ACOA Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

In association with books, music and videos recommended by Don't Fall Until You See the Whites of Their Lies.

Step Eleven

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, striving to allow that will and ours to become one and the same.

Perhaps the most important word of the Eleventh Step is the first word "Sought". The concept of seeking implies action and that was a new concept for many of us. We had grown passive when our earlier attempts to deny, minimize, ignore, get revenge for or bury the sexual abuse did not work. It is as if we threw up our hands and said, "What's the use?" We found ourselves withdrawing. We often surrounded ourselves with self-pity, licked our wounds, and regarded much of the outside world as the enemy. We lost faith not only in others, but in ourselves as well, and because we did not believe that we mattered, we were victimized again and again.

The Twelve Steps have presented us with a different way, an active way of living our lives. These Steps outline a pattern for living that challenges us to take charge of ourselves, love ourselves, assert ourselves and find serenity, not in changing others, but in changing attitudes. It is we who must do the seeking, for if we wait for serenity to find us we may be forever lost.

How do we do this seeking? The Eleventh Step says, "...through prayer and mediation." While some of us have used traditional prayers to improve our conscious contact with the God of our understanding, many of us have used less traditional prayers including song, poetry, dance, play, communing with nature, painting, loving, writing and gardening. The list is endless. What mattered was not the way we chose to communicate with a higher power, but the intent to make that contact and improve that contact.

There are those of us who have come to SAA feeling abandoned by the God we learned about as children. We have felt frustrated in our attempts to reconnect with a higher power, and angry when our prayers have seemingly not been answered. One of the hardest things we have to do is to let go of the need to control our higher power. Though we may have acknowledged the existence of a power greater than ourselves, we may have also continued to pray for our will for us, believing that we always knew what was best for us. While we often know what we want, we less often know what we really need.

The issue of trust is brought up again here as it is so often is for us as survivors of incest. We who have been abused have a difficult time trusting. It has taken time, but as we have gradually learned to trust ourselves the trust has eventually extended to others. We are wiser now, more selective in our trusting, but we have found that not trusting anyone leads to loneliness, helplessness and re-victimization. Step Eleven asks that we extend that trust further and believe that there is something within us and around us that is good and powerful if only we dare to seek it. Those of us who have doubted needed only to glance backward at the intricate pattern of our lives and the way the pieces have fallen so differently from the way we would have positioned them ourselves. In doing so we have often found that the difference between our lives as victims and our lives as survivors was the belief that we are truly not alone.

ACOA Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

In association with books, music and videos recommended by Don't Fall Until You See the Whites of Their Lies.

ACOA Redondo Beach incest survivor MBW Family known for genealogy, Harry Potter Easter Party, wedding pranks, divorce pranks, redhead jokes,  the Oh No A Bear Picture, Colorado resident Marvin the Martian, Spirituality Stories, Casper, Amaryzingrace's Tweety, Angela's Taz, Brittny's and Drew's Angelica and Tommy from Rugrats Playground.  The guys won't want to miss my co-worker and model Marina Blackwell's photo gallery.