Strengthening My Recovery

This is official Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization (ACA WSO) Conference Approved Literature. This eBook version has been upgraded to the epub 3.0 format which includes improved accessibility features.

Strengthening My Recovery was anonymously written by ACA members and is a Daily Meditation Book written by and for the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA/ACoA)
Fellowship. The seeds of this book were planted during the final development of the Fellowship Text, also known as the Big Red Book (BRB).

Each meditation starts with a quote from the BRB. The writer’s recovery experience is then shared. The affirmation at the end is intended as a message of hope to carry us through our day. The volunteers were asked to write in the nominative, plural case (the “we” format). Although their observations may be personal in nature, they are also thought to be universal to most of us. Using the nominative case makes them our stories, reminding us that we are a recovery family.

It should be noted that “Strengthening Our Recovery” is not meant to facilitate study of the BRB. It is meant as a companion to the BRB and our Twelve Steps of Adult
Children Workbook. Taken together, they are powerful tools for recovery that complement each other. In addition to making this book a part of your personal daily recovery reading, we hope that each group will read the meditation of the day as part of their meeting format.

What is an Adult Child?
The concept of Adult Child is someone whose actions and decisions as an adult are guided by childhood experiences grounded in self-doubt or fear. As children, most of us quickly figured out what we needed to think, say, and do to avoid the most pain. We survived the best way we could, relying on only ourselves to get by. Often, we stay in abusive relationships because they resemble how we were raised.

No matter whether there was alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex abuse, overeating, codependent behavior, physical abuse, neglect, abandonment or actions by immature parents, we develop similar traits or characteristics that interfere with our ability to form happy and healthy relationships with partners, at work, and anywhere else that fear and self-doubt can enter into our lives.

By finding a twelve steps meeting of adult children of alcoholics and learning to reparent yourself, you will come to know a new way to live that will relieve the pain, shame, and years of stored anger you have endured since childhood.

Healing our harmful personality laundry list traits developed from childhood trauma received by growing up in dysfunctional and abusive families.

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