Sugar and Sponsorship--Ask Yourself This Question

A young man in India was suffering from health problems due to his love for sweets and sugar. His mother tried everything she knew to change his eating habits, but he could not, or would not, change. It seemed that the more she got after him, the worse his problem

became.

Finally, at a loss for how to help him, she took him to see Gandhi, whom she knew her son admired. “Mahatma,” she said, upon reaching him, “my son is in ill health because of his love for sugar. Could you please tell him to stop eating sugar? Perhaps he would listen to you.”

Gandhi paused for a moment, thinking. Then he looked at the woman and said, “Madame, bring your son back in three weeks. Then I will speak with him.”

Three weeks later, the mother again traveled with her son to see Gandhi, whereupon he told the boy to stop eating sugar. “Why did we have to wait three weeks for that?” the mother asked, before leaving.

“Madame,” Gandhi responded, “three weeks ago, I was still eating sugar.”

I heard that story read last week in a class I’m taking. After we heard the story our teacher asked the class, “Where are you still eating sugar?”

And of course I immediately thought of the gummy fish, and licorice sticks that I love to gnaw on. But I also understood that Gandhi—and my teacher—was talking about something more than sucrose consumption.

This week I’m thinking a lot about sponsorship. I love having a sponsor and there hasn’t been much time in my years of recovery that I’ve gone without one. But again and again I have lapsed in being a sponsor. This week I am reminded why it’s really important to both have a sponsor and be a sponsor.

And it has a lot to do with Gandhi’s wisdom and the question: Where are you still eating sugar?

I have two sponsees right now and as they talk to me about their experiences as recovering women I do feel like I have a lot to share. I work at my recovery, love step work and I’m committed. But I was brought up short (sugar) twice this week by the advice I heard myself offer the women I sponsor.

In one case I was explaining the importance of Step Ten and actually doing a tenth step. Using pen and paper and writing a mini inventory at night—“We write…” I quoted, yeah, it says, “we write…” As a spiritual director I know that this practice we call Step Ten comes

from the Ignatian practice called The Examen. It’s that old—much older than AA. And there’s a reason we do that in writing or out loud with another person: we do it so we really hear ourselves.

So I was going on and on with that sponsee and suggesting a few short questions she might journal about each night, and after I got off the phone I thought, “Whoa—do I do what I am telling her to do?” And the answer was “not really.” So, I needed to start doing a nightly Step Ten both for my recovery and to have some integrity as a sponsor.

With another sponsee, I was talking about relationships with coworkers and trying to see each person as a person, how to be both caring and detached—to find that royal balance: care about the person but detach from, “Do they like me?” and “Is she wrong?” and I heard myself advise, “You have to pray for your coworkers.”

Yep, again I looked at my emotional self and I had “sugar” all over me. I knew I needed to pray for my colleagues.

Maybe I would have gotten there through reading recovery literature, or I might have heard those good suggestions in a meeting. But being a sponsor holds up a great big mirror and asks me, “Are you still eating sugar?”

Do You Have a Softball Team?

This week I am on Cape Cod finishing the book, "Out of the Woods".  A friend has loaned me her beautiful home so I can write all day long. Today I took a break and went into town for a pedicure. I went to a salon I'd never been in and a young woman with a British accent had time to do my toes. When she asked me why I was on the Cape I took a breath and said, “I’m writing a book.” “What’s it about?” she said, running the water for my feet. “Well”, I said, taking a breath, “It’s about women in 12-step recovery.” And I paused, not sure what would happen next. “Are you in recovery?” she asked. And I nodded. Then she said,  “I am too, ten years.” And we had a great conversation.

When I asked her about sponsorship she told me about her sponsor’s advice. “You need to have your own softball team”, she was told. “You need seven people that you can call in as needed; seven who are your team.” “You need seven people in recovery that you know well enough—and who know you well enough-- that you can call them any time.” I had never heard that advice before and I think it is terrific.

I immediately and discretely started counting on my fingers. Yep, I have seven. So that’s another mini guideline we can use for our ongoing recovery. Do you have seven women that you know well enough to call anytime? That means seven women who are watching you recover just as you are watching them. And of course to get and keep that seven you gotta be in meetings on a regular basis because life happens and that seven won’t be the same seven a few years from now. Life happens, schedules change, we get new jobs, we fall in love and sometimes we move to a new town.

Do you have a softball team? Should we get shirts?

The Mother _______ with Recovery

Click on the link below to read a commentary about, “The _______with the Hat”, the Tony award winning play written by Stephen Adley Guirgis. It’s a play about recovery and a play that has stumped all media who want to write about it because the full name of the play—that part with the long dash____can’t be printed in most papers nor on signs or billboards. (I can’t fill in the blank here either or this blog will get blocked by your spam filter).

Ah, well. The play is good and it has won some Tony’s and other awards. And this piece of commentary from today’s New York Times arts section is also good in what it says about recovery realities. Take a look.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/theater/recovery-as-seen-on-stage-and-on-tv-and-in-movies.html

Spiritual Direction

In AA we know the value of having a sponsor and being a sponsor. The standard advice is to “Find someone who has what you want and ask them to be your sponsor”. I always find that funny because when I was a few weeks into recovery I heard that very advice and I saw a woman in my home group who was tall and blonde (I am not), a published author (I was not) and who was well-dressed (always my aspiration) so I asked HER to be my sponsor!

This is also a God story because she turned out to also have things I had not yet seen: good recovery, a generous heart and a sassy way of living her recovery. We did the steps together, attended lots of meetings together and she also told me, “You didn’t get sober to wear sack cloth and ashes so go shopping.” Perfect.

So God is woven in and out. People talk about the “spiritual part” of the program and I remember another good sponsor telling me, “there is no spiritual PART—it’s all spiritual.”

Toward that end some of us add another layer of help to our recovery and work with a spiritual director. This can be someone else in a 12 step program who has the kind of spiritual life we’d like—and like sponsorship we can “ask them how they got it.” Some of us have gone to faith communities, inter-faith practitioners or retreat centers and worked with a spiritual director for a week, a month or a year.

I have done this three times over the years when I wanted to talk thru my conception of God, when I wanted to acquire some new spiritual practices and recently when step work bumped right into reservations I was holding about God and surrender.

So I’m interested in your experiences: Have you tried spiritual direction? What was your motive and did it help your recovery and growth?

Step Four: The Big Book Way

A month ago I committed to a new Fourth Step. Over the years I’ve done several but it was time again. My sponsor was doing one too so it was perfect timing. I considered formats and thought about a couple of ways to write a fourth step and I made a few notes—actually quite random notes.

Then on Saturday morning at my home group the scheduled speaker didn’t show and a woman stepped in whose recovery I admire. She spoke about how she had worked the steps several times and that after a number of years in the program she did it the way it is outlined in the Big Book—“And”, she said, “I added the fourth column—the one that is not shown but that is described.”

I did not know what she was talking about. I’ve read the Big Book many times and I could picture the example--now on page 65—the one that shows the three column format: 1. “I’m resentful at:” 2. “The Cause” and then, 3. “Affects my:” But what was this fourth required column she was talking about?

So I read the chapter. And there it is described on pages 66 and 67: “We turned back to the list, for it held the key…” And “Referring to our list again…we resolutely looked for our own mistakes….Where were we to blame?”

This is the fourth column of the Big Book format for a Fourth Step: My part. My mistakes. My wrongs. My faults. Oh dam.

So now I have begun my new chart: not as hard as I imagined. I have plenty to fill in. And yes I can see and name my part and my faults but I’m looking forward to reviewing this with my sponsor. I know that doing this with her will help me give words to more parts that are mine and that sharing the less than nice, less than pretty, less than honorable parts of me with another person will invite a deeper process of healing to begin.

Sponsorship

When I was new in recovery I heard: “Find someone who has what you want and ask them to be your sponsor.” I always laugh at things we tell the newcomer. How would I know what someone had? So the first woman I picked as a sponsor was tall, blonde, had a degree from Harvard and was a published author: She had all the things I wanted! God laughed though, because she also had a great program of recovery—I had no idea about that -and she had grit! She took me grocery shopping, came to my house many times and took my phone calls at night, on her vacation and while nursing her newborn baby. And she made me read and write and work the steps.

Over the years I’ve had maybe ten sponsors, step sponsors and sponsors in other 12 step programs. Each one the perfect teacher, guide and gift for that stage of my recovery.

Tonight I had dinner with my sponsor and some of what we share is having a long career in AA and –God remains good—she also has experience in building a business while working an equally important day job, she’s an artist, wife, stepmother and a woman who loves clothes and style.

How lucky did I get? That very first sponsor told me one day, after I suggested that my new life in recovery probably meant I should not color my hair anymore: “You did not get sober to wear sackcloth and ashes: buy some new clothes and make an appointment to get some blonde highlights.”

We are met at the level of our needs in this program.

Sponsorship

Today I am reminded again of the gift of being a sponsor. Even though sometimes I have to make myself take time for the phone calls or schedule the coffee dates I am always the beneficiary. I listen, I ask questions and then I hear a woman younger than me describing some feeling, situation or struggle in her life that I have or have had in mine. I offer a suggestion for her situation and then realize that what I have told her is exactly what I need to try as well.

We talk about the “gifts of sponsorship” and often mean receiving the generosity of a sponsor, but being the sponsor is receiving the gift too.