I have often heard old-timers say, “One day at a time.” At first I didn’t understand. I was struggling so hard to string together even a few days of sobriety. I thought that when I reached 30 days, I had arrived. I just didn’t understand what it meant to have sobriety, just for today.
Mixed face-to-face meetings are a great place for me to learn to respect myself in the presence of men. I have the option to go to a women-only meeting, but I have found (after hiding out in that women’s meeting for a year or two) that the mixed face-to-face meetings are 10 times better for my recovery and healing.
I’m just an ordinary person, but special in the eyes of God. I’ve been involved with SA since 1993. It took me six years to be able to maintain any sort of sobriety. Until then I had not surrendered my “right to lust.”
How did my addiction to lust begin? There are many ways I could explain it: my childhood; my parents’ relationships with themselves, with me, and with others; genetic predisposition—it can be looked at from different angles. Today I believe that my addiction stems from my relationship with myself, from my unhealthy self-talk.
When I first got into SA recovery, I had been attempting for a month to recover—on my own—using a popular Twelve Step study guide, but I was slipping constantly. I happened upon an online SA meeting and posted my complaints about the triggers that were overwhelming me.
For me, honesty is the basis of a sponsorship relationship. I’m honest with my sponsor right away if a behavior is becoming a problem. I’m honest with her about what situations I must avoid. I also know what I am able to handle without problems.
My husband and I were talking about intimacy recently. We agreed that intimacy must be based in truth, and that I need to be totally honest (without gory details) about the big stuff.
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.
I just wrote the following statement in my journal, and it caused me to burst into tears: “A male friend called me on Monday and asked me how my job search was going.”
Recently, I had a painful experience that knocked me down mentally (I did manage to keep my physical sobriety thanks to the support of God and SA) and showed me once again how cunning, baffling, and powerful this disease is.
