It means mending, or (quite literally) fixing, the relationship. Addiction takes over your life, stealing both your joy and your time, and making it impossible for you to give back to others and live a generous life. Instead, as you pursue a life in recovery, focus on being generous with your time and giving back to others. In this way, you can take the focus off of yourself and choose to live a life of greater meaning. It’s much easier to just apologize and move on, but committing to living your life differently looks different.

Preparing for Making Amends in AA

They take different forms, including direct amends, indirect amends, and living amends. Our scholarships give individuals the chance to invest in their long-term recovery through the sober living programs we partner with. Recipients are expected to pay back 25% of the awarded amount within a year.

Apologizing for the Way You Behaved

Part of this experience is rebuilding family connections through amends. Making amends for harm caused is part of the 12 Steps of AA. The 12 Steps help people with a substance use disorder create lasting change in recovery and reconnect with family to help cement that change. Those who are unfamiliar with the treatment and recovery process may not understand the meaning of making living amends when it comes to sobriety.

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• Making living amends is not just about apologizing to your friends and family.
• You’re left with a mountain of guilt and no one to apologize to, no one from whom you can ask forgiveness or make amends.
• If they receive that scholarship, they’ll pay 75% of that month’s rent.
• Working Step 9 is challenging and you’ll likely need support and assistance as you work through it.
• This scholarship program gives those in recovery the opportunity to fund their first three months in a sober living community.

The person may not even remember the incidents in question from memory, but others may remember them quite well. What comes up may be feelings of guilt, shame, or something else entirely. The theme of making amends is forgiveness, and although it is one of the steps people may not like, it comes at this point in the AA journey for a reason. It means the person has come to a point where they are ready to move forward through this step, but it takes some finesse to do it without causing more harm to loved ones.

• The process of making amends is not about us fixing everything—that comes in time and from going to meetings, attending to our recovery and cultivating a relationship to a Higher Power.
• That action can and probably should have two parts to it.
• To help, we’ve compiled a list of examples of making amends in recovery that deal with ambiguous scenarios.
• When a person has died, you can still make amends for your actions.
• At FHE Health, you’ll learn more about Step 9 and how to handle the worst of experiences.
• Deathbed promises are a common way people make living amends.

Direct Amends

Making these types of life improvements typically requires that you work with a counselor or therapist who can provide an outsider’s perspective and objective view of your life. Making these types of life changes is difficult and requires lots of hard, emotionally-complex work, but it’s worth all the effort in the end. The FHE Health team is committed to providing accurate information that adheres to the highest standards of writing. This is part of our ongoing commitment to ensure FHE Health is trusted as a leader in mental health and addiction care.

As Kessler describes, this woman may decide that her way of making amends is to always answer the phone when someone she loves calls after a fight. Though this cannot undo or directly compensate for the initial mistake, it can serve as living amends that comes through a different way of being in the world. In that https://ecosoberhouse.com/ act, your actions in their memory make you and the world a better place. I will be applying to jobs in the treatment field in the coming months as I continue to gain more time as a sober woman. I look forward to this next chapter in my life, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Living Amends.

Instead, try to reference specific times when you hurt the other person and/or let them down. Being specific also makes the amends that you offer more achievable. You may not be able to rectify “everything” you’ve done to the other person, but you can repair specific wrongs. Yet, to living amends be truly successful at forgiving and releasing past wrongs, you need to go directly to the individual you’ve hurt. When you go directly to the person, real spiritual transformation is more likely to occur. When I first came to recovery, I was certain steps 8 and 9 would be a breeze.

• I know your contribution will help a lot more than just me in the long run.
• Reaching out to people you have hurt can be intimidating.
• It is not enough to help someone only once or to reach out sparingly.
• I knew I had to either find a new place or quit a great job.
• Living Amends helped out my recovery and sobriety immensely.
• Making amends with the people you’ve fallen out with as you’re thinking about mortality and what happens when you die is one way of finding emotional freedom and closure.

Whenever possible, a direct amend is made face-to-face rather than over the phone or by asking someone else to apologize on your behalf. When I received my first month scholarship at a point where I had to decide between my job and having a place to live. I had just started at Tesla Gigafactory looking forward to the big checks and great benefits.

By the time we have a clear understanding of what sober living is, we have no means to pay the up-front money to be accepted into the home. Most of us go back to drugs and alcohol because we have no options but to move back into the same situation that we previously found ourselves in. Every person travels it differently, with unique experiences and opportunities. When a loved one is in recovery, they are working on their mind, body, and spiritual connection to themselves and others.

But, by facing reality and the long-term impact of your actions, and making amends to those you’ve hurt, you’re able to make peace with the past and put it behind you and move forward. On the opposite side of the street are those individuals who simply say, “All of my amends would hurt people. I’m just not going to speak to anyone.” Avoid the temptation to get out of this step.