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

Thank you, Linda. My name is Virginia. I'm a member of the Queen City Al-Anon Family Group in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And first off, I want to thank the committee, those responsible for my being asked to come and share with you tonight.
I didn't used to spend Friday nights like this. I don't know about you, but I had to get ready for the weekend.
The banks weren't open on Saturday, so I had to be sure I had cash money.
And if I didn't have any in the bank to get out, I had to borrow some, because the places we went to, they didn't take checks or credit cards.
And I had to prepare myself. You know, I projected until Monday morning immediately when I came home from the office on Friday night.
And this took up a lot of my time. It also kept me from facing realities of myself and my own life and my own responsibilities.
This is a beautiful room. Have you looked?
I looked around earlier this afternoon. I kind of like to walk in a place where I'm going to share beforehand, so I have a feel of the room.
And I thought, how warm it is. And it's even more so with your presence.
I know that some comment was made about the tape, so that those that aren't with us can enjoy this conference by tape.
Well, I want to assure you that I miss anyone that isn't here, but I'm mighty glad that you are.
It's awfully hard to stand up and share in an empty room.
I guess the only place to start is in the beginning.
And as old as I am, I can assure you I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow.
We'd be here all Sunday night.
I'm going to try and hit the hot spots and the high spots that were low.
It's the only place you can go, isn't it, and talk about how terrible it was and everybody applaud.
I don't know.
How self-centered and egotistical.
All those sorts of things, and everybody shakes their head, yes, yes, yes.
I was born on the eastern shore of Maryland to a relatively well-to-do family.
This was a home situation which wasn't necessary for my father to go out every day and earn a living.
There was adequate income from investments.
And I enjoyed the nicer things in life.
I know in retrospect there were a lot of things that I enjoyed, a lot of love and support and guidance that I didn't have.
This was a partying family.
A drinking family.
There was always a lot of people around, well-known people, socially prominent, talented people, authors and singers and painters.
And there were always the parties.
And it wasn't until just a couple of years ago that I'd always thought of these as the, quote, happy years.
And it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized a memory came to me of something I either blocked out
or there'd been too much other stuff in the way for me yet to remember it.
And that was lying in bed.
In that beautiful home at night in the dark, with my head under the sheet, thinking, what did I do wrong?
And what I was hearing was my mother and father arguing after the guests had left or passed out.
I grew up not thinking it was at all unusual to help burn, push burning mattresses out of upstairs bedroom windows,
or that anyone that got in a boat might run ashore, or people that would dive in shallow water and cut their feet on oyster shells.
We lived in a house.
We lived in a house.
We lived right on the Chesapeake Bay.
And I don't suppose any of us think people live any differently than we do, no matter what our environment.
It had been a custom with our family that every summer we spent a month with our maternal grandparents in western Pennsylvania.
And the year that I was seven, I went on the annual visit, and I wasn't to return to Maryland.
This was a home situation in which the children were seen and not heard,
and you didn't ask questions if you were supposed to know something you would be told, and you didn't question anything.
I wasn't to know.
I wasn't to fully understand for a number of years that the depression had hit.
And I know there are some in this room that will know what I'm speaking of,
either by experience or having heard it spoken of.
The home situation with these maternal grandparents was exactly opposite of what I had been accustomed to to this time.
They were ultra-conservative Presbyterians, and you went to church every time the doors opened.
They were extremely fine people.
And the older I get, the more I realize,
exactly what they did do, because, you see, they were in their 70s, and they had a seven-year-old they were caring for,
and did a beautiful job, although that's a tremendous age gap.
When we left Maryland, my father stayed there.
He had become an invalid, and he stayed there, and very soon thereafter, he died.
And for a number of years, I said, my mother abandoned me.
And then I came to realize this isn't what she did, this is what I felt.
She felt abandoned, she left, and the bottom line is, she didn't come back, but that wasn't her intent.
And I never thought there was any inadequacy on her part that she didn't return.
And I started what I know now was developing that misplaced sense of responsibility
that became larger and larger in me as time passed,
because I thought, what's wrong with me that she would leave?
Now, I know that after Buck and I were married, and three children were born to us,
this was even more perplexing to me.
I know also in retrospect that I was very self-centered, because I was not an only child.
I can never remember thinking what's wrong with my brothers, my sister, and I.
It was always what was wrong with me.
And sometimes I forget to share the fact that after Buck and I were married, I found her,
I located her, and that spot in me that was so lonely and hurt so badly that I thought would disappear,
excuse me, if I had a relationship with my mother because I thought you didn't know that feeling
because you did have a mother, didn't go away.
And I learned to love this woman, and I was able to get rid of, with the help of the program,
my hate, my resentment, my anger, and all.
I never learned to like her, but I learned to love her.
And I learned also that she had some inadequacies of her own, and that's why she left.
She was a woman that was accustomed to.
Money, and she didn't know how to face life with four children, and no money, and she ran.
And it never crossed my mind for years that my mother would do that, or any adult, for that matter.
I've been very good about endowing people with virtues they don't have.
You know, I'm always elevating them, and then wonder why they let me down.
But within seven months of one another, when I was 11, these grandparents died,
and I became a ward of the Orphan's Court of the State of Pennsylvania.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
I don't think that's a good thing.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
I won't tell you that for you to feel sorry for me tonight.
At one time, I did.
And one of the reasons I found out that I did this was, and it bothered me for a long time after I came into the program,
why I did have this need to share tragedies with everyone.
Never joys, but tragedies.
And I realized in me that if I strung my tragedies like beads on a chain and held them up, you'd say,
oh, poor Virginia, no wonder she's like you as she is, and you'd let me off the hook.
But I found when you let me off the hook, that didn't let...
I didn't let me off the hook, and it doesn't really profit me to do that.
But it's just part of my story, and I think it was a factor in my staying in the years of active alcoholism.
I was awarded a court, and I was given a dollar a day to live on.
It wasn't very much then.
It would be nothing now, but it wasn't very much then, and I felt very, very sorry for me.
I was as tall then as I am now.
I wasn't as wide, but I was as tall, and I was a misfit.
I remember changing schools in the eighth grade,
and everybody in the room could walk under my arms.
They thought I was a new teacher.
You know, I was very awkward, very ill at ease, had no social graces,
and was very resentful that there was no money in the family that I could take dancing lessons and all that like my sister had,
and that's why she was like she was, and I was the clunk that I was.
I approached the orphans' court when I was 17 and asked permission to leave Pennsylvania.
World War II was coming along then, and I couldn't go out.
I was outside the continental United States, a good thing,
because I'd probably gone to Hong Kong, and I'd never gotten back from there,
but I went to, I did get permission because I was socially mature.
I was dumb, but I was socially mature.
I think I relate so much when we hear an AA share about taking a geographical cure.
I think that's in a sense what I did because I equated unhappiness and sorrow with Pennsylvania,
and I wanted to leave, and it was going to be different wherever I was going to go,
and as far as I could go was California, and as I say, I was socially mature,
and I had gained permission.
I'm the type of person that would sit in the back of a steady hall,
and somebody would tell dirty stories.
Surely somebody else in here has done this.
So I'd tell dirty stories, and I'd just sit there, and they'd say,
Boy, look at that Virginia.
She can keep a straight face.
There was no effort.
I didn't get the point of the joke, you know, but I was cool.
I was dumb.
I'm probably the original dumb Dora, but at any rate, I went to California,
and then the next three years, I was to do a considerable amount of drinking
that was to give me pause to reflect when I came into Al-Anon,
but I'll get to that in a minute.
I was in California, and I did a lot of drinking, and I did a lot of partying,
and I made an idiot of myself on many occasions,
and I always think it's important to tell people that are talking about
how you identify alcoholism in yourself or in another,
and I think to get drunk doesn't make you an alcoholic.
To make a fool of yourself doesn't make you an alcoholic.
You can do it without booze or on booze.
That doesn't make you alcoholic, and I'm living proof of that,
but I met someone from North Carolina, and I had an opportunity to go there,
and very shortly thereafter, I met the man to whom I am still married.
Now, if you have not heard anyone state a miracle in one sentence,
I shall give it to you now.
Quote,
Buck and Virginia are still married after 37 years, and both are alive.
Period, end quote.
That's a miracle.
And sometimes after I've shared, people have said to Buck,
Oh, how did you stand it?
And then sometimes after Buck has shared, they've said,
Oh, Virginia.
Well, I want to assure you,
you're going to hear him if you do come to the meeting tomorrow night.
You will hear his side of this deal,
and I want to assure you that we deserve one another.
Beck and I started talking about getting married.
He says I asked him, and I say he asked me, but it doesn't make any difference.
I needed him to need me, and I didn't know that,
and I remember saying to myself one night what I was going to tell him,
and his response, I was going to tell him I was going to leave, I was leaving,
and his response I knew was going to be, Oh, don't go.
I love you.
I need you.
My life, you know, nothing without you.
And so that Friday night I said to him, I think I'm going to return to California.
I'm going back to California.
And he hadn't read his script because he said, When are you leaving?
To show the extent of my false pride, I couldn't say I was just kidding.
I went downtown the next day, and I bought a ticket, and I returned to California.
And Buck came for me about six weeks later, and we returned to North Carolina.
Now, in those days, if you weren't a North Carolinian, you were a foreigner,
and I was a foreigner.
And his father and mother, his entire family, are extremely fine people,
but they weren't so sure they wanted that old boy to marry that strange person.
And, oh, my, as years passed, I wish I had listened to them, and he had listened to them, too.
But at any rate, because of all this conversation that was going on about him marrying this person from way off,
we were married.
And I thought, Now I have someone to love and someone to love me, and everything's going to be fine.
I had developed over the years, I didn't know any of this, it's only through repeated inventories,
I found it out.
I had developed a reverse snobbery.
If you had social position, money, and education, I thought you were shallow and vain,
because all the people I'd ever known that were endowed with any of those things had been shallow and vain.
I didn't know that you have to have any resources on which to rely,
and it has nothing to do with money, social position, or education.
You either have those resources or you don't.
And just as I ran into a whole string of them, I had no inner resources.
But I had developed this reverse snobbery,
and I wasn't interested in a fine.
I was interested in a fine house, and fine clothes, and cars, and all of that.
You know, it was going to be fine.
Two children were born to us, and we had an opportunity to go into business for ourselves.
And we were very successful.
But I wasn't happy.
Things weren't working out like I thought they would.
And I didn't know what was wrong.
I hadn't the slightest inkling that it was alcohol.
Because Beck and I drank together before we married, and we drank together after we were married.
It was during these years I couldn't understand what was different between he and I.
Because we could go out with the same crowd, to the same club, drink out of the same bottle.
And the next day, I didn't do what he did.
I didn't keep on drinking.
Or I didn't get into the trouble he did.
It was during these years I figured it must be because I'm more intelligent,
stronger character, higher morals.
Physically, I can drink. I can hold my liquor.
I didn't know anything about the disease concept of alcoholism.
And neither did I know that it was blossoming in our home.
There was never a sober Christmas.
You know, I hated Christmas for years.
It was like a dark cloud when they'd start advertising Christmas.
I hated it. It was always a disaster.
You know, you go through the business of putting up the tree, and a bunch come in.
The tree's flat, and all the ornaments are broken.
Or you prepare a nice meal, and somebody comes in.
They're across the Christmas table, passed out.
You get so, you just don't give a damn.
That was a lot of my feelings.
When we went into business for ourselves and were successful,
something happened to me and something happened to Buck
that were turning points for both of us.
I had a great need to be needed.
I still have a great need to be needed.
And I think all of us do.
If it's way out of proportion, then I'm real sick and real twisted and real flaky.
But in a normal sense, in a rightful sense, it's a God-given instinct.
But I had a need to be needed, and I had a need to be important.
And running this business made me important.
Now, when you're running a small business,
you feel important because you are.
You know where I was coming from.
But with this successful business and my working there,
it gave Buck the money and the time to do what he wanted to do.
And you will hear from him, not me, the things that he did.
You'll hear my reaction.
I'll try and share some of that.
I wondered what I was doing wrong.
You know, if I was five foot tall instead of six foot tall,
maybe he wouldn't drink.
If I knew how to bake biscuits like his mother,
his mother made the best biscuits you have ever eaten in your life.
Mine are like hardtack.
I knew how to bake biscuits.
If I knew this, if I knew that.
It got down to the superstition of,
I won't wear that red polka dot dress because every time I've worn it,
we've had a fight, so I won't wear that dress.
I won't serve steak on Tuesday night because every time we do,
we have an argument.
You know, I won't go to the grocery store on Fridays
because every time I do, we have an argument.
Buck gets drunk. It's my fault.
It's my fault.
I think I had, somebody said the other day,
something about that we are volunteers or we are victims.
Well, I was volunteered a lot.
I volunteered myself also.
But you know, if someone tells you something on a regular basis,
you will come to believe it even though you,
on the surface of your mind, will deny it inside of you,
where you really live, you start to believe it.
And I heard for a lot of years,
if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't drink.
If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't drink.
And I kept trying to change.
So he wouldn't.
And I didn't know how to do it.
I did not know.
When I worked, he wanted me at home.
When I was at home, he wanted me working.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't have a mind of my own.
I was a pawn.
But I wasn't, I was a pawn that had feelings
and was confused and was lost and was lonely
and was out of step with the world.
And indeed, it was during these years
that I developed this feeling that
I didn't qualify for God's love and protection.
And when I heard you speak of the blessings God had bestowed upon you,
I didn't doubt that.
I just doubted my ability to find the keys
so that he would bestow some of the same on me.
And I taught Sunday school with a vengeance
because I was going to get good, you know.
I taught Sunday school and I went to church
and I was in PTA and employees union
and the kids brushed their teeth every day
or I'd bust their tail feathers, you know.
And they took a bath every day and I paid the bills
and I did all of the things, everything.
I was doing everything to qualify.
But I have found out if I seek to be good, I won't make it.
But if I seek to get well, good follows well,
just like dawn does dark.
And it'll fall in place in time, all of it,
and in time, in God's time.
All of the things that can happen to us
are not the same as far as circumstance or environment,
the holiday, the relationship to the alcoholic and all of that.
They can be very dissimilar.
But inside, where it really counts, it's all the same.
And that is our identity, the sense of guilt,
of loneliness, despair, the yearning.
You don't know where your husband is
and you do go and you look out the window
and you play games.
The third car coming from the left will be him and it isn't.
No, it'll be the third car coming from the other direction.
You're lying in the hospital and you say,
if I don't look at the door,
those footsteps coming down the hall will be him
and he'll be coming through the door
if I don't look at the doorway.
And they don't come to your door.
The steps stop and you look and he's not there.
You think, what have I done?
What have I done wrong?
And your desire for this person is good.
And you don't know whether your desire for them is good or bad.
You have no right to try and control.
And you're not responsible.
That's one of the greatest freedoms Al-Anon gave me
when I came in, the realization that I hadn't caused it
and I can't control it and I can't cure it.
But my group told me I'd contributed.
And in the beginning I thought,
you damn bet you I did, I've kept him up for years.
But that isn't what they meant.
They meant that I had prolonged his act of alcoholism
through my false pride and my vanity,
covering up, bailing him out of all kinds of situations, lying,
going to see his parents and they would say,
where's Beck?
He couldn't come with you this Sunday?
And I'd say, no.
And they'd say, is he working?
And I wouldn't answer and they would assume he was.
I might not even know where he was.
But I couldn't say, we're in trouble.
I couldn't because I was at fault.
It was my fault.
After all, he was one of a large family
and he was the only drunk in the bunch, so it had to be me.
On one occasion when Beck was gone on a drunk,
I'd tried everything, you know, meeting him at the door,
welcome home, pour you a drink, cook dinner,
meet him at the door, you're not coming in here drunk,
he's sober up, you can come in.
You're not bringing that bottle in.
Your friends aren't coming in here, cooking meals for them,
driving all hours of the day and night, going to the beach.
We live 180 miles from the coast of South Carolina.
You know, the East Coast zoops in and out.
So we're closer to the South Carolina coast
than we are to North Carolina.
Your one history lesson this afternoon,
geography lesson this afternoon, Dawn.
And we'd go to the beach, all hours.
I would drive to the beach because someone told me Beck's car
was at Papa Nash's, which was the
joint down there.
And I'd have to go and see if it was.
Didn't matter if I found the car or not.
If I found the car, I still couldn't go in.
But the unknown nearly drove me crazy.
But I remember Beck had been gone on a drunk
and I made up my mind, okay, I've run the business,
I've taken care of the children, I've taken care of the home,
I've held down my job as well.
When he comes back, I'm going to ignore him.
You know, I've gotten along with him.
I'm not going to argue, there's not going to be any,
we're going to talk this thing out.
There's not going to be any of that.
I'm just going to ignore him.
And he returned home and six weeks later,
the doctor told me I was pregnant and I knew again
I was a failure.
If you don't get it, I'm not going to explain it to you.
But Beck had been out, what I've heard some people
refer to as treating his illness.
And I couldn't get it to, by this time our business
was gone and I couldn't get a job in this small town
in South Carolina and for a long time I would have told you
it was because of his reputation and that was a part of it.
It wasn't the total truth.
I wasn't very employable either because as I say,
if someone told me Beck was at Papa Nash's or someplace else,
I had to go and see if he was.
But I had returned to Charlotte and I had obtained work
and rented an apartment for the girls and I.
And on Christmas Eve, we were moving and he returned.
And when I saw his car pulling the drive,
has your heart ever beat so low?
It's like somebody beating your ears.
You know, you can't hear, your heart's just beating that loud.
That was the feeling I had, fear.
What is he going to say when he finds out we're moving?
Well, I've gone to Charlotte and on my own,
I've gotten a job without consulting him.
On my own, I've rented a place for the girls and I.
I was afraid, he'd been gone since October,
but I was afraid of what he would say.
And he came in and I remember telling him
that I wasn't leaving there to leave him,
I was leaving to find work.
And I had found work.
And I kind of held my breath and I said,
you can go with us if you want.
I'm holding my breath and he said,
yeah, I'm going with you.
And I sighed in relief because I,
oh, he still loves it.
After he got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous,
I found out why he agreed to go.
I had loaded the bed and he was flat broke.
But it's all right because what he said sustained me
through as many a dark hour,
depending if he still loves it.
We went back to Charlotte.
We had lived in Charlotte previous
to going into business in South Carolina.
And I thought that silly thing,
it can't get any worse.
I didn't know what I was talking about.
Boy, can it get worse.
And if you're looking for it to get worse,
it damn well will.
If you're looking for it to get better,
it can do that too.
And in the next few years,
things that I thought never would happen,
that I would never do, I did.
I thought wouldn't happen, did happen.
I'm the kind of person that would get in a car
with a hammer and a screwdriver and wrench
and go looking for Buck's car.
And when I found it, I was going to fix it.
The hammer was going to knock out the windows
and the screwdriver and wrench.
I was going to do something to that engine.
And then I was going to sit and wait.
And when he came back to that car,
I was going to say,
that's what you get for treating me like you do.
And sometimes I'd find the car
a little bit easier.
You know, when you set out in life
to do something fine and you don't make it,
then you figure, well, you know.
But when you set out to do something
low down and dirty and can't do it,
that's failure too.
I've done a lot of crazy things.
Appalling.
I'm so grateful when I am really shook
when I remember some of the things I've done.
Because if I hadn't changed any whatsoever,
they wouldn't shock me today.
But when they shock me,
I know my perspective has changed.
And I'm grateful for that.
Beck was involved in a number of automobile accidents
and he was in one accident
and wasn't expected to live.
And a doctor at that time told me to go home
and take care of the children and myself
and let this man find himself.
Those were his words.
And I could not go.
During all these years, you know,
my responsibility, one of my primary responsibilities,
certainly was to these three children
because I left them at home many an hour by themselves.
And I have to live with that.
And that is my action.
And I cannot lay at anyone else's feet this day.
I want to jump now because this is what it was like.
And it's only necessary so that if anyone's done
any of these things or thought any of these things
or had any of these feelings,
that you know you're not alone.
But that's not programmed.
I want to jump to a noonday.
And on my first inventory,
I had down that I was thrifty.
Now, I knew I was thrifty because I saved mayonnaise jars
and pickle jars and bread wrappers and tinfoil
and gift wrap and clothes I could no longer wear
and string and newspaper magazines
and box and bottles and jars.
And I thought that was thrifty in case I needed them.
I didn't know I was fearful.
I didn't know that if I put my trust
in a higher power one day at a time,
he would supply my needs
to my needs.
That doesn't mean just sit back on the chair
and let him do it.
I've got some work to do, too.
But I don't have to be fearful.
But in the refrigerator,
I had some leftover salad.
Of course you don't throw away leftovers
until they're green.
But this was salad with oil and vinegar dressing
that I was saving.
Isn't that sick?
But anyhow, I reached in and I got this jar
and I put it under my arm.
When you're tall going into a refrigerator,
it's insecure.
And it came off and this salad,
this leftover salad went all over the kitchen floor.
And I reacted in my normal voice,
God, what else do you expect of me?
That damn drunk and now this mess.
And then it hit me.
He wasn't drunk.
He was sitting in the living room
waiting for me to fix lunch.
Now, I can't remember everything
I thought that Monday afternoon,
but I remember a lot of it.
How long has he not been drinking?
Then the dawning of the realization.
Sober people have been telephoning him.
I knew they were sober.
I could smell a drunk on the phone any day.
Sober people were coming by the office
to see him.
What was going on?
I'll bet he hasn't told them
what a good wife I've been,
how I've stood by him through thick or thin.
We wouldn't have this business today
if it wasn't for me.
These children would be out on the street,
you know, on the defensive.
And then something very traumatic.
It's always traumatic when I realize
something I have believed for a long time
to be true,
when I find out it isn't true.
And that afternoon I found out
something I'd held on for a long time
was not true.
I had believed if he would get sober,
we would be all right.
He wasn't drinking,
and my life hadn't changed a bit.
And that really shook me.
Have you ever been out in a small boat fishing?
You stand up to fish.
You don't stand stiff-legged.
You keep your knees flexed.
And you roll with the boat,
ready for a branch, a root,
a wave, wind,
prepared for any eventuality
in order not to get thrown out of the boat.
That's what it was like for me
living in active alcoholism,
prepared for any eventuality.
And he went out and got sober,
and I'm still rocking with the boat,
wondering what's wrong.
Well, I decided,
well, I don't know where it is he's going,
but I'm going, too.
After all, I'd been in jail with him.
I'd gone to the bootlegger with him.
I'd been in the hospital with him.
I'd been in wrecks with him.
I'd been in beautiful places with him.
I had been in the pits with him.
I'm going, too.
Now, it wasn't that simple.
I couldn't just say,
I'm going with you tonight.
I had to have my reasons,
so I started working on my reasons.
I'm your wife. I have a right to go.
I want to meet these people.
I'm drunk or sober.
I'm still sitting here running it day and night.
I'm not doing any more. I'm going with you.
I'm getting revved up.
I'm going.
So about 7.30, about to lighten Mr. Serenity.
Oh, I could pinch his head off.
Anyhow, he's lighting his pipe.
He's not sober long,
but he's still Mr. Serenity even then,
you know, lighting his pipe.
And he says,
well, I'll see you about 9.30 or 10.
And I said, well, I'm going, too.
And I could have killed him,
but I didn't use any of my reasons.
Now, back when I was drinking with Buck,
and I didn't get into the trouble that he did,
you know, when I told you about the feelings,
the understanding that I had of myself,
why I didn't,
you know, that's very fertile ground
for I-know-it-all-ism.
And when you know it all, you can't ask questions.
You can't admit you don't know something.
So when we started out to the car,
I'm mad already
because I had all these reasons.
I'd spent so long working up,
and I didn't know how to use them.
And we get in the car,
and I can't say where are we going
because then he'd know I didn't know,
and I didn't want him to know I didn't know.
So we get in the car,
and I'm sitting on like a blowfish out of water.
Further we go, boom, I'm about to explode.
We got out of the car,
and we walked into this building,
and he pointed to a stairwell,
and he said, they meet down there.
I didn't know who they were.
I died before I'd asked him.
I went down those stairs.
I'd never been to an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'd never been to a meeting of Al-Anon.
I knew nothing about either program.
I knew nothing about alcoholism.
I didn't know that it was a treatable illness.
And I did not know that there are those
that are afflicted with alcoholism
and those that are affected by alcoholism.
I knew none of that.
I just knew I was absolutely at the end of my rope.
Nothing I believed in or hoped for
or dreamed of had come true
and I was working out,
and I was totally lost.
When I walked in the room,
I started talking to a lady.
Idle conversation.
In a little bit, two of the men in our Al-Anon group
turned around and said to us,
won't you ladies join us?
And she and I went and were seated.
I'm sure they opened the meeting with a serenity prayer
and read the purpose and the preamble on the steps.
I don't remember any of that.
All I know is, in a little bit, somebody said,
our program tonight is Anne,
and you know, Anne was a visitor there.
She thought I was a member of the group.
Because I was talking to Anne,
the group, the people in the group
thought I had come with her.
And I didn't get the newcomer welcome,
but I got something better than any newcomer welcome
I've ever heard of.
I got a meeting based on the purpose of Al-Anon.
And if our meetings are based on the purpose of Al-Anon always,
we will attract those that are wanting,
those that are needing,
those that are reaching out.
You can have all the rosters,
and all the welcoming committees,
and all the telephone numbers,
and all the envelopes of literature for the newcomers,
and all of that,
but if you don't give them a meeting
and make them feel a little bit more comfortable,
they won't be back.
And you can give them that without all that other jazz,
and they'll be back.
I'm living proof of it.
I thought she was crazy,
but I thought I was too,
so that made two of us.
I don't know about Al-Anon or about the program.
You see, I know God, as I understand it,
was working in my life that night.
First of all, that I got angry enough to go,
and that was the only way I ever did anything,
was angry.
Secondly, that I chose to go a night
it was closed AA in Al-Anon.
Thank God I didn't get to an open meeting
of Alcoholics Anonymous first.
I would have become one of those non-alcoholic members
of Open AA.
And hell, they caused a lot of trouble.
They sit on the fence.
You sit around coffee tables at deals like this,
and they'll say,
well, honey, how long have you been sober?
Oh, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not in AA.
And they'll say, that's just like an Al-Anon.
And I'll say, no, that isn't.
That's not Al-Anon.
A marriage license doesn't make you Al-Anon.
A birth certificate doesn't.
Nothing makes you Al-Anon other than going to meetings
and being willing to listen
and being willing to share and wanting it.
It's just not by osmosis.
You've got to do something.
You know, that would be like saying
every drunk out there tonight's a member of AA.
Now, isn't that apparently an untruth?
Why can't we recognize the same
when it comes to the spouses and family
and friends of alcoholics?
If they don't involve themselves in it,
they ain't in it.
Not in my book.
But anyhow, I chose to go that night, angry.
I chose to go, and it was Al-Anon.
And I've been to a lot of Al-Anon meetings
in a lot of places.
Vuck and I usually drive every place we go.
And I remember one time,
our itinerary is set by where the meeting is.
How many miles are we going to drive?
Where's the closest meeting?
The map and the directory.
I've been to a lot of Al-Anon meetings.
I have never seen Ann again.
It was sufficient that she was in one room
for one hour of one night
to share her experience, strength, and hope
and open the door for me.
That's all it took.
I was attracted.
I started going to meetings,
and I'd been going some few weeks,
and one of the ladies said,
we don't know what Al-Anon meeting you've been going to,
but we're glad you've decided to come and be with us.
And I said, I've never been to Al-Anon before.
And she was appalled.
They hadn't given me the newcomer welcome.
But anyhow, I was more comfortable
than I had been, but I wasn't comfortable.
They were so good.
Oh, mercy, they were good.
Nobody said bad words like damn and hell.
No one, very few of them smoked,
and alcohol had not crossed anyone's lips
but mine, apparently.
They never said anything
They never talked of disliking police
or being afraid of police.
They never talked about wanting to kill him
and would if they could have gotten
and figured a way to do it and get away with it.
None of that.
Everybody was so euphoric, so loving.
You know, I heard things like,
since my husband's been in AA
and I've been in Al-Anon,
we've not had a crossword.
And I thought, oh my God, what am I not learning?
What are you doing I don't know?
Because that wasn't the way it was at our house.
You know.
Sobriety isn't, at our house,
was not instant success and happiness.
I don't know about yours.
And if it was,
talk to me this weekend
and tell me how you did it.
Because it still isn't that way at our house.
And the only thing I can figure
is these people that have never had a crossword
since he or she has been in AA
and he or she has been in Al-Anon
is they live in different houses.
You know, it's just got to be something.
But anyhow, it's better than it was,
but you know,
I firmly believe in telling people
when they come to Al-Anon,
nothing may change whatsoever,
but you can.
But you may be the only thing
within sight or sound
that will change.
And that sober,
that alcoholic that gets sober
isn't going to stand up and applaud
when you say,
I'm going to my meeting tonight
and walk out.
Now, we're supposed to applaud
because the alcoholic needs to go to their meeting.
But I think we better be very much aware of the fact
that we need our meeting just as much.
And I think when an Al-Anon,
and I'm one of them,
is able to put their meeting first
and then they're starting to get with the program.
It has nothing to do with personal rejection
of another person
or lack of cooperation or love
or moral support.
To me, Al-Anon is a life and death situation.
You know, lots of times
when the anonymity statement is read,
I think about it so frequently
that I don't know very many alcoholics
whose lives would be jeopardized
if their anonymity was violated.
Certainly their livelihood,
but not their lives.
But I know Al-Anons
whose anonymity would be broken.
They are subject to physical abuse.
And I know one sad tale,
a true one,
where a woman's anonymity
was violated,
and a sick guest,
practicing alcoholic,
killed her.
So I say to you,
don't introduce me
as Virginia Melton
and my husband as Buck M.
Anonymity is very important.
Sure, families may raise cane
about that alcoholic
going to a lot of meetings
and one's going to give some time to me
after all 20 years of drinking,
but the anonymity of the family
is vitally important.
Vitally important.
Not just for the reasons
our program teaches,
but just for life.
Well, I started going to meetings.
I wasn't real comfortable.
I don't know what time I started.
Will somebody tell me?
I started going to meetings.
I wasn't real comfortable,
and I started going to open AA meetings,
and I was a deaf person,
and I was a deaf person,
and I was identifying with alcoholic women
very much, and I thought,
hmm, maybe I belong over there.
And, um,
some of our groups during that time,
you'd go in and put your name
on a slip of paper with a quarter,
and when they'd get the price of a book,
you'd win the book, you know.
And I wrote my name on a piece of paper one night,
and I won the big book Alcoholics Anonymous,
and I took it home when I read it,
and I knew I belonged in Al-Anon.
Al-Anon's not mentioned in it.
It wasn't in existence when it was written,
and I can't say I was thrilled to know
I belonged in Al-Anon.
I wasn't, because as I say, they were so good,
and I wasn't sitting with these cats, you know.
And it blew my mind one night
when a lady came to a meeting,
and it was obvious that her husband
was having trouble, and somebody said to her,
I'll say her name was Mary.
Mary, how's John?
She said, well, it's pretty bad.
He was passed out, but I did put a pillow
under his head before I left,
and I thought, yay, God!
A pillow under his head?
And I sat there, face to face, lay on top,
smother him to death, please, Dad,
turn him over, face to the pillow,
call the police, say da-da-da-da-da.
And I used to think, okay, now,
how would you react if this really had happened?
How hysterical would you be?
You know, it's got to be realistic.
It's got to be believable.
You know, are you crying, or are you in shock
and just real cool, you know?
And I'd sit there, and I'd think on this,
and I'd think, the kids are in diapers,
but now how am I going to send them to college
if he's dead, maybe, you know? And I'd think about,
well, I don't want to wear a black well,
and I don't want to buy a black dress.
I don't have money for it anyhow.
And then I always knew the bottom line was,
he'll come to and beat the socks off of me,
and so I'd go on in the other room.
You know.
I hear a lot of people talk about guns
and homes, alcoholic homes.
I want to tell you there's one thing
I'll do any time.
I get the opportunity.
If it's a situation of active alcoholism
and there's a gun in that home, I get it out.
And I tell the people, you can get it
when you want it.
But I'll get it out of that home.
There's too many bad situations.
And it isn't always the alcoholic.
I can remember when that last child
was born to us,
and Buck was treating his illness,
and I'm walking the floor
in the middle of the night
with this newborn babe in one arm
and a loaded revolver in the other hand,
and decided we weren't any good, any of us.
We're just no better than a pack of mongrel dogs.
We're nothing but a scar
on the face of the earth.
We weren't adding anything to anybody.
I thought, all right, I'll kill the girls asleep.
I'll kill him, and I'll kill myself.
And this wasn't hysterical,
crying, walking around mad.
This was that very dangerous
planning,
cool, you know,
deliberate.
Buck came home, and he walked in the house
and walked back to the bedroom.
And I'm telling him what I'm thinking.
And he turned and he sat down on the side of the bed.
And he's at gun level, eye level,
with the gun.
And I said, we're no good.
And we ate rid of all of us.
And he said, aw, honey,
and passed out.
Back on the bed.
And I thought, damn your time.
I want you to see me do it.
And I went and put the gun up.
Now, it's funny today,
but when I pick up a newspaper and I read,
I wonder if somebody had been pushed to the brink
and something didn't change it.
Anyhow, I read the big book,
I knew it didn't belong in AA,
and I was going down and on,
and I heard another lady talk.
Now, I'm not in touch with Ann.
I wanted very much, but it was like a secret society.
If Ann didn't give you her telephone number,
you're not supposed to have it, you know.
And I didn't even know Ann's last name,
let alone her telephone number.
I heard another lady talk,
and she talked about going to meetings
simply to have the opportunity
to dump her garbage.
And she said this woman would listen to her every week,
and she would say to her,
what have you tried the steps?
And she said she got so tired of hearing that,
she decided, I'm going home, I'm going to do those steps.
And then when she asked me,
I'm going to say yes, and they don't work.
And that was her approach to the steps.
She said she went home,
and she started reading the steps,
and things started changing.
They worked.
And I thought, wow.
She really wasn't interested in the steps
as a means of changing.
But in spite of that, it worked.
And I started studying the steps.
And I've done it by getting everything
I can read on the first step.
I read it, and I close my books
or the literature, and I come to conclusions
about that step at that time.
And then I read everything I can on step two,
and I put the literature up,
and I think about it,
and I come to conclusions about that.
And then on to three, twelve,
back to one, two, twelve, back to one.
About three years later, I realized
I was ready to start working on the steps,
and I think I have about 15 minutes.
And I'm going to touch.
It wouldn't matter if I had 15 hours.
It's impossible for any of us
to get everything we need
at one meeting or through one person.
It doesn't matter how many people we hear
or how many people what.
We have some things to do ourselves
other than just keeping our ears open.
I think it's important to keep our ears open,
but we've got some other things to do, too.
But I want to touch on the steps
because to me, that's the program.
Because these steps are important.
These steps won't let me down.
People will.
And I'll let other people down.
But the steps will never fail me.
Never.
And whether I'm with 600 people,
as we are here tonight,
or in a room by myself 600 miles from anyone,
the steps are still available to me.
And the principles they teach us,
teach me,
have been there
since the beginning of time
and can go with me through eternity.
They're not standards.
They're principles.
They're principles.
They're principles.
They're principles.
They're principles.
But principles never do.
The first step says we admitted
we were powerless over alcohol
that our lives had become unmanageable.
I found it difficult to admit
I was powerless over alcohol
because I could take a drink
or leave it alone.
And our rejected groups
were saying you're powerless,
you're powerless, you're powerless.
And then for a long time I've admitted
I'm powerless over alcohol, yes.
But that's not all.
I'm powerless over time and place
and circumstance.
I'm powerless over thee
and I'm powerless over me.
I can't even dig a hole and crawl in.
I am powerless.
And once again I thought I was a failure.
That's a failure.
And then I thought, no, it's reality.
I'm a failure radically.
I'm not a failure because of what they're doing,
how they're driving.
I'm only responsible for how I drive my car.
I'd also be mighty foolish
if I didn't look out for those other cars
that they got in my lane to get out of the way
to avoid disaster.
Not for their protection, but for my own.
So I've admitted I'm powerless.
Am I unmanageable? Yes.
You know, I'm like a lot of people
that come in and say, oh, I wish
I'd found this program six months ago.
And you talk to them a couple of years later
and they say, oh, you know what?
I did this six years ago before I did.
And then later on, you know, that was me.
And then I went back and I realized
I've been regressing since I was about five minutes old.
And I still can slip.
You know, one of the things about us in Al-Anon
is when we slip, you can't smell us.
We don't get locked up for it.
We can run around.
Thank you.
But boy, do we slip.
You know, when you stop playing the open prayers
and go back to multiple choice,
you slip again.
But I'm just as unmanageable.
My life is just as unmanageable today
if I think I can do it without
the principles of this program
and God as I understand him.
And if I think I can do it without help.
And if I think I can do it without being honest.
If I think I can do it without telling you
exactly how I feel, not the flat,
oh, I'm fine, how are you?
But I'm crazy today.
You know, he's sober, yeah, but I want to kill him.
You know, I don't know about you.
Maybe nobody else does.
That's all right.
But I want to tell you that this old girl
hasn't thought he was elevated to
whatever he'd be elevated to
just because he's not drinking.
You know, I don't know if it's something lacking in me.
And if it is, I'm sure God allowed me
to see that as time passes.
Well, we are two human beings
living together.
And we've been living together a lot of years.
And a lot of things have happened.
We've done a lot of things to one another.
We've done a lot of things
for one another.
But before we're alcoholic
or non-alcoholic
or male or female,
we're human beings
with human needs
and human emotions
and human inadequacies
and human opportunities.
But the program had to point these things out to me.
The second step says,
came to believe that a power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
I had no need to question,
never questioned the need
to be restored to sanity.
It was the biggie for me.
Because I thought I didn't qualify for God's love.
You know, all that deal.
I was the kind of person, if I really liked you,
if I thought you were neat,
I'd leave you alone.
You talk about an ego trip.
I thought if I tried to develop our friendship,
I'd really screw it up.
You know, you'd have trouble because you knew me.
Now, that is the greatest type of reverse egotism there is.
But it's sick.
I can tell you, it's sick.
But I came first to believe in the people
in AA and in Al-Anon.
You know, when I'm troubled about something today
and I strive for something programmed to help me,
I don't know whether I heard it from an AA or an Al-Anon.
And I really don't care
because I think all wisdom comes from God
as I understand it.
Sometimes an AA is a channel
and sometimes an Al-Anon is a channel
and sometimes an Alateen is a channel.
Sometimes even some other people can be a channel
if I can get over my closed-mindedness
and listen to them.
God isn't, you know,
we don't have closed minds.
We don't have a closed market on God.
Sometimes I think we think we do,
but we don't.
But I came, and I came to,
and I came to believe.
And what made me really get into the third step,
made the decision to turn our will on our lives
over to the care of God as we understand Him,
was the very fact that humans let me down.
They didn't want to,
but they couldn't be everything I needed.
And when I realized
that it was unfair
to expect them to be everything,
be the source of everything I needed,
I also knew it was unfair
for others to expect me
to be everything for them.
So the first two steps freed me
from other people making me responsible
in their lives
and pulling emotional blackmail on me.
And they always knew
what buttons to push.
The kids used to push the guilt button.
They knew I felt guilty about
the type of mother I had been
in their childhood,
and they'd push that.
Or they'd push the old ego button.
The old egotistical Virginia
wouldn't just raise up to that
because she needed that.
She needed to be able to do something
better than somebody else.
But I made a decision,
and that's all I did,
to turn my will and my life over
to the care of God as I understand Him.
And that decision came to me
in reality
in using a prayer
that says,
when we pray to ask God
to remove our defects,
that it would be evidence
to others of His power.
And I was praying it one day
and I thought, God,
if you don't relieve me of my defects
but it will serve you,
that's all right.
And no sooner had I been willing
for that to be true
than I knew it wasn't necessary.
It wasn't necessary.
But I just made the decision
for me in the third step.
And that is
made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
Not an exercise in self-condemnation
but a real picture of me.
Somebody said, you know,
if you're inventorying a jewelry store
and in the storeroom you find
a bushel of potatoes,
don't say that doesn't belong here
and skip over it.
If it's in the jewelry store
and you're inventorying the jewelry store,
put down the bushel of potatoes
in the storeroom.
And you're inventorying the goods
and the bad in an inventory.
I look for the truth.
And in the fifth step
I try to find out the good and the bad.
And in the fifth step
admitted to God, ourselves,
and another human being
the exact nature of our wrongs.
I remember thinking,
why do I have to admit to God?
You've told me God knows me
better than I know myself
and He loves me better, too.
You know?
Just like I don't believe God punishes.
He gives me the opportunity.
God has given me a choice in everything
and I didn't know it.
He gives me a choice.
You know, a lot of people have said,
and one of the things I've tried to share
with my husband repeatedly,
and that is,
when things aren't going well for us,
we're, you know,
it's not gee-hawing too well.
I'm not in this marriage because I have to be.
I'm here because I want to be.
This is where I want to be.
And all those years when I felt trapped
or thought I was trapped
or I thought I couldn't go,
I could have.
I just didn't want to admit I didn't want to.
A lot of people say,
why do you stay in active alcoholism?
I don't know about you folks,
but there were a lot of reasons I did.
I stayed sometimes because
I didn't have any place else to go.
I stayed sometimes because
there wasn't any gas in the car
and I didn't have any money to buy any.
I didn't want those three girls to have
a mother and a father and a house.
I didn't know I was doing worse by them
than what I'd experienced,
but that's what I wanted.
I stayed sometimes because
I knew if I went out the back door
he'd be bringing another one in the front door
and I had too much time and money invested.
I'd be darned if I was going to walk off
and leave it all.
I stayed sometimes because
I didn't want to be alone
and I knew 10% of his time was better than none at all
and I didn't think anybody else would have me.
I stayed for lots of reasons.
Some many in one day
and sometimes one for a long time.
But I admitted to God and myself
and another human being
the exact nature of my wrongs
and how I did that is
I took my written inventory from step four
and I sat down with somebody
and we went over all of it.
And when I would reach a point
where I couldn't go ahead,
I was distressed or upset
or just crying, you know,
she would share with me.
And I was going through all the issues in the program
because they're not program words
and one of them is salvation.
Well, there is some in some of our places.
If you just read, you'll find it.
I'm not going to tell you where it is.
But the word salvation means to come home.
And I had a sense of coming home
because I had a sense of total acceptance
without judgment.
And I was so grateful
there wasn't a zap out of the blue from God
from what I'd done.
And I felt that my past
was like a lot of bombs
and they no longer had the power
to blow up in my today.
And I felt relief.
And I felt good.
And she told me to go ahead
and work on step six.
We're entirely ready to have God
remove these defects of character.
This step is probably the one
that has given me
I have learned the least of.
But it boils down and has for a long time now
that I'm a human being.
It's going to be in God's time.
And I must be willing.
But God isn't going to remove anything from me
if there's a lesson for me to learn in it.
Example and point is self-pity.
Tremendous self-pity.
Been in the program a while
and just hated it.
Went to talk to somebody about it
and they said,
you can't be grateful and feel sorry
for yourself at the same time.
So I went home and I started reading
everything I could on gratitude.
I started making gratitude lists.
And if God had just reached down
and relieved me of the self-pity,
I would have had gratitude.
But when I was willing to research gratitude
and make the effort
and to keep on the surface of mind
that for which I had to be grateful,
the self-pity became less and less.
Seventh step says,
we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings.
I've heard people say,
if you mention humility, you have none.
And these people say something like that
and I just wait when they say,
oh, I'm so grateful.
And I say, whoops, don't say that.
What do you mean?
I said, a while ago you said,
if you mention humility, you have none.
You cannot isolate one thing and say,
if you mention it, you don't have it.
But all these other things, you can.
Because to me, humility is honesty.
I don't know about you,
but if I'm honest and I have nothing to hide from you,
you see, where it really counts,
it's already all known.
And that's what God is understanding.
I don't deserve to be here tonight.
I don't deserve to have been extended
an invitation to come.
I don't deserve to have clothes and food,
money in my pocket,
acceptance and love,
unearned and undeserved.
I don't earn it. I don't deserve it.
I don't have a right.
And this humbles me.
And to me, humility is honesty.
I take your inventory.
I say, why'd you do that?
Or she shouldn't have done that.
And what I'm criticizing is the me in you
that I see.
The Eight Steps says,
when they list a person's great harm,
became willing to make amends to them all.
My husband was on it.
My children.
Friends.
People whose names I don't even know,
but I remember incidents.
And those I do not know how to get in touch with.
I ask God to relieve them of any memory of me
that will give them pain.
I ask God to stand between them
and the pain I inflicted.
The Ninth Step says,
made direct amends to such people whenever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
To me, it's very simple.
I cannot,
if I'm honest about this program,
and I'm sincere,
ease my guilty conscience at someone else's expense.
Step Ten says,
continue to take personal inventory,
and when we're wrong, promptly admit it.
My Fourth Step is a written inventory,
and it goes back to my earliest recollections.
My Tenth Step is a daily one.
It took me a long time to find out
I didn't have to wait until the end of the day to take it.
But if my day was going crazy,
what was going on?
And most of the time,
I find out that I jumped out of bed
to answer the telephone,
and I didn't make contact with God.
I'm not a morning person,
but I do try in my first thoughts
to say this is the day the Lord has made me
rejoice and be exceedingly glad.
But if I don't even do that much,
my day's going to be screwballed
before ten o'clock if I'm up.
You know.
And I can stop and start a new day.
Somebody says,
I thought you were going to admit it
at the end of the day,
because it says you promptly admit it,
and the people you've harmed aren't going to be there.
You can't admit to them.
I said, wait a minute,
I thought the one you promptly admitted to was yourself.
That's where you've got to face it first, isn't it?
The Eleventh Step says we
sought through prayer and meditation
to improve our conscious contact with God
as we understand Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry it out.
What if they'd written that
but the steps were written in retrospect,
in the past tense?
What's the present tense?
Because that's where I want it.
I'm not looking back.
Today I want to use it.
Then it's seek, how, through prayer and meditation, what?
Knowledge of God's will for you
and the power to carry it out.
It's the open prayer.
People say you don't pray for anything.
No.
But if I'm thinking about buying a car,
I sure say, God, I'm thinking about buying a car.
Do you think I should?
Just as He's interested in everything in you.
The Twelfth Step,
having had a spiritual awakening
as the result of these steps,
we try to carry this message to others
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I have had a spiritual awakening
as the result of these steps.
If my obituary had been written 17 years ago,
you could use it today
because nothing has changed
except on the inside.
And I do try to carry this message
and sometimes the message is what not to be
because sometimes in my humanness
I don't have a mess.
I have a message, I have a mess
because I can be vain or insecure
or frightened or overwhelmed
or pressured
or just plain flaky.
And I don't have a message.
But when somebody up here stands up like this
and shares, you think,
my God, why did they ask her?
It's a message what not to be like.
You shouldn't elevate people to get asked
to get up places like this.
Look down at thy feet, they are clay
and so are mine.
But the last shall come first,
it's written, and the last says
practice these principles in all your affairs.
The definition of the word practice
is to teach yourself through repetition
by doing repeatedly.
To me that's built in forgiveness
from my higher power
because you ain't going to do it right all the time.
You're going to fall flat on your face.
Get up and keep practicing.
Keep trying.
And if you are bored with the steps
and you're bored with meetings
and you're bored with hearing stories
and you're bored with the whole ball game in here,
you're not just bored with this,
you're bored with life
because indeed isn't that what life is,
one day, one after another?
And aren't we at the business of practicing living?
We have a good relationship,
my three daughters and I,
we pick at one another,
but neither one of us are in this marriage
because we have to be.
I love him.
I've done terrible things to him.
I've fought terrible things of him.
I've put terrible responsibility on him.
But I know today
that we just contributed
to one another's dilemma.
I'm talking over.
Let me close with a few lines
that someone else wrote
that really tell you
how I feel about you.
How I feel about this whole deal.
I know not what the future holds
of marvel or surprise.
I'm assured alone that life and death
God's mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
to bear an untried pain,
the bruised reed he will not break
but strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
nor works my faith to prove.
I can but give the gift he gave
and plead his love for love.
I know not where God's islands
lift their fronded palms in air.
I only know I cannot drift
beyond his love and care.
And if my faith is vain
and my hopes betrayed,
pray for me that I may find
a surer, safer way.
But I can assure you
I've never found a surer, safer way.
And I pray, O Lord,
who knows thy creatures as they be,
forgive me if too close
I lean my human heart to thee.
Thank you for allowing me to share.