My daughter was two when I got sober. I went away for a week to visit my sister who was sober, and she took me to many meetings. It was my ‘treatment center’. Those first six months were not terrible, but I knew I had to get to meetings. A few meetings had childcare, and my then husband watched her often. I went to as many meetings as I could during the day when she was in daycare. I was working really hard to connect with the program. It never occurred to me that my daughter had any awareness of something being different. I believed I had been able to be just as attentive and loving as I had ever been. I was, what most people called a high bottom drunk, so I also believed that my drinking had never really affected her.

One day when she was three, she was playing and got out the play purse that she had. She asked me if I knew where her ‘keys’ were. She had a set of old keys that we had given her so she could pretend to lock the door or drive a car. She went to the closet where her coats hung on hooks low enough for her to get to them. She got out a coat, sort of put in on (it may have been upside down) and marched out of the kitchen/playroom towards the front door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I’m going to a meeting,” she said brightly. I chuckled and was so surprised to hear her say that. I had no idea that she tracked my going to meetings. She couldn’t get out the front door, so I stayed in the kitchen making dinner. I could hear her in the living room talking but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After ten minutes or so, she marched into the kitchen and said: “Oh, I feel so much better!”. She knew! She knew that when I got home from a meeting, that I felt better and was BETTER. She knew I was in a better mood and perhaps kinder and more loving with her. She KNEW!

Years later at a meeting, I told this story after we were reading from The Family Afterwards in the Big Book. In that moment I realized that my behavior BEFORE I got sober had affected her and I was clueless. I felt some shame but also knew that my behavior changed rather quickly after I got sober, enough for her to recognize that Mommy felt better and that something called ‘meetings’ helped, and it helped her as well. Meetings make all the difference!