Step Four: Skeletons in the Closet

Written By Pink Flowers

Time to pull them skeletons out the closet, y’all — for realz!

Step four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

This step can get people bogged down trying to remember every frigging thing they ever did wrong. Nothing about recovery calls for beating up on yourself. If you’re having that kind of experience of recovery in whatever program you in, you might wanna get you a new sponsor, or find a new meeting. I had a kickass (as in awesome AF) sponsor and I’mma share the way they did it with me.

You gonna need an hour, or at least fifteen minutes on four different times. Get you something to write with (make sure the shit works so you don’t get jammed up in the middle). I’mma suggest you get a yourself notebook. First fifteen minutes—set a timer!—write about everything you resent. Just write it like a list. Fuck details and frigging be honest. If it come up, write it down, even if it surprise your ass. When the timer go off, stop!

Do the same thing stuff you fear. Write fifteen minutes. When the timer go off, stop. Do the same making a list of things make you feel guilty. Then make a list of the things you shamed of. Serious, y’all, only do fifteen minutes on each. It ain’t a exercise stroking your ego denying you done experienced anything negative in your life. It ain’t a frigging pity party either. Git in and git out. Magic of the step honesty. Half measures don’t avail nothing.

That’s it. You got your work cut out for you. You can think this is something cute to do someday, or you can grow a pair and dive in. The world needs us well right now, so it’s bigger than what you want. It’s got to be about what we need. Let me know how it goes, y’all.

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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Step Five: Spilling the Tea
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Step Three; The Overturn