One of my first spiritual awakenings in S-Anon was that I had been “waiting to live.” I took lots of photographs, prided myself on a keen memory, and stored away the experiences of my life for later. I would smile or put on my sad face at the appropriate times, but my heart was not in the moment. My heart had been sealed away to avoid the pain of life. I was too afraid to live fully in the moment. I was so far down the path of waiting to live that I became numb to the experiences of my life as they actually occurred.

Letting go of denial shattered my stuffed treasure chest, and three years of grieving followed. I grieved the addiction and the pain it left in its wake, but I also grieved my unlived life. I could not go back and hold my son as a baby, I couldn’t go back and feel my first kiss, and I couldn’t go back and feel myself as a bride in all those photographs. The grief of my missed life was keen.

Today, my recovery goal is to live fully in the moment: to cry today’s tears, to laugh today’s laughter, and to no longer wait to live.

Reprinted from S-Anon’s Reflections of Hope, page 323.

The tool I use the most often is my Higher Power. I started out in S-Anon and continued for quite some time to call upon God’s guidance and comfort only in the most painful of times. I now feel like I have a need for God All of the Time. This is not because my life is continuously painful, but because I become more complete and whole as a person in the company of my Higher Power. I seem to have more patience and energy for my children, more compassion for my husband, less resentment towards relatives and I’m more able to accept myself as a worthy person who deserves to be loved and has enough love to give back.

I see my husband’s disease as a spiritual battle, just as I see my own battle as being a spiritual one. My greatest lesson at this time is that it’s OK for me to hate the disease of sexaholism, to acknowledge that my feelings of anger and hurt are appropriate and that my Higher Power understands and accepts those feelings. It’s at this point that I make a spiritual decision. For me, if I have kept my relationship with my Higher Power cultivated, it is easier for me to stay on the spiritual path that God has intended for me to go on. I have to move forward with my life even in the midst of dealing with the trials that sexaholism brings into my family. I hope to stay on a spiritual path so that I am made more whole. I’m becoming who I was always meant to be.

Reprinted from the 1990 issue of S-Anews©.

 

I entered S-Anon more than seven years ago, determined to save my 17-year marriage to a charismatic, deeply troubled sexaholic. Fourteen months later the sexaholic was gone, and my motivation for staying in S-Anon and working the program had changed. Now I was determined to pursue health for myself and my pre-teen and teen- age children. I had learned that sexaholism is a family disease, and I was willing to do anything to stop its spread throughout our family. The first few years were difficult, especially for my sensitive 13-year-old son. All three of us were in therapy, attending spiritual support groups. When my son was 15, he began to attend an S-Ateen group, which helped him to deal with his unhappiness.

The year my son was 17 he gradually stopped attending S-Ateen meetings, stating that he had resolved many of his issues with his father and was getting all the support he needed from his spiritual and church youth groups. Shortly after his 18th birthday I was trying to locate my tax records on the computer and found, openly stored in the documents bin, a collection of pornography which clearly belonged to my son. My immediate desire was to react — find him at the school function he was attending, give free reign to my fear, and issue ultimatums. Thank God for six plus years in the program, and the knowledge of how counterproductive that would be. Instead, for support I called two S-Anon friends with older male children. Then I called one of my friends who is a recovering sexaholic and asked for his suggestions. Instead of obsessing, I went to bed and actually slept. In the morning I went to church and asked God to give me the right words. Fully 24 hours after finding the pornography I sat down to talk to my son about it. I did not ask him for any explanations or promises. Instead I told him how much I loved him. I also shared with him that, having watched this disease destroy his father, I was terrified of what it could do to him. I offered him resources, including the names and phone numbers of two men who were recovering sexaholics, who would be willing to meet with him one-on-one and take him to recovery meetings. Then I limited my input to daily heart-felt prayer for my son.

Fifteen months later God has not shown me any more pornography or signs that my son is sinking deeper into sexual addiction. Today I have the faith that my Higher Power will bring to my attention anything I need to know. I do not have to search, snoop, or question my son. Today I also know that, as much as I love him, this is my son’s problem, not mine. He has the tools to deal with the disease—tools such as the knowledge of the effects and progressive nature of sexaholism, the opportunity through marathons (local or regional one-day conventions) and open speaker meetings to meet and listen to the stories of recovering sexaholics, and the experience of working an S-Ateen program. My son knows where to find help. The best way I can help him is to pray for him, be open for conversations, and leave him in God’s hands. My perspective and attitude depend on my working my own program.

[For information about S-Ateen meetings see the S-Anon/S-Ateen Service Manual or contact the S-Anon World service office.]

Reprinted from Working the S-Anon Program, 2nd Edition, pages 80-81.

In seeing our need for a Higher Power, we realize that it is safe for us to be dependent upon God; however, it is risky to depend exclusively for our well-being on another human being. We all have a hunger which we call the “God hunger.”We attempt to satisfy this hunger with a relationship with another person when we are really looking for a Higher Power. We can go to that Higher Power for refuge and strength. We also have the support, encouragement and understanding that we gain when we share with one another. It is startling and humbling to realize that we are often as addicted as the sexaholic. We may not be addicted to sex or substances, but sometimes we are addicted to people and situations in our lives. Ours is no less serious an addiction; in some cases we’ve suffered as devastatingly from our addiction as the sexaholic has. We need the help of a power greater than ourselves to bring us back to sanity.

It is important to remember to be patient with ourselves during this process of being restored to sanity. We are not asked to do all this at once. It takes time to develop faith and to recover. Feeling guilty and having expectations of a quick recovery only interferes with the healing process.

Reprinted from S-Anon Twelve Steps, pages 16-17.

When I first started coming to S-Anon, we had a special meeting about trusting God to take care of our worries and deepest hurts. We were asked to write down our worries and cares on strips of paper, tie them to helium balloons, and let them go, symbolizing releasing them to God. As we watched them rise, one person’s balloon got stuck in an oak tree. The frustrated person grabbed her keys and threw them at the balloon, which shook free and began to rise again – but the keys remained in the tree!
This reminded me of my years prior to S-Anon and before I had come to rely on the slogan “Let Go and Let God.” When I came to S-Anon, God showed me there were still times I tried to control what I had surrendered. For in- stance, sometimes I would let go of my worries, but then tell God what to do with them.

Today when I let go, I visualize God while releasing the “balloon,” knowing He receives whatever it is I surrender at the point of release. In my visualization, God is in control of where the balloon lands. This means God is in control of the outcome.

Reprinted from S-Anon’s Reflections of Hope, page 255.

It amazes me how God uses little everyday events to illustrate great truths. This one had to do with a squirrel which was invading my new windowsill bird feeder. Hi appetite was so voracious that I had to refill the feeder at least twice a day just to keep him fed, and the birds were hardly getting any birdseed. Besides that, I had only a few brown sparrows, and I wanted so much to attract bright cardinals and finches and blue jays.

I began to see that squirrel as “the enemy.” He was, to me, like the disease of sexaholism, and I was trying harder and harder to outwit him, like a true codependent. I was “becoming irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.”

I stomped out the backyard with huge clipper and attacked the branches of the tree. I hacked at the bushes near the window ledge. I destroyed the squirrel’s launching pads. Now he couldn’t leap from the bushes and trees to devour my birdseed. All was quiet for a day or two. A couple of finches came. Then, out of nowhere, HE appeared. Losing my serenity completely, (it was during my morning meditation…I had been dreamily watching my finches, against the backdrop of gently waving [short] branches) I leaped up from the bed and banged on the window like a maniac, cursing and spluttering. The squirrel leaped to the ground.

Thus began a plunge into obsessive tunnel vision, rivaled only by my similar obsession with a recovering addict whom I love. My brain spun,“How does he do it?”and“I’m going to catch him at it!” and “He won’t outsmart me this time” and “If God loved me, He’d protect me from this.” I was insanely focused on the life and habit of the squirrel — as I had been on the people I knew and loved who sometimes disrupted my life and didn’t do things MY way.

While the squirrel fed on my birdseed, I fed anger and impatience and frustration into my morning meditation as time after time he’d appear out of nowhere … on my feeder … looking at me. As I lost my serenity, I tried acceptance. Love the little rascal, birdseed pig that he is, with his little faults. Ignore him. Detach with love. It didn’t work. I wanted BIRDS! Why else would I have bought a BIRDfeeder?

I finally caught him. He simply walked down the side of the house, as if the vertical wall of bricks were a horizontal patio. No mystery. He just walked in and ate.

I decided to take the matter up with a Power Greater Than Squirrels. I consulted the nice woman at Wild Birds Unlimited … the specialists. She said, so matter-of-factly, “If you don’t want squirrels, don’t give them what they like to eat. They hate safflower seed. Use that in your feeder. And by the way, the cardinals and finches love it.”

It worked! It really worked. The squirrel came two days in a row and turned up his nose and left! The cardinals came! The purple finches came! My bushes grew back! But more importantly, my serenity came back. And with it, this revelation … don’t feed this disease what it likes! It thrives on anger and frustration and bitterness and rage. Don’t feed the ‘ism’ in our homes … the enemy…what it loves, and it too will begin to go somewhere else to feed. I have applied this, if imperfectly, and have seen wonderful results in my relationships with the addicts I love. And the brighter, more cheerful thoughts I have are like the bright birds that now come to my windowsill feeder daily. Just yesterday I saw that squirrel barreling along the top of the tall fence with a walnut in his mouth nearly the size of a tennis ball. I felt genuine love for him as I smiled at him, “Bon appétit!”

Reprinted from the Fall 1992 issue of S-Anews©.