Perhaps the single most important tool we all have is knowledge. If we know we can change, all things are possible. Victimization doesn’t have to be inevitable. We have choices. Today we can choose to have a career or not, be mothers or not, to go to college, law school or medical school, get that GED or not, to wear pants or not. We have choices we haven’t always had in almost all areas of life. Almost all.

Some of us do not have choices in the most important area of all, in our own minds. Some women see themselves as trapped in emotionally empty or unhappy relationships because ... where else would I go? Who else will ever want to be with me? It’s too late for me to find anything or anyone else.

We trap ourselves in our own mental jails. We sentence ourselves to a life of hard labor under miserable circumstances because we don’t see another way out. The prison bars of fear and lack of self-confidence keep us from trying to break out or change things in our lives. The expression "I can’t" comes to mind, and efforts to change things stop or never start. We give up on substantial changes and move towards relief from the pain, boredom, chaos in our lives by gambling more and more.

"At least while gambling I am in control." ... "Nobody bothers me while I am gambling, and the staff is so nice to me," report many gamblers. Gambling creates a dangerous false sense of control over everything. This is not empowerment.

Empowerment is looking at the rich history of our mothers and grandmothers and their mothers before them and knowing they all did their best. Empowerment is looking at our own circumstances today and committing to search for our own personal best.

Women today have legal rights we never had before; we have opportunities we never had before. We go into space, fly planes, drive tanks, run businesses, hold presidential cabinet posts, become senators and doctors. But we don’t always know how to stop our own self-destructive behaviors.

Cultural researchers will say that the weak in any society are the victims. They are abused, taken advantage of, and forced to do work others won’t do. Ancient civilizations record a chain of wars, conquest and slavery. The strong take over the weak, dominate the weak, rule over the weak.

Anthropologists like Margaret Meade talk about how women in almost all ancient and tribal cultures were dominated and ruled by men. Women have been owned, fought over, won, lost, perhaps treasured, and unfortunately abused. Today this no longer has to be a woman’s lot. Women do not have to give such power to fathers, husbands, bosses—or to gambling.

The "weaker sex" labeled women who couldn’t hunt, haul, lift, lug or fight as effectively as our male counterparts. Modern technology has removed almost all of these physical barriers, and the latter half of the 19^th century saw women begin to challenge the notion of mental inferiority as well.

We fought for the right to vote and participate as equals in our nation’s democratic process, and we gained such rights in the 20^th century thanks, in part, to our grandmothers’ efforts. The empowerment movement tries to focus on the strength-building opportunities often brought about by adversity.

Such things as loss, the death of a loved one, an abusive relationship, retirement and boredom, health concerns, loneliness, depression, unemployment and role changes can become forces that drive an urge to escape or find relief. And what a wonderful relief and escape gambling can provide … for minutes at a time.

But there are better ways. The quest to feel better does not require women to lose money, respect or themselves in gambling. Gambling has proven to be a coping mechanism that creates far more problems than it solves.

Solutions to the problems we had created for ourselves and others seemed impossible. While we may have been unaware of the extent of our fear when we first walked into a GA room, a counselor’s office or a treatment program, soon we began to recognize the reality of our fear. But we had no idea how to deal with it—no idea we could successfully employ faith to combat the most irrational of fears.

If we stuck around for awhile and listened to people who had been there ... if we followed the advice we heard and read— "One Day at a Time," "Don’t try to solve all your problems at once"—we detected a faint sliver of light at the end of the tunnel. But at first, when the problems and the fears seemed insurmountable, we had to "take it on faith."

It’s not easy for a compulsive gambler feeling smothered under a crushing load of fear to muster up even a tiny bit of faith. We have to go to meetings, listen to other people’s stories, and witness the miracles taking place in the lives of GA members who work the 12-step recovery program.

Once having come to believe in a power greater than ourselves, in Step 3 we make a decision. Without faith, this step is impossible. Some of us may have wondered, "How am I supposed to have faith? I don’t even know what faith is." Faith is a nebulous concept, difficult to define. A venerable, old book defines it as well as any dictionary definition: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

We come to GA burdened with problems, beset by fears. In time, we gain a glimmer of hope that solutions to our problems and freedom from our fears will acquire substance as we live one day at a time. But early on we cannot see where the solutions lie; we cannot see the promised freedom. Concrete evidence in which to ground a belief of better things to come eludes us. This is where faith comes in.