Meditations on "Amends"

S In Step 8 we make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them.

One of the central pillars of the recovery world is the sharing of our experience, strength, and hope.

All of us who have weathered the storm of an addictive lifestyle know that our days were filled with trials of one sort or another.

When we begin the recovery process we are often overwhelmed by the guilt and shame of the mess we have made of our lives.

Making amends requires a will to do so. Some of us struggle to be sorry for our actions towards another or are more offended by what they did.

For most of us compiling a list of people we have harmed and becoming willing to make amends to them is extremely intimidating.

As we sit at home watching our leaders on TV it is easy to make controversial comments about how they are running the affairs of the country or city where we live.

When we say in Step 12 that we have had a spiritual wakening, we are describing the impact we have experienced as we’ve completed the first eleven steps.

When we look back at our lives, we see that the road that took us down the path to addiction was strewn with flawed thinking and self-deception.

Seeking out those to whom we need to make amends can be intimidating.

Making a list of persons we have harmed is intimidating but becoming willing to make amends to all of them seems too much to ask.

In “How It Works” we read and hear the words read regularly in meetings: Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.