What My Sponsor Said

The best thing I did in my first year was ask somebody to be my sponsor. The second best thing I did was ignore every single piece of advice I had been given about how to ask somebody to be my sponsor.

I had been told to find someone with what you want. I had been told to find someone who had worked all twelve. I had been told to wait until I felt "ready." I had been told a lot of things by people who meant well and who had, in most cases, not spoken to me specifically.

What I actually did was walk up to the woman whose share made me laugh the hardest in my first month and say "will you do this with me." She said yes.

Her name is Robin. She is the reason I am here.

Things Robin has said to me

"You don't have to feel like calling. Just call." I learned in year one that I could pick up the phone when I did not want to. That was the whole skill. That was it.

"You're allowed to be wrong about yourself." I had a lot of very firm ideas about who I was. Robin treated those ideas like weather — interesting, not binding. Over seven years most of them have blown through.

"Your worst day sober is still information. Your worst day drunk is just damage." I have quoted this to every sponsee I have had. I did not come up with it. I do not know who did. I just know that on the days when nothing works, when I am white-knuckling and miserable and convinced that sobriety has nothing to offer me — even on those days, I am learning something I could not learn drunk.

"You are not too much for the program. You are the program." This one she said to me when I was about two years sober and was convinced, for the ninth or tenth time, that I was uniquely broken. I had decided that the steps had worked for everyone but me. She let me finish. Then she said the sentence above. Then she said "now pick up the book."

What I have learned about sponsorship

Sponsorship is not a credential. Robin is not a therapist, not a priest, not a coach. She is one sober woman who agreed to take my calls and read the steps with me. That is all the job is. That is the whole job.

I have now sponsored four women. I have told them, on their first call, that I am not going to fix them, that I am going to return their texts, and that I am going to ask them to do exactly what Robin asked me to do. One of them quit after a month. Three of them are still sober. That is a better average than almost anything else I have attempted in my life.

What to do if you don't have one yet

Ask someone. Not the perfect person. Not the person you are intimidated by. Not the person with the most time. Ask the person whose share you remembered on the drive home.

They will say yes. They may have been waiting for you to ask.