Tradition 1 – Sue N. – New England Big Book Workshop Weekend – 2020

Hi, everybody. Welcome. And my name is Eduardo and I'm an alcoholic and welcome to this breakout session on Tradition One, which will be titled Acceptance Fuels Unity. The session will run for 45 minutes and the format is that the facilitator will share their experience for 10 to 15 minutes on the topic and then open it up for you to share your own experience or ask questions. and everyone is encouraged to participate. So at this time, please welcome Sue N. Thank you, Eduardo. I'm praying right now. Please help me to say what I need to say. Thank you so much for inviting me to come today. I am honored to be part of this weekend. This is awesome. It's been great so far. So Tradition 1, I'm going to read the short form and the long form. So Tradation 1, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. And the long form, which you can find at the back of the big book, each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first, but individual welfare follows close afterward. So we'll talk about that more after. But what comes to my mind is one of the things that I heard early on, that groups don't drink. Individuals drink, but groups don'T drink. And so it was important for me to go to meetings, to go a lot of meetings. Um, I first want to talk about the title. Uh, I love the title acceptance fuels unity. I, um, what I know is that in my experience, I came to AA through a treatment facility and, um there's all sorts of things about treatment facilities but when I got there, um I never wanted to feel the way I felt when I arrived there. Um, I knew I had to get sober. I was still, um, wondering if I could maybe someday drink again. Um. But while I was there, I, um. I acquired this acceptance. Uh. Acceptance is huge. And so what that did for me is, I wanted to do whatever it took to stay sober and I came to understand that I was not going to be able to do that alone and I wanted to commit myself to the program and I met a sponsor who helped me be a committed member of Alcoholics Anonymous by suggesting I join a home group by suggesting I get a job in that group, you know, and going every week because, you know as it's called a home group, that's where you're going to find your home and that's where you are going to get to know folks. And it's going to become a community. And that's what AA Unity is all about, is being a community of like-minded people. um you don't always have to agree i have an opinion you all have opinions but we need to be unified in that common purpose which is to help an alcoholic stay sober is to be of service and um i wrote down a bunch of stuff but i have i'm just going to look at it when I am lost, my mind goes blank. I wanted to read this though. I'm not a great history buff, but I love history. And the traditions were first published in the April 1946 grapevine under the title 12 Points to Assure Our Future. Formally adopted at AA's First International Convention in 1950. Shortly after that, Dr. Bob passed away in the 12 and 12 was written in 1953. I love finding out about AA history and the thing is about these traditions, he didn't mean to mute me, right? Okay. Just like step one, where I accepted my powerless over alcohol and my unmanageability. Tradition one asked me to accept the fact that you're part of the community. I am part of a community now and I have to play well in the sandbox. I have play in the sand box and get along with people, even though I may not like everybody. It doesn't matter. It doesn' t matter. um first paragraph of of um the tradition says the unity of alcoholics anonymous is the most cherished quality our society has our lives and the lives of all to come depends squarely upon it to stay whole we stay whole or aa dies without unity the heart of aa would cease to be our world arteries would no longer carry the life-giving grace of God. So it's important for me to remember that I am here to help the next alcoholic. I am hier to be of service. And the other thing that these traditions have given me is a basis for living my life outside of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that seems to be the hard part. You know, I can come to AA and work the steps with a sponsor and develop a relationship with the God of my understanding in Alcoholics synonymous because, you know, I'm going to meetings every day and I'm seeing you all. And I'm forming a relationship with you all and I'M GOING TO MY MEETINGS, THE ONES THAT I HAVE BEEN GOING TOO AND I'M CONTRIBUTING AND DOING ALL OF IT. BUT IF I'M, YOU KNOW, AT WORK OR AT HOME, You know, Myers talked about it last night and I'm being an a-hole. What good is all these principles? You know the traditions have been important to me to use in my personal life, in my work life, in my church life. You know I have a church community, I have work community and I have a family that we, we need to, we have different difference of opinions. But we have a common purpose is a common practice in my family, you know, we, we trust in each other and are loyal to each other. And, you Know, we develop, we try to develop communication. You know, we try to develop, you know, I have to remember that I can't just do whatever I want if it's going to affect my family. I need to, you know, talk about it at work. You know I'm convinced that when I was before I got sober I was working a temp position actually at the place that I work now and I was there for just during the school year because my kids were young then and uh you know when I went back the next year I worked for a couple months and then after a little bit of time I was told that I'm not working out anymore i i was i'm like how dare you how dare you i had no recourse because i was a temp so i left pissed off you know telling everybody my story uh you know not understanding what the heck you know why i was doing so good what you know what's the problem it wasn't until i came to alcoholics anonymous doing an inventory finding out I was trying to run everybody's life there, just trying to, you know, I was, you know talking about people and trying my big thing is like, I want to help be helpful. So I'm going to do your job the way I think it should be done. But not, you know not letting you do your job and so when when i start doing that and people start getting threatened they don't like that so my manager fired me because she thought i wanted her job so i probably did but you know i didn't know it at the time but i you know i'm the type of person that's like look at me i thought great and um you know these traditions these steps help me to see my ego and um and so tradition one you know each member of alcoholics anonymous is a small part of a great whole i remember telling my sponsor one time you know i've been a member of the same home group since i started coming around on way back september of 2001, um, after I came through treatment. And, uh, so I don't remember what it was that annoyed the heck out of me, but I wanted to make a change and I brought that to my sponsor and I told her, I think we should do this in our home group. I must've been, you know, five months sober. I don'T KNOW. And she just laughed at me and said, listen, you DON'T need to change anything. you know we're getting along just fine without your changes so you know this is this is something that we've been doing it's it's all well and good um i there was there was an old timer that i always i didn't always but i i had an issue with him and uh and my sponsor you know and i wanted to leave the group because of him and uh she said you know pray about it and if it's something that you need to discuss with him discuss it with them we don't come to aa to avoid people and this is about the group it's not about perfect personal preference um and so you know in during my time in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I've been a member of this group for over 19 years and there's ups and downs, but I love my group. I love to be able to meet new newcomers. I love being able to be of service. And that goes for any of the meetings that I that i tend to attend on a regular basis you know i want to be of service to the newcomer and to the group as much as i possibly can and and that helps me um remember that i do the same type of these same type of actions outside of alcoholics anonymous you know I have a church community that I'm involved in a couple of things there and you know and I and I go towards the people that were like-minded and, um, share the same values. Um, at work, it's a little more difficult because there's some people that want to be a team and there's other people that don't want to do it. And I have to be able to work with all of them. And, um. You know, So there are things that I don't always agree with, but with the help of my higher power, it doesn't matter. You know, I just take the action. I cooperate. I don't have to be a naysayer, you know, but that doesn't mean that, you know, you walk all over me either. The principles of tradition one, the principle of tradition, one common welfare always has to be first and formal you know my recovery is is very important it's so important um and i think you know you come to alcoholics anonymous um you know this is a 12-step program please do the 12 steps yeah you know once you've had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps the traditions become super important to you and because it keeps our fellowship alive. You know, Bill knew that he needed to put together a set of principles to keep us together because of the actions of the Washingtonians, you know, in the Oxford group had so many people, you know needing help. He knew that, you Know, people like me with this big ego needed to be reined in, we needed to Be guided so that we didn't destroy this fellowship. And so that's what these traditions do and it starts with tradition one. And so I'm gonna end there, thank you. Thank you so much, Sue, that was wonderful. Appreciate your share. Again, my name's Eduardo and I'm an alcoholic. So now the session is open for discussion and you can share your own experience or ask questions by raising your hand in the participant list and I'll call on you then. Kathleen? Hi, I'm Kathleen. I'm an alcoholic from Charleston, South Carolina. Hi, Kathleen. Hi, thank you for your experience, strength, and hope on that tradition. I wanted to ask you, you know, we have a steps study sponsor. Did you have a tradition sponsor? How did you learn about all this on your own? I wonder. my the sponsor that um that i had early on um i mean once i have now both um are into the traditions and why and how i became um she had introduced them to me um you know once once i did the steps with her um and started to you know i guess once i had my spiritual awakening as a result of these steps um she immediately suggested that i i take a job as the intergroup rep for my group and so um so i did that i had no idea what i was doing um but it gave me the opportunity to expand my my service outside of the home group um she when i first started coming around she wanted me to go to a big book meeting a step tradition meeting um and my home group those are the three meetings that she wanted me to find and you know i i kind of went wherever she went so we had gone to a step in tradition meeting. And at the time, the traditions were read once a month. And so that's where I was introduced to the traditions. And we talked about it on occasion. You know, I referenced her when I was in treatment. She, I didn't know what at the, at the time, but I would call her up and I would start spouting about all the stuff that was going on in the treatment facility and, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she like didn't even hear anything I had to say. All she wanted to know was, can I come and pick you up? So in, you know, several years later, I realized she has no opinion on outside issues. You know, that's one of our traditions and, you know she taught me them as we went along, but she also wanted me to, you know go to a tradition meeting and read them. on a regular basis and discuss them. And now I am involved in a meeting that every other week we discuss and talk about the tradition, so. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you Sue. Eduardo, Kelly has her hand up. She can't raise her virtual hand. Thank you, so much Maureen. as a co-host, I cannot raise my virtual hand. Thanks. My name's Kelly and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you for sharing. And I really appreciate that you brought up the employment example. And I see where unity is so critical in that example or not. AndI got caught in that dilemma when I worked for the same boss for 14 years and we were part of a high functioning team and we packed to go to Maine. We brought hiking boots and a winter coat and a hat and gloves and we're going to Maine in the winter and 14 years we built this high functioning team and then a new boss came in and I learned within like 60 90 days she was going to Florida and I hadn't packed at all for anything down south and and um I did not get on her team in fact I began to behind the scenes my character defects I've been sober for quite some time at this point. My character defects kicked in, I started to work against her behind her back. And I just could not make the adjustment to go into Florida. And that wasn't the issue for me in hindsight, what the the issue was, was that I didn't handle it in a spiritual way. I handled it from a place of self and you know how this story ends of course uh she fired me and with that came some healing time and reflection and it you know it definitely felt like winter in Maine I was still in Maine and and also I have had um winter in Alcoholics Anonymous I've been hurt in Alcoholics Anonymous and I've had expectations of others in Alcoholic Anonymous that has have not been met and I ve learned uh through suffering which is I guess our all of our MO I know it certainly is mine in these tough lessons that um unity is a choice that I have to make on a regular basis. It leads me to all of the aspects of spirit in my life, picking up pen and paper, forgiveness, letting go, acceptance, all of things that are not of me, but come from a power greater than myself. And sometimes it takes me a while to recover. I'll admit, I do not often I do not always bounce back quickly. And I'm so grateful that you all have given me the tools to bounce back, to even if I'm on the periphery of you, you don't let go. You stay with me. You hang in there. And, you know, I'll be forever grateful to all of you to Alcoholics Anonymous for keeping me connected even when I'm trying to get away um you've stayed with me and you've loved me through my own ugliness and and and that is tradition one that's unity and so I just wondered what you thought about um tradition one in zoom land and if you had any thoughts about how tradition one looks different or feels different or operates differently or what new characteristics you might see in uh as we do alcoholics anonymous through zoom thank you for letting me share good question um it's definitely different um um yeah it's uh zoom thank god for zoom um but i sure do miss meeting in person um it definitely is a different vibe and a different definite uh different feel uh the tradition is definitely different um i i feel like in larger groups it's a little more random as far as the unity um smaller groups um i'm finding that um unity is uh i don't know better i don'T KNOW IF IT'S BETTER BUT UM IT JUST SEEMS MORE TRADITIONAL YOU KNOW IT SEEMs LIKE IT'S THERE MORE UM THAT'S BEEN MY EXPERIENCE YOU KNOW I UH YOU KNOW ON THE OTHER HAND THERE'S A LOT I I FEEL LIKE um i feel like that the meetings the groups that i attend people will come some people will come early some will hang on after you know for fellowship and um you know everybody still continues to talk about their alcoholism and and how much they need to be here um so So that is definitely our common bond. And the unity, I don't know, the unity is there. It's just different. Definitely different. Thanks. Thank you, Kelly, for the question and appreciate your answer, Sue. Anyone else like to share? Maureen? Hi, I'm Maureem. I'm an alcoholic. Sue you were terrific Edward Eduardo thank you for your service um so when I first came to AA meetings I was aggravated that we were not on the step I needed to be on which was you know one and um and then i was aggravated that once a month we did a traditions meeting and because because it was all about me and i just wanted to hear what i needed to hear for me or so i thought so um you know we do read the traditions once once a months in my home group um but it was really good to hear you sue because uh like now i'm going to look for a traditions meeting honest to pete um so it it's not all that stuffy stuffy stuff right it there is growth in that in traditions as well i guess that's all i wanted to say and thanks noreen great thank you norene next up is karen hi um my name is karyn and i am an alcoholic hey karen um i really appreciate your share uh sue sue and um you touched on something that i've um been struggling with lately and particularly this morning in that going to a meeting and having someone in the meeting that we just disagree all the time. And this meeting is kind of interesting because when we were meeting in person, we would get together every Saturday morning and we would read a piece of recovery literature and we would have a meeting about it so sort of all the same rules applied that would apply in a meeting you you know somebody chairs you don't cross talk you speak for so many minutes you um you know stick to the topic you don t talk about outside issues and when we started with the zoom we decided to continue and at first we were reading from a book and eventually stopped reading from that and it's just sort of a get together uh they're women in recovery but i find that there's a lot of um talk about things that well in this in this current climate that um you know just are kind of upsetting when people have different views on things and i'm at the point now because this woman and i just disagree on just about everything and she has a lot to say and she talks all the time and I am so disturbed sometimes and some of it is probably myself you get to say your opinion and I don't get to stay my opinion and if I if I do start I'm quickly I feel like I'm like quickly shut down. So I enjoy the recovery part with these, with these people, but it's very difficult on zoom to have a group conversation. And I don't know if I should leave the group for now or continue with it until we get back to recovery stuff. But I'm left quite often feeling very uncomfortable and very, um, it's just not doing it for me. And what you said, I appreciate pray, pray over it. If there's something I need to say to the person, I should say that if I decide to leave the group. I could leave the group so whether I talk about it or not it's kind of off the subject of an AA meeting so the same traditions and rules don't apply and I'm a little bit uncomfortable but I didn't get sober to be alone and uncomfortable and resentful about people so if you have any advice or how you handled that or got over yourself to hear this person. Yeah, I would appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you for your share. The only thing I would say, Karen is keep it on your common solution. Keep it on AA, keep it On Recovery, you know, and that's it. thank you sue great question karen for those of you who may have joined us late we're on tradition one we framed it up with the topic of acceptance fuels unity at this time we're asking for anyone who would like to share their experience on tradition one to raise their hand in the participants box and we'll call on you thanks mary hi everyone I'm Mary I'm an alcoholic great to hear you Sue good to see you Eduardo um you know I uh I'm out in Wyoming part-time and we only have certain meetings there aren't a lot of options we don't have big book step study we don'T have speaker meetings there's not a lot to be jumping around to. And it forces you to accept whoever shows up at those meetings because you have to get along. And I remember when I first started coming out here complaining to Sue, who's my sponsor, about things not going the way I wanted. And she said, well, are they staying sober? I was like, yeah, but they're not doing it right. And she's like, well, maybe that's about you. And of course, that made me angry. But I would say that after coming around for a while, I found attributes in all of those people who annoyed me that I have come to like. And I have found that they have a message, not all the time. And certainly, they all have their character defects. But what I've come to realize is that, hey, guess what? I probably do too. You know, I'm probably annoying too sometimes. And they still invite me in the room. They're still happy I'm there. And nobody ever says, hey, it's Mary. like maybe you should go find another meeting. And for that, I'm grateful and I'm glad I can see that differently and accept everybody where they're at. I do run into a lot of times thinking the meeting should go a different way. And I just have to sit back and just accept the meetings as they are and get what I can out of them. I don't have other choices, and that's taught me to be a little bit more patient, and it's taught мне that my defects are alive and kicking. So it's not a question, but I'm really happy to see you, Sue. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mary. Thank you, and next up is, I hope I get this name right, Thais? You did. It's close enough. Thais is how my parents pronounced it. But you know, I answered almost all things nearby. I'm Thais and I'm a recovering alcoholic addict. And I just want to bring up a subject that is near and dear to my heart that hovers very near traditional one. And Sue brought it up in a bundle of ways. um and that's the notion that attitude adjustment in aa teaches me to look differently at dissenting opinions um the tradition of business world that some of us come from is their hierarchical you know we're right you're wrong you're voted out we don't want to hear from you and it's a it's very shunning uh exclusive way to to run a show and it leads to discontent and resentments When I first got in the program and saw how meetings were run different, especially business meetings, which can be contentious because that's where we resolve the inner workings. What I noticed the difference was, and somebody actually had a word for it for me. They said, the word is consensus. And I realized that that word has taken over into the business world too. But what I noticed was how it felt. I watched a group, a fairly large group where one woman, one person had a dissenting view and everybody handled it differently than a tradition that I was used to. You know, that hierarchical, you know, we don't want to hear from you because you're different. AA by definition is inclusive. And the beauty of seeing that happen in a meeting where one person stood alone and you know a large group of other people felt differently but they included the dissenting opinion and that's where i learned unity the first time in in a meeting um and saw how it was resolved that person even though that person's idea did not get adopted it was included that person did not feel shunned or left out or uh discounted for having a differing an opinion and that idea of living on an island was brought home to me when I was in a art one of those fairs where everybody had their booth set up and some alcoholic came driving through uh you know crazy drunk that day and their truck knocked out a lot of the pins that were holding up other people's tents and I was waiting for everybody to get really mad at that person and shun them and How dare you? And they handled it very differently. They helped the person get their car out safely so they didn't cause more damage, and they dealt with the situation differently. Everybody started gently putting their tent poles back up and rebuilding. I said, how can you not be mad at that person? They said, we live on a very small island. We can't afford to get angry. we'd run out of people and that same concept inclusion no matter how we come to a meeting some of us come in drunk you know we we don't get it yet and watching the beat i get tingles just saying this watching how everybody handled that person with compassion understanding we've all been there at some level um there go i that inclusive feeling is so different than feeling you know how i already walk in the room going god nobody's gonna accept me because i'm different I'm terminally unique, you know, and then recognizing how similar I am. That inclusion, that using tradition one before I even knew the language for it, feeling it was what kept me in the rooms, which kept me listening, wanted to come back to hear what you had to say and wanting what you had. So thank you so much for bringing tradition one to a suit because it, you know, to me, it's got so much power packed behind it. So here's to consensus and inclusion. Yay! Thank you, Mittle. Thank you to you. And thank you for helping me with your name. You know, speaking of the business world, it was Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Make Friends and Influence People, who said the sweetest sound to a person's ears is the sound of their own name. So I appreciate that. We have about five more minutes left in this session. Again, we're on tradition one. And if you'd like to share your experience or have a question for Sue, please use the participants box to raise your hand. Joanne. Morning, everyone. I'm an alcoholic, Joanne from Ottawa, Canada. So nice to be with everyone. So funny how we hear certain things. In my experience, I haven't had contemptuous or contentious home groups. And so our business meetings have always run very smoothly. but i have a sponsee whose um home group is filled with a lot of bleeding deacons and and things get discussed outside of the business meeting and she's the gsr and she reacted oh boy she reacted and she sent an email and so last night we read her harms inventory and uh so we and we read the big book everything that it talks about in making amends and and she just said uh I'm not willing I'm Not Willing and so we read The Big Book together where it says we know what's going to happen if we're not willing to make the amends and i was able to recognize that she's just overwrought and exhausted and i was able to share my experience with her and i think this is a sponsor trick i had to make very painful amends and when i wrote out my harms inventory i couldn't do it i couldn'T make the amends before i read it out to my sponsor and she let me sit in it for 48 hours and I could feel that gravitas of what I had done to another member of Alcoholics Anonymous so that by the time I you know got a hold of her um hopefully it was so bad that it would give me maybe 10 seconds of self-reprieve right the next time before I reacted so um I love that we read this today and when my sponsee calls we can read tradition one together you know and I've taken notes on what everyone has shared and uh because i know my time's just a coming you know it'll come for me too if i want to be of service there was a women's emotional sobriety meeting last night and the woman is very active in fellowship or service and she said you want to test your emotional sobrietty get involved in service and not just at your group level go to district area become a trustee and then see how good your emotional sobriety level is though so i thought that was pretty funny it's great to see everyone today thanks thank you joanne thank you Joanne we have a couple of minutes left i'll take that as perhaps we've uh run out of uh things to say or we're just looking forward to the next session. So I want to thank Sue for your share and all of those who participated. Well done, Sue. Thank you so much. And in just a couple of minutes, we're going to be transitioning into step four. Donna and Matt will be joining us. If you want to be part of that session, you need do nothing more than just sit tight. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be of service and I'll see you on the other side, I guess