What's in your holiday toolkit? Do you look forward to or dread spending time with family around the holidays or maybe you totally avoid them?

Welcome to episode 311 of the recovery show.

This episode is brought to you by Stephanie, Michelle, Lisa, Sherry, Rose, and Janie.

They used the donation button on our website.

Thank you, Stephanie, Michael, Lisa, Sherry, Rose, and Janie for your generous

contributions. This episode is for you. We are friends and family members of

alcoholics and addicts who have found a path to serenity and happiness.

We who live or have lived with the seemingly hopeless problem of addiction,

understand as perhaps a few others can. So much depends on our own attitudes and we believe that changed attitudes can aid recovery.

Before we begin, we would like to state that in this show we represent ourselves rather than any 12-step program.

During this show we will share our own experiences. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you like and leave the rest. We hope that you will find something in our sharing that speaks to your life. My name is Spencer and I am your host today.

I got an email from Maria who I think expresses the difficulties that we're talking about here today. She writes first I'd like to say that I'm very thankful and grateful for this podcast

It is part of my weekly toolkit that I listen to on my morning walks and oftentimes throughout the day.

I've been an active member of Al-Anon since July 20th of this year and I've been fighting the

dread of the upcoming holidays.

I grew up in an alcoholic household and holidays were filled with chaos due to my mother's, she was, and still is an untreated

Alonon. My mother's need to have a perfect Norman Rockwellian event that was screaming and yelling right up to the moment company would arrive,

and then a switch flipped and she was the perfect hostess.

As an adult, I've always been able to have other plans with friends etc and have always been able to deal, cope and have relief with not having to be with my family.

Until this year. I was involved with a man over the past year who unb unbeknownst to me, is a severe alcoholic.

I knew he partied, but the severity of his drinking wasn't obvious as we were not living in the same

city. This relationship, and the ending of it, triggered so many things that I have shoved way down for many years.

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