We Admitted We Are Powerless Over Alcohol: What Al-Anon's Step One Has to Do With Recovering Your Soul

Returning to Step One- A Gentle Path Back to Yourself

There is a reason that some of the most listened to episodes of the Recover Your Soul Podcast continue to be the ones connected to

Al-Anon and recovery.

For many of us, that is where the journey began, and it is where my journey began.

It is where we first walked into a room feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and unsure of what to do next.

It is where we heard something that softened us, something that helped us feel less alone. A quiet truth that said this is not your fault, and there is another way to live.

Al-Anon has been such an important part of my journey, and it continues to be a place of deep wisdom and guidance.

In a recent episode, I share an excerpt from How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics and reflect on Step One. As I sit with these teachings again, I can feel how alive they still are for me and how much they continue to shape the way I move through my life and my relationships.

When we take in these teachings and begin to see them through the lens of our own soul journey, something beautiful begins to open. The words move from something we are learning into something we are living. And in that shift, we are invited into a deeper layer of awareness, healing, and connection with ourselves.

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable. That sentence changed my life.

What I notice now, reading it again, I am reminded. We are not even talking about being powerless over the person yet. We are talking about being powerless over alcohol itself. Over what it does to the mind. Over the way it changes behavior. Over something that we cannot control, no matter how hard we try.

So many of us spend years trying to fix what cannot be fixed.

We try to love someone into healing. We try to say the right thing, do the right thing, become the right version of ourselves so that maybe everything will finally settle. And in that process, we slowly lose connection with ourselves.

There comes a moment when we begin to see the truth. That all of the effort, all of the energy we have poured into trying to control something outside of us, has left us with very little left for our own lives.

And that is where something new can begin.

In Al-Anon, we are given the simple and powerful reminder of the three truths. We did not cause it. We cannot control it. And we cannot cure it.

These words can feel both relieving and confronting at the same time. Because if we truly begin to accept them, we are invited to let go of the role we have been playing for so long.

In the Recover Your Soul process, this understanding expands even further. We begin to recognize that we are not only powerless over alcohol or another person, but over everything outside of ourselves. Every outcome, every reaction, every path that belongs to someone else.

And as we begin to accept that, something shifts.

I remember early in my own journey attending a group for women who were in both AA and Al-Anon. At the time, it felt like a very specific identity. But the more I have walked this path, and the more I have worked with others, the more I see how many of us live in both spaces.

Because codependency has its own pull.

We can become deeply attached to the people we love, needing them to be okay so that we can feel okay. We can find ourselves thinking about them constantly, trying to anticipate, manage, or soften what they are going through. We give so much of ourselves in the hope that something will change.

And often, even when we know it is not working, we continue.

There is a powerful image that has stayed with me from these teachings. It is the idea that we have been on a battlefield for so long that we no longer recognize it as a battle. We wake up each day and return to it without even questioning it. We gather our tools, our strategies, our effort, and we try again.

But it is a battle we cannot win.

There was a time in my life when this was my reality, In my marriage, In my family. In the years when I was so focused on helping and fixing that I lost sight of myself.

And slowly, through this work, I began to understand something that changed everything.

No one purifies another.

Your work is to discover your work, and then to give yourself to that with your whole heart.

Your work.

Not theirs.

When we begin to step away from the battlefield, even just a little, we are not abandoning the people we love. We are not giving up on them. We are simply choosing to stop harming ourselves in the process of trying to save them.

We begin to see that each person has their own path, their own journey, their own timing. And that no amount of effort on our part can take that journey for them.

This is where compassion deepens.

Because we are no longer trying to control or change them, we can begin to hold them with more understanding and less resentment. And at the same time, we begin to return to ourselves.

Admitting powerlessness is not a defeat.

It is the beginning of freedom.

If Al-Anon has been part of your journey, I encourage you to continue with it. There is so much wisdom and support in that community. And if you find yourself wanting to go deeper, to explore your inner world, your patterns, your relationship with a Higher Power, and your own healing more fully, the Recover Your Soul process is here to walk alongside you.

There is no right way to do this work. There is only your way.

And wherever you are on your path, you are not alone. You are here to remember your wholeness, and your soul knows the way.

🎙️ Watch to the full episode on the Recover Your Soul Podcast