12steps

im·pos·tor imˈpästər noun a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain. synonyms: impersonator, masquerader, pretender, imitator, deceiver, hoaxer, trickster, fraudster, swindler As I sit in the meeting, listening intently, trying to hear a message that I’ve not heard one hundred – (no, thousands) – times before, I hear only the same things over and over again. The medium might be different but the message is the same. ...

Step 2 Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Oh, this step! The savior for so many and the downfall of so many more. The capitalization of Power seems to imply a deity, yet we are told it needn’t be a specific deity or God, a thought that on the surface seems absurd to many of us. ...

If you’re like me, the idea of an interventionist god, who is going to fix you, who is going to save you, simply does not resonate. And if you’re like me, you were probably told that you don’t need to believe in God to practice the 12 steps. You may have been told that there is a difference between Spirituality and Religion. And when you insisted that there was too much God talk in the steps, you were probably pointed to the chapter “We Agnostics” in the Big Book. ...

I believe in facts; verifiable, indisputable, precise, truths. The sun rises in the East, at dawn, after the night. This is factual. I cannot disbelieve this truth. I can verify this with tools. Even on days when it is cold and rainy and I cannot see the sun, I know that it is true that it rose in the East, at dawn, after the night. I believe this because I have evidence. ...

For months, I have woken up filled with anger and angst about the politics of the United States. I’ve felt that it was my responsibility to be educated, to be involved, to raise my voice against injustice, to resist. But in the 24 hour news cycle this has become taxing — Taxing on my mental health, my family, and my friendships. I’ve been keenly aware that my anger and angst, my resentments, have been eating me alive. I’ve also been keenly aware that these things are beyond my control. Intellectually, I know what to do, and yet, I have resisted. And I’ve felt trapped. Trapped by the fact that this is an “outside issue.” I’ve felt a strong need to talk about it in a safe place, a meeting perhaps, but have known that I cannot bring up politics in a meeting for obvious reasons. I’ve been caustic in my criticism of this new reality on my social media outlets. Where I’ve needed to bring healing words, I’ve only brought sandpaper to rub the wounds of my friends. ...

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness April may be the cruelest month, but August is a close second – at least in my book. Here in Maryland, August is hot, humid, and oppressive. This year, it was even more so with record temperatures and long periods of no rain. But that’s not why August was so hard for me this year. It was the constant flood of memories of how things were last year. ...

We all do it. We all compare ourselves to other people. We compare ourselves to our friends, our enemies, our neighbors, strangers on the street, and celebrities that we will never know personally. In some cases we feel “superior to” and in other cases we feel “less than” — neither view is particularly healthy. Our subjective understanding of ourselves is deeply rooted in our understanding of how we fit in (or don’t) to this world. We come to this understanding by comparing ourselves to others. In early years, this is how we learn to become social animals. It’s how we learn to make friends. I am constantly amazed that my son so easily makes friends when he meets other children his age. I am sure he compares himself to them, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He quickly finds the commonalities and joins in in the fun. Those commonalities may be as specific as the love of Legos or as simple as the mere fact that they are kids and not adults. I have vague recollections of being able to do this myself when I was young. But somewhere along the line I lost the ability to quickly identify similarities and began to focus on the differences. ...

It’s June. The 6th month of the year. Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will be celebrating the start of summer with the summer solstice. Those in the Southern Hemisphere are headed into winter. Of course, in the 12 step world, we often focus on a step and a tradition each month. Naturally, meetings are focused on the sixth step in June, where we humbly ask the good of our understanding to remove our defects of character. I’m still fuming. ...

"As we seek balance in our meditation practice as well as in our lives in recovery, one of the things we have to look out for is this tendency toward extremes." (1) When I first started to contemplate the 12 steps, I struggled mightily with language that I perceived as evangelical. If you're anything like me, you may have struggled with specific words too, perhaps God and Him. I counted the number of steps that talked about something related to God and came up with 6 that used these words. I gave Step 12 a pass even though I thought spiritual awakening sounded a little too much like being saved. I saw things as absolutes. Black and white. On or off. Binary. And I was repulsed. All I wanted was to stop drinking, I didn’t want to fall down some rabbit hole and become a holy roller. People told me that I didn’t have to believe anything in particular. I heard incredibly stupid things, like, “you can make a light bulb your higher power if you want.” ...