Cleaning up the wreckage of the past.
This is perhaps the least enjoyable (in the anticipation phase, at least) and most necessary part of a healthy program of addiction recovery. In our active addiction, we are at best flawed and manipulative individuals around whom our every thought, word and action is centered and at our worst we are a nightmarish plague of Biblical proportions, wreaking havoc and causing ruin. The toll on those around us is immeasurable and in many cases unspoken.
At times, it is critical that you don't reach out and make contact with a person from the past, for your own sake or for theirs due to the potential harm it could cause. If you're being honest with yourself those cases are pretty obvious although not always simple to address. This process of making amends can also lead to special challenges when, in addition to being a near-to-impossible to quantify emotional toll you are attempting to make amends to someone who's no longer living among us. How in the world to you go about balancing that numberless ledger with either someone you cannot contact or a person who has passed away?
What in the world do you do to reconcile that - making things right when you can't measure the wrongs you perpetrated against a person who you can no longer see, hear or touch?
This is where the beautiful concept of making living amends gets to shine through. Think of it as being intentional about the way you live as a tribute to a person.
My father departed this Earth on August 25th, 2002 and the mental, emotional and spiritual pain this brought me (barely a year removed from so nearly dying myself) was massive. Dad wasn't around to see me bottom out, and he wasn't around to see me begin or sustain my recovery. I've chosen to work a 12 Step program as my method of recovery and a pivotal part of that is the amends making process. When I got to my dad, I was a bit stumped. My sponsor at the time clued me into making living amends. I thought specifically about how I'd harmed him and what way of living could offset that.
With dad, I'd lied, stolen and manipulated. The inverse of those habits is pretty clear, and as such I make my amends to my father each day by being rigorously honest in my dealings with everyone. I also try and stay as humble, helpful and loving as possible because this would make my father intensely proud of me.
For several years, I knew deep down that the way I was living would've caused him great shame. That is not the truth today, and as such I can celebrate his memory with a full heart rather than mourning him from a place of emptiness.
