When the person you owe reparations to has died, you can still make living amends by changing things about you and how you live your life. These changes can positively impact the people you love and care about. We let emotions and/or unconscious baggage dictate our words or actions, and in the process, sometimes cause people we love, care about, or respect pain. This is a fact of life and relationship, so the question is not will this happen. The action of making amends can help you during addiction recovery as well as encourage sobriety. When you make amends, you are committing to lifestyle changes and a new set of principles and values.

• Remembering how I stole from you makes me sad and fills me with shame.
• If we want to be forgiven, we have to be patient, because it may not come today, tomorrow or the next day.
• Suddenly your spinning around things you feel guilty for.
• We’re telling the world, “Addiction made me behave a certain way. I don’t like it, and it doesn’t reflect the person I want to be in recovery.”

Every person travels it differently, with unique experiences and opportunities. Living amends require a voluntary fundamental redirection. We are not tied to the old behaviors of our disease, or to our character defects.

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For example, if you had an affair for three years during active addiction, visiting your ex to fess up and say you’re sorry isn’t going to help them; it’s going to hurt them. Are you taking the step to clear your conscience at the expense of another person? If so, then you should avoid approaching that individual. The spiritual purpose of making amends is to find inner peace, freedom, release, and rebirth.

She came home to what she described as “a completely different house”. My living amends to my mother is to be fully present in my life so I can be fully present in hers. If we want to be forgiven, we have to be patient, because it may not come today, tomorrow or the next day. We likely promised to sober up in the past, only to revert to alcohol abuse or another drug of choice. Children see it all for what it is, not what we’ve promised.

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Maybe you became flakey and stopped answering a friend’s messages or spending time with him or her. The recovery process builds upon each step in your sober journey. Thus, it only what is a living amends makes sense that step nine is a response to step eight, which involves making a list of all the people that you have harmed and become willing to make amends to all of them.

It takes willingness and courage to reflect on and find a resolution to your mistakes. If the recovering alcoholic is able to do this, then it demonstrates that they are progressing positively and ready for the tenth step. The guilt for your wrongdoings will eventually dissipate and by making an apology and amends, you will be able to let go and live. Many people think of making amends as simply apologizing for whatever wrongs they did in their using, however an apology is not an amend.

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It ranged from promising to fix something around the house to going to a family gathering. Today, I know my words have value whether they pay attention or not. If they didn’t pay attention, I do my best to let them suffer the consequence. If they take my words for granted, sometimes, I take a break from talking. I don’t punish them with silence (although I did do that in the past).

Kelly McGonigal, a yoga teacher and research psychologist at Stanford University, offers a four-step practice of making amends rooted in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Self-forgiveness is often not even possible, and certainly cannot be complete, until we have in some way made amends to those we’ve injured. Making amends is not for satisfying an external standard of morality. Rather, it is an expression of our belonging to the world and our own hearts. The urge to make amends arises when we have dared to face the reality of our impact on others.

The first step is to know that your questions and feelings are normal. The next step is to talk to someone about those feelings. I am not proud of that, but it is the reality of how I used to behave. I also made countless promises to her that I did not keep.

Successfully approaching and accomplishing step nine requires the alcoholic in recovery to be willing to go to any lengths to make amends to those individuals whom they have harmed in the past. Apologizing is difficult for many people, and taking responsibility for your actions can be painful as it may remind you of the harm you have caused. However, this provides you with hope and inspiration to become and remain a better person in all future endeavors. The root of many fears and feelings boil down to guilt and shame.