Good Morning and thanks Mary and others for your service and shares.  It can be so hard to work boundaries and detachment with my significant other's family. My partner has a first grandchild now who we rarely see. His concern is that the behavior of his children will repeat into the next generation. He's fought to have a place in his adult childrens lives who have no program. Sadly, they either don't realize that through a miraculous connection between their father and a higher power, they been given back their dad. Despite all of our efforts - phone calls, invititations (almost all refused), gifts (all accepted), we're on the outside looking in. When there are larger family get togethers, we see them there. We recently attended one and it was an opportunity to see the baby and let the baby get to know us a bit. The tide has turned a bit now due to the child. We stayed longer and tolerated things would not have in the past particularly the excessive drinking and stupid talk that went with it. But we got to see the baby and hold the baby. What would typically be considered general conversation with healthier individuals in this situation were off limit topics but of course we had no way of knowing until we broached these subjects. One such instance was when I caringly said I was hoping to see a sibling who wasn't there and asked how they were. This set off a drunken rant about the drunken condition of the sibling. Need I say more? We use to leave these get togethers feeling like whipped dogs but thankfully because of Alanon and AA we no longer do. Don't get me wrong, we do feel sadness that so much is skewed but it only wrecks our serenity to focus on the negative. After this recent visit, we were able to smile about the new baby, feel gratitude, comment on how lucky we were that the weather held out so we could enjoy the outdoors, be grateful such an opportunity presented itself where we could see everybody all at once and pray and hope for healing for progress and simply let go and let god keep working on this.  Acceptance is the answer.... Focusing on disappointment due to expectations is self sabatoge for me. I begin hatching a plan to "fix," and get in the way of my hp. My partner who is sober alcoholic made a good suggestion to me before attending this event. He said that no matter how we were received whether we are ignored or experience sideways remarks, we might just continue to detach by engaging with positive conversation to those family members. You know ... the whooosh thing lol They say something to get to you and you pretend it went right over your head, keep your serenity, dignity and be a positive presence. You finally get to go home to your program people, your family of choice who get you   (((hugs))) TT