What kept me from al anon
My husband celebrated two months of sobriety. I'm proud of him!
This also means that I've been in al anon for two months. You readers should all be happy about that because it gives me things to talk about, rather than trying to speak for marc, I can write about what's in MY head, which I'm much better qualified to write about! I really did not know how to do this before al anon. I showed up there wanting to bitch about my husband. I saw the sign on the wall that the group is for me, that I have to be in the center of my own story, and I couldn't even deal. But I'm slowly realizing the value of their philosophy.
Here is step 2, of the 12 steps:
2) Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
A lot of people recommended al anon to me last year, and I ignored them all until I was really at a breaking point. I wish I could write myself a letter back in time.
First, I didn't like the idea of the 12 steps because they seemed so damn religious and I am not religious. I do not think it's a good idea to believe that God gives you magical gut feelings so you have to do what the Bible says even if it doesn't make any damn sense. I've seen too many examples of bad religion - people beating their kids, disowning their LGBTQIA+ relatives, exploiting or even enslaving their neighbors, because they think it's in the Bible and they're Christians so God makes them RIGHT. They use God as an excuse not to think. Oh or my favorite 2022 example... refusing a COVID vaccine because God gave us an immune system!
But there are atheists in AA and al anon all over the place. They will quickly remind you that the higher power doesn't have to be an old testament, "smiting the wicked" GOD. Can we just try believing that there is a better idea out there? That you do NOT have all the answers? That it's NOT you on your own who can restore yourself to sanity? If you're so wrapped up in your own head that you can't think straight, maybe the thing to do is to step back and step outside of it and think for a minute, listen to other voices?
Can your thinking just move up? A little?
The second reason I didn't go to al anon is because I thought it'd be a group of people with all these huge terrible problems and I wouldn't have anything to say to them, and they wouldn't think my situation was a big deal, I didn't even know if I was living with an alcoholic, I wouldn't pass the al anon entrance exam or whatever. I wouldn't have a good story. This is funny to me because again, I read that second step, which I could have read before, and it's in bright flashing lights that "THIS PROGRAM ISN'T ABOUT YOU." It was pretty damn self-centered of me to think that these people needed anything from me, or could gain anything from me. Why do I have to make everything into a performance? A job interview? A Rolling Action Item List?
My al anon group reads. We go around the circle, everybody reads a little 1-2 paragraph bit out of a book, tiny stories from the lives of other people affected by addiction. And if you want, you can just say "that's great" and pass. Or you can say "this reminds me of how I sometimes do this thing that's not helpful..." You don't prepare in advance and you don't worry about saying the right thing. You just sit with an idea of the day. At the end, you take it or leave it. You get a bunch of ideas about how to change your story, or accept what you can't change, and why you might be okay. It doesn't have all the answers because nobody has all the answers. But it lets you know that answers might be out there someplace. So keep looking around.