I didn't have to be told that in the years of my
drinking I had damaged those closest to me. My wife's tears,
the pain on my children's faces as I erupted again and again
in alcoholic rage: these had played a large part in bringing
me to crisis and then into recovery.
Nor did I need to be told that I needed to make amends
to them for the pain I had caused them. I was -- I am --
involved with my spouse, children, and with members of my
family of origin. I did not want to terminate relationships
with them: rather, I wanted to put my involvement with them
on a healthy, functioning, and mutually-rewarding basis.
There was work to be done, and lots of it.
The "Big Book" turned out to be right; my wife and
children were generous in accepting my apologies, eager to
help me heal, happy that the long nightmare in which we all
had lived was now over. But that would only be the beginning
of the process of making amends to them. My apologies, no
matter how sincere, were not enough. I had damaged my loved
ones and deprived them of the kind of husband and father they
had a right to expect; to put relationships with them on a
healthy, functioning, and mutually-rewarding basis required
the patient creation of new patterns of involvement with
them. This proved more difficult than I had first thought. I
had to grow out of self-centeredness and selfishness, and to
learn to look at the world from their point of view in order
1.
2.

to understand what I might do for them. I had to find new
ways of communicating with them. All of this took time, to
say nothing of that rare quality, patience! It wasn't by
accident, I realized, that we undertake the Ninth Step only
after we ourselves have become strong enough to embark on the
kind of spiritual work that amends-making requires. Perhaps,
too, that's why we can expect the Promises to come true only
after we have started making amends within the family.
As difficult as this process sometimes was in relation
to my wife and children, it took on a new dimension when I
finally turned to making amends within my family of origin.
In my own immediate family, the major damages were done by
me, and I was the one who needed forgiveness. But in my
family of origin, there had been no knights in shining armor.
My alcoholic father damaged my co-dependent mother and she
damaged him; frightened and angry as I was, I damaged both of
them and they damaged me. Aunts and uncles and cousins and
grandparents -- the damages, mutual damages, seemed to be
everywhere. Everyone was a player and, in all honesty, and
perhaps because I had left home in my mid-teens, my part in
contributing to those damages had been relatively small.
But I still needed to clean my side of the street, and
although it wasn't yet clear all that needed to be done, I
saw that I had to begin by forgiving those who had hurt me.
With smoldering resentments still eating at me, it was
impossible for me to be really effective in repairing the
3.

damages, however minor they might have been, that I had done
to those who had in turn injured me. I hadn't expected it,
but forgiving others for the injury they had done to me was a
necessary part of my Ninth Step.
But what would it mean for me to forgive those relatives
of mine who had made my childhood so unhappy? It was,
obviously, more than merely mouthing the words "I forgive
you". But what more? And whatever the "more" was, how was
it to be done? The "Big Book", so helpful in many other
matters, didn't really give me the direction I needed.
Neither did the "Twelve and Twelve." In a small handful of
places, both sources mentioned the necessity of forgiveness--
of asking forgiveness of God and of other people, for
example, and of forgiving others as well as oneself. In two
places, the "Big Book" even implied that we should "forgive
and forget". Forget? Forget being beaten? Forget being
sexually molested? Forget being neglected? Forget being
publicly ridiculed and shamed? These childhood experiences
were burned into my memory. Even if I could forgive those
who had harmed me in these ways -- and the "Big Book",
unfortunately, didn't tell me how to do that -- I didn't
think forgetting would be possible.
It turned out, however, that after some 11 years in
recovery I learned something about forgiving someone, and so
what forgiveness means. I learned that lesson by finding

4.

myself in a kind of do-or-die situation in which forgiving
turned out to be the only good option available.
My mother had died suddenly and I had to return to my
original home for her funeral. In the confusion of the next
few days, one idea kept nagging at me: I would have to meet,
I would have to be involved with, my father's sister, Aunt
Margaret. Aunt Margaret! During my childhood, although she
was sometimes kind to me (but there weren't many of those
times), she was more frequently unkind, missing no
opportunity to criticize me cruelly, even to the point of
publicly embarrassing me. Negative in her attitude towards
me, bullying, judgmental, insensitive, at times malicious --
all of these came with Aunt Margaret! In my mind she had
become a living symbol of much of what my unhappy childhood
involved. To have to deal with her --and I could no more
avoid doing that than I could avoid going to my mother's
funeral -- was to raise the ghosts of an unhappy past.
Frankly, I didn't have the emotional or spiritual "energy" to
handle Aunt Margaret on top of my own confused and conflicted
feelings over my mother's death. "I don't know how I can do
this," I said to my sponsor. "I don't know how I can handle
the funeral, that whole crazy and sick family of mine, and
Aunt Margaret at the same time!"
"Can you try to change the way you see her?" he asked,
". . . not as the tormentor of your childhood, but as a
pathetic human being who has always wanted something she
5.

never got in your grandparents' alcoholic household -- simply
to be loved for herself? Can you reach around your own pain
and touch her hurting spirit? Can you show love to her?"
"But I don't love her," I replied.
"I didn't ask you to love her," he said. "I'm suggesting
that you act lovingly towards her, or at least try. You can
try, can't you?" I remember thinking: I can try. But it
won't work.
I had no sooner arrived at my family's house where I
stayed during the funeral period when the door opened. There
was Aunt Margaret, an odd half-smile on her face. Here it
is, I thought. This is it. God, give me some help with
this, I thought. I went to her. "How kind of you to come,"
I said. "Thank you for doing this for me. It is very good
of you." I hugged her close. (I didn't lie, I remember
thinking. Everything I said was true!!) Aunt Margaret began
to cry, and I did too. She loved my mother and she was
grieving. The old dragon was then just an old lady,
bewildered by the loss of her sister, perhaps frightened that
her own death might not be very far away. Some time later
that evening, as she was leaving, I said to her, "I am going
to the funeral home tomorrow to make final arrangements. I
would really appreciate it if you would come with me to help
me through it." She readily agreed (was that surprise on her
face that I had asked her?), and that established what was to
be the pattern of my involvement with her over the next few
6.

days. I took opportunities to invite Aunt Margaret to be
with me, whatever it was I was doing. I was signalling that I
wanted to have her by my side. I was behaving lovingly.
Since then, seven years ago, there have been changes,
significant ones I think, in our relationship. I call Aunt
Margaret on Mother's Day and at Christmas, and on her
birthday. When her husband died suddenly, I called
frequently. She writes me and I write back. No, she's still
not my favorite person and if I can ever come to like her,
much less ever develop a warm, intimate relationship
with her -- well, that has not yet happened and perhaps never
will. Perhaps, too, it would be different if I were living
near to her rather than across thousands of miles, and had to
relate to her frequently and face-to-face. That might
severely test my resolve to keep acting lovingly towards her!
But the reality is that I am here and she's there; and the
reality is also that while memories of the past flicker from
time to time, the pain of those memories is no longer there.
The fire has gone out.
In all of this, Aunt Margaret never once asked for my
forgiveness. Perhaps she doesn't know that she ever needed
any forgiveness from me; but I knew I needed to forgive her
for me. So I learned the surprising truth that you can
forgive people even if they don't ask for forgiveness, even
if they don't realize that they need it. Forgiveness seems

7.

to depend more on the love of the one who does the forgiving
than on the "lovability" of the one being forgiven.
One last learning. I discovered that there can be an
important meaning of remembering that goes far beyond its
minimal sense of just being able to recall. To remember in
this deeper sense is to keep something from the past alive,
to give it weight in one's life, to make it matter in the
here-and-now. In that sense, I no longer remember the pain
that Aunt Margaret might have caused me. I've forgotten it.
Jamie C.