I’m getting down on my home group. In the scant six years I’ve been attending, the fifteen man/woman roster has flipped three or four times; save the three or four old-timers that remember the charter meeting back in ‘98.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
And it’s been drilled into my head again and again: if I’m finding some aspect of the program bothersome, irksome, unacceptable, it’s 100% my fault. I’m the one shutting down, not them. I’m the one mentally pushing myself away from the table halfway through the ceremony. I’m the one looking for the differences; digging up and dwelling on whatever can keep me all up in myself. Call it pre-emptive self-exclusion.
I’m the one whose forgotten the miracle of “we”; of the power of intensive work with others. Today and moving forward: carry the message. Go and be active beyond the coffee; past the chairing and coin wrangling. Go and be active with the people.
Make contact with those who know and those who wish to know.
For today, whenever I’m feeling the urge to pull away, may I lean in instead. May I learn, listen, and connect through the commonness that is our crazy, in all its glorious forms. Nothing calms my insanity quicker than the reassurance that I’m not alone in said insanity.
12 the hard way 