Friday is a step meeting and we read from Paths to Recovery. We work the 9th step in September since it corresponds numerically to the month:
"I learned that direct amends can take many forms. In some cases, when the other person knew I had wronged them, I needed to go face to face to try to mend the relationship. My amends, however, could also be an act of kindness or consideration. A change in my attitude oftentimes was the best possible amends. Leaving the door open to allow a relationship to redevelop slowly was a helpful approach, too.
I also learned that my amends needed to carry with it a commitment for better behavior in the future. Whether someone accepted or rejected my amends was none of my business."* - Al Anon Family Groups Inc.
I never forgot when I first heard someone in the rooms say the following:
"If the program could be summed up in one sentence it is: Mind your own business."
Four years later, at the end of this summer, I discovered the corollary to that, as outlined above in today's reading from Paths to Recovery. The concept that what other people think of me is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.
I don't know about you but that's revolutionary to me.
Doesn't everyone spend most of their waking day thinking about me and my behavior?
No?
And even if they did, what they think is NONE OF MY BUSINESS!
Can I tell you how liberating that is? How it frees me up from my own ego, false pride and shame?
Wait, a minute. Don't bother answering that. Just for today, what you think is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.
One of these two has more of an alcoholic personality; one has more of an Al-Anon mindset.
Can you tell which one?
On Thursdays, we read from Hope for Today.
Today's reading was about the power of the Al-Anon fellowship and the importance of participating in service.
First all, we had a laugh at the perfect, loving Al-Anon fellowship depicted in the share.
Where were the dramas, the power plays, the soap operas that can sometimes occur in our strange bed fellowship?
In fact, let's acknowledge them here. If I hadn't participated in the Nice Al-Anon fellowship so much, I wouldn't have had the benefits that come from confronting what for me was some disappointment, rejection and betrayal. Prior to the program, I would have cut and run. But I already cut and run to come here. It was no longer convenient to cut and run.
Bikram yoga is a type of yoga practiced in an extremely hot room. Up to 101 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes. The instructors say the key thing is to STAY IN THE ROOM.
I haven't stayed in every room in the south of France but I've stayed in the rooms. That's progress, not perfection.
Participating in Al-Anon in Nice and participating in the service aspect of Al-Anon changed me for the better - because I saw I could survive and thrive within the 12-step fellowship soap opera, not be disheartened by it. It gave me courage and trust in myself.
I like it that the city of Nice's original name was Nikaia, Greek for "Victory."
That's where the Nike got its name.
I like their slogan, too, and how it applies to the idea of participation.
JUST DO IT!
On Wednesdays, we read from the dreaded One Day at a Time in Al Anon. Today's reading began with a quote from a founder of Al-Anon:
"Smugness is the very worst sin of all, I believe. It is difficult for a shaft of light to pierce the armor of self-righteousness. Many of the things I thought I did unselfishly turned out to be pure rationalizations to get my own way about something. This disclosure doubled my urge to live by the Twelve Steps as thoroughly as I could... The word "humbly" was one I never understood. It used to seem servile. Today it means seeing myself in true relation to my fellow man and to God."
As readers of this blog know, I have my issues with the dreaded ODAT but I liked the reminder at the end of today's reading:
"Bargaining
with God and asking Him to grant my wishes is not the highest form of
prayer. It is very different from praying only for God's will for me."
I
despise smug people. The met my first Smug People when I was about 28
and had just broken up with a serious boyfriend. The minute my
relationship ended, all my friends, naturally, decided to get married
and I had to go to about 10,000 weddings that year. Alone. A few years
later, all those same friends had babies. Their Smugness was complete.
"How's your love life?" one friend frenemy asked me, smugly, when I was about 34 or 35. My friend frenemy was married with a new baby. I was not.
Fast forward a few years. My smug friends were getting dumped by their husbands at an alarming rate. Surprise! The quickest way to be de-smugged is to get dumped and left as a single mother.
Whose turn was it to be smug? Me! Yay!
But as the years pass, I'm leery of ever being smug. For me it's the quickest route to a comeuppance.
I hate comeuppances even more than I hate smugness.
Every Tuesday, we read from Blueprint for Progress. Today we are on the "Love" chapter.
"After years of living in the grasp of the disease of alcoholism, it may be difficult for us to love other people, and loving ourselves may seem like a foreign concept. Making another person our top priority may have robbed us and them of dignity and respect. Some of us may have felt that we didn't deserve to be loved.
For the first time, many of us tried to learn how to show our love for the alcoholic without supporting his or her destructive actions. We knew it was possible because we saw others in the Al-Anon program respond to the same situations with love and respect. Eventually we have come to believe that love is one of the best recovery tools available."
I said this today -- when I am in a dating situation and am told someone loves or cares about me, it always sounds hollow and false. As if they are just feeding me a line, playing me. Maybe in some cases, they are. But I'm aware that it's probably weird to process declarations of love from the opposite sex as something fake!
An old-timer in the program said this and I got a lot out of it: "Your ego is what everyone else thinks of you and self esteem is what you think of yourself."
When I think of that, I can act and not react.
An old-timer in the States has also been very helpful lately. She stresses how the secret is building on that relationship with your Higher Power. Once you've got that love down, that's the biggest recovery tool of all.
Every Monday, we read from Courage to Change:
"An Al-Anon friend says, 'I have a tendency to think of my experience with alcoholism as an epic, technicolor movie, an extravaganza with my name in lights on the marquee, but it's not really like that. It's really just home movies.'
...I came to this program with a story to tell that seemed to splash across every inch of a very wide screen. I told it, and told it, until one day I noticed that I was sitting in a room with others, showing home movies. Today I feel happy to be there as part of the show, but my role has changed. I am no longer the martyr, bravely sacrificing myself to the cold, cruel world of melodrama. Realism has taken over. My role is important, but not unique, and I don't expect to see it in lights. "*
Sometimes I have doubts about the program. Many times I have doubts about myself. Many, MANY times I have doubts about how well I am working this program or how it's working me.
But, as I said today in the morning meeting, if nothing else, being in Al-Anon four years has made me realize that I'm not alone and my problems are not unique. Before the program, I thought the world was exclusively against me.
Before, my home movies were over-the-top. They would definitely have gotten the thumbs down by movie critics. Too melodramatic, too self-absorbed, too much victimology. What would movie critics have said? Overwritten. Cloying. Sentimental. Self-Absorbed.
My new home movies are maybe not as colorful, but they are more realistic. They used to be on the edge of science fiction, now I'd classify them as documentaries.
"Do you wish your life was a nonstop Hollywood movie show?" Well, of course I still do!
The Ninth Step or....... Milk Chocolate?
Blame those spawn-of-an-alcoholic genes for this Grateful Member's nine-alarm-fire Sweet Tooth.
Every Friday of every month we work the step that corresponds to the month using PATHS TO RECOVERY.
This Grateful Member is stuck on the ninth step.
In fact, both the 8th and 9th steps are sticky. They bug me. I want to skip them.
Here's the first question on the 9th Step Chapter list from PATHS TO RECOVERY:
"Which people on my list do I need to make direct amends to first? What's stopping me?"
The person who always comes up for me isn't even someone I knew for that long or who was important to me. Nor was I important to her. She was a minor boss in an office where I worked in the late 1980s. She was an officious, domineering, killjoy busybody. She was getting on my nerves one day and I wanted to put her in her place. So I told her "You're the most hated person in this office."
And it was true. But sort of mean and vicious, right?
If everyone were like her, I could make my 8th step list and make my 9th step amends easily. It would be very clear cut. But with other people.... I don't know.
These are my own questions:
Is it always wrong to speak harshly to someone? Isn't the world chockablock full of idiots?
Does keeping your own side of the street clean mean you have to make an amend to everyone you've been less than saintly to in your entire life?
What does "harmed" mean, exactly?
And if you're an Al-Anon type who has barking doormat qualities - how can you be sure you're not just being a doormat again when you're making an amend?
I've been told you can't think your way forward in this program.
So I'll just put those questions out there.
I want to say also that I'm stuck at the 9th step because I hate confrontation and possible rejection. Ugh.
I'd much rather just go eat a big bar of milk chocolate.
I like outlaws.
"I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member." -- Groucho Marx, spiritual founder of the Nice, France morning Al-Anon meeting
Every Thursday, we read HOPE FOR TODAY. Today's reading was about an Al-Anon member who always felt "different," even when she started going to Al-Anon meetings. She also felt superior to the other members. But she feared asking for a sponsor because she was afraid of rejection.
Ah, the old inferiority/superiority syndrome. Higher Power, PLEASE REMOVE this character defect.
Thank you.
