September 6, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
A word before I begin: This post is not about trying to tell anybody how to sponsor another alcoholic. If anything, it is an invitation for those of us who sponsor, myself included, to occasionally take a look at how we sponsor, why we sponsor the way we do, and where some of our ideas about …
September 5, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
There is a strange thing that can happen in Alcoholics Anonymous when you’ve been sober for a long time. People stop asking if you’re okay. I understand why. You’ve been around. You know the Steps. You’ve sponsored people. You’ve probably held service positions, chaired meetings, made coffee, spoken at conventions, attended funerals, celebrated anniversaries, watched people come …
September 1, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
Last night I was sitting in my home group when one of our members shared something that kind of made my head explode. You know those moments in an AA meeting when somebody says something and you immediately think: Wait. What did she just say? This was one of those moments. She was talking about the …
August 31, 2026 In Legacy of Service By Rick W.
A Beginner’s Guide to AA’s Third Legacy There they are. Hanging on the wall. You’ve probably looked at them a hundred times. The Twelve Steps are over there. We know those. We talk about those all the time. The Twelve Traditions are hanging nearby. We may not completely understand those yet, but at least we’ve heard people talk …
August 30, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
I don’t particularly like failing. I don’t like being wrong. I don’t like discovering that I’ve hurt somebody. I don’t like having to admit that something I was absolutely certain about turned out to be absolutely wrong. I don’t like rejection. I don’t like finding out that despite my best efforts, something simply didn’t work. …
August 29, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
“Okay, God… I’m available.” Sometimes somebody says something so simple that it just stops you. That happened to me yesterday. I had the opportunity to do some service work with another spiritual organization I’m involved with. More than twenty volunteers took a Dinner and Game Night to a local assisted living community. There was food, …
August 28, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
Ok, fasten your seatbelts. This is gonna be a bumpy ride for some of you. And yes, I’m gonna go there. There is a word in the Big Book that can make some people in an A.A. meeting uncomfortable. We talked about it tonight in my home group when reading page 29 in Into Action. …
August 26, 2026 In General Information, Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
Sometimes seeing the whole program makes it easier to understand the parts. I’m going to begin with a disclaimer because I can already hear somebody somewhere reaching for their Big Book. This is not an attempt to rewrite the Big Book. It isn’t a replacement for the Big Book. It isn’t a “new and improved” …
August 24, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
I was sitting in home group tonight in a literature discussion meeting and I heard two things that I needed to hear from one of our members, she said, “Experience requires action. And it’s more than just information acquisition.” We were having this conversation in regards to the spiritual awakening. I don’t think most alcoholics …
August 22, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
God didn’t clean you up so you could pretend you were never messy. Your story is someone else’s hope. There is something about that sentence that makes me uncomfortable. And I think it should. Because after we have been sober for a while, it is surprisingly easy to become embarrassed by the person who first …
