I love this quote: “In between black and white thinking is not grey; in between black and white thinking is where the colors are.” I want to share with you the rainbow that recovery has given me.

When I was 17, I got promiscuous. I was acting out a lot. I met a man and fell in lust, and we had two babies. We were abusive to each other physically, emotionally, and mentally. I remember once I had our baby in my hands and he was hitting me, and I thrust the baby into his hands so I could hit him. I remember going into the emergency room to get glass cut out of my leg. It was insane. But I could not imagine giving up the physical aspect of my relationship with this man. Finally, five years later, I was able to leave him.

Then I discovered the Internet, and my disease went wildly out of control. At first I did cybersex. Two years later I was acting out every day, up to 10 times a day. I couldn’t stop. I was meeting men I didn’t know in hotel rooms. I was having phone sex. I was sending pictures of myself all over the Internet. I had lust in my head all the time. I could not even look at my kids without pornography images in my head. It was like a veil between us. One guy said I seemed possessed, and that is how I felt.

I reached out to five professionals asking for help. None of them had a clue what was wrong with me. Then, in September 1999, I read a book that said sexual addiction is a progressive disease that can be fatal. Finally, something made sense. I called SA the same day asking for help. A lady called back; she used the words “sexual sobriety.” I asked her what that was and she said, “No sex with yourself or with anyone else, except your spouse.” I can’t masturbate?? Was she kidding? I didn’t want anything to do with it. But I saw how crazy I was. I was in a lot of pain and had been contemplating suicide.

So I decided to go to an SA retreat. I had never heard of the Twelve Steps before. I’m from a very small town in Idaho, and the retreat was in the big city of Seattle. It intimidated me to go there. I made arrangements to meet a woman in Spokane and ride with her to Seattle. I had no idea what a sexaholic was supposed to look like. When I arrived, I was greeted by a short, old, religious lady (I kid her about this today). I got into her car and we drove all the way to the Seattle area for a weekend-long retreat. I think we were both a little uncomfortable.

The retreat shocked me. People there were talking about their feelings and this life-long disease. I had expected a seminar of facts and information. I was ready to figure this out. And I had no concept of God or His part in recovery. On the way home, my driver was praying fervently, “I hope she doesn’t ask me to sponsor her.” But I did ask her to sponsor me! She worked with me through the Twelve Steps the first year. I slipped a couple of times. It took me six months to get sober. But the slips were valuable lessons in my recovery.

A lot of great things have happened to me in recovery. At thirty I met my dad for the first time. That was a really big deal. I got baptized. I learned that I have a mental illness: I’m bipolar. I learned how to recognize the symptoms of trouble, how to do a lot of work with my illness, and how to deal with and adjust the medication. That was a big deal. Today I’m stable for the most part.

I’ve continued attending retreats in the Northwest region twice a year. The retreats are amazing. I love hearing the couples share. I get so much hope from the couples. I love hearing the S-Anons share. I love their being a part of it; although I thought, “S-Anon doesn’t really apply to me.”

But as I arrived home from the San Diego convention in January 2004, my mom informed me that she was having an affair with my ex, the father of my children. I live on my mom’s property, in a separate house, so it was happening right in front of my face, and our two kids were being dragged through this. My mom’s opinion was, “I’m doing nothing wrong. You’re not with him anymore. Why should you care?” So I got catapulted into S-Anon.

I used to drive to Spokane (almost 2 hours away) at least three times a month to go to meetings. When I started going to S-Anon, I wondered, “Oh my gosh, which meeting do I go to, SA or S-Anon? Will they feel uncomfortable with me, since they know I sit in SA meetings with their spouses?” That must have been hard for us all, but I had to take care of myself, and I think there was growth there for everyone.

At the July 2007 convention in Maryland, I participated in a breakout meeting with the topic “Adult Children of Sexaholics.” I felt a deep sense of belonging in that meeting. I hope to see this travel through the fellowship.

My mom’s relationship with my ex lasted about six months. Two weeks after that relationship ended, my ex married someone else. A short time later he called to tell me that he could never be sorry enough for what he had done to me. I was amazed that he could see that.

Today, after being in SA for a while, one thing I’ve experienced is the tremendous blessing of service. I’ve often heard, “The measure you give is the measure you get back,” but I’ve found instead that the measure I give, God multiplies it and gives me back much more.

A small amount of service can bear amazing fruit. For example, there once was a man who lived in Spokane, who started an SA meeting. That man and some other people held a business meeting, and they decided to have a phone line. They developed a script for the phone line, and someone had to serve as Treasurer to collect money and pay for the phone line. That’s the phone line I called that connected me to the fellowship that gave me my life. A lot of small links worked together for the phone line to be ready for me.

Then someone in Seattle or Portland decided to have a retreat. For the retreat to take place, they needed planning committees as well as people willing to serve. A lot of work goes into retreats. People just attending business meetings help make retreats happen, because the committees need enough people to participate in decision making.

Also, because Spokane is far away and the meetings are small, I’m not sure I would have gone there for meetings if I hadn’t attended the big weekend retreat and found so much hope. I’m not sure I would have seen the miracle and stuck around. Many pieces worked together to get me into a meeting. That’s all the fruit of service. In doing even a small service, we can be saving someone’s life. So I’ve become a service junkie.

Someone asked if I would chair the Loners Committee, because I’m a loner geographically. I thought, “No, I’m doing too much!” But God kept niggling at my heart, and I thought, “What if there was a network that women could plug into? Where they could get sponsors and connect with each other—sort of an entryway into the fellowship?” That’s how WiSA (Women in SA) was born. We have a weekly phone meeting, and more than five countries are represented. We also have an email group. Women from ten different countries are members of that group. That’s pretty amazing—the ability of all those women to connect with other women. And now it’s becoming independent from me, which is great. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. I just did what God asked me to do. That’s what I’m doing when I do service, and I get back so much that I cannot stop doing it.

Being a woman in this program can be a challenge. I once heard a man describe his discomfort about being triggered by a woman in his meeting. I wanted to jump on the table and shout, “Try being in a room full of women and you are the only man!” I’m a gutsy sort of person, but for women who aren’t, walking into a room full of sexaholic men can be intimidating. But I’ve found that it is in these meetings that we learn to relate to the opposite sex in healthy ways.

Today, as a single woman who desires SA sobriety, I know I cannot have sex with myself or with anyone else. But because of SA, I’m able to have healthy relationships with men today and to experience progressive victory over lust. I’m not cured, but I’ve stepped away from lust.

My sobriety date is March 12th, 2000. Because I haven’t acted out for a while, I recognize lust sooner when I feel it. It’s like poison. I can almost feel it in my veins if I fantasize; it’s toxic. I’m grateful that I can recognize that now. But I don’t think sexuality is bad; God made us sexual beings. It’s my disease that turns sexuality into lust and perverts it into what it isn’t. Today I believe that if I have a sexual thought or feeling, or if I’m attracted to someone, it doesn’t mean I’m bad or that I shouldn’t have felt those feelings. That’s the way God made me. If I can say, “Oh, that’s just a sexual feeling” and surrender it and not do anything with it, then it goes away. That, for me, is progressive victory over lust.

I’m more intimate with God when I allow myself to feel. I don’t recommend this type of thinking for newcomers because stepping away from lust for a while is a key to freedom. But I believe that God has healthy sexuality in my future, I’m just waiting and not taking any active steps. That gives me hope. It doesn’t have to happen today.

I’ve been attracted to a guy who works at a store where I shop. I think it might be mutual. I was able to experience being attracted to him, and I got a little flustered, which hasn’t happened in years, because I’ve stepped away from relating to men in this way. So I left the store feeling kind of giddy. But I didn’t fantasize about him or do anything else with the feeling except keep it in the context of what it was. I’m not going to marry him. It is what it is. To me, that is progressive victory over lust, one day at a time.

I love this fellowship and I love all of you.