it enlarges the definition of that word and process. These last days are full of dilemmas and sorrows in both variety and degree that outpace anything known in our world’s history. I have witnessed these things for myself and in the lives of so many amazing women.

For almost three decades, I have been involved in different capacities within addiction Recovery (i.e., addict, white-knuckling addict, addict-in-Recovery, service missionary, sponsor, facilitator, group leader, and full-time senior missionary). I have been an out-of-control prescription drug addict while being an active member of my Christian congregation. I justified taking drugs because of my stress load within my congregation, family, and business life. I told myself that I was different, that I could handle it, and that God would be okay with it. Then I found Recovery and my relationship with my Savior. I do not pretend that the Recovery was easy. It was, in fact, my Gethsemane. Recovery is not an easy path; every path to redemption is grueling. I am a witness to these sorrows.

I have held the shaking shoulders of women in the deepest kind of shame. I have listened to the stories of hearts crushed by betrayal trauma and seen the rage of women trapped in a hundred types of anger and blame. I have sobbed with women tortured by mother guilt wherein they cannot get out of bed, much less forgive themselves for what they did not know while mothering their children who have committed suicide or merely left the covenant path. I have witnessed how regret, self-pity, negative thought patterns, alcohol, and heroin all sicken the physical body in like manner. I have listened to the lies produced in countless severely addicted and broken minds and heard stunning truth pour out of women who have suffered the consequences of abortion and rape. I have listened to the shared feelings of thousands of women in at least one thousand group meetings in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

I have immersed myself in learning the difference between surrender and resistance, connectedness and addicted isolation, controlling others and letting go, between painful negative thinking and true thought-control. I know there is a difference between the formal requirement to forgive and perfectly timed forgiving, the unquenchable ego and the godly power of meekness, the fire of self-revealing journaling, and the perfect peace that comes only through grueling repentance.

Most of us who struggle and work in these trenches have paid the price for a few kernels of truth about the space that exists between those contradicting elements and the place where the Savior’s healing dwells. There is, as well, considerable space between those contradicting elements as a whole and the daily application of the Atonement of Christ. Merely entering, much less traversing, that space is—for the sorrowing, addicted, or abused woman—an act of heroic faith.

I have written this book for our daughters, Krysta, Isa, Cherie, Irma, and Amy; our thirty-five grandchildren, seventeen of whom are granddaughters; and for all other women who love God yet struggle with sorrows. I have done this with joy for all the seeking women who are the caretakers of the sick, the overwhelmed mothers of young children, the exhausted mothers and aunts of addicted teenagers, and the tired grandmothers who are raising their addicted children’s children. I make this effort for those who work full-time in and out of the home, doing the best they can to stay in balance and not go screaming down the street.

I write these words on paper for all terribly disappointed covenant women whose hearts have been broken by men who left or whose partners have inflicted trauma through the use of pornography or other abuses. I write for those who experience the lonely disappointment of a marriage that hasn’t happened yet and those whose wombs are still. I write for women trapped in pornography, gaming, eating disorders, substance addictions, and those savaged by childhood sexual or physical abuse by those who were supposed to protect and nurture them. I also write for the abused who responded in kind to their children or made a drug or behavior addiction the comforter-of-choice and live in constant shame.

I write for the many women who have been crushed by bullying or other injustices that have sorrowed them for years with repetitive triggers and thought patterns of self-pity, blaming others, and are just plain mad as hell. I care about those who became perfectionists or are in constant cycles of depression or anxiety. I do this for those suffering in the terrible cycles of codependency, the well-intentioned over-servers who gave their all for loved ones who strayed from the covenant path. I write because they are now full of disappointed fatigue with no relief in sight, wondering why, after all the things they did right, no one appreciates them and why heaven’s blessings seem to be meant for everyone else.

I have done this for those who will have to wait years before they can take the time to sift through the existing libraries on How to Heal Hatred or Finding Balance while Insane or Overcoming Insanity while Maintaining the Crazies. This book is for the exhausted woman who cries herself to work, praying while driving because there is not one minute to bend a knee on an average morning.

I have attempted to sift through twenty-plus years of study about how to traverse the space between where we are and the daily application of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The focus is on women who know there is a God and love the covenant but feel lost in the maze or have entirely lost their way—lost as to exactly how to connect the dots, one step at a time, that will bring fantastic strength from the only true healer, the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ, while respecting the path, rejecting the shame, and finding the joy of surrendering to what is! If this small effort in compiling, sorting, and reasoning helps one dear searching sister or daughter, I am twice blessed.

Personally, this has been a quest to know the actual value of my multiple roles here on earth: daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend. The stresses held in those roles have presented me with profound challenges, joys, and sorrows. All along the way, other women have been placed in my path to help guide, direct, and comfort me. I cannot adequately express my sincere gratitude for each of them. But it has been through the sorrows of prescription drug addiction and continual study in the trenches of the field of Family Support and Addiction Recovery that the floodgates of knowledge about the magnificence of womanhood have opened.

For my whole life, my entire covenant-loving-yet-messed-up life, the one question I asked continually was How do I apply the Atonement of Jesus Christ to my daily life? In my left-leaning brain, I could not connect the dots until I found the beauty of Recovery. This journey took half a century. I do not know how my life would have been different had I known these truths earlier. I do know this: the Lord’s comprehensive tutoring of my soul is a living, vital, and constant overseer as my path has progressed in many battles with my carnal pain-mind. My prayer is that this book will serve as a useful memoir to family and beloved friends and soothe the sorrows of a suffering co-traveler.

So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them. (Abraham 4:27)

I believe that we agreed to do tough things under the doctrine of agency in the premortal life. We chose to do hard things for the tutoring it will bring to our souls, as well as for those we said we would help. That covenant path exposes the power of womanhood in this life in unexpected ways with its mixture of joys and horrors. This power, sourced in the Gods, allows us to do the very things we promised we would do.

While I have attended online college for several years, I do not have a formal degree. My perspective is born and raised in the trenches of the Christian work of healing sorrowing souls, including my own. I have referenced and given credit where possible, but this is not a scholarly attempt. This effort hopefully facilitates the functional and spiritual healing everyone desires. We all carry an innate longing to be right with God. This work is a companion to any 12-Step (AA-based) workbook. The appendix lists some of my favorite workbooks and other companion study materials. I have been working the 12 Steps in my personal life daily for nearly a decade. While I am forever grateful for these Steps, I noted early on in my Recovery that there were some gaps in the how-to department, especially for women. The hope is that this work fills in some of those gaps. Knowledge is power. We all need more education about addiction, troubled thinking patterns, betrayal trauma, and unrealistic expectations. We learn, practice, and then help each other while we respect the path of each daughter of God.

My gratitude overflows for the help