“I went to my first few Meetings because I was desperate to help someone I loved. I felt alone, and what was worse, I felt like my problems were entirely unique. I went to those first Meetings not because I thought I could relate to you, but because I wanted to enlist you in helping me rescue my wife. It took listening to many people share before I gradually began to realize that I was not unique – that the desperation I had felt leading up to those first Meetings was actually the opening of a doorway for me, that led to a wider sense of belonging in the world. I gained tools which allowed me to see that the person I was married to was not the only one I had felt I needed to rescue in my life. Slowly, I learned to ‘identify rather than compare’, and began to believe that my loved ones’ problems – however desperate and isolated I had felt about them – might not actually all be mine to solve. Since then, with the help of the Steps, the fellowship, and the growth of my own spiritual life, my world has continued to expand in ways I never could have imagined during those dark times that brought me into Al-Anon.”

— Lew G.