u/Traditional-Emu-6344

my sponsor has been out of the country for about 3 weeks on a vacation. She left when I was beginning step 11 and I made her (and myself) a promise to work on meditating daily as a part of my spiritual practice. I was super skeptical if it, but everyone I talked to said how helpful it is to their recovery, how much they have grown to love/need it and to hang in there because it was hard at first but got better.

it’s been a month and the exact opposite is true. It’s almost i for me to quiet my mind and get started. Connecting with my HP has actually made several situations in my life worse (things have come up or to light, issues have arisen, conflicts have started). any sources of stability have gone awry. at this point, even my concept of my HP has comp gone sideways (from a Judeo-Christian view of God to I have no idea what but DEFINITELY not that anymore!).

I wish I never had started this practice. has anyone else had a similar situation, or has been able to stay sober and work the steps without that part?

I wanted to say a huge thank you for this group existing, and for the crazy Reddit algorithm that suggested it to me.

I’ve struggled for years with Christmas. Never being able to say out loud that I didn’t like it. Being made to feel guilty or that there was something wrong with me for feeling that way. I’ve had people tell me things like “you just dorm understand the spirit of Christmas” or “what about (insert activity or thing here)” or “I don’t know what’s wrong with you! how can you not like Christmas?”

I’ve been told I’m a Grinch (not true. If Christmas makes you happy, party on Garth! You do you BooBoo!). Ive been told that I need to do MORE Christmas things to be able to “get into the spirit” or “feel that holiday joy”. Someone even told me to wait to do all of my holiday shopping until Christmas Eve and go out and do it all then to truly feel joy of the holiday.

That last one sounds like my literal definition of sensory hell.

This year, I’m finally confident and okay with the fact that I don’t like Christmas. that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me. it doesn’t mean that I have a problem or that I need to change. I genuinely have tried to and nothing has happened.

The whole thing is crazy to me. People do things out I’d the “spirit of the holiday“ which are just normal nice things to do for others. Why does it have to be limited to one holiday of the year? The crazy amount of overconsumption. The fact that the sales and the items and the music are shoved down our throats as soon as the school year begins. How on the day we have to celebrate thankfulness people are camped out in tents outside of a store for 20$ off of a big screen TV and months and months of credit card debt. Move over thankfulness and gratitude- I have overpriced crap to buy!

Hi. I hate Christmas and for the first time I’m okay with saying that out loud.

thank you for reading my ramble

What the title says.

i got the mangentic menu board two weeks ago and I love it. Does anyone know what kind of markers came with the board? I want to order more of them but i threw away the packaging from the board. The markers are just white with no info on them!

Earlier this year, I was voted in as secretary for my home group. At first I was excited and grateful that i was picked to serve in that role.

Now it’s nothing but a growing resentment. There’s so much I have to do for this role. For the first few weeks it was “well, have you done this?” “You forgot to take care of that or mention this” “hey, why didn’t you tell central office you were the new secretary?”

Now it’s the sheer amount of everything. Our snack signup sheet was running out, and the person would told me gave me the “what are you going to do about this” look. I don’t know! Im new to the role. Do we have a sheet we print out on our group thumbdrive? what have we done in the past?

It’s become part of the group culture to send reminder texts to whoever is bringing snack that week. So I have to remind myself to remind someone else to bring the snack.

At meetings, I’m the one everyone comes up to to ask questions to. Do we have more napkins in the bins? when was the last time we did a literature inventory?

I have to figure out what our home group meetings are about- keep track of loose threads and what’s going on. Come up with the topics we talk about, check on who is following up on things, try to take notes on meetings where theres tons of discussion and debate.

at meeting this week, I called for a short HG meeting afterwards to talk over two things. Less than 10 minutes later, I was done but them a treasures issue came up and we were there for another half an hour. someone in th meeting kept making stink faces at me, and at one point loudly whispered “I thought this was going to be a SHORT meeting. I can’t stay any longer” she and someone else walked out. I didn’t even know that this thing was an issue and suddenly it’s my fault?

I love my HG, but I’m spending all of my time at meeting doing the same executive functioning that I do for my kids and my husband all day (SAHM, two young kiddos, my husband is out of work and I have probable ADHD that is unmedicated). I can’t just ”be at a meeting” because of all of the secretary stuff I have. I’m only able to go to this one meeting a week for the foreseeable future. I want to quit, but I don’t feel like I can. There’s very few people who are consistently there each week that could fill in.

We’ve been cooking at home more often (who can afford eating out these days?). I realized that a lot of our kitchen equipment was really old or damaged or the cheap stuff that we‘d had forever and were making do with (Electric hand mixed where we could only plug in one beater and power switch has a crack with a sharp plastic edge). Replacing items that we are making do with or would probably fall apart or break apart with higher quality items. Trying to set us up for longevity of things we have for cooking because I don’t see a lot of eating out in our future, especially with two young kids!

Also we had a great local knife sharp recommended to us. Chargers per blade (a nearby grocery store charges 2$ per inch per knife!), and usually gets things done in a day or two. Complete game changer in the kitchen!

So, my first grader is doing really well in school except for penmanship. His handwriting looks worse than some of the doctors I’ve worked with. Part of it i inherited (his father has chicken scratch that pretends to be handwriting!). Pretty sure it’s just an issue with handwriting- he gets 100s on his spelling and sight word/phrase recognitions.

Any advice or hints on things I can do with him to work on his handwriting? I’ve got workbooks and lined paper books to practice, but. I’m also looking for things outside of that. Like maybe fine motor skill activities for fingers and hands? I want to work with him on this over the summer but not necessarily sit him down to do worksheets over and over.