Thirty-three years ago when I I was 25 years sober, I thought I had it figured out. So when I found myself in a relationship with someone in active addiction, I was sure I could help. I read him meditation books. I managed his finances. I found him work. I arranged for him to be in the right meetings at the right time, hoping he'd hear just the right thing.
I was doing everything for him except the one thing that mattered: getting sober.
My sponsor finally sat me down and sent me to Al-Anon. In those rooms, I heard something that changed how I see love and recovery:
"If you help a chicken out of its shell, it will be crippled and never walk. If you pull a butterfly out of its cocoon, it will never fly."
I had been crippling him with my help.
This principle applies everywhere, sponsorship, parenting, counseling, friendship. When we do for people what they are capable of doing for themselves, we rob them of the struggle that builds strength. We take away their opportunity to learn they can handle hard things.
The hardest act of love is stepping back and letting someone face their own recovery. It means watching them struggle. It means NOT offering solutions. It means trusting that when they're ready, they'll find their way, not because you arranged it, but because they chose it.
The moment I left, he got sober. Not because I fixed him, but because he finally had to fix himself.
That's the boundary that saves them.
This story is excerpted from the book “How to Become an Oldtimer, Don’t Drink and Don’t Die.”
Available on Amazon too!
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