Since getting sober, have you ever said to yourself, “OH HELL NO! I’ll never share that,” or “What could possibly come from me dredging up THAT mess again?”

I don’t know about you, but when I did my 4th and 5th Steps, I came face to face with not only a bunch of character defects that were ugly, but I saw many ways in which I caused hurt and harm to those in my life. While I’m not going to go into the amends process in this post, I do believe it is important for us each to come to some kind of understanding of what is important to share publicly and what about our dumpster fire of a life before we came to A.A. is kept between us our our sponsors.

Let me say first that the decision on what we share publicly is completely up to each one of us. My experience has been that I use the litmus test of, “Will this be helpful to another still suffering alcoholic?” or “Will sharing this help create a space of identification for someone?”  Coming at this from the standpoint of service and helpfulness to others ensures I’m not focused on me and my sad little story. Coming at it from the perspective of usefulness to others helps me not get tangled up in my ego and concern about what others may think about me.

Let me give you a very personal example (snapshot – not an in-depth telling):

• When I was a small child (not completely sure of the math) about 6-7 years old, I was sexually abused by an extended family member for 3 years
• That experience created an enormous amount of psychic damage in my life
• By the time I started drinking and realized what alcohol would do for me (mask, cover up, run from feelings and emotions around it), I threw massive amounts of alcohol “at it”
• I didn’t get recall of the experience until I was 5 years sober
• In early sobriety I swore I would take that to my grave and never tell a soul
• Somewhere along the line, it came out in my work with a sponsor and I also started seeing a therapist(s) about it
• Fast forward to today, I have done a lot of work around that and the feelings and emotions are now something I do not hide from
• From time to time (and not always), I have even found myself referring to it in my story from the podium because it speaks volumes to the same thing that the author of “Freedom From Bondage” talks about in their personal story in the back of the book. I simply did not have the capacity to deal with my feelings and emotions from an early age and alcohol was a great deterrent to dealing with them
• When I do share it, I typically will try and tie it up at the end of my story and talk about an experience of forgiveness I was able to have for my perpetrator and that it came as a result of the power of A.A., the Steps, a God in my life, and some wonderfully caring therapists
• In every single case when I do share it, I always have a man come up to me and thank me for my honesty, courage, and vulnerability to share that because he had the exact same experience and had been holding it in secret for many years. The shame that’s attached to that is some powerful stuff, but being able to bring it out into the light and talk about it is even more powerful. I’ve had the opportunity to share with many, many men in the Fellowship who’ve walked through the exact same experience and have found relief.

That’s my mess and today, I am proud of it – not because it’s something to be proud of that it happened to me; but BECAUSE it happened to me and have taken action, I am no longer letting it define the truth of who I am. I’m finally at peace around it. DISCLAIMER: I have done none of this work on my own or by myself. I have had an army of trusted members of A.A. and many trained professionals help me take the steps I needed to take to get through it.  I highly suggest that if anyone reading this has experienced something similar and is carrying it deep down inside, that you first talk to your sponsor about it and start unpacking it with them so the healing can begin.

A little side note, our literature says we share our experience “in a general way” and that can be defined differently for each person. Please don’t try and make those decisions by yourself.

There are many times in our literature that Bill and others talk about the importance of sharing our “mess” as it were so it can be helpful to others. But there are sometimes we just don’t know if sharing it can cause more hurt and harm. Again, talking to a sponsor about this is helpful, but here’s an excerpt from “Writing the Big Book” – William H. Schaberg, where he highlights some of Bill’s thoughts on “sharing our mess” from The Family Afterward:

“In that chapter, Bill says that sober members and their wives who have wrestled with marital problems “should be only too willing to bring forward mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places” and to share them with the new member and his wife. These revelations—along with the story of their successful resolution—are essential for showing newcomers how they too can gain victory over such terrible family problems. However difficult and counterintuitive it may sound, Wilson encourages sober members to speak openly and candidly with others about these delicate family matters because “in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have—the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.”

Skipping the next paragraph for the moment, Bill opens the following paragraph by noting that A.A.’s have few secrets and that “Everyone knows all about everyone else …,” an observation that flows smoothly and logically from “the dark past is the greatest possession you have” comment just noted. It continues the thought and fits perfectly into the point Bill is trying to make about the need for group members to be open and candid with each other, up to and including the sharing their darkest secrets. Complete openness and honesty about past family difficulties is, he says, one of the important and critical ways we can be truly useful and helpful to each other.”

I use that reference primarily because it highlights that if we are willing to go to any lengths to have a “personality change sufficient to bring about recovery form alcoholism,” then there really is nothing that is off the table. But prudence is the key word here. I cannot stress enough that a conversation with one’s sponsor before taking action in this area will be especially helpful.

In the end, I believe that the things I did and experienced in my life before coming to the rooms of A.A. may be very helpful to that newcomer who just walked in the door who’s burned their life to the ground and feels worthless. Knowing that there are others who’ve walked through similar experiences is the cornerstone of our program. When Bill sat down with Dr. Bob in that gatehouse in Akron and shared his story – THAT was the moment that our mess… became our message. Thank God for A.A. and for members like you who’ve helped me identify so I could stay.

In love & service,