My name is Molly and I am an alcoholic.

Most of this experience was given to me by my sponsor of 18 years, Junie B. She went with me on my first ‘Making Amends Round,’ and taught me how to offer my amends without giving away my soul. It is a gift from her that keeps on giving. She taught me that Steps 1-8 prepared me to uncover and heal my own deep sense of shame, so that I would not make amends and ask someone else to give me the sense of freedom. It had to come from doing the work myself ... most of it painful, and most of it terrifying. I began to see how vital the Steps would become to my spirit and the freedom I sought. To face another in privacy and sanctity, facing my own shame and humiliation, I came to understand I never needed to be alone again. Junie taught me to make a list. It contained the names of people with whom I had left my spirit, and it was my responsibility to retrieve that spirit, and reclaim it in a process called "honesty and humbleness." I was to listen to hear how someone else had experienced a perceived wrong. I was taught to say these words: "I ask you to let me know what I can do to make right this moment between us." I was never to say I was sorry. I was to apologize. I was a sorry drunk. I can be an upright, apologetic, and responsible person in recovery. After being sober from 1979 to 2001, I drank again. Junie died the July before I got sober again. Not a day passes that I don't long to talk to her, yet her words and her example live on in my heart and in my head. My children, now 14 and 16, saw me drunk for the first time in their lives. Most of my amend-making with them has been to listen and to be frank and forthright. They have actually used that honesty to make their own changes on their own merit. For me, the value of this process has been to reclaim myself in pieces and parts. Alcohol remains the great divider, from the bridge back to life.

Thank you for allowing me to share.