“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — William Shakespeare

It’s Father’s Day today. My father died in 1985. I think of him often, but there’s something about Father’s Day that was special when he was alive and is still special today. For me, it was always a way to say “Thank you” to a man that I both loved and feared. I would make him a card with my crayons when I was a kid and later would give him a card and a present.

My father was a man of few words and didn’t talk about feelings.…

Newcomers at meetings hear things differently than those who have been going for a while.  We each hear different things in meetings and we each take away something different from a meeting.  Sometimes I hear such eloquent things from people.  And I’ll wish that I had the oratory skills to express my thoughts better.  But is sharing really about how great a public speaker a person is?  Sure, it helps not to wander all over the place and to go on and on saying the same thing over and over.  But sharing isn’t about how witty someone is or how…

I laugh when I hear someone in a meeting say that they “shoulded” all over themselves. It is funny but such a true statement for so many of us in the program.

I certainly did my share of shoulding. And most of my finger-wagging attitude came because I was angry that my expectations and values weren’t being met. And I had no concept at the time about being powerless. I thought that I knew how things should be. The alcoholic had a different attitude.

I listened to a sponsee tell me about his shoulding yesterday. His wife is an active alcoholic, and…

At the meeting last night a lady shared about how little communication there is with her husband. She said that since he got sober, he didn’t talk. She said that talking about their children, their finances, and his sobriety were off limits.

Probably the saddest part that she related was that in going out for dinner at a restaurant, they would sit in silence with the only words spoken being those of the server. They’ve been married 42 years.

Sadly, I’ve watched people in restaurants where there was no communication. They sit and eat their meal without even glancing at each other.…

I went to a great meeting yesterday  that really got my thoughts going round and round. The topic was about loss. Most people shared about lost relationships. And how they lost themselves in dealing with alcoholism.

As people were sharing, I thought about how I really didn’t realize how much I had lost, until I found myself in this program. I was determined never to be the quitter. I stuck with my wife through some bad times, I stuck with my mother during her depressions and last years, I stuck with my job during many periods of disillusionment, and I stuck…

“Lower your expectations until you get what you want”. I was told that a few days ago when I was getting myself into self-pity mode. I was bemoaning a few things that were driven by fear which is my chief character defect.

It’s easy to let myself slip back into having fantasies about how things “should” be or how I want them to be.  I can build up expectations about something that I am planning, or that I hope someone else is planning.  And quickly I’ll be disappointed when my expectation doesn’t turn out the way that I have planned.  Then …

Yesterday there was a good meeting on “Let It Begin with Me”. This was a timely topic for me, especially in view of my thoughts about service work this week. I know that getting honest with myself about what I can realistically do and what I can’t is an essential part of the slogan.

If I want things to change in my life for the better then it will need to begin with me. When I first came to Al-Anon, my marriage was just about dead. This was a last ditch effort for me. I didn’t want to live with alcoholism,…

I recently shared in a meeting that I have begun to feel as if I am taking on more and more service work with Al-Anon. And the feeling that I get is similar to those pre-program years when I took on more and more things at work and at home, only to feel trapped and resentful that I had taken on too much.

I inventoried what was going on and find that I’m not wanting to take on anything else. In fact, I’m wanting to rotate out of service on some things. I haven’t volunteered to do the Beginner meeting in…

I’ve read several blogs and seen for myself in real life the horrors that go along with active alcoholism.  One woman wrote in her blog that she was struck on the head and choked by her husband who is alcoholic. She called the police and now has a 11 day Emergency Protective Order for her and their 20 month old child. And she is scared, lonely, and wondering the same thoughts that I used to wonder about during the time that I lived with active alcoholism.

In the worse part of those years when my wife was drinking, we had our…

One of the qualities that I have come to admire in this program is the ability to remain calm and serene even in the midst of turmoil. It’s like a Zen like peace that emanates from a few people that I know. I’m still very much a work in progress, although my serenity meter has definitely moved to the higher end of the scale since joining the program.

Those times when I display anger, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, self-pity and a host of other character defects still come up. Yet, most of the time I don’t put that face forward to…

It’s wearying to see the lack of respect that occurs in our culture today. And in spite of the rude and unkind behavior of others, “respect” is a big issue worldwide. Everyone wants it, but there’s a prevailing feeling that it has to be earned or gained in some way.

Maybe this whole thing about respect is bass-ackwards and “Respect is always given and never earned.”

I was taught to respect people, all people, from childhood. And that respect was given and kept unless proven otherwise through the course of their actions. Respect wasn’t required to be a test given to another…

At the noon meeting, we talked about losses. Some of us shared about losing loved ones to the disease. I shared about losing myself. It has taken me a lot of years to recognize that I am still grieving the loss of innocence that I had as a child and the loss of love that I experienced in my marriage.

The sadness, anxiety, anger, and emotional confusion that I experienced as a child were extended into my marriage to an alcoholic. I had a lot of expectations of others that never were met. I wanted closeness with my father who loved…

I remember all those Mother’s Days when I would get up early and put cards out and pick some flowers from the yard for my mother. The cards were the ones that I had made, with stiff paper and colored with crayons. Later on, I bought cards but they never seemed to have the same significance for me as those early ones that I made. The flowers could be anything from what was growing, usually tulips, daffodils, and irises, to some wild flowers. My mother would always act surprised and happy. She kept all those cards, and I found them…

Another part of the closing statement for Al-Anon goes like this:

I’ve always liked the Al-Anon closing statement. But this part of it I have found particularly moving:

“A few special words to those of you who haven’t been with us long: Whatever your problems there are those among us who have had them, too. If you try to keep an open mind you will find help. You will come to realize that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.”

In dealing with alcoholism, there is a lot of dishonesty. I’ve been dishonest with myself for a long time because I tried to pretend that things were going well. People would ask me how things were going and I’d say that they were “fine”. I think that sometimes I believed that things were going well because it was too hard to look at the truth.

And then there is my unwillingness to hurt others. I’d been hurt plenty but when it came to being brutally honest about my feelings, I found it difficult to slash and cut the other person. Every…

I’ve been thinking about how anger is a hurtful thing. Just seeing someone go off on another indicates the amount of physical and emotional energy that anger takes. It’s not a productive emotion for me and seems to take away my enjoyment of people and opportunities around me. The words that are said during an angry interchange can maim the soul. But after an angry outburst, it takes me quite a while to get the event out of my head because I go over it and try to figure out what happened.

It seems that angry people like to think that…

There’s a roundup occurring nearby that my sponsor and I are attending. These are a great opportunity to listen to some great speakers and to participate in some of the small meetings that occur. It’s also a great time to meet other people in the program. I went to this roundup a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it.

I’ve downloaded a lot of the speakers from Sobercasting.org and have been listening to them on my IPod as I make the drive to and from my work. Some of them are excellent and have incredibly compelling stories. I’ve found myself very…

I was listening to a speaker talk about how life is often spoken of as a game. I haven’t felt that it was much fun playing the game of life until I came to Al-Anon. In thinking about my life and the stages that I’ve gone through, several things come to mind as to how I’ve played the game.

1. Don’t play at all–just give up. During the last few years when things were so bad and I felt hopeless, I came as close to giving up as I could. I simply had enough of the anger, moodiness, emptiness and depression.…

It’s good to have it be Saturday, and I’m grateful for getting a good night’s sleep. Even a simple thing like having it be Saturday is something to be grateful for. One of the things that is helpful with recovery is to have a gratitude list.

I thought that this concept seemed strange when I first heard about it since I guess I’d always felt the things that pleased me rather than actually listing them. My first gratitude list came after a particularly low period  when I felt a lot of self-pity and frustration about my life. My sponsor suggested that…

I went to a meeting last night where the topic was One Day at a Time. Because I was on the other side of town, I couldn’t make my regular Al-Anon meeting so I went to a nearby AA meeting. It was interesting to hear the alcoholics’ perspective since I’ve heard so much about ODAT in Al-Anon.

What I heard about self-pity, fears, and expectations were identical to sharings of Al-Anon without alcohol being in the mix. One person talked about escaping through alcohol because of not wanting to face fears. Once the alcohol was eliminated, then there were other means…

Have you ever noticed how things just slow down and chill out when you finally “get it” about recovery? All the things that used to burn my fuse seem so insignificant and distant to me now. I’m actually surprised when I encounter something that seems to burn someone else’s fuse. Traffic and driving is a good example. I have a 5 speed car so I shift into neutral at a stop light. It may take, say, 2 seconds to shift into first from neutral but you would be surprised at the number of people who will beep or shake their…

I had the old anxiety dream last night in which I was alone and looking for the person that I love. It always ends the same way in which I find the person who wants nothing to do with me and is drunk. This is a recurring dream of fear and loss that I have had throughout the duration of my marriage. A therapist once described it as post-traumatic stress syndrome from the anxiety over drinking. I think that it goes deeper and right to my childhood where I became fearful of being left alone by one or both parents.…

At last night’s Al-Anon meeting, we talked about Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. This is a step in which I can either choose to get lost in all my character defects or accept my limitations and let my HP take over. Through step one I’ve learned that I can’t control people, places or things, especially the alcoholic. In Step Two I accepted that a power greater than me can help me, nurture me and restore me to sanity.

For me, I think about three…

When I first started in Al-Anon, I thought that there was a different language being spoken. There are a lot of phrases that are used such as “One Day at a Time”, “Let go and let God” “How important is it?” and many others. One of the acronyms that I could identify with was F.I.N.E. which means F–kedup, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. How true those adjectives fit me!

I came into the program after a lot of years of frustration, anger, self-pity, denial and low self-esteem. I always thought that I was a bit of a loner, although I like people.…

When I first walked into an Al-Anon meeting, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was at a very low point emotionally and knew that I needed to get some help. They say in AA that you have to hit bottom before you recognize the problem and get with the program, or else you die. I guess you can say that I had pretty much hit bottom emotionally. I felt empty and tired of everything. I had pushed myself to work, do chores, and keep life moving along by sheer determination. My “qualifier” and SO wasn’t getting any better in…

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

This is my favorite step. I like it because it incorporates all that I’ve put into action through the previous nine steps. But most of all, it means that it’s okay for me to recognize and admit my mistakes promptly and then move on.

Step 10 means that I take my own inventory and not someone else’s. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to take the alcoholic’s inventory. But that isn’t what this is about. And this step isn’t about my being right. It’s about my having…

Have you ever noticed how the small things make people happy? I think that sometimes it’s just a smile or an expression that you care that can make a person’s day.

Yesterday I took some time to go with a good friend to visit his aunt. She is 80 years old. She lives alone now, after the death of her husband three years ago. She seemed to be thrilled to have a visit from us. We drove her around the town for about 30 minutes because she doesn’t drive anymore. She wanted to show her nephew some of the places from…

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about step four. One of the guys that I sponsor is working on his step four inventory.  In Al-Anon there is a work book called Blueprint for Progress that is used to help with this step which is a “searching and fearless moral inventory” to include resentments, fears, harms to others, and sexual conduct. I’ve heard that some people fear this step. When I did my Step Four, I looked forward to doing this work. I’ve been to therapists and told them my story. With Al-Anon, I think that this step was more helpful…