In Which I Receive a Sign…
Jan 3, 09- (by Mama MPJ)
- 5 responses
- Family and Friends, Sober Salon
Although I’ve just finished working the 12 Steps with an online group, I haven’t been to a real life 12 Step meeting in over a year. I went to meetings weekly in the first year after I learned of my husband’s sexual addiction, but I stopped going regularly about four years ago. The meetings stopped being good for me — or maybe I stopped being good for the meetings — in any case, I got to a place where my group and I just weren’t good for one another. However, I’ve been starting to think that maybe it was time to go back. Maybe I’m ready now.
One of the things holding me back has been the fact that I never felt entirely comfortable with the approach of my old group. There was another group I attended a few times that I liked better, but there were no local meetings. A few days ago, I shared this with my online group and my husband. I wondered if I should go back to the old group or try to start a local meeting for the other group, although the idea of starting a meeting seemed overwhelming.
On New Year’s, my husband said he was thinking about skipping his own meeting. It’s something he only does on holidays, and on this particular holiday, I hadn’t been feeling well, so he was leaning toward staying home to let me get some extra rest while he put the kids to bed. But when his meeting time came, I was feeling better and told him to go. When he came back, he said excitedly, “I have something for you!” and pulled out a flier. It turns out that his meeting is moving to a new (larger) room, and a new group is moving into their old room this week. The new group? The very meeting I was just bemoaning the lack of.
Well, ok then. I guess I’ll be going back to 12 Step meetings this year.
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And that seems to be the way it works
I love it when the decision is made for me.
Its so wonderful how things work out how they are meant to work out in such a great way!!! Life is heading in the direction its heading and I am so happy for you!
This is awesome, MPJ! I’m so glad everything fell into place for you. And I know you’ll have so much to contribute to this new group.
Around here we like to say that all you need to start a new meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot. I stayed away from the group that I now consider my home group for about a year - It took that long to get over thinking of them as insufferable fools and to realize that I had something to bring to the meeting. Around here there is also a faction of 12 steppers who have a very particular way of understanding the material in the big book, a specific way of working with newcomers, a method of working steps, etc. that they believe works - that may work for them - and that I think is a cult of personality founded on the rantings of a megalomaniac and which causes incalculable damage to most of the people they come into contact with. I stay clear of them. But I find that I really need people and I need people who I can see and talk to and sit down with so I found other meetings. I’m sure that you’ll find what you’re looking for in a meeting if you keep an open mind, don’t judge to harshly or too soon, and remember that you have something to bring to the meeting that no one else does.
I hope you find your home in this new group. I am so grateful that I have a meeting that works for me. I’ve found for myself that I’m more comfortable in a local Al-Anon meeting than I was in our local COSA group, though I do sometimes miss the focus on sexual codependency. When it comes down to it, though, what matters most to me is a healthy focus on the steps, which is what is helping me recover.