How to Forgive

Vol. 3, Issue 48

I walked into my AA sponsor's tattoo shop last week armed with a hastily scribbled list of people I've wronged. My sponsor and I began this nice routine this year where I do my step work in his shop: I get a small tattoo, and then we finish a step after that. Last week, we did the 8th step where, once again, I'm supposed to "make a list of people I had harmed" and promise a willingness to make amends to them all. The actual amends happens later – that’s Step 9. Every year for the past five years – with three different sponsors – I've done the 8th, but my list continues to grow. My sponsor said that he "hasn't added anyone in two years," and I guess he's either lying or a saint or lives a very dull life, but he's a tattoo artist, so it can't be that dull.

Or he keeps his life simple. I think that's it – he's a student of simplicity. That notion used to terrify me because, to me, a drunk idiot, a simple life meant a drab one. I preferred to be freewheeling and mysterious! I am one of the special ones who will avoid consequences! I shall touch the sun!

But more often than not, I was just a total piece of shit. 

And every year, I remember new lows – when I failed to treat someone like they were an actual human with a heartbeat. Sometimes these awful memories will creep in like black smoke, but I'll do my best to forget – if I don't remember them, then, well, what's there to amend? But with more clarity, more sobriety, the more I remember.

Once again, this year's list is longer than last year's. So we read the chapter from the Big Book out loud and then discussed how I should go about mending things with the lucky people on this year’s list. "But what if I think the person I did something to is a bigger piece of shit than I ever was?" He said I should deal with that issue later.

I got stuck on this, though. What if my biggest problem isn't amending but forgiveness? And maybe I should forgive myself first. I should: I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.

*****

So that's where today's real story begins. Our Really Good Shares guest this week is Jenn Sterger. And she, more than any other person, has taught me the actual benefits of the amends process: I'm offering an opportunity for people to forgive. The gift of amends is to help another person get rid of the invisible shackles of a hateful, broken heart.

In the feature pit down below, you'll find both the podcast episode we did with Jenn called "The Rescue" plus the original essay on how we met, how I betrayed her, how I amended, and how she forgave me. Plus, she gave our family a dog. Here's a quote from the podcast interview:

"I would never judge whether or not you were a good home for an animal based on your treatment of me. It was more just like I'm a proponent of rescue. I'm a proponent of giving animals a second chance. Honestly, when I look at it, I guess I'm a proponent of giving people a second chance when I think that they've done some work on themselves and deserve it."

Please share this episode – it might help someone who's still hurting. – AJD

PS: The tattoo I got last week is that small black heart in the top image. Life is weird.

How To Mend (Remix)

by A.J. Daulerio

When I was newly sober my first impulse was to send a mass email to selected friends, family, and former associates to apologize for “whatever I had ever done to them over the years” and have that serve as formal amends. But most good sponsors in 12-Step programs advise against doing that. The actual step here, the 9th one, suggests you “make direct amends wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.” This step terrifies me.

“The steps are in order for a reason,” is a particular refrain among 12-Step devotees, specifically for selfish scaredy cats like me who cannot see how an unnecessary amends could cause more pain for someone else. I didn’t send a mass email, but I forged ahead on a few sloppy, half-ass attempts at apologies. Believe me, it’s better to wait.

While I wait, I keep updating my amends list each year which is filled with the usual people who suffered because of me: ex-girlfriends who deserved truth and compassion but got emotional abuse; ex-employees who I betrayed; friends I neglected; company investors who got burned; a sister who sensed my absence; parents who did the best they could.

Then there’s another list a little more unique: people I hurt from my years blogging at Gawker Media for many of their sites. Both of my 12-step sponsors have suggested most of these people fall under the “living amends” guidelines – in order to not be harmful to myself or to them it’s best to write out a letter to them but never send it or offer up a thoughtful prayer. The real amends is that I leave them alone now and forever. I must still be accountable, this is simply an added level of consideration. The Universe will do the rest.

In 2010, in my former life as a Deadspin editor, Jenn Sterger was someone I hurt very much when I burned her in pursuit of a story. The story – Brett Favre’s sleazy harassment of her while she was a New York Jets sideline reporter – was huge. Jenn shared this story with me in confidence; I did not abide by that. Both our lives changed, albeit for completely different reasons. My career got a boost, but hers disappeared. For most of the decade, she held a justifiable resentment against me as she agonized over being “The Brett Favre girl” and the resulting trauma and employment struggles that came from the ordeal.

Jenn Sterger was relegated to the living amends list because I’m pretty sure she would never want to hear from me again. But the Universe had different plans and we ended up sitting across from each other at a Los Angeles diner called the House of Pies in 2018. Here’s how that happened.

*****

I wanted a dog. My wife wanted to (sensibly) wait a little while because we had a one-year-old son and number two was on the way. But she saw an Instagram pic of some puppies on the shelter kill list and couldn’t resist. One of the dogs – a yellow-white lab mix – resembled the dog I had growing up, so it would be downright unconscionable to not put our name in. Julieanne emailed the rescue shelter and within a couple of hours, she heard back from a volunteer who was eager to bring the dog over for an in-home visit the next day. She grew silent, almost anxious. Then she showed me the volunteer’s email address and my heart closed up a bit. It was Jenn Sterger.

A frantic, cursory search on the internet ensued to clarify that my Jenn Sterger did, in fact, volunteer at a rescue shelter in LA, and yes, of course, she did.

“Well, I guess a dog will die,” I thought.

Or: I could face this, I could derail this run-in as best I could so she didn’t show up at our house with a puppy only to find me standing there like a ghoul.

I quickly dashed off an email to her rescue shelter address and gave a rambling explanation. Reluctantly, I wrote that I would understand if she’d prefer to find the dog another home.

I also wrote that I’d love to finally get the chance to apologize in person for what I did to her. I tried to be as sincere as I could under such short notice and obvious duress.

I sent it off and settled into the interminable wait for a response.

*****

Before this run-in, Jenn did pop up in my orbit from time to time in the past ten years. I made two attempts to apologize to her a little too soon after the story broke but they were mostly for my benefit, not hers. Back then the worst, most broken parts of me still maintained that it was MY story. I used equivocation and denial to come to this conclusion: She knew she was speaking to – and consider this the loosest definition possible – a “reporter” so this was the consequence. She also knew the potential league-wide impact of her allegations since Brett Favre was arguably one of the most famous (and married) athletes on the planet at that time. Favre had harassed a team employee, and the Jets nudged her out the door while they protected him. This was bigger than both of us and I waited almost six months before I published anything. Most reporters would not wait that long with a story this huge.

But Jenn didn’t want that. She didn’t want the attention, or to be considered a home-wrecker or a liar. Her career in sports journalism was just picking up and she didn’t want the distraction. I remember the desperation in her email after we got off the phone:

“AND NOT A WORD OF THAT SHIT TO ANYONE.
I like ya AJ... and if there is a way to expose this dude for the creepy douche he is WITHOUT me being attached to it in any way that is fine. I just want to make it clear I never met him, saw him, etc.”

But I published her account (including the email shown above), and then a third party stepped forward and provided me with the evidence. I don’t even remember their name because they didn’t matter. I just met them at a hotel, handed over an envelope with $10k in exchange for a flash drive with the voicemails and photos, and off I went.

The story became huge and dominated most of the headlines throughout the entire 2010 NFL season. An investigation was opened by the commissioner's office to see if enough evidence existed to suspend Favre.

Jenn disappeared from public view but I heard she did some talk show appearances in an attempt to set the record straight – how she didn’t want it out there, how she never met Favre, how she didn’t get money from Deadspin in exchange for the story. I mostly ignored those interviews.

I did see her "Good Morning America" spot, a two-part interview with George Stephanopoulos that occurred about a year after the story broke where she sounded positively deflated. “I just want my life back,” she said.

*****

When Jenn and I finally sat down at House of Pies, we were already civil and I didn’t think she would choke me, but it was intense. In one of our email interactions before the meetup, she confessed her lingering self-doubt, that maybe she’d lost her right to feel like a victim because she’d confided in me in the first place. I related to that part: true madness resides somewhere between that fear of culpability and the anger of justifiable victimhood. Plus she's struggled with what part of her life should be different: How does it feel to no longer be blackballed? How does it feel to be whole?

She admitted that there are still uncomfortable days and awkward moments stemming from the Favre ordeal. There’s still a version of her that exists in the internet’s memory hole where she will never be a real person; she’s just a plot point without context, without skin. But the thing that I did was more vicious. You see, I knew she was a real person – and I did what I did anyway. I didn’t care if I destroyed her. That’s just the type of person I was back then.

I don’t remember how long we actually talked, but I remember we both walked out of there a little relieved like we’d both just found a therapist who finally understood the excavation tools required to break new ground. Some hurts were still unreachable, though. Time takes time.

*****

The dog's name is Nesta. He’s a bit overprotective of our babies and has freaked out on several delivery people, but he’s just wonderful. I look at him sometimes when he naps on the couch, all angelic in the freaky window sunlight, and I get amazed at how he got here. Jenn Sterger. What a strange and beautiful tale.

And just so you know, I sat on our meetup and didn’t share it until a couple of years after we met up. But I asked her if it was okay to run it and she said “You’re definitely welcome to,” which helps us both inch even closer to some semblance of peace.