People-Pleasing Kept Me Quiet for Forty Years and I Called It Love – Elaine B.

About This Speaker Tape

Elaine B. speaks at the Monday Blue Chip Speakers' Meeting at the NAVA Club with a sobriety date of August 3, 2002. She grew up on an Oregon farm, the seventh of nine children, with a drunk father who openly said he only wanted four kids. There was no emotion in the house and something worse she only hints at — trauma she survived by learning to dissociate and compartmentalize. A third-grade nun, Sister Benita, planted the one good idea she carried forward: a Higher Power of love, not fear.

She resisted drinking at first because she had seen what it did to her father and two heroin-addicted brothers. An eating disorder in 1976 became her first real addiction. She got hired as a flight attendant at 20 with zero bar experience, landed in Miami during the Miami Vice cocaine years, and survived mostly on luck. A casual suggestion to have a drink before her annoying mother-in-law arrived became the clincher — she couldn't stop. She put in eight years sober around her daughters' births, then drank again for four years until her husband walked out on her 40-something birthday while she threw up in front of their nine- and twelve-year-old girls.

For twenty years after that she sat in the back of meetings, collected medallions in foreign countries, went to church, and called it sobriety. She was turning into her mother — quiet, pretending, tolerating. In Naples she heard women with twenty and twenty-five years say, 'until I really did the work, my life was ugh,' and recognized herself. Separated from her husband of 36 years, she moved to Newnan, Georgia in November to be near her daughters and redid the steps — this time looking at patterns: avoidance, lying, relying on herself instead of a Higher Power, letting people walk over her and calling it love.

At 65 she is finally speaking up, getting on her knees morning and night, saying the Serenity and Third Step prayers, and letting her sponsor tell her when she is delusional. She opens the floor to questions — something unusual for an AA talk — because she wants input, not a monologue. Her closing image: she wants to be the surfer in the wave, not the swimmer who is afraid of it. A member baptizes her the new nickname on the way out: 'from farm girl to surfer girl.'

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Alex opens the Monday Blue Chip Speakers' Meeting at the NAVA Club and introduces Elaine B., who hasn't shared since 2003
• 2:30 Elaine thanks the Newnan women who welcomed her after she moved from Florida in November following separation from her husband of 36 years
• 6:00 Oregon farm childhood — nine kids, drunk father who said he only wanted four, no emotion in the house, Sister Benita teaches a Higher Power of love
• 11:00 Learned to dissociate and compartmentalize trauma at home — detrimental later but it let her function at school
• 16:00 First drink at 15 pouring beer out, senior prom blackout with a tambourine and a bruise, Dairy Queen speed behind the ice cream machine
• 22:00 Flight attendant at 20 lands in Miami during the Miami Vice era — cocaine, pina coladas, smoking lessons, passengers with spoons in the lavatory
• 29:00 One glass of wine before the mother-in-law arrives — can't stop. First AA meeting after six weeks. Gets pregnant and goes to rehab
• 36:00 Eight years sober around the kids, then her husband says 'I think you can have a drink.' Four years of in-and-out follow
• 41:00 Birthday August 2, 2002 — husband finds her throwing up in front of the kids and says 'I'm done.' Sobriety date August 3, 2002
• 48:00 After 20 years on the outside of AA, a Naples women's meeting and a new sponsor make her redo the steps — patterns of avoidance, lying, controlling others. Closes with surfer vs. swimmer analogy and audience Q&A