From Courage to Change of Aug 13:
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. She appeared to be more than I could ever be; she was perfect.
One day she made a mistake and fell from the pedestal on which I had placed her. How could she be so human? How dare she display such imperfection? At first I felt frightened and abandoned. But my Sponsor’s slide from grace led me to see that I was responsible for my own Al-Anon program.
I found that the “answers” she had given me were simply her own experience, strength, and hope, along with her understanding of the Twelve Steps of recovery. I learned that the tools of the program are available to me too. And I learned that , although she was my Sponsor, we were both changing, stumbling, growing members of Al-Anon. Most importantly, I learned that setting a human being up to be perfect creates inevitable failure.
Today’s Reminder
Have I put someone on a pedestal? Am I encouraging anyone to have an exaggerated view of me? Al-Anon helps me see that while we offer mutual support, we must learn to rely on ourselves. Today I will remember that my answers lie within me.
Sponsorship is a friendship made up of two members learning from one another, . . . two people learning a new way to live – one day at a time.
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There was a time when I needed Her to be perfect.
I carved Her image from the ache of my unmet needs—my longing for a parent who would never abandon, a friend who would never misunderstand, a mentor who always knew what to say. She was everything I had ever lacked. I placed Her on a pedestal I had constructed from desperation and awe. She shone there, impossibly radiant. A goddess not of myth, but of survival.
And then She slipped.
She didn’t answer a prayer. She didn’t show up in the way I expected. She made a mistake—at least, that’s how I saw it. The pedestal cracked. And with it, something in me did too. I felt a familiar terror—abandonment’s sharp wind blowing through my soul. How could She fail me? How could the only perfect thing I had ever trusted reveal Her own humanness—or worse, my projections?
But in the echo of that fall, I heard a deeper invitation: to grow up.
My recovery began anew that day. Not in the grand illusion of divinity projected onto another, but in the ordinary grace of shared humanity. I turned to my Sponsor, not for commandments from on high, but for shared stories, real struggles, and the compass of the Steps. He did not rescue me. He walked beside me.
That walk continues. I am no longer chasing perfection—in God, in others, or in myself. I am learning that the sacred lives in imperfection. In missteps. In misunderstandings that become doorways to deeper truth.
The pedestal had to fall because it was never built to hold truth—only illusion. I don’t want to put anyone there anymore, and I don’t want to sit on one myself. I want to stand, bare and unpolished, in the messy middle with others who are doing the same.
Sponsorship isn’t sainthood. It’s shared light in a dark wood. Two wounded souls exchanging lanterns as they move forward, one trembling day at a time.
Today, I will resist the urge to exalt or diminish. I will honor the divine within by staying grounded in truth. And I will remember that no one else has the answers I must discover for myself.
Daily Reprieve 
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