I found sobriety in the city. I had a General Service Office around the corner...Meetings available for breakfast, morning tea, lunchtime, dinner and supper...A bookshop that was open everyday except weekends...about 3 rehabs, the A&E, and psychward were within 5 minutes for when I needed a reality check through service...countless members coming in and out of my home...constant sponsees and constant contact with my sponsor....the local video shop even had Bill's vid...

Then I was given the opportunity to stop talking about recovery and start living it. It was time to start doing the things I had for so long only thought about, read about or talked about. It was time to step into the life I longed to live. My sponsor smiled and suggested her butterfly had found her wings. Members were happy for me and wished me well and there was a fearlessness attached to the change. The complete lack of fear is experienced in an overwhelming feeling of trust in all that is. 

And so I came to the bush and began doing the things that bring me joy. Writing, studying, researching, planting, raising animals, learning new things on a daily basis...As the landscape around me transformed into the paradise I had spent so long imagining...my trust was simply magnified. I felt no fear for such a long time.

Suddenly I am fearful...I am missing my AA friends, support and involvement. I feel misunderstood in this small town. I am seeing injustices that others don't seem to see and I realise my mind has become very critical of the world beyond my farm. I miss the feeling of usefulness I feel when two AA's talk. I miss the understanding that can be found in the rooms no matter what kind of day it is. I miss the feeling that I belong exactly where I am, and that my progress is an important part of group progress. I keep hearing an old mate saying to me years ago, you know your going down, if you don't change things soon you will drink.

I don't feel like a drink or a drug. I deeply understand that a drink will kill me and I have much I still need to do before I exit.

I realise today, that I really need to just communicate with other AA's. I am missing the sharing. I need to go beyond the readings and citations and feel that I relate and connect to real people...I hope that makes sense. I really want to know what people think of the things they post here. I read them with interest and yet I feel kind of abstract, like I'm reading the newspaper or something... I'm not sure how to change that. I realise most of you have access to face to face meetings, so maybe you might not understand where I am coming from...I miss the laughter, I miss the heartfelt shares on simple things we insist on complicating, and I miss the shared stepping.

This is a kind of 4/5...an emotional inventory, because today I am feeling that I need to take stock of my feelings of isolation and separateness and the lack of AA support that my decision to move here created. I need your help and I feel fearful asking, in case you decide I am asking for too much or am not being grateful enough for what is offered. I am grateful you are all here. I am just feeling a bit faceless, I think...I realise I am still mixing up names, and am having trouble getting to know people online. Maybe I am not communicating enough or well? My online AA contact is pretty much all I have now, beyond occaissional phone calls and text messages sent from the city. The town people are friendly but I don't go there much and they are not AA's and I am missing AA interaction, I think. The way my AA friends just seemed to understand me, and knew how to motivate me, or make me laugh...they way they would cut through my abstract thoughts and demand I look at things, participate in life and keep moving forward.

I would like to get to know people here on this board and I'm not sure how to go about this. I don't mean I want to invade anyones private life or anything, I just want to feel like I understand the people here and that they understand me. My phone reminds me each morning to "Offer what you want"...so I guess I am trying to do that. I am trying to offer a bit of me that matters today. Something that exists beyond the big book in the today, in the life I am living sober... how I feel about things today...what is happening for me...my thoughts. And I'm making myself trust its ok to do that, because I need to feel that trust again.

Goodnight all.

Hi Nic...big hugs!!!!

I myself am grateful for your honesty, thankyou. I do live in a city but my shift at work is 4-11...which prevents me from going to the meetings that i want. When i was in treatment i was doing 5-6 meetings a week. I really miss that. I  really relate to alot of what you said, although i am fairly new to the program and sobritey i need to get honest with myself to.

Its strange how i read your post at this time..for the last couple of days i've been feeling quite disconnected. Lonely, i have work,,,but thats work.I have my 16 year old daughter here with me but she has her own life, her own friends. I don't know I just feel out of sync.Lonely.For me meetings aren't enough to quell that lonliness either. I do identify with the fellowship but it's a short share ya know? I know alot of people in the program who just relapse too much for my liking, so i choose not to hang around too much. Negativity has its affects on me. I try to be positive. And need that positivity in return. And too face to face. I thank God for the online stuff, but...its really not the same.

Keep sharing how you're feeling nic,please, you're helping me more than you know. \\//Wendy

Oh Nic...please invade my life! I feel alone here too, sometimes it gets to be too much. I need to talk to women in the program. Around here, it's mostly men. I call my sponsor but I need that day to day contact too. My husband and I talk, but his emotional sobriety and mine are so far apart it's like night and day.

If you have access to msn, IM me at clwebster41@hotmail.com. or email clwebster@mato.com.

I'm up at odd hours so you should be able to catch me at some time.

I know exactly what you're saying...and I love you for saying it.

Love, cheri

Aw thankyou both.

I was so afraid I'd be misinterpreted or brushed off with some quip or cliche. Thankyou for both understanding and letting me know you do. It is strange really, but that shared understanding is so important, isn't it? When we share in a meeting...the room can be chocka block from desk to door, but you stand up and trust that someone...maybe only one person...but someone will understand and relate... and you see it in their eyes, or they approach you later or just smile, and you know you are a understood... And it makes all the difference to your world.

When I found sobriety I was just another messed up alkie who had forfeited my chances at an education and career. I'd walked out of a marriage and was struggling to rebuild a business and keep food on the table for my kids. I had no concept of life beyond the struggle, and life was just plain bloody hard because I expected it to be.

My sponsor absolutely enchanted me...she had overcome so much in her sobriety...learned to read and put herself through uni, found peace in an incestous and violent family and established a career working in these areas and helping others. She had travelled and visited the places she wanted to see or understand. She had bought a house and turned  it into the home she'd always wanted, then another, and she continued to remind me that I too was capable of all these things.

Back in the city amongst my AA friends it was very different. They all know where I come from..that I am no different in essence... they understood that my education was just one facet of my recovery...something recovered from the mess. Here in the bush, people just figure I have come from the city...they are unable to look beyond the city and country differences and I often feel very different and seperate. I find I am talking less and less. The things I have learned, in agriculture for example, are dismissed as "all that silly city stuff", so I just do what I have come to know works...(a bit like just working the program, I guess) and wonder how on earth they can argue it, criticise it and me, when the evidence is in front of them... People come here to the farm, and say Wow, this is great..some call it the oasis... and I stand on my verandah and look across the hills at the brown and lifeless land that people keep stripping for their cattle, and think they too could have this too, if only they cared...if only they would stop arguing and condemning me, and just start caring about what is theirs.

It has become me and them hasn't it? Reading back over that...

I remember my sponsor saying once.."Tis a lonely road we trudge...the road marked recovery needs stamina. You will see a lot of folk heading back the other way on this road and you just have to let them go where they want to go. Sometimes you meet up with people travelling in the same direction and you fall into step with them. You can share a bit of the journey but ultimately you have to learn to walk alone."

Thankyou for letting me know you both are also on this road. I may not be able to see you, but it is reassuring and encouraging just knowing you are there somewhere and that we are all travelling in the same direction, doing the best we can and striving for progress. I don't feel so lonely today. It makes all the difference knowing you both understand and relate. Thankyou. Maybe together we can help each other feel the sense of unity we are missing?

Raising teenagers is hard work...they are so full of activity and so bloody social...that it is hard sometimes, not to feel caught in the wake of their rushed communication, bombardment of mates demands and their new freedom of spirit. Those little kids who used to wait for us to tell them how to do things, now don't need to...they know what they are doing, they have choices and dreams of their own, new friends and lots of them. I miss my kids sometimes even though they are still here buzzing about and living their lives.

It is fun being a Mum though, I think...I love watching them grow and they are nice people. I was so relieved

I realise too... my mate and I don't share a lot of AA anymore...His program has always been based on the KISS method and he describes me as a very deep and thoughtful type, so we laugh and roll our eyes at each other and have always just accepted that while different, both ways work, and that is the blessing. It has always meant though that we tend to move outside of the relationship for AA support, which is probably good...since I figure relationships really don't need any additional problems... and things can be magnified or distorted or misinterpreted when we try sorting them "inhouse". He's a nice person too. He knows how to make me laugh when the last thing I feel like doing is laughing, and I think that is a special gift.

I feel grateful today. Thankful that you both responded and shared a bit of your world with me and helped me feel like I'm not alone out here, or slipping into a feeling of uniqueness. You have reminded me that I can still have AA friends and it doesn't matter where they are, or I am, we are still on the same road.

All the best girls,

Nic

Hey Nic, I got back from Kansas Wednesday evening and I have just been checking in to read post when I have a minute. The trip was so relaxing, graduation was nice, bittersweet , the last of my brothers babies.I did not want to come home, just wanted to stay and not have to face life here.

Got home and found my husband sitting on his back porch drunk, this is the man who is on probation for felony DUI, is suppose to be going to 3 AA and NA meetings, 2 probation meetings a week, and if they do a UA on him and find out he's using, he goes back to prison for 10 years. Needless to say he had not gone to meetings,not reported to his probation officer, had not gone to work in 5 days....

I told you this to say this," I ran to an AA meeting Thursday night , I called several friends in AA and Al-anon and my sponsor, I mailed someone on this board and vented." It takes all of this for me to stay sane??? and sober.I have 20+ years of sobriety but I do it one day at a time just like everyone else with any sobriety. I have read the promises several times in the last few days, said the Serenity Prayer, over and over, let go and let God and today I tried to keep it simple.I thank God for the programs of AA and Al-anon each morning and each evening, I use the tools in my life everyday.My husband has been in and out of AA for 17 years , I got sober 6 years before I came into the program, but he just doesn't seem to get the program, he won't work it, he won't reach out to others , isolates, which is something I  did also.

Nic, I'm glad you are reaching out, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't get to meetings. This board is a great place to work the program and if it is all you have at the moment, use it. What is the population of the nearest town to you, and how far is it. I would think there are others who need AA in your area?I know one of the steps that I have to work is the 12th, I have to give this program away or I stagnate, I get wrapped up in Me, and my little world.Y

Yes, we women need each other,we have a few unique isms that men just don't seem to understand, and we have to do the girl talk thing.I love to go to women in recovery retreats, they are so refreshing and the crying and laughing are so freeing. 

What is we need to discuss, what's the topic? Let's get one started...

I'm glad you are here my friend, I know you have so much to offer, just as everyone here does.

(((Hugs)))

GammyRose

Hey Gammy,

Not many...nearest town has probably 300 in the district, I think. And when you say there are bound to be people here who need AA...*laughing*...well, yeah the whole town probably needs it, but if they don't want to consider it, then they're unlikely to get it...alcoholism and recovery, like many things out here is a "city thing" apparently...

It is very different, and at time difficult to understand how 'backward' things seem here. My mate says it is the town that time forgot. Just got to laugh, I guess. Shake my head and get on with living sober.

Glad you're back Gammy.

And girls - Have tucked your msn's in my list...will keep an eye out for you and see if we happen to strike it lucky with the international clock.

hi girls...big hugs to you all!!!

Nic i relate to thinking that the whole world is backwards...actually normal people scare me!! lol the only normal i know is the cycle on my washing machine...and i'm stuck on spind dry!!

Can you get a meeting list for the surrounding towns?? that involves some driving but i guess its going to any length to get what we need right

Gammy i'm sorry to hear of  your husband no wonder you wanted to stay on your vacation, you're in my thoughts and prayers.

Here is a prayer i think you might like

Father, I ask you to bless my friends reading this right now. I am asking You to minister to their spirit at this very moment. Where there is pain, give them Your peace and mercy. Where there is self doubting, release a renewed confidence in Your ability to work through them. Where there is tiredness, or exhaustion, I ask You to give them understanding, patience, and strength as they learn submission to your leading. Where there is spiritual stagnation, I ask You to renew them by revealing Your nearness, and by drawing them into greater intimacy with You. Where there is fear, reveal Your love, and release to them Your courage. Where there is a sin blocking them, reveal it, and break its hold over my friend's life. Bless their finances, give them greater vision, and raise up leaders and friends to support and encourage them. Give each of them discernment to recognize the evil forces around them, and reveal to them the power they have in You to defeat it. I ask You to do these things in Jesus' name. Amen

i hope your day is peaceful, serene, sunshine and smiles

\\// and luv Wendy

philipld@sympatico.ca

anytime my freind, from the other side of the world--and anyone else on this board that wishes at any time to use it also.

Its a WE thing:)

Oh, Wow, boy do I understand your feelings, I too live in a small town and I don't fit in with the click's of the town. I have NO Friends either GOD has been my only friend and don't get me wrong, GOD is an awsome friend to have boy he sure can do some awsome stuff in your life, but I think he is trying to push me to get some human friends,,,

So please add my to your list of friends ok,,

my email is. fittness1@yahoo.com

Godbless

matisa