aa & me stories

Fear No More!

Have you ever had fear in your soul?

Fear of sleep, Fear of wonder.

What will happen next causes you’re such a slumber.

With my head in a fog.

I can’t picture my future

So I made the call.

Help me please, I am broken.

My vase is shattered.

My face I can’t see.

I don’t know who I am,

For I have lost me.

Lord, pick me up,

For I am fallen clay

I need you, I can’t do it my way.

I try and try!

I can’t do it this time

For I have left fallen pieces behind.

As days go by, little by little,

I can see my cracks are adhering back.

God with your love and mercy for me

I can see the future you have planned for me.

Written By:

Donna Renee Cumbie

02/12/2022

To be honest, I didn't think you meant ME when you shared your E,S, and H.  You must have been talking to THEM. I wasn't really in need of this SOLUTION you seemed so charmed by. I could figure it out myself. Until I really ran out of "good ideas", I was going to figure it out on my own. You'll see.

Finally I woke up. I'd run the tracks completely.  Now I could HEAR that you were talking to me! Then your solution seemed like the ONLY GOOD PLAN. All of the sudden I could hear you and see how what you offered was the way out for me too. Then and ONLY then could I open my eyes AND ears to the true SOLUTION!

Susan R. 

11/13/2025

I had come back to AA, and I was becoming angry. I was easily agitated, and old behaviors were returning. It was apparent that I was becoming dangerous again—to myself and others—even without alcohol.

I found myself at a birthday party thinking, I could drink that bottle of Patrón, and there isn’t a thing anyone could do about it. I immediately realized I was the designated driver, and my two friends were counting on me. If I drank, I would disappoint them and ruin the plan for the evening. After all, the role of “perfect friend” was my current aim.

As soon as I heard myself truly considering drinking that tequila, I told myself, You need to get to a meeting. Actually, what I said was, Girl, you need to get to a meeting. I hadn’t yet learned the importance of speaking kindly to myself.

I had been active in AA in a different state for nine years. Then we moved to Texas, and I stopped going to meetings. After all, I wasn’t drinking. When I decided to come back, I knew what to do: go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps—and so I did.

I found a sponsor, and she helped me through the hard parts of getting divorced after 27 years of marriage. She was guiding me through the steps. Full transparency: she had less time than I did, and really, I was guiding her… guiding me. It became clear that I needed someone with years of experience—not with sobriety, but with master manipulators. I needed someone who wasn’t enamored with my humor and wit, someone who could see through my intricate masks.

I knew I wanted a new experience. For once, I prayed for guidance. God stepped in, and I happened upon my current sponsor.

By this time, I had found peace with most of my resentments, but it was time for Step Four… again. Fearless and thorough. Fearlessness was never the issue for me. I could always do the hard things, say the hard words, and acknowledge my part. After all, no one was tougher on me than me.

But I had not actually been thorough each time through the steps—not intentionally. My mind was still healing. I was so focused on what I had done to others that I put what others had done to me into a box and shoved it far back into the recesses of my mind. And there it stayed.

I don’t quite know why, but things from my childhood began to come to the forefront of my mind more than 40 years later, and I realized I would have to include them in my Fourth Step. For the first time, I was truly afraid. I was afraid I would feel the anger, the rage, the bitter morass of self-pity. I was in a place where I was no longer angry, but if I wrote all of those memories on paper, it would open the wound all the way up.

I felt like I had just barely made it out, and now I would have to run back into a burning house. Logically, I knew this was the only way to truly heal, but emotionally, I was spent.

Thank God my sponsor had to go on a business trip for a month. She had me doing Steps Ten and Eleven on paper every day. It was exactly what I needed. Apparently—with guidance—Steps Ten and Eleven can be done at any time on your journey through the steps.

I may be eligible for an award for taking the longest amount of time to work Step Four.

God brought me a sponsor who knew exactly how to work with me—how to guide me and how to recognize that I was working slowly and diligently. Doing things slowly is uncommon for me. I’ve recently learned that hurrying steals me from the present moment.

All this to say, I wrote it all down. I did the hard thing. I got angry, but by that time I had worked Steps Ten and Eleven so much that I knew how to turn to my God for comfort. Divine timing.

While Step Four may be “just a list,” it was a hard-fought war in my mind. After all, isn’t that where all of our wars are fought?

“The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” — C.S. Lewis
 

AA gives us the keys to unlock those doors.

The next time you hear someone express reservations about Step Four, be encouraging. Try not to shame them for not moving quickly or for struggling to get started. Words of encouragement go a long way.

Although, I will say, the man at a meeting where I shared that I was struggling with Step Four—who said, “It’s just a list”—inadvertently motivated me. I thought to myself, Forget that guy, and I started it. Still, harshness is rarely a good substitute for kindness.

We learn early on not to “punish people with our rightness.” Not only was acknowledging my part and the role I was attempting to play in each resentment important, but learning how to seek my Higher Power’s comfort while facing painful memories was crucial to my navigation of Step Four.

Julie M.

When you hear the phrase “to surrender”, what comes to mind?

I have learned it means more than how it is defined.

To me I thought of weakness, quitting, giving up.

While that may be true, another truth surfaced up.

They told me men don’t quit, so I drank to defy.

Not quit drinking, that I could comply.

Down the hatch it goes, followed with the burn of the throat.

From that I preached alcohol, wearing my self-centered everyday coat.

I drank like I hated being conscious to where being numb was a prayer.

Like silence was safer than admitting that You were there.

I kept you at arm’s length, but the bottle closer instead.

I was too scared to say, feel or even beg.

Men don’t quit,

That lie kept me choking in silence

White knuckling hell,

Calling self-destruction “self-reliance”

So, I come to you angry, embarrassed, and exposed, with my ego bleeding

out on the floor.

I say, “if surrendering means living, I don’t want to be a man like before”

So here I am, no speeches or excuse left to spin,

Just a soul who is sick of fighting battles I never fucking win.

Take this thirst, this ego, this need to disappear,

I’m done pretending I’m in charge while I’m drowning standing here.

I surrender not because I’m strong, but because I’m done,

I can’t trust myself with power, the darkness or my so called “fun”.

Relieved from setting the heavy bottle down out of my grip.

If I’m going to live at all, You’re the one who has to steer this ship.

Now, “to surrender” wasn’t all that I was taught to believe

It’s ok to hand it all over to You, to take care of what I was thieved.

Another day clean, another raw prayer, no promises I fake,

My old ways, I thoroughly forsake.

~ Tanner B.