Post by lildee on Feb 2, 2005 0:19:49 GMT -5
Hope For Today
I remember awakening one night when I was a teenager to hear my drunken mother gossip with a friend about intimate details of my life. Nothing was sacred when she was drunk. The pain was intense, and I tried to hide my sobs in the pillow.
For many years I hid my feelings and the details of my life, just as I had hidden my sobs. Gossip and my fear of it propelled me deeper into perfectionism. After all, if I were perfect, no one would have anything to talk about. Gossip created a judgmental atmosphere in which I did not feel free to be myself. So I continued to hide and did not accept who I really was. Gossip was just as harmful to me when I was the one doing it. When I gossiped about another,I avoided feeling and looking at my own life.
Then I came to Al-Anon, where -gossip is considered detrimental to recovery. For this reason it is listed as one of the "Three Obstacles to Success in Al-Anon" in our Conference Approved Literature. I felt such relief when I heard the following in our Suggested Al-Anon/Alateen Closing: "Talk to each other, reason things out with someone else, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love, and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time." What peace that statement brings. Today I avoid gossip, and in doing so I keep from being controlling and judgmental. I put the focus on myself, one day at a time.
Thought for the Day
"Whom you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here" is a lesson not only in maintaining anonymity but also in avoiding gossip.
"Gossip never enriched anyone's character: It was only an excuse to avoid focusing on myself:' Courage to Change, p. 300
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I remember awakening one night when I was a teenager to hear my drunken mother gossip with a friend about intimate details of my life. Nothing was sacred when she was drunk. The pain was intense, and I tried to hide my sobs in the pillow.
For many years I hid my feelings and the details of my life, just as I had hidden my sobs. Gossip and my fear of it propelled me deeper into perfectionism. After all, if I were perfect, no one would have anything to talk about. Gossip created a judgmental atmosphere in which I did not feel free to be myself. So I continued to hide and did not accept who I really was. Gossip was just as harmful to me when I was the one doing it. When I gossiped about another,I avoided feeling and looking at my own life.
Then I came to Al-Anon, where -gossip is considered detrimental to recovery. For this reason it is listed as one of the "Three Obstacles to Success in Al-Anon" in our Conference Approved Literature. I felt such relief when I heard the following in our Suggested Al-Anon/Alateen Closing: "Talk to each other, reason things out with someone else, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love, and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time." What peace that statement brings. Today I avoid gossip, and in doing so I keep from being controlling and judgmental. I put the focus on myself, one day at a time.
Thought for the Day
"Whom you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here" is a lesson not only in maintaining anonymity but also in avoiding gossip.
"Gossip never enriched anyone's character: It was only an excuse to avoid focusing on myself:' Courage to Change, p. 300
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. I will be back looking for Lin and others.