Seventeen to twenty-one weekly three-hour sessions of group therapy at $60 a pop. This is fairly standard for a first DUI in my county. Some are more, some are less – this is what I got. When I learned that this would be part of my probation I was at a point in the process where I thought I was nearly finished. I had done the six weeks of therapy that my lawyer’s evaluator had prescribed and I honestly thought that I was bringing my paperwork to the court evaluator so they could give me a big fat check mark – that much closer to being finished with all this mess. Instead she told me that those six sessions were a waste of my time and I would be going to group therapy for seventeen to twenty-one weeks. Needless to say, this information rocked my world.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at my first session. We started with the inventory I mentioned before and after completing that we went around the room and shared what we scored the highest and lowest on and elaborated on one or the other. We came to one young lady who already stood out for me as the sort of person I would like to learn more about. She radiated positivity. She had a great laugh, used it and seemed kind.
Jennifer scored lowest on finances and that frustrated her. She had been financially responsible and independent from an early age and over the past year had gone through some difficulties that had put her in debt. She was relying on others for help and that made her uncomfortable. About a year before I met her in group, she broke both her feet rockclimbing, bouldering, dirtbiking or something along those lines. She was laid off from her waitressing job because she couldn’t work with those injuries. Just after that she got busted for a DUI – the second in five years – a big no no. Not to mention, she’d had a third DUI charge reduced to a reckless driving charge. Now I’m a pretty reasonable person. I can see that two DUIs and a reckless driving charge within five years’ time should raise flags. In fact, Jennifer told me at some point that first night that she was going into this process with an open mind…she too saw a raised flag. What she told me next, though, made my heart sore. Jennifer was taking care of her mother, who was in hospice, when she got this DUI. Despite her attempts to stay out of jail and care for her mother, she was sentenced to three months. Her mother died while she was there.
What’s interesting is that I didn’t pity her circumstances so much as admire her attitude. I interact with way too many people who blame everyone but themselves for the situations they’re in to overlook someone who is so willing to own up to their mistakes and do so with a positive attitude. My mother and my sister complimented me many times in the first few months of my DUI for my positive attitude. As I sat and listened to Jennifer I thought My God! Its one thing for me to have a positive attitude about all this but for this girl to have one shows resilience on a whole new level. Thank you for bringing me to a place where I can meet her, see this and hear your message.
As it turns out, group has been one of the best things I’ve gotten out of this whole experience. We don’t sit around and talk about drugs and alcohol the whole time. We also talk about our attitudes, our goals and our perceptions. We try to train ourselves to respond and behave in ways that reflect consciousness and further our goals. We share our experiences with one another in the hopes that we can all come away better than we came. Well, some of us do, anyway…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – his plan is always better than mine. If I’d walked out of that court evaluation with a paper signed and the light shining at the end of the tunnel I would have missed so much. Though that afternoon was filled with tears, the subsequent days have been filled with personal revelations. My God…thank you so much!
