I guess I am getting better at taking care of myself. I was able to tell her why I was changing to another person and I was able to take care of myself in doing what was best for me and considering my own best interest. I expected I would feel badly after it, as if I had let her down or abandon her, but strangely I feel liberated and healthy and totally at peace with my choice.

My first sponsor was in Alanon as well as AA. I liked that she understood both sides of my life, my need to recover and my need to understand my alcoholic. She was a wealth of information for me and truthfully still is should I need her and the fact that she had known the house hold my boys grew up in, after having grown up in one similar herself made her a magnet for me. She was the first person I reached out to and we were a temporary sponsor / sponsee from the start. It was agreed upon early on because I needed to feel safe and not blocked in, because I was afraid to commit. But it was a trial and error thing as she was often times over committed to other things and on many occasions our meetings would be canceled due to things going on in her life. So we learned to talk on the phone much of the time and that worked for me then.

My first sponsor, became my friend and I need all the friends I can get. Gratefully she still is. Last month I found an older woman, who when she spoke I saw in her ‘what I wanted’. I knew I had to change my sponsor and initially I felt a bit apprehensive because of it. I was drawn to this older woman, my now sponsor. Something about her reminds me of lazy summers in Oklahoma with old family relatives. She is from the south and I admit I do have a soft spot for the southern accents, the southern people that remind me of my past.

This recovery thing, even in the midst of financial melt down, this recovery thing has helped to keep me grounded. Regardless of the grey clouds that loom over head I am able to recover and remain grounded in the company of a meeting, listening to others, being reminded I am not alone and that there is so much more to life now than there was before I began this recovery thing.