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It's no secret; in fact, everyone that knows me knows it. So I'm certainly not stepping out of the family-member-of-an-alcoholic closet or anything here. The reason I'm even writing about it at all is to help others who might be in a similar situation and feel alone, distraught, and confused.

I learned, from the handful of Al-Anon meetings that I've attended, that one of the greatest healers is the knowledge that you are not alone in your suffering; that, in fact, others are going through almost the exact same thing. Sitting in those meetings, listening to the stories of others whose loved ones were alcoholics and what it had done to them, was like listening to myself. I had always known that others suffered at the hands of their alcoholic loved ones; I had no idea the suffering was, however, so very similar.

Knowing is one thing; experiencing it is quite another. And it was the experiencing - hearing other peoples' similar tales - that gave me comfort and put me on the path to healing, acceptance, and forgiveness.

It is my hope, then, that sharing my story will help others in the same fashion; that reading about another's struggles with the same problem will aid my readers in coming to terms with, and beginning to heal from, their own broken hearts and homes.

For as long and as far back as I can remember, my father drank to excess. Drinking was the most important thing in his life; it came, without exception, before his wife and children.

It was many years before I realized there was anything wrong with this setup; I simply had known no other way. My earliest memories are of my father not coming home from work or being where he'd say he was going to be, my mother sick to her stomach with worry, and him eventually strolling in very late and very drunk; at which point my parents would fight for hours with much screaming and many bitter tears.

A running "joke" between my sister and I - when seeing a loving or doting (or even slightly interested) father on television - was to say, "Daddy's don't do that!" We would laugh, but not without a bit of irony. The fact was, our daddy didn't, and it was something - as we grew older - we were all too well aware of.

You can't truly miss that which you've never had, so I cannot say we were ever sad that our father wasn't a father, and obviously didn't care to be. We joked about it and noted it with sardonic observation, but to say we mourned our lack of a father figure would be incorrect. It was simply the way it was - it was the

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