Christmas By the Book

What kind of goodies do you find in your Christmas stocking? Last Christmas I found a copy of the Third Edition of the Big Book in mine. It was a gift not from any of Santa's helpers but from a sponsee--one of my helpers. Shortly before, he was telling me of a discussion in which a young woman stated that in the early years of Alcoholics Anonymous women were not allowed membership. Whereupon he referred her to the story of a woman who had gotten sober in 1939. Like a newcomer myself, I asked him where he had learned about that woman. "In the story at the back of the Big Book, of course," he said. "The one called 'Women Suffer Too.' You know the one I mean?"