I Married My Psychiatrist Which Isn’t a Terribly Smart Thing to Do 🤣 – Mildred F.

About This Speaker Tape

Mildred F. continues her workshop on the spirituality of the 12 Steps, picking up her story from early sobriety. After a dramatic spiritual experience at age 40 that removed her compulsion to drink, she describes living her first year sober on Skid Row, sweeping floors, with all her belongings in a plastic bag. She recounts how two men in her AA group insisted she do the steps, meeting her an hour and a half early to read the Big Book — and how during her fourth step review, the lightbulb went on at age 41 that she was her own problem. She traces the arc from making money and buying houses to sitting in her fine house at 18 years sober saying "this isn't it either."

At 21 years sober, Mildred became suicidal again, convinced the program worked for everyone else but not her. A second spiritual awakening followed, and a Jesuit invited her to give retreats. At the first retreat, her walls came down and she wept, admitting she had no real friends despite decades of sobriety. She asked the women if they would have coffee with her — and a whole new level of life began.

The bulk of the workshop walks through Steps 1 through 9 with hard-won spiritual insight. She frames Step 1 as "I'm not the boss" and spends ten minutes on it every morning. Step 3 is a decision, not perfection. Step 4 reveals that the problem was never "you" but self-centeredness. She tells vivid stories to illustrate each step — confessing lies to break their power, her sister's devastating one-liner about her sister-in-law ("She only acts that way when you're around"), and the critical distinction between forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. Throughout, she insists that no human power can fix what is broken inside, that intellectual knowledge of Higher Power is not the same as experiencing Higher Power, and that spiritual growth never stops.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with a moment of silence; references competing relationship workshop
• 3:00 Family history — grandfather died of alcoholism in the 1890s; brother got sober with 49 years
• 6:00 Convent years — went for a quid pro quo with Higher Power, came out sicker than she went in
• 10:00 May 20th spiritual experience — compulsion to drink removed in a heartbeat at age 40
• 15:00 First year sober on Skid Row — sweeping floors, plastic bag of belongings, husband paralyzed by depression
• 20:00 Finding AA again — two men insist she do the steps; first sponsor in a white suit says 'You can get well even if your husband doesn't'
• 26:00 Fourth step lightbulb: 'You're the problem, Mildred' — at 41, first realization others were not the issue
• 32:00 At 18 years sober with money and houses: 'This isn't it either'; at 21, suicidal again
• 38:00 Second spiritual awakening; retreat invitation from a Jesuit; walls come down, asks women to have coffee
• 48:00 Walking through the steps — Step 1 as 'I'm not the boss,' Step 3 as decision not perfection, Step 4 and self-centeredness
• 60:00 Steps 6-7 — willingness vs. readiness; humility as truth, not self-deprecation; lying story and breaking the need to lie
• 68:00 Steps 8-9 — sister's line 'She only acts that way when you're around'; forgiveness vs. reconciliation vs. restoration