Rosa didn’t set out to start a meeting. She set out to stay sober.
She’d been going to the same Tuesday night meeting for six months, sitting in the back, sharing occasionally, doing what the program asked. She was staying sober, which was the point. But she was also exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with early recovery and everything to do with being the only Latina woman in a room of fifteen white people week after week.
One Tuesday, she shared about her mother’s disappointment in her. About the specific cultural weight of letting down a woman who’d sacrificed everything. About the shame of needing help when she’d been raised to be strong enough not to need it.
After the meeting, a white woman came up and said, “I totally get it. My mom was disappointed in me too.”
Rosa smiled and said thank you. She drove home and sat in her car outside her apartment and cried because no, that woman didn’t get it. Her mother’s disappointment and Rosa’s mother’s disappointment might have used the same word, but they carried different weight, different history, different consequences.
Two weeks later, Rosa put a flyer up at the community center: “Women of Color Recovery Meeting. Thursdays 7pm. All are welcome who understand what it means to navigate recovery while carrying identities that aren’t always seen in traditional meetings.”
Twelve women showed up that first Thursday. Rosa had expected maybe three.
Starting From Necessity
Every woman I talked to who started a meeting for women of color said the same thing: they didn’t do it because they wanted to. They did it because they needed to.
They needed space where cultural context didn’t require explanation. Where sharing about family dynamics wouldn’t be met with advice that ignored systemic realities. Where recovery could happen alongside the full truth of navigating the world as a woman of color.
Yuki started a meeting for Asian American women after spending two years in predominantly white meetings where every time she shared about family pressure, someone told her she needed boundaries. “They kept saying I should just tell my parents no,” she said. “They didn’t understand that family obligation works differently in my culture. That saying no wasn’t just about setting a boundary—it was about potentially cutting ties with my entire family support system.”
She tried explaining. She tried educating. She tried finding ways to make her experience legible to people who’d never navigated the specific intersection of addiction and cultural expectation in immigrant families.
Then she stopped trying to make it work and started her own meeting.
“I put up a post in an Asian American community group on social media,” she said. “I didn’t know if anyone would show up. Eight women came. We sat in a circle and for the first time in recovery, I didn’t have to translate. I could just talk about my mother’s disappointment and everyone understood the weight of it without explanation.”
That meeting has been running for three years now. It meets every other Sunday. Attendance ranges from five to fifteen women depending on the week. Yuki still goes to other meetings for structure and community, but that biweekly meeting is where she can breathe.
What These Spaces Provide
The meetings that women of color create for themselves provide something different from what mainstream AA offers. Not better or worse—different.
They provide shared reference points. When someone mentions cultural expectations around marriage, career, or family, the other women in the room nod in recognition rather than confusion. When someone talks about code-switching, about managing other people’s comfort, about the exhaustion of being the only one—no explanation required.
They provide freedom from translation work. In predominantly white meetings, sharing often requires context setting. You can’t just say “my mother” without explaining the specific cultural dynamics at play. You can’t reference discrimination without managing white fragility. You can’t talk about survival strategies without defending their necessity.
In meetings built by and for women of color, you can just tell your story.
Sharon started a Black women’s recovery meeting in her city after years of navigating predominantly white AA. “I was tired,” she said simply. “Tired of explaining. Tired of managing reactions. Tired of editing my story to make it palatable. I needed somewhere I could just be honest without also being a teacher.”
Her meeting started with four women. It’s grown to regular attendance of twenty. They meet in a church basement in a predominantly Black neighborhood. They read from the Big Book and they also read from Black women writers who’ve written about addiction and recovery. They work the steps and they also talk about trauma, about systemic racism, about the specific ways that being Black and female shapes experience of addiction and recovery.
“We don’t replace other meetings,” Sharon said. “Most of us still go to other AA meetings throughout the week. But this meeting is home. This is where we can show up whole.”
The Work Nobody Sees
Starting a meeting sounds straightforward. Find a space. Set a time. Put up flyers. Show up.
The reality is more complicated.
Rosa had to negotiate with the community center for free meeting space. She had to create flyers and post them in places where women of color might see them. She had to show up every Thursday whether two people came or twenty. She had to handle the logistics—making coffee, setting up chairs, managing the group’s small treasury for literature purchases.
She also had to navigate questions from white members about whether the meeting was “really open to everyone” or if it was exclusionary. She had to explain repeatedly that open meetings meant anyone could attend, but the meeting was created by and for women of color because that community had specific needs not being met elsewhere.
“I got accused of being divisive,” Rosa said. “A white woman told me that AA is supposed to be about our similarities, not our differences. I told her that my meeting existing doesn’t stop her from going to any of the other fifteen meetings in town that work for her. This one meeting works for women like me.”
The emotional labor of starting and maintaining these meetings falls on the same women who already carry more in recovery. They’re doing the work of showing up for their own sobriety while also creating space for other women who need it.
Yuki described it as both burden and gift. “Some weeks I resent it,” she said. “I’m already working my own program, sponsoring women, dealing with my life. Coordinating the meeting, making sure we have a space, managing the group dynamics—it’s extra work. But then I see a new woman walk in and start crying because she’s never been in a recovery space with other Asian American women before, and I remember why it matters.”
What Gets Built Through Necessity
These meetings create more than just alternative spaces for recovery. They create communities where women of color can develop leadership, learn to trust their own voices, and practice advocacy in environments that actually support it.
In predominantly white meetings, women of color often stay quiet or share carefully edited versions of their stories. In the meetings they create for themselves, they learn to speak freely. That practice builds confidence that carries into other areas of recovery and life.
Sharon sponsors seven women now, all Black women. She learned to sponsor in her own meeting, watching other women model what culturally competent sponsorship looked like. “I couldn’t have learned that in predominantly white spaces,” she said. “Not because white sponsors are bad, but because I needed to see what it looked like when a Black woman sponsored another Black woman. I needed to see that we could hold each other accountable while also holding the cultural context.”
These meetings also provide networks of support beyond the meeting itself. Women exchange phone numbers. They check in on each other between meetings. They create group chats where they can ask questions, share resources, celebrate milestones.
Rosa’s meeting has evolved into a broader community. They organize sober social events. They support each other through job searches and housing crises and family conflicts. They show up for each other’s kids’ graduations and quinceañeras and difficult family gatherings where staying sober requires backup.
“We’re each other’s people,” Rosa said. “The meeting is once a week, but the community is constant.”
The Question of Separatism
The most common criticism these women face is that culturally specific meetings divide the fellowship. That AA is supposed to focus on similarities rather than differences. That creating separate spaces goes against the principle of unity.
Every woman I talked to had heard this criticism. Every one of them had a response.
“We’re not dividing anything,” Yuki said. “We’re creating something that didn’t exist before. Women of color have always been in AA. We’ve always navigated predominantly white spaces. Now some of us are creating additional spaces where we don’t have to navigate in the same way. That’s not division. That’s meeting a need.”
Sharon was more direct. “The fellowship was already divided,” she said. “It was divided the moment the Big Book got written by white men and the meetings stayed predominantly white for decades. We’re not creating division. We’re responding to division that already existed.”
Rosa pointed out that her meeting doesn’t prevent white members from attending. It’s an open meeting listed in the directory. White members occasionally come. Some of them get it—they sit quietly, they listen, they don’t center their own experience. Others don’t get it—they share as if the meeting is like any other meeting, they ask why race has to be mentioned, they tell women of color that focusing on difference keeps us sick.
“We don’t turn anyone away,” Rosa said. “But we also don’t adjust the meeting to make white members comfortable. This space exists for us. If other people want to attend and learn, they’re welcome. If they want to attend and make it about them, they usually don’t come back.”
What These Meetings Don’t Replace
None of the women I talked to suggested that culturally specific meetings should replace mainstream AA. They attend other meetings. They work with sponsors from various backgrounds. They engage with the broader fellowship.
But they need this additional space. The meeting created by and for women like them isn’t their only meeting—it’s the one that allows them to sustain participation in other meetings.
“I couldn’t do this long-term if I only had predominantly white meetings,” Yuki said. “I’d burn out from the constant translation work. The biweekly meeting with other Asian American women gives me energy to engage with the rest of the program.”
Rosa described it as breathing. “Other meetings are holding my breath. This meeting is exhaling. I need both. I need the structure and community of regular AA. I also need the space to just breathe.”
These meetings fill a gap. They provide what the broader fellowship often can’t or won’t provide—culturally specific understanding, shared reference points, freedom from explaining, community built around both recovery and identity.
The Responsibility Shouldn’t Be Ours Alone
Starting these meetings addresses immediate need. Women of color who can’t find adequate support in predominantly white meetings create alternatives that work better for them.
But the responsibility for creating inclusive recovery spaces shouldn’t fall entirely on the same people who are already navigating the most barriers.
The broader fellowship should be working to make all meetings more culturally competent. White members should be examining their own assumptions and biases. Sponsors should be learning how to work with people whose cultural contexts differ from their own. The program should be actively recruiting diverse leadership and representation.
That work happens slowly when it happens at all. In the meantime, women of color keep doing what we’ve always done—creating the spaces we need to survive and building community where community doesn’t automatically exist.
“I’m glad I started this meeting,” Rosa said. “It’s sustained my recovery and probably saved other women’s sobriety. But I also wish I hadn’t needed to. I wish the existing meetings had been spaces where all of us could show up whole from the beginning.”
We Built Tables Because We Needed Places to Sit
The meetings that women of color create aren’t supplementary or special interest. They’re necessary recovery spaces that provide what mainstream meetings often don’t.
They exist because women got tired of translating. Because they needed community that understood all of what they were navigating, not just the drinking part. Because recovery is hard enough without also managing other people’s comfort with your full humanity.
These women didn’t start meetings because they wanted extra responsibility. They started them because they needed to stay sober and the existing options weren’t sufficient.
They show up week after week, setting up chairs and making coffee and holding space. They do the work of creating and maintaining community while also working their own programs and managing their own lives.
They built their own tables because the tables they found didn’t have space for all of who they are. They built them from necessity. They maintain them through commitment. And they open them to other women who need the same thing—a place to sit, a place to breathe, a place to recover without abandoning the truth of their lives.
If you’re looking for this kind of space and can’t find it in your area, know that it’s possible to create it. Start small. Put up a flyer. Show up consistently. Other women who need it will find you.
And if you already have access to meetings that work for you, consider what you can do to make those meetings more welcoming to women whose experiences differ from yours. Listen more than you speak. Don’t ask women of color to educate you. Examine your own assumptions. Support efforts to create culturally specific meetings rather than questioning their necessity.
We built our own tables. We’ll keep building them as long as women need places to recover fully and honestly. But the work of creating truly inclusive recovery shouldn’t rest only on those who benefit least from the current structure.
We’re here. We’re staying sober. We’re building community where community didn’t exist before. That’s service work. That’s recovery in action. And it matters more than anyone who hasn’t needed it might understand.