New choices changed my life

I do not feel helpless and alone anymore, even when I am being treated in a condescending manner. Al-Anon teaches me to keep the focus on myself and not take another person’s inventory.

If I can’t change the circumstance, I can at least change my response to it. I can honor my value and worth as a person and not engage. I can detach with love. I can walk away.

These are choices I didn’t know I had before; they help me maintain my serenity today. Each time I practice my program and take care of my needs, I am drawing on the wisdom of Al-Anon members who have gone before me.

Sometimes, I may have to stand alone in the world and face tough issues, but I am never truly alone. My Al-Anon family is always with me. I gain strength from knowing that I have a safe place in which to explore and grow as I move through this life.

Al-Anon has fortified me with a blueprint for living. Al-Anon teaches me to accept rather than expect, to respond rather than react, and to get my focus off those people over whom I have no power.

I have learned that the core of my success is in turning my will and my life over to the care of God. Al-Anon reminds me that this is not a race. It took many years of living with insanity before it ever occurred to me that I needed to change before anything else could change.

Al-Anon provides me with something crucial for my growth. When I walk through the doors of a meeting, I know that I am safe. I trust that everything I say will be treated as confidential. I can share my deepest, darkest secrets with my group or my Sponsor and feel the weight of those secrets lift, the shame of them disappear. What an extraordinary experience this is. What a peaceful life I have now.