Member-only story
An AA Meeting — Motivated by Fear pg178
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
1994
I figured nothing could make me eager to give up good merlot, and I knew all I needed to know about God. Experiences with ‘His’ followers had left me unimpressed to the point of abhorrence. The words being shared around the circle didn’t penetrate, but something else gradually did. A ring of sincere and gentle truth was conveyed as each woman took a turn to tell a story. It was bizarre. A woman said something that seemed to come from her heart rather than her ego. What she shared wasn’t the fiction and falsehoods passing for conversation I was used to. Guys in bars never goaded me to get all empathetic and uncool by speaking from the heart.
The sheer novelty of this phenomenon caught my attention. People were talking truthfully. A softer spot in my crusty heart whispered this was okay… even a little bit nice. An atheist spoke about finding a creative power that was bigger than her own ego, and how this belief helped her to not act out. A gentle, long-ignored voice inside me suggested I could do this again. I didn’t drink for a week, and returned. — From Chapter 9
This painting was done two weeks ago. This is the beloved group of women I have been meeting with outdoors all this fall — distanced and masked…
