Making Amends to the Universe Every Day – Sharon C.

About This Speaker Tape

A 1950s Iowa childhood of black earth, fireflies, and GTOs catching air on country roads. Sharon C. was the girl looking for the mothership in a soybean field, a "bright young girl with promise" who traded it all for Canadian Club and Schlitz beer. The slide from the White House to the bottom of a bottle was fast. She describes a life of geographics—fleeing to Wisconsin to grow organic crops and then to New Orleans, where she lived in a flat above a biker bar with a pet skunk and a platinum blonde wig.

The wreckage was concrete: a disrupted courtroom, a seedy southern jail with bugs as big as thumbs, and the sight of her father arriving in Bogalusa to bail her out of a jackpot she’d built for herself. Now, with over three decades of sobriety, Sharon views her life as a group project. Since blackouts erased the specifics of her debts, she makes amends to the universe daily through maximum service to her Higher Power and the people around her.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Sharon C. opens with her sobriety date: August 20, 1975.
• 3:45 Laughter: Story about being a 4-H representative and drinking with the boys at the White House.
• 8:12 Description of the 'blackout' drinking and the 'chug-a-lug' contests of her youth.
• 15:30 The emotional fallout of her first heartbreak and the use of alcohol to 'shove feelings down'.
• 22:10 The 'fertilizer' metaphor: Norm A. explains that the grass is greener because the other guy took care of his lawn.
• 31:40 The 'seedy southern jail' in Louisiana and the moment her father came to bail her out.
• 42:15 The 'bottom': Living in New Orleans with a pet skunk and wearing a platinum blonde wig.
• 51:20 The violent crime in California that left her with a wired-up jaw, preventing her from speaking in early sobriety.
• 58:10 Mention of the 12 Steps and the process of working the Third Step prayer on a living room floor.
• 1:05:40 The detailed process of making financial amends to her father and the 'dossier' of her debts.
• 1:15:20 The story of her father's sudden death on his John Deere tractor.
• 1:22:10 Closing thoughts on being a 'worker among workers' and the joy of returning home to Iowa.