Rosalba

My first thought was "No, it couldn't be... the longer-standing members of that group are just as scary as she is..." but then I don't know. I recall at that early meeting, the woman who'd been leading at it glared at me and announced "We're deadly!" and certainly there was a lot of self-castigation with no insight involved, which passed for taking inventory. Luckily I was already self aware enough, and aware enough of the importance of self-love, not to take this stuff on board. Not my stuff, so I didn't dwell on it.

I was mildly nonplussed a few weeks back... we hold our meetings in a room attached to a church. Nice room, with adjoining kitchen. Then the place was being redecorated, and our meeting was moved to a room upstairs - which also had a kitchen attached. For whatever reason, the members continued to use the downstairs kitchen - until a couple of us bumped into the priest on the way in one evening, and he encouraged us to use the one next to our meeting room.

So far so good. When a couple of us started to make the tea, the lady I'm concerned about told us we weren't supposed to use that kitchen. When I said it was OK, the priest had said we could.., she snapped back "Alanon family groups have no opinion on outside issues, hence our name ought never be drawn into public controversy" and walked off. It took me a little while to realise that this was her way of saying she wasn't going to argue about it. I think.

It just felt bizarre.

I can speculate as to why she adopts this approach, from what I know of her history, but that's really not my job or my business. I've found quite frequently that I can say something innocuous and light-hearted, only to be met with a seemingly irrelevant frosty reciting of one of the Traditions.

I think I'll contact the member who was leading the group, the one she shouted at, tomorrow. I'm also wondering if it's triggering something deep within me; when I was a kid my mother suffered from mental health problems and was often bizarre and unpredictable - certainly the family home never felt safe. And that's quite apart from my father's drinking.

Hmmm...