We Are Just As Sick

One of the important parts of doing Step One is in realizing that we are as sick as our alcoholics. It says in Step One that OUR lives had become unmanageable. This program is about us but for many years, while I was still living with active alcoholics I would rationalize it in my head that I was going to these meetings because of them. THEY were sick. I need to learn how to live with THEM. If THEY hadn't done all these things to me then I would be a perfectly fine and functioning person in the world. Even though we are taught that it is a family disease, I still placed all the blame on their faults and what I saw as THEIR disease.

After my alcoholics weren't with me anymore though-- after they had died, I was still here and I was still not managing my life to the best of my abilities. I was still displaying codependent thoughts and behaviors. I was still stuck in everyone's head but my own. I still didn't listen to my Higher Power. I still let my character defects run rampant through my life where they created chaos and disorder. I left Alanon for several years and jumped head on into many slips because I was sure that with my family of alcoholics gone I didn't need to do the work anymore.

I still would rage on about how if they hadn't left me when I was in my twenties that I would have a better life now. I still blamed them for the chaos that enveloped my life in the wake of their disease. I still was in so many people's heads that I couldn't think straight. My depression and codependency was a result of their problems, obviously not my own.

I was thinking today though how it's impossible to blame them for anything in my life anymore. It's been a year since my mother died, three since my father died and five since my sister died. I have discovered the ultimate detachment. They're not here anymore. They're not doing anything to me actively. They don't even know the problems I face now or what my life has become so the idea of me blaming them for anything that I have created in my own life seems to fall very short now.

I'm still sick.

I have all the problems that this FAMILY disease has instilled in my brain. I am standing here on my own, alone with no alcoholics in my life and I am still living in many of the same ways that I did when they were here. I, and I alone, are recreating the same patterns that I lived before because I lack the knowledge and know-how to create anything else. I need the help. I need my Higher Power to guide me. When you're locked in a room by yourself, which is somewhat what it's felt like since I was left an orphan in my family, you discover in that silence what really goes on in your own brain and what kind of person you are.

I am a person in need of recovery.

I find that recovery in Alanon.

Concept One: Responsibility and Authority -- Two Sides of the Same Coin

CONCEPT ONE: The ultimate responsibility and authority  for Al‑Anon world services  belongs to the Al‑Anon groups.

Concept One came about because Dr. Bob, one of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, became terminally ill. This was someone who the groups of AA looked to and entrusted with many policy decisions. Though the years had been fruitful to AA and many thought it would continue throughout the future unharmed, Bill W-- the other main co-founder of the fellowship-- needed to ensure that the fellowship was protected in case anything happened to those like him and Dr. Bob who had first created it. He wanted to make sure that future generations could benefit from the strength and hope of the program they had established.

Bill W had fought in World War I. He had seen for himself that many dictatorships crumble under the ultimate power of one authority figure while other governments were made too weak with complete democracy to do anything to ensure their futures. He needed something more to sustain the spiritual program of AA. He did this by passing the responsibility and authority to the groups themselves. They would then be trusted to conduct their own group conscious meetings through their own higher power and Tradition 2 which states “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” The trusted servants in turn would serve the groups in higher offices but they would be accountable and responsible to the authority of the Alanon groups themselves. He said this was possible because it was a spiritual program and because the love of a higher power was behind the program.

Alanon kept this model. We received the Twelve Concepts from Alcoholics Anonymous when they were first created in that fellowship in 1962. We adopted them just as we did the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and they helped to strengthen our own fellowship. Many people who come to these programs are confused about how to work well with others and do service that is helpful and orderly. These concepts give us practical rules to live by concerning the fellowship as a whole but also show how we can work well with others. They describe how best to do service, both in the program and in our own lives. Through Concept One we created group conscience meeting, the upside-down triangle of authority of Alanon with the groups maintaining responsibility and authority in the program and a basis for which to allow our trusted servants to serve but not govern us. The program now had a way to to carry out it's service.

The main message of Concept One is Unity. It also shows how we have to serve the group in order for the Alanon groups to serve us; we have to give it away to keep it. Bill did this in AA when he gave his baby-- his program that he created out of the blood, sweat and tears of his own life-- and gave it over to the groups and their authority. He saw that there was so much more the groups could do that a few authority figures could not. One person can not do as much as the whole group.

We must remember that we recovered through the program. It's not enough to recovery and have unity with those in the program, we must also uphold the responsibilities that are given to us with the many service opportunities in the program. We may have the authority within our groups for Alanon, but without continuing to fulfill the service positions there will be no Alanon anymore and future generations will not be able to benefit from the program as we have. Authority and responsibility are therefore two sides of the same coin. We can not have one without the other.

This translates to our own lives as well. When we allowed other people to become our Higher Power and bent to the wishes and whims of the alcoholic many of us hid from our responsibilities. We stopped taking care of ourselves as we should have and with that lost much of the authority over our own lives. We ended up with lives that were unmanageable and out of control.

On the other side of things, how often did we think that we were the ultimate authority for our Alcoholics? We took their responsibility away by trying to become their Higher Power. We paid their bills, did their chores, made sure they were happy and they forgot how to manage their own lives because we were there to enable them. We forgot that we were part of a team. We forgot that the unity of our own relationships should be about two people coming together equally. We tried to control that which wasn't ours in the first place and took on way too much for one person to handle. We needed to delegate like in the program when we place some of the duties of Alanon in the service boards. We needed to give some of the authority away to keep our sanity. No one person or one group can do it all.

To truly work this concept in our lives we have to remember that we are part of the group. No man is an island and if we try to do it all we will surely drown. We have to also be able to dedicate our new found sanity and peace to serving the group and it's collective conscious, as it says in Tradition 1: “Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.” We must seek to serve the groups in our lives-- our families, our marriages, our work environments and our family groups at Alanon. We must give it away to keep it and continue to do service where it is needed, in this way we serve the group but we also make sure that the groups continue to serve us. By doing service where it is needed and warranted we will pass it on to the next generation and ensure that we all get healthy.

Alanon's Best Kept Secrets: The Concepts of Service

The Concepts of Service are called one of Alanon's “best kept secrets”. I've never come across a meeting on a concept in my area. We give lip service to them in the beginning of most of the meetings in this county. We'll read the same twelve statements, usually one per each meeting and call it a wrap. I used to sit there during the reading of the Concepts and wonder what all these things meant and we we were reading them if we weren't going to ever use them. It seemed like a lot of wasted time when we could just get right to the sharing.

We barely do meetings on Traditions either. I remember a few years ago in my home group, we had a group conscious meeting about changing the format of the meeting so that we would do Step study on the first Thursday of the week like we were already doing and then some people wanted to add in Tradition study on the third Thursday of the week. So many people were against doing this because they didn't see any point in studying the Traditions.

However, as I did my own reading and studying of the traditions a whole new world opened up for me. It's said that the Steps are for our own recovery and the Traditions show us how to have group unity. Once I started studying them I found helpful ideas on promotion versus attraction, supporting yourself financially and emotional, remaining anonymous and all these other life lessons that I was never taught growing up in a dysfunctional home that was plagued by alcoholism. It was as if someone had given me the handbook for life, opening my eyes wide while they said, “here's all those things you always wanted to know but never knew where to ask.”

My first inkling that Traditions were a guide to practical relationships and unity came from this article: http://www.upperroomcomm.com/insights/traditions.shtml and also later from this PDF file: http://storiesofrecovery.org/downloader/index.php?afg/TraditionsAsAGuideToHealthyRelations.pdf . It was such a wonderful a-ha moment! When my home group passed the motion that we would start studying the Traditions I volunteered to speak on the first one-- mostly just because I wanted to open other people's eyes to what I'd found through those two readings. I like to think they were impressed because a lot of them were like me and didn't really know that the Traditions were of any use outside of the Alanon groups. Why isn't this being taught more?

Now that I've come back to Alanon I want to dive back into the murky depths and pull up as much treasure as I can find in these waters. I want to know the program deeply. I've had many slips in these past few years and I feel like maybe if I grab onto something new or something I haven't learned about yet it'll stick this time and I'll keep coming back to the rooms. This probably has to do with my over-eagerness and maybe a misplaced sense of guilt for the slips that have occurred. Still, I want to teach myself the Concepts of Service. They are said to be a good guide to working well with others-- something that as a child from a dysfunctional home I know very little about.

Unfortunately, unlike the Traditions which have so much written about them information about the Concepts seems very bare. When I CAN find it I find it so hard to wrap my head around the business like legal jargon and translate it into English. It's hard to figure out what is trying to be said though I still feel like there's some awesome information in there if I can just figure it out. There's stuff about participating to create harmony, effective leadership and how responsibility and authority are two sides of the same coin if I can just reach down far enough to pull these secrets out from where they're hidden so tightly away. Here's hoping I hit the jackpot! I'll let you know what I find.

What an Alanonic learned at an open AA meeting...

I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the other day. I do this sometimes so I can gain perspective on the disease from the other side of the fence. My own view point can become very narrow at times and I need fresh ideas so my brain can have some more puzzle pieces to play with to figure out this great big thing we call life. Tunnel vision is the great curse of being an alanonic.

At this meeting, there was a newcomer who didn't know if they were in the right meeting. They told some of their story and then threw out their question to the others in the program: “So, do you think I'm an alcoholic?” They seemed desperate for some kind of validation, as if they were pleading with the elders of some tribe to tell them what they needed to do with their life, give them guidance on this problem and start them on the quest to finding the missing part of themselves.

None of the people in the meeting would tell them the answer. It couldn't come from them. They weren't a tribe of elders. They followed Tradition Two very well where it was written, “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”

In the end one of them finally explained that no one in Alcoholics Anonymous could call another person an alcoholic. They had no authority like that. They only came to share their OWN experience, strength and hope not to cast judgments on those who came through the doors to the meetings. They went on to say that it was something that person would have to do some soul-searching to figure out because when the answers came from inside themselves with the help of a Higher Power, that answer would mean more. They also explained that to judge someone like that would take away the dignity of them finding their own answers away from them.

Now most times I understand that alcoholism is a disease, but my old thinking of them being screwed up individuals who would screw up more times than not is still ingrained in the back of my head. There I was though-- listening to the people in the meeting and they were making more sense than I was during this conversation. As an alanoic, I always feel like I have to tell those in my life when they are sick or bad or crazy. I have an overwhelming need to tell them to stop and do it right-- do it my way. I am quite often judge, jury and executioner for those who I deem more broken than me. Thinking I know better than everyone else is my own special brand of sickness.

I'm no better or worse than the rest. I have no right to believe or act or preach otherwise.

They have their own Higher Power and I am not it.

I have to let people make up their own minds, do their own soul-searching and make their own decisions. I have to detach. I have to live and let live. I have to keep an open mind and remember that I can learn from everyone and everything out there.

Only in this way will I start to recover from my own sickness.

"When Love Is Not Enough" -- The Lois Wilson Biographical Movie

I found the biographical move of Lois Wilson, the founder of Alanon and the wife of Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, on YouTube this morning. It shows the audience how an alcoholic marriage looks and the great pain that those who find themselves in one can experience. I'm not from an alcoholic marriage myself but the stories of what happens behind closed doors at home are similar for me as an adult child of two alcoholics: the fights to take the keys from the drivers who can't drive, the times when you really need them to be there for you and they fail to show up, the times the family members leave the alcoholic hoping that it'll keep them sane or make the alcoholic sober and the way that you can find yourself loving them despite all the hell they put you through. It's not an easy way of life-- it's a sickness and a disease that first separates and then seeks to conquer.

I found myself having resentments through the movie that I had never thought about before. For all Bill W's faults he was the one who started AA-- just a drunk who but for the grace of god go I. Once he succeeded in getting himself sober he went on to help so many people and though their marriage was rocky through his active stage and then even in recovery, he still made a future with Lois. I wondered why some people can do that when no one in my family could. I always thought I was amazed by these people but I think a part of me is actually angry. Angry at them or maybe just at the disease-- why do some people recovery and go on to live relatively happy lives and some people lay buried in the dirt after their funerals? We may never know and even after we know the answer will probably still piss me off.

Another thing I noticed while watching the movie is how I'm struck by the history of these programs. Most of the movie takes place during in the 1930s, in the great depression-- both economical and emotional. Watching people who were even younger than my grandparents face the kind of issues we're still dealing with today and see them start programs that we are still benefiting from today was impressive. It felt like standing on top of a mountain to see how grand the universe is and somehow being a part of everything there. We are living better lives because of the work that these two individuals accomplished. Their legacy lives on.

A lot of times I feel broken because I came from an alcoholic dysfunctional household, but look at what two other 'broken' people accomplished! They were homeless at times, which is something I've struggled with myself, but they marched on and continued their good work. They only helped so many people because of the pain they had both been through. It was so empowering in the movie when Lois realizes that she could actually help others by starting her own groups and by doing so help herself. We come together to share our experience, strength and hope as she did before us-- and so many generations in between. How many rooms has Alanon's message been shared? How many meetings have been held since Lois began this program decades ago? There is something beautiful happening here and it began so many years ago. It grew strong through the ages and it'll continue into the future if we uphold what we've learned in this program and keep the message alive.

Thank you, Lois, for everything!

“Our hearts do not need logic. 

They can love and forgive and accept that 

which our minds cannot comprehend. 

Hearts understand in ways minds cannot.” -Lois Wilson

If you're mad at a step, does that mean you haven't taken it? I completely resent Step One.

I have long ago accepted the first step, that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. After losing my whole family to death and addiction it's really hard for me to say that things have been easy or manageable. It's also impossible for me to say at this point that anything I could have done would bring them back or stop the alcoholism. The disease has already taken it's toll. The damage is done. We lost the war and it's time to pack up and hobble on home to our crippled existence. For the rest of my time on this planet there will be certain unalienable facts: my sister is dead, my father is dead, my mother is dead, my family is no more and I stand alone.

Maybe I've forgotten the 'we' part of the first step, because I'm not truly alone. I have the Alanon groups; my lovely fellowship that has been with me for the past decade while I lived through the awful things that would destroy my life. Still, in my darkest hour, I feel alone. Depression is like that-- it keeps you separated and vulnerable.

Though, when I think of Step One I feel so much anger over it. Someone once said, “The Steps shall set you free, but first they'll piss you off.” I feel like I have accepted that I could not control the drinking in my family time and time again, but I also feel like I was forced into this ideology. I was forced to feel my powerless when I had to walk over the passed out bodies strewn across the kitchen floor. I was forced to accept that I wasn't in control when my sister said that it was her life and she didn't care if we didn't want her to drink right after she got her liver transplant. I had no choice but to surrender when I went to funeral after funeral and buried loved one after loved one.

I had no choice and the alcoholism is still laughing in my face. It's still showing me a future that I could never have. I still have to plan my wedding and know that I won't have any of my family show up for me. I still have to find a way to carry on in the face of all that I've suffered and seen. I'm angry that my choice was taken away from me. I'm angry that the drinkers in my life made their choice in what seems like complete disregard for my feelings or my life. I know they couldn't live for me but maybe they should have thought about what they were taking away from me-- what could have been my family and my future.

I wish the step had been written “We ACCEPTED we were powerless over alcohol” because I wish I could say that. I wish I could accept that fact with out this pain in my heart. I wish I could get over my anger and accept that the alcoholics in my life didn't choose to walk the path they did that ended in death for all of them and a solitary life for myself. I don't accept what they did because I feel like maybe THEY should have been in control of themselves. I can admit though that it's a disease and like the depression that I have myself, it oftentimes tells you things you think are true. It tells you that your family doesn't care, that you NEED one more drink, that you are weak and there's no where to turn for help but the bottle. It makes you turn away from your family because you think there's no other choice.

Then again, if I had to accept and not just admit, I would probably never be able to take the first step.

As a Libra, I always see two sides of everything in balance-- for now I see my anger over what they did but I also see the disease. I understand the knowledge of the disease because I've been educated on it. The face value of the idea. Though, it's hard to comprehend it; to take it in and wrap my brain and heart around it and feel all the emotion that surrounds these simple facts.

I have so many resentments over having to take Step One and how I feel forced into doing so, but I think that's where I am regardless. I have no control over the past. I have no control over the disease. I have no control over whether or not my family ultimately lived or died. And I have very little control over my unmanageable life now.

Wishing simply doesn't make it so.  

Finding Hope Through My Tears

My father died only a year and a half after my sister's death. I was twenty-eight at the time and I'd already lost so many people. My aunt died in 2006, my sister in 2008 and my father in 2010-- all of which were alcohol related deaths. As I stood at my father's grave site as we said our final goodbyes at the funeral, I was overcome with so many emotions I could barely stand up. I stumbled on the grass of the cemetery, crying over my broken family and all the things I had lost and also the things I would never have with my father now.

My mother was already drunk that morning before we left for the cemetery and somehow she stayed drunk throughout the entire service at the church and then the small service at the cemetery. She was off in her own little world and I almost envied her for the ability to just stop feeling and thinking and doing-- to just be completely obliterated and lost to the world must have been a nice change from the feeling that were coursing through me.

As the service ended, I remember being too numb to move. My mother ushered me along, pulling on my arm but I couldn't stop crying. I could barely walk and I just wanted someone to help carry me-- metaphorically, emotionally and physically. All I got from my mother was her insistence that I, “stop crying and being a baby” because “my friends are here at the funeral and you're making a scene.” She pulled on my arm roughly as she said this and stumbled a bit herself, more from the effects of the alcohol than grief. I looked at her, wanting to smack her. I was making a scene?! I was at my father's funeral, only two years after burying my sister and I was making a scene?! And she wasn't?

I shook her off and refused to get in the limo that was supposed to be for me, my mother and my other sister. I went in the car with my brother-in-law, crying to myself and letting myself feel my emotions. He told me I could cry and it was okay. All I wanted was for someone to tell me it was okay to feel my feelings-- something that my mother couldn't tell me in her own state of confusion.

Two years later, my mother passed away. She fell down and got a concussion when she was drunk. She never told anyone or went to a doctor. There were issues with blood on the brain and she passed away a few days later. During that week, my sister-- my only living nuclear family relative at that point-- was doing a lot of drugs to get her through the week. I remember crying in my living room and her telling me the same thing that my mother told me, “my friends are coming over to the house and you are making a scene”. Then she told my boyfriend to “take her in her room and keep her quiet, she's bothering me.” This treatment continued until we were at the gravesite again-- my mother and father were buried at the same site. Once again I was told that I was making a fool of myself and I shouldn't be crying. I asked her friends to just keep her away from me because I wanted to grieve for my mother in peace. They tried their best but my sister was on a rampage that week and I was her favorite target for some reason. We still haven't made peace after all this even a year later.

I've also had some friends who suggested only a month or two after these funerals that I “look into going on anti-depressants because you're such a downer” or “I've given you two months to cheer yourself back up but you just want to stay depressed.” These things were both said to me within a few weeks of these life changing events.

All I wanted from the people in my life was for them to allow me to grieve in my own time. I still hold resentments from being told that I was too sad for them to deal with right after these tragedies.

Wasn't there anyone out there who understood that I needed time to process all the shit that was going on in my life so that I could sort it through in my head and deal? There were many who showed up for the funerals but afterward it felt like I was supposed to get on with the show right away and show a false face of being perfectly fine only a few weeks later.

It still haunts me today, but I was reading in How Alanon Works (pg. 378 – 379) about someone who had dealt with the death of their son and the pain that comes with such a loss. They opened my eyes to ways of dealing that had before been lost to me.

“We were devastated. His death almost broke out hearts and spirits. I believe we made it through the terrible anguish and loss only because we each believed a Higher Power was taking care of us. The unfathomable agony that I experienced ripped open my closed heart and made it possible for my Higher Power to take over. I can't describe the spiritual awakening that came at that time. Words aren't adequate. But the result was that, after eight years of suffering, I was able to climb out of depression and lethargy and to get myself into action. I returned to Al-Anon. To be so warmly greeted by familiar face, even after all these years, was overwhelming.”

Alanon is one of the places I feel the most comfortable sharing my pain and crying if I need to process things. I've seen people cry at these meetings and I've also been the one to open up so much that my insides seem to spill out in tears. I remember once I started crying when I recalled something that happened to me as a child. I got up after my share and went to go cry in the bathroom. A wonderful lady from the group came into the bathroom, asked if she could give me a hug and when I nodded she wrapped her arms around me and let me cry on her shoulder for a few minutes.

We are all so broken up when we come through the rooms. So many of us have been met with uncaring people in the outside world-- people who really are in need of a good program. As the motto goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” The outside world may never really understand the kinds of things we saw growing up or the feelings that we are left with even after we leave the alcoholic or they leave us through death. It's so hard to talk to anyone who doesn't know what it's like and that's not even their fault entirely. I've always felt like an alien living amongst the regular normal people of the world. Obviously they're not going to know what it's like living on Mars-- but those in Alanon do and together we can make it just a little bit brighter by sharing our own experience, strength and hope.

How Alanon Works goes on to say, “These wonderful men and women at my various Al-Anon meetings urged me on, shared with me, called, cared for me, laughed a lot, teased me, and eased me back to life and to reality. The eight years of nightmares and unrelenting suffering were finally over, and I had survived.”

And how good it is to say that we have survived!

I think when we experience these tragedies that rip us apart and open a wound, it's a way for our Higher Power to reach deep down inside us. Sometimes that Higher Power comes simply in the form of people at a meeting who will allow us to breakdown if we need and will be there when we climb out of our bottom to build ourselves back up. When we open our wounds, it breaks out skin, metaphorically and we can allow either the good or the bad to come into our hearts. We can see that the world is a cruel horrible place that won't even allow us to cry at the funerals of those we love; or we can see that these moments have brought us closer to understanding the mysteries of the universe, have helped us to reach out to know our Higher Power and have urged us to find the people who can change our lives for the better.

The story in How Alanon Works ends with the paragraph, “I am experiencing the wonderful knowledge that it is never too late for a fresh start-- even at my ever-ripening age. I owe my life to Al-Anon, and with its help, I can be proud of the person I am becoming.”

And you know what? I AM proud of the person I'm becoming. I may cry excessively and I may feel my feelings to such a degree that I am sometimes inconsolable, but at least I can feel them. At least I'm not stuffing them like the rest of my family did and getting sick by doing such. I can allow myself to be sad for those I loved and to get through the pain in my own time. I think a lot of times when we fall to vices-- whether it is overeating, or drinking too much, or zoning out in front of the television-- it's because we are stuffing our feelings. So what ends up happening is we wake up, stuff our feelings for that day, fall to our vices, go to sleep and do it all over again. We can continue to do this for years in some cases. We can even continue to do this until we're dead sometimes. I've watched people I care about stuff their feelings so much that I don't think they ever experienced them before they died.

We have to walk through the pain.

What's worse? Walking through the pain for a year or spending our entire lives stuffing everything down and drowning the pain away by killing ourselves?

I choose to feel my feelings.

I choose to cry if that's what I need to do.

I choose to allow those who will listen hold me and let me cry.

I choose to find my Higher Power when everything else goes dark.

I choose life.

And I guess that's the difference between me and those who told me I “couldn't cry because I was making too much of a scene”. I won't take their inventory, but for myself, I think I'm actually happier this way.

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

I wrote this journal entry a few years ago. I'm going over the steps again though, right back at the beginning after a slip. It was good re-reading this and seeing where I was, where I am and where I want to be. I'll probably be doing some rewriting of this now that I'm restarting Alanon and restarting journaling.

Step One

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

"You lose everything. Your friends, your self... you let this control you and the world goes away." -Buffy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

When I was much younger, I used to keep a secret journal under my bed. I recorded the times when my mother drank, how much she drank, what was going on at home that might have caused her to drink, how long the binge lasted and what I could do better next time in order to keep her sober. I would celebrate the times when there were long breaks in between her drinking sessions and spend a lot of time trying to decipher why she slipped so much when she would drinking many nights in a row. I thought somehow this would help. It didn't.

I thought a lot of things that I did to “help” my qualifiers would work. I yelled at my sister when she drank, I argued with my parents when they did, I told my aunt that I didn't want her staying at our house because she was old enough to find a place of her own. The real reason for trying to kick my aunt out was because I thought if she wasn't around the house so much that she wouldn't drink so much and leave us to take care of her. 

There were many qualifiers in my house growing up, and the more that fell under the spell of alcohol, the more unmanageable I felt my life becoming. There were few people to turn to because I felt that they were all out of their minds. I thought I was the only sane one there, but I wasn't so sane myself to be honest. 

In the early years, I thought it was my fault, but somewhere in high school I realized that it wasn't and that the only person who could stop their drinking was them. At that point, I grew less guilty and grew more bitter. That bitterness never really went away, and it has caused a lot of destruction in my relationships with my family. I grew angrier, and angrier still. No one cared about me, I was sure, because if they did they would see what they were doing to the family, what they were doing to themselves and what they were doing to me. 

The guilt returned this year, when my sister died of cirrhosis, following my aunt who had died of cirrhosis five years earlier. I'd fought with my sister, pleaded with her, listened to her yell at us that it was her life and she would do what she wanted with herself and her body. I was there for her interventions, through the times she tried to stop and all the binges in between. And yet, when she died, I felt like I wasn't there for her enough. She was the hero of the family when my mother became an alcoholic and my family started to fall apart, she was the one who held it all together. My parents placed so much on her and she was dealing with her three young children, trying to keep her marriage together and drinking herself into an early grave to deal with everything. I wanted to save her the way that she'd saved me, mother her the way she'd been my substitute mother growing up. I couldn't manage her life though, because I could barely manage my own.

I was powerless to stop her from dying. I was powerless to stop my aunt from dying five years prior. I am still powerless to stop my mother from drinking, or my father. All I can do is watch and that is so hard to do when people you love are making what you feel are stupid choices, choices that you have to watch them die from eventually. Death is the final step of this disease. 

I still argue with those who are still alive and are still drinking. I am the scapegoat of my family. While my sister was the one who tried to fix everything, I am the one who often points out that there is an elephant in the living room. I've tried my hardest to stop doing this in the past few years since coming to Al-anon. When there's an elephant in the living room, and it is breaking stuff and you hear crashing noises and stuff breaking.. there comes a point when you realize that everyone knows that elephant is there. Only someone who is blind would not know that the elephant is there. And if they're blind, or in denial in this case, there is nothing you can do to make them see the elephant. That is when you have to admit that you are powerless. You can not make a blind person see, you can not make someone in denial realize what they are doing to themselves.

My family might be blind, they might be lost but I decided when I came to Alanon that I didn't want to be a part of the problem. I didn't want to get swallowed up with the rest and have my life destroyed through this disease. It has already been effected immensely. I've let it control my life to the point where I look back on several years of my life and know deep in my core that this was not a normal life. I did not get to have a normal life. I had one filled with fighting and disease and dysfunction instead.

Growing up, I felt completely isolated because of the disease. I couldn't get my parents to drive me anywhere, because they were often too drink to pick me up if I stayed at a friend's house late. I would not let anyone come over my house either, for fear that drinking or fighting would break out. I couldn't talk to anyone in the house either because they were often too drunk to hold a conversation. 

Family vacations and holidays were disrupted by the disease as well. I remember crying on vacation, while taking a walk and looking at a bunch of other happy families at the resort and wondering why I couldn't have one like that. I remembered the days before the disease hit my family and I was often nostalgic to go back to those days. I can barely remember those days now. It's very hard to remember what life was like when my family didn't all hate each other, when my parents didn't drink all the time.

I'm not sure I can put the pieces of my family or my relationships with them back together, but for now I am working on putting the pieces of myself back together. When I came to Alanon, I was so far from who I am today. Somewhere along the line, I'd lost myself and become someone cold, an orphan to the world and so frightened of speaking my mind-- unless it was to argue with someone and tell them they were an idiot. Slowly, I learned to open up and learn what my views on topics and concepts so that I can share my ideas with others. I learned to treat things gently, to love people again and trust that the world was bigger and stronger than what my family had shown me previously. I admitted that I was powerless over the people, places and things that had effected me and caused me to become so sick in the soul and heart. And I realized that my life had become unmanageable, but that it didn't have to stay that way. Through Alanon, I took the first step to recovering from this family disease and rediscovering the person I had lost so long ago-- myself.

FIRST STEP PRAYER

Dear Higher Power,
I admit that I am powerless over people, places and things.
I admit that my life is unmanageable when I try to control them.
Help me this day to understand the true meaning of powerlessness.
Remove from me all denial of my situation.

Slogan: Let Go and Let God

"I've been up high and I've been down low But mostly I've been tired I'll tell you, the best thing I ever did was to let it go" -Voltaire, 'Let It Go'

I've been thinking about letting go tonight, about the process that a person goes through to get to the point where they can just surrender to the fact that they can't control everything. I think it's definitely a matter of realizing that hard, forceful control does not always working in every situation. In fact, it may work so rarely that it's not worth trying to begin with. The old adage of winning more with honey than vinegar is very true. I've witnessed a lot of people in my own life who only have a hammer with which to hit things with and so they see every problem as a nail. I see them get confused when they hit the important things in their lives with said hammer and brake them or hurt them, because many things in life are too fragile to just go hitting randomly with hammers. This is the danger of not letting go.

Letting go also deals a lot with patience. Humans can be selfish creatures; I know this because I happen to be one of them. People want what they want when they want it. I tend to get very discouraged when I don't get what I want when I want it, which leads to trying to control situations forcefully before I get to that point.

I was talking with a friend of mine this week about goals of ours. He pointed out that one of our mutual friends had recently met his own goal, and although it took him nearly two years to do it all things happened in time. I could feel myself pouting inwardly, thinking 'but I want to meet my goal tomorrow!'. My goal however, was not something that could happen overnight and I realized I needed to let go of that type of thinking if I was ever going to get where I wanted to go. There's a kind of irony in that.

This week, I was attempting an experiment in not getting into arguments with people. Every day I would wake up and try to remember that I was going to attempt to win my debates with a lighter touch. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get through one day without forgetting about this. I would see someone doing something that I thought was stupid and try to put my two cents in. Not that I even have two cents to spare these days, spiritually, emotionally or financially. I thought I would feel better once I put those two cents in though. And besides, I figured they were doing something so horribly wrong that they needed to be corrected and fixed. Most times it just backfired and exhausted me.

I keep trying to turn it over and let the universe sort things out though. Take this afternoon for instance. My nephews were over and making a lot of crazy noise in the kid's room. As I walked past the room, I noticed that the chaos that was erupting in there. Potato chips were thrown all over the floor, pictures were askew, the futon mattress half off the frame. I stopped and was about to raise my voice and ask them what the hell they were doing, but I heard my inner voice say, "Does this really concern you? Do you reeeeally want to get involved in this?" I promptly shut my mouth and kept on walking, toward my own room where I closed the door, turned on the music and by the time I walked out again my nephews were gone and my mother was already cleaning the kid's room. She was dealing with it and I didn't have to do anything.

There are small things like that that I can let go of to protect my serenity, but there are so many other things that bother me and take up my time which I can't seem to let go. The hardest things I have problems letting go of are things that have happened months, or even years ago. Resentments that I carry with me and eat away at me even to this day, even sometimes after I have told the other people involved that I have forgiven them. I heard once that memories buried alive will never die. If you do not work through these issues until you find the forgiveness needed to move past them, they will rot there under the surface and color your relationships with those involved.

I often get into these problems where I want so badly to move on to forgiveness and to where everything is good between me and the other person, that I'll just say that I've let go and that I've forgiven them, but I really truly haven't. I didn't want to do the work necessary, or maybe I thought that I was working on their time table and thus felt the need to forgive them and let go of whatever hurt they'd caused before I'd worked through it. It always comes back up when you go about pushing your problems under the rug this way. Always. Memories buried alive will come back as zombies, eating away at your flesh and your heart, destroying your brain until you can't think of anything but the problems between you and the other person. You need to let go. You need to do the work and find a way to forgive.

A lot of times, these imagined hurts are probably things that the other people involved don't even remember. It's like that old story of the monks who came upon this raging river that they needed to get across. They saw a young woman who wanted to cross it as well but she was worried about getting hurt because the river was really raging. They were in a very strict order and as part of their vows they were prohibited from touching women at all, but still one of the monks decided to pick the woman up, carry her across the river and set her down. He went on his merry way, with the rest of his monk brothers following behind him. They were fuming and griping for the next few hours, until one of them finally yelled at the monk who had touched the woman. “How could you do such a thing?” he shouted, but the monk replied, “I picked up the woman, it's true, but I set her down on the other side of the river. It is you brothers, who have been carrying her ever since.” So often we forget to put things down, and we carry them with us as burdens for a long time after they have ceased to help us-- if they ever really did help us in the first place, which is questionable.

There are times when I'm afraid of putting things down and letting go once and for all, so I'll give it up to my higher power only to take it back again. Strangely enough, my higher power doesn't seem to mind and will take the burden from me each time I allow them to carry it for me. How many humans would be willing to do the same for us? I can't count that many. It is this fact that allows me to trust in my higher power, the idea that it will always be there for me when I am ready to allow it into my life.

I think the main reason I don't let things from the past go is that I think it will keep me from getting hurt a second time around. If I hang onto the hurt, then I seem to think I'll remember not to get hurt again. I'm starting to realize that this is a faulty premise. Forgiveness and moving on does not mean forgetting what happened. You can still heal while continuing to remember not to walk into that trap again. Someone from my Alanon home group has this motto which state, 'Once you know something, it's impossible to unknow it.' Once you know what not to do and how to not get hurt again, the hurt that you are carrying inside of you becomes pointless to keep around. At that point, it's just plain pain. It's not a pain that can teach us anything, because we already know the lesson. It's like staying in kindergarten when you already know the alphabet backwards, forwards, sideways, ect. There is so much more to learn from life, so much more to experience and if we stay in one place we could miss it.

Another hard thing for me to let go of are relationships that are not good for me anymore. I always hang onto people for far longer than I should, even to the point where they are causing me emotional harm and I am doing the same to them. This is still amazingly hard for me to do, because I always feel like it might be the last exit to happiness, even if that happiness only exists in my mind. I've always wanted that person that would stay around no matter what-- I've been abandoned many times in my life and I've never had anyone that was stable enough to stay for very long. I've always dreamt of that friend that you meet when you're still in elementary school, then you grow up with them and grow old and spend your whole lives together. It's a nice dream, but I don't think that'll ever be me. It gets even harder when romance is on the line and your heart is deeply involved. But things do grow stale, even the best of relationships grow apart sometimes. It is then up to us to move on, which I'm still learning how to do. How can we find our happy ending though, if we're stuck on a dead end road?

At the moment, life is not going the way I want it to and I seem to be finding a lot of those dead ends. In fact, it's going pretty much the opposite of the way I want it to. I'm trying to remember that that's okay though. The universe has it's own plan and it's own time in which to unfold that plan, and also it's own time in which to clue me in to what it's plan is supposed to be. It's laughing at me now, I think, doing it's own thing and wondering why I can't see that there's little I can do to change what was, what is or what will be. Perhaps in time I'll have the 'wisdom to know the difference' people always talk about. One day at a time.

Tradition One: We Are All Connected In The Great Circle Of Life

“Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.” - Tradition One

Today I attended a Group Conscious Meeting in Alanon to discuss whether we would keep our current schedule of doing meetings on each Tradition on the fourth Thursday of each month. Some of our members didn't like that we spent so much time talking about the Traditions, and so they did what they felt was best for the group and voiced their worries. The group then called a session together to talk about what we were going to do about these meetings and then vote on what would be done, so that we could better help our group find wholeness on the topic.

As someone who comes from a non-functional family myself where people were expected to either dominate the discussions or play the role of the shrinking wallflower that retires to the corner and to whom others refuse to listen, it's rather eye-opening to see that every voice counts in Alanon and that through discussing our differences we can reach a better understanding with each other. This is true democracy for me and true recovery from a life where I felt I needed to voice my opinion in an over-the-top aggressive fashion or keep my mouth shut as to not get in trouble for expressing myself.

It is often said in Alanon that we are only as sick as our secrets. If something is buried inside you that keeps you from uniting fully with others in your group, whatever it is needs to be talked about because it is the only way to strengthen that bond. I often talk about things buried under the surface and the damage they can do. This damage is not limited to yourself and your own psyche. Like termites eating away at the foundation of a home, these buried feelings that keep you isolated and separated will only erode your relationship further if you give them room to grow.

If we hold back our opinions, we may in fact be hurting the group. We set ourselves a part when we do this, keep secrets that may destroy unity and shut down, depriving those in our group of our experience and wisdom. This does not mean that everyone has to agree with us though, because that's not the way that life works or the way that any group should ever be run. Domination by one part of the whole is always bad, whether it's done by us or by others. No one voice is more important than any other in any functioning, thriving group.

Unity does not mean not having our own opinions, nor does it mean conformity, because that would keep us from growing in the areas of resolving conflicts and individuality. It would also keep others from benefiting from listening to opinions that are different from their own, and the possibility that you might voice something that they were afraid to share themselves. Unity does however, mean finding the right way to debate these topics when they arise. It means talking about our points clearly and without gossip or criticism. It means sitting down and reaching a compromise, even if that compromise is only that we agree to disagree. Only in that way can we find the courage to say what is in our minds and hearts.

We are all equals, all coming into the group for the same purposes. In Alanon, this is our shared recovery. The groups help us to recovery, and we in turn protect the group so that the next newcomer can benefit in the same way that we have before. We keep to the designated reading lists, steps and traditions that have long stood the test of time because if we lose this structure we may very well lose our chance for recovery. Protecting the group and the group's purpose is the only way that we'll survive and the only way that our community will survive.

In a relationship or friendship, we come together to share and grow in the same way. We may not be focused on recovery, but we are still focused on finding the joy in life and in developing ourselves through our interpersonal connections. We can not be selfish in this connection, for that will hurt the group and therefore boomerang and hurt us. So often we get bogged down in selfishness and self-centered that we forget that we are only a part of the whole. By damaging the whole with our own private agendas, we also damage ourselves.

If I want to help myself, the best way I can do this is by contributing to the peace and serenity of the groups in my life, those that seek to uphold me. These groups will carry us to safety from the rough oceans and high seas we may otherwise drown in; that is, providing I don't put a hole in the boat. Any dissension in the ranks due to selfishness, self-centered or a character defect left unchecked could sink not only myself, but others in the group and the group as a whole.

It is up to each of us to foster this unity and to protect the group and each other. This is our responsibility, and the way we give back for the many gifts we receive in return. It is all about balance. When we are selfish and believe that things are all about me, me, me then we fall out of balance and forget about the we, we, we of unity.

In my own family while growing up, it usually boiled down to the question of what can you do for me, instead of what can I do for my family. President Kennedy said it best when he addressed the country in his inaugural speech back in 1961, “ask not what your country can do for you rather what you can do for your country”. The country was in desperate times, but it was not the time to put ourselves first, but instead a time when banning together with a common goal would get us all farther in the long run. How often have we all seen groups fall apart because we forget that we are stronger when we act as a team?

In my need to look after myself, since I have often felt that no one else would do that, I often isolate myself from certain groups I'm a part of and take care of my own priorities first. I forget that there is strength in numbers. Instead of experiencing sanity or growth from going out on my own though, I become disconnected, angry and destructive of the chain that links me to my community. I forget to listen, forget to share and sometimes even forget how to tolerate them altogether. We are not islands onto ourselves, but we can make ourselves out to be if we try hard enough. One of my teachers used to say it took a certain kind of determination to fail a class, and I believe it is this same determination that can cause us to fail ourselves and our communities.

The biggest thing I take away from my studying of Tradition One is the question of whether or not I want to be a part of the groups and communities in my life. If I agree that they match my goals, interests and desires for my self growth, then I need to get out of my own way and help that group thrive. The singular person will never thrive if the group itself does not thrive. If I want to be a part of the group, then it is time to pick up an oar and start rowing, because we're all in the same boat and if we work together instead of against each other we will reach the safety of land in a safer, saner and quicker fashion.

If the answer is no, I do not wish to be a part of the group, then it is my responsibility to leave. If I don't believe that the group works for me, then my presence there holds me back from where I truly could be growing and it also impedes the growth of others who may feel that the group really is for them.

Thinking back to Alanon and the Group Conscious Meeting, I find it almost strange to see that there is someplace where everyone gets to say what they feel. It is overwhelmingly comforting that all opinions and voices are given the same amount of attention and care. It's why I stay in Alanon, why I come back week after week: to share, to listen, to grow. I'm happy to say that we will be keeping our Tradition meetings in our group, and we even talked the few who were unsure of whether they wanted to keep them into our unanimous decision. After some discussion, we all came to agree that the Traditions had to offer us something very important: a base outline that will serve to teach us how to have better interpersonal relationships and grow as a community. With a strong community, we can become strong individuals. United we stand; divided we fall.

Leading The Horse To Water

I hear a lot about people who want to come to Alanon to make their spouse, partner, child, friend ect. get sober. People come into the rooms with that goal in mind, not even thinking about their own welfare or how sick we all are when we first enter the rooms. Denial takes a hold and makes us think, 'this is THEIR disease, this is THEIR problem'. We're selfish in our unselfishness and codependency reigns supreme.

If THEY would only get better and do THEIR work, then OUR lives would improve and WE would feel better. They should go to AA, they should call their sponsor, they should stop drinking, they should stop controlling us so we can start controlling them better. None of this actually makes any sense rationally. It's a family disease. We are a part of it as well. We are just as sick as them and we need to start worrying about us.

By the time I came to Alanon, my mother had been sick with alcoholism for about a decade. I was way past worrying about her by that point and I wanted help for myself. I wanted to know how to live my life and how to get through it all. I had already done the denial bit. I was done with that shit. When my mother first started drinking, I was really young and I kept a diary (that I later forgot about and then found when I finally moved out of my house in my late 20s). It detailed how many glasses of wine I saw her drink, her drunken symptoms, her mood at the time of drinking and (this part hurt the most) any reasons I may have caused her to drink. The diary was a whole list of “I got a B on a test” and “I fought with my older sister tonight” stuff which I didn't know at the time was definitely NOT the cause of her disease. Like I said though, by the time I came to Alanon it was many years later and I was done with thinking of it this way.

Apparently though, we are always able to fall back to old patterns when we least suspect them, especially if they come in slightly different packaging. I went back to Alanon recently, taking my fiance with me who I thought could benefit from the program as well considering he was marrying into this family. He never asked to come and even tried to beg out that night when we finally went but I thought it would help him with his own issues. He is a rageaholic (which is funny, I guess in a sad way because I always said I would NEVER end up with an alcoholic, but hey, I just choose a partner that was one step over from that and patted myself on the back for not falling into the obvious Adult Child trap) and I thought he might hear something that would help both of us.

We went and listened to people talk about making amends with others. I sat there hoping it would be a good meeting, happily buzzing in my seat when I saw him nod his head and thinking 'oh thank you, higher power, you sent us to just the right meeting because HE so obviously needs to make so many amends'. What a fool I was to even think that and once I realized what I was doing it was the first wake up call to me that I've fallen out of step with the program.

When we came home he didn't say a word about the program-- I had no idea what he was thinking about it and sat a bit nervously in the car. After we arrived at our home though, he got pissed off because I had forgotten to do the laundry that night and he said some stuff in regards to 'if you really want to know what I feel I'm gonna SHARE some of my feelings with you.. you're a *beeep beep beep* and all I want is to be left alone for one goddamn night'.

I was pretty pissed off for a couple of days. I had opened my heart, my life and my sense of spirituality to someone who didn't take very long to trash it. Then I went to another meeting by myself and we talked about how we are not other people's Higher Power. I really have to Let Go and Let God. Some people may not be ready for the program. Some people just don't want it and that's where they are at the moment. I can't force anyone to do anything in life that they don't want to do because they'll buck me off in an instant.

My qualifiers for Alanon never went to any programs. They all chose to die instead, falling prey to the heartbreaks of alcoholism: bad livers, falling down stairs, concussions, cirrhosis-- no one came back from the brink of that disease; not my aunt, my sister, my father or my mother. They chose to do what they choose to do, and I chose to be the one person in the family that lived. I think of myself as Harry Potter sometimes-- he was “the boy that lived” in the novels, I'm “the girl who lived” the “Alanon miracle”. I did what I chose to do and that was my path and mine alone.

In the past week I've been doing a lot of reading and realizing a lot of my own shortcomings with this past incident. For instance, I asked my fiance to come with me in part because I don't own a car and I thought he would be able to get us to the meeting easier. However, Tradition 7 points to my need to be fully self-supporting. “Every group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.” I can't rely on anyone else to get me to where I need to go-- spirituality or by the very fact that they own a car and I don't.

Also, the first part of Tradition 11 comes to mind where it says, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion...” I can't force this or any other program on anyone who doesn't want it and that's not their fault and it's not mine. It's just the way it is and I have to accept that and stop being so co-dependent by trying to save everybody. Maybe it just wasn't their time. Maybe it'll never be their time. That's up to them and their own Higher Power to decide.

All I have to do is worry about me and work my own program.

This story has a bit of a happier ending. Eventually, my fiance forgot about the laundry that he was pissed off about and told me that he's very happy and proud that I have gone back to Alanon. He told me that taking that first step is often very difficult one and he sees that a lot of the principals of the program can be useful to many different areas of life not just in dealing with alcoholics. It's a glimmer of hope after a dark week and even if it's a bit codependent it makes me happy that he supports at least my own efforts with the program. Whether he will follow or not, I don't know-- but then it's not up to me and it never really was in the first place.

Practice These Principles In All Our Affairs

One of the recovery blogs I read regularly (http://al-anonfilter.blogspot.com/) made a good post recently about patience and how we learn to use it. I started to think about using the slogans in this context. How do these simple saying help us in all our affairs—starting with any hypothetical situation where we may need to find patience?

For me, patience comes down to Progress Not Perfection. Yes, I may want a million things to be different but if I can start with fixing just one of those things I feel a little better. Step by step.

Also, the slogan Easy Does It works in many cases. I try to take on so much and want everything done NOW. But again, it's a step by step progression that I can't push myself too quickly through. Relax. Easy Does It.

I also try to remember that when I am being impatient, it's usually then that I'm ignoring what needs to happen in the now and thinking too much about the future. Steven Sadleir said in The Awakening, “Impatience is ignorance of what is supposed to be happening in the present moment.” I remember when I first came to the rooms I wanted to jump into the shares right away. I didn't want to waste time with the secretarial stuff, treasury stuff, old business, new business and all the boring duties of the group. Eventually though, I came to understand that without getting these things done and without going through what I thought of as "the boring stuff" we wouldn't have a meeting in the first place. First Things First.

One Day at a Time is also a great one to use to find patience. So many times when we are impatient in life we are living through the future and not grounded in the present moment. Spiritual awakening is often just brought about by remembering to stay in the NOW. One Day At A Time reminds me to stay where my feet are and even if things are not happening for me right now, right away to be comfortable in the present moment anyway. Each second that we are given is a gift from our Higher Power. We need to let go of the control of the moment and remember to enjoy that gift.

Let Go And Let God helps to remember that we need to let go of what we WANT to be happening and accept was IS happening. Patience comes about through a lot of acceptance. Our Higher Power is so much smarter than we are and it doesn't much care about what we want—it usually focuses more on what we need and what needs to be happening.

It says in the Just For Today poem “Just for today: I will have a program. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself from two pests: Hurry and Indecision’s.” This goes to show how important our program is in dealing with the need for things to hurry up. If we take the program day by day and live through problems just for today eventually we’ll find that what we waited for and wanted to happen so badly is already in our past. Life passes just that quickly. Blink and you just might miss it.

The Al-Anon Prayer by Kayla Howran -- The Healing Force of Music

I've listened to the sample of this song on Amazon.com. It sounds lovely; a little too country for my own tastes, but still the lady has a wonderful singing voice. It's definitely worth a listen. I may buy it once I get a chance and throw it on my playlist of positive music to play when I'm feeling down.

Music is such a powerful healing force in the world. I find it a great way to self soothe. Alanon tells us to use the acronym H.A.L.T. when we're feeling crazy before we do anything drastic. We are told to figure out where our feelings are coming from and to deal with our Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired feelings first.

For me, music can reach me for at least two of those feelings. When I'm angry, I listen to either peaceful music to relax me back to a state of serenity or listen to angry music so I know other people have felt the same way. I exhaust myself sometimes through loud, pounding angry music so that I can just get it out of my system in a safe way in a place by myself. Music can also reach me when I'm lonely because when I hear someone going through a situation like mine and I know that there are so many listening to the same song and feeling the same way, I feel like I'm not alone anymore. I'm a part of something bigger than myself and I can touch a version of the Higher Power for a little while.

I've heard so many songs on the radio about the other side of the disease. Demon Alcohol by Ozzy Osbourne, Hate Me by Blue October, Cold Turkey by John Lennon-- there are so many songs out there about finding sobriety and struggling for it. There should be more that are out there for us Alanon-ers. We have a unique story and way of looking at the life through the eyes of the program.

The only one that I can really think of other than this one I found on Amazon is Evanescence's, "Call Me When You're Sober". That song has been on the radio a lot in recent years and it's so easy to relate to the anger the singer feels when they kick the alcoholic out of their life.

Incidentally, I went to a Alanon county convention a few years ago and one of the speakers there sang a song about growing up in an alcoholic home. I still remember the way it brought tears to my eyes. One of the most beautiful things about pain in this life is that it often gives way to a creative side. I've met many singers, writers and painters in the rooms. It's a great way to make the things that we've gone through count, to strive to create some kind of beauty from our scars.

I'm a writer myself because I used it as a form of escape for many years. I also found my voice and my courage to speak my mind through the program, which I'm sure has given my writing a lot of its power. We have voices that need to be heard as we continue to rise up like phoenixes from the ashes of our past. Just for today I will be thankful for the struggles that led me to my art and the pain that led me to the Alanon program.

Personal Story: A Little Bit of Background

I had a pretty happy, normal childhood growing up. We went on vacations, we baked cookies with my grandparents, we celebrated every holiday with big parties and decorations-- I want to preface this story this way so you know how my world did a 180*.

I was ten years old and the biggest annoyance of my life at the moment was that I had to go to the dentist that day. My mother told me to brush my teeth before we left, so I did.

Then my father came home. Only it didn't sound like my father. He was angry--angrier than I'd ever imagined he could be.. and I think he was drunk. Only I didn't know words like "drunk" back then. I learned them later on.

He threw a beer bottle at my mother in the kitchen, and I froze in the bathroom. I didn't know what to do. They started arguing and fighting REALLY loudly about how my mother cheated. I didn't understand the word "cheated" either. I didn't understand how my father could get so insanely angry about losing a game.

I stayed in the bathroom, listening to them fighting-- both with words and then with loud crashes in the kitchen while my mother screamed for it to stop-- I must have stayed in the bathroom for over an hour. It felt like forever.

Eventually, I gathered enough courage to race out of the bathroom, back to my room I shared with my sister. She was there too, in tears and on the phone with her friend. She hugged me tightly and asked her friend what to do. She was 14 but we were still way out of our league.

Over the next couple of hours, we listened to them fight and my mother cry. Eventually it ended. They both went to bed.

The next few years were full of them fighting all the time. Sometimes so badly that my other sister (who was 18 at the time and lived most of her days at her boyfriend's house) would bundle us up and bring us to anyone who would take us in for the day because she didn't want us there.

Eventually, my mother became an alcoholic. She promised to change though, to go to counseling, to stop drinking, to not run away with the guy she wanted to leave us all for-- looking back, I wish she had just left. She turned into a horrible nightmare, full of rage and not wanting to stay with our father but still "staying for the kids". I wish my father hadn't begged her to stay. Hell, sometimes (I know this is fucked up) I wish my father had killed her that day.

He was a good guy. She was just a fucking nut.

She lost her mother a few years after that. Started drinking more.

Drank with my aunt. My aunt died of cirrhosis.

Drank with my older sister. My sister died of cirrhosis.

Argued about who was drinking more with my father. He became an alcoholic as well and ended up falling down the stairs and breaking his neck and dying when he was drunk one night.

The middle sister turned to cocaine to escape. She refuses to talk to me these days because she feels fighting over the estate my father left us is more important because she wants the money for drugs. I got kicked out of our house at this point as well because my mother decided the oldest living child of hers should be the executor. I'm living with my fiance (sometimes ex-fiance because we fight so much, but that's another story entirely...) at the moment.

Before my mother died, she did one last thing to screw us all over and left 1/3 of my father's estate to the guy she started fucking after my father died (who was cheating on his wife to screw around with my mother and playing my mom for as much money as he could get).

It's been 21 years of hell since that one night when the world crashed down around me. I never even saw it coming.

SLOGAN: TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE IT

I went to a meeting today on the slogan “Together We Can Make It”. It's not as well known as the other more famous slogans but it embodies our way of healing. This new slogan comes to Alanon through Alateen, where it first originated. Thinking about how young people are hearing this slogan and how they're putting it to use in their own lives gives me hope for the future of this disease of alcoholism. When I was growing up I didn't have a program and I had few people in my life who really understood what was going on behind the closed doors, as a result I felt completely isolated. On top of that, I never let anyone in to my life or my heart because my classmates saw me as the 'weird one' or 'quiet one'. I had too much on my mind to talk to anyone or make friends in class, so a lot of time I sat alone at school lunches and after school I came home and sat in my room with the door closed.

These were really stunted years of social growth for me and I don't think I ever really got over the amount of walls that I built up during those years. I eventually started talking more and making new friends, but it wasn't until I was in college that I came into Alanon and found people who were like me and had gone through what I'd been through in my own life. I wasn't the weird one anymore. I didn't feel like an alien in a strange world.

I remember the first time I went to a meeting I felt so welcomed just because when I asked if anyone was sitting in one of the seats a woman smiled at me and jokingly invited me to sit down, telling me, “We were saving it for you.”

I try to tell that to newcomers now and pass along the message. That empty seat? It's for you, welcome, sit down, put up your feet and enjoy the ride of getting to know us and getting to know yourself. As it says in the Alanon closing, “After a while you’ll discover that though you may not like all of us, you’ll love us in a very special way - the same way we already love you.”

That unity is one of the many special gifts of Alanon – something I probably would not have understood if there weren't people who had walked the path before and were willing to show me a better way of living than the one that I grew up in.

Now a decade later and I'm still going to Alanon and continuing on my path. I stopped going for about two years. I wasn't living with any active alcoholics. I moved out and I thought I had moved on with my life to the point where it wasn't necessary for me to continue healing. My mother eventually died and with that I became an orphan at the tender age of 29. I survived my entire family of alcoholics: my sister, my father, my mother. Once again, I was finding myself alone and getting really depressed at the thought of not having a home anymore; even if my family was chaotic, it was still a place I called home for the first (almost) three decades of my life. My friends would often comment on the fact that I was a miracle, how it was incredible that I survived the hell of my past and how it must feel great now that it's over and I'm the only one left.

It didn't feel so great to be honest. I was depressed much of the time. I felt like I was an alien again-- like Superman, the last survivor of an ancient race of alien beings. The part that they don't tell you about in the comics is how isolating being the last of anything can be and how dreadfully confused it can make you feel. So many questions still fill my head with no one to even talk to about the disease and the toll it took on me. To make matters worse, the man I was living with was a stranger to me and our relationship was built around walls. Most nights I spent on the front porch-- starring at the sky and wondering if there was someone out there I could talk to that might understand.

I had forgotten “the understanding, love and peace of the program” which had caused this “miracle” in the first place. It took me a while to remember to “keep coming back” but gathering my wits about me I decided to go to a meeting this week. I also found out about the phone meetings (www.alanonphonemeetings.org) which were so helpful since I don't have a car at the moment. All it took was picking up the phone and talking to people who've been there before-- listening to them and letting them listen to me.

Alcoholism is a Me-Disease.

It's all about me, me, me.

All the time.

24/7.

Me.

The same is true even if you're not the actual drinker in the family disease. It's easy to get wrapped up in depression and anxiety, making it hard to focus on anything other than the isolation and the feelings of abandonment that many of us as left with in the wake of the traumas of our lives.

After going back to the rooms, I'm starting to remember that I had serenity once and that it was created out of the strength that the other people who attended Alanon brought into my life. And how easy it is to return to that peace if I just get out of my own way and let people into my life. Once again, they've offered me a rock to cling to in the middle of a stormy time; no questions asked, no refusal to help just because I turned away from the program for so long-- they were there when I needed them before and they are there now. The program is one of the few things in my life that is always there when I need it. I'm starting to realize that the things and people that welcome me back with open arms, no matter how long I've been away, are the things I will return to in my life time and time again. Thank god for them.

The meetings have been a lifeline to me because it's inside these rooms that I start to understand the meaning of “we”. The family disease of alcoholism is said to create a sense of being special-- so special indeed, that no one could ever hope to grasp an understanding of us. The depression sets us apart from the rest of the world, holding us apart from the unity and community of the whole by telling us that we are something different and foreign. However, when I listen to others share I am struck by the way that my story and my separate and “special” brand of pain comes out of their mouths. Their stories may not be exactly the same. Sometime the qualifying alcoholic is their child or spouse-- a case I've never lived myself-- but the worlds we inhabited and the emotional turmoil felt are so similar that for an instant we are connected. We are one. We are part of the larger circle of life.

And if we can't give voice to these feelings yet because we are still so new to acknowledging what we are going through, having someone else speak those words can be all the more life affirming. Someone has spoken. Someone has said what we felt and what we may not have even understood about ourselves-- but it is put out there in the safety of the rooms and we can now give voice to the elephants that have taken up space in our living rooms.

What's more is that if we listen to others in these rooms we not only hear their pain-- a pain that is so close to our own-- we hear also their triumph, their ways of climbing the emotional mountains that seem to be so unsurpassable. We don't give advice in Alanon but we do share our “experience, strength and hope” and show each other that yes, it is possible.

And yes, we can do it.

And yes, together we can make it.

When newcomers come to Alanon, they are often told about a Higher Power that will guide them through the most difficult things they have to face. It's not a religious thing. It can be anything that is stronger than them, a force for the better that will pull them through-- so often, newcomers choose to call the rooms their Higher Power. In these cases, G.O.D. can simply stand for 'good orderly direction'. We can make it together-- with each other's support and especially the support of our sponsor.

When we are all working together, we understand the need to lean on each other, help each other through the rough spots and listen to each other. It is said in the closing, “Talk to each other, reason things out with someone else, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another.”

It's a rare thing in my life to be given the opportunity to speak my mind and be heard. My alcoholics didn't listen to me, my peers rarely did and very few of my ex-boyfriends did either. My voice was starting to get soft and quiet and my boundaries unheard. Alanon reminds me that I am as important as everyone else though, and that respect for my opinions is vital. No one is more important than the rest. We don't have leaders, we have peers who do service.

A study of the 12 traditions teaches us about the importance of cooperation and unity. They teach us how to interact member-to-member, within our group, with Alanon as a whole and the outside world as well. They contain important lessons not taught in my own family about leadership, finances, membership, public relations and anonymity. It is through these traditions that we make sure that Alanon continues functioning, thriving and working together. In this way, the program will continue and future generations will continue to be able to learn from our collective strength and find the hope and serenity we have been so privileged to enjoy. Together with our newcomers we can make it into the future.

I haven't even been back to Alanon for a week now, but I can feel the dusty parts of my brain starting to wake up again. I was reading a blog today (http://al-anonfilter.blogspot.com/ ) about someone's experience with her own sponsor. When she came to an impass in her own problems her sponsor said, “You're like a drowning victim, going down for the third time, blindly refusing to be rescued, because you're still convinced that you can do it on your own!” This was definitely very close to my own experience, and I bet there are many in Alanon who can relate.

We will most definitely drown if we continue to believe that we are alone. I know in my own life there were times when the whirlpool of depression got so strong it very well might have pulled me down under. There were times when I was in relationships where it was very true actually, that I was alone and I was trying to pull us through by doing all the work myself. This caused a lot of the depression and a lot of the need to depend only on myself and build my walls. Even then though, I put too much emphasis on myself. These were bad relationships to be in and eventually I found that out.

I strive to be healthy now though, to move towards healthy people and healthy groups. To make sure that WE make it. I don't have to do it all by myself. The question to think about now is are we working with the people in our lives, in our jobs, in our relationships or against them? Are we pulling our own weight? Will we allow those around us to help us and share their experience, strength and hope with us? Will we keep coming back to what is healthy and strong so that the miracle can have time to happen?