The many colors of a RAINBOW …

One of my old time blogger friends posted an entry many years back entitled “A guy who'd never met a Jew before”. As the title suggests it described the breaking down of age old prejudices.

Whenever I think of that it brings to mind the day that I attended my first AA meeting. It was in 1989 and I was “The girl who’d never met an alcoholic”. I remember looking around the room and thinking that I had absolutely nothing in common with this strange group of humanity. I was no longer a child and I, literally, couldn’t see where I could gain anything from these “misfits”. I had always thought of myself as a liberal, well educated and non-prejudicial person but, as I looked around the room,  I remember thinking that this was taking things a bit far !

Thankfully, I had a wise Sponsor who taught me to LISTEN and it made all the difference. She suggested that I reach out and try to find the similarities in my fellow members and I decided to give it a try.  All of a sudden the world seemed to open up before me. I realized that I had been living in a vacuum…and a boring one at that. I became teachable and the more I listened and opened my heart and my ears the more I learned. Now, after almost 31 years of continual sobriety, I cannot imagine a better way to live.

My friends are a conglomeration of different races, colors, sexual choices and ethnicities. They range in age from 17 to 94 and not a day passes that I don’t learn something new from them. We share laughter and tears and the knowledge that we will be here for each other as we continue on our journey of sobriety.

Today I feel like I have a metaphorical rainbow that covers and protects me. It is made up of the melding of all these colorful characters ... and to think that I almost let it pass me by !