Great story! I’m so happy for you! I think that you are doing well.

Oh! I am a friend of Bill W.

I drank,(and did every drug there is, except Hayauasca sp?), for 45 years.

Connection, healthy connection, is, indeed, what I was missing. I am just learning that closeness can’t always be achieved with every person. It took six tries for me to find a sponsor that I can work with.

I was in a women’s meeting. A woman happened to mention in her share that she had 35 years of sober and clean time. It was a “duh-me” moment.

I had already become friends with D.R. when her father passed suddenly, early this year.

She was calling people in the fellowship, trying to find someone who could dog/house-sit for she and her husband, while they were in her home state. It was 3am. I was, of course, up, reading. I said, “Of course I will!”

(She has the most precious two Yorkies in the universe!😍)

After dog-sitting for her two more times, I heard her share that day.

(I’m 60, retired, and my time is my own).

The main thing that I have learned about connection, in sobriety, is to abandon the rush to closeness.

I had been so soul-crushingly lonely, after divorce, and our daughter growing up, not needing me anymore, that I would get drunk/high at home, alone, knowing that getting together with my “friends” was a bad idea. Then, at a certain level of drunkenness, the loneliness became unbearable. The resolve to stay home evaporated. I called over, or went to, the people who drank/drugged like I did. Stupidity ensued.

I had started experimenting with pot, when I was ten years old,(1968). By the time I was fifteen, I was drinking/drugging every day.

I, and many of us, in the fellowship, never formed an adult, emotionally mature, identity.

Our connections were desperate and childish.

Though I worked, paid the bills, got married and produced offspring, I never 'really' grew up.

Slowing down…realizing that I have a lot to learn, and that it’s going to take a long time, being humble, instead of humiliated, dropping my false pride like a hot rock, picking it back up again, my sponsor and/or another sister in sobriety pointing it out to me, having the humility to take advice, direction, from those who have traveled this road before me…and still, reading,(a lot), and writing,(a little).

It’s a way of life. My new life. One that is, slowly, *becoming*.

My sobriety date is 09/21/2018.

I leave you with my breathing meditation mantra…

Peace Love Kindness Respect the more you give the more you get 😍

You are going to be okay.

😍😘😇🙏🏼

PS: you never know who your sponsor may be. I’m a trans woman. My sponsor is Catholic and, every time I arrive at her house, Fox News is on! Go figure!🤔🤣