Boring Anniversary Meetings...

I was going to write about how there's this deranged, compulsive mare that attends my home group meeting and has decided to bother me at every meeting about... well.. everything she can possibly come up with. (For ponies new to sobriety, or thinking about getting sober, a home group is a group I make sure I go to every week and I know many people at. My special comfort meeting!)

That changed after I went tonight.

We have these special anniversary meetings, usually the last meeting of the month, where ponies who got sober in whatever month we're in share what their life is like now.

My group has three meetings on Monday and I usually don't go to that first meeting, I go to the meeting after that. But my friend with seven years of sobriety was celebrating and I wanted to show up to cheer her on. She's always cheered me on, especially when I was counting days in the beginning. She's fun like that!

She got up slowly, and took a big breath and shared how this was a hellish year for her. She had a neck injury and she couldn't get above a trot for several months. She had lost feeling in her hind quarters at one point and was almost confined to her home. It took months for the doctors to find out what was wrong with her and fix her neck with surgery.

As she teared up, holding her seven year coin very tightly, she told us about the point where she was exhausted and feeling broken. It was a few weeks after the surgery, she was in the bath and she wanted to take all the pain pills the doctor had given her...

We're told that when we are close to a drink or a drug that our Higher Power can show up in some unexpected way between us and that next drink or drug.

Her super-special kitty, Gato (Gato is Spanish for cat... natch.) jumped up on the rim of the tub and she had that moment where she was presented with a stark reminder of the life sobriety had given her.

"Who would take care of you, Gato?"

You could hear everypony in that room tonight take in a breath. We all had to make a decision one day to go one way or another.

Gato was her Higher Power showing up at that moment. It isn't always Celestia swooping in with a shining light.

She then talked about how grateful that she was here to share this.

After she finished speaking and the she left the front of the room to wild applause she sat down next to me and I gave her a giant hug. I am so grateful I have ponies in my life that are true and honest. That can even let us know when things are bad.

I could go on and on... My super-petty annoyance with this other mare was immediately right-sized. I was able to let go.

I told her about this blog for sober ponies I'm writing...

She laughed so hard!