When It Hurts To Much To Cry…….

In the children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit, the little bunny asks “does it hurt when you become real ”  yes little bunny it does…Alcoholism is a terrible disease, it kills people who don’t even have it.  Things go on in most homes that we would not really want in the headlines, but damage fueled by alcohol takes things to a new low. One of our members recently had a sexual abuse , resulting in jail time, in her family. Sibling against sibling, and grandchildren all involved…. gives new meaning to the ” wreckage of our past….” At some point we have to accept our responsibility for how our kids grew up, and they have to accept the choices they make, as adults, are their own.

About 20 years ago I heard a sober alcoholic say, in front of 2,000 people, that he had molested his daughter, I was stunned. The room took on a respectful silence, and I knew that man was not alone, nor was his daughter…..If we are to survive, ” We are to face the facts, and accept the facts”,  For myself as a person who grew up in a home with far to much abuse, it was freeing to know I didn’t have to live with  in my past or hate my parents, that forgiving is not always forgetting. Our Promises say ” we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it…… my past is the greatest asset I have today, it has made me the person that God and AA have always wished for me to be.

 I got sober in 1985, and we were not quite so politically correct then, we took our lives and our troubles into the rooms of AA and became whole again. There was a lot of ” keep it to the booze” and” tell your story, not your parents” and that was good, it kept me focused on my behavior and my disease…But now it seems like the pendulum has swung to far in the other direction, that we are sanitizing AA to match some ” high bottom” television series. You know we all get well and it only takes 28 days…..Dr. Bob’s son gives a powerful talk, he may have passed by now, but I still play his tapes.  He was there for the early days, and says quite clearly, those early members brought all their lives to the meetings. I am the first to cringe when I see a meeting going into a ” this was my day” meeting where we try to fix people. That is not what I am suggesting here. I am proposing that our groups look again at being open to the alcoholic who may have sobriety, but need the understanding of their peers. About 15 years ago, my son in law got arrested for child pornography, he committed suicide and  my daughter found him…….I went to a meeting……..That meeting was not hi jacked, but I did not have to put on my ” happy face” and nobody tried to fix me…. Today I would have been told to ” buck up”.. that is not AA.