In my post 19 – Hard Truth I pointed out that we cause our own pain. Let’s dissect that a bit because there is a tendency to blame and shame ourselves for things we don’t actually own.
My regular OA meeting was disrupted by a “Zoom Bomber”. He interrupted the person speaking and announced that OA was a scam, we only wanted people’s money and that we were a cult. I was in charge of tech that evening so I removed him from the Zoom meeting. On a personal level, I dismissed what he said because I felt I had satisfactory answers for myself to all his statements.
Later that week I met with a person who was also in attendance that evening. She admitted to being shaken by his interruption and was feeling maybe OA was actually a cult.
We discussed it a bit, but I tried to be cautious and let her work through those questions herself. After our call, I spent some time investigating the definition of cult and the principals of OA. I still disagreed with his statements but I did come across a story that made my heart ache. It was about a woman who “needed to be deprogrammed” after being in AA. It was explained that she had just given away her inventory and was on her way home when she thought about the multiple sexual assults she had suffered. At some point she was told if she had been sober she would not have been raped, so she connected some dots in her head and decided the assaults were her fault.
As a child, I was too scared to say anything about what my grandfather was doing to me. Not speaking up as a child does not make the abuse my fault even though I had opportunities at the ages of 7 through 10. Often people who have suffered from various types of abuse blame themselves. It is not their fault. Abuse is abuse.
I don’t believe that the Big Book asks a victim to own a perpetrators’ offense either. The Twelve steps were born out of a religious movement and the Bible has laws about discipline and sex that make it clear that abuse is not God’s will.
When we get to Step 9, where we make amends to people we have harmed, the book says we are God’s people and that we stand on our own two feet, we don’t crawl before anyone. My experience with the steps is that they are meant to build us up in the right places and humble, not humiliate, us where we did damage. I was never felt torn down or shamed.
There is a fine line in understanding the ways that I hurt myself. I am not to blame for the abuse, but I do hurt myself when I tell myself I am a terrible or stupid person.
As we go through steps 4 through 9 we uncover the areas where we caused ourselves and others harm. I will try to explain how I discovered my own shortcomings and how I took responsibility for the wrongs I committed, not the wrongs committed by other people. I hope I can convey how I was able to shake off the chains of being a victim even though I had been victimized. I hope you are able to find this kind of support in our room, and not own another person’s behavior.
“A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.” – Maya Angelou
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