We can put somebody on our Eighth Step list and still attach an invisible asterisk beside their name.
I hurt them, but they hurt me first.
I lied, but you have to understand what was happening.
I wasn't there for them, but I was drinking.
I said some terrible things, but so did they.
We had a lot of asterisks.
Some of those explanations may be completely true. Step Eight doesn’t require us to pretend they aren’t. It also doesn’t ask us to decide who was the worse person. It asks us to look honestly at the harm we caused and become willing to make it right.
The word “but” can keep us from doing that. Everything after it becomes our defense, and suddenly we are back to explaining why our behavior was understandable. Maybe it was understandable. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t harmful.
We can tell the whole truth about what happened without using somebody else’s behavior to erase our own. Sometimes growth means finally looking at our part without an asterisk.
Where am I still putting an asterisk beside one of my harms?
