Are you feeling isolated because of a life-controlling problem – addiction, overeating, gambling, bad relationship, newly divorced, stressed from caregiving?

Help is just around the corner for all women who suffer from any number of problems.

To be more specific, help will be available on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue in Marlinton at St. John’s Episcopal Church, beginning Sunday, October 7, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Although, not affiliated with any religious organization, the newly formed Step Sister Women’s Support Group will incorporate the 12-Step program, adopted from Alcoholics Anonymous.

The 12-Step program has saved many lives and relationships as it helps those suffering from negative behaviors to turn their lives around.

“There is power in numbers,” said one of the founders of Step-Sisters. “A meeting of five women has more power than someone sitting in their own insanity by themselves. Even a timid person can come and listen to someone else talk and gain help for their own problem.”

Step-Sisters is based on the precepts that “we are all human. We all have problems, but we are not hopeless. There are always solutions.”
 
There is no age limit for participants. Everyone is welcome from ages 15 to 95.
 
This is not an AA meeting, but women who have a problem with alcohol are encouraged to attend to benefit from the support of others.
 
The following information may be of encouragement to those who are not familiar with the 12-Step program:
 
According to 12-Step.org, “These steps are meant to be worked sequentially as a process of getting rid of addictive behaviors and growing in freedom and happiness.”
 
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.
 
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
 
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
 
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
 
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
 
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
 
Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
 
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
 
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
 
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
 
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
 
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
 
The founders of Step-Sisters will strive to make it “a safe place to go, a safe place to fall.”
 
For more information, you may call 304-799-2360 or 304-799-0820.

Jaynell Graham may be reached at jsgraham@pocahontastimes.com