Image credit: Photo by evilnick on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

Our family keeps a pretty rigorous schedule, with nearly every night of the week blocked out for some activity or another, but rather than shuttling between soccer games and dance practice, like many parents in our social group, we're shuttling between different 12 Step meetings.

So, a week ago, as I was lying in bed making the decision to try to attend my first Overeater's Anonymous (OA) meeting, my first thought was: How am I going to fit this in? I mean, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights as well as Saturday mornings are booked. What if the only meeting in the area meets on Monday nights? Am I willing to give up my COSA Step group for a new meeting? Or what if it's on Tuesday nights? I definitely can't do it then. But if it's on Fridays, well that's one of the few nights we have together as a family...

Then I realized I was (as usual) getting ahead of myself. I took a deep breath, stopped myself from running to the computer right away to look up meeting times and told myself to wait until morning to see how things actually stood and take it from there. The next morning, I typed in my ZIP code, selected a wide radius and hoped there would be one meeting I could somehow squeeze in. I remembered when, shortly after discovering my husband's sex addiction, I was looking for a meeting for partners of sex addicts. There was just one meeting for just one group within a fifty mile radius of my home, and that group consisted of only four or five women.

So, when the OA search results came back, I had to laugh. There were dozens of meetings at all times of the day, every day. I could easily fit in a meeting while the kids were at school any day of the week. And when I attended the meeting. Wow. There were dozens of people: more people there than in any of the sessions I attended at COSA's International Convention and enough people to volunteer for all sorts of positions that the groups I've attended have never been able to support. (We're lucky if we can support secretary, treasurer and literature person without having to double up on responsibilities.)

It made me wonder (not for the first time) where all the friends and family members of sex addicts were hiding. And as thrilling as it was to be in a room with that much recovery, and to have access to so many meetings in my area for a problem I'm struggling with, it also made me sad that the same vibrant community is so hard to find for those struggling to heal from the wounds of sex addiction.