Waiting for a sign: It is not necessary to know in advance what will become of what I do today. I show up. I remind myself that I am a person with a life—with goals, with hopes, with questions, and with needs I cannot and do not want to ignore. It is okay to be this person that I am. I am a welcome guest, invited to participate in a world I didn’t make but have an option to create, at least in part.
Step Five, “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,” sounds threatening, the way this Step was written in AA and Al-Anon’s original twelve steps. What does that mean to me, if I am a person who is discovering my inner child who was not wrong at all when I began this journey, life?
I look in a mirror and see my own dear face. Whatever age I am today, the little child who wanted to be me is also there. I reach for them. I smile. I welcome my innocent spiritual being into this present day.
I will stick together with others, just for today. I will let myself reflect on how the effects of being amid dysfunctional people, places, and institutions have taken form in me. These are the wrongs I want to remedy; the injuries I need to soothe and heal.
I have a program, here today, a process that a great many people who were lost have successfully used to be at home again. The Steps are sure, and I am not abandoned as I move along my own path where so many have already passed.
They smile and reach out to help me find my way, even when it seems too dark or foggy from my point of view. Just for today, I can be patient. I can trust.
Kathleen S