This past August, by the Grace of God, I celebrated my third “birthday” in this life-saving God-inspired program. Ceaseless are the gifts that befall me in recovery. The gifts come in the form of growth (sometimes painful) by learning more about who I am and acceptance of me, defects and all. I made a list of people I thought I had harmed while doing the first four steps and it was quite impressive.

A note of encouragement to you! I have been involved in the program for several months now and at this point I have an incredible 5 weeks sobriety. Praise God for your program, I don’t think I could do it without the meetings and literature.

As a group, we are in the process of determining what kind of group we want to be. Questions such as:
1. Do we want to be strongly newcomer oriented?

I would like to tell you a little about our group that we have here. Child Molesters Anonymous was founded in 1986 at the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Our founding fathers of this organization saw the need for this type of an ongoing support group. There wasn’t any real help for people like me for my type of crime and I wanted something that would keep me from repeating these crimes over.

We send our best. Our meeting is growing strong! We had two members who celebrated anniversaries of 2 years and one of 4 years! Our conference was a success also. We will be sending a donation from the remaining assets as soon as we get the financial situation reconciled (perhaps another 10 years!). Believe it or not, we came out ahead financially, much to everyone’s surprise. This was due to the great financial support the West Suburban groups gave us.

Finding enough sober people is a problem. Loads of unsober people attend here. Things will change. Something for everyone doesn’t work.

As you remember, over the past year the fellowship has been asked to approve or reject a procedure for taking an international group conscience on issues that affect SA as a whole. What follows is a report on that process, prepared by Katherine D., the chair of the committee to determine an IGC procedure:

Memories of the “Real Connection” International Retreat in Salt Lake City will still be fresh for many members as this issue of the Essay appears. For many of us, this retreat felt like recovery often feels: emotional, sometimes tense and uncomfortable, yet open and secure. As we walked together through sharing our struggles and victories, we began to experience the joy of true union with one another.

We have been meeting regularly for two years with mixed results. We began with a core group of two and have had ten different people attend meetings at one time or another. Our longest period of sobriety is two years, and our shortest is five days. Some older group members have recently slipped, and one has stopped coming.

At the heart of our condition is the drive for union with Person. Bonding. This drive, instead of having been diminished by our misconnections in lust and sex, seemed to increase. Never satisfied with the substitutes, our longing for personal union merely deepened and energized the vain pursuit for the real.

In September, SA group donations paid for an express shipment of literature to the new group in Sidney, Australia! Literature was provided free of charge as a gift from the fellowship. The expression of support was warmly and appreciatively received.

I am writing to thank you for putting me on your mailing list for the Essay newsletter. It’s a terrific piece of literature filled with powerful and inspiring information which has helped me and others I have shared it with tremendously.…

The other day I learned a crucial lesson. I was feeling in a confrontative mood and was inappropriately (for meeting time anyway) challenging one after another for their lack of sobriety and recovery. A good friend of mine went last and had a slip and sounded confused in his sharing. Being disappointed, I also let him have it.

I’m so grateful for SA for putting me on a spiritual path!

SA in Ft. Worth continues to grow in numbers as well as in sobriety. We have averaged around ten people per meeting all summer. Last Thursday, we had fifteen in attendance. This is an all-time high for us and hopefully an indication of things to come.

The Gooding SA Group is growing in numbers and sobriety. We have two meetings a week, and have also started one in Twin Falls, which will no doubt soon become independent of us, as there are increasing numbers in recovery in Twin Falls. It is exciting to see the changes in our lives as we surrender our lust and share together.

The SA Convention in July in Rochester, New York, was a beautiful experience for those of us able to attend. Feedback still being received indicates that nearly everyone who was there felt that we had achieved a spirit of unity and recovery that many of us had never seen before.

One of the workshops at the recent SA convention in Rochester was on the topic of meeting quality. Those workshop comments are listed below, without evaluation. It was not always possible to neatly separate the comments into those things that detract from good meeting quality and things that help, but this was the general scheme followed in the workshop.

In the May Essay “Food For Thought” column, an elaboration of SA’s sobriety statement was presented for member reaction. So far, only some eight groups and individuals have responded. This small sampling, inconclusive as it is, has created quite a furor. Apparently, people are either very much for it or very much against it.

The Riverside fellowship celebrated its first birthday as a group on March 7th. We also have had two individual sobriety birthdays and another coming up next week. God has blessed us with recovery and it’s catching! We have doubled our regular membership in the past few months and we have a new meeting in Redlands.…