I came to Al-Anon starving and humbly begging. I was starving emotionally and begging for “food.” I found food in the program—nourishment for my starving soul. I kept coming back and working the program, because I gained emotional nourishment.

My first commitment to the program was a case of God doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. In turn, it has led me to all the commitments I have made over the years.

Attending meetings offers a wonderful opportunity for me to listen to and learn from the experiences of others, and to decide if these experiences can be helpful to me. At a speaker meeting recently, I have become reacquainted with the slogan “Listen and Learn.”

Up until age eight, I had no character defects. They were all assets, as far as the eye could see. Once age eight came along, I was apparently a grown-up and responsible for my behavior and the behavior of others. I started to believe that if I was told I was bad, I was bad. I remember fighting these comments. I remember trying to win unwinnable arguments: when I was told I was lying and I wasn’t; I was fat when I wasn’t, and the list goes on.

Editor’s note: An Al-Anon member shares her Alateen story.

When I was a child, I always sensed that something was wrong. I thought I had two dads, Nice Dad and Monster Dad; that was the only way my mind knew how to handle my father’s alcoholism.

I’ve learned to accept that my loved one’s sobriety is literally “One Day at a Time.” I’ve learned to let go when she’s sober, and detach when she’s not. Today is one of those in between days that I need to manage differently. She’s struggling in her sobriety and I want to reach out to help. “Helping” looks like checking up on her emotional state, or trying to distract her with activities. I can color it prettier than trying to control her behavior, but it rings familiar for me. It brings me back to my early days in Al-Anon of caretaking and worry.

There was a lunar eclipse this cold Saturday morning and I got up at 6 a.m. to see it. I got out of my warm bed, went to the window, and opened the shade. I was disappointed in what I saw: a barely visible, blurry blob of white with a gray smudge and a little red tint on the bottom. Maybe it was just a streetlight in the fog, maybe it was too overcast, or maybe I had forgotten that I am nearly blind without my glasses.

When I first started working the Steps with my Sponsor, I was scared to death—scared to death to share the secrets of the disease that I had carried with me, some that I had had since childhood. It wasn’t until we got to Step Five that my new self-awareness started to become comfortable.

So much depends upon my attitude and learning to put my problems into their true perspective.

The information below is in portable document format (PDF), and may not load properly. You can open the document full screen in your Internet browser, or download the free Adobe PDF reader.