People keep asking me if I'm ready to be a sponsor.
By people, I mean one or two (I think it just scares me so much, that it seems like more). Not people interested in my sponsoring them, mind you. They think I'm ready to sponsor women with less time than I have.
My sponsor says she thinks I'm almost ready, but she agrees with me that I need to have completed the steps, and I'd like to have at least a year of sobriety under my belt, so that's my standard answer when these people ask me whether or not I'm ready.
I go to a couple of meetings that are overwhelmingly attended by newcomers, most having less than 90 days. My nearly 8 months in recovery, and my advancement through the steps to Step 10 seems like a lot compared to that, and I know it seemed unattainable to me when I kept going back out, and didn't have a sponsor and wasn't working the steps, and couldn't put together more than 4 months of continuous abstinence from alcohol. I know, also that I am growing and maturing and changing in my attitudes and understanding, and my spirituality is growing and deepening and is the most precious part of my recovery. So, relative to that newcomer, I do have something someone else may want, and I want to share that and help that person, but I am NOT yet ready to sponsor.
That doesn't mean that I can't help the newcomer, or the woman with less time than I have, though. I can listen to her and offer advice based upon my experience and learning from our literature. I can encourage her to get a sponsor, and take her to meetings where she can meet women who have what she wants and do have enough time in the program to sponsor someone. I can introduce her to my sponsor and other women whose programs I admire. I can help her in obtaining the literature she needs to begin learning more about this program and internalizing its principles on her own. I can be a friend and a sister, even if I can't yet be a sponsor.
Yesterday, a woman from one of my meetings called me. She was really struggling with how her drinking had damaged her relationship with her boyfriend, and wanted my advice on how to see if he was willing to give her another chance. We talked for and hour and a half, with my mostly just listening. She poured out her life story to me, and at the end of our conversation she said, "Pam, you have helped me so much!"
I was on cloud nine the rest of the day! I called my sponsor immediately, who was just as thrilled as I was. I'm going to meet this lady at a women's step meeting I attend on Wednesday evenings. There are newcomers there, but also quite a few women who, like my amazing sponsor, have many years in recovery and work awesome programs. I bought a 12 and 12 to give to my new friend as a "welcome home" gift. I've told her to call me ANY time she wants or needs to talk, or even if she just wants to get together and hang out. These are the things I can do BEFORE I'm ready to sponsor, and I LOVE that I can begin to give what has so freely been given to me.
10 comments:
hey that's great. helping others helps us too! and you've done BRILLIANTLY well the last 8? months!
It's a personal choice when to begin sponsoring. Yours and yours alone.
But...
I'm glad that Bill W and Dr Bob didn't wait until they had a year sober before they began showing others how to integrate the steps into their lives.
I've been sober over years now, and I don't feel prepared to sponsor anyone. But I do feel I can be a friend to anyone wishing to be sober. I guess some of it comes from the fact that I don't feel fully wed to the AA program - that is, I don't practice it as fully as someone who I think acting as a sponsor should. Not that I am a bad example. I just think other people have more experience, strength and hope than I have to offer at this stage.
I'm glad you're doing so well.
-Judith
DG I am the same as you, sometimes someone will make a comment like that to me, and usually it is my own crazy head that makes a big deal out of the other's comment... like "hey, you should sponsor people!" I take it as a compliment, and can see how sponsoring would be good for me.
As with you, when I am ready, I am sure maybe I will be a sponsor.
My sponsor says I need to get through the steps first, because that is the main purpose of sponsoring someone... taking them through the steps!
i'm planning to post this, but when i popped in here, i thought it applicable:
we work in the dark,
we do what we can,
we give what we have
The advice over here is five years continuous sobriety to enter into a sponsor/sponsee relationship. I guess, what Dave said though; your call.
Take it easy. It's been a privilige reading your stuff this year.
Merry Christmas!
Ho! Ho! Ho! DG!
Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year.
Greetings and lotta loves from Malaysia.
p/s I see that my blog has been deleted from your blogroll.... Merry Christmas!
A happy and peaceful and sober 2008 to you!
I felt the same way you did about being a sponsor. I thought I wasn't "ready" or whatever. Someone asked me to be her sponsor and I must have looked at her a little "off" (you know how sensitive we are) and she wouldn't even talk to me about it after the meeting. I don't think its a mistake when someone asks you to be their sponsor. I have every excuse, I have kids to worry about, no time, only a little over a year sobriety, etc. But when I started praying on it, wondering if there was something that I needed to do, someone asked me to sponsor her. And she was drunk when she did and totally lied to me about it (doesn't sound like an alcoholic, does it.) I talked to her about honesty and she fessed up. You know what, I think I'm just too self-centered to be a sponsor, I like to talk and not so much listen. So that's why I do it. I'm too much of a perfectionist, and if they go out and drink (like the 2 sponsees I have right now) I take it as a personal failure. So that's why I do it too. I sponsor people for every reason that I can't sponsor people. I've found that if I pray before I talk to someone, I can only trust that what I said will help... if not right now, they will remember it and remember me and everything is as it should be in God's world.
In other words, my advice is to try it for every reason that you feel you are not ready to try it. No one works this program perfectly. Just rely on God to put the right people in front of you and the right words in your mouth.
Good luck and God Bless.
~ Ann
www.coffeecigarettes.webs.com
Happy and sober 2008 to you! I have never been asked to sponsor anyone and I am not sure I am prepared to do so. My sponsor and I have a pretty loose relationship and I'm not sure I really know how to be one.
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