By the grace of God and the Fellowship of AA, I am in my 42nd year of continuous sobriety. I was Twelfth Stepped into the program by a woman named Betty.

I was blessed with the gift of sobriety in June of 1988, and I’m incredibly grateful to my first sponsor for the values he instilled in me and the actions he directed me to take.

I met Lu when I moved to San Antonio. I was about two years sober.

It was March, and I was cold, lonely, confused and terrified. I was sure that this was it for me. It was 7:30 a.m., and I somehow crawled out of the car drunk and made it into the house.

Ten years it took me to finally grieve my sponsor’s death. It’s been almost four years since I had that super-ugly cry on the beach over her passing.

At six months sober, I had just finished cleaning and waxing my newly purchased but used Maverick.

Many of us have read and heard about the importance of good sponsorship.

On a cold morning in February, I got a call from an AA friend who was working with a local ministry group that helped refugees and immigrants who had been given asylum in the United Sta

For three years meetings, working Steps with my sponsor and service had kept me sober. I thought I was doing pretty good.

I was raised in an alcoholic household. My father was an alcoholic and my mother should have been in Al-Anon.

In the spring of 1985, I did a “geographic” from New York City to San Francisco, only to find that I had followed myself all the way across the country.

I am a bilingual AA member and my home group is a Spanish-speaking group.

When I first attended my virtual AA meeting, I was elated to “see” my recovery family, plus new faces from places across the world.

I didn’t want to go to AA meetings because I was afraid—afraid they would work! I had experience doing the Twelve Steps in a sister fellowship for another addiction, and I recovered.

I got into general service in the same age-old way that I have heard many other alcoholics speak about: My sponsor raised my hand at our home group’s business meeting.

In 1967, I was 13 years old and attending a Catholic grade school in a small Minnesota town. One day our class took a trip to the monastery nearby where priests and monks lived.

About 20 minutes after 8:00 one Saturday, while sitting in my morning AA meeting, my mind kept wandering to thoughts of a friend in the program. I’ll call her Lily.

During my time in the rooms, I have met people who can quote from memory every page of the Big Book from cover to personalized leather-bound cover.

I’ve always thought of my life’s path in terms of decisions I made that took me in certain directions.