Picture if you will, eight women parked in front of the Clinton Street Brooklyn home of Bill and Lois Wilson. Their motors are running and they are steamed.
On this night in 1938, their husbands, most of them newly sober, are attending a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with the organization’s co-founder, Bill Wilson. What ticks the ladies off is that their husbands have replaced drinking with meetings, leaving them once again alone and unloved.
At that moment, Lois, with suddenly heightened awareness of her own resentment and anger, realized that spouses, too, have been touched by alcoholism and must seek an appropriate response in their own lives if they are to get well and stay well.
So Lois, on that night, brought the women in for a get-together of their own in the kitchen and out of it there emerged Al-Anon Family Groups, the Fellowship she co-founded with her good friend, Ann Bingham. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, co-founded by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, the impact of Al-Anon has been huge.
A World Wide Resource
Today, there are Al-Anon Family groups in practically every town and city across America and in 130 countries around the world. Membership is estimated to be close to a million.
In Al-Anon/Alateen, members do not give direction or advice to other members. Instead, they share their personal experiences and stories, and invite other members to “take what they like and leave the rest”—that is, to determine for themselves what lesson they should apply to their own lives.
Most of those attending Alanon meetings—84%–are women who find the format a little more intimate and chatty than the men folk, and they are more ready to express emotions. Anger for example
Long time Al Anon member and author of a popular column, which appeared in our One Day at a Time quarterly newspaper (replaced by a web site), Ruth M. provided valuable insights into the Al Anon mind.
“My Higher Power (MHP) likes to keep me busy with challenges,” Ruth began in one of her columns.
“I have learned through Al Anon that it’s not so healthy to create my own chaos, because the challenges MHP provides are quite enough, thank you very much.
“I have heard over and over again, “God won’t give you more than you can handle”… blah, blah, blah. Are these people nuts? Have these people seen my credit card bill? Have they walked in my shoes and lived with my ADD? Have they met my spouse of 30 years, and have they met me? Do they know I get up sometimes three times a night to let my elderly dog out the door?
High Drama
“Just before the holidays this year,” Ruth continues, “we had a huge drama event at our house. It took me completely by surprise, and sent me into despair. I was calling AA’s and Al-Anons all over the state so that I could get guidance and hear God through them.”
“One advisor told me to continue being myself, another told me to get to Al-anon and still another told me I was accepting unacceptable behavior. One Al-anon even had the gall to tell me to ask myself what was my part in it.
“Wonderful support group I have. No, I’m serious they are! But finally, one morning MHP actually spoke directly to me.
“The message was this—it doesn’t matter who you are, you can’t run away from yourself, and you can’t hide from your higher power, no matter how hard you may try by drinking, drugging, making stupid choices, looking for geographic cures, or, Al-Anons take note, allowing another human to replace your higher power no matter how temporarily, or obsessively, you indulge in this fallacy.
“This ‘Aha!’ moment sent compassion flooding through me, compassion coming directly from my higher power, and for the first time in my life I felt a glimmer of what unconditional love might be like.
“I was able to forgive myself and the party who had thrown me into such a snit. The program was working for me, and God was doing for me what I could not do for myself.
We hear about unconditional love a lot. And, to this moment, as I write this, I’m not sure humans are capable of unconditional love, but I know God is. It was a mini miracle for me to feel the compassion that might instead have been well-justified anger, self-pity or even poisonous self-destructive behavior
Commit to Freedom
I am coming through this trauma, with renewed awareness, new commitment to be FREE, not FEAR-Filled. (“Wordies” take note, in the word “Fear” the vowels are encapsulated by the F and R. In “Free” the vowels are outside the F and R. I know– too much Scrabble.)
I wish I could share my experience, strength and hope and tell you serenity comes easy after all these years, that love is a noun not a verb, and that if you adopt a spiritual life, you will no longer experience setbacks, but that is not my experience.
But here’s my hope. If you have been fortunate enough to log on to this website, and if you have questions about someone else’s addictions because you are being held hostage by them, please don’t despair. Go to an Al-anon meeting for starters. Listen and learn. There will be people who you may not know, “but they will love you in a very special way.”
More than likely you will run into people you do know. Your first reaction may be, OMG, they know my secret! But the truth is, they have lived your secret. They will become a support group that will save your life, rejuvenate your spirit and be there for you when the alcoholic, recovering or not, may be unable to assist you with your challenges. The support of Al-Anons will become your strength.
There is an adage; you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip, and a country western song that wails the message not to “look for love in all the wrong places.” If you are trying to do this metaphorically, then come to Al-Anon, where God can help you.
Stepping Stones
As for Bill and Lois Wilson, in 1941, six years after the founding of AA and three years after the founding of Al Anon, they moved into a new home in Bedford Hills, New York overlooking the Hudson River. Lois named it, “Stepping Stones,” and for the next 30 years, the two lived out their days traveling in the service of their twin ministries.
In 1971, stricken with emphysema, Bill Wilson died at the age of 72, and the world finally discovered who founded the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when The New York Times published his full name on its front page.
Lois was almost crippled with grief but eventually rallied and carried on her work for the next 17 years, but she never got over Bill.
When the end came for her, as she lay dying, she waived off attempts to prolong her life and delay reconciliation with her husband. “I want to see my Bill,” she scribbled on the pad they provided.
Lois Burnham Wilson, at ninety- seven years old, joined her beloved Bill later that evening. It was October 5, 1988. She was buried next to her husband in the small family cemetery in East Dorset, Vermont.
Lois’s name is chiseled on the simple white marble gravestone, but true to principles of anonymity, there is no mention of Al-Anon. Bill’s gravestone, equally discreet, makes no mention of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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