Sunday, October 30, 2011

Making Amends? (Oct 17th 2007)

Tonight my mother called me, she's working the 12 steps of AA for the umpteenth time in her 52 years of life. (holy shit my mom's 52!) this is another attempt as sobriety for her and honestly I think this might very well be the first REAL attempt she's ever made.

She's on step 8
for those who cannot recite the entire AA Big Book
these are the :THE TWELVE STEPS
OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

She's on Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. and with it, step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Don't get me wrong, I'm amazed at her progress, saddened that it took prison to cause it, and very very proud of her for getting this far.

She's never EVER admitted she'd harmed me or my siblings in any other sobriety attempt. So this is REAL progress for Momma.

but omg
the things this has drug up that I'd spent years trying to forget.
maybe that's good
right now I don't know.
she wants a face to face amends with me some time soon.
Maybe that will be good too.
though it means a trip to NC.

I tried to tell her tonight that some of the things that happened to me as a child, she had NO control over and needs to stop beating herself up over them. She did not know that my uncle was a child molester or my grandfather. She was a single mom trying to raise a kid and pay a mortgage, she accepted free babysitting from a family member. What should have been just a kind act became something monstrous but it was NOT her fault any more than it was mine.

She does not give herself credit for the things she did right and there were more of those than bad.

besides, she's my Momma, I love her no matter what.

J

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