Carla R. at the Heartland Roundup – 2019

Hi everybody, my name is Carla Rowland. I'm an alcoholic. Wow, I love the sound of this room tonight. God, welcome everybody. How many of you are here for the first time at this conference? Woohoo, me too! Yeah. And the rest of you just come back for more. You just keep coming back for mehr, right? You're just convinced. Yeah, well thanks for having me. I want to thank Mark and the committee for inviting me out here to share with you guys this weekend. I have just enjoyed myself from the moment Diane and Linda drove all the way out to Fargo to pick me up, and then they drove alltheway back. And, you know, I know why they do it, you now, because somewhere along the line they learned that if you're voluntold to do something, that it's a gift. And I kind of suspect that they didn't even have to be told. But, you know, if you're new and you're voluntold to do something, whether it's stacking chairs or dumping ashtrays or going out to Fargo to pick somebody up from the airport, somebody you don't even know, God knows what you're going to get in the car, and you'RE going to be stuck with them for two hours. And you say yes anyway. It's a gift. You know, you just never know. And, you know, one of my favorite lines in the big book is what seemed at first a flimsy reed turned out to be the loving and powerful hand of God. And my whole sobriety since September 25th, 1987 has been laid on a foundation of flimzy reed after flimsey reed after flimsie reed just like that. Just go pick that person up from the airport or pour the coffee or make the coffee or whatever it is, you know, go pick up that newcomer. And those kind of things have served me well. When I was new and I didn't even, you know, the steps hadn't had a chance to, they had begun, something was working, but I hadn't digested them. Those kinds of things helped me to begin to experience the absence of the noise on the inside of my own head for just a few minutes. I wasn't thinking about myself, and I didn't even know that was a problem. And in a minute, you're going to hear why it was so insane for somebody like me to say something like, well, I can't be selfish. I'm a mother. Yeah. So thank you for having me, and thank you, Linda and Debbie, for picking me up. And I don't know where Linda is right now. She's got this beautiful bird kind of eagle thing painted on the side of her head, and it's just gorgeous, so you can't miss her. But I love the buzz. I love how the sound of the quiet AA room, you know, in the beginning, just a couple of people clanking chairs around, and then before you know it, it is just loud, loud, louder than my head. And it's a good thing. This is a good things. And, you know, we talk about our miracle. We are not the only people who experience miracles. You can go to a cancer support group and they think the miracles they're experiencing are pretty good too, don't they? You know, but our particular kind of miracle, the way we needed to have it and the way мы get to keep it is pretty fantastic. It's the miracle I needed. And if you're new and you don't quite trust the process and you didn't even know what the process is, just please come in here, sit tight, you now, sit on your hands. if, hey, listen, if white-knuckle sobriety is all you got, hang on to that. Just get in the middle of a bunch of us so you can't move and you'll have to knock a whole bunch of us down to get to the door until you come to trust the process. But white knuckle sobrietty is what I had when I got here. What else am I gonna have? You know for some of you I know the obsession to drink was lifted right away, way, yay. That's nice, that's nice. But it was not for me. When I got here, I was still thinking about drinking. And it's important, we all come from so many different walks of life. Some of us coming in here having built and lost great empires, some of you came in a little later in life. That is not me. I peaked out at about 11 and a half and skidded across the bottom until I was about 29. That's me, you know? But the thing about us is that at some point, some point during our drinking careers, we all have come to that point where we are either drinking or thinking about drinking all the time. And we cannot undo that all on our own. I can't stop drinking once I start, and when I put it down for any amount of time, it begins to be all I can think about until I pick it up again. And I used to think that I had to drink to shut that obsession up. And Alcoholics Anonymous is a thing that you planted inside of me that stands between me and the first one. And I'm not somebody you're going to hear say it's not about drinking because once I get into a great... I will never be so spiritually fit that I can take a drink of alcohol in any form at all. And by that, I mean mouthwash form, cough medicine form, food form. I don't know if it's food and they're alcohol anyway, but I guess people do. I was watching a show, you know, Emeril Lagasse on the Food Channel one night. He says, tonight we're going to build a meal around wine. And I thought, well, wine. Doesn't everybody? so his was more complex, his recipe was more complex than mine but those are the stakes for us I could not undo that on my own I've been around here now long enough to know what happened to me as a kid and a lot of stuff happened to me as a kid. My family, you know, we loved each other, but we just didn't know how. We just really couldn't keep it together. We had a lot of trouble in my family. My husband, on the other hand, he comes from a happy childhood. You know, his family grew up singing together and loving each other. And his father painted the family pick up the color of his high school. You Know What I Mean? he was that family you know oh my god we leave after Christmas Eve dinner with his daughter and the whole family's there you know I still have a little bit of a sugar headache hanging on you know because it's just so sweet and uh that's not my family and we've come a long way in my family but it was not like that but he sits right next to me in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous why because alcohol did exactly for and to him what it did for and to me. And I know that there are people who lived way worse childhoods than me, but when they picked up a drink of alcohol, it did not work for them like it did from me. They probably got some therapy. They probably got a little help. A lot of them grew up into fantastic, useful human beings. It wasn't my circumstances because the reason I know this is that implementing the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life, there has not been a circumstance in 31 my 31 years of sobriety that is that where the thought occurred to me that I should have a drink about this and that's a miracle that's our miracle so welcome stay till you get that you know then it's about living then it's trying to grow up and you know but oh my god the obsession a drink for me sounded like that kid following his mom around the grocery store wanting chocolate you know what I mean like mom Let's have a drink. Have a drink, have a drink, on the way to the meeting. Have a drink at the break. Have a drink on the way home. Nobody will know. The lullaby of rationalization. That wasn't lifted until I was about nine months sober in the middle of making my amends to my family. You know, and it's different for everybody. Some people did come in, and I was, you know, I mean, I wasn't mad at them or anything, but I was like, how does that happen? How does that happened where that is gone? So I don't know why I'm an alcoholic. I know I started a sentence a long time ago that you may never hear the end of. um so so a lot of my life gave me an inventory it just didn't make me alcoholic and and some of those are the reasons why but you know i uh my mom was a single mother of two girls and we moved around a lot for the rent and i loved school school was a place where i went for everything everything was you know okay there i could i i loved cool i loved class i was good in sports and i love to run track i wanted to be the first woman to run a four minute mile and the first woman major league baseball player the firstwoman president you know i wanted to like i was a little kid with big dreams you know and that doesn't make me alcoholic it makes me a pain in the butt sometimes but not really an alcoholic because i know a lot of non-alcoholics who felt that same way but by the time i was in sixth grade i was tired and i needed a drink And the deal was, when I took it, it worked. It worked. Oh, my God. Now, I got my first social resentment behind a game of spin the bottle. And I know they don't even play that game these days. They just get right down to business, don't they? They just zoom right past spin the model. I'm not going to make any more commentary on that right now. But, you know, I was at my friend Leonard's house. It was that summer between 6th and 7th grade. And there were a few boys and a few girls at my friends' house who were passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey and were spinning the bottle. And those weren't the first drinks I ever took, but these were the ones where I really got that alcohol did something for me I couldn't do for myself. I really Got That Then. And so the bottle we were spinning landed on me. I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys and we were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell. But when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him a player and me a slut. And I did not think that was fair. And I still don't think it's fair, if you want to know the truth. But every sponsor I've ever had has told me that the fair comes around once a year and it lasts two weeks. That's all you get. So. But I had these ideas, you know, not alcoholic ideas. Because we put a lot of, you know, we just changed the world behind those things. But I had ideas that I kept bumping up against the world and I didn't easily loosen my grip on them. And if I had talked to any number of girls in junior high at the time, I would have found out there were girls doing way more than I was doing. And I just didn't know it. And so I got a reputation I didn' t understand nor could I take responsibility for it. I began to impose ideas from things that had happened to me at home with family members and things like that. and decided, began deciding who I was about that. And alcohol began to relieve that. It just started to relieve it. And I stayed in the social game for a while and then I started to let go and back away from my life. I started spending more time in the girls' room than I did in the classroom and hanging out with the other girls who were doing the same thing. And after a while school just wasn't working for me anymore and that had been my last bastion of refuge. It was, you know, just no longer working for me and I started to find my hope out on the open road. My favorite place to be way back then was on my way to somewhere else. I love that place. You know, it felt like hope to me, like hope's just up the road. You know? Like the bottle in the glove compartment. You know. Like I didn't even have to have that thing open to already feel better. Just felt like action to me. And so I'd leave and I'd get out on the on ramps of the 10 freeway coming east and the 101 going north and I would stick my little thumb out on that on ramp and I'd crawl in the car or the truck going wherever with whoever, and I would be on my way. And I love, love, loved that. But consequently, because I was so young, I started ending up in some of the Southern California hot spots like Indio Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and L.A. Central Juvenale Hall. You know, it's funny too, I didn't even realize this for a long time, but when you say juvenile hall to a bunch of adults who have never been there, they think, oh, romper room. Juvenal hall is kids' prison, okay? It's prison for kids. And I didn't even get the effect that that had. I had imposed it on me. I put myself there, but I didn' t even get what that was for a while. And people kind of pat me on the head, and I didn''t realize why I was getting so mad. Anyway, I digress. So my dad, you know, I was always sitting in front of a judge waiting for placement, waiting for replacement, waiting for displacement. My dad used to say, I think they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla, and maybe he's right. You know, I come from a family where my baby sister committed suicide at the age of 17. My baby brother died of drug addiction and alcoholism when he was 30. He was 6'10", 160 pounds when he lay on life support. And his last words to my parents, my mother and my stepfather were F you because they wouldn't pay his electric bill. And after he passed, my Mother said, God forgive me, Carla, but it's kind of a relief. that's that's the effect that we have on the people around us who love us who can't do anything about it and they tried everything and my mom died of end stage liver disease about 10 years ago and my last remaining sibling lives in wisconsin and when she's not on the on the uh when she'S NOT DRINKING SHE'S ON THE VICODIN MAINTENANCE DIET AND SHE'S JUST NOT BEEN INTERESTED IN PICKING UP THIS KIT OF SPIRITUAL TOOLS THAT WE FOUND to be effective. And my dad won't go to Al-Anon because he thinks you want to teach him how not to care. He's just not ready for that still after 31 years. And, you know, and I get it. I get it. And he and I, we've had a, you know, there was a long period of reconstruction that we had and we're so much better than we ever were. But there are still some misgivings, you You know, and when I was new, I gave them all my parents. I have six, but I gave all my family members the big book, and I said, this is about me, and then I gave some of them the Al-Anon material. I said this is you, and, you know, have fun. And over time there's been some real sweet moments, and we'll get to that too in a little while. it um anyway i uh when i was 14 i left home one more time with a friend of mine uh i was always heading for san francisco and uh you know here's why i think i should tell you i i've had spiritual awakenings before i got to alcoholics anonymous we don't have the market cornered on that and god was always around you know just because i woke up didn't mean god just got made you know he was there and but I couldn't maintain them you know couldn't stay couldn't stay tapped into that that inner resource and some challenge would come down in the family and I pulled the shade down between me and the sunlight of the spirit I pulled a shade down didn't even know that's what I was doing rolling up my sleeves taking over the management of my own life I got this you know and but i didn't stop trying you know I was born into a southern baptist home. That religion worked very well for my mother till the day she died. I'm not somebody who thinks that spirituality and religion has to be two different things. I don't think you have to choose, but I tried being a Catholic for a couple of weeks in the fourth grade, you know, but I'm about as deep as a mud puddle. You know, if it's not working right away, I got to go. I gotta go, you Know, but i was in love with a ceremony of what I thought it was, you You know, and then I burned black candles for a couple of years and prayed to the other guy for a while. You know? Just hedging my bets, really. You know. I just wanted to be on that side that was winning. You understand that. And then the television series Kung Fu came out. Some of you guys I know are old enough to remember that show. Yeah, David Carradine ironically played a Buddhist priest named Cain. And he walked the Wild West in bare feet. That guy was tough, wasn't he? And because he looked different, though, he'd walk from town to town, nothing but the clothes on his back and a little bag on his belt. And I don't know what was in that bag, but he looked pretty peaceful, didn't he? And he'd walk to a town and he'd see a whole group of guys. He'd be met by a whole group of hostile guys. And they'd come at him and they'd assault him verbally. And he would stand there ever so elegantly. And just pearls of wisdom just rolled off his tongue you know just a couple sentences but boom and you'd watch their faces change and they'd go off to help people oh my god that is real power don't we know real power when we see it right we i mean you know it when you see it and and so that would happen and then he'd keep walking walk to another town another bunch of hostile guys this time they'd assault him physically, and when they did that, he kicked their ass. And I wanted what he had. You know, he seemed to be, to me, the perfect personification of strength and serenity all rolled up into one guy. He had something, and don't we know that when we see it? Oh, so I was chasing this, you know, and then the songs that they sang. I was 12 in 1969, so the 60s were over by the time I got out in the world but I loved what I saw on TV you know those people unified and they marched and they didn't take crap they were strong and they played those beautiful marching songs Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and you know they just rousing you know you feel your spirit just oh so I was always there in San Francisco man that's where it's at so I's heading for San Francisco and me and my friend ended up going up there we got one long ride all the way up into a little place called North Beach, a little party town, and the guy dropped us off and looked to my left, and there was Carol Doda and her flashing boobs on, she was a famous stripper, big sign, and looked at my right, and they were hookers and dealers and pimps, oh my. And we weren't on that street for 10 minutes before a couple of guys approached us, offered us money for sex, and we said yes and did the next indicated thing, and boom, a whole new career path opened up for us. And I started living a day at a time in a way I've not had to live in a very, very long time. And Dr. Silkworth talks about this in the chapter, The Doctor's Opinion, that after a time we can't differentiate the true from the false. That after a while our alcoholic lives seem the only normal one. And you know, I'm not against sex. I'm not even against sex for money if that's your thing. I're not talking about that. But what I had already done and didn't know it was I'd already begun to trade away every God given talent or gift or potential that I had for the effect that alcohol produced. And if you had told me back, asked me back then, I would have told you I was doing it willingly. That this was just the next thing. It was just part of the deal. It Was Just What We Do. So a year later, I was in a mental hospital and they were not talking to me a lot about alcoholism. They were talked to me about disorders. I was a very disordered looking child. I was alternately violent and withdrawn by then, and living with the level of frustration down in my gut, I did not know how to talk about. In fact, it wasn't until I got to AA almost 15 years later that I heard a tape of who I now know is Cubby Selby talking about feeling like a scream looking for a mouth. And I thought, oh my God, you know. And this was not a treatment center. It was a mental hospital. There were not a lot of treatment centers back then and especially not for kids. So a lot of my roommates had some real illnesses, real manic depression, real schizophrenia, the real deal. And those things stand above beyond and besides alcoholism. They are not the same thing, you know, and it takes a little while to sort that out. And so in the meantime, in the beginning, they were giving me daily nutritional supplements, athorazine, melaril, valium, down main sleepers. I suppose they were concerned I wouldn't sleep. And I had become intimately familiar with five point restraints. And that's what I looked like at 15. And if you don't want to go crazy in the nuthouse, you better get busy. And one of my favorite ways to be busy was the boys. And I loved all the boys, but my favorites were those sexy smoldering types, you know? You know the kind. They just sit back there and simmer. And you just never really knew when they were going to blow, you now? And I just used to love those guys, you kno? Now today I know that feeling is fear, so I stay away. but the trouble with guys like that in the nut house is that they're usually in there hiding from a junior prison sentence they don't want to go to california youth authority so they're trying to lay low but they got nothing so they eventually blow you know like my first boyfriend ended up blowing up and throwing a big chair through the big plate glass window of the boys unit my next boyfriend ended up blown up and thrown a nurse through the Big Plate Glass window the boys unit and so that was progressive too and uh i don't know about you but i've always thought i should have a soundtrack to my life you know music playing in the background of all this drama going on you know like maybe one day bob dylan following me around singing a ballad tangled up in blue you know or maybe another day just a mariachi band you know setting us up for a fiesta maybe another day just flat out rock and roll because it's just like that right we play those sentimental jailhouse songs like who when will i see you again and press our little faces up against the big bay window of the girls unit looking out at them looking back at us living in that sweet spot of anticipation you know what i'm talking about Right there, right there in the if only, as soon as I, when I, if that ever happens, I'm going to be okay. Right there. Never in the getting it. As soon as i get it, I think, what was I thinking? Never. And I feel the need to qualify this too, you know. That's not just us. Alcoholics aren't the only people who think like that. But I am the only person who, when I live in fantasy enough, I take a drink and the drink works. And alcohol for me created and preserved so many illusions for me. And I believed them and lived in them for a long time. Well into my alcoholic life seemed the only normal one. Well into that. And I know from the looks of you, some of you too. so one afternoon I was sitting outside on the smoke break bench watching my boyfriend Terry being cuffed and escorted off by security he's the one who threw the chair through the window and he's gone he's going I'm never going to see him again and I'm devastated because you know this had been a real relationship you know two three weeks or something you know nut house love is pretty intense and so I'm sitting outside of smoking my tragic cigarettes and channeling Greta Garbo and just inside the girls unit I could hear Diana Ross singing atop decibel touch me in the morning then just walk away you know I love that bill wrote that they wrote in the big book that we avoid the deliberate manufacture of misery you know we avoid that did you know he avoid that? And I didn't know that. I didn' t know that for a long time. I think you play that record over and over and over again, you know, just sink way down into that mushy mire. So I didn''t understand what I came looking for, I came looking with. I didn ''t understand every spiritual tradition I''ve ever looked into all say the same thing, including our big book Deep Down Inside Every Man, Woman, and Child is the Fundamental Idea of God In the last analysis, it's only there he may be found. Other practices say look within. The kingdom of heaven is within us. Look within, in you, in me. I didn't know any of that. Always looking out there for what I thought was going to fix me. And the trouble with that is I was always about half a bubble off what it was I thought I saw anyway. You know, like I'd mistake arrogance for confidence. I'd mistakes sex for love. I'd mistaken brute strength for strength of character. and I get it up in my hot little hands, and it dissolves where it stood because it wasn't it. I had to come to AA to learn that it's constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs. That's what makes that illusion of separation disappear for me. None of that did I know. All that grace it took for me to get here. And I went from the girls' unit to the co-ed unit to the unit where they put the patients they just don't know what to do with anymore, and I ended up going over the wall of that place and back in juvenile hall and sitting and waiting, sitting in front of a judge, waiting for placement, waiting for replacement, waiting for placement. And into a rehab where it's just the opposite. Instead of giving you drugs, they take it all away. No threats or acts of violence and no drugs. It was based on the Synanon thing which had been working really well out on the West Coast for a while. So they put it in the state hospital. They had one for kids and one for adults. and I was in the kid they made us wear signs and things like that my first sign was I think I'm tough but I'm only a cream puff like a big eat at Joe's thing toilet paper around my neck because I had a crappy attitude so um i never out the front door of any of those places and um the last place i was in was a girl's home and again i met my roommate and she was on the same page as me we're looking for those people from the 60s we're working for that sense of spirit that those strong peaceful loving people well, where are they? Where are they, where is that? It's out there somewhere. And all of our friends said, man, they've moved to Oregon, they're not in San Francisco anymore, they moved to Oregon. We're like, oh! So we're out the second story window, that girl's home, down the tree and into Randy's truck and off to Oregon where God might be. And I don't know about you, but I never went anywhere new thinking let's go screw this up too, you know. I was always like, fresh start, clean slate, we're going to get it right this time, you now, we are going to do it. We're going to get it right. And my friends rented a house, and they let me come with them, and we planted a garden in the front yard. I was going to gets back to the land. Now, I'm from Los Angeles. I don't know what land I thought I was getting back to, but I was gonna get back to land. And we planted that garden, and that's where I learned that when they talk about hoeing in Oregon, they meant with a tool. You know? It was just... Different. Two things happened while I was up there that I didn't even see while it was happening. Our book talks about this too, many of us showing symptoms and signs of alcoholism long before we're ready, willing or able to do anything about it. It was certainly happening to me. There would be days that I would go without booze and when I had no booze, I had steps or fellowship or God in my understanding, I didn�t even know about those yet. I'm restless, irritable and discontent. My relationship with alcohol already so established that when you take it away for any amount of time, I'm a big pain. My life quickly becomes your fault. I'm just nobody you want to be around and when I could drink the way I needed to drink, I was always overshooting the mark and that was happening again and still at 17. And my friends had asked me to leave and I was asked to leave a lot and I went around and around and I ended up even living with my father against his better judgment for a couple of months and finally he had askedme to leave. He said I'm not going to watch you die and I'm not going to help you do it. You got to go. And I was back out on Hollywood Boulevard in just a hot second. And, uh, and so it went, you know, when a few, a few I was 18 years old starting my days off with a pint of pop-up vodka and I would just go wherever the day took me. And some days it was a party and some days It was just survival. Not a lot of hope about it getting any different. And a few months into that, I met a man walking down Hollywood Boulevard and I saw the light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was orange sunshine, but we hit off. I moved in with him that night. I didn't even know his last name, and six weeks later he's asking me to leave, and I still don't know his first name. But I like to bring him up because years later he was on my eight-step list. He was someone who came to mind very quickly and clearly that I owed him amends. You know, like some of those people just stick to us, right? And so aside from my family, this guy came up in my first inventory, and you know, I knew in six short, He'd done nothing but try to help me, you know, gave me a place to stay and just a safe, you know. And I've gone through his life in six short weeks spiritually, physically, materially, mentally, in every way you can go through someone's life. And so he was on my mind, you Know, and I loved it when I got one right in my first year. You know, I don't know about you. Maybe some of you got it all just perfect, your first inventory, but I didn't, you know. Mine was more like your fault, your fault. Your fault, me. Your fault, your fault, your fault me. You know, like that. But I got some big chunks and he was on it. I knew what I had done and I got it and after I made that first round of amends to my family and I'd gone to see them and either made full amends or the intent to financially take care of things or with my family just say to this day none of them ever, ever ever are going to worry about where I am my daughter knows where her mother is my father knows where his daughter is my mother knew where her daughter was you know it's like that and but after that and I went looking for this guy you know I went everywhere I knew to look but it'd been years and of course I didn't find him and my sponsor finally said you know you're going to have to set that down now for a while if you're supposed to find that guy you'll find them, but in God's time, not yours. And you need to get on about your business here, you know? And she said, you Know, so keep doing what you're doing and try being a friend to a man in a vertical fashion. Go ahead and keep doing that. And, you know, it's not like I needed a lot of convincing in that direction when I got here, but I did not have a clue as to how to go about it. I knew when I got here, I had no self-respect. I also could see that some of you did. I knew that you couldn't use the words Carla and good character in the same sentence, but I knew that someof you did, but what I didn't know was how to get from here to there. You know, our book talks about having moral and philosophical convictions galore. I didn''t believe in the person I had become. I didn't believe in being that and yet here I am. So you know so I did what she said and I just kept going about my business and right before my 13th AA birthday I had to go give a talk on the other side of town it was a hot Sunday afternoon and I did not feel like going and thank God you guys have taught me it's not how I feel it's what I do that matters. You know I said I'd be there, and I'll be there. And you know what? I still love that. I still love being able to say, I'm going to be there and actually being there. You know, I used to think I could blow off a dinner for two and not be missed really, you know. That was me, you now. But you got to invite me. Don't forget to invite me. You invite me but I'm not going. That's how we're doing it. But because I couldn't show up. And I knew as I was telling you it sounds like a good idea that I wasn't going to be there and so even all these years later I love being able to do that I love it even no matter how afraid I get no matter how much how bad I think it's going to be I show up and so I go and I give this talk and of course I feel better and when the meeting's over the thank you line came through and this guy stopped and he said, hey, where were you in 1976? That was a guy from Hollywood Boulevard standing there in front of me with eight and a half years of sobriety and I was almost 13. Not only a very well-organized loving spirit of the universe could have made that happen when I, in all my efforts to get it done on my own, couldn't make it happen. And what I realized later is that even if I had, even if somehow I had managed to maneuver that and work it in and make that happen. He wasn't sober yet when I was sober in my first year, you know? So all that time later, you know, it just walked up to me when it was time. And so I got to take him to dinner and we had a long, long talk and I told him everything I remembered. And then a lot of his sentences started with, sure you want to hear this? You know, and so the answer is yeah yeah and after it was over he said Carla that's long forgiven long forgotten I just can't believe you're still alive then he's right you know if we're in this room tonight I think we're the lucky ones somehow some way we've managed to slip through a window of grace I didn't feel like doing it I just did it somehow someway I slid through the window of grace and hung on. And still, after all these years, the distance, the gap between my efforts and perfection is a whole lot of grace, you know, because I'm not a perfect human being. And I don't think I'm smarter than any other human being because I am an alcoholic. Isn't that great? We all tell each other that in here when we're new. You're in here because you're smarter than everybody we're better coming here hiding from god don't want god to find us don't don't let god find me i hate god i don't know god and then three months into it we're like too bad they don't have what we have and look don't get me wrong we got a lot but it was alcoholism that was the catalyst for me to come to the vehicle Alcoholics Anonymous that gave me the particular miracle, the particular portal into that path to spirituality that I needed as an alcoholic. Other people have their portals. Why would they need AlcoholicsAnonymous if they're not an alcoholic? They got other portals, and these 12 steps, man, there are, what, 300 fellowships or something like that that use the 12 steps. It's great, great simplification, but we're not the only. But I'm telling you, if you're alcoholic like I am, this is the place. because every place I was ever locked up in anything that I might have learned there while I was there and I had a lot of attention you know therapy and all of that kind of stuff and some good information but anything I ever learned in any of those places I left there when I left and somehow in Alcoholics Anonymous availing myself and implementing these principles in my life there's no place I go where AA is not it walks out the door with me when the meeting is over. You're with me. It's with me, it's in me. That's pretty powerful. There's not been one thing that happened that has happened in 31 years of sobriety that ever, ever did I think a drink was going to fix. And I've had some miserable times in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, you know, lives life. But I didn't ever think a drink would fix it. My second sponsor, Lee E., who was just, he just passed away a couple months, a few months ago now with 37 years of sobriety. He was a big old gray-haired looking Jerry Garcia looking guy, you know. Overalls was his uniform and he'd say things like, well that's going to feel a whole lot better as soon as it quits hurting, you know but he'd always open his talks by saying I drove all over this town today and I didn't see anybody I wanted to be and I didn' have to take a drink of whiskey whiskey. And I wanted that. I left Hollywood with another guy from another rehab and we, you know, again loving the idea of peace and love and all that stuff. We just couldn't stop knocking the hell out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love you know we just uh moral and philosophical convictions galore and can't get there to save our lives and uh we ended up living in a on in a in an old beat-up mining claim on top of a mountain just in in southern oregon way up on topof a mountain it was an old mining claim a a log cabin the the remains of a log cabinet had no roof so we threw a plastic tarp over the top called it a skylight, and then the baby came. And I had this little girl, you know, and I thought having this little girls going to change the way I drank, you know, and up there we were drinking moonshine and homemade wine so it was organic and much better for you. And I have this little girl and you know I knew from all the therapy I'd had you gotta break the cycle, you gotta be the parent you never had, you got to do it differently, you And now I'm getting my clothes and shoes and the necessities of life out of a box behind a store in town and I think I'm going to be a better parent than the one I had because I'm delusional. And he and I, we just blew up. She got in the way of one of our fights when she was about 10 months old and I started dragging that kid from state to state. And now it was time. Up till then, I was living on the side of the road in the bushes and I just couldn't get out into the real marketplace and now it Was Time. I had to take care of this little kid, and so my first legitimate work was in the bars, and it never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have that job? It just seemed to me to be cosmically efficient, and so I drugged that kid from pillar to post. And we ended up back down in LA, and I was renting a room for my aunt out in a place called Covina. And I was about 35 miles away from my new job in Hollywood. Again, not a bad place to work. It's me. I'm the common denominator. And every afternoon, I'd kiss her goodbye. She was almost four years old at the time, and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood, I'd get thirsty about halfway, Arcadia, pull in onto Huntington Drive and into the parking lot of the first cabin. Pulled in there and I'd have my shots of Cuervo Gold and Bud back, so shots that got me ready to go do my shift, drink with everybody and pour drinks till the wee hours of the morning and crawl home and start all over again. I did that for months like clockwork. One afternoon I kissed her goodbye like I had been doing and I took off for The Bar in Hollywood. I got thirsty again, same place, Arcavia, Huntington drive, first cabin, shots of gold, bud backs. And to this day I don't know what was different on that day from the day before except for 24 hours because I didn't hate the job I was going to and I didn' t love my daughter any less on that day than I love her today. It had nothing to do with my circumstances or my feelings. But I took that drink and it took the next and I couldn't get off the barstool. I couldn' t stop long enough to get up and go see about the job and I couldn't stop long enough to get up and go see about the kids so I sat on the barstool and I lost them both in one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. And I stayed and I lived off the kindness of strangers there in that little area until I fell into another job at another dive bar. And on it and on it went. And here's something I know that every single one of us has in common if you be alcoholic like me and that is that beautiful little understatement Bill writes in the book where he says gradually things got worse and we all have it and I married my drinking partner you know and I you know I'm a peace-loving hippie I want to be I want to you know when he and I moved it got married about the time we should have split up moved in together became the neighborhood entertainment we settled our arguments with a shotgun whoever got to the gun first won that's how we roll and I went to my first day a meeting with black eyes and broken ribs again and I have a friend who says it's not so much the yet's that bothered him it was the oh no not again again and again and again that condition and the only thing I heard this lady say at this meeting was that somewhere during her drinking career she switched to beer so I did after all the representative from Alcoholics Anonymous highly recommends it. And I didn't think beer was really drinking anyway. You know, it's more like a whole grain breakfast food if you ask me. And that went on for another couple of years. No, I didn t I got my kid back when she was eight and a half and I didn d get sober till she was almost ten. So it was more the same, more of that. And one Saturday morning we re living in this tiny little apartment across town, me and the husband and the kid. The cops are in the driveway one more time by the afternoon. The neighbors are watching us one more time. The kid's standing in the corner in her mismatched clothes and her unkempt hair, and she got that look of fear in her eyes one more time. I can't tell her it's going to be any different. Nobody woke up that day saying, let's do this. And the husband left for the last time. The cops left. They took the gun. It's me and the kid and the booze, and I can stop drinking. And here's where a hard drinker might take a look at their life and say, you know, I'm really tired of this. Hard drinker could say, I'm going to go get some help at the detox. I'm gonna go get off this stuff and then I'm coming home and they'll go back to work and have a story to tell if somebody asked them. But they would move on with their life. That's hard drinker given a sufficient reason they can stop me. I drank through. I just pull the 12 pack closer to the couch so I don't have to keep getting back up to get another drink because I drank Through my circumstances. I drink through homelessness. I think through drug addiction. I I was living indoors by the time I got sober. My circumstances had nothing to do with it. Wasn't the worst drunk I ever had. My first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with a power greater than myself, I could start by counting the coincidences that happened in my life. One of the first ones I could count was that I had moved in next door to a woman who had five years of sobriety and AA and she had seen or heard that whole deal go down she came over a couple days later and she brought me a big book and a 12 and 12. And she sat on my couch and she told me her story. She was just a woman properly armed with the facts about herself, and she talked about her, and in her story I heard me. I drank like her. I drink like she did. And I'd been seeing with my own eyes that she wasn't drinking anymore. And what impressed me more about that was it didn't seem to bother her that she wasn�t drinking. And that got my attention. That got my attention because I don't know how you do that when I had no no booze I had no steps or fellowship or God on my understanding I didn't even know about those yet I felt like a strip the coating off my wires you know I felt over sensitive and under loved and I didn t know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way my self-centered head closed in on me from there so much so that even even though I knew a couple of things about booze by then I knew that I couldn't guarantee if I was going to have two or 22 I knew that. I didn't know we called it the phenomenon of craving. Even though I knew that I no longer had to invite trouble, it seemed to come to visit unsolicited, didn't it? It showed up. Even though i know that the window of relief had gotten smaller and smaller and smaller, i knew that somewhere along the line i was going to have to pick up that first one. There was not going to be a good enough reason not to. So I didn't know how her twelve little thinly veiled Sunday school sentences were going to have any effect on me in the face of what I'd become. They just seemed so weak, and you all seemed just a little bit too social for my taste anyway, you know what I mean? Like if I could've come here and stolen what I thought you had and gone home and done it myself, I would have. so it was about a week and a half later, I just didn't go back and buy any more beer. And I sat home and I shook it out at home. There was no place left for me to go at that point. My daughter was with her father somewhere and, you know, there was just nowhere else for me to go. No insurance, nowhere. And so I shook it out of home and into Monday and into Tuesday. And by Tuesday afternoon, I was stark raving sober. I went back to my neighbor and asked her what to do. She sent me up to a meeting in Sierra Madre, California, and that became my first home group. She said, not that there'll be any big question, but raise your hand and tell them that you're new. And I went up there. I sat way back by the exit sign in the open door just in case, and I heard you guys being very kind to each other. I heard what we call the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. How you doing? How's that inventory coming? Did you get a big book? Do you need a ride home would you like a cup of coffee how's your lawn Joe but it moved me a little bit you know like I thought oh my god could my life ever be so elegant and simple as to be concerned about a lawn you know, like just sitting there enjoying the smell of fresh cut grass Wow you know the simplicity because up till then my life had been all about foraging and scraping and holding on that's what I'm afraid of if I were to go out and drink maybe death wouldn't come for a while but that that at the end of that meeting the secretary asked me to read that portion of chapter 11, a vision for you that we read at the end of a lot of meetings. And I took it from her. I said yes. I didn't even know what I was doing. She just walked all the way back to the room. They usually had people come up front. She walked to the back with me and, or to me and handed it to me. I took it from Her. And as I read, I came into the room just a little bit, just a Little bit more, just like I do every time I say yes to something You asked me to do. and i was coming to two and three meetings a day and and i lasted 89 days and then that first step edge came back to me you know i thought big book and a beer sound a little more like balance to me you know and just wasn't ready to get from bridge to shore quite right yet and and uh so i had to drink one more time and as soon as i took that drink i wanted what i'd had just a few minutes earlier even with the discomfort and I learned a valuable lesson and I was lucky enough to come back but that I had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable that's the grow zone that's the human condition that's what I wanted to learn how to do all my life anyway you know there's nobody who's not ever uncomfortable but being able to stick it out and not shortcut it you know? And by the way, we are not terminally immature. We don't have to be anyway. Some of us, you know, beg to differ, but we can grow up. So I got to come back 24 hours later. My sponsor picked me up. She helped me throw away the bottles and she took me up to the big book study that night, and I was in not great shape, and nobody in the meeting said, ew, I smell alcohol in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nobody did that. And a guy came up to me at the break, and he said, hey, you want to come up on Tuesday and make coffee with me? And I thought, dang, somebody thinks I'm going to be here on Tuesday. And I came on the days in between, and And I came on that Tuesday, and I've been here ever since. And those little jobs that we get in the meetings, you know, like I said, they helped me until that internal thing happened, until the process of the steps overtook the obsession to drink. And it hasn't returned. And I've heard from some old-timers that the obsession can return, even doing everything that we're supposed to be doing. That's not been my experience, but I've hurt it, and I respect it. You know, our book never stops mentioning alcohol. You know, and I'm not saying that we're not walking around here. I'm not saying we're walking around you're not drinking. That's not what we're doing. We're not not drinking, you know, let's go out together and not drink. We are not doing that. You know, we hear that over and over. But, you know, I ask what's in the ingredients in food, you You know, I respect the effect that alcohol has on me as an alcoholic. I respect a phenomenon of craving. That's the first half of the first step. And in the chapter of the doctor's opinion, they devoted a whole chapter to it that any description of the alcoholic that leaves this element out is incomplete. The best description to simplify all of this, at least even for me, you know, after all these years, I think the best description of alcoholism is on page 44 in our big book. And it says simply this, if when you honestly want to find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience will conquer. And if that's you, welcome. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. And in all its simplicity, We complicate the hell out of it, and we'll help you do the same. Somehow we all get through it, you know. I'm just kidding, really. But maybe not. But we get to stay. And I just want, you Know, again, I think it bears repeating. I will never be so spiritually fit I can take a drink of alcohol in any form at all. it's why I stand at the door and welcome the newcomers. It's why I'm still here. You know, I still work with newcomers I want to, I hear them and I see me too. It has been a long time since my last drink but this is hopefully their last drink and they are walking in and they have no idea what's in store for them if they come across the threshold of AA. But I will tell you something too I'll just share this with you. I have friends who forgot and they were all in they were not like working in a fringe program and then oops slid off these are people who were all-in with 14 20 43 years of sobriety good sobriete helping people and then let stop doing what we do and picked up a drink and some of them can't get back you know when you are always welcome I don't care you are always welcome in Alcoholics Anonymous but man watching you try to stay is so painful the pride and I know I know how my pride is sober and watching this is painful and I know it's way more painful for them knowing what they once had it wasn't something they didn't have or never had it was something they had once and they know they're missing it and uh and i believe them so so what happened so i was going to meetings and and uh and uh you know i was involved and uh i was paying rent for more than a month in a row i really didn't care if you were a glum lot or not when i got here i didn't share i wanted to learn how to do that how to raise this kid how to be a responsible adult I just, I didn't, I couldn't do anything for very long. You know, I just couldn't. I was sick all the time and I couldnít hold a job. So I was hanging on to this phone answering job by a thread and I had begun to show up. And after a couple of years my daughter didnít have anybody. I had you guys and now it was time. She was pissed. You know sheís like 11 years old and sheís pissed and she's out running the streets. Sheís been jumped into a gang. Sheís starting to find her sense of family and camaraderie out in the street where I used to. She's, you know, if she's coming home at all and I'm getting phone calls from the cops at work, you now, Ms. Moore did you authorize this party going on? You know, and she needed help. She got 18 year old vatos crawling in and out of her bedroom window and she needs help. And so I, you know, the people in AA were great for a while and I had to find something bigger and I put her in a treatment center and had to turn her in there and I didn't know if that was the right thing or not but they told me back then that the gang influence on kids that age was a thousand times more toxic than drugs and alcohol on kids that age. Why? Because the I got your back feature, because of the feeling of family. And she, I was busy being wonderful in AA. And right up front in our book on page 19 is where it is. I'm a page quoter and a book reader, and yes, because I want you to know where I get it. In case I'm wrong, you can call me, but that's where it ist. And please, with your sponsor, read your big book, but read your own big book. Read your book. Because if somebody like me raises my hand and shares something in a meeting, you know, go back and check. Go back and check because we want to know. We need to know if I'm quoting it wrong or... So it says that a more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our homes, occupations and affairs and if I'm only doing it in these rooms I'm only half doing it you know so it was time for me to get out there and go be a mom go to work go to a meeting and then go home and be a mom to that kid and over time you know like I said a long period of reconstruction ahead from the time she was about 11 till she was About 23 it took and you guys taught me that mountains are moved a spoonful at a time and I showed up when they asked me to and I stayed away when they Asked Me To and you know stuff happened she came back to live with me she wanted to live With her dad for a while she came back to me and I had to shut up about what I thought of him you know and all this all many many many years later you know I her her stepmother ended up asking me to take her to a meeting you know because of the amends process because there was some kind of example that she saw that maybe there could be something better and that took years you know we just never know when that's going to happen but when my daughter was 16 she came to me with her boyfriend they had a funny look on their face, and I told them they were pregnant, and they nodded. And I got to tell her, I'll be there for you, whatever you decide. I'm here. And so I got to be present at the birth of my first grandson. And that kid just started his second year law school this year. And her youngest just finished high school. He'll be 19 in December. And I'm just gray-haired Grandma Carla, you know? They don't have a lot of use for me, but they like having me around, you know what I mean? And my daughter and I, it was a long period of reconstruction ahead and we were talking about this at dinner. Don't be surprised if you're not getting the keys to the kingdom when you're 30 days sober. They're still going, hmm, I don't know. It took a long time. Like I said, after nine months, around nine months I made amends to my family and there is still not one member of my family who'll stand in the doorway and say no please don't go to the meeting you know they never knew that and uh off you go to Minnesota then other women started asking me to sponsor them and I got to tell you the only fifth step I like better than mine is yours because in your eyes I see redeemability I see forgivability and hope and growth and love where I don't always see it in myself. And you draw for me sometimes things I need to share that I didn't even know needed talking about. You do that for me. I'm a big believer, you got to give it away to get it. You know, and then I, and I heard when I early on that, you know, you gotta stay and let us love you till you can love yourself. And I heard that we still hear that a lot, you Know, but when I read what I really heard it and what I really love is let us love you till you can love someone else. And that's when I hear it change with women I sponsor too. They're not, and in me too, but I hear it with them. You know, when they stop calling about their stuff and they start calling me about how they're going to help the woman they're trying to help, you know, that's when it changes. It's just different. And we sit different in our bodies when that's happening when we begin to really, really start to care about another human being. And you don't have to qualify them as an alcoholic. Hold the damn door open. Who cares who it is coming through you? You know, have a nice day. But sitting there working with somebody who can't get sober, who can'T get sober and stay sober, sitting there and watching the light come on in their eyes, having the same, having had the same problem I did, and now having the same solution and seeing it work in them that's priceless when i was five years sober i came home from the gym one night and i and i uh went to bed as usual and i woke up in the middle of the night to a man standing over my bed with a knife to my neck and his hand over my mouth and he said don't say a word or i'll cut your head off and he took the telephone cord and he tied my hands behind my back and he raped me and he robbed me that night in my room in my apartment and thank god my daughter wasn't there that night, and it turned out I knew this guy. He was there for a few hours, and it turns out I know him, and he actually got sober 30 days before I did. I watched him get his life, his wife, his kids, and everything back, and then I watched them join the church and leave AA behind, and when he went out, he went like that. What I chose to learn from that is while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right. Alcoholics Anonymous is the place where I learn the terms and conditions of my alcoholism. This is where I learned that I'm not one of those people who can go home after a Sunday sermon and have a glass of wine, no matter how spiritual I get. I come here and I remember who and what I am. You know, spiritual practices out there, religion, they treat spirituality in general. And I am not somebody who thinks you have to choose between being religious and spiritual come on religion started with a bunch of people wanting to get together practicing spiritual principles you know and they made a mistake you know not like in us us and aa who do it perfectly but i'll never be that spiritual where i can take a drink of alcohol in any form at all and And so I try to, you know, I come here. They treat spirituality in general, but we, what we do, our primary purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous is to take spirituality and we aim it right at alcoholism. That's our purpose here. That's why I'm in this room. And then I can go wherever I want to in worship, and I love it because I have found my experience only, I'm going to speak for myself, but I havefound that we are as much alike as different. I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows as far as my alcoholism goes. I have a condition called alcoholism, but my jealousy doesn't make me alcoholic. What makes me alcoholic is if I don't treat that jealousy, then I'm going to end up looking at that first drink somewhere down the line. But the fact that I'm jealous does not make me an alcoholic. The fact that i'm angry doesn't mean I'm an alcoholic, but being alcoholic, I know that I've got to treat that. that's what keeps that's what stands between me and the first drink is some level of spiritual of a fit spiritual condition that's why I do it I started to do it because I had to and now I do because I like the result you know even in troubled times and so anyway there was a trial that followed they caught him and there was a trial that followed and as part of the defense they had a lot of the guys I'd known years before get up and testify as to who I used to be and uh so we had to get a character witness for me and by that time you know i told you who i was and by the time i was working at a big fancy uh investment firm downtown los angeles a place i never would have walked in the front doors of years before would add no business being there and people like henry kissinger walk the halls of this place and i was walking undetected and the division head there volunteered to come and testify on my behalf and they told him all about who I used to be and he said yeah but she shows up early and she stays late and she was where she said she was and see that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself and then it was my turn to testify and I had to uh by that by that time my sponsor had been talking to me about forgiving you know by that Time Margarita become my sponsor Lee walked me right up to Marguerite we both knew it was time for me to ask a woman and uh and he knows that sponsorship is not ownership and he walked me right up to Marguerite and she said you know you're going to have to forgive this guy where people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments and I know she's right but at five years of sobriety anger was still my favorite way to deal with fear like that you know, fear made anger made me feel like I had some kind of momentum, like you couldn't hurt me like there was some kind OF power and isn't that my dilemma and I need a new one I need a new one and so the seven step prayer became my mantra there it was the one I like to say prayers from my heart a lot but in times like that when I can't find the words then those those were like mantras the seven step prayer was like a mantra to me and and so now it's me sitting up in the witness stand and I look out and I see him sitting there and it's a place where I've sat before and I could sit again if I were to take a drink I could be sitting in his very seat and what occurred to me was that prayer at the top of page 67 and I like to call it the prayer of compassion. I know people call it the sick man's prayer, but it gives me a connotation of, well, when that son of a bitch gets as good as I think he should, then we're all going to be okay. That's not what it says. It says, though we didn't like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they like ourselves. He, like me, is spiritually sick. He just like me. And when I was able to find, you know, if I, and where I found the equality or equanimity was, if I were to take a drink, I could be sitting in his very seat. You know, and that's where it started and it occurred to me, you know, that he's just like me. We're two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom. And in that moment, the forgiveness came. Compassion came. Forgiveness is never going to come from a spiritual hilltop, never goingto come from me looking down at you and thinking that I know what's good for you. It's just not. Thank you. Just to give you hope. Thanks, Howard. And it took a while for the healing, but the healing came. there are tinges that come back up, not just from that time, but from times before. But that particular time helped with so much of the past that it was just, there was a momentum that happened in that time and I don't have time to go into all of it. But he was sentenced to 20 years and he did about 15, I think, 15, 16 years. And when it was over, the detective who worked the case came to me And he said, you know, I don't know who you were back then. I'm not even sure I want to know. But whatever it is you're doing now, keep doing it because it seems to be working. And see, that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. And my father was in the courtroom, my sponsor, some of my sponsees, some people from my home group. Never once did any of my home groups ever say, what were you wearing? Or what did you do? You know, none of them, nobody. You know and that stuff used to happen to me out on the street on not a regular basis but often enough and i never knew you know i never did anything about it i never spoke up i never said anything why who's gonna listen who cares you fall down get up take a drink and keep walking but i did have this old idea about and i shared at one time in a meeting i was just so just confused by it and i thought you know maybe it was way back when i was still getting rid of the idea that God shoots things at us to see how we'll do with them I don't have that God anymore but you know and the old-timers said you know I said maybe a girl like me is just going to have that happen because I can handle it or something you know and after they got done laughing they said you just got in the way of somebody who wasn't looking to do God's will just like other people got in your way it wasn't personal you know and uh and and somehow that unhooked me it set me free and i had a new idea and i have a much bigger god than all of that these days but you know there were just a lot i was a bewildered one when i got here a lot of all kinds of crazy ideas about god and um and on it went you know i i have been you know I have been bankrupt I have had big jobs little jobs, no jobs in sobriety. You know, I have learned or at least come to a place for myself where I don't think that that always means that you're not working a good program. You know, there have been a lot of experiences and a lot things that happen. It's not what happens, it's how I respond to what's happening. And it's not always what's happening, it is a story I'm telling myself about what's happening and that's why I still need my sponsor. You know I have a great sponsor and she has a sponsor and I sponsor a lot of women and and but the good news is that all these years later most of my ideas when I run them by her she's like yeah that sounds right you know there's like I have matured some and you know our the promise of the 11 steps says we'll come to rely on it will come to rely the intuition my job as a sponsor is not to train you to listen to me run your life my job is a sponsor's to help you find your own intuition, to find your own power greater than yourself that makes sense to you. Just like I. It's our privilege and our responsibility. And I have a lot of fun with it. And I'll just close with this story, just because I like it. But some of you have heard it before, but oh well. But the joy of living we have is the theme of our 12th step. And I've had a lot of examples and a lot of experiences of that over the years. But my best example about that is when we tried to foster this little pit bull lab named Sammy. I know we got dog people in the room, right? Well, this little dog named Sammy was the happiest dog you ever saw, and you know how they are anyway. They're just like oh, oh, I can't believe it's you. It's you, it's yo, oh. When we had a play and you go into the other room and they're always like oh it's, it you, and you know they're just bright light you know when they don't care about what you know, they're so happy. And so I'd get up in the morning I'd feed Sammy I put down the food in front of her it's the same food she saw yesterday in the day before the day before that same food new day she's just like oh we are gonna to eat, and so she eats, and then she runs in the bedroom where Doug and I are, and she looks at him, and looks at me, and look at him. It's like same faces she saw yesterday and the day before and the days before. That same face is new day. She's just like, I can't believe it's you. We are going to party. And she'll play with us for a little while, and just jet out the back door into this yard, the same yard she was in yesterday and the day before, and the days before that. Same yard, same birds, same cats, same coyotes, same everybody is all there again. And she's running in circles you know with that goldfish mentality you know a castle, a castle a castle and just having the time of her life. And I look at the back and I see and I see her and I think I get that, I get it. You know not like stupid joy, not like I don't understand that there's stuff going on in the world not like that but just that foundation of peace that goes with me wherever no matter what's happening and she's she's reflecting that out and I think yeah I think when I get up in the morning my feet at the floor and I say thank you and then I go sit for 20 to 30 minutes quietly in meditation and then i get up and I read something whole books I mean I just I just eat it up I just devour and then i get up and i get to go have a day i get to give a day and i get to have problems and fun and everything all the time simultaneously i get to have that when i do that when i forget and i get up in the morning i forget the thank you and i forget the sit and i forget the read and i'm talking to people who aren't in the room on my way to the coffee pot before i know it i am sitting on the computer looking for a fight on Facebook talking to people I don't know about things I care nothing about but it becomes very very important in the moment right I get to choose that every single day and when I get up at my feet at the floor and I say thank you and I go do what I'm supposed to do I set the conditions to go out and give a great day I want to thank you again for having me tonight let's go have a great weekend thanks for letting me share Thank you.