Fear prevented me from experiencing healthy guilt. Guilt tells me I have done wrong. Fear also prevented me from feeling healthy shame. Shame is a slight embarrassment that others may see my wrongs. But fear primarily stopped me from facing toxic guilt and toxic shame.
It can seem that being happy and single are two ideas that don’t fit together. What a great discovery to learn that our joy does not rely on a relationship or even marriage! It relies on following the will of God through working the Steps.
While every ESSAY edition is special, carefully thought out, and filled with SA recovery, we would like to describe this edition as unique. The Fellowship has had many losses in the past year. Some experienced loss in recovery for the first time. Can the Twelve Steps and the Fellowship of SA aid those grieving?
Enjoy this April 2025 edition of the ESSAY and take a load off of yourself. Yes, you’re still responsible for clearing away the wreckage of your past, but remind yourself that although Higher Power still lets you struggle in your character defects so you can grow and progress, you’re not responsible for removing them. That’s God’s job! Surrender it all to Him.
The whole team at the ESSAY is again uplifted and humbled by your experience, strength, and hope on this month’s theme of “God as We Understand Him.” The other pieces about Practical Tools, Steps & Traditions, Worldwide News, etc. also continue to teach and inspire us.
I have loved the ESSAY long before this December issue. I would include it in my morning studies and let HP nudge me about what to highlight and make notes on. Then Luc accepted me onto the editing team where I got to act out my ADD and OCD to my heart’s content as I fix spelling, clarify passages for non-English writers, and fix punctuation problems.
In the chapter “Overcoming Lust and Temptation,” the White Book emphasizes the vital role that both AA and SA literature play in sustaining our sobriety and recovery, ensuring that there is at least one sober voice at meetings. These texts offer key insights into ourselves and a deeper understanding of the recovery principles. Roy states very clearly that Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve and Twelve constitute the basic texts of the original Twelve-Step program (SA 77).
I am greatly honored to have been asked to write the foreword to this issue of the ESSAY on lust.
About a year ago, I was asked to invite members to write articles for another ESSAY edition about women in SA. A few months later, talking about it during breakfast at the International Convention in Krakow, Poland, someone suggested that it would be more interesting to make an issue about women and men finding sobriety together. We are all equal in the Fellowship, and we need each other’s fellowship to achieve recovery as the White Book states in its chapter on “Mixed Meetings” (SA 178-179).
The topic of this edition matches the theme of the upcoming SA & S-Anon International Convention in July in Los Angeles: “Courage to Change.” Many men and women on the convention committee are serving tirelessly to make it an opportunity for you to continue your own change. All information on p. 30.
