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August 1962

One of the most poignant and least communicated experiences of the alcoholic’s life is the loss of children due to a marriage breakdown caused by alcoholism. I am a mother who lost my son during the final months of my drinking and I am a mother who has regained not only the physical custody of my child but the respect and affection of his father. Of all the blessings AA has bestowed this is surely the most deeply felt and the greatest daily reminder of the gratitude I owe to this Fellowship.

My experience is far from unique and not all of these tragic separations have such a happy ending. But after many discussions with both AA mothers and fathers I have come to know that there need never be a permanent separation from any child no matter how alienated the parents may be. Few parents, regardless of how bitter their personal relations may be, wish to be responsible for the unhappy results of separating a son or daughter from a father or mother who has returned to the human community through the healing influence of the AA life.

The most difficult attribute to acquire in this most painful situation is patience. When I first came into AA I was told by my non-AA attorney and by many newer AA friends that the courts were knowledgeable and lenient with parents who could prove their “fitness” through AA rehabilitation. I would have little or no legal trouble re-establishing my “rights,” they assured me. I thank God every day of my life that I took the much harder course advocated by an AA attorney friend with some good long years of AA wisdom behind him.

I’ll never forget what he said: “Rights? Oh sure, you have a legal right, but what is your spiritual right just now? If you insist on one before you understand the other you might well cause even deeper damage to your son and to yourself. If you wait until AA has had a chance, until you are aware of your total commitment to and responsibility for your sobriety, you may never have to go to court. You may also gain more, far more, than you ever had before.”

I waited—two long and pretty appalling years, seeing my young son only under the watchful and hostile surveillance of his stepmother. I had to watch his confusion and unhappiness and his questions had to be answered, “Why can’t I be with you?”; “Why were you away so long?”; “Why do I have to be with Daddy?”

I had to answer and I had to say, “I do not know how long it will be until your Daddy is able to share you. We will both have to wait and know that this is necessary now. You are not away from me really.”

Finally the day did come when his father came to believe, through what he had learned of AA and what he had seen in me, that I was the one with the greater “fitness.” Our son could now grow far stronger under the influence of what this program could bring to his life than through the climate in which his father operated. My son is nearly ready for college now, and he is indeed AA oriented, which means he is healthy in mind and spirit and strong in a conviction of God.

I know it does not always work this way—but children grow up. Any sober contact, no matter how brief and unsatisfactory, is better than association with the sickness of the actively drinking parent. In time the child will come to know the truth no matter how distortedly it has been presented to him or her. I believe deeply that the alcoholic parent is wrong even when right, until AA time has cast its sobering and healing spell. I also believe that the power of the love that AA can unfold for us is stronger and wiser than any court edict. Time, if we but give it, will in the end not only restore but sanctify.

I have since discussed this matter with my son’s father. He said, “You wrote to me that you would never go to court to do battle for our son, even though you might lose him. When you said you’d wait until he was old enough to understand, I knew I could trust you.” Great indeed are the rewards of AA’s gifts of love and patience and willingness to let God’s time, not ours, determine the way to actions of balanced sanity.

H. W.

New York, New York