Amends Is a Change in Conduct, Not an Apology for Hurt Feelings – Frannie S.

About This Speaker Tape

Frannie shares her story at the 46th Women's Conference in Florida, celebrating 40 years of sobriety with a date of February 7, 1970. She grew up in a deeply alcoholic New York Irish Catholic family, describing chaotic holiday scenes with her drunk parents and grandmother that the family turned into comedy. She drank only four times before age 21, but each time brought escalating consequences — getting drunk at six years old in a closet with her sister, then later getting pregnant, then getting married. She traces how cream sherry afternoons in the San Fernando Valley quietly began destroying her family long before she recognized it as alcoholism.

The story takes a devastating turn when she describes the drowning death of her eight-year-old son on his birthday — a tragedy that occurred while she was drinking at a bar instead of preparing his party. She and her husband stood on opposite sides of a hospital corridor, unable to touch or comfort each other, a moment she identifies as the full wreckage of what her drinking had done to her family. Her husband sought to divorce her and take the children, but she manipulated a lawyer into providing false witnesses to keep custody.

Frannie attended AA meetings drunk for three years before asking Dottie McCafferty to sponsor her. Dottie told her she was a loser but took her on, eventually calling her out on her speed use and teaching her how to live sober by hanging around sober people. A pivotal moment came when Frannie read the Big Book passage about people "constitutionally incapable of being honest" and believed it disqualified her — but Dottie reframed it as having less-than-average chances, not zero chances, and told her she would have to work twice as hard.

In sobriety, Frannie earned multiple degrees and an MFA in theater, eventually teaching technical theater at Compton High School where she helped at-risk inner-city kids gain exposure to college life and professional skills. She describes watching former students discover they belonged on a college campus as among the most meaningful experiences of her life. At 40 years sober, she and her husband teach meditation at Terminal Island Prison, all four of her children are sober AA members, and she credits the 12 steps with transforming her from someone hiding under a pier fighting off rats into someone who can stand in front of a classroom teaching words like integrity.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — home group South Bay Survivors, sobriety date February 7 1970, 40 years sober
• 2:00 Family background — alcoholic parents and grandparents, married four times, all four kids now sober in AA
• 5:00 Sponsor's advice to never sanitize her story — women in recovery stop talking about what brought them in
• 8:00 First drink at age six — she and sister Annie stole cocktails from a party tray and passed out in a closet
• 11:00 Christmas tree story — drunk father nails tree to floor, grandmother passes out and rolls behind it
• 18:00 Fourth step and amends with her mother — sponsor explains the agony of watching your child develop the same disease
• 25:00 Son's drowning on his eighth birthday — standing in hospital corridor unable to touch her husband
• 35:00 Asking Dottie McCafferty to be her sponsor — Dottie calls her a loser but agrees
• 42:00 Big Book confrontation — reading about constitutionally incapable of honesty and Dottie reframing it as less than average chances
• 50:00 Teaching theater at Compton High School — inner-city kids discovering they belong on a college campus