There is no power for change unless there is confession

As I approached my 33rd birthday, just a few months before the Millennium, as much as the Y2K bug threatened our world (what an anticlimax that was!), I prepared a book of the first thirty years of my life.  It was written for one purpose: I felt I hadn’t lived transparently as far as my parents were concerned; I wanted to share some of my ‘dark secrets’, as much to clear the slate as anything.  I even had my mother write the first chapter of memories to compensate for the period of my life before my own had developed.

I made a number of confessions in this ‘book’ — it was nearly 100 letter-sized pages long — and it was really only designed for my parents to read, though I have given a few very close friends access to it for a laugh.  But it was a very serious exercise when I wrote it.  It is difficult to describe how I feel reading through it now exactly 20 years later.

In the book I go into some detail regarding the drugs I tried and how much I drank and some of the shameful acts I engaged in.  I tell about the risky mischief I got up to.  I confess that as a competitive bodybuilder I took three courses of anabolic steroids and risked my health just to look strong and lean and to try and win.  (I could squat and deadlift 500lbs/227kg and bench press 330lb/150kg back then.)  I talk of treating the most important people in my life poorly.  It was a confession of sorts because I just didn’t feel I could look my parents in the eye in some ways.

I found my parents worthy of the trust of opening up to.  I even have notes written by my mother in the book; notes in many ways that memorialise that it was a hard read at times.

In being honest, and in finding my parents worthy of that trust that they wouldn’t reject me, intimacy grew, and I was strengthened through a peace you can get no other way.

What we do not and cannot face we cannot and will not change.  The AAs counsel us, there is mastery in honesty, which means the things that have a hold over us crumble when a light is shone over them.

Try these words from How It Works:

“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest...”

There are so many things we would all like to change, but there is nothing really that can change unless we face what we need to.  Honesty is the key to transformation, because honesty demands humility, and in humility is courage, and it’s courage that we need to do what we otherwise cannot do.

The truth cannot harm us.  Only denial of the truth can.