September 26
The Rest of Their Story
Someone tells a moving story at a meeting, and later we repeat it because we think it will help another person. We mean to show how powerful recovery can be. The details make our point vivid. It may not occur to us that the person who lived those details had chosen a particular room and a particular occasion for sharing them.
Anonymity includes care for what people have entrusted to us. Good intentions do not automatically give us permission to carry their story elsewhere. Even without a name, enough details can identify someone. There is something humbling about letting a useful illustration go because it belongs to another person. We have our own experience to offer, and we can ask before sharing theirs. The message of recovery does not become weaker when we respect the confidence through which we first heard it.
Whose permission might be missing from a story I am eager to tell?
Their experience remains theirs to share.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Tradition Twelve, p. 185.