Through the Red Door Blog

I spent most of my life in Seattle, WA. Here’s a little, known fact about Western Washington – there are no poisonous snakes (too cold year-round)!  I like to hike and roam so for all those years I never thought about snakes. In general, they don’t bother me but knowing that if I came across one, I could be assured that it was not poisonous.

Then, I moved to Southern Arizona. I moved in October, so it was getting cool enough that many snakes were heading towards hibernation. Very early on a worker at my place said, “come out by my truck, you can see a rattlesnake – a dead one”. I went out to see a thin snake about a foot long. I didn’t want to get close even though he told me it was dead. He said it was a very young one and that was why it was so small. I asked if its mother was around, and should I be worried, but he let me know that snakes are pretty much on their own two weeks after they hatch. So – no mamas around to worry about.

I walk for an hour each day. During my first winter in my new hometown, I didn’t concern myself much about snakes. There is a trail across for my place and I would walk each day admiring my new world and enjoy the sun. One day I noticed something black on the road as I crossed to go home.  It was a snake – a big one that had been run over by a car and was dried out. I took it home to check in my Snakes in AZ brochure and it was a diamondback rattle snake! Thank goodness it was DEAD.

Along about February my friends in AA began to warn me about snakes. They would be coming out of hibernation. The list of things to watch out for was long – look under your car before you get in, don’t leave out empty pots they can get in, they can crawl into your walled back yard through the drainage hole – make sure it has a dense screen to keep them out. If you see one – go the other way. Call the fire department and they will come and get it!  Yikes! I was freaking out! The newspaper in town had stories of snakebites every week and classes were available for residents, especially for ones that had dogs!

When I went on my daily walk, I was very aware of walking and watching what was in front of me on the trail. If I heard a noise I would stop and listen and assess and then move on. (By the way – rattlesnakes DO NOT rattle if you get close to them). I walked so that I was present and only looked a few feet ahead. I could enjoy the birds singing and the view of the mountains. I wasn’t afraid, I was cautious. The first time I saw a snake on my trail, I stopped about 25 feet from it. I didn’t see it moving but I still watched and began to look around to see if I could walk around the snake and not get cactus needles in me. Someone had told me that early in the spring snakes are often out getting sun to warm up since they are coldblooded creatures. I found a way around the snake, said hello as I watched, as I walked around the snake, and went on my way. Another time I was walking by the fire station near me, and they were doing a training on capturing snakes, putting them in wooden box and then taking them further out in the desert to release. It was fascinating. All wildlife in AZ is protected from being killed.

I’ve seen a few in this last year and this is what I have learned: Being present in my body and mind is very important. I can enjoy nature and be present at the same time. When faced with a challenge, I can stop, breath, and find the safest way to move through the challenge. Listening to others’ fears and anxiety doesn’t help me, it often just makes me anxious. I can trust myself that with education and AA support I can learn how to navigate my life. Scary things happen in my life. There is a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, and I turn my life of to the care of that power.

  

“In ACA, we learn to let go in stages…Our attempts at control bring spiritual death to a relationship with ourselves and others.…..At the core of this learned control is a fear that we will not know who we are if we do not have an addict or dysfunctional person in our lives…In ACA...we learn we can survive the journey of finding out who we are. We can change and know happiness.” Adult Children of Alcohlics/Dysfunctional Families; ACA Fellowship Text (The big Red Book) 41.

Recently, I’ve taken to rereading The Big Red Book of ACoA. Ever since I first read anything about ACA, put myself into therapy, and came to realize that I am an Adult Child of an Alcoholic who did not drink. In time, I came to believe that just about everyone in A.A. with at least five years of sobriety, should attend ACOA for at least six months.

ACoA is not just another Twelve Step program. Rather it is a program in which I was able to locate my behavior choices in order to survive a system that was broken, and we did not know it.

My choice (subconsciously) was a mixture of the quiet one (at school), the clown (at home). I had an undiagnosed learning problem, was labeled as being a “slow learner,” and so I stayed quiet in the classroom and around those whom I judged to be well educated. At home, for the most part, I could change mom’s anger into laugher and escape whatever punishment she had in mind.        

In ACA I looked back and realized that early in my life I had boundary issues, involving myself in situations (to be of help) that were none of my business. It was clear to me that we did not talk about our family outside the family (nor inside). And, bringing a friend home, or going to spend the night at the home of a friend, was out of the question

Out of the home and into college gave me a new life. I had to make decisions for myself, but I wasn’t sure all the time. So, unconsciously, I used other people to make decisions, to speak up on issues, to make suggestions. My dry alcoholic mother was a master of manipulation, and I learned from the best.

There came the day when I found total freedom and friends. Jack Daniels, Bud Wiser (Stupid), John Jameison, etc. In no time I was the center of attention, could dance, became arrogant, selfish, self-centered, and developed a fear of God punishing me that only got worse as my lifestyle spiraled out of control. Of course, I never doubted I was in control. I knew what I was doing. After all, by this time, I was helping alcoholics on the streets of Dublin.

ACA Step One reads: “We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable.” My mother was a good person who was addicted to Church, to work, and needed to control all she could of her family, what they said and who they were with. After her death, I wrote her a number of letters and in the end, I came to admit she had done the best she could in her circumstances. What a relief.

As a child in this dysfunctional system, I learned to keep my emotions to myself. I concluded there was no point in telling anyone how I felt. I was a couple of years in A.A. when I began to make a list of emotions and then acknowledge I had them. It was difficult to admit “ I am loving. There are times when I am indifferent.” “I am patient. There are times when I have no patience.” “I am loving.” I’m afraid to say I love you. I have difficulty hearing “I love you.” In time I learned to love and be loved.

Some of the ACA promises state “We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves…Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis… Fears of failure and success will leave us.as we intuitively make healthier choices…Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set…Gradually with the help of our Higher Power we will learn to expect the best and get it.”

Alcoholics Anonymous offered me sobriety and serenity and living one day at a time with people I wanted to be like. Sobriety and serenity opened my mind and heart to the environment in which I was molded, learned to love it, and from that become the person I am today, and I continue to grow. Thanks to AA and ACoA.

Séamus D

Seamus is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Except that’s not how I felt when I woke up and said that to myself this morning.

I didn’t feel happy. I felt discontent and tired. After 4 ½ years of avoiding Covid I had finally gotten it! I had to see a doctor about my aching knees. I feel old AND at the same time I have a zit growing on my nose, so I felt ugly and old.

I took myself for a walk. When I don’t know what to do, I walk. I started to walk during the pandemic, and it stuck.

Walking often delivers a God Shot to me and today was no exception. I remembered reading about a man who wanted to cultivate gratitude, so he put 8 pennies in his left pocket and each time he had ANY moment of gratitude during the day, he noted it and moved one penny into his right pocket. It never took him even a half a day before the gratitude pennies were all in his right pocket.

On my Facebook feed today, there was a memory of the start of a year (I think it was 2016). I posted a gratitude I had on January 1 and then I started to post one every day and I did it for a whole year!

This year that felt way too much – but maybe 8 pennies was doable. I tried in the past to list gratitudes as I turned off the light but by the end of the day, I rarely remembered them.

So, I will do this today, and hopefully tomorrow and on and on. I have 6 already: I heard a bird singing. The sun out and the weather is cooling in Southern AZ, seeing my daughter and granddaughter on FaceTime, dear ones I love, who I know love me and a few more.

As I got close to home from my walk I saw a small key on the sidewalk. It seemed to be for me – the God Shot. The key to whatever is going on is gratitude- gratitude and acceptance that life is as it is wherever my feet are at any moment. And this is my prayer: Please help me remember that the Impossible is Possible as long as I don’t believe the lie that it is all up to me. Happy new day!!

We went to Cape Cod a few weeks ago. It’s a favorite place with my favorite beach. When we are there, I go to the beach alone in the morning to pray. It’s easy—there’s a lot of privacy—the dog walkers might wave, and I can wave back. The surfers are out in the waves. No one is sunbathing.

I take time at the water’s edge to write the names of each person I love on the edge of the shore and watch to see the water come up and take the prayer away. Sometimes I write the names of people I struggle with—coworkers, former friends, and yes, relatives. I have left many prayers on the beach. Many fears, dreams, people I love and people that scare me. I have cried many tears with those prayers and let the ocean’s saltwater wash away my salty tears. Sometimes the healing or resolution happens right there at the water’s edge, and many times it happens later that day or week or month.

It is always some form of surrender.

I live in the gap between wanting to make a complete surrender, making that surrender for a moment, and then, seeing, even as I walk back to my car some fear returns and my wish to control something or someone is already back in my head.

Surrender is such an imperfect process, but I do think it is a process. I really do wonder about people who say they have done it and it’s done. Do they really never worry again? Worry means I still think I can affect an outcome. Curiosity might be the antithesis of worry. Being able after surrender, to wonder: “I wonder how God is going to play this one out?”

These are the things I surrender and later worry about: my job, his job, my health, his health, money, in-laws, kids and aging.

Maybe this worry habit of mine too is something I need to surrender.

Over and over, I surrender and return to these things. But just the surrendering of them makes them different—if only for a minute I am willing.

The ocean’s rhythm is familiar; in and out, in and out, washing, soothing, wearing me down.

The first time occurred while I was standing at the edge of that alcoholic abbess. There I came to believe I was an alcoholic and knew I had to stop drinking. I was scared. But I saw changes in the lives of others and worked the Program to bring those changes into my own life. My AA meetings hammered on the step-by-step process of dealing with the harm we’d caused. My sponsor warned me of the importance of continuing to attend meetings and continuing to work the Steps. At that point I knew I had indeed been born again.

As I worked the Steps, I came to understand that Step Two told me much about myself, the depths of which I didn’t comprehend immediately, and to some extent, not for years. It is this Step which tells me to “get outside myself,” to forget that I alone can understand life and function within it. Step Two tells me to “let go and let God,” to always seek the will of my Higher Power, to seek the next right thing to do in any circumstance. For me, accepting that was my second moment of being born again.

You’d be mistaken if you thought that at this point I’d leave talking about this born again business. But I want to point out that I’d missed an understanding of the depth of my “life” I was turning over. More recently than I’ll admit, I see that “turning over” includes not only the big stuff but the junky stuff we run into every day—car keys your son (or you) lost, your printer jams, the snarky letters from people. I need to remember to turn over these mundane sudden difficulties. These daily little things can push me into temper tantrums and anger causing me to fire off a “way-out-of-line” response.

It’s the daily ordinary trivial stuff that grabs me and turns me into a person I don’t like. It forces me to ask myself if I have really done what Step Two says. My failure to do so means I failed to take advantage of His love for me and His assistance in working my way through all of life’s activity.

It’s not always easy to “stop, be quiet and wait.” I fail a great deal. But the fact is that with a few seconds of reflection, I can muster a solution, I can find a way to look again to find those keys, even find a way to clear that jammed printer.

I have found that this “halting time” usually gives me that solution. Our Higher Power responds in many ways...sometimes quickly (calm down and look again for those keys under the chair). He has suggested to me a manner of response as I slept. Sometimes it comes later, sometimes not at all. It’s not always easy to wait and listen, but the fact is that when I am able to overcome my “know-it-all arrogance,” my life is smoother, more productive, and kinder and within Christ’s teachings and the Steps.

And when I am able to do this, I feel in those moments that I’ve been reborn.

Jim A, St X Noon/ Springboro/Frankin, Wed. Noon

Tomorrow morning, I will catch a flight to Washington, DC, to the World Convention of Narcotics Anonymous.  This will be the fifth one I’ve had the privilege to attend.  It is an amazing event. My first one was in the mid-90s about a year after I got an internet account and searched for NA and found chat rooms and email lists and discussion boards full of recovering addicts from all over the world and it was an exciting time because many of us met up in person at that convention!  Each one I’ve attended my circle of recovering friends has grown exponentially from the previous one. When we stay in the middle of the boat, and get involved with service at various levels, that is one of the results.  At the last one I attended my friend who was newly coming back from a relapse was amazed that everywhere we went—every meeting, workshop, meal, hanging out in a sitting area—I would see people I knew.  That’s an amazing thing when you’re looking at 21,000+ folks from all over the world!

Not only will I get to reconnect in person with many friends, but I will also celebrate my belly button birthday and turn 69 years old.  If not for recovery and all that comes with it—a renewed relationship with God, 12 wonderful steps and 12 wonderful traditions and all the great literature that tells my story—you would have thought they intimately knew me and were writing about me personally in our literature–this would not be possible!  Like many of you, I probably wouldn’t even still be alive if not for the gift of desperation that gave me the willingness to go to any lengths to stop using.

Recovery Ministries has also been a very significant part of my recovery as well.  I was working at a church when I got clean and one day something came across my desk from the local Episcopal Addiction and Recovery Commission, and I was thrilled that the church had such a committee! And lo and behold, there was also a national Episcopal recovery organization—at that time called NECA (National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol), and later NECAD (National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol and Drugs) and even later RMEC (Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church) as we know it today.  I’ve been pretty much involved locally and nationally since hearing about them back in 1987. 

My 12-step fellowship was there for me when I got clean, my Episcopal recovery organizations were there for me—and one thing I learned that has stuck with me all these 37+ years—if I want to keep what I have, I should give back to others what was so freely given to me. My gratitude speaks when I care and share with others… And I thought today would be a good time to sign up for a Red Door Blog post!

One of my fondest memories of 3^rd grade was how our teacher, Mrs. Vantrese, read books to us. The only one I remember was one about a little girl who could make herself very small and visit the ants that lived under her backyard stairs. I too loved ants after that and would lie in the grass in summer and watch them. Later when my daughter was 10 or so I got us an ant farm. I told her that it could be a fun science thing, but she wasn’t very interested. It really was for me.

On my daily walks in Arizona, I walk on the cart paths of a golf course that went belly up and the owners donated the course to our county as a park. You can walk the whole course on the paths, perhaps 5 miles. It doesn’t much look like a golf course any more as the desert has reclaimed the manicured green grass.

Most days, I see hundreds of ants crossing the paths. They often look very random. They bump into each other and seem to not have any idea where they are going or what they are doing. I am reminded of ME before recovery. I was on fire running around trying to stop the chaos and flames and never noticing anyone else and all the while wanting someone to help me!

Sometimes, I notice one little ant carrying something that seems way too large for this small creature to hold, let alone, carry. I watch as she tries to move a crumb of something, and I feel sad for her. I too tried to carry my disease all by myself. I could manage it alone, thank you very much, but it was hard. My life was unmanageable.

The other day I saw what looked like a red pebble on the path. It was the size of a dime BUT it was MOVING! I got closer, bent down to look, and saw an amazing thing. It wasn’t a pebble; it was some organic thing, and it was moving because a dozen ants were moving it! They were working together in a way that seemed to indicate that they had done this many times before. Their survival depended on working together. The ant hill nearby was their destination and there too were ants working together to maintain their home.

So, I think it is with recovery. Meetings and fellowship and reaching out to those who still suffer is the selfish thing I do to keep my sobriety. It also keeps me connected to and in fellowship with others to support and nurture us in our recovery. Carrying and supporting each other as we Trudge the Happy Road of Destiny.

–Libbie S, Sober Sisters, Green Valley, AZ

Reading Affirmations for the Inner Child by Rokelle Lerner, I came across this affirmation: “I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.”

Growing up in the country in Ireland just before a neighbor bought a combine harvester and before television, I loved the hands-on work in nature. Dad dug the potatoes, and I picked them, put them in the bucket to bring home. I’ve walked behind my uncle as he cut the corn with a scythe, picked up an armful and then took a handful and tied it. When possible, I took my brother’s bicycle and rode around the country as the hay was being cut and I loved the aroma of fresh cut hay. Animals died, stray animals were shot or drowned. Such was life in the country of the time. 

I do not recall thinking of myself as a self. Instead, I knew only too well I was “Annie D’s son” and I had to live up to that image – a happy, loving family. I was different from others but not in a healthy manner.

Then I went to seminary and got my head into books. I became acquainted with Jack Daniels et al. I got a motorcycle, then a car and these instruments of travel put distance between me and nature.

As a priest, I have celebrated Mass at the seaside, on a rock on the side of a mountain, by a stream or river. I got out into nature, but it was only a location, a place with which I no longer had that sense of belonging. Somehow, Jack Daniels and friends were hiding me from myself and nature.

As Lerner points out in her Affirmation “I did not learn about my body and facts about the natural world. Nature reproduces, but sex was a shameful secret in my family.” There were a lot of secrets in the family, and I learned early not to talk about the family to outsiders. We were a churchgoing, hard-working family.

 “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the stars and the trees. You have a right to be here.” This line from the poem Desiderata was something I loved to quote to clients in counseling but in private it made me cry. I did not belong. I was an outsider. I had secrets which I could no longer tell the trees.         

Then came recovery. Initially, it was a long slow process because I couldn’t admit to myself the secrets I spent years burying. Living up to the expectations of another was difficult to change.

Finally, after some four years of a dry-drunk, working the program for all the wrong reasons- just to look good to others especially my boss- I hit bottom. I admitted I am an alcoholic, I am powerless over alcohol, I have an addictive personality, I am an adult child of a dry drunk,  and my life had become unmanageable. What a weight to be lifted off my shoulders. Now what? The journey of recovery had just begun.

Everything I learned over the years had lodged in my head. I could give a good talk, teach, make you think you knew me and all the while hiding, even from myself, in plain sight. Now, all that I learned was trickling down into my heart, and, like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, I was beginning to feel love and loved.

“I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.” “I am a child of the Universe no less than the trees and the stars; I have a right to be here.” I became free to be who I am, free to be, become and feel alive, free to splash in the ocean and the ocean of emotions within me. 

Today, I love being in recovery, I love the feeling of being a child of God and a child of the Universe. I love to drive into the swamps and smell the sensuality of this land, to see the variety of animals, to feed an alligator from a boat. I love to see, to hear, to smell, to taste and to touch nature and be alive again.

Séamus D is an Episcopal priest in recovery and lives in New Orleans

Three of us met for coffee a couple weeks ago, “alumni” from a noon AA meeting in a church basement where we had met many years ago when we first sought sobriety. We hadn’t been together for several years. We’d gone different ways and changed in that period, one had moved to an assisted living facility, one had a death in the family, the other had retired and was traveling.  But what we immediately saw was that through the years, each of us had continued a very active participation in the AA Program.

We shared recollections of our time spent at this particular “five days a week noon AA meeting”. Usually, all three of us were present. Thirty or so faithfully attended but sometimes that basement floor was packed. We recalled our early AA meetings, the people who reached out to us as newbies, the laughter and support freely given to us by all ... to all.  This was an open discussion meeting...topics on all subjects: our hurts and successes, stories of how folks had worked the Steps, phrases from the Big Book, the whole gaggle of topics you find at any AA open discussion meeting. We applauded anniversaries of others whether years or a day. We shared fun and laughter and a special sadness for people we knew and worked with who had tried the Program but didn’t make it.

Our reunion reinforced all we had found and learned and accepted. For us, the Program had become a way of living our day-to-day lives, alcohol-free, but just as importantly as a way of working through life itself. We recalled times of difficulties we had confronted as we aged—normal issues a recovering alcoholic-and all of us-face in our lives—and yet, and yet, for us, sobriety prevailed frankly because we worked at it each day and followed the discipline of the Steps and went to meetings where of course others were walking the same path.  

We recalled our Twelve Step work of reaching others—one was the father and grandfather sponsor of many, another worked through the court system, the third spoke through substance abuse programs and in hospitals.

We spoke of meetings in other countries. AA, we agreed, was much the same wherever it was, language didn’t seem to be much of a barrier, after all, the readings while in a different tongue were from the Big Book or the “12 and 12” so we three all said we could easily follow.

Yes, this reunion was a grand time of laughter and recalling days of our early years in the Program. It reaffirmed what we are called to do in Step Ten—our belief in the importance of continuing to “work the Steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We closed our gathering as we did all those years in that noon AA meeting in that church basement...

God, grant us serenity to accept things we can’t change, courage to change what we can, and wisdom to know the difference...and keep us coming back for it really works if we keep working it.

Jim A, and for M and P, St X Noon

I lived in Seattle, Washington, for 44 years. I got sober in Seattle. Last fall I moved to Southern AZ to escape from the grey and the rain. This summer I returned for one month to visit family and friends. I didn’t expect to feel very different or see Seattle differently as it had only been10 months since I left.

I was lucky to have two very close friends who invited me to stay with them. Both were in neighborhoods I had not lived in. Staying with friends for two weeks each was wonderful and challenging.  I brought many things to feel at home and for the most part it was good and yet I saw my former city in different ways. It seemed that maybe it wasn’t ‘my’ Seattle anymore.

After 10 months in the desert, I have two great home groups and was learning to love the desert and cactus. I understood why friends who had visited me when I lived in Seattle from other parts of the country would say “It’s so green here!” It is! And the trees are so tall, not like the short Palo Verdes in AZ. The noises were different than I remember. Seattle is a big city so more sirens, more traffic noises, less bird noises and many, many more airplanes flying overhead to the airport.

In both of my friends’ houses there was liquor. Both are normies and I never thought much about it because they rarely drink (maybe they do when I am not around). I house sat for each of them for 10 days while they went away. While in the kitchen looking for something or in the basement looking for where the laundry was, I would see a cabinet of liquor or a wine cellar. I would find myself looking at the bottles as if I had never seen liquor before. Each time I asked myself if the bottles looked interesting to me. I was a stranger in a city that used to be mine. Before I got sober it would have been a great idea to have some? A lot? Instead, I found myself looking and then closing the cabinet and then didn’t really think about it until I was starting to write this blog.

I got sober in Seattle 34 years ago. My home groups were great, but most were still online from the pandemic and those that weren’t were not near me.  Thank goodness that my zoom meetings from AZ and from all around the country were still ones I could get to while in Seattle. I did get to spend time with my sponsor and that was a god send. In addition, my daily readings grounded me and when I felt out of sorts or unmoored, I would walk. I walked in familiar places with good friends and new places on my own. That’s where I talk to and experience God. Even though I was with so many good friends, I would be reminded that I am not alone.

The International AA convention was in Seattle when I was six months sober. It was the very first time I felt NOT ALONE in most of my life. Being back in Seattle, all I had to do was close my eyes and see myself in the Kingdome with 65,000 other recovering people. Seattle may not be where I live now, it may have changed some. I am so glad I went to visit, glad I could move anywhere and find AA, and glad that, one day at a time, a liquor cabinet doesn’t appeal to me.