I Want to Never Have Another Expectation — Only Great Expectancy That a Higher Power Will Meet My Needs – Mary L.
About This Speaker Tape
Mary L. shares her story at the Inland Empire AA Convention with 29 years of sobriety, sober since January 15, 1972. She opens with warm humor about her husband George, Ole and Sven jokes from her Duluth days, and the love affairs she sees at the convention. She qualifies as an alcoholic whose troubles started at age two, when she first decided she needed her father's approval to be okay — a self-centered fear that shaped everything that came after.
She traces her drinking from a first beer at an abandoned Al Capone casino on Lake Michigan during her freshman year at New Trier High School, where alcohol made her feel whole, smart, and free of the need for approval. She describes being a chronic relapser through fifteen or sixteen treatment centers, finally landing at 98 pounds in the Marty Mann Halfway House in Duluth, Minnesota for 14 months under her sponsor Marion. Her last relapse was driven by two reservations: she had to get her man back and her juvenile detention home job back, and when neither happened, she drank.
Mary walks through three dark nights of the soul in sobriety, each one lifting another addiction when she surrendered — bulimia at nine years sober during her depression after marrying widowed George, nicotine years later during the chaos of raising four adopted hard-to-place children (Chippewa Cree, Spanish American, and Greek, ages two to seven, one with cerebral palsy). She tells the story of stripping naked at 10 p.m. and emptying the garbage in her birthday suit when the kids had stolen everything, calling it one of the most powerful surrenders of her life.
Her core message is that Higher Power is the change agent, not her. Her job is willingness; Higher Power handles results. She was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression on top of alcoholism, drug addiction, bulimia, and nicotine addiction, and her doctor told her that's what makes her special. She closes by releasing George from her expectations and replacing them with great expectancy that Higher Power will meet her needs through whatever person or circumstance shows up that day.
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