Looking back, I can now see that the Steps separate Step Four and Step Five so there is enough time for real progress to happen. We need time to recall what happened. We also need to talk to a trusted sponsor or counselor about our story. The benefit of Step Five is improving my relationships with my Higher Power as well as myself. I do this through trust and honest communication. ~ INC., ACA WSO, Inc. Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families, ACA WSO INC.. Kindle Edition.

Steps Four and Five are related
but Four is finished before Five begins.
4. Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves
and to another human being
the exact nature of our wrongs.
What needs to go on your
searching and fearless moral inventory?
The Inventory is compared in the Big Book
to a merchant: A business which takes
no regular inventory usually goes broke.
Taking a commercial inventory
is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process.
It is an effort to discover the truth
about the stock-in-trade.
So after the inventory we figure out
the exact nature of our wrongs.
It’s not a jump we automatically know how to do.
I love this passage in Adult Children of Alcoholics’
Big RedBook that “The benefit of Step Five
is improving my relationships
with my Higher Power as well as myself.
I do this through trust and honest communication.”
When did you last improve your relationship with either?