SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES OF RECOVERY (long form)

Grief and Loss Anonymous

We began 12-Step recovery because we admitted to ourselves we were powerless over our grief and loss and that our powerlessness had made our lives unmanageable. In recovery, we learned and used the tools of recovery to help us regain our power and better manage our lives.

As we moved through the 12 Steps, we made an amazing recovery discovery: the steps are more than just tools to restore us to sanity, each is associated with a spiritual principle that helps us live a fuller, more satisfying life outside of recovery.

While different recovery fellowships – even within the same program – note a variety of words to describe the Spiritual Principle associated with each of the 12 Steps of recovery, the words are essentially subtle shadings of the same color. The following are the Spiritual Principles of Recovery in Grief and Loss Anonymous.

Step 1: Acceptance
Step One has us admit both our powerlessness over grief and loss and that this powerlessness has made our lives unmanageable. Only by accepting that we cannot stop our powerlessness on our own are we ready to reach out for the support of others. Our humility in recovery is a lesson we carry outside “the rooms”; gratefully accepting the support of others in all areas of our life as needed.

Step 2: Hope
We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity because we’d experienced how that had happened for others. Our belief in a Higher Power is founded in hope, which is defined as an expectation and desire for a specific outcome. As we moved through recovery and embraced our Higher Power, we began to experience hope throughout our life. And as we’ve learned in recovery, even if things don’t work out as hoped, everything will be okay. As noted in the next step, it already is.

Step 3: Faith
When we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understand God, we are practicing faith by placing our confidence in a power greater than ourselves. We don’t know how we will experience recovery from our grief and loss, but we are confident that we will. In partnership with God – both in and out of recovery – our faith in our Higher Power encourages us to do the next right thing, knowing the benefits to us and those with whom we interact will be boundless.

Step 4: Courage
It takes courage to undergo a fearless inventory of ourselves, to acknowledge where we have fallen short. Gratefully, our inventory also has had us highlight positive aspects of our life. This inventory not only provides proper direction in our healing from grief and loss but also in our daily lives.

Step 5: Honesty
It’s one thing to acknowledge our shortcomings to ourselves. It’s another to share them with someone else…and with God, who already knows them and has been patiently waiting for us to see them as well. If we hold nothing back when we share where we have fallen short in our lives, we discover that because we are fully transparent, we have unburdened ourselves of soul-crushing weights we’ve carried for a long time. Sometimes for our entire lives. Newly unburdened by this exercise of full disclosure, we find ourselves being completely, but not brutally, honest in all life matters. Our newfound honesty is not just freeing, it is life changing.

Step 6: Willingness
Being entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character requires us to have willingness to allow God to do so. We may want to hang on to one character defect or another because of the “benefit” it provides us. After all, in some cases when we were acting out, our character defects were nothing less than survival traits. Or our willingness may be wanting because we fear that once a character defect is removed from us, we don’t know what will replace it. Whatever our challenge to willingness might be, we find comfort in returning to the Spiritual Principle of Step 3 – faith. We have faith that, with our willingness, God will both remove our defects of character and then replace them with character assets that will empower our spiritual growth.

Step 7: Humility
The humility that we called upon in Step One to admit our powerlessness serves us here as well as we humbly ask God to remove our defects of character. It takes great humility to reach out for support in general, much less the support of a power greater than ourselves. Gratefully, the first word in the first step reminds us that ours is a “we” program. And the more we practice connecting with others in in recovery, the more easily – and eagerly – we do it outside of program. As we’ve heard it said: isolation is addiction, connection is recovery.

Step 8: Love
If there were only one guiding principle in life, the Golden Rule would be a strong contender: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In our life we have committed harms against others, certainly harms we would not want anyone to commit against us. We list the people we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them. Why? Because we love them. We may not love them as we love our family or friends. In fact, we may have great animosity towards them. But in recovery, we have come to embrace that everyone is deserving of love – no matter our true feelings about them – just as we would like to be shown similar grace. This concept of acting towards others with love pays unimaginable dividends in life. We also become willing to make amends to others because we have come to love ourselves. And making right that which we had, in some cases long ago, done wrong, is an act of self-love. We can now better love ourselves, embracing ourselves as one who now always strives to do the right thing.

Step 9: Forgiveness
The Step Nine spiritual principle of forgiveness may seem odd given that in Step 9 we make direct amends to people we have harmed, but forgiveness is at the very core of making amends. In some cases, we make amends to someone that we feel has harmed us even as we feel we are the one who is owed amends. But we must set that aside. As the saying goes, we are responsible only for cleaning our side of the street. And that is what we must do. When making amends to someone we feel has wronged us, we must forgive their wrongdoings so we can make our amends to them freely and without hesitation. What we did was wrong. Whatever anyone else has done to us is completely beside the point. Of course, when it comes to forgiveness, the first person we need to forgive is ourselves. We forgive ourselves because, through our work in recovery, we are not the same person we were when we committed our wrongs. We have worked hard to get to a place where we can forgive ourselves for our past misdeeds. This forgiveness – for ourselves and others – is sign of our spiritual growth.

Step 10: Perseverance
Step Ten is often considered the first of the three “maintenance steps.” In Step One through Step Nine we have done much self-exploration. We have enumerated our character defects and made amends where we have wronged others. But ours is a lifelong program and Step Ten underscores this. We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. Gratefully, having completed Step Nine, we know the tremendous unburdening that comes from admitting our wrongs and making them right. Because of this, we view Step Ten not as an obligation but as an opportunity. Through our vigilance and perseverance, Step Ten allows us – on a daily basis – to free ourselves of the things that might cloud our spirit and keep us from being of greatest service to our Higher Power.

Step 11: Awareness
We are grateful for our partnership with God, a partnership that has gently guided is through the steps and our recovery. In Step Eleven, we seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, asking only for God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. Whether at scheduled times or randomly over the course of our day, we find quiet moments to become aware of what is the next right thing that God would have us do. In this way, we become an extension of our Higher Power’s grace and goodness, sharing our best selves with others and the universe throughout our day.

Step 12: Service
Our recovery has been, and continues to be, a spiritual awakening. Where once there was dark as we toiled in the depths of our grief and loss, we are now living in the light of a new day – happy, joyous, and free. But we did not make this journey alone. We were joined by many in recovery, both those we knew and those who came before us. We were recovering in partnership with our Higher Power and with others who shared with us their experience, strength, and hope. And to continue our recovery and our spiritual growth, we pay forward the grace that has been shown to us, being of service when we can, where we can. We support the meetings we attend by filling service positions. We work with newcomers and others who se us as examples of those for whom the work of recovery has proven beneficial. And we carry our new spirit into all areas of our life, being of service whenever we can to share the light that we have worked so hard to have fill our lives.