| Step 1 | Admit powerlessness over your ability to protect you children from pain and become willing to surrender to your love and not your control. |
| Step 2 | Find hope in the belief that recovery is possible through faith and an acceptance of the fact that we are never really alone. |
| Step 3 | Reach out for help and acknowledge that you are not alone. |
| Step 4 | Take stock of yourself as a parent. |
| Step 5 | Learn to share your parenting issues with others without self-recrimination. |
| Step 6 | Become ready to change by giving up the demand to be perfect. |
| Step 7 | Make conscious changes in your parenting by identifying specific strategies for healthy parenting. |
| Step 8 | Take responsibility for the effect your parenting has had on your children and learn self-forgiveness. |
| Step 9 | Make amends to your children through healthy parenting without over-compensating. |
| Step 10 | Model being honest with yourself and your children and create acceptance in your family for imperfection. |
| Step 11 | Learn to accept your limits in life and fine your true spiritual path while allowing your children theirs. |
| Step 12 | Reach out to other parents in the spirit of giving and community. |
__
A Reinterpretation of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
from the Breaking the Cycle of Addiction (1987)
By Patricia O’Gorman Ph.D., and Phil Diaz, M.S.W.
