Gossip

[caressa]

Walk In Dry Places

Limiting Gossip
No harm to others.

"When you've told me their names, do not tell me their faults," a person said at an AA meeting. She was explaining how careful we must be to keep gossip within tight limits. However, it is possible to identify people in gossip without actually speaking their names. We can give so many facts that the listener can identify whom we're discussing. This is no less malicious and thoughtless than actually naming the person.

We can avoid these dangers by giving up both the desire to gossip and the wish to listen to gossip. We will always have matters to gossip about; we can always find weaknesses in those we envy, faults in people we want to see taken down a notch or two. But if we persist in the program, we should find ourselves moving out of this limited way of thinking. We'll put severe limits on gossip at the same time.

I'll sidestep gossip if it starts to find a way into my life today. Under God's guidance, I have better things to do.

Gossip hurts. I firmly believe it projects a negative energy onto the person that is being gossiped about and what I put out always comes back so this is something I try not to do.

Gossip almost drove me out of AA. It wasn't until I started healing and changing, feeling really good about myself, and people seemed to have a problem with that. Perhaps people have to put others down to make them feel good and perhaps they don't realize how much they are truly hurting themselves.

The best year of my life was when I was 57. I had lost weight, chose to be a blonde, was eating healthy, and was on a spiritual journey that had started the year before. I had a lot of male friends because I went to two meetings a day for two years and then one day up until I had 10 years sober. Women in this area only went to there home group and didn't do much travelling from meeting to meeting. According to the gossip I was wedded and bedded by several guys and I had more black outs in sobriety than I did when I was using. I didn't have any that I was conscious of when drinking but I did have them with pills. I don't remember being intimate with any of my so called encounters.

It is amazing how people try to sabbatoge hard work and an open mind and a willingness to change and not give credit for the effort. I started from the outside and made the journey inward.

I was a redhead when I came into recovery. I experimented with hair colour (a friend said "Do you think we won't know you just because you change your hair colour and style?" and looked for my own style which ended up being blue jeans, black turtle-necks and jackets which I am still wearing today.

Today I don't go to AA but to Al-Anon. It is were I need to be for my own peace and serenity. I have been going to Al-Anon since 1991 but not on a regular basis. Now I no longer do service for NA and AA, I go into the jail for Al-Anon. I can share from both sides of the street.