The Wider Hoop

Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, why then shouldn’t we be able to achieve by the same means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect? This is a riddle of our existence… 
— Step Six, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (1952)

The riddle Bill W. describes is familiar to most of us in long-term recovery. The miracle of sobriety can create an expectation that spirituality will solve everything. When it does not—when we still feel afraid, resentful, inadequate—we may assume we are doing something wrong. We double down. We try harder. Sometimes that effort becomes its own form of escape.

One of the most profound insights in Ingrid Mathieu’s research is that this escape can serve a purpose. Spiritual bypass, she writes, can act as a container for greater development. It holds us while we gather the resources we need. A person may not yet have the emotional capacity to process certain wounds. The defence that once protected us from overwhelming pain may keep us alive long enough to build the strength to face what we could not face before. For some people, bypass is a stepping-stone rather than a stumbling block.

This is not permission to stay defended forever. It is recognition that growth happens in its own time. Mathieu uses the image of an onion. We peel back layers, hoping to find something shinier underneath. But the layers do not suddenly reveal a fire truck. The onion remains an onion. Recovery does not transform us into someone else. It returns us to ourselves, more honest than before.

We never step into the same river twice. The struggles we face today are not the same struggles we faced five years ago, even if they wear the same name. Each return brings more awareness, more tools, more willingness. What we resist persists—but that persistence is also a gift. We get another chance. Growth and development are occurring even when we feel stuck. We may feel like we have stalled, but something is happening beneath the surface, even when we cannot see it.

Mathieu argues the hoop is wider than we think. There is room in it for our false starts, our defences, our uneven progress. Bypass is not a moral failing. It is not evidence that we failed at recovery. It is a human response to circumstances that felt unbearable. When we are ready, we outgrow it, the way a snake sheds skin that no longer fits. The program does not require mastery. It requires willingness. We do not have to be “good” or “right” to be spiritual.

She closes with an invitation to trust the process. Whatever our experience, she writes, we will be given everything we need. This is a different kind of faith. Not the belief that things will turn out the way we hope, but the confidence that we have what it takes to meet what comes.