Step 9 and Making Amends – Big Book Study – Part 5 of 7 – Local AA Speakers

Speaking from Sunday night, Orange County Young People's Meeting in Warwick, New York. And with that, we're going to do step nine. Tonight I'll bring up Kathleen. Hi everyone, I'm Kathleen. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, it's great to be here. I want to thank the group for having me. I usually don't get too nervous before I speak, but I do feel a little bit of butterflies in my stomach. I would like to briefly qualify. My sobriety date is May 14th, 1987, and for that I'm truly grateful. I have a home group, the Orange County Young People's Group in Warwick, New York. we meet on Sunday nights. We have a 6 p.m. big book meeting, and we have a 7 30 p. m. open speaker meeting or closed speaker discussion meeting. Sorry about that. And if you're ever up in Warwick, it's an excellent meeting. It's a very old time good hardcore AA meeting. I have a sponsor, and she is a sponsor and a grand sponsor. I have a lot of support of the women and the men in this program. You know, I got sober at a very young age and I really, really struggled for a while and it was really through the grace of God and the fellowship that I came to have in my life that really pulled me out on the other side. I do a lot if service work. I'm involved in my home group I chair the big book meeting and I am going to soon be making coffee for that group I am involved in a retreat for women called Keeping the Spirit Alive and I've been involved in that retreat for about 11 or 12 years and that's been very influential in my life that has really given me a lot of close relationships with women and men through service. I sponsor one woman. I also do service at home. I have three children. I have a husband who's sober, and so AA is really our life. It really, really is. AA is a family affair, and it's really ingrained in our life To briefly qualify, I had my first drink when I was eight years old, and I grew up in an alcoholic home in Whippany, New Jersey up in Morris County and my dad was the active alcoholic and from the first time that I took that drink I felt that warmth that I was really looking for and the big payoff for that first drink was just the calming of my mind my thoughts I always had a lot of racing thoughts and a lot of negative thoughts And having that very first drink, even though it wasn't a lot, calmed that down. And for the next 13 years till I was 21, I was really looking for that and could never fully find it. I had to drink more and more in order to keep my mind calm and to keep the bad feelings that I had about myself at bay. And they weren't always at bay, I was a very depressive type of person. I was not a happy drunk. I was either crying on the curb or suicidal. I never had an in-between, and it's really a miracle that I'm sharing on Step 9 because my mother always said that I was the one person that set the tone of the house, but I could never admit that. I could never admit that I had any faults. I always had this permanent halo over my head, and I really felt like I could do no wrong. And that could not have been further from the truth. My siblings looked up to me, and that really wasn't always a good thing because I didn't have the skills, I didn'T have the confidence in myself that was required of the oldest child. So I was a poor example. Did not do well in school and was always very busy pointing the finger at everyone else and never taking responsibility myself. And really for me, step nine epitomizes that. Step nine for me epit??izes the fact that I need to take responsibility for my life. I need to admit the harm that I had caused to others and make right those wrongs. The only way that I could do that was to take an honest appraisal of my life when I first came into the room. I was able to work steps one through eight in such a way that I found relief, but not the relief that really a lot of people find. I did not work the steps according to the big book at first, and so for quite a few years, I still had that depressive mood about me. And when I finally was able to dive into the big books, and that came at around 13 years of sobriety, 14 years of sobpriety, I finally were able to face the truth, and I finally was able to start feeling some relief from what was going on in between my head. With that, you know, I'm really, really happy. One last thing that I wanted to share was how I came into the program. I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was working at a bank in Cedar Knolls, and right across the street from the bank was the local church, Roman Catholic Church. and every day this big tall priest would come in and he could obviously see the state that I was in. I was not in a good way about me and he started talking to me and for the next two years he proceeded to ask me if I wanted to go on a Catholic retreat called an Antioch retreat and for two years I told him no and then one day he came in and it was, he probably came in during like the middle of the week And he told me, God bless you, that Kathleen, we're having a retreat right at Notre Dame across the street. Would you like to come? And I said yes. Okay. And that was really the beginning of the end. At that retreat, I met two brothers. And those two brothers, I did not know, were in Alcoholics Anonymous. And about six months after I met them, they brought me to my very first meeting. And that Was at St. Peter's Church in Morristown. Big, massive meeting. Um, I didn't know I was going to a meeting. So I went to that meeting drunk and I proceeded to go to the next two meetings drunk. Um, and I can't remember the second meeting that I went to, but the third meeting that i went to was a Sunday night meeting in Livingston and I went to that meaning drunk. And then they took me aside and they say, Kathleen, why don't you, you know, try coming to a meet sober? And I said, I said okay. You know, know, I really didn't think I'd have a problem doing that. But I was wrong. Okay, I really, really struggled with staying sober and really admitting that I was an alcoholic. I really felt that I could control my drinking. You know, it was 21 years of age, and I had only been legal to drink for like four months. And so I really had never taken a legal drink except for the last four months. And I found myself in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on St. Patrick's Day, and I don't know if anyone's familiar with Whippany, but there's a bar called Molly Malone's, and it was always my dream to always go to Molly Maloan's on St Patrick's day, and instead I was in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I did have one relapse at 59 days, and I've been sober ever since. What I wanted to share about the ninth step was how I had to take a look at my life and how I Had to Take a Look at the Harm that I Had Caused Others. And at first, I was not able to do that. My ego really, really was in the way because I was busy pointing the finger at you. My motto was anything worth having isn't worth working hard for and why is this always happening to me? So instead of taking a look at myself, I was always pointing the figure at everyone else. When I was finally able to do an honest fourth step and take a look at my defects and my resentments and fears and my harms done, I could really, really get with this step. And that took a couple years. When I shared my fifth step with my sponsor, the main theme of that step was I want what I want when I want it, and I don't care what I have to go through in order to get it. and I don't care who I have to step on in order to get what I want. I'm going to do it, okay? And I'm just going to plow you down. And that was really my attitude in life. And I didn't really care who i hurt, okay. So needless to say, once I got through steps six and seven and I could see my defects and I started making my list, it was a rather long list. I had one financial amends to make, and that was because I had stolen some money from a job that I had had. Unfortunately, that job had closed up and was no longer in existence, so I was able to make financial amens by placing a donation to someone who needed it. And that really was freeing. Some of the other amends that I really needed to make were to my family. Because of the fact that I had started drinking at such a young age, I really didn't have a lot of social or emotional skills in life. And so one of the major amends that I had to make was to my mom. I had been in a car accident shortly before I got sober and I had had some stuff fall out of my pocketbook. The police never found that stuff that shouldn't have been in my pocketbook and it had scattered all over my car floor. The accident was not my fault. Someone had run a red light. Unfortunately, I was not under the influence of anything at that time. So the police did not search my car. The next day, I knew that there was stuff on my passenger floor that I needed to get out of the car. And my mom and dad wanted to come with me to see my car. It was at a local gas station. And I said no, you know, I said, no, because I knew what was in the car and we had a major fight during the course of that fight. I bit my mother in the hand right here. Okay. I bet her severely enough to where she had to go to the hospital and get a tetanus shot, okay? Because that's the type of person that I was. If you weren't going to do things my way, I was going to make it so unbearable for you that I'm going to bite you, okay. I know that might sound like, you know, that might sounds really, really bad, but that's how I was, you know. I was a tough kid. Mind you, you now, I started getting detention in school in second grade. So I was a tough kid, okay? And no one was going to mess with me. So I bit my mother and I proceeded to walk to the gas station so that I could see my car and get my stuff out, okay. About 18 years go by because that happened when I was younger. And 18 years go by and I finally, I'm sorry, 13 years go by. And I finally make amends to my mother for all the harm that I had caused. And especially for that incident, for me biting her. And I'll tell you, I can't tell you the freedom that that gave me because even with that amends, my mom talked about that until I was sober for about 18 years. so I can't imagine if I had not made amends she probably would have never gotten over that okay I mean what was I thinking you know who was I to to do that to the to the woman that gave birth to me who was i to dothat to the person who loved me most on this earth okay I still feel bad about it but you know what making amends was not just me telling her I'm sorry for what I did how can I write that wrong it was also about staying sober and being a good daughter and stepping up to the plate and doing what I need to do in order to be that daughter and that woman of love and and sympathy and compassion and that's what it was about also It wasn't just about me getting together with my mom and saying, I'm really sorry for all the harm that I caused you. It was it was about following up with the action, too, because without that action. What's an apology? How many times did I make an apology in my life? How many time did I say, you know, I am sorry for everything that I did and not mean it, you now. So I need to follow up these amends with action. um in my big book i have highlighted the ninth step prayer okay and it leads into a section of the book that i would really like to talk about and that's on page 83 the ninth sub prayer says so we clean house with the family asking each morning in meditation that our creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindness, and love. And I say that prayer every day, okay? And it's really, really important. The next paragraph talks about a spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it, okay? And what that means is unless I am in tune to my higher power, I am not going to be able to lead a spiritual life. Unless I have that connection of body, mind and spirit, I'm not going to know what God wants of me for that day. And so without that connection, I am probably apt to expand my eighth step list, which is something that I really don't want to do. You know, I don't want to make my eight step list longer so that I have to make more amends. I rather try and stay on the AA beam and really lead a spiritual way of life. Okay. It goes on to say that unless one's families expresses a desire to live upon spiritual principles, we think we ought to not urge them. And that was something, that was a lesson that I really needed to learn early in my sobriety. Once I got sober, I really expected everyone to follow suit. You know, I expected my dad to get sober. Well, he didn't. He didn't get sober... I have 24 years. My dad has about 19 years, so he didn�t get sober right away. My brother didn�t gets sober. He still drinks and he may not need to be sober. I don�t know. That's really not for me. But, you know, they don't have the spiritual beliefs that I have. And that really doesn't matter to me. As long as I am connected to my higher power in a way that is in line with how I should get through the day, then I am okay. Okay? It says in the book that they will change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words, okay? And that was very important to me because when I got sober being the oldest child, I really, really tried to step up to the plate. And one of the ways that I tried to do that is my mom had back surgery after I had a year of sobriety. And being the oldest child, you know, there were a couple of my siblings couldn't even drive yet. So it was up to me to run the house while she recovered. And I was able to do that. I was able to go grocery shopping every week and go and visit her in the hospital, um, every day and, and, you know, console her and really try and help her. And if, if I had not embarked on this spiritual journey, I would not have been able to doing that. Had I not gotten sober, I would not have been able to do that. Okay? We must remember that 10 or 20 years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone. Okay. And that was very, very true for me. I didn't tell my family that I was sober and going to meetings for a couple weeks and actually had a reservation because I had a six pack of beer in the back of my closet or at least I thought I did but I must have mentioned it to someone because when I felt like relapsing. I went to go and look for the six-pack, and it was gone. And I was really upset. But you know what? It gave me that temporary reprieve that I needed in order to stay sober, okay? It also goes on to say that we should be sensible, tactful, considerate, and humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people, we stand on our feet. We don't crawl before anyone. And that is especially true for me because making amends is not about, you know, beating myself up. It's about righting a wrong and it's about saying to that person, I am really sorry that I hurt you. How can I make this up to you? And is there anything that you need to tell me? Have I left anything out? And when I said that to each and every time, you can be assured that that person had quite a bit to say. They really, really were vocal about what I had done and the things that I needed to remember because I didn't always remember everything that I had been doing. I didn' t remember what I did to people because I was a blackout drinker. um in our guide it talks about the step nine problem of being my ego and working step nine is an ego deflation for me because it allows me to sit face to face with a person and admit the wrong that i had done to them and then to listen and to really focus on the harm that I caused to them, not just the harm that I was aware of but also the harm that they are conveying to me. The solution to that would be to convey kindness, tolerance and love towards not only that other person but towards myself. There were a few amends that I thought I needed to make and I didn't and that was especially helpful because the only way that I really knew that was through the work with a sponsor. And she really helped me with that. I really thought that the amends that I need to make to my friend, because we had lost touch and I wasn't able to go to her wedding and maybe I didn't reply to her invitation to her bridal shower, totally appropriate, I really though that I needed to make amends to her. And that really wasn't the truth, the reason we hadn't gotten together lately and the reason that I wasn't able to go to her bridal shower was because of life circumstances. And so when I discovered that, I gave her a call and this just happened a couple weeks ago. And it took her a couple days to call me back. And when she called me back, she left me a message and she was so happy to hear from me. So the whole buildup in my head that I experienced with, oh, my God, she hates me. You guys know the drill. You know, I'm sure you've thought those same thoughts a thousand times. Wasn't anything that had to do with reality, okay? She was very, very happy to hear from me. She wants to get together. She just had a baby. Her dad just had an accident. She just got a stroke. so I can be there for her too, even though we haven't seen each other in a while. And that really, really helped me because it allowed me to be human. It allowed me to say, I don't always know what's best for me. I don' t always know who I should make amends to and who I shouldn' t make amens to. Some people, like my mom, were totally glaring. Obviously, my mom my dad, my siblings. They were the ones that were most affected by my drinking and my bad behavior. So yes, I had to make amends to them right away. Other people, it wasn't so obvious. One of those people was my sister-in-law. Now, the situation that I had with my sister in law was, I said something that was in my mind that I wanted to say that I shouldn't have said and I said it on an answering machine. Okay? My sister in law was pregnant at the time and I just unloaded on the answering machine and you know it's that situation where God I'm going to say what I want to say And I don't care. And then I hung up, and I thought of more stuff to say, so I called her back, okay? I do not recommend that, okay, I don t, I d n t recommend that. That was a long time ago, that was probably about 14 or 15 years ago. Thought I made amends, didn t want to make amends because everything that I said on that answering machine I meant. Okay? Well, so what? So what if I meant it? That doesn't mean I have to say it. That doesn'T mean that I have to be a brute. There's a certain way to say something and a certain way to not say something. And saying something on an answering machine is not the way to say it, okay? Because you can keep that forever, okay, and I'm sure she kept it for a while. She even played it back to me. Oh my God, that was awful. But you know what? That was where I was at. You know what, I wasn't a very nice person and you know, that's not who I am today. That is definitely not who i am today but that was the sober me for a while. That's who I was for a little while in sobriety and just because I got sober doesn't mean that I got nice. I certainly didn't, not for a while. So what happened was over the course of some years, because of what I did, my sister-in-law had a very, very difficult delivery of my nephew and he came out not too great and I really, really thought, oh my God, was that my fault. And it wasn't, it was okay. But you know, that stress that I put in, in that situation while she was like eight months pregnant was just not the right thing to do. And I needed to make amends and my, at my brother's urging, I, you know kind of apologized. Okay. And then, you know, she, she I, I didn't make amends at that time. So he, a few months went by and he talked to me again, please Kathleen, just apologize to Kathy. And I did another half-ass apology. I just couldn't bring myself because in my mind I was right. In my mind the harm that she caused me was greater than the harm I caused her. My mind is screwed up. I've been sharing lately that my mind is the type of mind that one minute I'll be behind the wheel and I'll be, you know, happy, joyous, and free. And then the next, I'll feel like ramming the person from behind because they're not doing exactly what I want them to do. That is my mind, okay? And now that I'm sober long enough, I know that's how my mind is. So before, I didn't. So my mind just screwed up. So what makes me think that the way that I am making amends, which isn't how the book tells me to make amends is the way than I'm supposed to be doing it. So finally, a third time, I called her up and I had a long talk with her and I made amends correctly because she lived far away. And I made amendments to her that day on the phone and then I made amendments to her when I saw her. And I know Karen doesn't recommend making amends on the phone, so when I did that, I made sure I followed it up with a face-to-face, okay? But had I not talked to her on the phone first, I wouldn't have even been able to see her. She would not have wanted to see me. So me making amends on the phone was the right thing to do at that time. Some years later now, I have followed it up with those actions that I find are so important in terms of making amens and just being of service to my brother and my sister-in-law and my niece and my nephew, or my sister or whoever in my family. And just thinking about them instead of thinking about myself and, you know, having them over for Christmas breakfast and,you know, giving them a nice gift without expecting anything in return. And through many years of that, of just being very gentle with that relationship and being ever mindful that these people are important to me, it has mended. Never thought it would. I never thought my sister-in-law would tell me that she loved me, and she does. And when I go through a hard time, she's one of the first ones to call me. So this step works, okay? One of the other things that I wanted to talk about was how much fear and anxiety I had concerning this step before I got to this step, Before I peeled away the onion, before I did my fourth step and my fifth step and then really discovered my defects and my shortcomings and really, really dove into step eight, I had a lot of fear concerning this step. You know, I hemmed and hawed about it. I didn't want to make amends to people because I was really afraid of how they were going to react. You know? I was not a nice kid. I was not a nice young adult, I was not a Nice Adult and I did a lot of harm and you know what I've shared with you concerning my mother and my sister in law that is that's what I got out of life another amends actually the last amends that I just made which was last year was to a good friend of mine and it was someone that I knew in recovery, and I brought her to, like, her first meeting. I was a couple years sober, and we were the best of friends. And over the course of time, I moved to Texas for a year and went to Texas Tech. And when I went to Alexis Tech, I got pregnant, okay? I came home, I decided to not have the baby. And when I made that decision, that was a decision that I really struggled with. And that was the decision that I could not share with you for a very long time because there was a lot of shame there. It was a no-win situation. And so when I decided to not be able to have the child, to not to have a baby, shortly after that my two closest friends, Vicki and Colleen, were pushed away from my life. I got them on the phone and I said to them, I can't be friends with you anymore. I am in so much emotional and spiritual pain that I have nothing to give to you anymore and I don't want to see you or talk to you ever again. And this is pretty much how I dealt with the losses of my relationship. I was in so Much emotional pain from that decision that I had nothing to give to anyone, let alone myself. Little did I know that that decision, although it wasn't an easy decision, it was a decision that actually altered the course of my life to what it is today. And I wouldn't have known that. But I really needed to make amends to Vicki for that because she was my best friend. She didn't know what happened. She didn'T know that I had what was going on in my life. All she knew was that I was emotionally spent and that the way I left our relationship was probably not the best. fortunately you know my friends today would never they they would they would laugh at me if I ever said anything like that to them you know they'd say oh Kathleen what are you talking about you know we're we're not going to let you be or you know something like that whatever whatever they would say so I really owed Vicki an amends okay lost touch with Vicki didn't know where she was never saw her again. And through the course of God, but I was always willing to make that amends. Through the courseof my recovery, God put someone in my life who knew Vicki. Vicki owns a business in Rockaway. That business is now instrumental in my recovery. And last year, I was able to makeamends to Vicki face-to-face. And now I see Vicki all the time. I didn't see her for like 20 years, and now I see her all the time. So that, making that face-to-face amends, mended that relationship. And really, really, you know, I don't have the day-to?day contact with Vicki. I see here every couple weeks, but we have that love for one another that was always there. And had I not made that amends I would have lost that. I would have never known that that love was still there. I would not have been able to know that. The book really goes into a lot of detail about how we're supposed to make amends and how making amends changes our life. And, you know, the changes that occur in our life are the promises that are read at every meeting. And I would just like to read them. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. I can attest to you guys that these promises are coming true in my life every day, each and every one of them. The amount of serenity that I feel having completed step nine is something that I had never felt before. I just have a peace within me from my higher power that everything is going to be okay. And that peace does not leave me. I may get fearful once in a while about a life situation, but it quickly passes. I have a love of the program and I really believe that it is because of step nine. Because I have cleared away the wreckage of my past, I've been able to not feel ashamed about any of my relationships at all because they are on a spiritual plane and I have amended the harms that I had done to people one of the biggest amends that I ever had to make was to my husband a couple years ago my husband and I had some marital problems and those problems were not just his fault. Those problems were also my fault. We brought two broken people into a marriage, and through the course of this fellowship, those two people, myself and my husband, have been repaired. When I made amends to my husband for the harms that I had done, I did that face-to-face, and I did it in a way that I was able to admit every wrong that I had done that led to almost the demise of our marriage. It wasn't about what I thought he did to me or the fights that we had gotten into or how I felt that he treated me or what I felt that he did to the kids that caused a fight or how much money we had in the checking account or what bill was laid or anything like that. It had to do with how I treated him in our marriage and what led to the situation of where we were at at that time. And what led to that was my emotional inability to express how I feel about the people that I love. And after I went through that situation with my husband, who's a really good guy, I made a decision to let people know exactly how I felt about them when I feel it, okay? And not just think it in my head. You know, because of my upbringing, I was never a very touchy feely person, although I had like everyone in my life is very touchy feely. So I had that in my life, but I could never initiate it. After the discovery of the wrong that I had done, I was able to make a decision with the help of my higher power that when I was thinking about a person, whether I was going to see them or call them on the phone, I was gonna act upon that. If I saw someone that I loved, I was going to hug them and tell them that I love them. And that's just being mindful of the relationships that I have in my life. I had never really been able to do that before because I was damaged. Working Step 9 cured that. Working Step 8 really was able to help me see how much people meant to me. really was able to help me see how much i meant to people because before that you know people were mad at me for everything that i had done because i caused a lot of wreckage um mending those ways was was very very beneficial one of the people that i was ableto do that with was with my sister My sister's 13 months younger than me. My sister is not an alcoholic. My sister has three nice kids. She chose to focus on her career instead of her family at first. My oldest child, even though my sister and I are only 13 months younger, my oldest child is 17. Her oldest child was 6. Thank God I don't have a 6-year-old anymore. Oh, my God. I am so grateful for that because that is rough. But what I was, you know, I was really like nervous because my sister views people successfully by how well they're doing in life physically. OK, so when I made amends to my sister, it was,you know, we had I had called her and said, you know,I'd like to have dinner with you. I'd liketo talk to you. And I kind of put my sister through a lot of crap because her and I hung out together. She was not an alcoholic. I was. I am. And so, you know, I think I kindof marred her. We got very good at rolling the car, my dad's stick shift car, down the driveway and down the street so that we were home by curfew but we could go back out. Okay? That's the type of stuff that we did. And I just caused a lot of grief in her life. And I, you know, never said I was sorry for it because I just felt like I was entitled to do that. You know, I'm the oldest sister. You're going to listen to me. I'm going to boss you around and you're goingto like it. You know? Well, she didn't. So I really needed to amend that relationship. And this step helped me do that? this step, help me say I am so sorry for what I did, for all the havoc that I caused in your life how can I right that wrong and she told me, she said Kathleen I'm so proud of you that you've been able to stay sober, that you have been able to have three nice children that you had been able to mend this and we had a dialogue and had I not opened that door we probably would not have the relationship that we have today. Okay? I love my sister with all my heart. She's my one and only sister, and yeah, I might complain about her. I might say that she's a pain in the neck or that she never calls me, but I can call her. It's not about keeping score. It is not about saying who did what last. That is not what it is about. This step is about mending a right, or mending a wrong. Sorry about that. In our workbook it goes through a prayer and then it talks about how the step nine principle is all about forgiveness and it's not just about me forgiving others. It's not about them forgiving me. It' s about opening that door to a relationship. And it's about me forgiving people for being human, and it's about asking for the forgiveness that I need in my life, you know? That's not a totally easy thing for me to admit, that I mean forgiveness from people, but I do, okay? And by me opening that door and me initiating a dialogue with the people that I had harmed, it opens the dialogue for forgiveness. And it also opens the door for me to forgive myself because I'm the type of person that really would always wear the weight of the world on her shoulders. I was always the worrier. I was the silent worrier I was also filled with a lot of silent scorn so if I felt that you did me harm I wasn't going to talk to you for a week and I had really no problem doing that so within my household I had to make amends for that because that was a huge major defective character when my friends found out that I would do that to one of my kids because they made me mad They, you can imagine, really reamed me out for that. They were not too happy. They'd say, you know, you cannot do that to your kids. You have to talk to them. You can walk away. You can say to them, I cannot talk about this right now. I need to step away because I am too upset or you are too upset. But we will get back when we each calm down. We will get black and we will talk about it. And that is what I started doing. And you know what? Sometimes I still want to have that silent scorn. And so that's something that I need to be mindful of because I don't want to add to my eight-step list, you know? Okay, some of the practices that I mean to incorporate into my life are doing no verbal harm to another person. And that means no lashing out. And that needs to be done and that means that I nee to shut my mouth. And let me tell you, that is not easy for me. I need to zip it, okay? And I do that. Like, I do the zip it thing because that's what I need to do because I always like to get the last word in. You know, I don't want to get in the way of the I do. That's just how I am. I, you know, I probably would have been a good attorney for that, but, you now, I know one attorney who I really like, but all the rest I don' t. Okay. Sorry. I need to make a daily commitment to this step, okay? And what that means is that as long as I have people on my list, I need? be entirely willing to make those amends. But being entirely willing t? make those amendments, when those amens are meant t? be made, God will put those people in my life. And that has certainly been true. A good example was with Vicki. I was always willing to make amends to Vicki, and then when the time was right, God put her in my life. Criticism is not loving. Refrain from it, okay? I am like the world's best critic, okay. I can criticize myself equally as well as I can criticize you guys. And, you know, just ask my family members. They at times feel like they can never do anything right As a matter of fact, when I first got married and when I first had children, I was so uptight about that stuff that no one could open like a bag of potato chips without a scissor. They couldn't open a letter without a letter opener. They couldn'T open a box of cereal and have the slightest little tear in it without me going into like a tailspin. You know what I mean? Who wants to live like that. That takes way too much energy, way too much time and I would rather be happy joyous and free and spending peaceful time with my family than causing a big uprising because you open the bag of potato chips upside down. So that's where I was at with this step. Do no physical harm and what that means is that no more biting, you know? I can't bite my mother. I can'T bite my kids. I can' t bite my sister or my friends just to get my own way. Can' t do that. Can' T harm myself because I feel poor about myself. I can�t do that, okay? Choose always to be helpful, never hurtful. And what that means to me is that There are some people in my life who, yes, although I'm able to see the God in everyone that I meet, sometimes I don't like seeing God in everyone I meet. Okay? So that suggestion to always be helpful has really changed my life. And what it's done is it has made me selfless. Okay. Instead of always thinking of myself, still think of myself a lot by working this step, I am able to think of others. And that's because I really think that I'm not like, um, I'm not, you know, worn down with, with all these unhealthy relationships in my life. I'm able to really say to God, where do you need me today? Please help me to do your will. And that's what God wants me to do. God wants me to be helpful to people. You know, my sponsee, she called me on Friday. Now I'm a huge sports fan. My sponseed called me on Friday She said, can we go to a meeting and finish the first step? The Devils were playing their first preseason game The Yankees were playing that night. And I really didn't feel like going out. But you know what? Being helpful to others is what I need to do. So I was able to go to the meeting with her and we were able to finish her first step. And now we can move on to the second. Being a sponsor, being of service isn't doing it when I want to do it because frankly that would be never. It's doing it when I need to do it. It's doing it when I'm called upon to do it. I don't know if you've gotten the impression that I love being sober, and now I didn't always like doing what I had to do to be sober. For a long time, I didn�t like it, but now I don�t mind it. Now I don�t find it so much because it�s really not a big effort. I don�t always have to give a big effect. Sometimes all it is is just showing up and just smiling at a person. And, you know, before I worked this step, I really didn't feel like smiling a heck of a lot of the time. Okay? Second to last suggestion is no action, either harmful or helpful, is not without effect. And what that means is that we have a powerful presence in other people's lives and in our own lives. And I really need to be mindful of that because when I am interacting with someone, I really needs to be aware of how I'm doing that because I don't want to come off too strong. I don' t want to become meek. I want to be like myself and not working this step is going to keep me from that. Not working this step is going to keep me weighed down with just worry and anguish and anger and resentment and just all those things. Working this step frees me of all those thing. So, you know, it's really, really wonderful. The last suggestion, the only one that I highlighted was give up arguing one argument at a time. You guys know just from the little bit that I told you that that is not easy for me to do, okay? I think I was like born arguing. I would argue, I saw the mosquito land on you. No, you didn't, you know, that type of stuff. I need to give up arguing and I have. Because of that, I have a happy home life. I have an easy life. I have happy work life. I have a happy life I have I have a beautiful life um I graduated from college I've gotten I've grown up in AA and it was because of this step thank you for letting me share applause music music music music music music thanks for listening