Casey - Change your mind and your life will follow: 12 simple principles

This edition first published in 2016 by Conari Press,

an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2016 by Karen Casey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Originally published in 2005 by Conari Press, ISBN 978-1-57324-213-4.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-682-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the hardcover editon

Casey Karen.

Change your mind and your life will follow : 12 simple principles / Karen Casey.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57324-213-6 (alk. paper)

1. Twelve-step programsReligious aspects. I. Title.

BL624.C357 2005

204'.4dc22

2004027460

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover images: buds haraldmuc / shutterstock, flower Pixel-joy / shutterstock

Typeset in Garamond MT

Printed in the United States of America

M&G

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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I t's a bit mind-bending realizing that Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow was written a decade ago. I was sitting right where I am now, in our Minnesota lake home, pounding away on my Apple computer in the wee hours of the morning. I had a deadline that I intended to make and the ideas filled my mind as quickly as I was able to make space for them. The words tumbled forth almost unnoticed by me. And the ideas kept coming.

Gloriously I sat among the ideas and the thousands of words knowing, without question, that I was doing exactly what I was intended to do. That's been the beauty of my writing life, actually. I have never doubted that the God of my understanding had called me to attention as I sat before my computer. In fact, that god had first called me to attention in 1981 as I sat, not many miles from here, with pen and legal pad in hand writing the words that were to become my first book: Each Day a New Beginning. My god has kept me very busy over the years, listening and then writing the hundreds of thousands of words that have filled many books. I consider myself a lucky woman indeed.

As I sit here recalling the many pleasures, as well as the struggles of my life, I am wholeheartedly convinced that I wouldn't change any single event. I believe that every one of them wore my name. Whomever I met I know agreed to meet me. Whatever I learned was on the list I came here to sort out. Having this mindset gives me relief beyond measure. It has allowed me to trust that whatever remains of my life will be exactly as it is destined to be. And all who cross my path want to do so. We will meet because that has been our intention. We will learn that which we came here to learn.

Reviewing this book you now hold a full decade after it was first published pleases me, not only because of the message that I continue to feel committed to word for word, but because it has stood this brief test of time. I simply wouldn't change a word of this book, with the exception of updating the number of sober years I have had, and that seems remarkable, actually. Is it because I got the message so right the first time around or because I trust that what was written then simply needed to be shared by me in that perfect time? And what I may need to share now will find its way on to the pages of another book.

My journey with you, the reader, has been such a gift, one that I feel so blessed to have traveled. That we have been able to develop a friendship through this and perhaps other books of mine, too, has given my life such a rich purpose. We each have been purposefully born. I relish this Truth.

Day in and day out. That it will pull me forward into my next pursuit allows my breath to freely escape between my softened lips. We are here by intention. We will be there with intention too.

May your every step be taken with as much assurance as your heart can hold. And may we meet repeatedly along this journey that has so lovingly called our names.

Karen Casey
www.womens-spirituality.com

MY JOURNEY

I AM DAUGHTER number three. Sixty-five years ago my father, against the doctor's advice, insisted that my mother get pregnant again. He wanted a son. My mother didn't want any more children. I can't be certain that I sensed her unhappiness about my impending birth while in the womb, but I think I did. A former therapist of mine thinks so, too. Two years after I was born, there was a fourth child, a son. My dad rejoiced. My mom became even sadder.

My earliest memories are of closely watching my parents' every move, trying to figure out if I was the cause of their unhappiness, of my dad's incessant rage and my mother's sadness. Watching their faces for clues about how I should feel and behave became second nature to me. And I strenuously avoided eye contact with either of them.

Most of the time I was scared. At times the fear was immobilizing. I spent many Sunday afternoons and evenings on the living room couch, sick to the point of vomiting, because I had to go back to school on Monday morning and face teachers who made me as fearful and uncomfortable as my parents did. My fear followed me throughout childhood and into adulthood, stomach aches and all.

By the time I was in high school the habits I had formed to deal with my anxietyincluding escaping into a fantasy world, which I wrote about during spare momentswere well honed. I wanted to spend as little time as possible around my real family, so I lied about my age and got a job in a department store when I was barely fifteen. I went to work every day after school and on Saturdays, thus managing to greatly reduce the number of hours a week that I had to interact with my family.

Unfortunately this did nothing for my anxiety.

Growing up, my siblings and I never talked about the near-constant fighting at our house. Sadly, we seldom talked to each other at all, so I never knew if the fighting triggered the same kind of fear in them. It seemed that each one of us more or less tiptoed around the house, trying to avoid my dad's wrath, without ever acknowledging that that was what we were doing. Perhaps our isolation from one another was our attempt to keep the fear from being real and overtaking us.

Only in the last few years have my siblings and I broached the topic of the tension in our household. Since no two people ever share the same perceptions in troubled families it's perhaps not surprising that no one seems to recall it as vividly as I do. One sister hardly recalls it at all.

Throughout high school, even though I was a member of the in group, I always felt slightly separate. I often tried to read the faces of my friends to see how well I was liked, as had been my steady habit in my family. I am quite certain that none of my friends realized how insecure I felt. I certainly never voiced my fears. I didn't need to. By age fifteen I had discovered the perfect anxiety reducer: alcohol.

My drinking was alcoholic from the start. I didn't get drunk every day, of course. It was not until I was married that I started drinking every day. But I did feel an immediate sense of well-being every time I drank, and I loved the freedom from fear that alcohol offered me. My love of alcohol didn't elicit reprimands or even a glance from my parents. They drank, too, as did all of their friends, as well as their siblings. It was easy to indulge without drawing attention to myself. And luckily for me there were frequent family gatherings where I managed to meld into the woodwork with a drink in one hand and a stolen cigarette in the other.