Letter To The ACA Newcomer

Dear Newcomer,

Many new people come into Adult Children meetings every day who are distressed, feel that something is missing, and have unresolved issues in their lives. Some of you come from other 12 Step programs; for many, this is your first experience with a 12 Step group.

Whatever your problem, there is someone here who has experienced it before. We all come from homes where alcoholism and/or dysfunction have affected our lives. As one woman put it during her first meeting, "When I heard 'The Problem' read, I knew that finally I had found others like myself and that I was home, at last."

Many of us needed to understand what happened to us as children. We need our reality validated — that there really was a problem... that it really wasn't just our imagination! We need to share "what happened" but also "what's happening right now" in a Loving, Listening environment. We need to see that we sometimes recreate what happened to us as children — now in the present — in our relationships, jobs, and internal Lives. Above all, we have the opportunity to see that we can change our unhealthy thinking and patterns, act more than react, and get on with our lives as we heal ourselves in an atmosphere of Loving, mutual support.

If we keep coming back to ACA meetings, we find tools and resources that help us in healing, growing, and becoming happy people. Some of these tools are:

1. The Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, The Problem (also known as the Laundry List), Solution and 12 Promises.

2. The fellowship: participation in meetings, coffee and conversation after the meeting, etc.

3. Reading and writing

4. The telephone

5. The care of a higher power of your own understanding.

    Welcome home and keep coming back!

Very truly yours,
An Oldtimer