Cotton Balls, Tissues, and Panties

OK.  So.  It's been a really, really long time since I last blogged.  Oops.  Life happens.

I celebrated four years of continuous sobriety on June 3.  My anniversary fell on a Sunday, and my homegroup meets Saturdays, so I waited a whopping six days to celebrate. (Womp womp.) 

I cannot tell you how amazing it felt to receive a coin in front of 150+ group attendees (yes, big meeting) who have loved and supported me for years.  (OK, I received some beautiful flowers from friends, too.  That was awesome.)  The meeting has been my only homegroup throughout my sobriety; I even celebrated 30 days at the same podium.  And what an amazing journey it's been so far!

In this part of the country, celebrants receive only one coin for an anniversary, from their sponsor.  (At home in the west, friends will give celebrants coins, too, so you could walk away from a meeting with pockets full of sober change.)  I somehow received three coins anyway.  My fiance had conspired with my sponsor to buy me a gorgeous hand-painted coin in my school colors, but my sponsor ended up finding a coin that she had.  So I received both of those.  Nice.  Plus I had already agreed to take a speaking commitment a couple hours away on that same day; a friend surprised me with a beautiful coin with my birthstone on it at that meeting.  I keep all three in my wallet at all times.  (I can't tell you how many times I have tried pulling out an AA coin to pay for parking meters!)

Four years!??!

In the time since I've last blogged, I've switched some sponsees around.  I currently have three beautiful young ladies (21, 27, and 33) whom I absolutely adore.  These three sponsee sisters look out for each other, too.  Sponsoring women has enriched my recovery almost as much as having a sponsor myself.  I tell my girls that I get more out of sponsoring them than they do out of working with me.  I'm not sure if they believe me.  I almost hope they don't.  Maybe that'll keep them on their toes.

(A side note: I find it fascinating that each of them identifies heroin, a drug I never touched, as being her drug of choice.  For me, the mentality of addiction is the same.  Details of our pasts are irrelevant, and the solution that recovery gives us is the same.)

My sponsees and I have so much in common that it scares me sometimes.  Especially in terms of insecurities.  Of course, each of us is at a different phase of development, but I'm confident that all three of them are moving in the right direction. 

One of them recently celebrated that major early-twenties birthday milestone that qualifies her for the "never had a legal drink" title.  I gave her a recovery-related quasi-gag gift containing the following:

• A bag of cotton balls. There's a great saying in AA that newcomers should remove the cotton from their ears and place it in their mouths.
• Several pocket packs of tissues. I've joked with her before that she needs to carry tissues for her issues--a reminder that a lot of our problems are solved by realizing they're not problems after all.
• A pair of pregnancy panties. (I didn't realize such a product exists!) Because we all have times in which we have to pull on our big girl panties and just deal with it.

Thank god, she wasn't offended.

More later!