“I put my sponsor on a pedestal. I looked to her for all the answers and saw her as my mother, friend, mentor—a goddess.”
-Courage to Change August 13
What is mothering? Mothering is just like it sounds: acting like someone’s mother. This can include taking care of responsibilities for another person, including an alcoholic, that they as an adult should take care of for themselves. From my personal experience, this has the power to take away the dignity of the alcoholic. They have a right to become a mature person who is capable of making their own decisions and running their own life. It is also my experience that the alcoholic loses respect for us when we mother them. They become the errant child and not our equal.
Mothering does not only occur with significant others, however. It can easily occur with sponsees as well. With good intentions, we proceed to manage and direct sponsees who need to be treated as capable women. And let me assure you that these alcoholic women will rebel against such control. The problem becomes that they start using the same tricks on their sponsors that they always used with their own mothers. This is part of their disease—not of their recovery. When we can solely be a woman’s guide and only share our own experience, strength, and hope with her, we can be much more useful. The sponsee can make her own choices and experience her own failures—all parts of regaining one’s own dignity from the incredible losses endured by alcoholism.
No matter who the alcoholic is in our lives, we need to turn the focus on ourselves when in relationship with them. There is nothing an alcoholic—drinking or not—likes more than for others to be responsible for their behavior and choices. But even they know that this is not what they need. An alcoholic building back his or her life is a beautiful thing to watch—and an even more amazing journey to experience for the recovering alcoholic. Breaking a destructive pattern of mothering frees everyone in the situation.
We actually have no power over another person. This is an illusion. When I take my hands off and let go completely, it is scary. But remembering that this person also has a Higher Power enables us to recognize that God can do amazing things when we seek him, both for alcoholics and for those who care about them.