AMENDS
April 27, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“Many of us peep ahead to Steps Eight and Nine and sense that we have amends to make to various people, including our parents, who have harmed us as children. Oftentimes this harm is the vulgar act of incest, physical abuse, or mental and emotional abuse by sick parents or caregivers.” BRB p. 109
“When some of us looked ahead at Steps Eight and Nine, we couldn’t understand how we owed amends to our perpetrators. The very idea was unthinkable.
But what we didn’t realize was that we were not going to be asked to make amends to unsafe people, and we certainly were not going to be asked to make amends for things we had no control over.
In ACA, we learn that the amends we are responsible for are the things we’ve done as adults, which usually have their origins in our childhood abuse. However, whether we actually make direct amends is a personal choice, because it is not always a safe thing to do. This is why we look for guidance from those who have already been on this road. If, with their help, we decide we cannot make direct amends to some people, we learn that indirect amends can be made, which includes becoming the person we were meant to be.
On this day, before I make amends to potentially unsafe people, I will first seek the guidance of my sponsor or my other fellow travelers. An indirect amend may be more appropriate in many cases.”
My Experience:
What a relief to know I do no owe amends to some folks. What I do owe, and I owe it only to myself, is forgiveness to those that wounded me. I say to myself because forgiveness detaches me from the people that wounded me and the atrocities heaped upon me. Forgiveness breaks me away from the past hurts and allows love and serenity to grow in my heart. I am not saying it is easy and if you are anything like me, having grown up with much anger, it is extremely difficult as it almost seems like I am letting them off of the hook. I am not. They did what they did and they will have to forever live with that knowledge and guilt. They will have to go to their maker understanding that they never made amends. But I understand that forgiveness is truly for me, it’s not for them. As in the amends process, I don’t even have to face them to tell them I forgive them. It is only in my heart that I must muster up the courage to provide forgiveness and thus receive detachment, serenity and room for love to grow inside of me. When I do that I look at and walk through my world very differently. I better appreciate the seasons of the year, the activities I choose to partake in and the love I experience. Words take on new meaning and I no longer need to be angry at the things I cannot control.
OPEN WOUND
Never forgetting the atrocities that caused all the strife
They tell me absolution allows me to live my best life
So, on a quest from the past that I am ready to heal
Freely giving this thing called forgiveness helping to deal
Those that have chosen to hurt it unshackles me from
Out of the ooze of woundedness from whence I come
Try as I might, I cannot make others forgive me
I can only bestow amends for what I now see
My gladiator having been exercised from the infinite fight
Now staunchly battles for me to come into the light
I realize if in humanity I am to take my rightful place
A pardoning of those is what I must now embrace
Offering to my perpetrator, once said, “that I cannot do”
But I realize today that to heal I must stay true
Because I have come to know that un-forgiveness in my body anywhere
Is a threat to forgiveness and thus my sanity everywhere.
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