A Holiday Gathering

Met with Charlie, Margie, Mike, Diana and Lea at the usual Friday morning Crossroads Mall get-together.  We discussed how our week had gone, holidays, recovery, life in general, and then read from the last three pages of the 12^th step from the 12x12.  During our reading, a brass band was tuning up for Christmas Carols on the stage.  We got to finish reading the 12^th step to much fanfare.  It was inspiring.

We discussed pride vs. false pride after the reading.  We are all grateful to be sober.  My feeling is that sobriety can be seen as a god-given gift, what can be proud of is all of the work that we have done to available to receive the gift of sobriety.  There was a smattering of consensus on this perception of pride with a considerable lack of clarity as to what constitutes a healthy pride for alcoholics, the dependence of self-esteem on our most recent achievement and how to avoid anxiety.

In the end, we had a nice conversation for more than an hour, declared it our holiday gathering and gave each other hugs.  It felt good.

After that, Lea and I stopped by Eastside Intergroup to get some AA coins for our homegroup to get newcomers with 1, 2, 3 and 6 months of sobriety.  It was good to see Nancy.

I am grateful for my wonderful friends in recovery, proud of Lea’s achievements in the 9 months since starting methadone and glad that Michelle can call home while standing next to me (she just activated a Virgin Mobile cell phone).