Powerful

Image credit: Photo by J. McPherson on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

This week, for the first time in over a year, I went to a real life 12 Step meeting. (I like to say the meetings I attend are for partners of sex addicts -- because that's mostly true -- but strictly speaking, they are for anyone affected by someone else's sexually compulsive behavior.) My meeting was held in the same room my husband's home group used until last week. It's the same room Mark has been attending meetings in for over five years now and close to the new location of his meeting.

It was a powerful night. It was powerful for me to be in the room where so much of Mark's healing has taken place. Those walls and chairs may not have been responsible for his growth, but I feel a gratitude to that space nonetheless for being available to him.

It was powerful for me, after years of connecting with others in recovery entirely online, to be back in a room with real live people again and to listen to them share. It was powerful to be able to hear voices quake and hold hands at the end and say a prayer together.

It was powerful to be with a different group with a different philosophy and dynamic than the group I left years ago. And it was powerful for me to feel serene and accepting, to have reached a place where the meetings don't trigger me anymore or make me feel judged or separate.

And it was powerful to be able to meet my husband afterwards, to meet some of the other couples working through this together and to see faces light up with recognition: "Here's that woman Mary we've heard about for years now." We were old friends who've just met.

Yes, I'll be going back next week.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.