Mildred F. at the 7th. Sunlight of the Spirit – 2004

My name is Mildred and I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. And I am from another country. As a matter of fact, I come from the city that is hosting the international conference. How many of you are planning to come and visit us? Fabulous. We're in the process now. Everything has been put in place, and I guess about January the host committee will get going, putting the greeters together, and we'll be waiting for you at the end of June or whenever it is you decide to come the other country. The other city, too. Thank you for the invitation to be here. I'm really delighted to be hier. You know, every conference that I go to, I think has a special feel, and this one certainly has its own feeling. And from what I experienced last night, it's a great feeling, and I'm really glad to be here and to share with you what has happened in my life as you so generously have shared with me. I'd like to thank my hosts, Joe and Melinda. We had a little difficulty getting together in Baltimore, but we managed. And so I'm grateful to be here, and I'm thankful to be hier. I see Clancy sitting out there. I know Johnny's here. Not met Sister Maurice yet or heard her. Yeah, I've heard you on tape, Sister Maurice. Heard lots about you. And I'll leave it at that. All good, of course. All good. Anyway, I haven't heard the speaker at 11 o'clock, so that'll be wonderful too. Really enjoyed Doug last night. I have my marching orders as you have when you stand at the podium. It tells me in the book that I'm to share in a general way what I used to be like, what happened, and what I am like now. It also says in another place that through our stories we share how we developed our relationship with God. And I really need to do that because I think really that's what my life is about. It took me a long time to let down the walls, but it's amazing to me. You know, I used what I thought was spirituality to get away from you because I didn't like you. And so I thought, I'm going to find God so I can deal with these crappy people. It turns out that as the walls came down, I found not only my God, but I found you and I found myself. And my life is not at all the way it was when I came here. You know, Bill writes in the 12 and 12, and it describes me. In Step 10, he says, we were in a place where we hated some, loved only a few, and were indifferent to the many as long as they caused us no trouble. That's a very good description of me when I came here. I was a nasty little piece of work. Imagine that. I see Clancy smiling. because he knows that to be the truth. But you know, if you stay here and you keep on doing the things that you were taught and something happens and that's what has happened to me. I'm not a nasty little piece of work. Sometimes I can be, but that's not the way I am as a general rule. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous the first time in 1966 and my dry date is not 1966 My dry date is May the 18th, 1973. So you can see something did not go right that first time I came here. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and I was delighted to walk into that first meeting. Why? Well, I was in the convent. I left, I came from the west and I went to the convant in 1950, I think it was, 50 or 51. And when I left home to go to Ontario, if you don't know your geography, CNN some time ago had a little question on the little quiz they were doing about the most unlikely places that you probably never heard about. Guess who was one of them? Saskatchewan! And that's the province I come from. So when I left home, I had a brother who they said was dying. They didn't quite know what was wrong with him. Sometimes they said it was his heart. Sometimes they Said it was stomach. Sometimes they We just don't know what's wrong with But he's not going to live long. And then I left Home and one day about two years Later I get this letter from my father. My father was not given to flowery language. However, this is what the letter said. Your brother has been transformed. Transformed? He said he doesn't drink anymore. He said he sits in the hospital often all night with sick alcoholics and he said he works. Which was a real mark of improvement to my dad. And he went on to say, something good has come to the prairies. He said, I don't know what it is, but he said they call it Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, your brother, he said 12 stepped him. The mayor of our town had found AA and had 12 stepped my brother. And he said, now all this has happened. He said, he's just, I can't believe it. And that's how I heard about Alcoholics Anonymous. So when the psychiatrist said, we think you should go, of course I'm going to go. My life was in shambles. My life wasn't good. It was a mess. Would I go to this place that my dad said you could be transformed in? Of course I went. And I liked it for about three weeks. Did I need Alcoholics Anonymous? I leave you to decide that for yourself. To solve my life's problems, I had gone to a convent and I stayed there for 15 years, drunk all the time that I was there. Didn't work. I have been locked up in mental institutions, psych wards, and insane asylums and I differentiate them because they are different. 32 times that I know of. While I was there, they put me in rooms that had no knob on my side of the door. They tied me to the bed sometimes and trust me, it was not for fun and frolic. I see there's a little identification going on a couple of times they put me into jail they diagnosed me with every mental illness that I think was in the books at those times I have had shock treatments Not one or two, I had 38. And if you need your life lit up, that'll do it, trust me. And in those days they didn't give you anesthetic when they did it. I used to wake up in the middle of the night reliving that experience. I'd wake up into sweats. Did that stop me from drinking? No. I even married my own psychiatrist. they said it would be cheaper. I think it was probably the most expensive thing that I did and probably themost awful thing that he did. So, did I need it? See, in those days there were no treatment centers and people didn't smell me. And so they thought if you watched me, if you saw me without a drink I was one person if you see me with a drink I was another person so it would be quite easy to say well she's depressed she's manic depressive depressed and now she's panic depressive manic and so on and so on I really understand that now they didn't know what was wrong with me I didn't know what was wrong with me so did I want it sure I wanted AAs I've told you but I wanted it on my own terms as I have wanted most of life. And what has happened to me, I think, as life has gone on, life has ground me down to show me that life does not work that way, that life works more the way Doug explained last night in, as he talked about step three. It's not about my will being done, but it's about me learning that life is what it is and learning to flow with that and learning to find peace in the midst of that, and those were all things I didn't know. See, I was in AA about three weeks when I realized nothing had changed. Only now I wasn't medicated. Well, hey, I can take care of that. So I sat in AA for five and a half years medicating myself, stoned most of the time, and again feeling I'm the loser. And you see, when you're stoned all the time, it interferes a little bit with the way you see Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm being facetious, of course. And so I was to drink again, and I'll tell you a little more about that as I go on. How did I get to be such a mess? You know, the book says that drinking alcohol is only the symptom. And when people said to me, you drink too much, see, some part of me knew that I drank too much. Some part of me also knew the truth because the book goes on to say that drinking is only the symptom. Well, there's a problem then underneath that symptom and when I got sober that's what I was faced with. What was my problem? You know, I can tell you now, I don't think it was just drinking alcohol that took me to Skid Row and to sleeping on a park bench. I'll tell you what took me down was my self-centeredness. You didn't exist. I existed and you were there to make me okay and you weren't doing your job. That was one thing and the other was defiance of God. Strange for somebody who said she spent 15 years in a convent. Well, I was what the book says in the state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. How did that happen? I'll tell you just a little bit about it, not because that's what made me an alcoholic, but that's what formed my belief systems, my defense mechanisms. So when I put the booze aside, I'm not one of those who sailed into bliss. I'm one of Those who has struggled, who has walked through this program and is grateful every day that the program is here because the tried and true things, those are the things that helped me to stay here, that enabled me to grow and to change so that I'm not the same person 31 years. I'm in the same body. Well, they tell me it's a different one but anyway, it's I have this identity called Mildred but I behave in a different way. Most of the time I feel different. Most of the times I think in a different way, and that didn't come easily because I clung to those old ideas. What happened to me was I woke up to consciousness at about three and a half, and there was somebody in bed with me crying. I had a sister who was retarded. She died a couple of years ago. I'm going to use the word retarded simply because that's what they said. Now we know different things. We know that nobody, I mean, we all have different kinds of intelligences. We all know people learn more slowly. Some of them learn faster. She was injured at birth and she didn't she couldn't learn as fast as the others. I'm 71. She was 15 years older than I was. And in those days what they did was they kept her in grade 3 until she was 16. and the kids used to make fun of her and they used to her name was Dorothy and they called her dumb Dora we all need comfort when our hearts are sad we need comfort and we go to those who can comfort us I was a little kid I was full of love and she came to me and she'd crawl into bed with me and she would say Mildred why was I ever born why didn't I die in the cradle she was in my life she was there as my teacher you know I have a Jesuit spiritual director and as he's always said you're thick headed Mildred you don't get it she was put there because she was your teacher one of my most important teachers as he said you don' t need a big intellect for God to heal your soul I think we're doing such a different thing on this planet than I always thought I always thought I was here to be rich and famous and important and all that kind of stuff, and now I find out I'm here to wake up spiritually. And you don't need a big intellect to do that. And somehow or other she found that out. But as a little kid, I lay in bed with her and I would cry and I Would say, Why was I ever born? Why didn't I die in the cradle? I don't regret that today because I know that's part of what my growth has been about. It forced me. it forced me to do certain things it pushed me and it also has pushed me into God if you will into a new way of seeing the world so that I don't have to live that way I don' t have to feel that way anymore I don´t have to think that way but it hasn´t come easily I have fought it every step of the way because I thought I knew better you see when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous is I made error number four. And error number four for me was I can just park my hiney in the chair. I'll go to meetings and I'll park my viney and you know, I'll read the book. I'll do whatever they tell me to do and they're going to fix me. Doug talked about that. Go to meetings and don't drink and then you'll be fine. I'd be dead if that's all I did. That's what I tried to do in 1966 and it didn't work. I couldn't live that way, but I wasn't ready to hear what I needed to hear. So error number one for me was I've got to fix this. I have got to stop her from crying and I couldn t so I made error number two. I'm the youngest of ten kids and my brothers and sisters were all a lot older. I was kind of the punctuation mark at the end. Maybe it was actually a question mark. Maybe it was a punctuation of desperation. Who knows? But I thought, my big brothers and sisters, they can do stuff that I can't. They're going to fix her. And you know what? They didn't. I know now they didn't because they couldn't just like I couldn't. I thought it was because they wouldn't. And then I made this third error. Life is scary. Be afraid of life because if you've got a problem, nobody fixes you. You know, now I know that. I didn't know that then and I hid behind the walls and God didn't seem to answer either. I was so confused. We were Roman Catholic. We went to church and I never heard about punishing God I heard that God was love and God was power here I've got this problem fix my sister and you know what God did but not on my time because the day was to come many years many many years later many many tears later when she said to me do you still cry yourself to sleep at night I said no she said I don't either she said I'm real happy now that's when my Jesuit director said you're thick headed, you don't get it she never learned to read a book she never learn to sign her own name and yet somehow or other she surrendered she accepted life, she came to feel that life was good, she come to feel peace and that was a few years before she died well I picked up a drink at 5 and God did I need one You know, there have been alcoholics in my heritage, but they've all been males. I was the first female that came down the pike. My father used to make homebrew, and I'll tell you, that stuff had a kick. And one night he had his poker cronies in, and they thought it was real cute. I'm going to pour the drinks. And I did. I poured drinks for them, but I also poured one for me because I was curious about why people acted different when I could smell this stuff on them. You know, my big brother, who became alcoholic, I should say he was sober 49 years when he died. Isn't that wonderful? You know that good thing that came to the prairies whenever it came and came to our household, he was able to latch on to that. But when I was a little kid, when he smelled like booze, I liked him. When he didn't smell like boozy, he was just the way I was, self-conscious, afraid, didn't have anything to say. He was locked in that cage of fear that we get when we're full of self, the kind of self-consciousness that I had. So I took a drink, and I was away to the races. I chased that feeling for 35 years and you can talk about it in any way that you like. I'll tell you, I became the ever girl I drank whatever I'm not one of those who drank only this or that I'm the whatever, if it had booze in it, I drank it including vanilla, I'll telling you nobody suspected this little nun going into the grocery stores buying 12-28 fluid bottles of vanilla they would have looked a little strangely on me in this black and white regalia that we wore had I gone to the LCBO I drank perfume Chanel No. 5 was my personal favorite it goes down hard but it does the job A couple of years ago, some friends gave me a big bottle of Chanel No. 5 for Christmas and on it was, For Old Time's Sake. I spray it on now every once in a while and I say to myself, See, that's a sign of recovery. I don't think a women's IODE group would really understand that one, would they? so I drank whatever I drank wherever I've had many a good drunk in the church I always made sure that I had all the jobs in the Church because if I ever ran out of booze there was always mass wine I can't wait to hear your story Sister Marty and I used to worry that the pastor would wonder what was happening with all this mass wine I was buying What I didn't know, he too was alcoholic. So he was probably dipping into it as well. But I always had all the jobs in the church and I used to have my booze delivered to the bell tower of the church. They didn't ring the bells in those days. Who would think of looking in the bell Tower of the Church? I went back to that church after I left and they had locked the door to the Bell Tower. Somebody had obviously found what I'd been up to. So I drank wherever. I drank whenever. I'm not one of those who can say, you know, I'm a daily drinker. I drank whatever I could. I used to get up in the middle of the night. I'd go to bed sober. I'd get up at 2 o'clock in the morning and by morning I'd be drunk and my husband would say, what happened to you? You went to bed. I was sober. I woke up inthe middle ofthe night and thought it would be a good ideato have a drink. Makes sense to me. and i drank with whomever i've been drunk with priests i've been drunk in the bars so i covered a lot of territory never got drunk with the other nuns because i don't think there was anybody in those days maybe there was maybe they hit it as well as i did anyway like i said i was two people you know and at the beginning you start drinking. If anybody had said to me, alcohol promised everything to me. You know, Doug said it last night. The voices stopped. I didn't hear the voice that said, you're a loser. You're nobody. And I have a big one up here. You'RE a girl. And girls don't amount to anything. Men have the power. Men do the stuff. YouRE a nothing and all that stuff. And nobody cares about you. They didn'T fixed door. You know, that's what I listened to most of the time. And when I drank, those voices were silent and I breathed. Oh, I got ease and comfort. Dr. Silkworth talks about it. He says we're restless, irritable, and discontent, and screwed up, and confused, and unhappy, and miserable, I'm adding, unless I can again experience ease and discomfort. And I know how to get ease and comfort. He says by drinking alcohol, what if there were another way to get ease and comfort? That to me is what the program is really about. Another way to get ease of comfort so I don't have to go down that terrible spiral that takes me right to the bottom. So how did I try to deal with my life? Well, I tried the convent. I didn't go to the convant for the right reasons. I was drunk the night I entered and they kept me. That probably says as much about them as it does about me. I stayed there for 15 years, and I have to say there's nothing wrong with the convent. It was the person who went in there with the agenda that I went in with. I know now what my agenda was. I was scared of life. I wanted somebody to fix me, and i was going to be safe there because i didn't feel safe on the planet. And so somebody, I was going to go to the convent and I was going to be safe and they were going to tell me what to do. Now there's another paradox. I hate being told what to but I go to a convent, doesn't that? That's about as crazy as you going to the army. Makes about as much sense. You know, they were good to me. God knows I got a great education there. And one day Mother Superior called me and she said would you like to leave? Of course, I never wanted to be here. But anyway, we got my dispensation and I stood on the convent steps January the 10th, 1966. I was a very well-educated young woman and I knew nothing. Isn't that amazing? I thought the problem was out there. Most of my life I thought The Problem was out There. That it was the Pope, it was Mother Superior, it was the convent, it was a farm it was Saskatchewan it was my parents it was all kinds of things but I never looked in here and so I stood on the convan steps and I just knew it was going to be wonderful out there and the car came that took me to my new way of life and I have to tell you it was an landslide it was this high speed landslide into hell. It was the high speed landslide into a degradation that I couldn't have dreamed of. Remember, I've been a nun for 15 years. Maybe I didn't do it right, but I tell you I cared about who I was and I had learned principles of living. I broke them all. They had taught me and I Had taught others and now I'm at the bottom of the bin. And the only conclusion that I could come to because I still did not know that I was alcoholic. I thought my solution was alcohol. Don't take my solution from me. I need this alcohol to survive. And so I found my other solutions down at the bar, those male brain surgeons and CEOs and directors of banks, et cetera, but they probably also didn't believe they were drinking with an ex-nun. Not the way I behaved. At the end of that time, in absolute despair, I signed myself into the Ontario Insane Asylum, it was called in those days, because there was a doctor there who was going to help me. And I went there and it was there my brother and sister found me and they took me back to Saskatoon. Life is such a series of experiences. I don't always like the present moment, but I know from looking now at how this power has worked in my life, it's always at work. My brother said, we've got a bed for you in Regina. We've got to bed for you and Saskatoon. Where do you want to go? And I said, Saskatoon, I don t know why. I know now why I had to go to Saskatoon because Dr. Abraham Hoffer was there. By this time, I had a file that thick from all these hospitalizations and nobody had ever said, do you drink too much? Well, Dr. Abraham Hoffer was the doctor that Bill had consulted and he knew a lot about alcoholism and he know a lot alcoholics anonymous. My doctor was head of psychiatry there. And Dr. Hoffer had a lot of clout in that university hospital and he one day went to Dr. McCarricker and he said, you know, you've misdiagnosed, he said all this stuff, she's been misdiagnozed, she's an alcoholic. And he said she should go to AA and Dr. McCarrick who was known throughout the world for his work in the psychiatric world said we can't let her go to AA. It would interfere with our treatment. Well, Dr. Hoffer prevailed, and I went to AA, that brings us, and by this time, of course, this psychiatrist named Dr. Frank took a shine to me, shows you he was a little loose in his loafers too. He was an alcoholic. You know, I like to say we had a relationship. What we had was an emotional entanglement. And I wasn't with him 20 minutes and my gut said this is not good. But I needed him and he needed me. So we made that deal in hell and we lived it. He was alcoholic too. He was sober when I met him. He was to start drinking again as I was. Anyway, I went to AA for five and a half years. I went to meetings regularly. That's why meetings by themselves don't do it. I didn't drink, but what I have to tell you is I was stoned all the time. I artificially changed the way I felt so I didn t have to dig my heels into this program and do what I was told. How can you read the big book when you're stoned? How can you do a fourth step? I tried a fourth step. You know, how can you tell the truth when the essential thing that I was clinging on to was the stuff that was changing the way I felt? I couldn't give it up, said I. I just wasn't there yet so I one day after five and a half years went out to drink. I even tried 12-step work. See says now I carried the disease rather than the message. I used to go out to the women's jail every week to tell them how to do it when I didn't have the first clue myself. Anyway, I drank for another year and a half and I'm here to tell you fear never kept me from taking a drink. I've had DTs. I've been in prison for a long time. I've heard convulsions. I've head blackouts. I've have that whole work and I am not like Doug who can say he didn't lose anything of his possessions, etc. I lost it all. So by the time I was done, I was sleeping on a park bench. Most of my life, I functioned. But the last year and a half, there was no more functioning. It was simply scraping together whatever I could so I could have a bottle of booze. And when I had a bottle OF booze, I didn't care about anything else. And whatever it took to get that bottle OF boos, I did. I won't stay sober because of fear. I won' t stay sober. I can't stay sober because I know I'm an alcoholic. Self-knowledge, the book says, won't do it. Spiritual principles. See, I had gotten to the point where the book, as the book says, I'm beyond human help. I can fix myself. You can't fix me. And God could and would if he were sought. Because I'm Beyond Human Help. And it says we get to that jumping off point where there are only two choices. One is to accept spiritual help, and one is to go to the bitter end. And I thought I was going to the better end because I wound up in a psych ward the morning of May the 18th, and I came to to see two men sitting at the foot of my bed, and they really were there. One was a psychiatrist, and one was a private detective who'd been hired to find me. And Sunday morning, the nurse said I saw myself. I had teeth knocked out. My hair was straggly. This eye was sticking out. I had a big half moon of purple on my face. And, you know, I said, you've become a woman of the streets. And she said, yes, you have. What are you going to do about it? I didn't know. I went back to my room, and I thought, what am I going to do about this? And I made my decision. And it wasn't one of those decisions that was a cry for help. I was going to take my own life. And I called the nurse, andI said, I want my clothes. So she went to get my clothes, and the unbelievable happened. I had a spiritual experience. It was as if in the twinkling of an eye, a hand reached into me. I was 40 years old. I hadn't drawn a sober breath, andi'm not going to tell you I was drunk every day. that's not true. But I didn't draw a sober breath if I could draw a drunken one. That is God's truth. And it was as if a hand reached into me. It had heard my cry. My cry sounded like this, I'm off the planet. I can't do this anymore. I'm out of money. I're out of friends. I have no self-respect. I don't have any self-confidence. If somebody were to offer me a job. I couldn't take a job." I have no home, I have no possessions. By the time I was done my possessions were in one little plastic bag and a small suitcase. Everything was gone, the houses, the cars, all the pretensions that we had built around us, it was all gone. And so that's what I determined and I knew how to do it and I'd be gone just get my clothes. And and that's what happened. That hand reached into me. It's the only way I can describe it, removed the compulsion to drink, and in 31 years and a couple of months, I have never had the compunction to drink. It is not an issue. I knew it was gone. Like Doug said last night, the problem had been removed, that piece of it. What was left for me was how do I live sober? And I remember saying, you know, whoever you are, whatever you are. Because I felt as if I had been picked up. I had be looking east and now I'm looking west and I don't know what's on that road. It looks black and dark and uninviting. I don' t know the players. I don''t know the road signs. I was 40 years old and I had never been able to pull off living sober how am I going to do it now and I knew the compulsion to drink was gone how am i going to this and I said whatever whoever you are because at that time I hated God top of my hit list and I say whoever you are, you'll have to send me somebody. And if you do, I will obey. Never said that in all my life. And as I said it, there was a rap on the door, I swear to you, this really happened. And there was man standing there and he said, I saw you at breakfast. He said, do you need help? Are you alcoholic? And I said, yes, you want to make something of it. I'm sure that thrilled him, Noam. And he said, no. He said, I came to offer you help as I've been taught to do. And so it was through that man's help that I got to a hospital on Tuesday and it was Dr. Bell's clinic for addicted people. Dr. Bill was a pioneer in Canada, maybe in the United States too, in providing good medical care for people who have addictions and I had no money. The nurse said, we can't keep you. Anyway, I want to go back to that Sunday morning because I think as I look at grace, that is the action of God in our lives. And God's grace doesn't act the way human beings think it should. God's Grace acts the way God's Grace knows how to act. It's present always. It's always offered to us. I don't think I was offered anything the morning of the 20th that i wasn't offered all my life that i'm not offered this morning as i stand here see because i don't think we don't create grace we don'T earn it but what we have to do is accept it and in that place that i was that morning as I said I got to get out of here because I can'T do this anymore how we say it doesn'T matter God knows what we DON'T know And that was my cry for help. And God knew I let it in that morning. I didn't know where it was going to take me. That's what I think bottom is about. I'm out of plans. And that's what surrender is then. I'll let you in with your plans. I'll take the actions. You see, and at the time, I just did this. I didn'T know what was happening here. I went through the institution and after I got out of... And the institution did not promote AA. Thank goodness, because I didn't like you. You were on my hit list too. And all they wanted was to give you a little psychological treatment and they gave you some meditation and some good food and I started to get better. Better enough that they gave me a little money and I found a room on Skid Row. So I remember opening that door, and I just went, you know such places existed on the planet. But I didn't have to drink. And my psychiatrist, not my husband, the other guy, he said, you have to get a job. And I did. I went down to an employment agency. I told them I was doing some research. i'm sure they took a look at me and they knew what kind of research i was doing and they gave me a job i went to answer a telephone and i did odd jobs made two dollars and 20 cents an hour my first year was a year of wonderment as i look back on it even at the time i couldn't have explained it but i knew it was right it was right for me and what was in that first year was poverty there were times my husband was sitting there, he's depressed. He can't get past the fact that he used to run treatment programs and now he's living on skid row. And he was just paralyzed. I'm not here to place a judgment on that. I went out and got the job and brought in the little money which didn't supply us with everything that we needed. And I knew what it was like to open the fridge and there was no food in it. And i didn't even have enough sense. I don't know if there were food banks at that time. We did without, and I survived. And the day came when I walked back. I was in the institution one Sunday morning, and a man saw me, and he said, would you like to come to a meeting with me? I didn't know what he was talking about, and I said yes. And that's how I got back into Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't really remember except I felt comfortable there, and they said keep coming back, and I had nowhere else to go. Nobody was asking me for a lot of stuff, I can tell you that. I kept coming back to the meetings and there I started to meet the people. Poverty had done its job on me. It had started that process of ego deflation in depth. I had to find out that nobody cared about my education. Nobody cared whether I had money or not. What they cared about in this wonderful group was that I would come back and that I could sit there and try and change as much as I could. And then I started to find the people. I found a sponsor who said to me, you can get well regardless of what your husband does. That's what I remember of that first period because I didn't come into AA until I was six months clean and sober. And then this sponsor helped me, and she was there for about three months. and then there were two guys in my group they took me through the book I couldn't read, I couldn' t remember they said if you'll come early we'll read the book to you and they did they read the books to me and they told me how to do the steps and I did what I was told and you know what you don't get bunny points for eloquent words and you don' t get bunny points for anything but taking the actions and I learned that from Clancy I don't know if I ever told Clancy this, but I think the first really good laugh I had, I was sober about ten months and we have a big conference in Toronto in March and Clancy was the speaker. And I sat there, I was sure, Clancy, you were at least ten feet tall. I remember sitting there and I saw myself in what Clancy said and I laughed till I cried. i couldn't believe what i was hearing and my sponsor was sitting beside me and i guess she said after a while she said i knew you were going to be all right i thought god had come to toronto and it was it gave me enough and i've been so grateful to clancy you know for things that i've Been taught but that was the start of it and the other thing i heard was, you take actions you don't necessarily believe in. And one thing I've done right, I stayed here. When I came the last time in 1973, I stayed here and I've been slow in growth because I came here sure that I was right and the world was wrong and I didn't even know that that's what I was operating from. So I'd like to tell you a little bit more. So those guys took me through the program, and the night before I did my fifth step, they said, sit down and read your fourth step to God, to yourself, and tomorrow you'll do it with the person. And the light bulb went on. I was 41 years old, I think, or about to, yeah, I was41 years old. And I had never, ever known that I was the problem. and that night when I looked and read over my fourth step I saw you weren't the problem that means then I don't have to change you what freedom there is in love all this wonderful energy that I have within I can use and direct it to the right place to do something the things that I have to do and leave you alone. Oh, I've tried to meddle in your life. Don't get me wrong. I have from time to time been sure that you were wrong and that I was right. But, you know, I'm learning. One year I was sober. The day after my one-year medallion I got a job again. I'm a high school teacher and a college teacher by profession. It's what I love to do and what I'm really good at. And, you know, I was still a basket case, but I got the job and I worked my way through that. And for 20 years, I got to deal with students who had learning disabilities. Imagine that. Not what I would have chosen. Sixteen-year-olds who used to come and hold out their arms and say, See, miss? See? I was in jail over the weekend. That's where the police put the handcuffs. It was their badge of honor. How do you deal with that? I said to my sponsor, I feel incompetent because I didn't know how to deal with that. He said, that's because you are. He said what would you have to do? So I said, well, you know, I can't go back to university. I've done a lot of that already. And he said, if I'm going to continue to sponsor me to you, he said you are going where you can learn how to do your job. That's what the program is about, demonstrating these principles in all your affairs. He said I won't sponsor you otherwise, so I had to do what it took to get back and to get the information so I could do that job properly. at seven years what I really want to talk about for the last while that I have up here is the great stuff that has happened in my life and at the time I didn't know it what I have to remember today is that great stuff is happening in my life today and sometimes it doesn't feel that way and I can't see where it's going. Seven years sober, my sponsor did the steps with me again and I got rid of a lot of that suppressed anger. It was as if the wind was on my back. My sponsor's accountant said you have no money because I'd use that seven years to pay off my debts. My sponsor insisted that I make restitution, imagine that. And so, you know, I had the old rusty car, I had the poor furniture and God had other plans. One day I went to another school to do some work and on the way out, I was almost out the door and I thought, oh my friend Bodil's upstairs, I'm just going to go say hello to Bodil. Bodil came charging out and she said, you have to come over on Saturday, she said. Jim and I are starting to buy houses. I said, well, you're talking to the wrong person. I have no money. She said, get over here. To make a long story short, within 10 days I had bought my first house and that was to be the first of many and I made lots of money. I tell you that because I always thought money was the answer. It was one of those old ideas that was buried deep inside me. If I could make lots of honey, I could buy your love, I could buy the life that I wanted and I made lots of money and I was sitting one day in my big house and my red convertible was on the driveway and I had lots of cash and lots of bank and I sat there on my couch crying as bitterly as I ever had because it wasn't the answer but I had grown up through it see, I think we get the experiences we need I had to learn You couldn't have told me what I learned through that. I learned a level of responsibility. I learned how to do life that I had run away from all those years and then my life started to unravel again and at 20 and 21 years, I left my job because it was time. I was scared to retire and I left a man that I'd had a relationship with which was another entanglement. I don't know how to do relationship at this time because I'm still locked behind my walls. And I had to make another big surrender. And out of that big surrender, I didn't know what was coming. That's what I really think. Every day is a new experience with God. Every day's a new experienced with life. Every day something is there for me to surrender to, to let in. And at that point it was a big surrender and I didn' t know how my life was going to evolve. And one day the phone rang out of the clear blue sky, so to speak, and it was a Jesuit saying, would you like to come and give some retreats here at Manresa? And I say that because a whole new life opened up for me. I went to give the first retreat to a bunch of women and the last morning that I was with them, God surrendered me one more time. You know, I think we can make attempts at surrender, but I think somehow or other in divine providence God surrenders us. And that morning, I'm finishing off this retreat and I start bawling. I didn't cry pretty like they do in the movies. I bawled. And words came out of my mouth that I never thought to hear. And what I said was, I don't have a friend in the world. I have lots of acquaintances. I don'T have a FRIEND in the WORLD. And I knew that to be the truth. People used to say, you intimidate me. And I was sick enough to think that was a compliment. I had those walls up so thick around me, you weren't going to get near me because you hurt me. The problem with walls is you have to stay in. And the problem with walled walls is other people can't get in. and I don't know, I don t think it's up to us to take down one another's walls because walls serve a purpose until you're ready to live without those. And I was ready to live without them at the time and a whole new life opened up to me. A whole new way of being on the planet. I had to learn to let people in and I had to learn to be real in a way that I had never been real before and get rid of the masks. See, one of the masks that I used was my wits. I lived in my head. If I could think about it, if I could talk about it ,if I could write about it if I, could analyze it then it was going to be okay and it's not where it is. It's the journey from the head to the heart that's so important and that's that big journey that I've been on it seems to me it took me 21 years to get to the place where those walls could come down and that I could start this wonderful experience of being with you I sat there last night and I thought you know how different I am I don't feel isolated anymore I don' t feel critical I didn' t sit there and think about your talk Doug and analyze it I just let it in, and it was absolutely wonderful. And I'm looking forward to the rest of the talks. I'll see you again today, Clancy, 10 feet tall. Whoa! And you too, Johnny, back there. Mustn't forget how important Johnny has been in my life. And one day I was coming home, and this thought came to me. What if God is really everything? See, I used to be afraid to go home as a kid. My father was kind of uptight when... He wasn't an alcoholic, but my home was a little uptight, you know? And when people drank, they were just a little looser. And I never liked coming home alone because people were always more friendly in my house when there was company. and now i live alone and what it came to me what if god is everything you know that's what it says in the chapter two the agnostics the day will come when you'll have to face it is god everything or is god nothing so i said okay god i don't get it with this i don' t rely on this too much anymore uh how about this i'm going to believe that you're everything and see what happens and everything has happened my whole life has changed i have a whole new way of life to give retreats and go to conferences and all kinds of things and um but it's the way i feel inside that's so different i want to tell you one more story about god's action in my life and then i'll bring this to a close i never understand when things are happening where it's going i have to remember that. I do big book studies and one day I got a call from a woman who had been in a big book study that I had given. And she said, my mother just died. And she said I wanted you to be the first to know that I'm so grateful to you because you made it possible for me to be at my mother's bedside. Well that just blew me away. I just listened because, you know, I thought her mother has just died. I'm not going to argue the point with her. And she went on to say, you Know, and I'm thinking, how did I help her? We never talked about death. Anyway, she went On to tell me her mother had Alzheimer's and how she had been there and she had stroked her mother and she Had sang to her mother. And She said, I know my mother heard me. And it was because of what the work you did with us that I had changed and was able to do that. And I thanked her very much. Little did I know that God had used me as an instrument to her, and had used her as an инструмент to me to use. One day, about six months later, I get a phone call, and it was my brother-in-law. When my parents died, my sister and my brother-in-law took in my sister Dora. They had five little kids at the time and they took in Dora and they gave her a home and she was happy there. And those kids my nieces and nephews, they treated her like an angel and they were so loving with her. Not that my other family wasn't but this was her home now and she knew she had a home because she was afraid to live on her own. And my brother-in-law called, and I've often said, you know, there are lots of wonderful people who've never had a drink too much. My sister and my brother in law, they have never had to drink too much. But if there are angels on the planet, they qualify. And I say that every once in a while to my brother and mom. He says, oh, get away with that. We just did what you know we just did the right thing. Makes no big deal of it. So he phoned me and said, Dora's dying. Are you surprised that there were two of my sponsees at my home that day? They packed my suitcase. They got me a ticket. They stayed with me that night and poured me onto the plane the next morning. And I have to tell you, I'm coward enough that as that plane was heading for Saskatoon, I was thinking, I hope it's over when I get there because the coward in me said, I don't know how to do this. I get there and my brother picked me up and he took me to the hospital and I got to the threshold of that room and I knew exactly what to do. I didn't even think about it because I had been taught by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who shared her experience with me. I knew what to do and I went into that room and I got to be with dora the last 18 hours and i did a life review with her and i sang songs with her that i hadn't sung in 50 years and the words came back those would be the songs that she would remember from church and she loved you are my sunshine and sometimes i got through it and sometimes i didn't and i stood by her bed all night and in the morning my brothers and sisters came and we took away the life support. And just about before she died, I have a sister-in-law that over the years I have not been kind to. I have been very judgmental and self-righteous about her. One time I was home and my sister was giving a dinner party and I said, who's coming? And she rattled off who was coming and she mentioned the sister- in-law and I said, do we have to have her? And my sister said, well, sure. Why would you not want her? And I said, Well, she's always so pretentious, I said. And she's also full of herself. And she's almost telling us how rich they are and all about their powerful friends. And my sister without a breath. She's as calm and sweet as not as high on but as you can be. She said, she only acts that way when you're around. I think there's a message there. She was at the deathbed and she said to Dora about 20 minutes before Dora died, she said, Dora, you know, you can swallow. She says, it'll make it easier to breathe. And Dora responded. And she responded again about five minutes before. I'll tell you why tell you that because when it was all over and I went back to Toronto I said to Father Bill his name is Father Bill Wilson by the way I said to Father bill you know the one thing I'd like to know is that Dora heard me because she was unconscious he said you really are thick aren't you I said why well he said if she could respond 20 minutes before she died and if she responded five minutes before died don't you think she heard you at night it had never struck me so there it was it was such a wonderful sacred experience it was the most peaceful experience that I had ever had and another thing came to be I had had a big problem with my mother all my life and that morning I felt my mother's presence there you know if my mother and dad had wanted anything in their lives I think it would have been that first of all that their daughter who could who was handicapped that she would be looked after and that in her hour of need she would be looked after and who got to do it but I who had resisted my mother I who had sort of feared loved my father but nevertheless I got to be the one that was there and i have to tell you that in that moment i had done my prayer work i had done my forgiveness work with my mother with my father and all that but there always seemed to be something lingering and that morning it was gone and i think it's so important that we let go of our parents as i was able to let go and the quality of my life has changed again since that has happened, into a new way of being peaceful and into a new experience of the presence of God. I don't live with those old ideas anymore. I still hear them sometimes, but I know what to do about them today. You know, everything that I have, what I've tried to trace for you is really who I was the first 40 years of my life and what this program has made possible, The steps, the traditions, the concepts, the fellowship, the being able to share, listening to others, being sponsored and having the opportunity to sponsor others. Who would have thought it? A new way of life. You know, I can put my head on the pillow these days and I can say, you know, you did good, kid, or maybe you better change that tomorrow. but basically you're okay imagine I like myself but also I like you that's amazing to me and you know I try and live in the presence of God and all the blessings of this wonderful program is my prayer for you thank you