Twelve Lessons from Wonderland: Alice, Moral Injury, and the 12-Step Healing Journey

Most people remember Alice in Wonderland as a strange children’s story about a curious girl, a rabbit with a watch, and a very loud queen.

There is another way to read it.

Wonderland looks a lot like what happens to a nervous system after moral injury. A child sees something deeply wrong, feels it in her bones, and is told to treat it as normal. Logic bends. Words do not match reality. The people who are supposed to protect her either enforce the madness or quietly look away.

In that sense, Alice is not just a girl in a fantasy land. She is every person who wakes up one day and realizes, “This world I was handed is nonsense, and the nonsense is hurting me.” In this article, I use the phrase “Alice in Wonderland moral injury” to describe what happens when a person grows up inside that kind of upside-down world and only later realizes the harm it has done.

The Humble Pie 12-step journey follows the same arc. It moves from falling into chaos, to trying every survival strategy possible, to finally saying, “This is not sane,” and walking away.

Below is a way to see Alice’s story as a map of that healing process.

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Step 1: Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Theme: The first crack in the story

Alice is sitting on the riverbank, half numb with boredom, when she notices something odd. A white rabbit with a waistcoat and a watch. Talking to himself.

Curiosity wakes up first. Then confusion. Then the decision to follow.

In recovery language, this is the first moral injury. The moment when reality wobbles. Something is off. The rules you were taught no longer explain what you are seeing, but you do not yet have language for it.

Step 1 in this journey is that internal moment of

“Wait. This is not right. And if I keep pretending it is, I am going to lose myself.”

The fall down the rabbit hole is that plunge into “Oh. This is bigger than I thought.”

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Step 2: Drink Me, Eat Me

Theme: Shrinking and stretching to survive

Once Alice lands, she keeps finding bottles and cakes labeled “Drink Me” and “Eat Me.” Every time she obeys, her body changes size. Too big for the room. Too small for the key. Never quite the right shape to fit.

This mirrors the second step of the journey: realizing how much you have been shrinking and stretching yourself to fit around other people’s expectations. You become too small to be a problem, or so big that you carry everyone else.

The rules seem simple on the surface. “Be kind.” “Be humble.” “Be easy.” But every time you follow them, you lose yourself a little more.

Step 2 is noticing that your adaptations have a cost.

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Step 3: The Pool of Tears

Theme: Overwhelm and emotional flooding

At one point, Alice cries so much that she creates an entire pool of tears and nearly drowns in it. Other creatures are swept up as well. Everyone is trying to escape the flood she created.

This is what happens when feelings are stored, minimized, and then suddenly surface. The grief, rage, confusion, and fear that were never allowed to exist start to spill over.

Step 3 is recognizing that your emotional responses are not the problem. The problem is that you were taught they were dangerous or shameful, so they had nowhere to go.

The pool is not madness. It is backlog.

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Step 4: The Nonsense Rules

Theme: Circular logic and gaslighting

The “caucus race” scene is a perfect example. Everyone runs in circles. No one really knows why. There are no clear rules, and at the end of the race, the Dodo arbitrarily decides that everyone has won and Alice should hand out prizes.

This is life inside a toxic system.

You obey invisible rules that change without warning. You try to explain yourself, but language is constantly twisted. You are always somehow wrong, no matter what you do.

Step 4 is about naming this nonsense. Seeing that you were not failing the rules. The rules were designed to keep you off balance.

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Step 5: “Who Are You?”

Theme: Identity under interrogation

The Caterpillar asks Alice the most unsettling question: “Who are you?” She cannot answer. Not because she never had a self, but because Wonderland has distorted it. She has been shrunk, stretched, shamed, and scolded. Her sense of identity is no longer stable.

This is the step where you realize that your identity has been shaped by survival. By the roles you were assigned: the good girl, the problem child, the fixer, the black sheep, the golden child, the peacekeeper, the scapegoat.

Step 5 is not about inventing a brand new self. It is about gently asking, “Who am I underneath all the roles I performed in order to stay safe?”

Here, people often begin to feel the first glimmers of sovereignty.

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Step 6: The Mad Tea Party

Theme: Chaotic relationships and boundary confusion

The tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare is one long exercise in absurdity. Time is broken. Sentences never finish. The conversation loops in circles. Alice is talked over, dismissed, and moved around like a prop. Everyone else accepts it as normal.

Many people recognize their family, workplace, community, or faith space in this scene.

Step 6 is where you begin to see:

“This table is not safe. These people are not arguing in good faith. There is no version of me, however polite, that will make this sane.”

This step is about learning to get up from the wrong table, instead of trying to win at a game that is rigged.

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Step 7: The Cheshire Cat

Theme: Ambiguous guides and partial truths

The Cheshire Cat drifts in and out, smiling, offering hints that are both helpful and frustrating. “We are all mad here.” It never fully commits, never fully explains, but it points.

This can represent books, mentors, therapists, teachers, online posts, or passing conversations that help you feel less alone without necessarily rescuing you.

Step 7 is the integration of guidance. You start sorting:

What wisdom resonates in your body

What advice is just another version of Wonderland in a softer costume

You begin to trust your own sense of “this feels true” instead of surrendering your judgment to the loudest or most confident voice in the room.

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Step 8: The Queen’s Garden

Theme: Walking on eggshells

The Queen of Hearts rules through terror. “Off with her head” is always one breath away. Everyone is tense. Cards shake as they paint the roses red, trying to hide mistakes and keep the peace.

This is what it feels like to live around fragile power. Abuse is dressed up as authority. Everyone scrambles to prevent explosions. Children learn to edit themselves in real time.

Step 8 is where you finally name this pattern:

“I have been living in a world where my safety depends on keeping other people calm.”

You begin to see that you are not too sensitive. You were accurately reading danger.

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Step 9: “You Are Nothing But a Pack of Cards”

Theme: The moment of truth

At the trial scene, the whole thing descends into pure nonsense. The evidence is absurd. The logic collapses. Everyone is shouting. Alice grows larger and larger, finding her voice, until she finally says the line that breaks the spell:

“You are nothing but a pack of cards.”

This is the turning point.

Step 9 is not polite. It is not pretty. It is the moment of moral clarity when you see the system for what it is and refuse to participate in the lie any longer.

You are not imagining the harm. You are not overreacting. The court is rigged. The authority is hollow. The cards were stacked from the beginning.

Once you say that truth out loud, even just to yourself, the deck scatters.

Step 10: Waking Up

Theme: Choosing to leave Wonderland

When Alice speaks the truth, the cards fly at her, and she wakes up on the riverbank. The dream is over, but the impact is real.

Step 10 is about waking up in your actual life and seeing what has happened with clear eyes. You are no longer in the fantasy that “if I just keep being good, this will get better.” You understand what you survived.

This step often brings a mix of relief and devastation. The world you thought you belonged to is gone. The newly honest world is still unbuilt.

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Step 11: Telling the Story

Theme: Grief as sacred integration

At the end of the book, Alice tells her sister about Wonderland. Her sister listens and then imagines a future where Alice will grow up and tell these stories to other children.

This is Step 11: allowing the story to exist in language, and allowing grief to be sacred instead of shameful.

You stop asking, “Why am I still upset?” and begin to ask, “Of course this hurts. What did it cost me? What does it say about how much I cared?”

Step 11 is where grief becomes a measure of love, not a sign of failure.

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Step 12: Life After Wonderland

Theme: Breaking the pattern

The final image of Alice’s sister, imagining her grown, telling stories to the next generation, is the quiet ending many people forget.

It is also the heart of Step 12.

Step 12 is where you turn your lived experience into something that can protect and nourish others. Not by fixing them. Not by dragging them out of their own rabbit holes. Simply by telling the truth about what happened to you, clearly and without self-erasure.

It might look like parenting differently. Teaching differently. Setting different boundaries. Writing. Creating. Listening to others in a way you never received.

This is the step where you stop reenacting Wonderland and start building a world where fewer children have to fall quite so far.

Why This Matters for Moral Injury and Recovery

The original 12-step model, stories like Alice in Wonderland, and the Humble Pie framework all share a recognizable pattern. They are descent and return stories. You fall into chaos, lose the old rules, search for meaning, tell the truth about what happened, and then use what you learned to support others.

Seeing your life through this kind of story can soften shame and make room for grief. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” you can begin to ask, “What did I walk through, and what kind of person does it make sense that I became in order to survive it?”

Sometimes the first step out of Wonderland is simply realizing you were in it.

Thank you for reading. If this stirred something in you and you’d like to spend more time with this work, you can explore The Humble Pie 12 Steps and learn more about how I support people as a trauma recovery coach.