Practice These Principles Means You’ll Fall Flat on Your Face — to Me That’s Built-In Forgiveness from Higher Power – Virginia M.

About This Speaker Tape

Virginia M., a member of the Queen City Al-Anon Family Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, shares her story at a 1983 convention in Bloomington, Minnesota. She grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland in a wealthy but hard-drinking family, was sent to live with ultra-conservative Presbyterian grandparents in western Pennsylvania at age seven when the Depression hit, and became a ward of the Orphan's Court at eleven when both grandparents died within seven months of each other. She traces the roots of her misplaced sense of responsibility and reverse snobbery back to childhood abandonment by her mother.

At seventeen she left Pennsylvania for California, where she did considerable drinking and partying before meeting Buck, a North Carolinian she would marry. Their 37-year marriage survived his active alcoholism — lost businesses, car wrecks, disappeared weekends, holiday disasters, and a harrowing night when Virginia walked the floor with a newborn in one arm and a loaded revolver in the other, planning to kill the whole family. She describes the insanity of chasing his car with a hammer and screwdriver, driving 180 miles to beach joints at all hours, and the relentless self-blame of believing his drinking was her fault.

When Buck got sober through AA, Virginia discovered that his sobriety alone changed nothing in her own life — she was still rocking with the boat. She followed him to a meeting out of anger and stumbled into Al-Anon by accident, never receiving a newcomer welcome because the group assumed she came with a visiting speaker named Ann. She shares how she resisted the program at first, thinking the members were impossibly good, but eventually began working the steps after hearing another woman describe doing them just to prove they would not work.

Virginia walks through all twelve steps with hard-won personal insight, emphasizing that powerlessness extends far beyond alcohol, that humility is simply honesty, that inventory must include the good as well as the bad, and that the word "practice" contains built-in forgiveness. She closes by affirming that after seventeen years she has never found a surer or safer way than Al-Anon's principles.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction as a member of the Queen City Al-Anon Family Group in Charlotte, North Carolina
• 3:30 Childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland — wealthy partying family, burning mattresses pushed from upstairs windows
• 7:00 Sent to grandparents in western Pennsylvania at age seven; father dies, mother leaves and never returns
• 11:00 Grandparents die when she is eleven; becomes a ward of the Orphan's Court on a dollar a day
• 14:00 Leaves Pennsylvania at seventeen for California; meets Buck and moves to North Carolina
• 20:00 Marriage to Buck, business success, and the escalation of his drinking — holiday disasters, car wrecks, self-blame
• 28:00 Driving with a hammer to destroy Buck's car; walking the floor with a loaded revolver and a newborn baby
• 35:00 The salad jar moment — Buck is sober but nothing has changed; realization that sobriety alone is not enough
• 40:00 Following Buck to her first Al-Anon meeting out of anger; accidentally missing the newcomer welcome
• 50:00 Walking through all twelve steps with personal experience — powerlessness, inventory, humility as honesty, practice as built-in forgiveness