How are my recovery tools helping me to live with grief and loss? How am I feeling my feelings today? My father died a few days ago. I am grieving his loss. Because of my work in recovery, I can feel my feelings. I don't have to deny them, and stuff them. What a gift!

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My life was out of control, but I still thought I could control my loved one’s drinking. Cold Wednesday in April. The beginning of the story but also the middle of the story. Where is the beginning? When I learned, as a child, to take care of everyone else first? That I couldn’t be happy...

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“When I got busy, I got better”. I’ve heard this as an encouragement to service in recovery. What is service, and how can it support my recovery? Spencer and Ester talk about our experience with service, with support from almost a dozen listeners. Our discussion was guided by but certainly not limited to these questions....

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How can we use our recovery tools to help us when our loved ones are suffering from mental illness? Is it harder when our loved one is our child? Roberta shares her experience, strength, and hope around these questions. Our conversation was guided by these questions. How/when did you come to Al-Anon? Give as much...

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If I’m not the problem, then there is no solution. Huh? How does this make sense for my recovery. Spencer, Eric and several listeners share our thoughts about this idea. How would you have felt about this statement before you came into recovery? In what ways were you trying to fix other people’s problems? Which...

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What are you grateful for right now? Where do you have gratitude that isunexpected? How has the practice of gratitude helped you throughturbulent, stressful events and times? My gratitude this year is centered on people in my life. My brother, who is taking care of my aging, ailing parents. He is there when they have...

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Recovery takes time. That’s a good thing. Why? Ester leads us through a conversation about slow recovery, guided by these notes. Recovery, like everything in life, has its ebbs and flows.  An “ebb” in its noun form is defined in the Meriam Webster dictionary as “the reflux of the tide toward the sea” and as...

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This has been a rough week for many of us in the United States, and outside the United States. As political processes wind their way through; as the pandemic is escalating; I wanted to take a moment to think about the ways in which I have used, and in which you can use program tools...

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I heard someone in a meeting say, “the great thing is that there are no experts in Al-Anon.” What does this mean and why is it a great thing? Aren’t we all experts on our own stories? One expression of this idea is found in Tradition 8: Al-Anon Twelfth Step work should remain forever non-professional,...

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