There’s a moment most people never see. The moment after the first meeting. After the initial resistance. After the part where you tell yourself, “I’ll give it six weeks, but it’s not for me.”
The moment when you realize you keep showing up anyway. Not because someone told you to, but because something in you is finally ready.
That was me.
The change may have started in therapy, but I believe the real turning point came the week before Christmas in 1994.That’s when I walked into Al-Anon with just enough willingness to stay. Not a grand decision. Not a breakdown. Just a quiet cracking, and a whisper that said,“
Try.”
At first, I was only there to prove it wasn’t for me. But something happened. Little by little, the sayings I rolled my eyes at began to land.
“No is a complete sentence.”
“Detach with love.”
“Let go and let God.”
They felt strange at first, even cult-like. But over time, I started to understand. Not all at once. Not in big, dramatic revelations. But in the slow rewiring of how I saw myself and how I moved through the world.
For over a decade, Al-Anon became part of the rhythm of my life. The meetings, the slogans, the books, the sharing, they all worked their way into my bones. I carried around quotes in my purse, wrote in journals, underlined passages that made sense only after I lived them.
And I kept going.
Even when it was hard.
Especially when it was hard.
It was through Al-Anon that I learned how to pause before reacting, how to sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, how to create boundaries without apology. It gave me a language I hadn’t known I needed, and a structure for rebuilding my insides when everything else looked fine on the outside.
Al-Anon opened the door to the rest of my healing. It led me to the books that would shape me. It gave me the courage to follow teachers and paths I’d never considered before. But most of all, it helped me return to myself, one quiet, consistent choice at a time.
And for that, I’ll always be grateful.