Speaking to your newly-sober self
Dear friends in G.R.O.W.– I’m Louise and I’m an alcoholic, very grateful for the sobriety I have today, both physical, emotional and spiritual. Welcome to all our newcomers too.
What would I tell my newly-sober self to put her at ease if the mature sober me, well over three continuously sober decades later, could go back as I am now and sit with her for a few hours…?
The newly-sober me was 30-yrs old, an emotional mess, with such a past gathered up behind her, which she carried about inside her. She’d been hospitalized many times, and had left a trail of chaos in her wake. She gave a child up for adoption, and lost custody of her son and her marriage broke up. She’d married a father figure in the rooms of AA—almost 13 years older than her. She suffered from what our Book talks of as a ‘grave emotional and mental disorder’. Today she might even have been classified with a personality disorder. She’d been in and out of AA since 19 years of age. She truly thought she was different. AA didn’t work for her. And no matter how hard she tried to stop (hundreds of times), she always went back to drinking. But she’d come back one last time, as she knew (like the psychiatrist told her a year or so before) she’d be dead by 30. She came back, broken and willing to be taught. She put down that first drink, for one day.
I’d gently tell her the following:
Louise, if you only knew the peace you will experience, and how it will all work out, you would let go and let God in fully now. 🙂
Get a sponsor, go through the steps, and let the magic of this program unfold little by little within you. Don’t listen to your head’s stinkin’ thinkin’. Get to a meeting instead.
Get into service in any way at all in meetings. Stay with service always.
You don’t need to worry any more. You are safe in the hands of a Power greater than you.
Don’t be scared; you are going to experience a way of life beyond your wildest dreams, even when the going is tough. Life is tough at times for everyone but you will grow through it all.
Keep trusting that you are being looked after and guided. You ‘have entered the world of the spirit’. (p 84 BB)
You will experience a growing peace that deepens through the years of living this way.
You will have lost the desire to drink by the time you are seven months sober (for me, that is, up until today).
You will come to listen to that still small voice within, which guides you in your decision-making.
You will build a relationship with a Power that gets more intimate as time goes on.
You will begin to leave your world of self and move out into an other-centered world—there will come a point when you realize that you genuinely can put others’ needs before your own. Even when your own problems are looming– especially when your own problems are looming you will look to help others!!
You will come to a point in your life when it becomes hard to even imagine how you are now. That’s because your true personality will have a chance to emerge. And you will love it. You will no longer feel lower than a snake’s belly…
All the conflict within your mind that you find hard to live with will lessen, little by little, through time. Just keep sharing..
God will untangle all the mess that no psychiatrist ever could do.
You will be a rock for your sons and family.
You will build a life which involves going back to school, new career, and you will become a person people can rely on. You will be valued in the society in which you move.
You will learn to accept that you are powerless over people, places and things. And this is a lifetime job but you will get better at it as your experience of life and being sober grows.
You will sit and marvel that you have been fortunate enough to have been given this gift…
Ladies, I invite you to share on what you would tell your newly-sober self if you could go back in a time machine and sit with her for an hour or two..
And for those newly-sober members of our group, please just share on anything I have brought up.
For the new members of our group, we’d truly love to hear you share.