Fellowship, Family and Friends: A Part of my Self Care

I am back in my heart again.  Thank the Goddess.  I was really starting to worry this time.

I am starting to learn that no amount of meditation, self care or study can replace the therapeutic benefits of fellowship. Meeting with people, connecting with loved ones and sharing with each other I think is the true purpose of being a productive member of society, but not necessarily belong to that society.

Its always such a fine line of moderation for me.  I am an either all in kinda girl or a totally cut out one.  Accepting the grey and being comfortable with that is so, and I cannot seem to emphasize 'so' enough, so hard.  If I belong to a group of people, i have to like them all, if even one person rubs me wrong the whole body of peeps is removed from my life.  It's the same with my family, if one member disowns me or hurts me, they all are cut out from my life.  It's like my mind thinks they are all of one like mind and therefor I cannot stand to be a part of any area of the whole.

My all or nothing approach to friendship is unrealistic.  It is hurting my growth as a person.  I have been isolating lately because i can't hang out with one best friend because she is not all recovery and I cant hang out with the other because she is all recovery.  So instead I stay home drink wine and wallow in my own misery.  How is that productive at all?

Make new friends and abandon the old was the path I have taken in the past.  I have so many groups of friends I have been part of in my life.  Always sticking around and laying the ground work to a great friendship until something goes amiss.  A challenge, a disagreement a conflict, and I am out.  I see now I have no idea how to handle situations that are less the light and fluffy.  I don't know how to give back without feeling like the price i have to pay will be far to great for me to afford.  I have a sense of entitlement I guess

.I watch my one best friend and her fellowship that is so tight with her family that I am jealous.  If one of her siblings is in need she will drop everything and be there in a blink for them.  I have watched them do the same for her.  I hear her frustrations over having to watch a family member struggle through something and yet still hold a place of deep compassion for that part of her fellowship.  I dont know how to do that.   I have another best friend who has devoted her whole life to her fellowship and forging these amazing bonds with people that need a new way of life.  I see my friend easily sacrifice her plans in luie of someone in need and do it with such joy.  I don't know if I am there yet.

I seem to be able to only go so far with any fellowship or friendship I am part of then when I am asked to give to much of myself I back away.  I don't know why that is.  Maybe its because i don't have that much of myself to give yet.  Maybe its because i have finally just found myself and I dont want to lose it again.  Maybe its because i am just not able to get vulnerable and allow another human being the opportunity to love me.  Maybe love is still too toxic of an emotion for me.

oh, that last lined burned a bit.  Time to change tracks,

........ This world is a social one we live in and being a part of the pulse that pumps through each individual is what the purpose of life truly is.  I go through these cycles of alone time to connect with myself that sometimes turn into isolation and disconnection with myself.  Again with that fine line.

I flipped that around yesterday though.  I spent the day with my mom.  Its weird but every time I am with her lately i feel filled with joy and energy.  Almost goofy giddy energy.  I am still tired at the end of our visits as we are usually shopping and rushing around doing things, but I come away feeling filled up with something deeper and longer lasting.  I am not really sure what it is, a subtle energy of motherly love maybe.  My mom knows me the best and I am certain she knows not to push me and let me take things at my own pace.  Come around in my own time.  Thats the subtle energy of love that I think I am drawing on.

Come to think of it thats why I love both my best friends, they allow the same grace as my mom.  I am such a hard person to get along with sometimes.  So i have been recently told by a co-worker.  lol.   I can see what he meant though.  When i get in a negative cycle I am equally as vocal and biting as I am in a positive cycle.  Realizing that I have three beautiful supportive women in my life that allow me to be me has been a great reminder, a dawning understanding as we speak, that I have been given something I can give back to others..... grace to allow each person to walk their own journey in their own way, without judgment.

I judge what does not make me feel light and fluffy.  I cut the entire tree down because of one bad apple.  Last night sitting in 'my' fellowship I was faced with my own judgement.  I had to sit in my own fear of being judged.  I am not okay with people not liking me.  A few posts ago I asked for thicker skin because in the business I am embarking into I am going to face people that don't understand what I do and people that didnt get what they expected out of my services.  I am going to need to be okay with that.  Last night was a step one on surrendering to the idea that what other people think of me is none of my business.

 I also surrendered to the realization that just because someone is vocal in my fellowship doesn't mean I have to follow their path.  Even within a group of like minds I can still have my individual journey.  This is a very very new concept that I am sure is going to teach me how to strengthen my character and finally give me something to give back that is entirely of my own.

I am happy again today.  I feel clearer and more directed on my path.  I think making connections with my family, dearest besties and my fellowship on a regular basis is what my oracles cards have been trying to tell me the last few weeks.  Community.  My new focus.

A Journey through the 12 Steps

When a newcomer walks into a meeting there are a set of guidelines we collectively give them that will aid them in their success.  This is my rendition of that advice......

Meetings are the most important element of a twelve step support program.  Salvation Army put out years ago the 90 meetings in 90 days concept for which they have now rescinded.  The idea was the more meetings you attend the easier it is for you to integrate into the fellowship and build a strong support group.  The downfall to the 90/90 rule was that it fed an addicts all or nothing mentality.  When the addict failed at attending that many meetings they allowed that to be a reservation to their entire recovery and they gave up, thinking if they couldn't even do the first suggestion then they would never stay clean.

Building a support group then for me is the first suggestion I give the newcomer.  Move outside your comfort zone and begin building friendships with people in the rooms.  Get a sponsor as soon as possible because this person will help introduce you to people within the fellowship.  A sponsor clears a path for you .  Reaching out to people is a scary thing, I don't advise waiting until your destitute to do it.  Reach out when you are feeling good and confident.  Build relationships when your mind is clear.  Then when you feel shitty and want to use you already have a support group that has gotten to know you and can see that your starting a cycle of defeat and can help you out of it before it consumes you.

When I look around at my friends that are healthy I see that they all have strong family relationships or spiritual fellowships or a close network of friends that know them inside and out.  This is imperative to a healthy mind, having people see things we cannot.  Having friends that love us enough to tell us when we are walking into a trap and when we are being bitches.  I used to side step this by sharing only small parts of myself with each set of friends I had.  My coworkers seen one side of me, my family a different side and my girlfriends yet another side of me.  No one person actually got the full view of me, until I came into NA.  Now I see the importance of self honesty and full honesty with those people that I love and trust.

Having several fellowships is that same concept of only showing parts of yourself.  To move entirely from one fellowship  to the next after one outgrows a fellowship is okay.  As long as that person leaves in a comfortable fashion for all involved and takes the time to tie up loose ends and leaves on a happy note.  I am all for growth and moving along on ones path as I will do one day as well.  However to attend three separate churches but not fully integrate into any of them is still living in the half truths of yourself, your still hiding pieces of yourself.  Secrets keep us sick.  That is probably the largest lesson I have learned coming through the 12 steps and connecting deeply with a fellowship. Becoming Vulnerable.

After establishing a support group.  The steps begin.  Meetings promise the obsession to use will be lifted if you attend regularly.  In my words it means that if you attend meetings and integrate into the fellowship you will stay clean.  You wont recover however until you begin the work of the steps.  The steps are like  taking the doctors orders and following them.  Most of us ignore the doctor.  Most of us are comfortable in our sickness.

I am not.

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

This step is the hardest and  most rewarding.  It is the step that teaches us to let go.  When something doesn't work out for a healthy person they let go and try something new, change directions.  To an obsessive/compulsive mind we keep on pushing and kicking the door until we break it down and barge in.  Most time life greets us on the other side of that door negatively.  Our lives have become unmanageable.  To admit we are bulls in china shops is the hardest thing for us know-it-alls to do.

Step Two:  We came to believe a power greater then  ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I have two takes on this step.  The first one was taught to me in a Re-hab.  We Came.    Just keep coming back, is something we tell newcomers.  Keep coming back.  We Came.  Then We Come To.  Slowly we begin to wake up.  90/90 meetings helped this awakening process.  When we use we numb out not only our feelings, but our minds fall asleep to the truths of who we are and what we are capable of achieving in this lifetime.  Coming to, is to awaken to life's beauty.  For some people this takes years of coming to meetings, for others mere days.   After awakening then we begin to  believe.  In what you believe is irrelevant.  My Ex husband during a guided meditation I was testing out on him seen his higher power as Silent Bob, a movie actor. I didn't care I was just excited that he seen someone to guide him through it.

Working the steps will help awaken our beliefs.  Its not normally until the tenth step that we begin to truly believe in something.  I feel sad for the people that stop halfway through thinking that its not working for them.

Step Three:  We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understand him.

This step also has two meanings for me.  The first one being the simple act of making a decision.   In my active addiction I was either avoiding or running, those were the only decisions I was making.  To make a decision now in my life takes on a whole new process that I never practiced before.  Weighing out the pro's and cons, looking ahead at the consequences of the decisions are new for this impulsive addict.  Step three teaches us how to play the tape entirely to the end.

It also teaches me to pray before I make any decisions.  To seek my inner knowing and to open to my own intuition in situations.  To not always listen to what others are saying or follow what others are doing.  It took me many trials and errors to finally hear my intuition and still I make mistakes, but that is the process of step 1,2,3.  I will always be cycling through those steps with every dark turn I take in life, and I am not ignorant enough to think I wont take a few more wrong turns in my life.  The first three steps are my life long tools to get me back on track

Step Four:  We made a searching a  Fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

As a society we are so focused on other people that we are unable and unwilling to look deep into our own eyes.  We are unable to love ourselves for the incredible beauty that we are.  We will hide behind Internet addictions, food addiction, drug and sex addictions, alcohol and sugar addictions, work addictions.... you name it there is a distraction from ourselves.  Step four begins to slowly peel away those outward focus's and begins to redirect your gaze at yourself.  For some people this is so painful that they relapse or get nothing out of the fourth step.  I had to work this step three times before I got entirely through it and got something out of it.  Now its my most favorite step to work.  I can see now that I am not the devil incarnate as I once really believed.  Okay maybe not the devil himself, but surely his sexy ass wife!!

Step Five:   We admitted to God, to Ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I think this is the most miss read step of all of them and being the unstable energy of a five I can see why.  The key word there is 'Nature'.  We are not setting ourselves up to air every piece of dirty laundry to our sponsors, we are looking at the common threads of our misdoings and revealing the nature of those wrongs.  When we voice anything out loud it either gives power or removes power.  In step five we remove the power of our own self deflating thoughts by putting them on the table for another to look at.  Once we understand the nature of why we did those things we can forgive ourselves.  Forgive ourselves is the whole key to step five... To have a sponsor that digs for the nature is to have a really good sponsor.

Step Six:  We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

This step starts to  peel away all the shitty behaviours we have cultivated in ourselves from years of unguidance.  I am grateful I had someone walk through this step with me that countered my shitty defects of character with the positive character traits I already embodied.  To look deeply at how these behaviours hurt or helped ourselves and others is the first step in changing who we were then into who we are now.  This step for me was truly the hardest of them all.  When your defects becoming glaringly obvious its hard not to want to crawl out of your own skin.

Step Seven:  We humbly asked God to Remove our shortcomings.

Moving into this step quickly after six was the only thing that saved my ass because I learned how to cultivate patience with myself and to seek out hope from something greater then me.  This is where my faith in a power greater then myself began to grow.  It wasn't three of five, it was now.  At the end of the day when I was left alone with me and didnt like who I was... that pain of staying the same became greater then the pain of change.... I was surely willing to change.  I began to pray.  Really Pray.

Step Eight:  We made a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to all of them.

Ah relief.  This is where my must do personality trait could finally begin to work on fixing all the shitty things that the steps dug up for me.  This is where I could begin to take an active part in cleaning up my side of the street.  By this step I was so eager to rush out into the world and explain to everyone why I did what I did back then.  Making this list began that process of doing it right.  I felt tremendous relief and a release of the pain that had been building from step four till now.

Step Nine:  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

Slow down little pony, was the message my sponsor had to repeat to me numerously.  I began to learn that making amends to certain people would actually make the situation they were in worse for them as they were in a place of beating themselves up already.  To say sorry for something you did to them, was in their mind to rub salt in their wounds.  This is where my prayers began to manifest.  As I began to project the amends I wanted to make old friends would call me out of the blue, family would approach me with an amends of their own out of nowhere.  And I am talking amends from people like my father for childhood hurts.... out of no where.  It was actually eerie to me.. even to me who believes in the power of that.

Step Ten:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By far my favorite step for recovery.  I think as soon as you start step one your sponsor should teach you step ten.  Every night before falling asleep think of ten things your grateful for.  Then run through your day to see what else transpired.  This will keep the cycle of obsession from ever getting to relapse point and your mind in a place of humility.

Step Eleven:  We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood her, praying only for her will for us and the power to carry that out.

This step is one I have been working for well over ten years and will still be learning and growing from for the rest of my life.  The layers here are truly deep and can be peeled back for a lifetime.  It was at this step that I was so amazed at my higher powers workings in my life that I was eager for a deeper connection.  Even all my meditation from years before had never connected me on the level these steps have.  To me our higher power is our inner power.  If we are unwilling to do a fourth step and look into ourselves and then a six step to peel away the darkness that covers our inner power, we will never connect to that higher power.  This is where all other spiritual programs in my life have lacked true authenticity.  The steps guided me through falling in love with myself..... the exact image of the Goddess.  The God in all her glory and dark nature.

Step Twelve:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principals in all our affairs.

Today I see a much broader picture of this step then the one limited to the rooms.  If an addict has already found her way to the rooms she is walking in the right direction.  I am more interested in the addicts in the world that are still lost and trying to find their way.  My work place has connected me with three separate addicts two whom I have had the privilege of being the light for.  That is what carrying the message means to me and practicing this in all of our affairs.  Once your light is turned on, you will want to share that with the world.  There are many many paths to igniting your inner light, the twelve steps is but one way as is religion but another way and there are a thousand more ways out there.  We all have the choice to embrace our lights.... we ALL have inner light.

Working the Steps, attending meetings regularly and setting up a strong honest support group are the three things that I did without fail this time around.  I know without a doubt that I am still clean and clean the longest I have ever been only because of the marriage of these three aspects of the program.  The twelve steps have given me what I have been seeking for well over ten years.  I am beyond gratitude.

You Belong, Now stretch Your Wings and Fly

Everyone wants to belong somewhere.

Identification was the first shocking experience I had in the twelve step fellowship.  I speak of spiritual awakenings and how my first was during step one.  Although that was a mighty big one, thinking about it now, I am more inclined to think identification was the first true one.

Realizing that there were people out there like me.  My whole life I felt like the odd one out, nobody ever understood me or the things I did.  I didn't understand me.  Then I found the fellowship and suddenly everyone understood me and I them.  The sheer relief I felt when I came into the rooms was overwhelming.

What Identification gave me was a sense of belonging that went much deeper then my blood family.  I felt normal amongst the unnormal.  I felt for the first time in my life I could say and do what I really felt and not get a sideways look from the other person.  I shared my dark secrets only to find out others had those same secrets.  For the first time in my life I began to not be afraid to speak about what was in my mind and on my heart.  I felt safe.  Identification gave me a sense of safety.

I believe we all need to feel like we belong somewhere that is why there are so many groups out there that you can join.  Why Churches are so popular.  We all need to feel like we are part of a community.  Like minded community.  The twelve step fellowship is my like minded community and I love each person in that community like they were my own blood sisters and brothers.

It is only through identification that I have been able to find my own individual identity.  Where I have felt safe and nurtured to begin to grow into the person that I have the potential of becoming.  It was through knowing that I am not alone, that we are all connected.  I can see myself in others and others in myself and this helps me feel the positive energy that lifts us all up as a group.

When I came into the fellowship I was reading a book that was telling the story of the Ugly duckling.  Today I feel that story coming alive in my life.  I lived my whole life trying to be something that I wasn't.  I tried so hard to fit into all these different categories and boxes that my family and friends had placed around me.  I just wanted to be normal like everyone else, to stop my brain from thinking the way it did.  But I couldn't be that ugly duckling that everyone expected me to be.  When I came into the rooms I realized why.  I wasn't an ugly duckling, I was a Swan.

Share in a Community, Your Life Will Change!

I would love to Share about Community today.

I feel as a society as a whole we are moving into a more community connected consciousness, and I am entirely grateful for the 12 step fellowships for ushering me in this mentality.  Together we can... alone we can't.

I have learned from personal experience that reaching out to others as a sounding board for the rat race taking place in my mind has been paramount in my recovery and learning who I am and who I am not.  Getting to know new people gives me the opportunity to develop my personality through the mirror they provide me.  And connecting with like minded groups helps me to find a connection to humanity that I cannot find sitting alone on my computer or on my couch.

I have been blessed with amazing friends within my fellowship and outside of it.  I have come to learn that we have many different likes within our personality and connecting with like minded people means getting involved with more then one group.  Not that i am saying join everything and overwhelm yourself with people from all walks of life... unless thats your personality.  Its definitely not mine.  I am a much more private person choosing to let only a few people close to my heart.

I have a friend from middle school that I still speak to almost daily, she lives far from me but we connect with each other because we share the same past.  We grew up together and its empowering to both of us to watch each other get through challenges and success, knowing we grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.  She is my truest sounding board.   She gets my brain and calls me on stuff that my other friends cannot.

 I have two friends that I met in a spiritual community about ten years ago and they are two of my dearest friends.  They are also normies... they do not get how and why my brain works the way it does. Because they love me, they find my thought process to be amusing and love me through these times that I stumble fall and find the hard way around to a solution   I love them for allowing me this grace, as they are my spiritual connection.  They have been my life line as I ventured to the depths of hell and back.  I lean heavily on them for my spiritual understandings as this is a very passionate area of my life.

However the largest community and the one closest to my heart is the fellowship that saved my life.  The women that have become my friends have brains that work like mine, have similar life experiences and completely relate to my entire being.  Being with a group of people just like me is empowering in a way I never understood before.   It makes me think of a church group and why they seem to be so happy all the time.  i am not sure if its the concept of God travelling through their beings or if it really is just the fellowship of like minded people connecting with each other.

I am a person who loves to dig and analyze ideas and concepts, but this one is so wonderful that it doesn't matter how or why.  I know that because of the twelve step fellowship and the work book of the steps my life has changed in ways I never thought possible.  All the things my spiritual teacher has been teaching me for over ten years now is finally taking hold.... but only because of the nurturing a support from this fellowship.  Within my group of friends I feel empowered to embrace my emerging personality and move confidently into who I am.  I feel love moving through me in ways that I never understood before.

Community is not just for people with the disease of addiction.  I notice that all people striving for overall health have become part of a fellowship of sorts.  Life is about relationships.  We cannot take things to our graves  but we can take memories and feelings of love.  Again I cannot say enough good things about my twelve step fellowship and I wish that everyone in the world could experience what I am.

If you dont belong to a group yet, I recommend finding something your passionate about or something your personality compliments... I am an addict that's the group I fit best with..... and get involved in its fellowship.  Community is the  way to connection.

Are you a part of?

Topic:  Fellowship

Always looking at my part in something has me digging deeper into where I am at mentally, spiritually and physically.   I struggle with after meeting coffees that I am invited too.   I never really understood why, it is just uncomfortable.   So when asked most times I say no unless there are people going that I am really comfortable with already.  After reading and sitting to reflect on this reading I think I may be embarking on an understanding as to why that is.

Small talk.

What is that?    Honestly what is small talk?  Logically i obviously understand the concept of it, but where in my life have I practiced it?  Upon digging deeper, I can see how all my conversations are deep and serious.  My life is deep and serious.  My relationships are all deep and serious.   Where is the lightness in my life?   I guess that slipped away from me when I began to travel the dark realms of addiction hell.    Learning to live in the light has proven more uncomfortable then I first thought.

Chit chat with new people is a light action.   Coffee after the meetings has no agenda and people are there because they are enjoying themselves and each other.   It's a different vibe then the serious tone of a do or die meeting.   I am comfortable with the do or die meeting.   Not so much with the light fun coffee afterwards.    How unbelievably odd is that?   I feel so odd outside the fellowship and within it.

I see now having coffee with fellow addicts after the meetings is part of learning a new way to live.   It's not like I never was able to small chat before, it's not a new concept for me, but it is a returning to earth again and that is a shaky transition.

Thinking of it a bit more deeply and getting even more honest, I also fear the intimacy with my fellow addicts.  Sharing myself fully means opening up and I think I have been shut down so long that the doors to my inner self are rusted shut.   In a meeting I can keep to the deep topics of addiction, at coffee I would be more inclined to share my day and what's happening in my world.  That is a bit more challenging for me.  I am a Virgo and we love our privacy, it's hard for me to open my book up for people to read.

Learning a new way is the goal thought, right?   Maybe I will be the one to instigate coffee after my next meeting.

Where do You draw POWER from??

... 'We had convinced ourselves that we could make it alone and proceeded to live life on that basis.  The results were disastrous and, in the end, each of us had to admit that self-sufficiency was a lie'.

I fully believe that as humans we are not meant to live a solitary life, we live in communities for a reason.  As addicts we isolate from lack of desire to live and work with others in our community.  For me it was because I was tired of being hurt by people, drugs numbed me and kept me safe from others.  Coming into recovery I struggle with opening up and let others in again.

When I stand in the circle at the end of the meeting I feel like that physical circle is a human shield my fellow addicts and I create against the darkness of drugs and that world that threatens to kill me.  When I am at a meeting I feel like I am in a safe zone.  There is a power in those rooms that keeps the demon in my head quiet while I am there.  I cannot quiet that overwhelming urge to get loaded on my own... I tried, numerous times.

Step 11 is what began to keep me safe outside the rooms.  Steps 2 and 3 helped me to begin to develop the concept of that power greater then myself, however it wasn't until step 11 that I began to really to sit and invite that power into my body.  As I practiced different meditations techniques I began to feel a white light surrounding me.  This became the human shield that the meetings created for me.  I call it running my energy.  I draw down power from the heavens and suck up grounding from the center of the earth.  This keeps me balanced and feeling safe.  Sometimes I even visualize a shield around myself when I am feeling really raw and want no one to hurt me.  This is the power that I cannot muster on my own.

Power greater then myself is not God, it's truly just electrical power that I plug into like a TV cord.  Strangely enough the more often I connect in this way, the more I seem to understand things about Divine Love and the more I want to live in harmony with the people in my community.

So Just for Today I will seek the support of other recovering addicts; harmony with others in my community;and the care of my Higher Power.  I cant, but we can.

Thank you for letting me share, I am a recovering addict named Arial.

Do YOU have the drive to Keep Coming Back??

....'We are grateful that we were made so welcome at the meetings that we felt comfortable'.

Can you believe it's February 5th already??  Just had to put that out there, reading these meditations daily keep me tapped into how time moves by quickly... a gentle awareness I wanted to share.  Moving on.

Keep coming back.  I hear it at ever single meeting and over the years I have peeled back more layers to the meaning of those three simple words.  I remember my first meeting so clearly like it was yesterday   A co-worker brought me as a guest.  I thought I was going because I was dating a hardcore addict and I wanted to understand him better.  I had no idea I was there for me, even after the meeting I was still in denial I didn't hear anything that applied to me.  Because I wasn't listening.  What I did get out of that meeting though was how friendly everyone was and how welcoming all these super hot guys were with their hugs.... hot damn I loved NA men!

It wasn't long after that when I realized after the hard core addict boyfriend was gone, I was still using and couldn't stop.  I remembered that meeting my friend took me too and thought maybe I would give it another try.  No one approached me this time.  Or the next three times I went.  So I stopped going.

A year later sitting in detox, I was forced to attend a twelve step meeting everyday.  So back in NA I found myself.  This time my detox room mate sat with me and luckily for me she was a lifer in the program and knew the drill.... really well.  She handed me a pre-amble and told me I had to read one at every meeting because it got people used to putting a name to my face.  She was right people came up and talked to me at half time and addressed me by name.   She also introduced me to her previous sponsor and pretty much forced me to sign on with her, even though I didn't feel ready for all this.

Thats when my life really changed.  My sponsor loved me so fully and held on to me so tight that I finally found some solid footing after years of slipping and falling further down the rabbit hole.   Keep coming back is what I practiced.  Even though for many meetings I wasn't welcomed and I slipped further away, my higher power kept bringing me back and lined it up perfectly for me, only because I was still willing to keep coming back.

Our recovery is our own responsibility,  but all we need to do is take the steps we can manage.  I did nothing to get my first sponsor, it was taken care of for me.  I just needed to take the small step to come to a few meetings.  I needed to take the small step through the doors of detox.  I needed to take but a single step to my future and spirit whisked me the rest of the way.

It is time now for me to give back what was so freely given to me.  I have attended enough meetings where I did not reach out to that new face in the room, but now I must because memories of how desperately I wanted someone to say hi to me during those meetings when nobody did now rings in my heart and the gratitude for the people that did reach out is overwhelming me right now.

So Just for today I remember the welcome I was given when I first came into NA.  Today, I will express my gratitude by offering a hug to a newcomer.

Thank you for letting me share, I am a recovering addict named Arial.

I Need YOU, Do you Need me?

...'Anyone may join us, regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed,religion or lack of religion.'

I am closed minded.  Writing that stings a little bit.

I read the reading in a new way that I have shared here already, I am going to share it again though because it's that new found way of reading that has opened my mind to how closed my mind really is.  I read the meditation three times now and pause in between each read to let it sink into my heart.  The first read goes into my mind as it normally would.  I pick apart my experiences with the reading and logically process what I want to share about the reading.  This meditation there was nothing that stood out.... it didn't apply to me.

The second reading I opened my heart and read it through there instead of my head and I felt some twinges of yuck come up.  When I sat with it after I had images of other middle class people in the room and my dislike for them.  The third reading brought up my love for the hardcore bottom of the barrel junkies that come into the room needing just a shred of love.  Thats where the reading began to hit home for me and I realized it did apply to me.

I can find love in my heart for the people that outwardly look like they need it.  The ones that have hit a bottom so low that I cant even imagine it, but have been taught from a young age to reach out and help these people... the people less fortunate then me.  Thats my closed mind pretending that it's open.  To open my mind I need to see that the people that come into the rooms with decent clothes and higher bottoms then me still need the same amount of love.

Instead of feeling love for the people who haven't become desolate I compare myself with them, I get in competition with them in my mind.  Rating how bad they have it to how bad I have it.  This goes back to the reading about sharing our hardships instead of alienating ourselves because of them.  We are all in the rooms because our bottoms destroyed our hearts and we need your love to help rebuild them.

So no matter where you come from in life, while in the rooms you are no better or no less then the guy next to you.  I need to open my mind to all walks of life as well as an understanding that every ones defects serve to teach me something about my own and passing judgment on them closes my mind to my own learning and understanding.

So Just for Today I know that the more diverse my groups experience is the better able my group will be to offer me support in the different circumstances I find myself facing.  today I welcome addicts from all backgrounds to my home group.

Thank you for letting me share