Vegetable Garden
(This is about a person and a learning experience which offered me comfort, calmness, and life skills.) Comfort was very difficult to find in my mother's house. For just the two of us were living there most of the time, it always felt chaotic and tense. I cannot...
Literature In Development Subcommittee Update
The Literature Committee has created two new subcommittees in the last year. One of these is the Language Subcommittee, chaired by Alexandra E from Sweden. That subcommittee is creating recommendations for language in our literature that is spiritually inclusive,...
Boundaries
As newcomers, we often feel the need to set boundaries with family or friends who don’t understand our program, who may give unwanted advice, or simply trigger our laundry list traits. I had a friend who criticized the way I taught my children manners (or lack...
The ACA “Laundry List” Describes Compliant Adult Children, Not Exiles Or Rebels
Only Trait 4 specifies substance abuse, as a way to cope. Addict/Alcoholic adult children do share the feelings—fears—in the traits, but they acted out as targets of abuse. I believe lumping defiant behaviors into the “Other Laundry List” isn’t satisfactory. All...
Volcano
Living with a volcano….He provides for us.He keeps us well fed, terrified,emotionally famished. The volcano explodesoften and unpredictably.Then just as suddenly,an eerie calm as if nothing happened. When will the volcano erupt?There’s no way to know.It just...
Turlock
nearing the restaurant I hear the boys passing on bicycles speaking beautiful Spanish entering i see a lot of people not prizing some invisible seed of potential ...
Rubber Band
I served as my family's rubber band... keeping it all together despite how far I stretched myself. There I was, a supple little loop; one end stretched to keep my Dad inside, the other around my Mom to keep her from falling apart. I strained and folded, bent and...
Finding A Higher Power, Or I How I Discovered Control
Blind faith has always sounded ridiculous to me. After all, a part of why I have been Pagan for over 30 years was because I did not just accept things at face value. I needed to know more. So I did not really have any problem “recognizing” my Higher Power. It was the...
ACA Kindle eBooks
The ACA World Service Organization (WSO) has upgraded the English language Kindle version of the “Big Red Book” (BRB) to ePub 3.0 format. This format now includes: – Revisions to content, as approved by the ACA Annual Business Conference – Page numbers that match the...
Le rétablissement, c’est de faire autrement
J’ai collectionné de nombreuses phrases, qui me servent parfois de boussole. Par exemple : • Si je ne change pas, ma souffrance ne changera pas. • Si tu veux des choses que tu n’as jamais eues, fais des choses que tu n’as jamais faites. • « Plus » de la même chose...