The AA Blog

Forgiveness and the Freedom of Letting

By Les
Some of you may remember my friend and many of yours; her member name was “and_it_is_Annie.” Annie lost her battle with cancer on Nov. 14th, 2009. I was her sponsor, however she taught me the greatest lesson. That is the spirit to forgive.
When Annie was 14 years old, a drunk driver killed her parents. The lost of her parents and the resentment she carried took her down many roads that we all know. Her Grandparents raised Annie, and she rebelled.
By the time Annie was 19 she had a story of the street, and all that goes with it. She was hitchhiking through Northern Ontario and some trucker picked her up. When she got in that rig, the driver asked her where she was going. Annie said, “I don’t know.” She never knew how much truth was in that statement. Because that trucker was me~!
I had a speaker tape on, not loud, just background noise. And Annie started telling me her story. It was one of heartache, despair and anger. I just listened, as she told me about her parents getting killed and how she let her life get ruined because of it.
I asked her, if she would like a better life, one where she could help people, just like her. I told her about my life and where it took me and that she can have what many people and I have. That nite we went for dinner and then took in a meeting, in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She had her last drink, at dinner that nite.
Annie rode with me for over four months. We drove all over the country and went to meetings. There was never anything sexual, for she had the top bunk and I had mine on the bottom. She asked me one nite, why I never tried anything with her. I told her, that it would kill me if, I lost her friendship and if anything I did caused her to give up her new way of life. It is sad, but Annie told me, that this was the first time anybody cared for her, just as a person.
When Annie was two years sober, she went hunting. She found the person that killed her parents. She used to follow him, and some of us were worried she was going to do something. Well Annie did something. She would follow him to the bar, and at closing she would go in and get him. She would give him a ride home. And in the morning she would pick him up and take him to his car. Whenever she was driving him home, in his ‘state’, he would tell her about the people he killed. Annie would just listen.
This taxi thing went on for about six months. Then one nite Annie asked him if he would like to go for coffee, the next nite. She told him, she would pick him up, and asked if he would not drink that day. He said yes.
Annie picked him up and she took him for coffee, and it was then that Annie told him whom she was. And that it was her parents that he had killed. She told him her “story” and asked if he would like a new life. She said he could have a life where he could help people just like him.
They went to a meeting that nite and Rob has never had a drink since. They have spoken together at many A.A. functions. And The Message of Forgiveness was felt in everyone’s heart many times.
Sadly on November 14th, 2009, we lost Annie to cancer. Rob was there for the last three weeks of Annie’s fight, and he was holding her hand when she passed away. Rob spoke at Annie’s memorial, and he spoke on her forgiveness’ and how she lived this program with gratitude and humility. He talked about how Annie gave him his greatest gift. And that was the gift of “forgiveness.”
I miss Annie and think about her a lot. I think about her most, when I am upset with some person, or something. I think about the “spirit to forgive!”
Annie, Rest in Peace and May GOD Bless Your Soul, the way you have blessed so many of us.

Check out Les and others in recovery @ http://www.intherooms.com/

A SONG FOR MY ANGEL

By Les

I BELIEVE ANGELS ARE AMONG US….
Hello, my name is Les, and I am an Alcoholic. I believe Angels are among us, and if you are anything like me, you may not be able to recognize one at the time.

For those that do not know me, I am a Truck Driver, and one night as I was driving through Ontario, Canada, I found a broken soul hitchhiking on the side of the highway. She was a young lady, tattered and worn with pain.

I pulled over to give her a ride and my life was to change forever. As we went down the highway, I heard her story and knew there was a reason we had met. That night I took her to a A.A. Meeting and she never had another drink.

She often told me, “Les after that first meeting and going through the book later that night, I never felt the need for another drink.” She was with me up and down that highway for about six months, and we would hit meetings all over the country.

We shared how we felt, when we hurt and our Hope. I remember her going through her step four and had to hold her many nights as she cried her way through it. I would tell her to take it easy,and to take a rest. And she would say, “No, I want to get better.”

As I drove she would read The Big Book, and quiz me on it. Whenever I made a mistake, she would say, “You know someday, you just may get this thing.” And laugh at the fact that she had found something that was new to me. I remember her laugh, the first time I ever heard it, all I could hear was pain. I never commented on it, and in time it changed. Slowly her laugh started to fill with joy, and her eyes were lighting up.

One day, we were on our way to Kenora, Ontario, and she told me we had to stop in Dryden. I told her “No, we are going to Kenora.” And she said, “I know, but I we have to stop in Dryden.” So we stopped in Dryden, I thought maybe she had to use the bathroom, or something.

We pulled into The Truck Stop there and she got out of the truck, and went in. I never gave it any thought, till she came out. She had a stuffed teddy bear with her and walked up to the fuel pumps without missing a beat, and gave that teddy bear to a little boy. I could not hear what was said, but I could see the mother mouth, “Thank you,” as she started to cry.
At first I never said anything. And then about a hour later, she said to me, that her mother told her to do that. I said, “What?” And she said, “Help that boy.” I never asked why, and was wondering about this because this young lady had lost both her parents when she was 14 years old.

Then she told me, that on the day that we met, someone walked up to her and gave her a pen and some paper, and told her she should write her mom. And she never questioned why this person done that. She just started to write, and she wrote for her mom to help her. Then she told me that I came along and was the person to offer her a ride. She always claimed that her mom sent me. I never said anything, for I was taught to never ever question someone’s spiritual beliefs.
I can go on and on, about the little co-incidents, that happened around her, but I won’t.

I do want to end with this.

This young lady is the person that got me on this site. She built my profile and gave me my name, “no_more_no_les.” When I asked her why that name, all she would say is, “I don’t know, but God will show you.” She never said “show us”, and that is because she was in the hospital dying. She was terminal with cancer and she knew it.

She passed away Nov14th, 2010.

Her name was Annie, and she was right, about ten months after her passing I found the meaning in my name as Annie would see it. I found it in a song, and that song is call No More No Less. I do put it in my status from time to time, and every time I do, I feel some comfort. As I listen I feel comfort that I cannot explain, I feel like it is Annie with me. I feel her struggles and growth in recovery. But most of all, I can hear her words, “No, I want to get better.”

I found a song that reminds me of Annie a lot. And if you don’t mind I am dedicating this to my Angle, “Annie.”

Annie I love you and R.I.P.

Join Les and others in recovery at http://intherooms.com/

Delusional Cowboy Dad

Shipwrecks, Mirrors, and My Dad’s Hero Complex
by Gaby Dunn

I remember it as the time we all got “shipwrecked.”

It’s the dramatic wording of an eight-year-old. We weren’t really shipwrecked, but we did get lost at sea. My dad’s bravado almost got us killed.

It was 1996 in Punta Gorda, a fishing community on the west coast of Florida. My father was still drinking at the time, and he rented a boat he could not pilot because he was a cowboy in his own mind. He’d been raised in Indiana with dreams of Shane, A Fistful of Dollars, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, wearing dark blue jeans held up by a metallic “screaming eagle” belt buckle and big, clanking cowboy boots. Stetsons lined each rung of our house’s hat rack. Hiring a guide was an option—but not in my dad’s world. If this man was going to rent a boat, he damn well wasn’t going to have someone else telling him how to drive it.

Adventure, like drinking, was a vice my dad had not yet given up.

The trip was an annual one for our family. It was inexpensive for my parents to pack me and my toddler sister into the car and drive a couple hours to a rented second-floor loft for a summer vacation. Below the loft, there were shops and restaurants. My sister and I loved the kooky gift shop that sold Beanie Babies. My parents liked sitting outside, listening to the nightly jazz band.

Early one morning, we all set out on a 15-foot outboard boat. The weather was brilliant. All around, there was bright blue sky and so much blue-green water. There was a smattering of look-alike islands and then, nothing. The boat skipped across waves. Sometimes it got stuck in sand bars.

When that happened, my father would get out and push the boat past, revving the engine over the hump. It was an annoying blip on an otherwise perfect ride, but it gave my dad the chance to play “hero” every other minute.
Mid-day, we stopped at a deserted island, and my dad parked the boat near the shore. He, my sister, and I got out to explore. My mom stayed behind to sunbathe, but I remember suspecting it was also out of fear. My dad took me on roller coasters, went camping in the dark woods, and drove too fast. He was the adventurer, not her.

My mom pretty much always stayed behind, most often with my sister glued to her side. My sister screamed at baseball games when the crowds got too loud and was scared of the animatronic animals at Chuck E. Cheese. She was a sensitive and cautious child, and my mom used that to keep her near.

I tried to be more like my dad, but, in truth, the Space Mountain coaster he’d talked me into riding had almost made me puke. Unlike my sister, who used terror to get out of scary situations, I constantly hid my fear to impress my dad; my number one goal as a kid was to never disappoint him.

Whenever I didn’t want to climb higher on the tree branch, or wanted to stop playing basketball, or felt afraid of monsters in my bedroom, he was there with a well-timed “Suck it up.” He wasn’t being mean, he just wanted me to be brave, to be able to handle things myself, to be independent.

That day, my sister and I were both intoxicated by his sense of adventure. We ate lunch on the sand and climbed around the mangrove trees. We got little sunburns and swam in the shallow water by the island’s shore.
Afternoon hit, and the sky got darker. We got back on the boat and started heading the way we’d come. But all the islands looked the same, and none of the landmarks were in the right place.
Lightning cracked the air, and the clouds turned black. The water that had once bounced our small boat like a baby on a knee tossed and turned us violently.

Rain trickled down. The boat kept getting stuck on sand bars, leaving us stranded in the middle of the swell. Now, when my father got out to push, I wondered if he’d get swept away by the strong water.
My mom took my sobbing baby sister and huddled in the corner. I stayed at the front with my dad. He silently steered for over two hours, his eyes tight slits peering out at nothing looking for some end to all this water. I tried to will a harbor into existence with my mind.

We were all going to die, here, together, I thought. All of us at once. Something about that made me feel both relieved and sad. I remember, at eight years old, picturing the newspaper headline the next morning.
“Local Father Too Proud To Hire Guide, Family Dies When Boat Capsizes,” or “Father Accidentally Drowns Himself, Family Off Coast of Florida.” Something like that. I wondered what the reporter would write about me, specifically: “A local girl, 8, was lost at sea after the boat her father stupidly thought he could pilot capsized during a storm. She loved Nancy Drew books, the movie Harriet the Spy, and unicorns. If she hadn’t died, she would have been the most famous author/astronaut to ever live. ‘I always like-liked her,’ the boy she had a crush on said as he sobbed, swearing he’d never love again.”

I had a big imagination.

Behind us, my mother and sister started praying in Hebrew: Shema yisrael, adonai elohenu, adonai echad. It’s the Jewish every prayer; it’s the prayer for when you don’t know what else to do.
I was scared, but, as per usual, I saw my dad out of the corner of my eye. He was stoic, hands on the steering wheel. I straightened my back and shot my mom and sister a disgusted look. My dad also seemed annoyed by their muttering. They were overreacting terribly, I thought. Being wusses, big babies. My dad wasn’t afraid and so I wasn’t afraid. We were the cool ones.

Finally, my dad spotted Gasparilla Harbor. He pulled the boat in and docked. My mother and sister got out, shaking like frightened hamsters.

My father, with me tagging along like a miniature version of him, went inside a small general store to call the owner of the boat and tell him what happened. It took an hour for the owner and his wife to drive to us. My dad ushered me, my mom, and my sister into the black SUV. I was desperate to climb back out and stay with him. I didn’t belong with these wailing women, I thought. My dad turned to the boat’s owner.
“You and I need to bring the boat back,” the owner told him.

“In this weather?” my dad asked. The owner nodded. It was the manly thing to do, my dad told us. He couldn’t say “no.”

“You know how to swim?” the owner asked my dad as the car doors closed.

The car pulled away and my dad and the owner got back into the tiny outboard. I watched, twisted around in the backseat, torn between barreling toward safety and wishing I could stay with him.
Back at the loft, my mom put me and my sister in the bath tub to warm us up. I pretended I wasn’t cold, even though my fingers were blue. Clean and in our pajamas, we waited in the living room for my dad to come back.
Two more hours went by.

He’s never coming back, I thought. The idea was foreign; my dad was a cowboy, not a pirate. And he certainly wasn’t a coward. But then I got angry. How could he, big and brave, egotistical and impulsive, have agreed to drive the boat back in what amounted to a hurricane? As time passed, it seemed less impressive, and more plain stupid. I also felt guilty, like somehow my tiny spaghetti arms could have saved his life if only I’d been allowed to stay with him.

Then, there was a loud knock on the door, and my dad was in the apartment, his clothing soaked, his curls clinging to his forehead. I remember him turning the shower on, and lying in the tub fully clothed, the steam rising around his limp body.

“I need a drink,” he told my mother, ignoring my and my sister’s cries of joy.

I remember my mom handing him a bottle of Jack Daniels, which he took long pulls from as he soaked in the scalding water, willing the feeling back into his extremities. He tells me later that in truth it was a small tumbler of scotch, and my mother handed it to him before he got in the bath. My mother thinks he did actually drink it in the shower.

Seven years later, my dad got sober after wrapping his car around a light pole outside our synagogue and, once again, surviving. He didn’t want to risk that third strike.
A month ago, I asked both my parents about the “shipwreck.”

“Do we have to talk about this?” my mother said, exasperated. It’s a horrible memory for her, of a time when she held a bawling four-year-old in her arms and thought her whole family was going to drown because her husband was a drunk show-off.

My dad tells me he thought my mom and sister were overreacting, though now he knows he was being delusional about the danger. He could have easily gotten his wife and two young daughters killed. It was more important then to seem cold and masculine than to acknowledge the reality of the situation he’d gotten us into.

In some ways, that’s hard for me to hear. I feel like I’m still that little girl sitting on the white boat deck, holding in my fear so my dad will think of me as his equal. But, I realize that’s like trying to impress a ghost, a person who’s no longer here.

The cowboy I remember my dad being is long gone, replaced by a man who’d rather eat his own spurs than put his family in danger.

Out of earshot of my mom, I told my dad that I think I stayed calm throughout the ordeal, but I wonder if that’s just wishful remembering. My dad said I did.
“You had this naïveté,” he said, “like it was all just a big adventure to you.”

I felt the same way about him. For almost a decade, I thought I’d been taking my cues from my father, but maybe, we were really just mirrors, facing each other and reflecting back.

This story appeared on the Good Men Project:  http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/shiprwrecks-mirrors-and-my-dads-hero-complex/

Gaby Dunn writes her blog, which can be read at  http://gabydunn.com/ and has a weekly column in the NY Times Sunday Magazine

Acceptance and Understanding

By Anonymous
I describe my childhood as my ‘dark ages’. I grew up without approval, acceptance, unconditional love, warmth, openness or understanding. Instead I faced judgment, criticism, shame, guilt, avoidance, transference, anger, raised voices, slamming doors, co-dependence, manipulation, denial and the tag-along silent treatment. In recovery I discovered acceptance and understanding. I found the confidence to be myself and to speak my truth. I was given access to suggestions, and tools.
As a child, I was necessarily present any time something went wrong, but I became instantly invisible as soon as I needed something. My parents communicated minimally with my siblings and me. When they did communicate – it was almost certainly negative. In turn, my siblings and I also failed to relate positively to each other.
“Feeling” was the equivalent ‘F-word’ in my childhood. It still is to my adult siblings. I always knew my feelings didn’t matter.
The atmosphere in my parents’ house was determined solely by my mother’s mood. If she was in a good mood, everything was wonderful. If someone angered her, or her mood plummeted for any other reason, her wrath came spewing out.
Unfortunately, as a child I was too young to understand that her moodiness was not caused by any external stimuli – it stemmed from within. With typical childlike understanding, I absorbed her vitriol with no filters or boundaries.
Through recovery I’ve come to understand and recognize the unreasonable responsibility my mother placed on my siblings and me, expecting us to be gatekeepers of her happiness.
In recovery I’ve met others who understand me. I’ve found friends, with whom I feel comfortable to chat, vent, sit in silence or cry without feeling self-conscious. Recovery has introduced me to people with whom I can share my story without worrying about what they might think or who they might tell. That’s not what our relationship is about. It’s about my recovery, about them and their recovery and me. It’s about supporting one another. It’s about building trust, openness, acceptance and understanding.
In recovery I’ve acquired tools to help me through tough encounters with peers who are less than aware, less than open, less than willing. I’ve learned to react from a balanced, healthy and open place, in a way that preserves my dignity and sense of self.
Recovery has taught me how to stand up for myself and allow myself the dignity and respect that I deserve. I’ve learned that I’m under no obligation to enter into situations that are unhealthy, unsafe or which further the dysfunction. I feel stronger now, able to walk away from unhealthy situations without giving explanations or becoming defensive. I’ve learned how to protect myself.
Using the information and tools I’ve obtained in recovery I continue to work through the grueling process of Step Four – to look at the darkness and see it for what it really is. It is part of me, most likely a learned coping mechanism – not a big part of me and, more importantly, not the real me. It’s learned and it can be unlearned – through training, awareness and vigilance; through acceptance, compassion and understanding.
My journey of recovery has released me from the expectation of having my needs filled by those who cannot fill them. Instead, I’ve learned to find other, better, sources of love, acceptance and understanding. Recovery has changed my self-perception. I am not the person others named me – I am not their ‘stupid little sister’ or daughter who just ‘can’t get it right’ or ‘doesn’t toe the line.’ I am His child, searching for truth, a place to call my own and a bit of happiness and peace along the way.
Recovery has imbued me with the courage to pursue my dreams. I’ve summoned the courage to express my truth in front of a room full of strangers and to recognize my feelings without shame or excuses. My fellow meeting-attendees continue to support me week after week. Even after I quit and dragged myself back, these strangers accepted my return with understanding, acceptance and I’ve-been-there hugs. These strangers quickly became my new family – my ‘chosen family’.
Recovery gave me, and continues to give me, the courage to look in the mirror, change the parts of myself I am able to change and accept the parts I can’t. I’ve learned to look inward, to acknowledge and accept. I’ve been awarded the ability to appreciate the good in my life – the friends who love and accept me unconditionally.
Most of all, recovery has taught me to put myself aside and offer compassion to another in sorrow or pain. And by being there for another, my inner child gains a measure of healing. By sharing some of my experiences, I can help guide another to avoid a painful fall or misstep.
Slowly but surely, recovery has shown me that healing is possible, and that ultimately, to quote a fellow member in recovery, “the joy in our lives is proportionate with the pain we’ve experienced”.

Addictive Behavior

There is more to my sobriety than not picking up. Consuming alcohol is only a symptom of my addiction to destructive behavior, most of it to myself. My lust, self-centered arrogance and jealousy were comfortable.
The last thing I wanted was to try anything that uncomfortable.

Over the years lust had replaced love, self-centered arrogance had replaced caring for others/humility and envy didn’t leave any room for good will towards others or altruism.

Some of my earliest memories are of feeling as an outsider, not good enough to be worthy of others friendship. I was fearful of rejection and being discovered. Whatever the measurement of worthiness was I didn’t have it, even if it existed in my mind only. My feeling of uselessness and inability to help others was making me hide inside myself more and more. It never dawned on me to ask for help. The puzzle was, how to cope with this fear, anger and guilt without being exposed.

My solution was alcohol. As soon as I found it I realized that I didn’t have to deal with any of these issues, the pain was numbed. I found a person in that bottle I liked, and my mission was to become him. As time went by I cared less about the consequences, less about you and wanted more.

If our relationship was intimate, my purpose was sex. There was never enough, and if you grew tired of it or wanted love then I moved on. Did not care about your feelings or needs. My arrogance was fed by the delusion that the next piece of ass was waiting.

If you had a nicer car, more money, a better job or a loving relationship, I was not happy for you I was jealous. I wanted more than you and I begrudged you any success. It was consuming, this inadequate feeling based on what you had drove my desire for more. It could not be satisfied, even my successes became reasons to want more.

The arrogance on my part was rationalized as acceptable behavior because I thought myself a high-energy achiever who was better than the rest and knew more. I didn’t have any tolerance for those who didn’t perform at the highest levels and would tactlessly correct them. Many times my behavior was hurtful and destructive of others. It mattered not that your way worked, just differently, it wasn’t my way and it wasn’t good enough. It became more and more of the fiber of my being and a burning need inside of me to be right, always.

These behaviors drove almost everyone away. Friends didn’t want to socialize, family became tense around me, employers dismissed me and I became number and number. It all lead back to drinking and it all became more and more addictive. It was a cycle that fed itself.

Sobriety taught me to be more accepting and less judgmental of others, to trust my Higher Power and to share about myself. It wasn’t easy, but as I attended more meeting and learned to identify instead of compare, to pray for knowledge of God’s will and to ask others for help, then my sobriety became more peaceful. When things happened that were difficult I coped and felt without hiding and when others needed me I listened and offered comfort without taking control. I trusted God’s Power and situations that used to baffle me didn’t, if my intuition was in tune with the Power of the Universe.

Knot Prayer

Dear God, Please untie the knots that are in my mind, heart and life:
Remove the “have nots, can nots, and do nots”.
Erase the “will nots, may nots, and might nots” that may find a home in my heart.
Release me from the “could nots, would nots, and should nots” that obstruct my life.
And most of all, Dear God: I ask that you remove from my mind, heart, and life all of the “am nots” that I have allowed to hold me back.

AMEN

Jealousy

By Gaby Dunn

My daughter who is a professional wrote this. She writes for publications like the NY Times, Good Men Project, Tribe Vibe, Fandango and Thought Catalog. She developed her own project a little over a year ago, http://100interviews.com/, which is a compilation of interviews she did of people she would never have experienced unless she went looking for them. She also has her own blog, http://gabydunn.com/, that are observations and comments on society and her life. She has grown in ways that amaze her because of these experiences. This is one of her realizations. Love You Do.

I am the most jealous person in the world. It’s never over something as frivolous as boyfriends or love though.
More than anything, I’m supremely jealous of my friends’ professional accomplishments. It’s a huge problem in my life and something I realized I really needed to work on. It’s not fun being so petty all the time.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy for my friends who are successful. But every article published, every movie role landed, every show booked, every book deal acquired makes my hands wring together. I’m smiling, but I’m also murderous. Like the Joker fused with Lady MacBeth, except more crazy.

The big thing is that I’m wrong. I don’t have to be jealous of my friends because all their success means is that I have the best, most talented friends in the world. I’ve started making a conscious effort to change the way I see other people’s accomplishments. Whatever good things happen to other people don’t belittle or change what I’m up to. It’s not a scale; it doesn’t take away from me, if someone I know succeeds.

Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s generally a group of really talented people who all find each other in some way — the British invasion, the Beat poets, 90s comedians, 1920’s expatriate writers in Paris, the artists of the Renaissance, East Coast/West Coast rappers.

Instead of going with my instinct to tear people down, I’m pushing myself to lift them up, to make an effort to work together, to support other successful people in my life.

This is something I have to constantly remind myself to do, but it’s really been worth it for my psyche and self-esteem.
Game recognize game, guys. All it means when the people I know succeed is that I know some pretty awesome people.

Making A Decision

When confronted with the facts that I needed willingness and decision making to complete my 3rd Step, anger and fear clouded my mind. My best thinking had brought me to the rooms and my decision-making had been flawed for the past 45 years. How was I to know the correct choice?

Facing this moment of truth I had to do what I was being taught by my sponsor and others in the rooms. Ask for help.

My entire life had been conducted on self-will and to even think that someone else might be able to solve my dilemmas or offer viable solutions had never crossed my mind. I lived on self-will and that was fine.

It wasn’t comfortable asking my sponsor how to turn my life and will over to care of God. “Damn, you people are asking a lot of me”, was my initial reaction. “Marc, you’re really not in control anyway. Look what’s happened in your life with the decisions you’ve made. Try trusting God’” he said.

It was the beginning of doing the uncomfortable and making changes in my life based on what I was learning from meeting and readings. I came to believe that God’s power and the acceptance of it in my life would enable me to make good decisions. Not that I always would, but by letting go and staying in the moment I might intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me.

A year or so ago, one of my adult children was experiencing difficulties that broke my heart. My instinct was to intercede and make her do certain things that I thought would fix it. During my morning meditation it came to me that I needed to listen for God’s will and be willing to accept it. So I let it go. Nothing happened. Within an hour as I had moved on to other activities, a still small voice came into my consciousness. It was a solution that let me be of comfort and understanding and not try to be in control.

If I let it, my whole attitude and outlook on life will change.

Not God

Discussions of Step 2 have totally changed for me in the past year. In the beginning of my recovery my thoughts would turn to the insanity part, I would focus on how insane my life was. There was a conversation with my wife one evening about Step 2; I would share with her by reading aloud parts of our Big Book. She said to me after listening, “You’re not insane.” My reply, “ Really? Think about my behavior since you’ve known me starting 20 years ago.” She changed her mind almost too quickly.

Several months ago I was refreshing my thoughts and activities about the Steps and a thought occurred in my mind that I had suppressed for almost 10 years. My firing from a position I was heavily recruited for and had turned down several times before accepting. The hiring was to fix a small company that had potential, but was not performing well and operating without experienced leadership. I qualified having spent over 15 years in the industry as an owner and manager.

The recruitment, lavish offers and unencumbered power was ideal for my grandiose opinion of myself, and my ego swelled. Of course I hadn’t found the rooms of AA.

The story is that it was immediately apparent to me that poor decision-making, theft and incompetent personnel was the root of the problems. Immediately I fired people, hired new employees, changed procedures, negotiated new contracts with our customers, resulting in a reversal of fortunes within six months. Along the way, I also informed the owner and his senior management of all the bad decisions they had made and how I had fixed everything. I wasn’t diplomatic, nor did I care about anyone’s feelings. Only my success mattered.

Six months after I started I was fired after returning from vacation. No explanation, no severance; just pack your things and leave.

About a week later in a conversation with a person I had hired as my assistant, she told me that the owner had been telling everyone the following, “ He already had a God, and didn’t need another one.” Not only didn’t I understand, I was resentful.

Ten years later it dawns on me that not only am I carrying around this resentment, but he was right I thought I was God. I had been behaving as if my decision-making was flawless, my judgments were perfect and I was omnipotent in all facets of life. Wow! Delusional would be a mild description of my behavior.

Almost six years in recovery, I am finally dealing with the concept that I am not God, and there is only one Higher Power whose love and protection is key to my sobriety, emotional and physical. What a relief, by trusting God and His will for me, my life is joyous and free.

Now it is time for me to make an amends to the man who fired me. Thank God.

Worth

This is from www.dailyom.com Not sure who the author is but I found it relevant and espressive of this way of life.

Though much of who and what we are changes as we journey through life, our inherent worth remains constant. While the term self-worth is often used interchangeably with self-esteem, the two qualities are inherently different. Self-esteem is the measure of how you feel about yourself at a given moment in time. Your worth, however, is not a product of your intelligence, your talent, your looks, your good works, or how much you have accomplished. Rather it is immeasurable and unchanging manifestation of your eternal and infinite oneness with the universe. It represents the cornerstone of the dual foundations of optimism and self-belief. Your worth cannot be taken from you or damaged by life’s rigors, yet it can easily be forgotten or even actively ignored. By regularly acknowledging your self-worth, you can ensure that you never forget what an important, beloved, and special part of the universe you are.

You are born worthy—your worth is intertwined with your very being. Your concept of your own self-worth is thus reinforced by your actions. Each time you endeavor to appreciate yourself, treat yourself kindly, define your personal boundaries, be proactive in seeing that your needs are met, and broaden your horizons, you express your recognition of your innate value. During those periods when you have lost sight of your worth, you will likely feel mired in depression, insecurity, and a lack of confidence. You’ll pursue a counterfeit worth based on judgment rather than the beauty that resides within. When you feel worthy, however, you will accept yourself without hesitation. It is your worth as an individual who is simultaneously interconnected with all living beings that allows you to be happy, confident, and motivated. Because your conception of your worth is not based on the fulfillment of expectations, you’ll see your mistakes and failures as just another part of life’s journey.

Human beings are very much like drops of water in an endless ocean. Our worth comes from our role as distinct individuals as well as our role as an integral part of something larger than ourselves. Simply awakening to this concept can help you rediscover the copious and awe-inspiring worth within each and every one of us