Kathleen SKathleen S
ACA Tuesday Zoombox
Kathleen S recounts a childhood marked by abuse and loss, her path into AA, Al-Anon, and ACA, and how inner child work transformed her relationship with addiction. She reflects on the early days of ACA, spiritual growth, and finding freedom and stability after profound trauma and grief.
14:43•4 May 2026
From Traumatic Childhood to ACA Co‑Founder: Kathleen S on Healing the Inner Child
Episode Overview
- Early childhood abuse and loss can fuel addiction and deep isolation, yet still become the starting point for long-term recovery.
- Inner child visualisation helped Kathleen connect with her loving father image and remove the emotional link between smoking and feeling safe.
- The Twelve Steps offered structure and acceptance even before she fully understood her PTSD and emotional unmanageability.
- ACA groups and open literature gave adult children of alcoholics a space to practise new behaviours and share creative tools for healing.
- Reframing God as a loving parent, and using the steps, allowed her to release old patterns, grieve, and remain “happy, joyous, and free” after major losses.
“I have come to believe that power and grace in myself can restore me to sanity and clarity and guide me to accept life on life’s terms and be happy, joyous, and free.”
What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against addiction? Kathleen S shares her story of growing up in an alcoholic and deeply abusive home, and how that early trauma shaped her relationships, her addictions, and eventually her path into multiple Twelve Step fellowships. Speaking as a long-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, and a co-founder of ACA, Kathleen traces how inner child work and visualisation helped her quit tobacco and reconnect with the only safe parent she knew.
A powerful moment lands when she explains, “When I was a teenager and I got tobacco, I got my dad back,” because the smell of cigarettes tied her to her father, her “only ally” in a violent household. You’ll hear how she moved from the chaos of the 1960s counterculture and LSD scene into a very ordinary kind of despair: foreclosure, isolation, and feeling utterly unworthy of help.
She describes stumbling into AA after taking someone else to detox, claiming “I’m an alcoholic” without really knowing if it was true, and finding acceptance and structure in the steps even while living with unrecognised PTSD. The episode also touches on the birth and growth of ACA on the US West Coast, from early meetings in Humboldt County to intergroup efforts and the creation of the fellowship’s first anonymous book.
Kathleen talks candidly about tensions with service structures, reworking harsh ideas of God into a loving parent concept, and using the steps to break ties with “all the bad practices” absorbed as children.
Her reflections on grief, love, and ageing in recovery show what long-term healing can look like: “I have come to believe that power and grace in myself can restore me to sanity and clarity.” If you’re wondering whether deep childhood wounds can ever soften, this share might give you something to think about. What part of Kathleen’s journey feels closest to your own story?
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