True Responsibilities

The goal in recovery is to find balance: we take responsibility for ourselves, and we identify our true responsibilities to others.

This may take some sorting through, especially if we have functioned for years on distorted notions about our responsibilities to others. We may be
responsible to one person as a friend or as an employee; to another person, we're responsible as an employer or as a spouse. With each person, we
have certain responsibilities. When we tend to those true responsibilities, we'll find balance in our life.

We are also learning that while others aren't responsible for us, they are accountable to us in certain ways.

We can learn to discern our true responsibilities for ourselves, and to others. We can allow others to be responsible for themselves and expect them to be appropriately responsible to us.

We'll need to be gentle with ourselves while we learn.

Today, I will strive for clear thinking about my actual
responsibilities to others. I will assume these responsibilities as part of taking care of myself.

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go. Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.

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