Well here it is… After Thanksgiving and bearing down on Hanukkah and Christmas. More opportunities to be challenged, social and remain sober. As newly sober folks the more opportunities we have to stand in our strength and test our new bottom lines.
Family and friends gift us with many opportunities to flex our sober muscles. They will offer us sweets, drinks or to step out and have a smoke. They do not see or know any of these events as problematic and therefore, time and again we have to decline these offers with as much heart as we can.
We do not have to have substances as a challenge to have our sobriety severely tested. Just the stress of loved ones expectations can be enough to open our back door to the addictive behavior. Once our back door is open it takes a team of horses to keep us from bolting through. We may be keeping our agreements but we emotionally eat things that are legal without any consciousness and proceed to fill the void that is our addiction pit. We want everyone to be happy at the holidays and therefore, codependent behavior rules the day.
In APP, we know that ceremony is the way that we exercise our sober muscles and create more resiliency to life’s challenges. We have one of the strongest ceremonies set for our December gathering. This ceremony comes just in time for the challenges ahead. There are many details to put into place so that each of you have all that you need. You will want to coordinate your efforts and step out of self focus to ensure success.
We will gather both physically and electronically at 7 pm on Wednesday December 2nd to celebrate our recent successes and plot our journey for our next ceremony. Remember that 7 pm AZ time is 6 pm California time at this time of year. Here is the link for the google meet up meeting. https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/calendar/NHNvbjlvcTB0cG1uMHNibHI0MDA5dGQyMG9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ._8d34cc1h84pkcb9h88sk2b9k6kskcba16opj0b9p7524ae9l68rjggi56c?authuser=0