Her experience has taught her that gossip in the Fellowship can be a harmful form of disclosure.

Sexual intimacy is a way to communicate my commitment to my spouse. That is why it hurt deeply when my husband, while we were married, told me that he was having an affair. His affair communicated that I didn’t matter to him. I became physically sick and didn’t want to live anymore. I wish he had never told me because that information is permanently seared into my brain. I can’t unremember it. 

Disclosure is a serious topic, and after being sober in SA for years, I learned that disclosure has a close relative: gossip. It is a subtle foe. Sharing with one another in the solution is a long-established way of connecting. Gossiping in SA, however, can communicate contempt and drive members out of SA. 

An old-timer shared that gossip can be hidden in the form of anonymity, surrenders, or questions for Experience, Strength, and Hope (ESH). Even if a member’s behavior is described anonymously, it is gossip if chances are good that members listening know who is being described. It is also gossip if chances are good that the member being described will find out. I would need to get permission from that member before talking about them, or I would have to change the details to such an extent that no one can find out who is being referred to. It is also gossip and a subtle form of disclosure if someone tells a member what others are saying about that member. 

In the same way I can’t unremember my ex-husband’s affairs, the damage from gossip can’t be completely undone. There’s a story where a couple went to a man in their village and told him they gossiped about someone. The man told the couple to buy a chicken and walk from one end of the village to the other, plucking the feathers off the chicken and letting them fall down. Then the man told them to collect all the fallen chicken feathers. The couple told the man it was impossible to find all the feathers. The man shared that just as they could not find all the feathers they dropped, they cannot take back all the gossip that spreads from one ear to the next ear.