My best friend Mo was in CoDA for years when we met. I listened to her. I knew my mother was codependent. I was sure of that. And I was moving to Florida to live with her. I’d go to CoDA because she was codependent.

Ha ha!!

Well, it takes what it takes. I got involved with an active alcoholic. I remember our first date. I remember it so well. I sat in the passenger seat of his noisy jeep feeling exactly as I did when I was in high school. It was a feeling of suffocating. Of not being myself. Of not really feeling.

It took until I was sick with a fever, going out in the rain to cash a check for this man for me to know in my heart that God was trying to get my attention. I had had a fever for some weeks and when I realized it was God who was waiting for me to return to myself, I finally ended that friendship with that alcoholic and got to a meeting.

It was my codependent bottom. I believe still. I made myself sick. But because of Grace I got back to CoDA this time knowing it was not my mother who needed CoDA it was me. I came to CoDA for my codependency.

I’ve been in ever since. That’s twenty years ago. And yes, I, after fifteen years of not being involved, met a guy who’s sober and kind and we’ve been together a few years now. I did stop going to CoDA because I was so happy. I became the same as everyone else who stays away from CoDA because they found Love!!! I started feeling totally codependent in the sense that I was just a miserable version of me. And I lost me. Self-love. I got back to CoDA remembering women who did the same thing. Came crawling back to CoDA crying because they’d left and all because we found someone. Wow. It happened to me too.

Now I know stay out. Keep coming. Keep listening. Keep reading the daily reading. Keep in touch with another CoDA member.

Self-Love. I find it in CoDA.

Olga 12/13/2022