Ninety Days. Two Jobs. No Car. Pages 86 Through 88. – Sheila A.
About This Speaker Tape
Sheila shares her story of growing up as a child of two alcoholic parents in Oklahoma and California. After her parents divorced when she was three, she bounced between her mother, foster homes, her father, and various relatives. Her mother was a nurse whose disease progressed until she could no longer care for her children, and Sheila and her brother entered the foster care system. A pivotal moment came when her father got sober in AA when she was ten, and his sponsor insisted he visit his children regularly and make living amends — a commitment that would shape Sheila's entire life.
Sheila's own drinking began at her high school prom, where she discovered that alcohol made the lifelong feeling of not fitting in disappear. Her disease progressed through waitressing jobs, a short marriage, drug use, and increasingly dangerous blackouts. After her mother died alone in an indigent hospital, Sheila spiraled further. She had a son, Bradford, and despite her fierce love for him, she could not stop drinking and drugging. The turning point came on December 15, 1984, when she woke up unable to find her toddler son and realized she was becoming the very thing she feared most.
A woman in AA had given Sheila her phone number, and that call led to a kitchen table, a Big Book, and the words "you don't ever have to feel this way again." Her sponsor asked her to commit to 90 days of doing everything asked without question. Sheila worked two jobs, got rides to meetings, read pages 86-88 every morning, and slowly rebuilt her life one day at a time. Her sponsor had her make specific amends to her father — bringing him hot tea and his newspaper every morning — and their relationship transformed from resentment into deep love.
Sheila's father passed away with 29 years of sobriety, surrounded by his wife, his daughter, and his sponsees. Her brother got sober and joined their father's old home group. The talk closes with a powerful story about finding her late father's plumbing company shirt on a woman at an institution visit — a moment Sheila took as a sign from Higher Power that her father saw her braces and that heaven is real. She credits the fellowship for teaching her to go the extra mile, to inconvenience herself for others, and to keep showing up so she could witness the miracles.
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