With love from the YearlyKos 12 Step Caucus
Mon Aug 06, 2007 at 01:57:40 PM PDT
On behalf of the 12 Step Caucus at the YearlyKos convention we'd like to share a little about our experiences. And we’d like to thank the organizing committee. Our little community was 21 in total, with a core group of about 8. As one of the members said on Saturday, "we're a caucus! We’re a real caucus!!"
We want to extend a huge thank you to Gina who was a tremendous advocate for the caucus from the very beginning. She and Shanna worked hard to make it happen. And I would be remiss if I didn't send out a huge thank you to Robin McMillin who was our last minute angel. She moved heaven and earth to make sure we had coffee for our 8 am meeting. And thank you to Nolan who allowed us, and the Flying Solos, to set aside a table for a safe landing zone at meals and keynotes. None of you will know how significant a difference you made for our members this weekend.
We had a great time at the convention, both as participants of the larger whole and as members of our little group. A few of us who had connected previously made contact on Wednesday night on the eve of the convention. We were ready to roll on Thursday morning and had a dynamite caucus. It was a hard core meeting focused on recovery and the challenges we face in new groups of people. We had members from a variety of fellowships although AA predominated.
We never knew which members would end up at the table together so it was an adventure at each meal and keynote. As some of us spent more time together there was the teasing and self deprecating humor that comes when people feel very comfortable together. I was interested to see that when we had a spare seat, someone would ask to join us and then either talk about family members or friends in recovery or would just talk about their own emotional challenges or frustrations. I think we were seen by others as a place to come and leave a few burdens in order to experience the rest of the day less encumbered.
There were several significant incidents for us over the weekend. The first was when one member had arrived and felt very uncomfortable the first night. The next morning she was getting coffee in the shop in preparation to pack and return home. A conversation began in the coffee line after another person bumped into the member. They started apologizing to each other, realized they had something in common, and came out onto the terrace for a morning meeting. Both stayed for the duration of the convention.
We were joined by a woman whose father had been quoted in the Big Book, the original book Alcoholics Anonymous written by Bill W and Dr Bob way back in 1939. It was like being surrounded by AA history. Each of us who were sober realized that we owed our participation in the weekend to those who came before us.
We celebrated the 17 year anniversary of sobriety for one of our members and we remembered another kossack at home who was also celebrating an anniversary.
We got together in the mornings sometimes just to chat and touch base, other times to have an actual meeting. What was interesting was the reaction of others on the terrace. One morning I heard a kossack say to another "why don't we just go over to that table?" The response was, "nah, they're doing their thing now. Once they start smoking then we can go over." And sure enough, they joined us about 10 minutes later. We weren't ostracized, we weren't seen as oddities. We were just another group of kossacks.
The caucus allowed us to have a net in place while we wandered off to do our own things. Some people just stopped in once and we never saw them again. Others were there at every meal and morning gathering. And our caucus was a microcosm of dailyKos. We had lurkers, rec list diarists, volunteers, panelists, local people and those from abroad. We were young and mature, blue collar and PhD. We were male and female, single and married, straight and not. We were active in recovery programs or not involved in any 12 step program.
I've presumed to speak for the group in the diary but I do hope others will chime in with their experiences in the comments. I just wanted those who weren't there to get a sense of what it was like. I also wanted the organizers, Gina, Shanna, Nolan, Robin and Andy, our founder, to know what your support meant to us. The caucus allowed us to be the productive members of daily and yearly Kos that we are meant to be. Thank you for your support.
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