I'm in.
Ahhh, forgiveness. That was by far the hardest part of sobriety for me. Forgiving myself, and yearning for others to forgive me. Early on, the shame and guilt was actually useful for me - I needed to feel really bad for a while - or there was a chance I'd just keep on going with the drinking. My conscience tended to conveniently check out when I drank, which of course, is part of the reason I drank - to forget for a while how bad I felt about myself and the mess I was making of my life. When I stopped, I had to suddenly start facing up to things - and it was pretty darn painful. I did what AA and treatment told me to do. I made my list of people I had hurt. I made amends when I could. I did the next right thing every day. I apologized promptly when I made a mistake and hurt someone. It took time. It took work. Slowly, people saw that all that bad stuff was truly in the past. Once others began to forgive me, I knew I had to start working on forgiving myself. This was much harder for me. I had to try to overcome a very long history of never feeling good enough, worthy, deserving. I'm still working on it. Thoughts still pop up - memories of things I did or said while drinking can still make me feel terrible. I figure that's ok. I feel the feeling, tell myself it's in the past and won't be repeated, make an amend to another person if necessary, and try to move on. I may never be done with that process. But hey - normies have to do all those things, too, all of their lives, unless they are perfect, which no one is, of course. Just part of life. The amount of guilt and shame I feel now is much less than in the early days, thank goodness. Time really does heal, and keeping your own side of the street clean eventually really pays off.