Candles in Darkness

When I first came to Al-Anon, I wanted the lights to come on all at once. I wanted one meeting to explain everything, one Step to fix everything, one conversation with my sponsor to make the confusion stop. I wanted recovery to work like a switch.

It works like candles. One meeting helped me understand I didn't cause it. One phone call helped me see I was people-pleasing out of fear, not love. One quiet morning with the literature helped me recognize my own anger for the first time. Each experience lit something small — not enough to see the whole room, but enough to stop stumbling in that one spot.

Step Four lit several candles at once. The inventory illuminated patterns I'd been tripping over for years without knowing they were there. Not a floodlight — I still can't see everything. But enough light to move forward with some sense of where I'm going.

Recovery isn't a sudden awakening. It's a slow accumulation of small truths that eventually become enough to see by.

When recovery feels too slow, I can name one candle — one small truth I can see now that I couldn't before. That light is real, even if the room is still mostly dark.