The Insanity of the Pink Cloud in a Codependent Relationship – Mary R.

About This Speaker Tape

1953, Kansas. A little girl in a Shirley Temple outfit with bright red lipstick, already learned by age three how to be manipulative and get her needs met through sex. Mary R. grew up as the "last hope" for a son, pushing herself to outrun and outthrow the boys just to be acceptable to a quiet father. She describes a childhood of wreckage—incest, physical abuse, and a mother who was a rager—which she masked with cherry bombs thrown under portable classrooms and a descent into drugs and alcohol.

After a stint as the wife of a "drugstore biker" and a subsequent marriage to an abusive alcoholic, Mary hit a total emotional bottom. She speaks of the "insanity" of the pink cloud, where early sobriety collided with a codependent relationship that left her jealous, paranoid, and feeling like a mess. Through a Higher Power and rigorous footwork, she stopped protecting the victimizer and faced her own offensive patterns of control. Recovery, she concludes, is simply the gaps between the malf...

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Reading of the Serenity Prayer and the CODA preamble.
• 2:15 Mary R. describes her childhood as a survivor of physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse.
• 5:10 The pressure to be a boy for her father and the use of sports to gain approval.
• 8:40 Stories of childhood rebellion and the use of cherry bombs in school.
• 11:20 Laughter: The 'drugstore biker' husband and his acid use.
• 15:45 Hitting an emotional bottom and the 'pink cloud' phase of early sobriety.
• 19:10 The struggle with Step 1 and the year it took to admit powerlessness over codependency.
• 22:30 Step 4: Confronting the 'wall of fear' and the tendency to protect the victimizer.
• 26:15 The process of forgiving herself before she could forgive her parents.
• 29:40 Defining recovery as the reduction of time spent in unhealthy behaviors.
• 32:10 Discussing the founding of CODA and surrendering the program to the fellowship.