Tradition 12
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.

We’ve talked some about Tradition 12 in our various meetings this month. It seems to be important for a number of reasons. First, it’s important because it not only protects me but it also protects the program. We’ve discussed how it’s possible that the program would be hurt if individuals touted that they are in Al-Anon and yet failed to live their recovery in their daily life.

It’s also about humility. No one need be treated special or as someone’s HP because when that…

A recent meeting topic was forgiveness. One of the members shared that it was hard for her to forgive her alcoholic mother. She loved her mother but had a hard time forgiving her and now needed to do so.

What I’ve learned is that I first need to forgive myself. Until I forgive myself for the things that I have done and my attitude, then I harbor resentment, guilt and contempt that poison my relationships with others. Working through my fourth step helped me realize how much anger, judgment and guilt I was carrying over in the decisions that I had…

I visited my husband tonight. It was good to see him, and he still seems to be in good spirits, although they are waning somewhat. He’s gotten a nasty chest cold, and he’s sharing a room with someone who goes crazy at night and imagines he’s flying an airplane, so he hasn’t gotten much sleep.

When you visit someone in the looney bin in my town, you sit in a large-ish communal room. There are televisions and puzzles and boardgames and a whole collection of coloring books and crayons. I like it that they want the crazy people to color. My…

Anne Lamott (come on, woman, set up a Google alert on your name and come find me already, for crying out loud) is one of my favorite writers. Recently, I have been reading Grace (Eventually) in stolen moments, usually in the bathroom. The kids are not generally detoured by a closed bathroom door, but they seem to hesitate at the sound of running water, or maybe I they waver when the sound of the shower causes a delay in my response. So, I’ve learned to turn on the shower and “wait for the water to heat up” while I read. (Yes,…

I spoke with my husband this morning, and that’s it. I have been on the road for much of the day heading to my relatives’ house for the holiday, and he knew I would be traveling. Still, I have knots in my stomach because I only heard from him once.

I hate playing this game with myself about the phone. First of all,  I could just call him. I’m not sure how difficult it is to get him on the phone at the hospital where he is, but I know I can call him. I could easily say, “Hi. I love…

I went to visit my husband tonight at the psychiatric hospital. It was good to see him, and he seems ok. They are dosing him with methadone, and they insist that they can’t not. Apparently, there is a federal law that mandates a patient who is receiving methadone maintenance continue to receive his or her dose if that person is kept away from the clinic; however, this same law doesn’t protect patients who are indigent from being cut off by the methadone clinic when they can’t pay.

I am almost impressed by the elegance of the Catch 22s my husband is…

When my husband first started recovery for sex addiction, I used to try to give him these helpful practical tips for how to not cheat on me. After all, I was very successful at not cheating on him. In “Not Cheating on my Husband,” I was getting an A+; I had an absolutely flawless record. He, on the other hand, was getting an F in Not Cheating on his Wife and was clearly in need of some tutoring. And who better to get guidance from than me?

In theory, doing such exceptional work at Not Cheating wasn’t easy for me. After…

When I was about eight or nine, I took my beloved uncle’s cigarettes away and started flushing them down the toilet. I didn’t want him to die prematurely (as he did anyway). Even as a child, I was sure that if I showed him how desperately I did not want him to kill himself, he’d stop. He never did. I wanted that change to somehow be within my power, yet it was completely out of my control. Sometimes death comes before change.

When I was trying to have children, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. And once I…

“Being a sponsor has been an important part of my recovery from growing up with alcoholism. In fact, as a sponsor I never give as much as I get…When I have the privilege of hearing the secret of a sponsee expected to carry in silence for a lifetime, I am reminded of how relieved I was to finally lay down the burden of my secrets with my sponsor…In becoming a sponsor, I cultivate a listening heart for others as well as for myself.”..Hope for Today – August 23.

There are no musts in Al-Anon, except the purpose states that you are…

I’ve had two days that were pretty awful in a row, and neither of them had anything to do with my husband! I’m somehow excited about it. Yesterday, I found out that a major system in my house is failing, and I’m going to have to come up with several thousand dollars to replace it. Today, I took my dog to the vet, and she lost her mind and bit the veterinarian and me.

Living with addiction has certainly given me an interesting perspective on bad thing in my life. These bad things are MY bad things. I didn’t necessarily create…

A meeting topic this week focused on guilt. It seems to be something that rises up for various reasons and can drag us down if we let it. Guilt is defined as having remorse for having done something wrong. What is important is to decide to forgive ourselves by letting go of what others have done to us. Forgiveness is where healing occurs.

I know that it’s easy to slip into the feelings of guilt. But guilt is like almost all feelings, best just felt and let go. The danger for me comes when guilt turns into shame, the feeling that…

Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings

I’ve been going through the process of working the 12 Steps around my own personal craziness, and last week, I reached the point where I was supposed to humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings. Whew! That has so many problematic words in it. I mean even if we forget about “shortcomings” (because, let’s face it, don’t most of us want to keep on keeping on with the ignoring in that department?), we have words like “God” and “ask” and “remove” and (trickiest of all) “humbly.”

I don’t know about you, but I…

Today, at a meeting a nicely dressed woman showed up drunk. She is a designer who has been coming to meetings for a while. She had been out partying and was completely messed up, laughing and generally making a lot of commotion. A couple of guys got her quieted down so that the meeting could continue. Later she picked up a white chip, still drunk.

I know what this does to me. It creates a gut-wrenching reaction. I have to force myself not to move. My eyes tell me that this isn’t anyone that I know but my heart tells me…

I’ve spend this whole, entire day not calling my husband. All I can think about is how much I want to call him, and I know that I can’t call him. When I’m feeling this deep need to connect with him, he can hear it, and he will use it to hurt me.

I have a lot of plans for the weekend, so I’m trying to focus my attention on looking forward to them. I’m trying to focus on ways I can lift my own spirits. I did yoga today, and I have a big yoga workshop tomorrow. There’s a meeting…

I’ve heard a lot of jokes and humor regarding the Al-Anon program. I don’t take offense at them because there often is a misunderstanding of what the program is about.
What it isn’t is a program that bashes or promotes criticism of the alcoholic. In fact, Al-Anon encourages compassion towards the alcoholic. It is really about those who have been affected by the disease of alcoholism.I’ve listened many times over the past few years to a lot of pain coming from women and men who are living with active alcoholism. They cry in pain because someone they love is either dying…

One of the things that relatives of alcoholics do is put forth a happy face to the world that masks a mess underneath. I’ve always liked the saying that “Happiness is an inside job”. But one of the challenges in recovery is to understand how to go about fixing my inside so that I am able to feel the happiness that I know is buried within.

I’ve read something in one of the on line forums that it’s best to “live life, and allow happiness to find me”, as opposed to trying to pursue happiness. This is a lesson that is…

The other night, my husband and I were watching The Amazing Race, a show in which teams of two people follow clues to race to various destinations around the world. Many of the teams view this challenging competition as an opportunity to work together and become closer to each other, and this is true of one of the current teams, a married couple named Ken and Tina.

In the most recent episode, Ken expressed frustration at where their relationship was and said (I wish I had the direct quote, but I’m paraphrasing here) that he wanted to see more rapid change,…

unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy.
I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world
as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

~Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book)

This past week has been one of those in which I look at my life, not with gratitude for all that I do have, but in despair for all that I don’t. I have been craving the things that others seem to have: time, money, older independent children (or no children…

I saw my husband earlier this week, and the brief contact with him seemed somehow to invigorate me. It was a good visit, and I’m glad he dropped by.

I am concerned for my sanity, though, in that seeing him had such a profound affect on my mood for days. I’m feeling much better about life because of a few minutes of contact with him. I don’t want something outside of myself and my own control to have such a profound impact on my ability to function. I’m glad to be feeling more back to myself, but I’m concerned about the way…

As part of the process of working through my Third Step, I did a two exercises designed to help put me in touch with my Higher Power.

In the first, I was supposed to meditate on people I’d admired and the spiritual gifts I’d received from them. But it was like trying to keep the foreground and background of a picture in focus at the same time. I’d think about the people, and God would slip out of focus. I’d quiet my mind and feel closer to God, and the people would slip away. Eventually, fuming with frustration, I decided to…