Step Nine – Hurt People Hurt People (but healing is possible)

STEP NINE

It does not mean that rainbows and butterflies will invade the space between you and another person.

It does not mean that you will break bread on a regular basis with this person.
It does not mean that the person your actions have harmed will necessarily forgive you.

But it can mean that those things become possible.

Step Nine is difficult because we mire our transgressions in one of two thick muds of thought:
Denial – “I didn’t hurt anyone but myself in my active drinking and using.”

Shame – “I can never make things right, the damage is too deep.”

I’m not sure where you are in your process of making amends, but I can tell you with reasonable certainty that neither one of these two extremes are true.

And the damage is never too deep to repair while doing Step Nine work. The step is more about your accountability than reconciliation, and repair begins by your very admission and asking for forgiveness.

Step Nine goes something like this:

“I drank a lot more than you think I did all those years ago, and I know I hurt you by disrespecting you when I was drunk.”

“I’m taking back control of the parts of my life that drugs hijacked. Those times when I bruised your feelings with my words, I’m sorry.”

Or just

When I got to Step Nine in my own recovery,  I had two very important direct amends to make to each of my daughters. They were five and eight years old when I got sober. The youngest claims not to remember very much about Mommy’s drinking, but my older remembers more than I’d like – especially the fights between their father and I, the shadow alcohol cast over my spirit, and the sickness and sloppiness toward the end of my active disease. My kids are everything to me – they were the one single thing I was going to do right in my life and not screw up like everything else. (Expecting perfection from myself in any area – and combining with with living in addiction – is a recipe for disappointment.)

With the clarity of new-found sobriety came light and sharpness, but also illumination of the damage I’d done to my beloved children by not making them top priority.

They were still young. How to make amends?

I started by educating them on an age-appropriate level about alcoholism as a legitimate disease; but not as an excuse for my behavior. Mommy has a sickness to drinking and drugs and it is my responsibly to get well and stay well, and that means staying away from drinking and drugs and working the program.

I followed up by staying sober, no matter what.

As I grew in recovery, I said things like:

“I know there was a time in your life when I did not stay away from those things; I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t trust God enough to help me, and I was very unwell as a result. I never meant to hurt or embarrass you, but I did those things all the same.

I am making the changes now to become stronger.

I am staying away from the poison that affected our relationship.

I am trusting God to help me now and forever, one day at a time.

Will you please forgive me?”

A funny thing happened on the road to redemption. My daughters are now 20 and 23, and they are not ashamed of their mama and her (now 14 years of) recovery. As a matter of fact, the are proud of my clean time, and our relationships are closer now than they have ever been. They have a compassion that they might not otherwise have for people in the throes of addiction. They are spectacular young ladies and I’m so grateful to Abba that they accepted my amends and have forgiven me.

It was hard admitting I’d hurt them, but restorative that their complete forgiveness has transcended a disease I once thought would take me from them altogether.

Step Nine does not invade the space between you and the person you harmed with rainbows and butterflies. But it does make space for healing.

And that’s ever more beautiful still.