A Story of Recovery:

Meeting Halfway

I did not enjoy going to meetings in the early days, particularly when I realized I couldn’t play around and change the ones I attended whenever I felt like it. At first, I thought it too much of a commitment, one that ate into my “free” time and caused disruption at home.

My sponsor encouraged me to commit to a certain meeting to which I had a lot of resistance. I love my faith, my priest, and my local church, and there was a particular service that happened at the same time as the meeting. I generally attended with my partner and our three-year-old granddaughter. After some months, I agreed to start attending the FA meeting instead. My husband was unhappy about this, saying that we wouldn’t be able to go to church together. I just softly said that I would see how it went and things might change again in the future—I had already learnt something about how to handle relationships at this point in the program.

I went to a different service, and three weeks later, my husband started attending the same service as myself and our granddaughter! The FA meeting still is my favorite, enhanced by the early start to the day, and my enjoyment of the fellowship afterwards, as some of us meet up for a cuppa. This is just one example of how letting go can be beneficial and of how recovery improved my relationship with my husband, as we learned to meet each other halfway on issues instead of maintaining our stubborn willfulness and expecting everything our own way.