fearless & thorough

it was the place where you went for a meeting the first time for yourself. a church basement with forty chairs positioned in an oblong circle. the far side of the seating was designated for the smokers, although in the smoky room everyone was effectively smoking. the chairs were the hard plastic bucket kind of 1970s orange and light olive green. you only had been going to meetings for about a month. you had already sat poolside with your sponsor a week previous, and had read from the front cover of the literature, all the prefaces of previous versions and about what the program had to say about spirituality. Did you believe you were powerless over your addiction? Yes. Did you think that maybe there was something else greater than you that could relieve you of your addiction? Yes. Did you believe that you would let that something else take care of you? Yes. "I can't. It can. I'll let it." You had just returned from a weekend in the depths of Virginia with your mother. On the way north, home, you started a conversation with your mother about how dysfunctional you thought the family was. You started it and finished it in one breath, "But I don't want to talk about it now." and lapsed into silence for the remained of the three hour drive, letting your mother sit in that heavy morass of judgment. Which brings you to the meeting you had been attending on Monday nights since you stopped using. When your sponsor had directed you to write a list of the people who you resented, you wrote down your "bitch list" as suggested. Your family members, past boyfriends, friends from high school, people in high school who you wanted to be friends with but never were, learning institutions, and time made it onto that quick list. You didn't really know how to proceed with writing a fourth step but you were taking the short iterative steps that your sponsor suggested. The meeting was a step and tradition meeting, meaning that the person sharing at the beginning spoke on a step and tradition for fifteen minutes and then other people would share after, their experience strength and hope on the topic. Each week progressed to a new step, starting at the first and then finishing with the twelfth. People shared about how working on a document where they were listing the people and institutions they held resentments against and subsequently, how their own character defects contributed to the relationships left them angry, irritable and discontent. You related to those feelings as was evidenced in your conversation with your mother. You shared in the meeting that your sponsor had directed you to start on your fourth step but that you didn't like feeling so many emotions and so thought maybe you should put it off. You didn't want to hurt anyone while in the process of the moral inventory. After the meeting your new friends came up to you and related that if you were already started in on the step and writing that the best thing to do was forge ahead and try to be honest and thorough, to continue on. To trust their experience, to trust in the process, continue writing. It might take you a couple months of slow progress, but the gift of seeing your part, accepting your part, and actively working on enumerating the wreckage on your side of the street, to constantly be working belief that you will be taken care of in all facets of your life will be the beginning of living by principles. Acting your way into a new way of thinking. Once you've started healing yourself, and going through the steps to start repairing some of the relationships in your life, turn to 30, 34 or 41. Maybe you need a little more time ruminating on how to take suggestions, turn to page 10.