Happy Anniversary to Me

I celebrated 22 years today at a meeting on Cape Cod. The First Light meeting in Eastham, Mass. meets daily at 6:30 am. I come to this meeting when I am on vacation. This is my beach AA home. Faces are familiar but I don’t remember names. But today in this group of eight people there are two others who have 22 years. I talk about getting sober in Baltimore. I tell them about being 12-stepped by a book, Robin Norwood’s, “Women Who Love Too Much”. I tell them about a moment of grace that October when I read that book and recognized myself and how the pin ball machine in my head went bing, bing, bing when Norwood wrote, at the end of the book, that if you found yourself relating to the stories in the book that the odds were good that you had a problem with alcohol, drugs or food. I had all that. And I had willingness. I had willingness to change, to get help, to want my self to be different.

I have that desire today but I wonder if I have the same willingness. Back then the pain was much greater, the losses more public and the shame and humiliation so acute. Pain was the bottle opener. Today I still want to be restored to sanity. There have been so many meetings, inventories, sponsors, phone calls and much service work too. There has also been a lot of outside help: therapy of all kinds, spiritual direction, retreats, workshops, body work and even shamanic healing. All to the good, all towards healing. The work continues and the journey continues. On the passenger seat of my car is another new book: Never Good Enough: Healing for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers. Another layer. More growth. More will be revealed.