There Is Great Hope Here
Dear Fellow SA Members: I’m grateful that more women have been attending SA meetings in recent years. By participating in this fellowship, women get to experience the same benefits of SA recovery as men do.
I was at a meeting today where a member shared about his anxieties and fears regarding events happening here in Denver. I wanted to grab him and tell him there is a solution—because in my own life I’ve had some victory in overcoming fear.
I had a dream in which a woman who was dumping me explained what she thought was wrong with me: “You are lost in self-pity,” she said. I awoke with nausea and a sense of dread. Oh no! Not self-pity!
It took me a while to let go of the idea that I could do this program on my own. I’d been raised to be self-sufficient. I had to figure out how to take care of myself and solve problems on my own. As you can guess, this hasn’t worked for me.
Mark told me once that no one ever died from sex. He said, “Alcohol, on the other hand, will kill you. It's a chemical fact. If I drink I’ll die.” What Mark didn’t say was that he was going to die anyway.
My father was admitted to the hospital in June 2008. The doctors said he needed a heart valve in order to live. He risked the surgery so that he might be around longer for his grandchildren. It didn’t work out so well: he was in a coma between life and death for six weeks. It was hard to see him so powerless.
I had just arrived at the Nashville airport when I got a voicemail from Jim. The message was “I just got back from the doctor and he told me I have six months to live.” Jim was dead within two weeks. After receiving the message, I immediately called him. I told him how much I loved him and how he was always the brother I never felt I really had.
Dear Son: It is amazing to see the very same issue that I experienced with my mother reappear in my relationship with you. The same wedge of estrangement, resentment, and detachment that I created and nourished with her has also developed in my relationship with you.
Recently my local Intergroup inspired me to create a flyer that could be handed out to women attending their first SA meeting. An SA’s first meeting can be such a key moment of willingness and admission of powerlessness.
On a beautiful October weekend in the Pacific Northwest, eight recovering sexaholics retired to a quiet retreat overlooking the San Juan Islands to spend one day in silence with the God of our understanding, and one more day in thankful and joyous fellowship.
