My name is Shannon, sober alcoholic.

When I was growing up I developed a very deep fear of God. I thought He was a punishing God. Good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people. I hated myself. I was absolutely miserable. Based on my false beliefs, I concluded I must be a bad person. God did not love me and He was punishing me. When my drinking was at its worst, fear overwhelmed me. It was never a case that I didn't believe, I just felt abandoned and that He didn't believe in me. When I got to AA and saw the word God on the wall, I thought, "how is that going to help?" Then I went through an odd period of having the idea that in order to explore my spirituality, I must go to every church of every denomination to find out everything about them, and figure it all out. But as time went by, I noticed something amazing. Everyone who had the kind of sobriety I wanted believed that their Higher Power loved them unconditionally and wanted them to be happy. Happiness wasn't dependent on what He was doing to me; it was dependent on what I was doing to myself. I also found out that religion and spirituality are different, and that I didn't have to follow organized religion in order to believe in a Power greater than I. That felt so freeing to me! In AA, I found the freedom to honestly and fearlessly look at my relationship with HP and develop a new and better one. I also found the freedom to say I didn't know what I believed. For a while, I pretended that I did, in order to avoid disapproval from older members. But then I found I wasn't being true to myself by doing that. Today, spirituality is many things. It is prayer, it is meditation, it is being in a meeting and letting it wash over me. It is also the simple, yet the very best things in life, such as connecting with my daughters, seeing the love and trust in their eyes that wasn't there when I was drunk. It is connecting at a heart level with another human being and sharing with them. It is stopping and looking around at this awesome world and connecting with the earth, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain, and the animals. Really seeing it all as though for the first time. And of course it is love. Being able to love for the first time in a way that is real and honest and not based on fear or dependency and being filled with joy.

Thank you all for being here.