(No, but it sure feels like it sometimes!!)
Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Say what now?? Where is my reward?
This is where you take a conscious action, a planned change of behavior and transform it into a daily one.
A habit.
An atomic habit?
I would say yes.
It is one thing to work hard at righting a wrong, or amending an action. This is all important and life changing. But returning to old patterns of behavior, old habits, will do nothing to lessen the amount of future amends we would be creating the need for.
So, there it is. Doing a good thing (or fifty) means that you must now live this way, ALL THE TIME!
But wait, there’s more, when you don’t, when you slip up, when you lose your resolve and do the wrong thing, you have to own it immediately and amend it on the spot!!
A typical first reaction to this is “WTF”, but in execution, it is quite doable, and in all honesty (cuz we are 12-steppin it after all), enjoyable. This is a ‘work as you live’ task, not a “put on your Sunday clothes” task.
No one is watching.
“Stinkin Thinkin” would see this as a way to say you are working step 10 without actually doing it, but all of the work to get you here prevents this from becoming a lasting reality. The beauty of these steps is their malleability. If you are not succeeding at one, you simply start over, you re-look at the steps you have already taken, you change course, you make amends to yourself!!
Genius!
My journey has been control.
Control is my vodka, heck it would be more accurately represented as my Bacardi 151. It has a strong hold on me. My early childhood experiences explain this beautifully. Trauma Response is my middle name. Actually, Trauma Response Higgins is more accurate.
A side trip on my journey would be anger.
Not just feeling the anger, but expressing it at the people least connected to what makes me angry. Ok, anyone other than myself would count here. I would say 99.9% of my anger is inward. Attached to it is anger at how I let people treat me, so perhaps anger at them would be understandable and even allowable but I seldom get beyond hating myself, or my choices, or my actions.
Since I am writing these posts without giving the steps the time they truly need to be effective, I am stuck on an issue that I am quite sure lots of recovering alcoholics spend ample time on with their sponsors. I call it the “tit for tat” rule.
See, many of the people I might benefit from making amends to are also people who have caused tremendous hurt in my life. With out really deeply and thoroughly going through all of the experiences you have had with those on your amends list you can’t filter this out.
Should you make amends to your abuser from childhood?
Not directly that’s for sure. If there is treatment of them you are struggling with, an appropriate amend would be self-care and therapy. Using that horrible experience to become better and stronger. Do you make amends to people with whom you had relationships with and terrible things happened to you because of them.
Again, not directly.
These are the details that cause us to grow while at the same time heal us. Quite frankly many amends’ situations would require heartfelt conversations, apologies, amend making and perhaps forgiveness from both sides. This would require two recovering addicts being at the same place in their steps at the same time.
I do not think life is that predictable or plannable.
So, what I am doing is processing what I feel an amends might look like from me to those people in my life that have hurt me. In that process I list how they might make amends to me. The process here, through out all of the steps, is always analyzed from both sides. We are never humiliated by a list of ways we suck, rather we are supported in stepping back from the issue, removing ourselves emotionally so that we can have clarity.
This is something I will do with my “not therapist” Carolina. I know that much of my anxiety comes from unresolved trauma at the hands of Aimee and Roy. I am still dumbstruck at the behaviors of Steph after all those months at the charter school. Gene Connolly, Chris Rath, and now Taylor.
I feel so stupid sometimes.
The work in The Breathing Lessons for Step 10 asks me to see myself as a “beloved child of God”. I know that doing this would allow for some self-love and forgiveness. A cutting myself a break so to speak. It is just hard.
So, I will continue to practice gratitude and look for the good, beautiful and holy in all things. I will stop looking in the mirror and try to see myself externally in nature. I will feel myself in the wind.
I will listen to Jack’s little voice as he tells me how much he loves me while giving me little sloppy kisses.
I will text with Gracie and take in her current experiences with happiness.
I will watch Kenny work to do his part in this crazy adventure.
I will live in the moment as best as I can.
I will continue to take inventory.
I will own what is mine.
I will release what is not.
