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Sober Life, Santa Rosa Beach, FL (2025)

12/23/2025

December 23
Holiday Triggers

One year, when I was a child, my father got drunk and violent at Christmas. I had just unwrapped a present, a bottle of hand lotion, when he exploded in an alcoholic rage. Our Christmas was disrupted. It was terrible. It was frightening for the whole family. Now, thirty-five years later, whenever I smell hand lotion, I immediately feel all the feelings I did that Christmas: the fear, the disappointment, the heartache, the helplessness, and an instinctive desire to control.
–Anonymous

There are many positive triggers that remind us of Christmas: snow, decorations, “Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” wrapped packages, a nativity scene, stockings hung on a fireplace. These “triggers” can evoke in us the warm, nostalgic feelings of the Christmas celebration.

There are other kinds of triggers, though, that may be less apparent and evoke different feelings and memories.

Our mind is like a powerful computer. It links sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste with feelings, thoughts, and memories. It links our senses – and we remember.

Sometimes the smallest, most innocuous incident can trigger memories. Not all our memories are pleasant, especially if we grew up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional setting.

We may not understand why we suddenly feel afraid, depressed, and anxious. We may not understand what has triggered our codependent coping behaviors – the low self worth, the need to control, the need to neglect ourselves. When that happens, we need to understand that some innocuous event may be triggering memories recorded deep within us.

If something, even something we don’t understand, triggers painful memories, we can pull ourselves back into the present by self care: acknowledging our feelings, detaching, working the Steps, and affirming ourselves. We can take action to feel good. We can help ourselves feel better each Christmas. No matter what the past held, we can put it in perspective, and create a more pleasant holiday today.

Today, I will gently work through my memories of this holiday season. I will accept my feelings, even if I consider them different than what others are feeling this holiday. God, help me let go, heal from, and release the painful memories surrounding the holidays. Help me finish my business from the past, so I can create the holiday of my choice.

12/21/2025

December 21

Stuck Grief
"Grief is loss that is stuck beneath denial, willful forgetting, and the fear of being perceived as dramatizing the past. Grief is the built-up defeats, slights, and neglect from childhood." BRB p. 199

Before we came into ACA, we might have thought of grief as something we experience only from overt losses such as death of a loved one, divorce, or a devastating illness. With recovery in ACA, we also experience grief as something that comes from the loss of our identity in childhood. We're exposed to many suggestions of what those childhood losses might be, such as being regularly and unfairly criticized by a parent, being compared to a sibling who was more well-behaved, being told we were bad, dumb or inferior, being told to keep secrets - the list goes on.

Just as it's valuable to handle more overt losses by grieving in a healthy manner rather than avoiding, numbing, and dissociating, we learn in ACA to practice loving ways to grieve our childhood losses, By working the Steps and learning to have a dialog with our Inner Child, we discover that our bodies and minds remember the neglectful and shaming acts of the past. Unearthing these memories and facing the feelings buried within them isn't easy, but we discover an amazing payoff on the other side of this grief - being fully self-expressed and feeling alive, perhaps for the first time.

On this day I will be aware of and focus on one of the losses I experienced in childhood and practice a loving and compassionate way to grieve that loss.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/20/2025

December 20

Dissociation
"Using a substance to alter the feelings is the second way to dissociate from feeling pain. The most easily available substances are alcohol, sugar, ni****ne, and caffeine." BRB p. 87

Many of us came to ACA with addictions to drugs or alcohol. Others came with addictions to money, food, s*x, or gambling. With the help of other 12 Step programs, we successfully worked on these presenting problems. But there were other seemingly more acceptable addictions that we picked as a way to mask our pain. In our quest for emotional sobriety in ACA, our feelings have to be available to us in order to locate the underlying trauma in our lives. Even if we're participating in these more acceptable addictions, like watching hours of TV each day, a ni****ne habit that interrupts everything we do, or excessive caffeine, our feelings are being masked.

If we continue to alter our feelings in these or similar ways, it may be because the underlying trauma seems too scary to face. But to find true freedom for our Inner Child requires that our feelings be accessible. We need to be "present" to work our program if we are to become our own loving parent, which means rejecting the role models of our childhood. We make a commitment that the abuse stops here! We allow ourselves to be imperfect and move towards our ultimate goal of being fully awake without reservation.

On this day I will be honest about what I may be using to numb my feelings. I will reach out for help so that I may find the peace I deserve.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/19/2025

December 19

Trait Fourteen
"Para-alcoholics (co-dependents) are reactors rather than actors." BRB p. 17

Before ACA, many of us ran from one person to another, one idea to another, found "better" jobs, sought solutions for our medical ailments, read all the self-help books: we tried anything to change the way we felt. We were so mixed up inside, wondering why everyone else seemed calm and reassured, while we had fireworks going off in our brains and bodies. Each time we jumped into frantic action, the results were usually hurtful to ourselves or others.

How did we learn to react so intensely? As children, each step we took or didn't take caused "bombs" to go off. We were told things like "Can't you do anything right?" or "If you'd just stop acting like that, everything would be better." We were scapegoats. We became reactors in an attempt to try to fix things. And we carried this behavior into our adult lives.

In ACA we find relief, one day at a time. We learn to use the slogans, like "Easy Does It" when we feel an "emergency" inside. They help us act in healthier ways by doing nothing, even if we have to sit on our hands or zip our lips until the compulsion passes.

Self-reflection is imperative during these times. Stopping ourselves before we react inappropriately, and even in mid-sentence, helps us gain self-confidence and positively affirm ourselves.

On this day, when I feel a compulsion to react "Right Now," I will remember two slogans: "Don't just do something, sit there" and "Be Still and Know." I am learning to be calm in the face of internal chaos.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/18/2025

December 18

Service
"The purpose of service in ACA is to support one another in becoming responsible for our own well-being." BRB p. 354

It can be difficult to start doing service when service seems to carry such a heavy responsibility. The idea that we can help another person recover feels similar to our having tried to save our families.

Yet service in ACA is what provides others the opportunity to assume responsibility for themselves. Opening the meeting, being the secretary, keeping the books, and picking up chairs after the meeting are all things that keep a meeting open and provide the means for ourselves and others to recover.

As members turn to us for guidance, we realize that we can share our experience, strength and hope, but that also, the directions are right in front of them. The "Newcomer's Pamphlet," the BRB, the Yellow Workbook, and other pieces of literature will answer any question the member may have.

Our goal is to support adult children as they become comfortable with the idea that they can be responsible for their own well-being. It may be very frustrating to the newer member to understand that by allowing them to find the strength to love themselves, we are expressing a deep level of love. However, if done with a spirit of love and a short explanation, they will feel the strength of the program filling in the vacuum they had long sought to deny.

On this day I will give service, realizing that every part of setting up a meeting creates an opportunity for ACAs to become empowered to love themselves.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/17/2025

December 17

Expressing Feelings
"As we move out of emotional isolation, we regain the ability to recognize and express all of our feelings." BRB p. 361

As children, many of us were not allowed to show our feelings. So we stuffed them and pretended not to have them for fear of being ridiculed or punished.

Is it any wonder that we carried this over to adulthood, where we continued to stuff our feelings and convince ourselves that they didn't matter? Or perhaps we chose the route of medicating our feelings with addictions or obsessions until we didn't have to experience them.

We come into ACA as adult children with an armful of triggers. These triggers can turn what should be a mild reaction into rage, not because of the situation, but because what is said or done awakens our stuffed feelings.

These denied feelings interfere with relationships, as we leave in our wake people who can't figure out why we respond the way we do.

ACA reaches into these hidden areas and brings our childhood feelings into the light of day where they eventually lose their power over us.

On this day I will continue to trust and appreciate that ACA is a safe place for me to recognize and express my feelings.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/16/2025

December 16

“To have someone who brings out the colors of life and whose very presence offers tranquility and contentment enriches my being and makes me grateful for the opportunity to share.”
—Kathleen Tierney Crilly

Loneliness and isolation are familiar states to most of us. We often protected our insecurities by hiding out, believing that we’d survive if others didn’t know who we really were. But we discovered that our insecurities multiplied. The remedy is people—talking to people, exposing our insecurities to them, risking, risking, risking.

Sharing our mutual vulnerabilities helps us see how fully alike we are. Our most hated shortcoming is not unique, and that brings relief. It’s so easy to feel utterly shamed in isolation. Hearing another woman say “I understand. I struggle with jealousy, too,” lifts the shame, the dread, the burden of silence. The program has taught us that secrets make us sick, and the longer we protect them, the greater are our struggles.

The program promises fulfillment, serenity, achievement when we willingly share our lives. Each day we can lighten our burdens and help another lighten hers, too.

I will be alert today to the needs of others. I will risk sharing. I will be a purveyor of tranquility.

12/14/2025

December 14

Victim
"Our experience shows that we often lived as victims." BRB p. 14

Many of us may have gotten very good at playing the victim. But we tell ourselves that we didn't create that role for ourselves. Wasn't it those other people and circumstances that made us a victim?

Holding on to regrets and resentments is like wrapping ourselves in a blanket of thorns. Each minute of each day we are aware of the fact that the thorns are causing us pain, and the only comfort some of us get is thinking that at least others see how hurt we are. But nobody wants to live with a victim, not even the victim.

How different our lives and our world would be if we could go back and undo the past. But life doesn't offer us that option. What we do get is a choice, to either accept our past and work through it, or to remain a victim, letting it continue to influence who we are and what we do.

When we recite the Serenity Prayer in meetings, we need to believe the words "Accept the things I cannot change." Our past happened. As uncomfortable as it was, it can become the catalyst that helps make us stronger.

On this day I will continue to shed the blanket of thorns I've worn as a victim and wrap myself in the soft blanket of recovery.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/13/2025

December 13
Across the fields I can see the radiance of your smile and I know in my heart you are there. But the anguish I am feeling makes the distance so very far to cross.
–Deidra Sarault
Looking down the hallway of our lives, we sense many uncomfortable corners. And they are there. But through the discomfort comes the ease of understanding. The security that we long for, we discover has been ours all along. All we needed to do was move into the corner–with trust.
As we stand before any problems, any new task, any unfamiliar environment, dread may overwhelm us. We stand there alone. But the choice available to us now and always is to invite the spirit of God to share the space we’re in. In concert with God’s Spirit, no problem or task can be greater than our combined abilities to handle it.
Our lives will be eased in direct proportion to our faith that God is there, caring for our every concern, putting before us the experiences we need to grow on. We can let go of our anguish, our doubts and fears. Eternal triumph is ours for the asking.
The smiling faces I encounter today–I will let them assure me that all is well.

12/12/2025

December 12

Tradition Five
"I give it away to keep it - recovery." BRB p. 513

When we come to ACA, we are hurting. We find others like ourselves. Because we learn to trust these people, we gradually allow ourselves to open up and share our deepest secrets.

But in some cases, people we've grown close to leave, and we feel abandoned, just as in our childhoods. We wonder if we should go, too. Maybe we've done all we can and should move on; maybe this ACA program isn't the answer to everything; maybe we aren't having the big "aha" moments anymore.

So why should we stay when others might not? Because this abandonment we feel is different; we are using new tools that help us work through these feelings. Everyone doesn't have the same path, and we can feel sad when people leave and hope they find what works for them. But for us, ACA is the healthy choice. We decide to stay, first for ourselves and then for others. We give back what we've gotten to the next person who comes through the door. These are our peers. We may not all look and act alike, but it's amazing the help we can give one another. By being there for others in recovery, we learn more about ourselves.

On this day I will rededicate myself to my recovery in ACA. I know this is where I belong.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families

12/11/2025

December 11
Keep the Focus on Personal Responsibility
Responsible attitudes.

Alcoholics often try to shift responsibility to others. We once thought it was possible to blame others for our drinking, and we had sneaky ways of manipulating family members so they would feel guilty and comply with our demands.

In sober living, we must not allow ourselves to slip back into this mode of thinking. Keeping the focus on personal responsibility is our best way of approaching all problems. “What is my responsibility in this?” is a good question to ask in evaluating our part in situations.

We are always responsible for our own sobriety. Beyond that, we’re also responsible for maintaining good attitudes and making sure that our own anger and pride do not make any situation worse than it already is.

I’ll be responsible today for my own thoughts, feelings, and actions. If any stressful issue or situation arises, I’ll keep my focus on personal responsibility.

12/10/2025

December 10
Empowerment

You can think. You can make good decisions. You can make choices that are right for you.

Yes, we all make mistakes from time to time. But we are not mistakes.

We can make a new decision that takes new information into account.

We can change our mind from time to time. That’s our right too.

We don’t have to be intellectuals to make good choices. In recovery, we have a gift and a goal available to each of us. The gift is called wisdom.

Other people can think too. And that means we no longer have to feel responsible for other people’s decisions.

That also means we are responsible for our choices.

We can reach out to others for feedback. We can ask for information. We can take opinions into account. But it is our task to make our own decisions. It is our pleasure and right to have our own opinions.

We are each free to embrace and enjoy the treasure of our own mind, intellect, and wisdom.

Today, I will treasure the gift of my mind. I will do my own thinking, make my own choices, and value my opinions. I will be open to what others think, but I will take responsibility for myself. I will ask for and trust that the Divine Wisdom is guiding me.

Sober Life

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