“Ever so slowly, I could feel myself changing. Things that had seemed important were no longer important. There was inside me a warming, a softening, a stirring, as the petals of a rosebud stir almost imperceptibly into a blossom.”
“I am learning how to cope with life, people, and situations, not as I want them to be, but as they really are.”
“The way our ‘worthy’ alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the ‘less worthy’ is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!”
“The next time you feel hurt, outraged, bitter or resentful – the beginning of many a slip as attested to by AA speakers – try to remember quickly that you haven’t been mortally harmed. In nearly all cases, it’s just a pain in your feelings!”
“Am I strong enough? Am I willing to commit my life and my heart at an even deeper level to doing whatever it takes to keep moving forward?”
“Though all alone out there, an AA from the Marshall Islands still claimed his group had three members, to wit: ‘God, the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and me.’”
“The inner energy that is love connects all the parts of us – our emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual selves.”
“One day, after sitting alone, soaked in tears and feeling empty, worthless, and crippled in the smallest task, I reached out and gave my phone number to someone else – they were hurting, too. In that simplest of acts, my world changed.”
“There has to be something to be grateful for if I am only willing to change my attitude and look for it.”
“Most of us do follow, in our personal lives, the Twelve suggested Steps to recovery ... We do this from choice. We prefer recovery to death. Then, little by little, we ... conform because we want to.”
“With the help of the Fellowship, the Twelve Steps, and a Higher Power ... I do not have to be a newcomer again.”
“I have made a determined effort to focus more on seeing myself as God sees me.”
“While we readily share our views, perhaps one of the nicest things about the AA program is that we don’t always have to agree with each other.”
“Those little maxims ‘Easy Does It’ and ‘Live and Let Live’ have come to be deeply meaningful and significant.”
“The beauty of sobriety is that sometimes I am the one supported, and other times the one supporting. One act helps destroy my ego, the other my self-centeredness. I need to practice both actions if I want to survive”
