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“We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.”

— Alcoholics Anonymous

Making Amends features 55 candid, firsthand stories from Grapevine magazine of AA members’ experiences with Step Nine of the AA program. The book is divided into eight main chapters, including sections on Step Eight, parents, children, family members, exes, special cases, financial, and finally, friends and coworkers.

Step Nine is a challenging, life-changing practice that requires preparation, so the book begins with a chapter of Step Eight experiences. In “Ready to Sweep,” the book’s first story, the writer leaves no doubt why these Steps are necessary. “When I was an active alcoholic, I caused physical, mental and spiritual damage to people,” writes member Gary T. In our understandable hesitance to dive into these most grownup of Steps, we sometimes express the idea that our fellows are tired of hearing our apologies, which is where our sponsors point out that when we back our car into a fence, we don’t turn to it and say, “I’m sorry,” we take out our hammer and nails. We make a mend. In “Learning How to Forgive,” D.W.R. realizes what had frozen his emotions, even in making amends: “I wasn’t forgiving them for not forgiving me.”

Parents often top the list of those harmed by our addiction, and in Chapter 2’s story “Making Amends,” C.M.’s mother welcomes his by assuring him that, “You do make amends to me each time you reach out to a newcomer.” In Chapter 3, we see that our vulnerable children are too often the victims of our drinking as well. In “The Luckiest Mom,” Pat T. had given her daughter up for adoption, and when it occurs to her to make her amends, she is miraculously able to do so in person.

The ravages of our disease ripple clearly through our families, and in Keith W.’s article “A Quiet Hatred,” in Chapter 4, his amends took the form of a racial reconciliation that seemed impossible. In Chapter 5, our exes, once our loves, are so often bound to us by negatives, thanks to our alcoholic behavior. In “Scene of the Crime,” Kit K. found enough peace in the quiet of a volcano crater to make a face-to-face amends to her once violent ex, remembering her sponsor saying, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

Garden variety fears fade in comparison to how we feel when the amends we must make are the survivors of those who did not survive our alcoholism. In the Chapter 6 story “The Amends I Most Dreaded to Make,” member D.S. reaches out to the beloved sister of the pedestrian he ran down who eventually died from her injuries, and is taken in as “a dear, real brother.” In Chapter 7, we’re reminded that money doesn’t mix with alcoholism, and the financial collision that often occurs leaves scars deeper than debts. In “Tax Returns,” an anonymous author writes that the bond between the amends-maker and the tax collector was “the silent work of a Higher Power.”

And in the book’s final chapter, we see that friends and coworkers, some of whom have been our drinking buddies, have invariably been in the vicinity as we drank, close enough to be harmed. Clearing our side of the street with them wins us back our self-esteem as well. As B.F. writes about her relationship with a dear friend in “Open and Honest,” “I had to be good to myself and stop dragging the past with me whenever I encountered Lynne.”

As the powerful stories in this book illustrate, we can count on Step Nine to mark, as our co-founder Bill W. wrote, “the beginning of the end of isolation from our fellows and from God.”