Getting away from it all

OA Intergroup Retreat

Hi everyone. I hope you are all well and abstinent. I had a wonderful time this weekend just past at a retreat organised by my local OA intergroup. It was amazing. I knew I needed to go. My sponsor went to great lengths to get to her retreat, and recommended I do the same, and I’m a big fan of retreats anyway. I had wanted to go on one ever since I started the program.

We arrived on the Friday night at about 7pm. Everyone was eating dinner. It was lovely to be around people who also had physical allergies to certain foods, like me. The food was free of gluten, and somebody else asked whether there was sugar in the chutney (the only thing on the weekend with added sugar). When I waited to have lunch, a simple “I don’t like to have eat too early” sufficed, without any need to worry what people were wondering.

After dinner we had a late night identification meeting which included a beautiful ceremony where the lights were dimmed, the chair lit a small candle. After her share, she told us one quality that she’d like to pass on to the person nextto her, and then used her candle to light theirs. As we each shared our experience strength and hope the room gradually began to light up and we became a circle of hope united against the darkness. I can be a very visual and kinesthetic learner, and I'm a bit of a romantic at heart, so I enjoyed the symbolism. It was also good to see teh variety of people there. Several of us were in our twenties, whilst others were in their seventies or eighties. Some has been in teh program a few months, and some had been in it for decades. My usual face to face meeting is very small so there was no one whom I knew. That was actually a good thing because it gave me an extra level of anonymity which enabled me to share more honestly and openly.