What is Mine to Carry?

Steps Six and Seven/ and Four to Follow - May 2025 edition

We’re at the halfway point of the DARE TO BE 12 Step Challenge. This week we’re going to lay down with two steps. And I say lay down because that insinuates surrender. Letting go. Sinking in.

Steps 6 and 7 are a two-step tango. A dance you think you can choreograph but alas, you cannot.

STEP SIX:

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

STEP SEVEN:

“Humbly asked [God] to remove our shortcomings.”

Also, when in doubt, you can do what I do. Turn to Rumi:

We’re talking about willingness day in and day out. Willingness to place things down and look up knowing Someone else has another plan for you.

In The Fix¹, Ian Morgan Cron replaces the word defects with defenses. “Remove all our defenses of character.” Break down those walls we put up. I like that and it feels like an easier entry point.

In sober circles, there is an expression, “drop the rock.” It is a metaphor for letting go of resentments and emotional burdens that can hinder recovery. The phrase comes from a story about a woman named Mary who is swimming toward a boat named "Recovery." As she struggles to stay afloat, others on the boat encourage her to "drop the rock"—which represents her fears, anger, and self-pity—so she can reach the boat and continue her journey toward sobriety².

It’s been said that a good way to enter steps 6/7 is to go back to your inventories from steps 4/5. With as little judgment as you can, look at what you wrote and circle the words that you identify or can label as a defense. Those behaviors you slip into when you feel threatened. These are your rocks.

One thing I’ve learned in my four plus years of sobriety is that some rocks hide very well. We kid ourselves into thinking a boulder isn’t a boulder. Just a little harmless pebble, a silly quirk. That is, until you notice a trend. That pebble goes EVERYWHERE with you. Until one day, you realize your pockets are full of pebbles. And these pebbles grow and multiply in size.

Once you feel their weight, you can’t imagine not carrying them. The weight feels like the thing that holds you. Keeps you, you. The willingness part here is trusting you can empty your pockets. Lighten your load and follow the road to sweet surrender.

Upon first read, these steps seem “simple” enough. They are known in the program as the fly-over steps. Because folks assume they know how to do this. That they already do this.

This two-step dance is really the heart of the program. I think that’s why it’s in the middle chronologically. Because it is the beating center of how you do this work. You have to be willing to look at yourself honestly and trust you are not in control. When we lead from the head and not the heart, it’s a constant re-start.

Let yourself take a moment right now to think of all the ways you block yourself from really inhabiting life. Those habitual patterns, thought loops, dramatic over reactions to even the slightest lob of a ball thrown in your direction. We all have them. We all do this. None of us are monks, are we?

As simplistic as these two steps might sound, you don’t want to (nor CAN you) breeze your way through them. The better approach is to lay on your back, chest to the sky, heart wide open, unclench your fists and drop the rocks. A spiritual Shavasana.

Photo by Andalucía Andaluía on Unsplash

I’ve been carrying my rocks for years. My seemingly harmless humble brags (not just about me but my kids -oh I do this a LOT!) Over performing and looking up and out making sure people see me doing all the things. I collected these rocks because of an acknowledgment wound I experienced in childhood. These wounds appear under the surface of your skin with no blatant bleeding.

For me, I’m beginning to understand that my yearning to be here consistently with this newsletter is a direct result of a wound I’ve carried for decades. This isn’t a direct blow from my parents or caregivers, it is just the natural result of being a young, shy girl in a home raised by a single mother who had no choice but to work a lot. I can look back and understand that as she was prioritizing my needs of safety, shelter, food, other needs flew under the radar. Because there was a certain sense of survival mode to make ends meet. There were sides of me I never showed because I didn’t know if there was space. I didn’t want to burden an already taxed parent. So now, that young girl inside of me feels a little braver and is desperately seeking the mic. To let her words out. It’s likely why I come here, exposing my insides because I never knew how to do it back then.

Many of us carry similar shaped rocks. Here are some I bet you’ve picked up along the way: overachieving, inner critic, self-saboteur, imposter syndrome. If any of these sound familiar and you know the weight of them, here is your permission slip to toss those rocks.

The lighter load can be scary, though. Empty pockets may feel like scarcity.

When my son was younger, his system would react from sensory input/overload and a physical therapist suggested we try a weighted blanket. It worked. Years later my daughter began struggling with sleep anxiety. A friend of ours bought her a weighted stuffed animal pillow to place on her belly as she was trying to go to sleep. It worked.

Whether it’s a weighted blanket or a weighted pillow, placing that on our body delivers a sense of security and safety. These rocks we carry around with us are no different.

Until one day they don’t work anymore. Suddenly all they are doing is weighing you down, preventing true expression. There is a Higher Power that wants to lift you up and is patiently waiting to show you another way.

The merry-go-round effect in all of this is that that imp ego we all have will continue to fill our pockets with rocks. And we won’t even know they’re back. Your ego will nudge you to negotiate with God which rock you’re willing to give up first. But this isn’t a game of bargaining. You have to lay them all out on the table and be willing to walk away, not knowing which rock will be tossed first.

There are no tips and tricks to get you through these two steps quickly or efficiently. You can line up your rocks according to size and look at them and think, “ok, this bolder of a rock here is my biggest character flaw,” place it in your palm and offer it up to God. But that’s not how it works. God looks down and chooses a different rock. A rock that you may not understand its place in things, but one that you have to accept is time to throw away and let sink to the bottom.

I really wish God would pick the monolith that doesn’t even fit in my pocket anymore. That boulder I drag is conflict avoidance. The irony is not lost on me that while I will sidestep all confrontation with other people in my life, I spend a great deal of time fighting with myself. I log so many minutes picking apart my own behavior and arguing to myself about myself - the endless reel of I should have done xyz differently. But if I take issue with something you did or said? Umm, no. Chances are I will sidestep that conversation until it HAS to be had.

I do have frequent conversations with my Divine, though. I ask for discernment frequently. Often when I sip my morning coffee, I whisper a soft prompt to God, please show me what is mine to carry today and what I should place down.

Photo by Jerome on Unsplash

Sobriety has placed me in so many lines for humble pie. It seems I don’t get full enough. Seeking satiation, I revert to my old ways. Until I taste a glimpse of humility on my tongue and I realize, wait, I’ve tasted this before!!

If you are so very good at avoiding the hard and avoiding the deep dark of, why am I like this/doing this like I am, go listen to this podcast episode from Africa Brooke Are you protecting your peace, or is it just avoidance in disguise? Holy shit. It stopped me in my tracks while out for a walk and I actually sat down on the trails, and rewound, listened again and rewound again. I thought I was pretty good at calling myself out on my own bullshit but, ummm. No. I needed Africa to do that for me.

THIS WEEK’S FOUR TO FOLLOW:

Another thing I do as I sip my coffee each day is read the words of

heather marie morse

who writes The Light Today . Her offering from May 7th titled Waxing Imperfection was the perfect companion piece to my examination of the rocks I insist on carrying. Heather invites us to “to pause at the intersection of pattern and possibility.” Often the cosmos can guide us.

Today’s Moon asks:

Are you trying to fix something that actually wants to be felt?
Are you rearranging your to-do list instead of sitting with your longing?
Are you organizing pain into folders instead of letting it break you open?

I say this with love. I say this as a Virgo rising who has alphabetized micro-trauma before feeling it. Who thought a new planner might finally keep the chaos at bay. Who used doing as a shield from simply being.

But Pisces—the sign of the North Node—offers a different path. One of surrender. Of trust. Of divine disarray. It is not neat, and it is not comfortable. But it is where the soul expands.

So today, consider letting the drawer stay messy. Let your mind wander. Let a wave rise without analyzing its shape.

Let the rocks drop.

How about the inner narrator? The one telling you all the tag lines that make up the story of you. Sound familiar?

Elise Loehnen

writes about that this week, and it feels very adjacent to the process we are in when we dip our feet in the step work. Sometimes our character defenses take center stage. The workshop Elise describes here sounds fascinating to me. I hope she comes to the Boston area!

“Once you make your stories conscious, you need to work with them, and that requires understanding how they’ve helped you survive, making them bigger, acting them out, thanking them for their service, and then letting them go.”

What kept me from the work of the steps for so long was my reluctance to swim in all the God talk. Because my relationship with the God of my understanding was messy and meandering. I am learning that it is not a one-size-fits all kind of faith that gets us through. I’ve recently discovered the writing of

RevKarla

who writes Spirituality Matters with Rev Karla. A space for those to go who left church but still let their soul wonder. In You Can Give Up God and Not Give Up Hope she writes:

You can give up God.
At least the version of God that harmed you, confined you, or made you feel unworthy
and still hold on to hope.

Hope was never owned by religion.

Hope lives in you.

Hope rises every time you choose healing over hiding.
Every time you create meaning out of your own experiences.
Every time you trust that life still holds beauty, mystery, and love even if no one is keeping score.

I think it’s important to understand that we don’t all have the same relationship with faith or God or Divinity. Hope, however, that is universal.

Josh Luton

writes Gone Dry. He recently dropped a poem that feels like the perfect companion to what we’re doing here. Go check it out - No One Gets Out of Life Unscathed . In it he asks this question:

“what if you could be wrong? Luxuriate in this question. Bathe in the potential it allows. In a world determined to be right, what if more beauty could be found in being wrong? By unlocking the chains you've fastened Notice the key in your hand Let them fall Listen to the clang as they hit the floor.”

I will say this each week of this Challenge: PLEASE keep in mind that I am not an addiction specialist. I hold zero degrees or certifications in counseling. I am just a person who has a litany of addictions that are super skilled in the game of whack-a-mole. I will be coming here with my experience only and that, really, is the only thing I am an expert in. I am an expert of my experiences, and you are of yours. Let’s keep that in mind.

JOURNAL PROMPTS/REFLECTIONS:

1. Upon first glance, these two steps seem to be talking out of both sides of the mouth. It’s up to us to name and call out our defects but we cannot be the ones to remove them. How does the dance of surrender and responsibility show up in your life?

2. When was the last time you tasted some good ol’ fashioned humble pie?

For the majority of this 12-week challenge, the comment section will only be for paid subscribers. THIS WEEK, I’M OPENING THE COMMENTS TO ALL.

Next week, we’ll return to closed.

REMINDER TO PAID SUBSCRIBERS: TODAY IS OUR ZOOM GATHERING (Friday, 5/9 at 1:00 PM EST). I SENT THE ZOOM LINK VIA CHAT THREAD.

If you want all access to the content and discussions that will transpire over the course of this challenge, you can upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking here

If you can only offer a one-time gesture of support, you can do so below.

ADDED BONUS: PLAYLIST FOR STEPS 6 and 7

The music as a companion to this work has been helpful for me. Here are some songs that remind me, you aren’t driving the bus, Allison. And, also, I can influence the destination when I pay attention.

1. The Fix - How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation For the Well-adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone in Between

2. What does “drop the rock” mean, and how does it keep you sober?