Fearlessly Facing the Proposition in the Chapter to the Agnostics – Mildred F.

My name is Mildred and I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. I'm really grateful to be here. It's been a wonderful weekend and I'd like to thank Doug and the committee for inviting me. And I would like at this time to thank you for being here and I would also like to thank the speakers. If I have ever needed to hear the message of letting go, I've heard it this weekend in every speaker beginning with Charlie, continuing with June Dawn, Barbara and then Steve last night and I thank you for that my life has changed drastically in the last month I've lost the person that is dearest or was dearest to me in all the world and it's made a big change in the way I see things and in the ways I see myself and I'll talk a little more about that but you know what, I think speakers get better or else I can hear different I don't know I've been to three conferences since my sister Dora died and I just think wow, most of these speakers I've seen I've listened to them and I hear things that I have really needed to hear and that have really been a great comfort to me so I thank you for that And I thank the committee for the kindness that they've shown me, and certainly to Michelle for picking me up and hopefully getting me back to the airport on time and all that. You know, I'll tell you one way to shorten the speaker, put them on the program when they have to catch an airplane, guaranteed. They won't over talk. some some months ago i was watching a television program and um it was about the nazi the nazy occupation of paris and the french taking back their city and there they were climbing the flag poles climbing the eiffel tower climbing everything that they could climb with their french flag shouting liberte liberte and the eyes were shining and they were talking about how wonderful it was to be back in their city. And as I watched this, I thought, isn't this like Alcoholics Anonymous? I don't know how people who are not alcoholic, and I don' t think alcoholism is the only suffering that can bring us to our knees, but the one I know best is alcoholism, so that's the one l'll talk about. Having been on the dark side of life, I now can feel like those Frenchmen climbing the poles, putting up their flag and reclaiming their world. You see when I came here I was in a state that the book calls pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I had no home I was unemployable and I certainly was not in the state in which you see me this morning. I came hier as broken as a human being can be and what you gave me was the fellowship you invited me in and then as I stayed here you introduced me to the program and you taught me about what really makes this thing work service to others giving away what it is that you receive here and you introduced my to a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful than anything I could have dreamed as each of the speakers has told you this weekend and I certainly reiterate that You told me that I would find a power greater than myself who would solve my problem. And for a long time, I didn't know that my problem was not men, sex, money, God knows whatever else. I thought it was out there. And one time my sponsor said to me, sit down and read that. And I said, God would help me solve, or God would solve my problems. And he had me read it again and again until I saw that problem was in the singular, not in the plural. And he said, and what is your problem? And of course, step three says it very well. Self-centeredness. And I didn't understand that because I think that's really all that goes on here. I say all because I think it's all that goes on anywhere in the world is the stripping of the ego so that instead of living an ego-centered life, we can live a God-centered life. And that is really truly what my journey here has been. I have been a very slow learner, but nevertheless, I have been a learner because the one thing I have done right, I kept coming. I kept Coming here in the dark days. i kept coming here in the days that seemed brighter whatever was happening in my life i've never had a period since i finally got here it took me 40 years to get here but once i got here i stayed and it is because of this i believe that the process goes on and you know as has been so beautifully spoken of this week it's not a process that i can orchestrate and my problem has been that I spent most of my life determined to orchestrate it. I didn't leave the results. I determined what the results should be and then said, now God, you've got the power. Come on, turn it loose so I can have the world the way I want it and it just doesn't happen. And when I tell you that I have had a lot of pain in my life, believe me, I have. You can't live that way. Pain is the messenger that says it ain't going right, kid. You aren't doing it right. You know, there was a time in my life when I was sick enough that I thought pain was God's blessing on me, that if God loved you, he really dumped on you. That's an old message, and you'll see where I got that. Well, I'm to share with you my experience, strength, and hope. And it says also in the book that our stories show how we developed our relationship with God. And you have done that for me many times, so now I will try and do that for you. If you're going to identify with me, let's just see how this goes. How many people out there were born on a farm in Saskatchewan? Another farmer's daughter, see? Well, we have no takers on that one. How many were Roman, Catholic, German, and the youngest of ten? Don't see any hands. How about how many are girls? Don't any of you guys put up? Uh-uh! I saw a hand go up there that I don't think should have gone up. Anyway, who knows the mysteries that lurk under these garments? how many out there spent 15 years as a roman catholic sister no okay let's try another one how many out there married their own psychiatrist we're not doing very well by the way perhaps we should just go to the airport now how about this one how many had 32 hospitalizations in one psychiatric ward, mental institution or insane asylum I saw a hand, good for you probably met you there how many here had 38 shock treatments no alright, how about this one, how many ever have been tied to the bed Uh-oh Not for fun and frolic Okay Along with that Anybody here been diagnosed as schizophrenic? Schizophrenic, paranoid Paranoid, schizoid Manic, depressive, manic Manic depressive depressed I see hands waving a bit how many here have been diagnosed as having a chronic personality disorder by the time i get finished you probably will agree or an organic personality disorder and on it went well you see the drama of my life is not the essence of my alcoholism you see as i hear your stories i can't identify with some of the drama of your life, but that isn't what it's about. If I tell you that when you put a booze into me, I can't guarantee when I'm going to stop, I can'T guarantee what I'm GOING TO DO, I can'T guarantee whatI'M GOING to chase or not chase, you can probably identify with that if you're alcoholic. And if I tellyou that the my main problem rests in my mind and that I have a mind that lacks proportion and can't think straight, and that's on a good day, youcan probably identify with that the book says that i have strange mental blank spots and that isn't just when i'm drunk or planning to drink that's in life sometimes i can't access my behavior and i do the same stuff over and over and again as if this time magically a different result is going to come out you know and the book says I can't do it on self-knowledge and I can do it own willpower and it goes on and on to describe me I can also identify we also identify when I tell you that I never felt okay I never felt that I belonged in my family I never felt I belonged at school I never thought I belong in the convent I never felt I belonged anywhere. And that was part of this whole shtick that I'm talking about. Well, when I was three and a half, I realized that the person that I loved most in the world and who I really consider was sent here as my teacher, and I was probably sent here as hers, cried at night. And she used to crawl into bed with me at night and she would say, Mildred, why was I ever born? Why didn't I die in the cradle? And I would cry with her. And I would say, why Was I ever Born? Why Didn't I Die in the Cradle? You see, she had been injured at birth. And she was 81 when she died last month. So we're talking she was 16. At this time, they kept her in grade three till she was 60. Her name was Dora and people used to call her dumb Dora. and you know she was smart enough that she knew she was different and didn't know what to do about it and so life seemed very cruel to me but I mean I have a big family so I tried to fix things I tried make life better for her don't hear me say this made me an alcoholic it didn't but I'll tell you I have not had an easy time in the program and it has taken me a long time to hear the messages because the messages of self and ego-directed living were so strong. My family didn't seem to respond. I had my ideas. If only my brothers would dance with her at these country dances that Charlie talked about. You know, the guys over there and the girls over there and she'd always be left. And I thought, God, my brothers would only dance with her. You know, it was only as Dora was dying that we sat and talked about some of this stuff. And I began to see my family loved her as much as I did. But, you know, 60, I'm 66, so get over the math. We're done with that. 63 years ago or 62 years ago, I don't know what it was like in your homes. but we didn't talk about emotions right now I think maybe we talk ourselves to death instead of getting into action in those days it was all action and I realize now that my family didn't know what to do with her you know, and as my sister said my father always took such care of her and if somebody else got a fur coat she got a Fur Coat and if someone else had whatever, she got it It wasn't that she wasn't looked after. They didn't do it my way. And God, when you don't do it myway, you're not worth anything. That's what I learned. I shut you out because if you didn't, if you didn't know me, if you wouldn't do what I said you ought to do because I had decided that if you would do such and such she would be okay and she wouldn't cry. And so my family didn't respond. Well, I've got another source of power where Roman Catholic. I go to church, and I didn't hear that God was mean. I heard God was love, and I heard that God is power. Wow, there's my answer. I'm going to pray to God, and I'm gonna point out to God what stuff is going on here, and then God, you've got the power, you fix it. Right? Seemed logical to me. You know what happened? Nothing. Or at least so I thought. Nothing seemed to change. You see, in those days, I thought God was the great cosmic concierge and that all I had to do was dial up and say, please deliver and I would make the decision about what was to happen and God would provide the power and everything would be fine. And you know, if it had worked that way, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn'T need to be here. And so I didn't turn against God. God became irrelevant to me. You know, it was kind of like, yeah, I know Queen Elizabeth exists. So what? I mean, God doesn't seem to interact in my life in any way as I thought at that time. and so I just was confused at five I took my first drink I was a late bloomer as you can see you know, I was not afraid of alcohol even though my grandfather died my parents were Americans my grandfather lied in the pool of his own blood in the early 1900s I had an uncle who was shot I had a brother who's now sober 48 years so we come by it naturally And I come by it naturally. But when I was a little kid, my home was nicer when people drank. Everybody was loose. Not loose as a goose, just loose. They were nice. they danced and they sang my father was an uptight German general not really a general but behaved like one he was a nice man but he was authoritarian that's all he knew and when he drank he sang and danced I loved when I smelled booze on people my alcoholic brother, he was pain you know where when he was sober he sat there and had nothing to say and he wasn't very nice and he didn't talk much and God, when I smelled booze on him I said, let the good times roll. And so I wasn't afraid of alcohol I didn't know it was a progressive disease I didn' t know it had killed members of my family and that it would one day almost kill me. So when I took my first drink I experienced what I had been chasing I experienced heaven on earth The difficult became easy, the unpleasant became pleasant. I got ease and comfort. I could say, it's all okay. And I came out to play. See, I was exactly like my brother. When I wasn't drinking, I was wrapped up in my complexes and my neuroses and my psychoses and God knows what other oses, but I was locked in that prison. And when I drank, I came out to play. I loved it. I came Out to Play, I Came Out to Work, I Come Out to Dance, I Came out to do everything that I liked to do. I was Jekyll and Hyde. You didn't like me very much when I wasn' t drinking. and when I was drinking, at least for a little while I was civil and people got to know a little bit about me because otherwise I was living in this world of my own problems and my own pain once I tasted booze and I knew what booze could do for me I never thought sober again I drank whenever, wherever and whatever I could it was only after I got to AA that I learned that people actually waited to drink until they had appropriate glasses. Imagine that. And that some people chilled booze and that some People drank only one kind. I remember the first time I heard a man say, and I only drank scotch, and I thought, well, bully for you. I drank anything that had booze alcohol in it, including vanilla. And I'll tell you, 28 fluid ounces of vanilla goes down very hard. and I used to drink perfume from time to time Chanel No. 5 was my personal favorite I can tell you it does the job and you smell good too for a little while I just couldn't stop I wanted that feeling all the time and I chased it to the gates of hell when I finished high school I really wanted to be a lawyer I was very young, I was I think 15 and I wanted to go to university I understand now I used to say the reason I didn't go to University was because I was an alcoholic that's not true I was alcoholic but that isn't what kept me because I wasn't still in that place where I couldn't function As a matter of fact, I functioned better when I drank. What kept me from going was fear. You see, what I learned in that bedroom was this. You're nothing, you're nobody. Dr. Paul talks about the committee in the head. Well, I had a committee, and you talked about it last night, Steve, about the voices, and the voices said to me, I mean, it had been proved to me nobody listens to you. My brothers didn't listen to me when I told them how they were to treat Dorf. the family didn't listen to me and I said, I'm a girl nothing good happens to girls and I could give you a whole list nothing will ever work out for you and you ought to be afraid and all that kind of thing those were the voices that spoke to me and I think this is one of the miracles of Alcoholics Anonymous that I can now get to a place where at least sometimes I have freedom from those voices because those voices ran my life so instead of going to university i stayed at home and drank and finally decided to go to a convent i think of the next kind of 20 22 years of my life as my attempt to fix my life the convent was the first place i went to do it because somewhere in my sick head, I said to myself, if I do this hard thing for God, you see, because nothing had changed in here. Nothing had changed because I was still in the mode of directing my own life. I was Still in the Mode of Getting Ease and Comfort the Way I Wanted Ease & Comfort. And so nothing had changed. So I was going to go to a convent, and again, I was gonna tell God how to fix me i'm going to do this very hard thing for you god and then you're going to fix me it didn't work i stayed there for 15 years you have to give me credit for a determination i really hung in there maybe tomorrow it's going to be different i was drunk the night i entered which probably says as much about them as it does about me they took me and they marched me into the chancery office about quarter to 12 at night to get my little bonnet and induct me into the community and i was to stay there for 15 years you know i had vows of poverty chastity and obedience i was a good nun in every department except that department where i had to drink and then i lied and cheated and stole like the rest of you you know and said well i'll fix that up tomorrow someday this is going to be okay i don't know how but i'll fix it up someday but today i have to drink and so i drank in some very strange places you know when you've got this big habit on black and white and and whatever you're not going to be going into the iroquois to have a few with the boys i'll tell you at some point a doctor introduced me to speed and that's not my my real thing booze is my real thing but I have to tell you that many times I added drugs to to my repertoire because that's what I could get more easily one time I was stationed out in Saskatchewan I came east to Ontario to enter the convent. Nobody else would have me, so I had to go 2,500 miles to find somebody who would take me in. And I was once stationed in a place, you want to talk about 65 people in a space. There were five of us, the parish priest, two nuns and a couple. Oh no, and their son was there too. And there was no liquor store in that place so I had to struggle and it was easier at that time to get pills than it was to get booze so I learned what uppers and downers and those things that made you go sideways were and I learned not to blink for 36 hours and I learnt to vacuum at five o'clock in the morning and all kinds of interesting things and in those days it was simple to go to a druggist and say I'm working too hard and he'd say what do you need like who suspected what was going on here you know in 15 years nobody ever challenged me about my drinking they locked me up in one place after the other psychiatrists counselors priests bishops God knows what they all had a crack at me and nobody ever said do you drink too much and I said to myself thank God because that was my friend and if you had asked me I would have lied about it anyway so January the 10th 1966 I stood on the convent steps and I have no idea who the problem was where the problem was what the problem was I thought it was a simple you take the habit off you get dispensed by Rome from your vows you get your secular name back I was no longer sister Mary Eugenia and I'm going to sail into life and everything's going to be beautiful not an idea here i had studied theology and philosophy and psychology and heaven knows what else didn't know the problem was in here and i carried the problem with me and i can only tell you that in the next 10 months i wound up in jail maybe that doesn't impress you it impressed me mightily i can tell you because i can remember the first time they threw me in jail and i thought i used to be sitting in a condom cell something's wrong here i'm in a jail cell and um i just lost my innocence the bloom was off the rose i can tell you that and i'll leave it at that and at the end of that time i had myself locked into an insane asylum and my brother at this point uh came and got me you know i think of june reminded me yesterday of how families interact with us my family was fabulous you know they wouldn't give me money they would help me they would try to do what they could the only time my mother sent anybody for me was to get me out of that insane asylum uh i went home after i was in the con out of the convent i was going to show off my new persona i really showed it off i was home 36 hours and came went to a party on a friday night and came home at seven o'clock in the morning with the family banker who was very much married and had three children and uh my family was not impressed as i was leaving from that period i guess i was homes seven days i woke up from a blackout the day i was leaving and my mother was sitting across from me and she was crying and she said milford we don't have a phone number and an address for you what if you die she said you could die in the ditch and we'd never know and my response to that was well i guess that's my problem isn't it that's where my heart was and then i blacked out again but you know what the amazing thing was they let me go it would have been such a simple matter to get a doctor in there and have me committed but she didn't do that she let me go i guess she knew that life had to take its course as it had with my brother and she let him go and so i went back and um within I guess a month I was back in another psych warden there I met the man who was to become my husband a psychiatrist God you talk about wanting to fix your life the convent was going to fix it it failed me now this man is gonna fix my life isn't that true with girls we all need a man to fix our lives or so we think and then one day the bloom is off that rose too hate to tell you that guys but it's true and um but what he did was suggest that i go to alcoholics anonymous and i went and i was in prince albert at that time and you know cease is there cease was my first sponsor and uh i loved a for three months three weeks god it was nice to wake up knowing where i'd been i liked the people i was with but you know what i didn't know how to live i hadn't a clue i think that i stopped growing when i picked up that first drink i hadn' t a clue how to life was so unbearably painful that i went to my second addiction and i sat in meetings of alcoholics Anonymous, trying to do what I was told to do but doing my self-will all along. I was stoned for five and a half years trying to read the big book, trying to do the steps. They let me go on 12-step calls. I used to go out to the women's jail every night for every once a week. See, Salva says she carried the disease rather than the message. I was a great carrier, I can tell you. and at the end of five and a half years i couldn't stand it nay i think back over my life and i think that over the extraordinary kindness of people that have met me because i don't know if i would have the compassion and the empathy i remember one time saying to cease why did you always come when i called for help because i drank for another year and a a half. Drank myself into DTs and convulsions and blackouts and traveling. God, I used to travel. Don't ask me how or with who, but I traveled. And then I'd call seats and then I play games. I'd register under another name. And Then I would do all kinds of things like change hotels, change motels, and thought I was being real cute. And I said to him once, why did you always come and he said because we never knew when the call was going to be the right one and I have never forgotten that you know in doing 12-step work I never know when the car is going to be the one anyway I think I told you enough about the way i lived and the kind of person that i was to to qualify my being up here and to try to tell you that as i tried to fix my life it didn't work even in alcoholics anonymous see what i understand today it's not enough for me to go to meetings that's great absolutely i need the fellowship the fellowship helps to teach me who I am and it helps to teach me you are and it helped me to teach me who God is but it isn't enough I had to eventually get into the steps I had to eventually do the steps i had to revenge when we get into real service and get into a lot of state anyway maybe 18th I wound up in the psych ward which was no no big deal and there were two men sitting at the foot of my bed and they really were there one was a psychiatrist and one was private detective who had been hired to find me and uh the next day i spent diapered i was 40 years old at this time and i i have lately started to mention this day because you know what it kind of shows me where my will brought me it shows me where alcoholism brought me it shows where my plan brought me 40 years old and i'm lying in a bed with diapers on that wasn't really what mother superior had in mind when she took me in it wasn't really what my mom and dad had in mine when they taught me principles of decency and honesty and when i saw them live with integrity they weren't fancy enough for me they weren t glamorous enough for me i wanted other parents you know but they really taught me something valuable so the morning of the 20th uh the nurse took me for a walk and i went to the washroom and i saw myself and what i saw was this eye was bulging out and this part of my face just a half moon of purple where somebody had hit me I guess and my teeth were knocked out and my hair was straggling and I weighed about 85 pounds and as I looked at myself in the mirror I saw myself and I said to the nurse I've become a woman of the streets haven't I and she said yes you have what are you going to do about it and those words rang in my head she took me to breakfast and when i got back to my room after breakfast i i knew what i was going to do about him i was out of plans i had no money i had no home my husband was an alcoholic he was as sick as i was because he'd gone back to drinking i was outer people that i thought could help me see my family they would have taken me in but on their terms not mine unacceptable to me i had no home was i going to go live on the street that was unacceptable i remember hearing ray o'keefe say you know there is a line in the sand beyond which we don't have to step and the line inthe sand for me was just that will i go and sell my body on the streets because i don't know how to use my the gifts that god has given me to live i'm out of ideas and it was at that point that I decided that I was going to take my own life I knew how I was doing to do it I was gonna sign myself out and finish it and it wasn't that point that I had a spiritual experience and the compulsion to drink was lifted it was done and I knew it was gone I knew that if I didn't want to I need never pick up a drink again I I couldn't have told you how or what. And I remember saying to whoever was in that room, I will stay sober. I knew I had no more compulsion to drink. I, who for 40 years wouldn't spend five minutes sober or clean if I could grab onto something that would hopefully change the way I felt. I knewI didn't have to drink anymore. And I remember saying out loud, I don't know how to live. Remember, I've had five and a half years in AA, and you haven't showed me. And so I said, I do not know howto do life. If you have to send somebody, and I swear to you as I stand here, there was a rap on the door, and a man came in, and he said, I saw you at breakfast. Are you an alcoholic? now you probably think I gave him a nice answer see I believe that spiritual experiences and we've all had them they do what they are meant to do and then we need to carry on from there he said to me, are you alcoholic? and I said yes, do you want to make something of it? he said no he said I just thought I'd come in and see if maybe you'd like to go to an AA meeting. I said, you've got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding. I've had five and a half years in AA and that stuff doesn't work. And I said you can take your God and whatever. He said well if you won't go to AA would you go to Donwood? And I went through my file of places and I thought no I haven't been there. and uh he said i said what is that and he said it's a hospital you know dr bell was one of the pioneers in canada on providing treatment medical treatment for addicted people and he had founded this place called donwood and i said well you know maybe and that was the start i had we had absolutely no money and yet despite that within two weeks I was in Donwood and you know I'll get Donwood did what they could do if you think about the 12 steps and what it says in the ABCs that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives be that probably and I take out the probably because i have not found a human power that has been able to fix what's wrong with me god uses you to fix me but you're not the one that fixes me and i'm not the one that mixes you that probably no human power could relieve me of my alcoholism you see what they taught me there was to eat nutritious food and to have a little exercise and maybe to breathe right once in a while and have a little meditation and what the disease was and we had some group therapy and you know where does group therapy get you I don't know it's fun to do but what else is it you know gives you a chance to whine a bit and never changed me and I got out of there and I went to Skid Row I didn't know there were places like Skid row I mean I knew they existed but I'd never lived there and so we had no money so we went to live there my husband was as sick as i was he was depressed and you know he said i can't work my psychiatrist said to me get a job and i went out and got a job and i want to tell you about my first year of sobriety because it is a wonder and you now when i really think about it i learned everything in the first year that i ever need to know you know because i was introduced to the three p's the first one was poverty i didn't know what poverty was i used to have a vow of poverty other people kept it i didn t you know i never knew what it was not to have stuff i didn' t know what it wa s not to ha ve money our money was gone the house was gone the stuff was gone cars were gone there wasn' t anything and i was making $2.20 an hour and there were days we didn't have enough to eat and began the process of stripping the ego. You know, it's been said in all the great spiritual traditions we have to go through this ego deflation in depth and I don't know anybody who likes ego defulation in depth. It's painful and it's grinding but eventually something else starts to take place. That's why some of the things I heard here were so important suit up and show up the second P was the people the first one was my psychiatrist I went back to him after I was out of there oh, I guess about three weeks and I went to whine and to tell him that I had been planning to take my own life the night before and I thought he was going to set me down and we were going to have another little discussion about the past and who had done what and who was to blame you notice she's got a sign on that says blame me and instead he said by the way he said Mildred if you want to take your own life go ahead but he said for heaven's sake stop your whining I'm not going to listen to you anymore if you wanna get well you're going to have to change he said i'll help you but you have to do the work now i'm telling you by this time i've had hundreds of hours of therapy never heard that i heard people say you're a nice little girl your mom didn't bring you up right and if you lived on that farm and what that priest said you know and all that kind of stuff you know i understand why you are here he was saying get to it if you want to change i'll help you i'll give you the guidelines and then there was this very nasty woman in aa she told me that i was the ugliest most self-centered person it had ever been her misfortune to me nothing sweet about that but you know what I heard her and though I resisted and said you can't talk to me like that do you know who you're talking to yes somebody sitting on skid row who can't put two sentences together I said I'm an ex-none and she said I don't give a damn about you being an ex-man and she went on to explain to me what i was doing and the miracle was i heard her and then there were people like ted lynch who is dead now and he used to say mildred do the do things boy i'll tell you that has stood me in good stead a lot of days in the program do the do things i was one of those who went with my feelings don't you know and they were usually feelings of depression and anger and fear and I'll tell you it makes a wonderful life just a roaringly successful life and he said do the do things and I said what are they he said well for one thing get up in the morning when you said you would be where you saidyou would be clean yourself up brush your teeth brush your hair and go out to that job and he if you want a better one keep on doing what's in front of you and something better so i five days a week i went to my little job and the sixth day i would always go and have go for job interviews to see if i could get a better job and make a little more money and that he was one of the people and then there was another man who used to say it's not important what you think of me now there's a concept what in the world does that mean i'm the great people pleaser of all time i need a little time when i meet you to see what you might want from me and then i go through my little stick to be what you what i think you want me to be and then we can get along and if you want me to buy you presents i'll do that and i'll give you whatever you want just like me just include me but why else why wouldn't i be that way i'm the world's most fearful person at this time and i believe that the answer is out there so why wouldn t i want to get the answer in here why wouldn' t i w ant to get you on my side and that's the way i lived and here comes this moose guy saying it's not important what you think of me it's important what i think of you i used to follow him every time i saw him and i'd say explain that to me again and he'd say get rid of the anger and the hatred and the judgment and the criticism inside that's what's killing you not what other people think they have their own stuff if they like you that's good if they don't like you that's good too that's their stuff leave them with it I tell you that was a new concept to me and then there was my first sponsor she was drunk within three months after sponsoring me and I used to think I had something to do with that but you know isn't it amazing think of your own life think of the people that have crossed your path either for a short time or for a long time but they left you with something and what did she leave me with she used to say because i used to think you know if only my husband would get a job you see i thought lack of money was my problem i didn't know it was lack of power and um i used to say to her you know for only he'd straighten out and he'd get a jump and she'd say he's not your problem you can get well whether he gets well or not i didn't know that and that's the message that woman gave me and then she went and got drunk and then you know i had come to aaa by this time six months into the program i walked in the doors of aa and oh my god here but i'll tell you it didn't take me long to know you were doing better than i was and you kept saying keep coming back. And by this time, nobody was saying come back. What they were saying was, if you come on our property again, we'll call the police and have you arrested. And so here I come in and they say, keep coming back and I kept coming back and the magic happened and I started to love what was here. Didn't know what was here? See, sometimes people have the idea that priests and nuns and ex-priests and ex nuns and ministers are so fortunate because they know all about prayer and meditation and God, don't think again. The playing field has to be leveled because knowing a whole lot about intellectual stuff isn't knowing stuff with the heart. And the only thing that really changes us, I believe here, is stuff that we know with the Heart. Sure, we can use our intellects, but it has to seep down into my life, it hasと seep into my soul, it has то seep in to my motivational processes, and it has to seep into that place in my life where I let go and let God run my life. That's been the whole journey as far as I can see it. And so there were two guys at my group and, you know, I had taken up this idea that I'm different. I'm an ex-nun. No ex-nuns out there and,you know, nobody understands me and these two guys came up to me and they said, you know what, you have to do the steps. You have to find a way to get this power functioning in your life. And I said, how do I do that? And for me, that was a miracle because up to that point, I had thought I knew about those steps on the wall. You know, when I saw those steps the first time, really saw them, it was not good news. I had had that stuff. We had talked about God, and we had talked about prayer and we have talked about surrender and all that stuff God's will and you're telling me that this is what is going to solve my problem but you see you could read those steps forever and not change isn't that true it's only when you take them and you chew them and you live them and you do take the actions that they recommend that they begin to change your life and things start to happen You know, I was so broken at that time. I just said, what do you want me to do? And I suspect that it was the simplest way ever of doing the steps. I just did exactly what they told me. If they said read page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, I did it. And I'd come back to the meeting and they'd say, now you do this. And I kept doing that. And I got through the steps, and you know what? I started to change and I began to see who the problem was I've done the steps in sequence three times in my life I did them before I was one year sober starting at 1 and going through to 9 and then continuing with 10, 11 and 12 the first time I did the steps the gift to me was and I think there's always a gift in doing the steps not in talking about them but in doing them that way The gift was I saw that I was the problem. You didn't have to change, and I believe that ever more passionately today. You're just fine as you are. And Moose was right all along. It doesn't matter what you think of me, but it sure matters in what terms I see you. And so I did the steps. And I'm going to go through the next 18 years quickly because there were three God deals. see I'm still trying to manage my life I mean I know it up here and I know a little bit down here that I'm the problem and I'm one that needs to change but I didn't really clearly see what step 3 says I wish I could tell you that all the shadows had been removed in that first doing of the steps but I believe that's why we come back here and why we keep coming back because this is a progressive, it's not about perfection. I think it was Causade, the great mystic, who talked about the evil vision, I think he used the term evil, of perfectionism. And our book says it isn't about perfection, that's why I need to come back because I can't get it all in one meeting, I can'T get it ALL in one year. I hear a speaker and then I hear them two years later and I think I've never heard them again. And why? Because I've grown and I've changed and the door has opened a little more so that I can hear a little more. You know, as one of the ministers that I know says we see the world not as it is we see it as we are. You Know, we see from what's inside and when you're filled with self you can only see a little bit. It's just little people and the people get getting bigger and bigger and bigger I think as we are here longer I got a teaching job again I who thought I would never teach again because that's my profession I'm a high school teacher and I got a teaching job I shouldn't have had that job and I won't go into how I got it but if I did get it the voice said go look in the paper I did there was a job advertised I went they were just mesmerized with me I wasn't that well together I was quite crazy still all I can say is it was a God deal and I got the job and that enabled me to pay off debts my debts, and my husband and I had separated by this time I paid off his debts wouldn't you have loved to be married to me and I paid of debts that we had accumulated and I'm seven years sober. And I'm now active in AA and I've got a good tough male sponsor now who takes no guff and he keeps me on the path and I am seven years over and I have got the old rusty car and the rented front. God, I have a six star credit rating but I have the old stuff and no money because I have spent it all clearing up the wreckage of the past and my sponsor said, we have to do the steps again. Magic words, eh? You know, when your sponsor says we have a lot of work to do you have to talk. You know you're in for something. And we did the steps again and the gift to me that time was an opening of the door of my repressed anger. You know I had repressed so much anger. I lived in a home. I lived in a beautiful home. But you didn't talk back. The philosophy in our house was children are meant to be seen and not heard, and I don't think the convent was much better. And I had never learned to express how I felt. I had Never Learned to Express Anger. I had repressed everything, and my sponsor knew that. And God bless the people that God sends into our lives. You know, I have always found when I need somebody, when I meet a message, I don't care if they're in China or they're Russia or they are in Bosnia, one way or another they're going to get where I am and they're gonna pass the message on to me. I've had people send me books that I didn't ask for. I've have people phone me that I...I didn't know that I knew. and one way or another this whole process goes on to me it's like a big dance you know some of you were at the dance last night and life goes on everybody is jiggling and jagging and that's what you go to a dance for but you know I think life is like that everybody has got their own thing and that is why it is so important to come to believe that there is a power greater than we are that uses us, that uses our experience, that uses who we are. It doesn't say you have to do this, but that presents us with opportunities. You see, I wanted the dance to be static. I wanted to put you where I wanted you because that was the only way I could be safe. And constantly the process goes on where I know the dance has to go on and I'm okay. I might get an elbow in the ribs once in a while but that's okay, that's part of the learning process so that was seven years and it was as if at that point the wind was on my back and I started another God deal showed up I always thought that men had the power because they had money and I thought I'm a girl, I can never make any big money and I went over to another school one day I'm sober at this time, seven years and one of my friends said hey, I've got to talk to you she said, you should buy a house I had just talked to my accountant a couple of days before he said, You don't have enough money to make money She said, I don't want to make any money She said you should pay a house My accountant just said I don' t have any money to pay money. She said, you come over on Saturday to make a long story short. She and her boyfriend were doing whatever they had found out the tax laws and all that kind of stuff. And within 10 days I had bought my first house. And Within the next 10 years I wheeled and dealed and I made a pile of money and I could do what I wanted. And I tell you that not about the money, but I tell you that because somewhere along the way i bought my own house i'm the person who sat on skid row now i have my ownhouse and you know what i the day came when i sat there on my custom designed furniture looking at all my rich furniture and all that kind of stuff and the red convertible was on the driveway and i'm sitting there saying this isn't it either i'm 18 years sober now and I'm at a conference in the south and I stuck my nose into a conversation they were talking about doing the steps and I thought that's no news, I've done that you know, and if you want to stay stuck assume you know everything I went back to Toronto and I kept hearing this conversation you ever have that experience where you hear something and you shrug it off and it won't let you rest one day I got on the phone and I said to my sponsor please take me through the steps because I think, you know, it's the old process he who has himself for a director has a fool for a director. And so my sponsor said okay we went through the step and one more time I experienced a shift in consciousness and I didn't know where it was taking me but it was pretty obvious when i was 20 years sober i broke up a relationship a 15-year relationship with a man you know when you can't express the truth when you cant be honest about who you are not because you want to tell lies but because you just don't know how to do that you cant really have a relationship so i said goodbye to that man and i gave up my job which were the last two things that I was really hanging on to and um I'm 20 years sober and I can't figure out you know and I don't ask you to understand this but I don'T think I'M the first person who in more mature sobriety has hit a wall and you get to a point where you can't take yourself further than where you are and that's where I was and I was in such pain that one day I just said look, I'm not cheating and stealing and I'm doing everything I know how to do the operative thing is that I know what to do and I was doing everything I knew how to and it wasn't enough big surprise and I thought I'm going to take my life I can't stand the pain anymore and I lay there that day and I laid there and about 6 o'clock that night I put my hand out of the bed and there was a notebook there and it was my notebook and I had written in that notebook there it was, Mildred can you take your life out of the toilet and I have written in capital letters absolutely not I don't know when I wrote this Mildren, can you make the pain go away and I've written absolutely not and again this time I saw page 62 in front of my eyes as if the book were opened and these pages were lighted and it was to that part on the root of my problem is self-centeredness and then that magical sentence which somehow or other I hadn't seen so clearly neither could we reduce our self-centredness much by wishing or trying on our own we had to have God's help see, all along I was living by a self-directed plan and the book says it isn't going to work and so I saw it clearly and one more time I experienced that amazing grace that said it's okay suit up and show up it's ok I was filled with elation and I got out of bed and I did what I know best how to do I got showered, dressed and went to a meeting and blabbed to everybody I'm going to be ok, it's Ok and the next morning I woke up and life was there the gray skies were there but I know enough now, I'm 20 years sober I know that I've got to suit up and show up and put one foot ahead of the other and I can only tell you that the last five years have been magical they have been what I came, I believe to the planet to find out that life can be beautiful it is not going to be beautiful on my terms but it is beautiful as the ego gets stripped away, as the self-centeredness gets stripped away and I let God run my life. I suited up and showed up and about three weeks later like I couldn't see what am I here for? You know, I don't have children so that's out and I don'T have a man in my life and on and on like what amI here for, what do I matter? What are they going to write about me when I die? Who's going to cry for me when I die? And one day the phone rang, and it was a Jesuit saying, would you like to come out here and give retreats? I don't know. He said, well, we have some AA retreats, and he said, I've heard about you, and I wonder if we could talk. And there began a whole series of things. I was afraid. I went out there and he said, you know, I'd like you to do some of these retreats. And I started and people liked my retreats and they came and said, help me with the big book. And before I knew it, I had started some big book studies and I was hearing fifth steps and I Was sponsoring more people and I started to develop seminars and a whole new way of life came about because of that. My life is rich and full. I haven't got time to do all the things that people would like me to do today. But what I realized, one day I was standing in front of 75 women giving this retreat, and I started to cry. You know what I recognized as I stood there? I'm the loneliest person on the planet. I realized that as a little girl, I had put up the walls. The problem with walls is you can't get out. And the problem with walls is people can't get in because they hit that wall and they back away. They don't know what they've hit. I remember people saying to me, you intimidate me. And I was sick enough to think that was a compliment. I know now what they were hitting. It was my walls. And I don't do vulnerable well, do you? And I said, you know, I'm lonely. I never realized this before. You see, and what else you shut out? You shut out the grace of God. And what you shutout is the experience of the present moment, which is all there is. I've been successful all my life. Didn't mean anything. I have been successful as a teacher. I got all kinds of promotions. I used to run choirs. I used direct operettas. I used do all kinds stuff. and even my material success did i enjoy it did i appreciate it no you know what i think i enjoy a simple cup of coffee with a friend as much as i enjoyed all that stuff i remember one time getting a degree and i was the only person out of 267 people named to the dean's honors list and i remember we were putting on our gowns and getting our flowers and i remember a group of people quite close to me were sitting there saying oh she must be smart imagine being on the dean's honors list and i remember like it was flatline so you're on the deans honors list anybody could do that doesn't mean anything because it couldn't get through my walls how do you get rid of the walls i had to go to people and say could we have a cup of coffee i'm lonely do you think we might be friends. And I started to reach out to people in ways that I never had. And of course, they reached back. It wasn't a totally easy process and it wasn't totally friendly process, if you will, but it was a totally great process. And didn't know that I was going to need to live without those walls. Life has become rich and full and life has become beautiful, quite different. And I was going to need to know that because of the experience I've just had. And then I realized something else, that as I was reading the book, I saw something in the book that I had never taken at face value. There's a paragraph in the chapter to the agnostics. You see, and I think Bill knew we were all agnostcs. Yeah, there's a God, but so what? That's kind of what an agnostic is. You know, what does it mean? And there's a paragraph there that says, Faced by a self-imposed crisis, the day will come when you have to fearlessly face the proposition. Isn't that an interesting adverb? Fearlessly. Why would I have to be fearless to face this? Because, I'll tell you, it says to fearously face the propositions that either God is everything or he's nothing. now to me to fearlessly face that and say that God is everything means everything everything has to change if I believe that God is everywhere, that God is everything, then a whole lot of stuff the old religion of going to church on Sunday and God being up there and out there and I do my life whatever the hell way I want to do it and then invite you in when it suits me, has to go. Then it becomes like Moses in front of the burning bush. Take off thy shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you walk is holy. Because I think that's really what the program is about. It isn't about becoming good. I'm not good, but I'll tell you what I have become is dependent on God in a way that I am no longer an agnostic. I am a believer today. God means something to me, and it had to change. You see, and in that process, I realized you've been trying to fix your life with your intellect. What is this intellect of ours? You know, it's a pinprick in terms of all the knowledge that's available to us. and if God is who I think God is he sure wouldn't fit into this intellect and I had lived my life believing that if I could analyze it and figure it out and if I Could just think it through one more time I could put a plan in place and if i could then carry out that plan didn't realize I don't have the power to do that instead it works out quite a different way life has really been taken out of my hands I didn't know I was going to get sober on May the 18th I didn' t know I would have a spiritual experience I didn''t know any of the important stuff sometimes I plan what I am going to have for supper and I carry that out but really the dance of life goes on and I am part of it and I have to let other people dance just as I want to dance and that is the gift that has come to me and with that has come peace and happiness you know for a lot of my sobriety I felt different I felt that you had it you had gotten that happy joyous and free and there was something wrong with me that I didn't feel that you see it doesn't say God guarantees that I'm going to be happy joyless and free I believe today that I've got to fulfill the conditions and that's not up to me i have learned that my life is mine but it's about cooperating with that power that knows much better than i do what it is that i need where the pitfalls are and that whole business and that will carry me where i need to be carried about um three weeks i guess it's february the 24th 23rd i got a call a call that i i knew would come one day and it was that my sister dora was dying and i can tell you that my heart sank and uh i didn't know you know i got a ticket and i went out there and i remember being on the plane and the coward in me wished that she would just sleep away then I wouldn't have to deal with it because you remember, I'm the world's biggest coward I don't handle my emotions well I sure don't do vulnerable well and when it comes to my sister Dora I don' t know how this is going to work but I said my third step prayer and I went because over these 25 years you've taught me put one foot ahead of the other and everything you need will be provided I got off the plane and my brother and sister and sister-in-law were there to tell me that Dora was still alive but that my brother-in law had just died so we went to the hospital and I have to tell you I was shaking all the way to the Hospital but once I got there once I got into the room I knew what I had come for I had come there to be with her in her last 18 hours of life and that's precisely we stood together as a family I went over to the bed and I sang to her and we prayed with her and we sang the songs of childhood and I stayed during the night and I sung to her and I said you are my sunshine and sometimes i couldn't get through it and i told her how much we loved her and as i stood at that bedside i experienced the closest thing that i have ever experienced to unconditional love i didn't ask anything she was unconscious she didn't there was nothing she could give me but all that i wanted to do was pour out my heart as much as i could to be as helpful to her, to be as loving to her. And we sat, we stood there and we said the prayers. We said the third, I said the third step prayer. And my sister poked me and she said, where did you get that? I never heard that before. And I said the seventh step prayer and I said the prayer from the fourth step. And so it was just a wonderful experience. And then we took off the life support and I got to be there when I got to experience death and I have to tell you that it was the most awesome experience that I have had it is the most awesome experience of being powerless because as as you see that person starting to breathe their last you are in a realm that you can't explain like I kept saying to her what do you see has anybody come for you do you see the light and of course she couldn't talk but I knew that I was in the presence of something that I had never experienced before and then she was gone gone where I mean it was amazing and I can tell you that if I have ever appreciated Alcoholics Anonymous I appreciated Alcoholics anonymous and so did my family because my family said we didn't know what to do. We wouldn't have known how to stroke her and how to talk to her and How to sing to her on how to be with her and because I was there imagine I who used to be the outcast now was there and led them to this wonderful experience and it was a wonderful experience. And it healed us. It healed our family i never used to feel close to my family and i can't wait to get home to them again now because all the walls have come down dora was a simple person you know a couple of years ago i went home and as i was leaving i put my arms around her and she just clung to me and i could feel the love going from me to her and you know we're not a huggy family and so she'd had very little physical affection and she just hung on to me and as i was leaving then she said come here she said do you still cry yourself to sleep at night and i said no she said i don't either she said say my rosary and i just put it all in the hands of the virgin mary and she said I'm real happy. And I didn't know what I had heard, and when I came back to Toronto, this is when I realized intellect doesn't mean a damn. I went to talk to my Jesuit spiritual advisor, and he said, don't you understand? God doesn't need your intellect. God doesn'T need your smarts. God DOESN'T even need all that stuff that you think you're contributing, because if you could change the mind of God with your thinking and your doing, you'd be the one in control. God loves you unconditionally. And you know, we went home and we had a double funeral for my brother-in-law and there were 800 people there. This simple person who never read a book, who could hardly write her own name. They came in droves to say goodbye. and I knew that the fact that I was there the fact that I could be there the fact that I would I could do all the rituals because my family is still Roman Catholic and they still have the casket and we still had the closing of the casquet and the going to the cemetery and I did it all I behaved with dignity and I thank you all for that because without you I couldn't have done that and it meant a lot to me it meant much to Dora wherever you are Dora and it means a lot to my family for all this wonderful stuff to happen and I think about powerlessness and I really think that's what step one is about I'm a guest here and so is everybody else and each of us has our journey and we're in this great dance of life and that to me is what powerlessness really means now don't push people around step two says that our great god a power greater than we is in the process of restoring us to wholeness not to holiness not to goodness but to wholenESS which is to take us to himself and give us sobriety first so that we can live our lives because the book says drinking is just the symptoms so when you take away the symptom you still have the change of life that has to has to come about and that's what this is and why then if i really believe steps one and two wouldn't i want to do three you know to decide means to cut from to cut me from what self-centeredness self-direction ego direction and give it to the care of god you know after she died i had a period of great darkness and you know it seemed to me where's god and where is she and why can't I talk to her and is there a God and then I had to come back to my AA roots how come you're sober Mildred after the way you've lived you've been sober 25 years and 10 months and never once have you had to struggle with the booze and the pills how come because there is a power as I understand it bigger than I am who's looking after all this I'll close with a little experience that I had two years ago, I was speaking in Pennsylvania on a property where there's a brook and before I went to speak I was walking along the brook and something in the broek caught my fancy it was an ugly little twig there were bigger twigs big piece of a log here and there there were other things in the brook but the only thing I saw was that little twig and I followed it and I walked along the broek and what I saw this twig was carried by the brooke and sometimes the broke would carry it fast the current was faster and then the current seemed to kind of stop and the twig just sort of sat there and then another little eddy would carry him and then sometimes it would twirl it in circles, that seemed like fun and then sometimes it could turn it back and it would go backwards a piece and then another little current would take it and carry it further every once in a while it got caught up along the side and I almost took a stick and pried it loose and instead I stood and I watched it and another current came along and carried it and carried it and I had to go and make my way and I thought isn't that just like life no I think I'll close with the no I won't we need to get I want to thank you for being here I want to thank you for allowing me the gift of sharing with you this morning and I wish for you all the blessings that come from this wonderful dance of life in the hands of our higher power. God bless you.