One of the things I have found out in this program is very important to someone like me. Recently I was thinking about what I learned early on. To shut up and listen and learn. And now just the opposite. Talking.
Sharing has been a key to a lot of my sobriety. The old timers and my sponsor were excellent, as far as I am concerned, with their willingness to share with me. It was part of my learning process. And today, when I go to meetings, I still hear others willing to share what I need to hear.
Then there are all those moments when it’s up to me to share with others. For me to be willing to open my mouth and offer to others what it is that I have learned and experienced in this program. And to meet with others outside of meetings. To be willing to go on Twelfth Step calls. To be willing to carry the message to the suffering alcoholic.
That’s one of the rewards I have found in this program. It’s the continual mixture of members just like myself. Doesn’t matter what our backgrounds were. The very fact that we have learned how to put together lives that have been changed by entering into a spiritual way of life through these Twelve Steps. And then the often oral history passed on from one time to another through the willingness to share with one another.
I can remember back quite a while ago I went into a state of mind, when I felt it would be good for me to keep my mouth shut like I had been told early on. I think a week went by where I kept my mouth shut at meetings. Then one of the old timers came up to me after one of those meetings. He pulled me aside and asked me what was going on by my keeping my mouth shut. I told him that I thought it was the wisest thing I could do. No way, he said. He told me that I had been in long enough to learn how to practice this program and I owed it others to share what I had learned and experienced. Then he said that in the next meeting he expected to hear from me. After that I have tried to remember what he said and do what he told me to do.
Besides, if I don’t share, I might fail to learn what I need. For instance I can at times be off base. If I share that someone will probably step up and share with me what it is I need to do to correct myself. I know that has happened from time to time. Hard to swallow when it happens. But after my resistive mind has calmed I know the truth and can put my ego and pride aside and move on and continue to do what I need to do. To be part of this program and the people in it.
I look back at my past and think of how separated I was from the world and everyone in it. Even when I was out mixing around at times. I had no connections. I only had alcohol and what it was making me do. And often it cut me off from people, places, and things. When I came into this program the people in here began to turn that around for me. I know I was paranoid at first and suspicious of others. Like I was still out there. But over time, with people willing to share so much with me, I began to learn and to change.
All of this really started, when I learned to shut up and begin to listen to those, who knew what I needed to hear. Eventually through working these Steps and coming to start the process of living a spiritual life and beginning to depend on a Higher Power in my life, I began to voluntarily reach out to others like myself and received their welcoming sharing with me. I started to believe in what I needed. I was given hope and faith and love followed. I am so grateful for all I have received.