Honesty as a topic

[Charlize]

Last night i missed my usual AA trans Skype meeting. I had been asked to speak at a cis speaker discussion meeting in a nearby town. The woman who asked me is the wife of a trans woman. I arrived a bit before the meeting and was given a warm welcome. Way to many names to remember but all warm faces. I picked up my decaf coffee and sat next to the meeting leader in a large circle of 50+ folks. I knew the leader and one man from another meeting. Soon everyone else sat and as in many meetings the women sat in a group. Wonderfully that group formed around me and the leader. When it was my time to tell my story i started by describing a bit of my journey with substance abuse but mostly with alcohol. I mentioned how in AA literature it stresses honesty. I spoke of being honest about certain things for the first time in my life with my sponsor as i did the steps. Looking around the room i saw one man had dozed off. I can understand that but i was curious. The next thing i mentioned was that i am transgendered. His eyes popped open! (thought that might do it). I was able to describe a bit of my journey to being myself and the beauty of a program that accepted me regardless of who or what i am. I cried but gained control of myself. Good old E at work (but more than that). There was time for other shares and it was good to see folks open up a bit about themselves. I was hugged by all the women after the meeting and many of the men. I was given a home if i ever need it with folks who actually can accept me even knowing about my life. I do hope that my being honest can help others to be the same. Our secrets can hurt us terribly and i am so grateful that i've found a way through sobriety to be honest and in the process help others to confront the truth about themselves. I love the coin i carry that says "To your own self be true". It is possible even in a room of cis strangers. Simple honesty something i was never able to allow when i was using.

Hugs,

Charlize

[Guest otter-girl]

Hi Charlize,

I remember reading in a 'do it yourself' psychotherapy book about the importance of openness about everything you do. The idea that it consumes energy by disrespecting yourself through evasion. I'm far from the perfection in this pure path but its a worthy goal. Glad your experience was a good one.

Hugs

Rachel

[Guest sweetcharlene41]

Last night i missed my usual AA trans Skype meeting. I had been asked to speak at a cis speaker discussion meeting in a nearby town. The woman who asked me is the wife of a trans woman. I arrived a bit before the meeting and was given a warm welcome. Way to many names to remember but all warm faces. I picked up my decaf coffee and sat next to the meeting leader in a large circle of 50+ folks. I knew the leader and one man from another meeting. Soon everyone else sat and as in many meetings the women sat in a group. Wonderfully that group formed around me and the leader. When it was my time to tell my story i started by describing a bit of my journey with substance abuse but mostly with alcohol. I mentioned how in AA literature it stresses honesty. I spoke of being honest about certain things for the first time in my life with my sponsor as i did the steps. Looking around the room i saw one man had dozed off. I can understand that but i was curious. The next thing i mentioned was that i am transgendered. His eyes popped open! (thought that might do it). I was able to describe a bit of my journey to being myself and the beauty of a program that accepted me regardless of who or what i am. I cried but gained control of myself. Good old E at work (but more than that). There was time for other shares and it was good to see folks open up a bit about themselves. I was hugged by all the women after the meeting and many of the men. I was given a home if i ever need it with folks who actually can accept me even knowing about my life. I do hope that my being honest can help others to be the same. Our secrets can hurt us terribly and i am so grateful that i've found a way through sobriety to be honest and in the process help others to confront the truth about themselves. I love the coin i carry that says "To your own self be true". It is possible even in a room of cis strangers. Simple honesty something i was never able to allow when i was using.

Hugs,

Charlize

excellent, Charlize, you have a lot more courage then i do, many time at meetings i wanted to tell my full story, but held back, for fear of being ostracized, as a closet cross dresser, i'm extremely afraid of being ridiculed, god bless you, you are a credit to youyrself, your community and laura's play ground

[Guest LizMarie]

There are many people out there who will openly accept and love us if we can find them. Sadly, finding them sometimes (but not always) means letting go of those we loved before we transitioned.

[VickySGV]

Honesty, especially self honesty, breaks down many things that stand in our way of living with and loving other people. No one has shared perfection with another person, if they are truly honest with themselves. If we are honest with ourselves, while we seek ideals of perfection we know we are far from perfect and those ideals remain beyond our reach. Simple ways of obtaining perfection such as reciting religious scriptures that claim their recitation alone brings perfection are merely ways of deceiving ourselves into isolation from other people. In isolation we become less and less honest with ourselves and more open to the erroneous belief we are better than others. It is here we become judgmental of others which in time degrades into terrible self judgment. Thus judgment of all people including ourselves spirals us down to the hell that is addiction or other madness where we take or damage our bodies and lives. When recovery begins, and we re-discover Honesty of self, perfection and judgment become seen as the unreliable and deceptive demons that they truly are. With those two impostors put aside, and a realization that we can have love and acceptance as our imperfect, but fully human selves that we can open our hearts to others and a Higher Power as we understand it can come into that place where we held our dishonest perfection and isolation.

[Guest]

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Guest Brenda Hailey]

Hopefully that gentleman appreciated being awoke from his nap when it was all said and done

I cant imagine ever going back into the abyss of absent honesty.

Brenda

[Michelle 2010]

Hi Charlize,

I remember reading in a 'do it yourself' psychotherapy book about the importance of openness about everything you do. The idea that it consumes energy by disrespecting yourself through evasion. I'm far from the perfection in this pure path but its a worthy goOal. Glad your experience was a good one.

Hugs

Rachel

This notion that it consumes energy is my experience as well. Recently I have started sharing in meetings that my drinking was dishonest and turned me into a liar from my first drink to the last 35 years later. I broke the law, hid my drinking from my mother as a youth. I was the type of adult to drink before parties and after, took bottles on business trips, and continued a drinking career fill with deception and concern what others might think. Yep, dishonest from beginning to end.

In sobriety, gender issues were the last stumbling block. When I systematically came out to all, a burden was lifted. While there was fear, energy which had been gridlocked ,or used to guard a secret, was freed up. That energy doesn't disappear IMHO, it is freed up in our spiritual journey, manifesting itself in positive ways if indeed we are trying to reflect the will of a loving god (11th step :-) )

Beautiful posts, my dears...

Michelle

[Guest erinanita]

Charlize,

It is sooo good to hear that you've been able to be honest and open at cis meetings. I feel so safe at my AA meetings. I just have a hard time speaking but I don't hold back in private conversations. I will be celebrating 29 years of sobriety next month and I keep thinking that for sure I'll let the cat out of the bag.

I stayed away from AA for about seven years when I realized I wasn't a male. I talk a lot in private conversations at meetings about what it used to be like and use a lot of gender mixing. I'm in the process now of finding a sponsor but I found I had to go to an LGBT meeting to find someone I am totally comfortable with. Hopefully I will become comfortable with myself before my birthday celebration.

Erin

[Guest Emily_E]

This is what is bringing me out of the closet. I don't know where in the Trans spectrum I fall...I do know that shoving all of it in the closet made me a bitter resentful self-pitying dry drunk. I had a major life screw up that had nothing to do with being Trans and realized I needed to be in AA. Once there, I kept hearing about honesty as a foundation of recovery.

I realized I had to come out, whatever the other consequences (my marriage WILL end, almost certainly).

Then I realized I really want to go forward with this-- since I've nade the decision to accept things Ive been a lot happier and more peaceful.

[Charlize]

Last night the topic of a GLBT meeting i attend was honesty. That always seems to come up at meetings because it is so easy to slip back into a smug condition of believing we are totally open. I admitted that i had spent so much of my life simply being dishonest about my gender. I didn't actually lie to anyone because i didn't have to lie. My feelings and actions were so hidden that only i knew that i was hiding myself. At times i even believed that there was no problem with my gender and yet whenever i had time to myself it came back. Often it returned with greater power. in active addiction i could never understand or grow. I just kept hiding. I lived in denial.

I thought my issues were a character defect as i did my steps. I actually shared openly with my sponsor and then promptly went back into denial as i tried desperately to stay sober. I just had to remove this "defect". Years have passed and a miracle has occurred. I have been given the blessing of understanding that it was dishonesty not gender that created my biggest defect.

Accepting my issues with gender has open me up to see that my biggest defect is that i had learned to constantly deny and hide myself. If i could lie about who i am i could lie about anything. Honesty opens me not only to myself but to others. As a fringe benefit i've found that my honesty has been helping others to look at themselves as well. Being truthful may well be an opening to a spirituality that allows me to help others. That is a true blessing.

Hugs,

Charlize

[VickySGV]

Thursday night I was at a meeting where we do a mega birthday celebration. 24 people took cakes and coins that totaled 487 years of sobriety. 22 of them mentioned the "H" factor, the only 2 who did not were under 8 years years along. One person was at 45 years and made it a huge point of his life. Just an interesting few statistics.

I was asked to read The Promises at the end of the meeting, and put a couple of words in that Bill did not have there, but everyone loved it.