One Day at a Time in Al-Anon:
Once upon a time there was a woman who was very unhappy. If you asked her what she was unhappy about, she would say despairingly: “Oh, just everything! And then she would go into the most excruciating detail about her sufferings, the awful things her husband did, the trouble she had with her children. A scared, lugubrious expression was etched on her face. Although she had been a pretty girl, she could see no reason for making herself look nice – and anyway she didn’t have the time. While she was looking on the dark side, communication and love between her and her family grew less and less. Even her friends avoided her, which increased her grievance against life. Everything would have been all right, of course, if only her husband would stop drinking, and she told him so every day.
Once in a while somebody would get her to an Al-Anon meeting, but somehow she had the idea that all the members were just waiting to hear her latest disaster reports.
One night a member, determined to help her if she could, put the cards on the table. She told her that everybody there had plenty of trouble, but with the help of Al-Anon and each other, they learned to stop exaggerating them. “Why don’t you try wearing a smile for a change, and see what happens? Maybe it would even be such a jolt for your husband to see you pleasant and cheerful that he’d run to AA.
And, believe it or not, after a while that’s just what happened!