Home Group

If you have never been to AA, a home group is an AA group where you feel most at home. Different areas around the United States and Canada do this differently, around Denver, it is your home group if you say it is... you don't sign up for anything and no one really knows if that is your home group or not. Where I lived in northern Washington, you signed up for a group, you filled out a card with basic information, including your sobriety date. When it came time for your anniversary, you were just on the calendar and your name was on the cake.

In that area of northern Washington, each meeting had a sign in sheet and you signed in as you came in. The chair person would then call on you from the sign-in sheet. You signed in with your name, home group, and sobriety date. There was a lot of peer pressure to have a home group and I think that was good. In fact, one of the guys I most respected used to say "if you haven't got a sponsor and you haven't got a home group, you might be in something, but it probably isn't AA."

Anyway, I just attended a meeting of my home group. I was looking forward to seeing my sponsor and my sponsee. Neither of them were there. Well, my sponsee showed up on her way to a district meeting and dropped off a key with me.

A new woman with only 4 months of sobriety was asking about not being able to sleep. Oh dear. The memories of the long nights and everything being so serious. She is worried that she doesn't have an adequate amount of serenity! Everyone told her she is fine, it just isn't fun not to be able to sleep but her body is so screwed up from years of drinking that nothing works right. It will eventually work fine.

I am tired and probably need to get to bed. There is a lovely cool drizzle outside my window and it feels so nice to smell the rain and feel a cool breeze. Contrast that with my son who just called from New Orleans (with the National Guard) he said it was 100 degrees there today.

Well, I think this blog is about as exciting as watching grass grow, but I got some positive feedback on it today, so at least for now, I will continue.

Thanks for listening.