London, England

I wanted to let you know what’s been happening in London, it’s all very exciting stuff… The meetings have been going very well. We now have five solution meetings going, four of which I am very involved in. I started one on Monday night and we changed the formats at the other meetings and a new meeting was started on Sunday morning, which is really nice.

Yesterday (4/4/94) we had our first convention (!!) to celebrate the fourth birthday of SA and a celebration of the new meetings and the new unity we have been experiencing here. A man who lived near Bath contacted us. He has a meeting there and yesterday four of them drove up for the convention, which was wonderful. They took the new meeting format back with them. One man lives in Leeds and is going to start a meeting there. Another wonderful thing happened. In the Essay we saw an article from a member in Scotland who said he was all alone and desperately needed SA support. He had been told about SA by a woman from AA. We wrote to him last week. He called immediately, was told about the convention, got a train Sunday evening and stayed with an SA member who brought him to the convention on Monday. He was overwhelmed, a bit like me when I arrived in the LA meetings… (he didn’t cry as much).

It was a wonderful day, a real celebration. At the SA countdown amongst 18 members that were present, the clean time added up to 19 years, 287 days. We have one other woman who has recently joined us with 18 days, so we check in with each other and spread the word to other women. We try not to get disheartened and most of the time feel at peace and laugh a lot.