Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Couldn't Sleep Last Night . . .

OK, so here's the deal.  I have shared a lot of the resources I've found with our Bishop, who's really awesome with this whole topic in my opinion.  He's never been anything but loving, supportive and compassionate with me on this road I'm traveling.  His heart aches for the women who are struggling even more than me and he doesn't know what to do for them.  I've written a long anonymous email addressed to women just dealing with this in their lives (the whole 'holy crap what just happened to my life' phase) that he's shared with women when he feels it could be helpful.  He's planning a 5th Sunday lesson (July?) where he wants to go talk to the women really candidly about porn and the 12-step program (ie, this is already here, this is affecting half of you, enough talk about prevention, how do we help the great number of you already hurting).  He talked to J and I about possibly speaking at this meeting.  If we wanted to, but no pressure.  We've talked about it at length, and feel strongly that although we do want to help people, but we don't want to put ourselves in a place to be judged or have it affect how people feel about us or our kids (i.e., like what if people didn't feel comfortable having kids come to our house anymore to play kinda thing.)  But, we do want to be involved in the 5th Sunday lesson, and each of us is going to write a letter to be shared. 
Here's what I'm considering . . . I want to explain my situation a little, what the 12 step program has meant to my husband and I, then extend an open invitation for any woman struggling with this in her life to meet at a specific meeting.  Our Relief Society has temple groups, where people meet up at someone's house and all carpool to the temple.  I want to create a similar group for recovery meetings.  Women who can meet up and carpool and get together (maybe go get frozen yogurt afterwards or something even).  I want to basically bear testimony through this letter that this program may as well be called, "How to tap in to the power of the atonement" and how much healing is there and how if they are struggling with this at all in their lives, they need to be there.  They will meet and find their Savior in these meetings, in this manual. 

What do you think?
Would it have helped you in stage before you went to meetings or if you haven't been to them before, to start attending?  Would you go with sisters from your Ward?
What would you write in a letter to your Relief Society sisters?

I am willing to be the Ward 'support group point person' if that's what it takes to help women get involved in this program and find their own healing.  I feel like this is what I am here to do right now.  My husband has also told the Bishop he is also happy to have the Bishop send men/young men (with their parents) his way with questions about the program and the 12 steps.  We don't feel good about putting it out there to the whole Ward, but we do feel a call to be there for people who are actively struggling with this.  It makes me a little nervous that it would 'get around', but I'm hoping just among women/men who are dealing with this in their own lives.  The other option is just share in the letter the resources I've found, my story, my hope and prayers for them, and include a meeting list and just see if anyone ever shows up . . . (also my Bishop is going to send out the email copies of the 12 step family book and the SAlifeline link for their "Understanding Pornography" book.)

Anyway, I couldn't sleep last night 'cause I was composing this letter in my head.
Any suggestions?  Would you do it?  Do you think it would be useful?

2 comments:

  1. I think this all sounds great. Read Step 12 and it might help you set a foundation for your letter. Good luck, and let us know how things work out.

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  2. Wow, that's so great that your Bishop is doing a 5th Sunday meeting about it. And I think your ideas for the letter are great. I don't know if I would have felt able to reach out at the time of my initial discovery, but it would have been nice to have a resource if I wanted to. It would have been nice to have a friendly face to go to a meeting wi for the first time. I have only been to SA meetings a few times because I feel awkward going, and I don't live near an LDS meeting. It's unfortunate that so many people are in this situation, but so wonderful that we can join together and use these wonderful resources that we have to uplift and strengthen each other.

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