Al‑Anon Family Groups has three Legacies: recovery through the Twelve Steps, unity through the Twelve Traditions, and service through the Twelve Concepts of Service. They are the spiritual foundation of our program. Each offers opportunities for healing and personal growth.

For many of us, however, the power and beauty of the Legacies were not immediately apparent. At the beginning of our recovery from the effects of someone else’s problem drinking, we may have found the Steps valuable, but may not have realized how they could apply to other aspects of our lives. Similarly, as we grew in the program, we might have understood that the Traditions could guide us in solving problems within our Al‑Anon groups, and that the Concepts could be applied to problems at the world service level. We had yet to discover how the principles within the Traditions and the Concepts could be applied, at a deeper level, to our personal lives.

Although the Legacies may be difficult to understand at first, with time and continued study our perception of them gradually changes. The depth of their wisdom gives us an ever‑growing, evolving understanding of the Al‑Anon program and the ways we can apply it “in all our affairs.” The more we learn from them, the more we realize how much there is yet to learn.

Each Step, Tradition, and Concept can be studied individually, but it is important to remember that they are all part of an integrated whole. Their principles build upon each other and are interconnected. Most of us, however, begin by studying the Steps in their given order, eventually moving on to the Traditions and the Concepts. In Al‑Anon, however, we are each free to study the Legacies in the manner of our own choosing. Ultimately, the way we approach the Legacies is not as important as the fact that we are willing to make that commitment to our personal growth in Al‑Anon.