Orange County, CA Adult Children Of Alcoholics (ACAs)
The Solution
The Solution is to become your own loving parent.
As ACA becomes a safe place for you, you will find the freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.
The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past. We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.
This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our existence. Our actual parent is the Higher Power, whom some of us choose to call God. Although we had alcoholic and/or dysfunctional parents, our Higher Power gave us the 12 Steps of Recovery.
This is the action and work that heals us: we use the Steps, we use the meetings and we use the telephone. We share our experience, strength and hope with each other. We learn to restructure our sick thinking one day at a time. When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthful decisions as actors, not reactors. We progress from hurting to healing to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible.
By attending ACA meetings on a regular basis, you will come to see parental alcoholism for what it is and how it affected you as a child, and continues to affect you as and adult. You will learn to keep the focus on yourself in the here and now. You will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting.
You will not do this alone. Look around you and you will see others who know how you feel. We will love and encourage you no matter what. We ask you to accept us just as we accept you.
This is a spiritual program based on action coming from love. We are sure that as the love grows inside you, you will see beautiful changes in all your relationships, especially with God, yourself and your parents.
LINKS:
The new ACA Blog site
Read posts and post your own messages
Common Characteristics
Does this sound like you?
The Problem
This is a description, not an indictment
The Solution
The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation
12 Steps
The pathway to change
The 12 Traditions
ACA policies and guidelines
Other ACA Meetings
Links to Online Recovery Resources, Information, Message Boards, Chat Rooms.
The Serenity Prayer
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference."
ACA is not allied with any sect, denomination, political entity or institution and does not engage in any controversy; neither endorses or opposes any cause. ACA uses the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions adopted from AA as the principles of our Program of Discovery/Recovery and our guide to living One Day At A Time.
This page is not endorsed by, under the direction of, or affiliated with Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization, Inc., AdultChildren.org, Prince Of Peace Church or any official organization.