Big Book Workshop – Kathy H. – New England Weekend – 2020

Hello, everybody. I think both rooms are joined now. Welcome back. Thank you so much to Aaron and to Judy for their service in the breakout sessions. And I am delighted to introduce our next keynote speaker, an Al-Anon speaker, Kathy H. from Cincinnati, Ohio. Welcome, Kathy. All right. I think I'm unmuted, right? All right. Thank you, Kelly. Also, big thanks to Ann for inviting me to join your New England Big Book study or your Big Book workshop. I'm only sorry I can't be in New England, but what are you going to do? So my name is Kathy, and I am recovering one day at a time. In the Worldwide Fellowship, in the Worldwide Fellowship, I am recovering one day at a time. In the Worldwide Fellowship, I am recovering one day at a time. In the Worldwide Fellowship, in the Worldwide Al-Anon Family Group. It's great to be here with you. I can tell you that I'm not a big fan. I mean, I've heard somebody kick it around. I'm not a big fan of Zoom, to tell you the truth. It's kind of hard just to talk to my, I feel like I'm just talking to myself, which isn't unusual. But it certainly beats a blank. I mean, it certainly beats a blank. And what I think is really important is that I'm not a big fan of Zoom. I'm not a big fan of Zoom. I'm not a big fan of Zoom. I'm not a big fan of Zoom. I'm not a big fan of Zoom. And what I have found to be true here in Cincinnati, at any rate, is that even though we encourage people to use the phone, I have never been on the phone more in my entire life than during this period of the virus. So I want to welcome any of you that have never been to an Al-Anon meeting before, and just invite you, if there's anything that you hear that you can relate to, or anything that you think sounds helpful. You can, I tell people all the time, you don't have to, like, sign a contract to get into Al-Anon. You can simply investigate it. Just, you know, investigate it and see if there's anything in there that might be of help to you. We have a number of people, as you can imagine, who are in both programs. And so, I don't know. It's just good to be here with you. So let me just tell you, I can just tell you a little bit about how I got to Al-Anon, what has changed for me, and how things are today. You know, I grew up here in Cincinnati, and I grew up in a, really, what can I say? I grew up in a loving home. My mother and father adored one another. And one thing that was very clear to me and to my five brothers and sisters, that the major relationship between me and my mother and father was that my relationship in that house was my mother and father's. I mean, I knew they loved me, but I also knew that the two of them came first. So sometimes if I'm in an Al-Anon meeting, I'll hear someone say, oh, where I grew up, we weren't allowed to feel our feelings. Well, I don't know about you, but in my generation, nobody, as a kid, nobody really cared about my feelings. I mean, no, I don't have any memory of, my loving mother or my loving father ever saying to me, how do you feel about that? They loved me, but, you know, we were raised by a generation that just came out of a depression and a world war. They really didn't care that much. If ever I would complain, I mean, if ever I complained, forget complaining. We were never allowed to complain. I grew up 16 years of an education delivered to me by non-education. I grew up 16 years of an education delivered to me by non-education. I grew up 16 years of an education delivered to me by non-education. I grew up 16 years of an really good nuns, but the big message there was offer it up. I mean, just offer it up. Suffering is not all bad. Suffering builds character, but you have to suffer silently or it doesn't count. You know, it doesn't count. So I'm no different than many people my age that I mean, I listened to and a lot of them didn't end up in Al-Anon. but or anywhere, they just kind of took it all with a grain of salt. And I did to a certain degree. But I can tell you this, in my family, humor was really important. And so anything that may have come up for me all the way until I was 21 years old, it was just dealt with. It was just dealt with humorously. This is a story I tell sometimes, but not always. My father had only one brother. And my uncle died just unexpectedly at age 40. He had a massive heart attack and dropped dead. And it was just a shock to the entire family. But my uncle had also been president of the Hibernians. I don't know if you're familiar. You're with the Hibernians. It's just this, the ancient order of the Hibernians. It's an Irish Catholic. I don't know what actually they do. I just know they put on a lot of St. Patrick's Day parades. And I'm sure they do good. But anyway. So here my father's only brother drops dead. I get to the funeral home. There's my dad standing next to the open casket of his only brother. And I go up to my father and I say, Oh, my God, dad, this is such a tragedy. But the Hibernians, they've planned the whole wake and they planned the funeral mass. The Hibernians, dad, have just done a wonderful job here. And my father in his grief turned to me and said, this is nothing. At dawn, they're going to execute a Protestant. So that's the kind of, I mean, that's what I grew up with. It was just like there was always a punchline. To everything. And I remember one time before I found Al-Anon, you know, I went from everywhere looking for an answer or somebody to fix this situation. And I remember going to a social worker who said to me, well, tell me about your family. I was like, my family? Well, I don't know what to tell you about my family, except I come from a very funny family. And everything was dealt with, you know, with a great deal of humor. And she said to me, well, that's, that's pretty sick. And I thought, well, maybe it is pretty sick, but it was really, all those years was a lot of fun. Anyhow, so here I am in this family, this funny family, where honestly, anything I would ever go to my mother with, she would always say, it'll be solved before you're married. I mean, I would think, what are you talking about? I'm seven years old. But that, you know, we just kind of learned to minimize. And I have found, after all these years in Al-Anon, that minimizing is a dangerous thing for many of us. And it's not an unusual thing for women. I'm not a social scientist, but that's my experience. We do, many of us do a lot of minimizing. Well, that's okay. Well, she probably didn't mean that. Well, he probably didn't realize what he was doing or saying or, well, I grew up that way, minimizing. But I also grew up with, addiction to approval. It was very important to me to look good. And when I say look good, I don't mean physically. I mean, to be on the side of right, to look good and to be right. Those are two stumbling blocks to my spiritual life and still are today. But I did. I grew up with an addiction to approval. I was a kid that always followed the rules, unless I thought I wasn't going to get caught. But I, I always had this attraction for boys who broke the rules. Actually, in women, in girls too, some of my best friends were really big troublemakers. But I just always was fascinated by them because, I mean, they didn't care about consequences. They didn't care about whose feelings they hurt. And my whole life up to that point is directed towards not hurting your feelings, learning how to read the room, I mean, I hear it a lot. And now I'm on these chameleon-like qualities that we take on. And that suited me, always waiting to see how you were before I knew how I could be, you know, trying to be there for, for everybody. And it's really, it's a, it's a, it's a fool's errand because as I have found, it just simply doesn't work. But I'm just going to fast forward here. So I'm in college. I'm in college. I'm in college. I'm in college. I'm in college. And I'm dating this really wonderful guy from Indianapolis. He's just as nice as he can be. He's crazy about me. He's patient. He's loyal. He sends flowers to the dorm for no reason whatsoever. Just a great guy. But we're on summer break between my junior and senior year. And he's back home in Indianapolis. And a friend that I know, an acquaintance really, she called me and she said, Hey, I have a brother. He's down in Florida. I have a brother. He's down in Florida. And I said, Hey, I have a brother. He's down in Florida. I have a brother. He's down in Florida. He's coming home for Labor Day. I run out of people to fix him up with. Would you go out with him? Well, that's exactly the kind of challenge I like, you know, nobody will go out with this guy. She's run out of people. So I'm like, sure, I'll go out with him. And so, you know, he came up to Cincinnati on leave from Meridian, Mississippi. And I'm telling you from the very beginning, I was fascinated by him. He was, he never walked anywhere. He swaggered everywhere. And he just said whatever he wanted to say. He did whatever he wanted to do. I kind of noticed the drinking, but I kind of checked that off. You know, I just thought, well, that's, you know, that's being a Marine. I didn't pay much attention to that. So we began this long distance relationship. And the other thing looking back on it that I didn't notice was the anger. And what I know today, and what I share often with women that I sponsor is this. Anger seeks a target. Anger always seeks a target. And I just thought that, you know, I could, I would take this diamond in the rough, and by my patience, and by my long suffering, just kind of, you know, smooth out his rough edges. Yeah, that's what I would do. That would be my job. So anyhow, what happened was this. I graduated from college. He's now in, I don't even know where he is now, Beeville, Texas, or he's in Cherry Point, North Carolina, still in the Marines. I'm teaching school in Chicago. Came home at Christmas. He invited me to his home. He comes from a big family as well for dinner. And we're all around his family's dining room table. And he announces to his family that he has that he has a big announcement to make. Now, I have no idea what announcement he's going to make. I know he's got Vietnam ahead of him. I'm under contract, this little Catholic school in Chicago. And he makes the announcement that we're going to get married. Well, what? We are? Do I say that? Oh my God, no. How will that look? How will that look? And how things looked stood in my way until I found Alan. I'm just going to say until I found you and just assume some of you went, really? How would that look? Oh my God, how would that, if I say, what? We really haven't discussed this. I'm under contract. Sister Marcel is going to kill me. No. What I say to myself is, well, well, well, you know, we probably were. I just didn't know it was going to happen this soon. But yeah, I can go along with that. And that's what set the stage for me, is giving someone else the responsibility for my decisions, for my happiness. And really, that set the stage. I can go back that far in my fourth step, where I began because I didn't want to make waves. I didn't want to look like I didn't know what I was doing. I began to change my plans, get in line. And so that's what we did. That announcement was made in December. We got married in January. I got pregnant in February. And he went off to Vietnam in April. And I could not. Wait to leave Cherry Point, North Carolina and go home. And I was a bride. I knew 10 days in that I was in over my head. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew whatever it was, it was way beyond me. Day 10 of my marriage, I walked out. We were in a little trailer in Havelock, North Carolina, which is outside. It's Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. I walked out. I thought, I don't know what's going on here, but I can't, you know, all my joking and goodwill and this is beyond me. But what stopped me was, how will that look? How will that look? And so what I did was I turned around, walked back to that trailer. And for the next 12 and a half years, waited for someone else to be different. For the next 12 and a half years, I tried to take a round peg and force it into a square hole. Honestly, if I had been honest and a woman of courage and integrity, I just would have gone back and said, I don't know what's going on here, but this isn't working. I got to go home. But no, you know, it was 1970 and no, I'm going to make this work and I'm going to blah, blah, blah. He goes off to Vietnam. I immediately head for the priest that married us, immediately. And as I'm walking out my parents' door, my mother says, I hope you're not going to tell this guy anything personal because that's how we were. You know, you just suck it up. So I go to this priest and I say the same thing. I'm totally befuddled. I'll tell you, a good word in Al-Anon is this, bewildered. I was absolutely bewildered. I have never, well, I'm not taking his inventory. I was bewildered. I go to this priest, say, I don't know what's going on. He's always angry. He's always blowing up. I'm nervous. I'm anxious. I never know what's coming in the door. I'm terrified, you know, to get into a car with him. He drives 90 miles an hour when he's been drinking. I hold this little rosary. In my pocket, I'm saying it like, you know, magical thinking. Anyway, not to knock the rosary, but please. Anyhow, this is what this priest says to me for all that he knew. You know, you come from a long line of pretty aggressive women. I think you're just going to have to take a back seat in this marriage. And this is what I knew. I'm watching you. This is what I knew. That wasn't the answer. I knew that wasn't the answer. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that. And from there on in, after my husband returned from Vietnam, it was like, then I go to the social worker. Well, your family, gee, they're humorous. That's very sick. I went to, you know, I went to a social worker that said to me, you need to speak in I statements. So I'd go home to him and I'd say, I hate you. It's my I statement. That didn't work. I even, I'll tell you, it's totally against my own particular faith, but I even went to a psychic and she came very close. She was like, he's going to find help in the basement of churches. I had no idea what she's talking about. None. And I thought she was the crazy one anyway. So he does, he comes back from Vietnam, decides to use the GI bill to go to dental school, gets in a horrific bar fight before we left. For Columbus, he went to Ohio State, just ripped open his tear duct, necessary to have a tear duct if you want to practice dentistry, had to have surgery. I, in the meantime, am, you know, I spin things. I am, my father, when I was a kid, told me I was going to public relations. I would take, took that story and made it sound like it was this adventurous thing and poor him. And of course, I left, you know, out the part that he was in a bar. Pouring, you know, alcohol all over the floor. I mean, I wasn't with him. Anyway, we go to Ohio State and for three years, at that time, it was a three year straight through program. There was no drinking. And I thought it was because of me. I thought it was because I had been long suffering because I hadn't been a nag because I had been patient because I, you know, I, I hung in there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We, he, graduated from dental school. We come back from Cincinnati and everything blew up in my face. I could not tell you what was happening then. What was happening then was now that he's dentist, he can write himself prescriptions for narcotics. And it wasn't long before he was arrested and thrown out of dentistry. And what followed then was years of, yep, years of unemployment. And that I will tell you, my heart goes out to, you know, the, my country women and men who, who are, you know, who are, you know, who are, you know, who are, you know, who are, who are in the throes of unemployment right now. That is a terrifying, terrifying experience. I didn't know what we were going to do, but at the time his family used to, they had a farm and we lived in this little summer house. So we didn't have to pay any rent. They allowed us to live there rent free. And he just kind of cobbled together employment. He it's not fair to say he didn't work at all. He, he began. He began hunting Fox and selling their furs in downtown Cincinnati. So I would say to people, you know, fur trading is really a reputable profession. Now, the truth is it may have brought in a lot of cash in the 1780s, but in the 1980s, it, it really, it didn't put a lot of food on the table. So he's running scams with the government, getting welfare, cheese, and all that kind of stuff. And he's running scams with the government, getting welfare, cheese. I mean, it was just bizarre. He felt, you know, he, he had this incredible vegetable garden. He started to raise bees. He would take the kids out in the woods and get berries and make jelly. The, this is the, this is the thing I'm going to write this down. Cause I'm never going to remember it. It was, this was a guy that could absolutely do anything. He, he could do anything. He was a, a jet pilot for the Marine Corps. He was a dentist who graduated with honors and he was a good dentist. His vegetable garden was spectacular. His bees loved him. I mean, he could put up jams and, oh God. But to watch that, to watch this guy go down that slippery slope, it, it is, this is what I wrote down and I'll say it now. The grief, you know, I'll tell you the thing that, that connects many of us in Al-Anon, although we have an outrageously wonderful time in recovery, there is an undercurrent of grief that connects us all because this family disease of alcoholism, not only robs us of our hopes, our dreams, our dignity, it also robs those that we love of the same thing. And that, it's painful. It's painful. I've had two sons of mine show up in a court of law in handcuffs and shackles, and there's no inoculation. There's no inoculation for that kind of pain. But this is the good news for us. We don't have to walk through that alone. We don't have to walk through that alone. Sometimes, you know, if I'm, you know, if I've already spoken or I don't know somebody, somebody invariably from another program will come up to me and say, oh, your sons, they're just out there working on their lead. That's not helpful. This is what's helpful. When you come up to me and you say, you know, Kathy, I had a son that had to go to jail and it's hard. That's tough for a mother. That's a heartbreaker. But, but I, I never had to do it alone. And if you need to call me, I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. Here's my number. Call me anytime. That's helpful. When we are willing to share our experience, strength, and hope with others, that to me changes, that changes everything because alcoholism took me into isolation, but recovery takes me into a community of men and women who understand as too few do what the family disease of alcoholism can do. So anyway, I'm very conscious of my time. I'm very conscious of my time. I'm very conscious of my time. I'm very conscious of my time because I am a talker and I, it's an awful, it's well, whatever. Anyway, so here I am. Oh my God, living in this situation. And I've got other family members. He's got sisters who also live on the farm. It was kind of like a compound. And I mean, things are, things are getting nuts. All this trying to cover up, trying to make the, you know, the fur trading industry, like it's really working. And then, you know, I'm getting calls because I don't know how it is in your area, but where we were out in the country at the time, you know, people that's getting developed. So even though my husband's family had lived on this piece of property, I think since the late thirties, now, you know, it's getting developed around them. And we've got all these, I used to call them the Stepford wives moving in. And now I'm getting phone calls because they're missing cats. Now, I love cats, but I'm like, what? I mean, the phone's ringing. Have you seen little Bootsy? We let her out last night, but she hasn't come back in. And I know he now has those infrared glasses and that he's out at night. So I said to him, oh, honey, please tell me that you are not out at night shooting cats. And he said, not the skinny ones. I only am shooting the ones that are killing our quail and our feral cats. And I said, well, I don't know. I'm not going to be out there killing our pheasant for sport. Now, this is what happens to those of us, many of us, I can't speak for evers, but this is what happened to me. In order to live with that, you kind of have to adopt that way of thinking. So me, who would have a house full of cats, if I didn't have these goofy grandkids that are allergic to them, I'm now thinking, well, that's true. Those cats are out there killing our pheasant and our quail. I mean, it's just, in order to live with it, I thought I was adjusting to marriage. I'm trying to adjust to alcoholism. And there's no, well, there's no way for me to do it. There was just no way for me to do it. He had bird feeders all over the place, but God forbid a blue jay came anywhere near any of those feeders. And that gun that he used to sleep with next to our bed, that gun would come out and kaboom, that blue jay would be psht. And I would say, well, I would say to the kids, don't play on that side of the house. Dad's hunting over there. But I, I would say, you're shooting birds. He would say only the blue jays. They're the felons of the bird world. I mean, so this is what happened. That's how it was. It was just crazy. And trying to keep all of this from the kids. That's the other thing. Constantly running interference with my children constantly. No, no, that's not what dad did. No, that's not what dad said. No, this is what dad meant. No, this is what really what I was doing was I, was denying them their experience and trying to make it an experience I wanted them to have. I mean, I used to go out at night, late at night and look up at the sky. And I would say, you know, God, I had a great childhood. I was great for me until I was 22 years old. I was just great. And if you're going to balance my life out with this, this awful anxiety, fear filled adulthood. Okay. But these kids, these innocent kids, this makes no sense to me. I couldn't square that with a merciful and loving and compassionate God that I had been raised with. And that my, that I had a faith in. I couldn't make sense of it. So very quickly, what happened was this. One of my sister in-laws went to Al-Anon and she went to three meetings. Women in that meeting said to her, yeah, now you might want to go to the meeting across the hall. And so she joined Alcoholics Anonymous. And then a second sister-in-law joined, a third sister-in-law joined. And before I knew it, I had four sister-in-laws in Alcoholics Anonymous and they are still in Alcoholics Anonymous today. And they are very active members. And I am thick as, I just, they're the best. They're the greatest. What a gift in my life, those four sister-in-laws. It's a stretch for some of them because of politics. But anyway, they are in recovery and God love them. So I knew what they wanted. I knew they were talking about Al-Anon, talking about family disease. And I thought, no way. I hate group things. Really, my family makes fun of group things like that. I mean, my family of origin, we have that mean, cutting Irish sense of humor. I mean, groups? Forget it. I mean, there's so many groups. I mean, there's so many get it. But this is what I noticed. They were changing. They were changing. And that is attractive. That was attractive to me. So I thought to myself, if this is, as they're saying, a family disease, and I'm pregnant now with child number seven, I am never going to get away from this. I'm never going to get away from this. I'm going to be surrounded by alcoholism for the rest of my life. And I always had this eight-year plan at the end of my life. I always thought because he was four years older than I was, and because women generally outlive men by four years, I'd have these eight years at the end of my life. I just called it my eight-year plan. But now they're telling me it's a family disease. There goes my eight-year plan right out the window. So I went to Al-Anon. April 5th, 1982, I went to Al-Anon, and I was just going to investigate. And that's what I would suggest to anybody that's interested. I went to a beginner's meeting, and I remember it as clearly as I'm sitting here today as I did in 1982. I walked into that beginner's meeting, and that woman said to me, alcoholism is a disease that you did not cause, you cannot cure, and you cannot control it. And we say today, we don't want to contribute to it either. That was the first time anybody suggested to me that it was not my job. It was my job as a loving wife to fix this thing. The first time anybody really gave me permission to say, you know what? Good luck, but I can't fix this. And not defend, not justify, not criticize, just to step back and say, you know, I can't, I can't, I just can't fix this. It was like somebody honestly had taken a weight off of my body. And then she said to me, this is a disease, and Al-Anon is here so that you can recover from its effects. That's the first, I heard that the first meeting I went to, and I will tell you this, if you've never been to Al-Anon, be very careful about meetings that you may attend, because I'll tell you, I go by pronouns. When I hear I, this is what works for me, this is what I found, that's usually where I want to be. When I hear he, she, them, unless it's in a beginner's meeting where we let people just, you know, blow off steam, no, no. It is so important for my recovery that we keep, that we say it all the time, keep the focus on yourself and not on the alcoholic, because this is a family disease. And I had to look at how it had affected me. And so, you know, we say it in the beginning of our introductory, in our opening, our welcome, the opinions expect, now, maybe we say it in our closing, the opinions, we say it in our closing, the opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you like, leave the rest. And that's true for opinions, but it's not true about our principles. And in Al-Anon, we have four primary ideas. Number one, we are powerless over alcoholism. Secondly, we come, we, there is a power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity. Third, changed, we have to change our attitudes and our actions. And fourth, we got to be willing to give it away and to be of service. I mean, those are, those are non-negotiables. And I know from doing a number of beginner meetings, when we had them in person, it's hard when people first come in, because I think many people think we're going to give them a list of do's and don'ts. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And we're going to fix it. And you will, that kid of yours, he'll stop drinking or that husband of yours, he'll, he'll recover, whatever. And that's just, you know, that's, that's, that's not how it works. But what we do is we start to do what many of us, I know I didn't for 12 and a half years, didn't pay a damn bit of attention to me because I was so focused on him. I was so focused on him. I had to wait to see how he was. So I knew what was safe to be. And it's just, well, anyway, it's, it just, it just didn't work. And the other piece is this, that's my latest, what do I want to say? Grant, I don't know, soapbox. Recovery does not take part, recovery doesn't take place in meetings. I go to meetings. I go to meetings because it's in meetings that I receive the, the hope of recovery. I go to meetings so I can listen to your experience so I can gain from your strength. And so that I can grab some hope from you so that when I go out, I can begin this process of recovery in my daily life one day at a time, because it's true. I'm sure it might be true. And I don't know, but I know it is in Eleanor. And I mean, I know women and men go into meetings forever, but nothing's ever changed. They just go to meetings. I guess that's all right for them, but it would never be, it would never be okay for me. So I'm going to this Eleanor in April of 82, and I'm learning things that were just foreign. When I look back on it, it's so strange, but really the whole damn program is rooted in a spirituality of letting go, of, of letting go. I've had, I've had the same sponsor. Prior recovery in, in Eleanor, she was over this morning for coffee. And after 38 years, she said something I never have heard her say before. She said to me, Kathy, you can watch the opera, but you can't listen to the words. I was like, what, what, what does that even mean? But I think I know what it means. I'll tell you the other thing she says, cause I'll never remember later on. She will say to me and has for, 38 years, Kathy, let God sort that out. Let God sort that out. I mean, that's, that's a big one for me, you know, to let, to let God sort it out, to remember. And I just said this to somebody and it's in our literature, although it's a Victor Hugo quote, but you can find it in our one, in our courage change book, God is awake. And whatever that idea of God that you have, I have to remember. Particularly when things are tough, that God is awake. I have had in the last three months, two of my kids start divorce proceedings, two. And on my mother's side of the family, there's never been a divorce, not since the 17th century. They even went back to Ireland of the churches with, if they still had records of the church hadn't burnt down, there's no divorce in my, that entire side of my family, except for three now. And all, three are my kids. But I want to tell you how proud I am that they believe in a God who does not expect them or want them to live in misery. How proud I am of them, that they have the courage and the hope to believe that there is a better way to live. That's anyway, I'm getting off the subject. Well, I'm not really, but anyhow, so I'm going to Al-Anon now and things are beginning to change. And things are beginning to change because my, my attitude is changing because my actions are changing because you were teaching me the importance. And it's another Al-Anon quote, that the beginning of love is to allow those we love to be themselves perfectly. And so that idea of acceptance is just critical. And sometimes people think Al-Anon's a passive program. It's not at all. We have three A's, awareness, acceptance, action. We are not a passive program. The key for many of us in recovery, however, is this. I cannot be attached to the outcome. I cannot be attached to it. I take the action that I believe is the right and loving action, but then I have to let go of that. I used to know this little darling, little Notre Dame nun. She used to say, you know, I've heard that expression, let go and let God. I don't say it anymore. I just go like this. And it's, I don't know if you can see me, but it's a wonderful visual of just awareness, acceptance, taking the action. And then I gotta, I gotta let go. I have people call. I mean, some women that I sponsor will say, you know what I really want to say to one of my kids. I want to say this, but I know in Al-Anon, we're not allowed to say that. I'm like, what? Where? I don't know where that is in your literature. That doesn't, what? You can say whatever you want. The danger, is if you're saying it because you think it's going to change somebody's behavior, that's where we get screwed up because alcoholism is like quicksand. I get close to it thinking that, you know, Oh, I, if I say this and if I do this, it'll make huge difference. Then they'll want to go into recovery. That's what will happen. That's where I'll get that's. And the next thing I know I'm gasping for breath because I've just stepped into the quicksand of alcoholism. So all of these things, time is it. Okay. These are things, you know, that I learned and continue to learn the importance of letting go and letting God, the importance of really learning that failure is the beginning of wisdom for many of us, that I'm dealing with people who are not bad, but people who are sick. And that includes me. You'll often hear in Al-Anon meetings, they'll talk about their qualifiers. I'm my qualifier. I'm, I'm my qualifier. Believe me. If my sister, I've got two of them, but one of them's really mean. If she had married him, if I'm telling you a week into that marriage, she would have made sure that that door to that, she would have made sure that that door to that trailer was locked and she would have set the whole damn thing on fire, but no, not me. You know, I'm, I'm going to go in and, and try. It was just such a, and continues to be a whole way of changing my attitudes towards, you know, in relationships, in relationships. And so I began to really rely on a power greater than myself. For me, it was, and continues to be many days, the wisdom of the group. The God of my understanding speaks to me in so many, it's so many times through other people's, you know, their shared experience, just the raw honesty that I find in real recovery. I swear, you know, I'll tell you this. I'm a swimmer. So I swim and have been swimming a lot since, well, I'm a swimmer and a lot of the pools have been closed, but now I've found a pool not far from me. And actually it's where I first began weekly swimming back in 83, when I gave up smoking. But a lot of pools have closed. That one's still open. I mean, it's a hike for me, but I thought, well, I can get in. So I'm going back there to swim. You got to make reservations 6 a.m. in the morning. That suits me fine. So the very first day, two weeks ago that I made my reservation because the local pool, the outdoor pool is closed. I go out there and I'm swimming. And as I'm driving home, it's 7 a.m. in the morning from this YMCA, where I first started swimming, 83. I thought, Kathy, look how your life has changed since you first began swimming in that pool in 1983. God's fingerprints are all over my life. Where I think of where I am today in comparison to where I was only a miracle, only really only a God of compassion. And if I could go on and on and on, but then I'll sound like I'm preaching. I am just so very, very grateful. Just so very grateful. So anyway, so again, I keep going and I learned to, you know, I learned to, you know, live in a way that, you know, turns things over, trusts, trust the God of my understanding. But nothing really changed for me until I got a sponsor and until I did a fourth step. I mean, that really is for me where, where the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the rubber hit the road. Because as I said to you before, for 12 and a half years, I'm asking the wrong questions. What is wrong with him? Why would he say that? Why would he do that? Never am I looking at me. Why did I say that? Why did I do that? What was I thinking? No, always looking at him. What's, I wonder what kind of mood he's going to be in when he comes home today. You know, should I lay low? Is it safe to be happy? That exhausting dance that so many of us do around someone else, the constant walking on eggshells. And so, you know, I had to, I had to honestly just step back and really to begin to take a look at my, and do my own personal inventory. Ask those questions about myself. Look at what we call in Al-Anon is the four M's. Mothering, managing, manipulating, and martyrdom. I mean, those are the four, it's in our literature. Those are the four that get so many of us into trouble. I just said to a woman I sponsor, we could do an entire inventory on just the four M's. Really that we could. And so, you know, there you have it. But it wasn't until I really got that down on paper and was willing to share it with my sponsor, who time and again would say to me, Kathy, you've got to lay some of this at the feet of alcoholism. You've got to lay some of this at the feet of alcoholism. But I still had to take responsibility. I had to change my actions and my attitudes. I wasn't in Al-Anon very long. Just a month over three years when my husband was killed. He was killed in a helicopter crash and he was killed very suddenly. When I think about the importance of having made that amends to him, of having gone to him and said, I gave you the responsibility for my happiness. I allowed you to make decisions that really should have been made. I allowed you to make decisions that really should have been made. I allowed you to make decisions that really should have been made. I allowed you to make decisions that really should have been mine to make. And when it all blew up, I blamed you. I never nagged. I'm just telling you this. I never nagged. I never hollered. But what I used to do was ignore him. I used, I just erased him as a human being. I was never taught to treat the sick that way. But that's what I had to begin to change. I had to change my actions. I had to recognize that alcoholism is a family disease. I'm retired now from teaching high school, but I used to teach high school and I used to run a little program for teenagers who came from alcoholic homes. And this one little kid, Katie Darling, when we were having this little meeting, she said, I hate when they say alcoholism is like a disease, you know, is a disease like diabetes or whatever we say, diabetes or cancer. And I said, well, Katie, what, what would you rather we say? And she said, I think it's much more like rabies. And, you know, when she said that, I thought, rabies. That's brilliant. Because honestly, when alcoholism came knocking at our door, who cares who got bitten first? We all ended up foaming at the mouth. I mean, that's why we, that's why I believe Al-Anon is so, is so really important. Because otherwise, it's always going to be about somebody else. Always. Did I make a great first, first, fourth step? No. But I have learned in Al-Anon that it's important not to let the perfect get in the way of the good. And so I'm not a sponsor that says, oh, you may want to wait. No, I just say, let's, let's begin, you know, let's get on this. My own sponsor said the first three steps are critical. They take the fear level down. But real change didn't happen to me until I did a fourth step and got, and, and worked with a sponsor. So, you know, now, I'm a widow with these seven kids under the age of 14, and they're getting into trouble. But I am hanging in so tight with my sponsor. I'm using the phone. I'm listening to those little cassette tapes. I'm getting to meetings. I had to go back to work. Thank God this high school, I knew somebody teaching at this high school. They called me and said, we need a teacher. I say, I'm an elementary school teacher with an expired, with an expired certificate. And they say, we don't care. Just come and teach. We need somebody to teach juniors in high school, of course, and morality and social justice. We'll worry about the rest later. You couldn't do that today. But back then, 1982, in a Catholic high school, you get away with it. So that's what I did. I started teaching high school. I started teaching this course in social justice and morality. And I will tell you, God put me exactly where I needed to be. Because what better place to be than a high school teacher? I started teaching high school. To learn how to be a parent of teenagers, than to immerse you into a classroom all day long with 48, 17-year-old kids. Between Al-Anon and those teenage students of mine, I'll tell you, one day at a time, one day at a time, you taught me valuable lessons. One day at a time, the difference between enabling and taking on their consequences. Parenting in this program, I believe it's a narrow road. Because you got to discipline my, I mean, I had to discipline the kids. And yet I had to be very careful that I wasn't enabling, you know, what some of them were getting into. I just did what you told me to do, which was this, to become entirely ready to have God remove those defects of character. And for me, a lot of it is ego. I mean, I know what other parents were telling their kids. Now, remember, when you go to school, don't accept candy. Don't accept candy from strangers. Don't, don't jaywalk and don't play with any of those he can kids. I knew all of those things. I was always going to juvenile court. I wasn't always going to juvenile court. It just seemed that way. But I'll tell you, after Rick was killed, I went to this guidance counselor. He was really a grief counselor. And I brought all seven kids with me, of course. And he threw them out of his office. He said, these kids are horrible. Get, get, get out, get out. Go sit with the receptionist. Let me talk with your mother. So I'm in there with him. And I said, you know, I, I don't think I can raise these kids by myself. And he said, you can't, you're understaffed. That along with my Al-Anon friends was, I mean, you know, for me, that humility comes in knowing what I can do and knowing what I can't do. And thusly, my sponsors, words of wisdom, let God sort it out. I took actions that I believed were appropriate, and I just trusted to let God sort it out. But a lot of those actions are what you told me to do. You told me the most powerful amends I could make to my kids was to give them a healthy parent. And that's, you know, that's what I attempted to do one day at a time. Did I do it perfectly? Absolutely not. But you know what? My kids today, I've got some in recovery, some not. Some in recovery. But I've learned to love them. Just, you know, love them for who they are and for where they are. You know, I say sometimes, I don't know, I'm getting this, my time's up, but I don't think it is. So I'm going to ignore that. Thank you. Now I'm free and clear. I, I, there were so many things that I learned. I mean, I had a couple of the, the boys were sent away. The courts got them, and the courts believed it was important for them to go, I don't know, into these rehabs. And, you know, it was never my, it was never my plan for any of my kids. But you were the ones that just taught me the importance of cooperating, of showing up, of cooperating, which I did with, you know, the Hamilton County Juvenile Court System, listening to guidance counselors, listening, listening, listening, not being so defensive, and just doing the best that I could, just doing the best I could. Even though I was teaching, there were more than once when I was called into my kids' schools. I'll tell you a story very quickly that one time I was called into my, one of the boys was getting into trouble. So the principal called me and she said, I know you've got to teach yourself. This was a great school. I know you've got to teach yourself. But would you mind coming down and meeting with some of the faculty before you go off to high school to teach? And I said, sure, I'll come down. So, because that's what you told me, just show up, show up. So I go down there and, you know, there's my little guy sitting there in a chair. I think he was like in the third grade and his teachers are all sitting around in the semicircle and then they begin. The one starts and says, whenever anybody in the classroom sneezes, he falls out of his chair. I think that's hilarious. I would, I would think that was so funny if one of my teachers said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But I don't say that. I'm like, okay. Then the next one, he taps his pencil on the desk and he knows it annoys me. Okay. I'm just there, you know, listening. Science teacher loves him. Anyhow, so they go around and finally the principal says, you know what, I think that we've heard enough here and Kathy's got to get her back to her own classroom. We have to get back to ours. So let's just, just make a decision, stay in touch. And I said, that would be great. You know, I'll do it. That's great. But I said to this little guy, you come out, you come with me, you come with me out to the car. So I take him out to my car, which is parked illegally, of course. And I put him in the front seat and I say to him, I'm going to tell you this, Nick, you got to knock that off. I mean, as a teacher, that stuff is annoying. It's just annoying. It's not bad. It's not terrible, but it's really annoying. You got to knock it off. But I'll tell you another thing. I don't know where your father is right now, but I know wherever he may happen to be, he's looking down now and he's looking at you and he's saying, what a great kid this is. And you are a great kid. So you get out of the car now, Nick, and you go back into that grade school and you knock him dead. And he looked up at me with tears in his eyes and he said, I'm Daniel. And I'm like, what? Get out of the car. Just get out of the car. That's the kind of parent I was. But you know what? It's okay not to be a great parent. It's okay to be just an all right parent. That's what I had to live with because I was understaffed. I just did the best I could. And my kids know it. My kids know it. And thank God for this program of recovery. Thank God for that belief that making amends means giving my kids a healthy parent. Thank God that I believe in a program that really encourages me to do those daily inventories. So I can see where I really have, at where during that day, I was the woman that I believe God challenges me and creates me to be. And conversely, I can see where I fell short, where I missed the mark, where my defenses got in my way of really being that woman. I mean, to me, that it's critical. It's critical to lead a life that is not only a self-examined life, but a life that's intentional. I used to say to my students, juniors, you know, you won't grow up when you're 45 years old and look at yourself in the mirror and say, God, what a loser I am. How did that happen? Or look at yourself in the mirror and say, wow, I'm a raging success. How did that happen? I'll tell you how it happens. One day at a time, it happens through choices that you make. So pay attention one day at a time to how you're living your life. You won't live it perfectly, but pay attention. And so for me, I think it's important to look at yourself in the mirror and say, hey, that prayer and meditation, I would have been lost without it. That's one of the main reasons I swim, continue to swim. I mean, it's totally wrecked my hair, my skin, but you know what? It's quiet underwater. And that going back and forth in the silence of the swimming strokes works for me. But in addition to that, I have to carve out of my day, time, quiet time for prayer and meditation. It's critical for me. I don't know how it is for other people, but for me, it's critical. But I'll tell you this. I go to meetings with men and women who have buried their children as a result of this disease. I go to meetings with men and women who have no idea where their kids are. They have no idea if they're alive or dead, but they keep showing up. Even in these Zoom meetings, they keep showing up and they lead lives of courage and integrity and grace. And service. And that's who I stick with. That's who I stick with. So I'm just going to wrap this up by telling you this, that lovely guy that I was dating from Indianapolis stayed single his whole life, stayed single, never married, but got in touch with me. I always kind of knew where he was because we had so many mutual friends, but he got in touch with me in 98. And he said, you know, I know that, I don't know. Well, he'd gotten in touch with me earlier, but really seven kids under the age of 14. My father used to say, never trust a man that would date a woman with seven kids. My mother would say, Jack, that's a terrible thing to say to her. He'd say, I wouldn't even walk on the same side of the street with a woman with seven kids. Nonetheless, I knew from Al-Anon, first things first, first things first, I had to get these kids raised. In 98, he connected with me again and said, I've moved from California and Indianapolis. Why don't we get together and have dinner? You always said that would be the nice thing. You could do that. That's what we did. In 95, my youngest graduated from college. In May, at the end of the month, Mr. Wonderful and I were married. I like to tell people he's a double winner. Never married, no kids. That's what I call a double winner. But on top of that, he also just celebrated in February, 30 years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's just been a delightful, just a delightful relationship with him. It's just, I can't say enough about it. So last but not least, service. I mean, I'm giving that short shrift, but as you all know, that willingness to share, I cannot keep what I cannot, which I refuse to give away. It's an old saying. Service for me means showing up. It means listening. In my old age, I've just become a compassionate listener. We don't give advice, but we do a lot of listening. I do. I ask a lot of questions. And I listen. I speak when I'm asked to speak. I hate doing workshops, but I will under pressure do that. It's just a willingness. You know, it's like, it's taking all the flax of my life and my experience with alcoholism and being willing to spin it into gold. That's what sharing your experience is. It's spinning the whole thing into gold. One of the blessings, and this is it, for me, one of the blessings of my life is because I got this job teaching high school, I discovered that all my kids, because their father had served in the military during the Vietnam War, they all got a free ride to any state school. And so all of my kids are eligible for what's called the Ohio War Orphan Scholarship. And they all went to college for free. What, I mean, I often say to them, that's your father's, that's your father's to you. But anyway, so one of the kids chose not to take advantage of that scholarship because she won a scholarship to St. Louis University. And while we're all up there at St. Louis University for her graduation, waiting for the president to come and address the children, address the parents, she's late. She's late. We're all sitting in this chapel waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. She shows up finally. She apologizes profusely. She says, I'm sorry I'm late, but I have to tell you, my seven-year-old, just learned the Lord's prayer and he wanted me to hear it. So I stood before him and heard it. And this is what he said, our father who art in heaven, how'd you know my name? And you know, when I heard her say that, I thought, you know, that's, that's Al-Anon. Al-Anon through our steps and traditions and our concepts, this program of recovery has given back to me a God who certainly knows my name. And for that, I'm very, very grateful. Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you. Thank you so much, Kathy, for sharing your experience, your strength, your hope with us and for your service. We really appreciate it. Thank you.