Restoration on a Higher Power’s Timeline — Sarah I.

And our main speaker tonight is Sarah from the Big Blue Book of Philadelphia. Hi everyone, I'm Sarah. I'm an alcoholic. first of all i i just i just want to thank all of you for being here tonight and for every single person who was involved in flying me across the country and getting me here and uh i really really want to thanks mariah uh for such a beautiful open to this meeting for expressing a gratitude that i have for alcoholics anonymous so eloquently and so beautifully and so heartfelt Like, this is why I come here, right? This is what I want to hear, that message of hope. You know, because I come into these places for so many years and I don't have any hope, and then I hear a message like this. And she talked about so many things that I experienced coming in and out of these rooms, that shame I came in here covered with over and over andover again. That shame that separated me from you, that kept me looking around the rooms at happy joints and free people and despising every single one of you because you were the recipient of promises that I would never receive. That's what I convinced myself of. I sit in meetings while you talk about knowing a new freedom and a new happiness and not regretting the past and wish to shut the door on it and that's never going to happen for me because of the vile things I did to my children, to my family, to every single person that I love. And that's how I show up here to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I want nothing of what you have to offer. I certainly don't want my solution to be spiritual in nature. It has to come in a tangible form that I can see and feel and touch like a man or maybe somebody, you know. And believe me, I tried. It doesn't work. I just don't want the solution to be spiritual in nature, I don't want it to be God. I don' t want that, because my God didn't work for me. The conception I walk in here with never worked for me because I had a conception that I come in here with that was transactional in nature. It was a conception that I picked up as a child and I'm not blaming anybody around me, it's just what I heard and coming in here I've come to find out that my perception is sometimes skewed but what I hear about this God is that if I'm good, God will reward me and if I're bad, God's going to punish me and the problem is I'm convinced from the time I'm a small child that there's something deeply wrong with me. I do not fit in your spaces, meaning the earth. Like I go to school, I don't fit. I'm at home, I Don't Fit. At church, I Do Not Fit. My skin doesn't fit, everything hurts, everything's painful, everything's uncomfortable, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self pity and I haven't picked up one drink yet. I just want you to love me. I want you for who I am but if you saw who I was deep within me, you would reject me. You would hate me as much as I'd hate me. And then I found alcohol. Then I picked up that drink and experienced the effect produced by alcohol for the first time in my entire life. My skin fit. I didn't care what you thought of me. I was at peace with everything. My first spiritual experience. I experienced God in that moment or so, I thought. See, I've been seeking God my whole life. I just didn't know God, right? I've always been seeking love and connection and I couldn't find it until I found alcohol. And when I picked up that drink and experienced that effect produce, all of a sudden I make a decision I don't realize I'm making and that's to turn my will and my life over to the care of alcohol for the next 20 plus years. Right? I surrender to alcohol in that moment. I give anything to this drink because nothing in my life had ever made me okay and alcohol did. It worked for me until it didn't. And you know, it is a progressive illness. I don't know what I don t know coming in here and in the very beginning, I can control and enjoy it when I want to and I can stop and moderate if I have to. But what separates me from normal people, like I don�t know anything about what it means to be a moderate drinker or a hard drinker, or a real alcoholic. And I might have skipped over that moderate part and progressed, you know, gone right to hard because our book is clear in how it defines, you now, the different classes of alcoholics. A moderate drinkers they say can stop a little trouble if they need to. Well, that's not me. Because the first time I ever needed to stop or moderate was at the age of 19 when I got pregnant. And this is what makes me different from normal people. When my sister's pregnant, she's doing all that motherly stuff like picking out baby names and decorating nurseries and doing all dat fun stuff. And I am crawling out of my skin and counting every day like I'm in a prison cell. Can't wait to get this kid out of me so I can breathe. That's all I want. I want that ease and comfort. I want that effect to produce. And the problem is, over any period of time, I'm getting worse and I have no idea this is happening. So by the time I have moved down the line seven years later and I'm on to my second marriage and my second pregnancy, I can't stop. And if I'm being honest, I don't want to. I don' t want to and I can't connect with the baby I'm carrying. I don't feel the love that I'm supposed to feel and the shame that I am covered with over that single fact is so overwhelming because I know there's something deeply wrong with me. What kind of woman can't love her baby? What kind OF woman does the things that I'M doing and drinks her entire pregnancy? And as a result of all of that, I give birth to a baby who's three months premature and he's two pounds. and you know he's healthy today and Mariah said this so beautifully the fact that he's alive and healthy today I felt that same shame like I didn't deserve this, I almost killed him I remember seeing him in the NICU on life support and looking at him and all that love that I couldn't feel when I was carrying him, I felt it poured over me in that moment and I love my son as much as I'm capable of loving anyone at that point in my life but what comes with that love is that overwhelming sense of guilt and shame, knowing this is all my fault. I did this to him. I did it to him." See one thing I was wrong about for so many years as I always thought that alcoholism was a disease of morality or lack thereof. And our book is pretty clear. It says it in multiple different places. We could wish to be moral, wish to philosophically comforted, we could will these things with all our might I don't have that power and I know some things today like I know I'm not a sociopath although if you would ask any of my families and friends for a solid two decades they would have argued that fact but I know this and the reason I know this is because the amount of shame and disgust I felt for the person I became was overwhelming right and that's you know that's not sociopathy like I I felt that. I so desperately wanted to be the good daughter, the good sister, the good wife, the Good Mother. I didn't have that power. See, the kind of mother I turned into is the kind who nods out and drops her kid on the floor or leaves their kid in a hot car in the middle of the inner city to just hop out and grab a drink. And I got arrested with my eight-month-old baby in the car. My husband at the time had to drive to the police station and pick up our child, and I got bailed out the next day. And when I got home, I walk into the living room and he has everything packed. He's going to leave me and he's going to take our child. And at this point I've already lost so much. See, I've already lost custody of my first daughter and I've also already lost that marriage and a string of relationships in between. And I'm faced with losing the only family I have left, the only security I have left, and losing yet another child. And I panicked. I'm absolutely terrified. it. And they do that thing that we do, which is beg and plead and promise. And I mean them. I mean every single promise I'm making in that moment. I'll do anything you tell me to do. Please don't leave me. Do not take another baby from me. Please don't do this to me. I meet it up until he says one thing to me, I'll stay on one condition. you go to treatment today you get sober today and in that moment I remember it as clear as day I looked at that man and I looked at my little boy and like deep down I knew what was going to happen I knew they were going to leave and I still said no because this is what my alcoholism told me, like you know what fix it tomorrow, do something about it tomorrow you can win him back, you'll work this out but right now need a drink. Like in that moment, I needed that alcohol more than I needed the roof over my head, my husband, my child, more than I need oxygen. I need alcohol. And I drank and they left and they never came back. The amount of shame that I'm covered with after that is, there aren't even words for it. I want to die and I'm too much of a coward to kill myself so I just try to drink myself to death. And I suffer for years under this false idea, this belief that I chose this. That's what makes me scum. That' s what makes garbage. That is the reason I can't receive the gifts you received and it wasn't until many, many years later when a woman in Alcoholics Anonymous opened up that book with me, the beautiful blue book we have right here and showed me what it says and there is a solution that for reasons yet obscure most alcoholics have lost the power of choice when it comes to a drink. And in that moment, when I see this in black and white and I compare it to my direct experience, I know something that I have never known before, that I am not scum, that I are not garbage, I am beyond forgiveness and redemption and saving, that I'm an alcoholic and alcohol has that much power over me. That I am human aid and that I need a power bigger than alcohol. that's what I know and I can't even stand here tonight and tell you that losing custody of both my kids was enough to bring me in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous because it was not and I would love to also tell you that the 11 felonies that I racked up during my drinking career was enough to get me here but it certainly was not ending up on life support losing every job every relationship every home that I ever had everything that ever mattered to me my dignity my self-respect losing all of that that is not enough to get me in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and here's a really important fact if you haven't experienced any of that it doesn't mean you're not an alcoholic in fact none of that makes me an alcoholic that's just what happened right what makes me an alcoholic as I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol when I start drinking I can't stop but more importantly when I'm stopped I can see these thoughts. I have a mind that will always bring me back to a drink regardless of the consequences. And the reason I believe that for me is that the chasm and the distance between me, you, and God is so great and so painful and so uncomfortable that if I don't find something to fill that with, I'm going to need a drink. That's how I feel. And The Only Reason I Talk about those consequences is to illustrate just how powerful alcohol became, that there was no threat. There was no consequence, that THERE WAS NO HUMAN POWER great enough to separate me from alcohol. You could tell me you were going to lock me up. I'm like, all right, well catch me when you can. I walked around with like warrants out on me for years and I didn't care. Or if he told me, you know, you were gonna take my kids away from me. Frankly, I reached a point where I just didn't want that responsibility and I went on with that selfish narrative in my head, well they're just better off without me. And if you told me I was going to die, I'd be like, can we hurry that part up? Because frankly, I don't want to do this anymore. And I come in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous for so many years and you welcome me and you tell me to keep coming back and you love me when I'm unlovable and you tolerate me when i'm completely intolerable and you honor these beautiful traditions. And the one that I love the most is that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. In fact, an honest desire, it says. And I come in and I don't even have that for so many years. I don' t have an honest desire to stop drinking because why would I? It's the only thing that ever worked for me. What I did have was an honest desired for consequences to stop happening because I didn't want to experience them anymore. But I didn' t know there was another solution and I was rejecting the solution that you were offering me. and then something happened on may 2nd of 2012 and it wasn't something i was seeking or expecting in fact it was crazy because it was the shortest run of my entire life and at the end of every other run i've had like you know my back's against the wall and i've lost everything and i'm like i'm a really low bottom drunk and i'm not saying this to brag that's just my story and this was just not that low of a bottom externally i had a car i had her roof over my head. I had like some money in my pocket. I had the boyfriend that I picked up in the recovery house who was an aspiring rap artist, right? Like that was working out so great for me, but by aspiring rap artist he rapped on corners and jail cells. No, but seriously like the outside just really wasn't that bad, but inside I was dying. And I remember getting in my car and driving to go get a drink in the middle of the night and for the first time in my entire life, I am overcome with this overwhelming desire to turn my car around and just go home because I don't want to do this anymore. I don' t want to lie to my family anymore. I don''t want to live like this anymore I can''t take it. No matter how powerful that desire was, my steering wheel would not turn. I couldn''t turn it around. I'm drinking against my will. My car is just driving it like it's on autopilot. I can't stop myself. So all the years I come in the room and you tell me about powerlessness, I don't really know what that means until I experience it, until I am drinking against my whim. And in that moment, I knew powerlessness like I had never known before. And I did something that I had ever really done before. I'm not saying I haven't prayed. I have prayed my whole life. Having this transactional God was sort of like, hey Sky Daddy, here's my wish list. Would you perform it for me? And when God doesn't do what I want God to do, I assume God does not exist and God does not care or God doesn't care about me because I'm scum, because I am garbage. But in that moment, in that absolute gift of desperation, I cried out to that power that I didn't believe in and I didn' t think cared about me and my prayer was, dear God, please effing kill me or stop me. Pounding on the steering wheel, begging whatever was out there to kill me or stuff. Twelve hours later I had handcuffs on. Now I really don't know how God shows up in your life. God has no problem showing up in mine is law enforcement it is uh it's definitely a power greater than myself right i can't it's hard getting out of those handcuffs um but and truth be told like that's not even really my conception today i'm not i don't think there's like some puppeteer moving people around but i do know this i know what the big book of alcoholics anonymous says that god does not make too hard terms for those who seek him and when i sought god in that beautiful moment of desperation and that place of brokenness, doors and avenues opened up to provide me with the help that I so desperately needed, but it wasn't the way I wanted. Right? I experienced that gift of desperation. It would be so cool to tell you that I had that psychic change and everything got better. That is not what happened. Because with like 48 hours later, I experienced the remarkable recuperative power of the alcoholic ego. And I don't know if you've ever experienced that, but it is something. You can almost watch it in real time. You're like, oh, wait, this isn't the deal. I wanted. I wanted a nice, cushy rehab. I didn't want a prison cell and some consequences. And all I have for the first 18 months of my sobriety that I was incarcerated in state prison is... And I only have this in hindsight, by the way. It's empirical evidence that what I suffer from does not come in a bottle. In fact, for me, the problem got bigger when you took the bottle away. And I'm not saying alcohol's not a problem, I would never do that, right? The second alcohol crosses my lips, it's an absolute problem. But for me, the problem got bigger when you removed it from me. Then I'm driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self pity. From inside the walls of a prison cell, I'm stepping on the toes of my fellows, right, I call home on a phone account my mommy and daddy paid for, telling them what they need to do for me. Like, go pick up my stuff here. they're like hanging up on me because it's insane or I write really long amends I thought they were amends letters by the way because like I've read the steps on the wall and I was pretty sure I had done them but um there's like four or five page long letters about how sorry I am but if you were better parents or siblings I wouldn't be in this position and p.s can you send me some money and I'm like my sister handed them back to me at five years sober and I got to read them And they're horrifying. And I'm surprised anybody in my family still talks to me. But, you know, that's the insanity. That's what I suffer from, right? When you take it away from me. And after 18 months of this, I get let out and, you know, I'm broken, sober. I don't have a solution. Crawled up in a ball in a fetal position on a bathroom floor, crying out again to a power I don'T believe in and I DON'T think cares about me, begging this power to show me what do i do now held me because if this is sober i don't want any part of this it hurts too much and i'm directed by loving people up the steps that my old home group the greater northeast group of alcoholics anonymous where i got sober and i walked in their room and something was different that brokenness in me opened my eyes and ears in a way that i saw everything in a different light like the people that as happy joey's and free people Like, they weren't strangers anymore. They weren't cult members anymore. They were my people. They were the people I drank with, the people who had been living on the streets of Philadelphia broken. And they were lit up and put back together, made whole. And I knew they didn't have the power to do that. And here's the thing. My ego loves to separate me from you. It does it before I even get up to speak. You're in a sock, everything's horrible, and I come into AA and it tells me I'm worse than you I'm greater than you it always tells me something and I still coming in don't think that this will work for me but I don't have anything left nothing left but to pick up the spiritual kit of tools that you have laid at my feet countless times I got nothing left and I gave it a shot and let me tell you none of it was fun like I did not have like this Bill W like heaven's opening up experience it was all awkward all painful all uncomfortable My first third-step experience, because I've been through the steps more than once, I remember I'm making the most important decision I've ever made in my life up until that point, and I miss the moment because I'm too busy thinking about myself. Because I'm worried you're going to look at me and laugh at me because I'M kneeling on the floor praying in public. This is weird. And I don't even know the words I'm saying, but I do know that the action that I followed that up with in the form of writing inventory was a game changer. Mariah talked about it. because it says although this decision is a vital and crucial step it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of what was blocking me from the fundamental idea of God, that power that is deep down within every man woman and child that I have obscured with calamity and worship of other things and resentment and fear, all this stuff that I put in front of a power that was already there And again, I have this experience in my inventory and I don't walk away like looking the world in the eye and feeling the nearness of my creator. I don�t know about you, I felt worse when I first saw that in black and white because I had never seen the truth about myself. I come in and it's all you. I so desperately wanted it to be you. My sponsor tells me, �You get to write a list of everybody you're angry at.� Well, I have a story I want to tell you and it�s a good one about how much of a victim I am And as I sit there for hours upon hours, and I get to look at this from that new angle, a different angle, and resolutely look for my mistakes, something starts to shift within me. And I get the truth for the first time, and it's not pretty. For instance, my mom got a page to herself. I was pretty convinced she's the reason I'm an alcoholic coming in here. Turns out I'm wrong. No, but long story short, these three men did something horrible to me when I was younger. and my mom's response to it was, why'd you put yourself in that position? Why were you so stupid? That's what happened. From that moment on, it was my goal in life to punish her for that moment and I did a good job. I did really good job and that fourth column revealed that. I made her suffer and not only do I see that when I get to that fourth volume, the pain and suffering that I've caused her, I see the absolute truth that my resentment blinded me from that one moment in history from my teenage years blinded me to the truth of her unconditional love. And that's what I walk away from in that inventory process, and it's ugly, and I don't want to feel this way, so you hand me six and seven. By the way, I could never have been more wrong about this one, but I thought those were the easy steps. Anyone think that? Because they're only like two paragraphs long. I'm like, oh, this is a breeze. I've got these two, and I've really never been more wrong about anything else in AA because this is, like, a lifelong thing. But coming in and, like... These... You know, my grosser handicaps are just disgusting, right? The bar is so low. I'm a liar, cheat, thief, like everything. And every single one of those things are causing me consequences. So when I'm asked this question in Step 6, is there anything I'm clinging to? I'm like, absolutely not. Take it, take it, took it. I'm on my knees in Step 7. Like, you go ahead and take all this stuff. That is not true at 13 Years Sober. Ask my sponsor, she gets to hear all about the stuff I still cling to that I think is going to keep me safe and sometimes I cling to it until I'm suffering from that self-imposed crisis that I can no longer postpone or evade, that happens. That's the truth. But coming in, I am broken and God, you can have all of it and then I go out into the world attempting to sweep away that debris that had accumulated out of my effort to live on self-will and run the show myself. And I absolutely love that our book does not mention alcohol because I do not need alcohol to hurt people. All I need is a lot of fear and self driving me, stepping on your toes. But as I walk away from each one of these events, right? And I go out to these people that I've harmed and I don't say I'm sorry because there is not a single person left at this point in my life who wants to hear the words I'm Sorry from me. and I admit my wrongs and I hear how I've hurt these people and I follow that up with the actions that they've asked me to take and the changed behavior something starts to happen within me and Alice and I were talking about this earlier today, I start to experience God the God I thought I could intellectually seek, right? I had to abandon all of that and throw that out and once I threw all that to the side and I just picked up that spiritual kit of tools and I started doing this work, I started to feel the power of a loving creator working in my life. And I couldn't deny it. And by the time I got to step 12 I realized what these 12 steps and what this power has done with my life because all those things I come in here with, those things that I want to take to my grave, those vile disgusting secrets all of those things are transformed and made my greatest gifts because when women come to me and they say they drank during my pregnancy or they drank during their pregnancy or abandoned their children or cheated on their husbands like I never look at them in judgment I can look at them in absolute love and understanding and speak that beautiful language of the heart that we are given here and I can see me too I understand when I'm sitting with these women I start to experience that gift that power that love that connection, that thing that I had been seeking my entire life. All those other places I saw God, I found here in Alcoholics Anonymous through you. And then I start going out to this world and living this life beyond my wildest dreams. Anybody think some of the lines in the big book sound like really flashy, almost like a game show, like you're promised all these prizes rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence, right? They make it sound so wild, and I get these ideas of what the hell that's supposed to mean. I'm like, oh, yes, I'm supposed to make a lot of money, and I'm opposed to get a boyfriend with a six-pack and all this great stuff. I have none of that stuff, right? But here is the truth. When I stopped embezzling from my employers and nodding out at my desk, I became employable. And I started walking through a lot if fear that I had, which is like going back to school. I came in a 10th grade dropout, and, you know, I was terrified. I'm like, I'm stupid, I can't do this. And I started getting degrees and going back to school and so my career started to advance and that stuff started happening and that fun thing where you taught me to make financial amends and actually pay my creditors when the bills came instead of avoiding the calls and not opening the mail. I got good credit, could get a mortgage on the house and do that stuff but none of that was the life beyond my wildest dreams and none of it had to do with being rocketed into this fourth dimension of existence. right? The words sounded so flashing that I got confused by that. And a lot of the gifts that I've received in Alcoholics Anonymous, if you were an outside observer, you wouldn't look at them as gifts, but they're the things that I hold most dear to my heart. They are my most precious gifts and my sobriety. When I got a phone call from my mom coming up on four years sober that my oldest sister Amy was dead, I intuitively knew how to handle a situation that not only would have baffled me, that would have absolutely crippled me. Like I wouldn't have been able to move. But instead of being frozen in that fear and in that self, I am guided by a loving creator. And I intuitively know that I have to show up and help my parents, that I get to showup and help my parents bury their firstborn child. And then I get the help her beautiful children bury their mother. And I remember, like, I'm given this amazing gift of being able to be in the room with my parents when they see their child in the casket for the first time. And I get to run on my mother's side. The woman who, by the way, was my number one resentment. I get hold her and comfort her as she's doubled over in pain in the worst moment of her life up until that point. You know, that's a gift. I didn't run. I didn' t hide. I didn'' t experience fear in that moment. I knew exactly what to do. I was guided by love. And not only that, the relationship with my sister had been made completely whole for the last year and a half of her life as a direct result of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the immense process. I got to have the relationship that I always wanted after her because of A. Yang. You know, if I lived to be 300 years old, I could never repay the debt I owe to Alcoholics Anonymous for that one gift alone. And through all of this, like I'm in more pain than I had ever known sober, I'm experiencing this overwhelming grief, but deep underneath that grief was this complete and utter sense being okay like I knew I was okay and I was surrounded by a piece that passes all understanding I knew God existed I knew that but even having had this experience this is the insanity of alcoholism I walk away from this and I start forgetting I start forgetting they start getting complacent I start doing this thing called two-stepping I don't know if anybody's ever done that uh here's how I'll describe it how it worked for me is I admitted on powerless over alcohol and I came to thank you I came to AA to life coach everything I wasn't sponsoring it wasn't sponsored I used to say I was sponsoring a bunch of women but that wasn't even what I was doing because I had no experience to transmit and I'd gotten so far away from this work you know I talk about this a lot like I I was causing so much harm, Stone Cold Sober, and I had no idea. I only learned the tradition so I could argue more effectively in my hunger meetings. Like this is the kind of energy I was bringing to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm getting further and further and farther away from the power. And it's just turning into this just like ego show. And then all of a sudden the pandemic hits. And I am forced to face the truth. that I have once again obscured this power with calamity, with worship of other things, my reputation in alcohol, whatever the hell that means. My reputation in alcoholic homes. That's insane, by the way. And I'm clawing my way to the top of an upside-down triangle. Chasing an insane relationship with a man who can't stay sober. And I am like, I am going to fix him this time. And this is what I'm doing. But when the pandemic heads, all of these human powers that I've made my highest power, they're stripped away from me. I can't leave my house. I can'T go to a meeting that would show off to all of you amazing people. And my relationship's tanking and all. I'm suffering. And I'm in pain. And I experience this beautiful moment of grace. Grace, fear, desperation, a lot of things. And I just know that if I don't take some action, I'm going to walk out that door and I may never come back. And I pick up the phone and I called another woman in Alcoholics Anonymous and that woman lovingly, without judgment, without a shred of judgment, because I'll tell you, I had seven years sober at the time and the last thing I wanted to do was pick up that phone and admit I was screwed. But that woman took me through the 12 steps as they're outlined in the big book from the very beginning like I was a newcomer, like I knew absolutely nothing and I set all that pride, all that ego aside and had a new experience and when I tell you I really don't even have adequate words to describe what happened to me I will tell you it was painful it was humbling and I'm going to say it was humiliating too because it was there's one thing coming in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous with a list of my gross or handicaps from all the stuff I did drunk this was sober and 90% of my 8 step list was all you It was all you. But when I say it was the most freeing and the most powerful and beautiful thing that I have ever experienced, those words just do not do it justice because after every single amend I walk away from, I feel closer to God and closer to you than I have never felt in my entire life. And from that moment on, there was a light that was lit underneath me for this program that has not gone out since. it just hasn't some days are better than others but that passion and that love i have for this fellowship has has just grown and grown and grow and now you know i'm so grateful no matter how painful or uncomfortable that experience was i'm still grateful i had that experience because it taught me some very important things number one i want to be this forever student of alcoholics anonymous if i've ever gotten to this place where i'm just like yeah sure i know what i'm doing I know I'm probably screwed again. But more importantly, it taught me that steps 10 and 11 have to be a living, breathing, working part of my program one day at a time for the rest of my life. If I not only want to be sober, but if I actually want to do something. If I want to feel happy, joyous, and free. And if I want something to transmit to the next person. and you'll notice when I kind of breeze through like my rundown on the steps 10 and 11 were noticeably absent because they were noticeably absent from my program for many many years it's not that I wasn't sponsored correctly I knew where the information was in the book I was taught early on to get a 10 step buddy and I'll tell you what that looked like that was like let me call her to complain about him I was really quick to spot resentment and I vented about it. I vanted, like I was in a therapy session. There was no God, there was no other power brought into it and then I just moved on with my life. So after I have this experience, I do two things. I lean more heavily into that 11th step where I need to go further when it comes to seeking a relationship with God and whatever that looks like for you, I encourage you to run with it and I won't get into that because everybody has a different journey when it come to the 11th steps But for me, it was vital that I go a little further than just reading a couple prayers in the morning and a couple when I go to bed and maybe shooting up a prayer here and there. I had to really seek this relationship. But even more importantly for me was that step 10. That was a game changer for me where I went back and started to do what it actually said to do, continue to watch for selfishness, resentment, dishonesty, fear. my ego, my mind as it comes in and it tells me say this, do this, run from this, hide from this. All that stuff, that chaos that's going on and when these things crop up another false belief I ran into is like if I'm angry I'm not spiritually fit. You know? No. I'm no spiritually fit if I don't do anything about it and as I watch and I bring power into it my responses and reactions to life start to change. I become a better friend, employee, sister, mother, sponsor. I'm not reacting the same way to life. And I'm so incredibly grateful I had this experience because a couple years ago I'm on the phone with my little brother who's one of us and the conversation wasn't going well. To be honest, we were gossiping about my youngest brother's marriage and we had both decided we knew how he should resolve his marital issues which is insane by the way since neither one of us have ever had a successful relationship and I'm going to be very clear these are perfect principles that I practice absolutely imperfectly so when I'm talking about gossiping yes I was at some point in this conversation he says something to the effect of well why don't you tell me what you really think of me and in that moment I reacted in a way that I had not reacted for the last decade in a ways that you had taught me I behaved in a way that you had taught me never to behave it, right? I talked down to my little brother from a moral and spiritual hilltop. And I said something to the effect of, well, I think it's time for you to start taking accountability for your problems and stop blaming mom and dad. And I was so kind and I was condescending, but I was honest, right, he asked for this. and he is less than pleased and he curses me out and calls me every name in the book and says he'll never ever speak to me again and he hangs up the phone and he blocks my number immediately. I know this because I, of course, immediately try to call back and continue this conversation and the reason I bring up that 10th step is this, is if I had not been practicing that 10 step the way it is actually laid out in the books I would have missed something so important because my first thought after that call and I was, I'm right and he's wrong. The number one thing that will separate me from you is that I'm white and you are wrong because I can't see you. But when I'm practicing this, like there's an undercurrent here, there's something disturbing me and I don't like it so I know I need to do something about it. I pray, I call my sponsor, I'm on the phone with her for an hour because my ego is stubborn but we get to that truth, that fourth column truth that I'm just absolutely terrified my baby brother is going to die. And I'll say or do anything to keep him here with me, no matter how selfish, no matter however manipulative. I'll do anything to keep them here. And so my sponsor says, you know, you need to make an amends. And it says it right there in the 10-step. When we were wrong, we promptly admit it. Not eventually, not when we feel like it. And I still tried to get out of it because he had my number blocked, which he told me if he doesn't unblock you in three days, you write a letter, you put a stamp on it. So after three days I couldn't write a lettre because I knew if I gave myself that full sheet of paper what was going to happen. Well, I'm sorry, bud, I're sorry, but... So instead I gave my son a little note and I gave him myself a tiny little note and I wrote three sentences. Dear Benjamin, I was wrong to speak to you that way. You didn't deserve it. I love you very much. and two months later my brother died as a direct result of this disease and on the morning of his death I was on the phone with his girlfriend for two hours because this is another gift we get here in Alcoholics Anonymous see we get to be of maximum service to God and the people around us in the depths of our grief and despair and in that conversation she shared with me that he got that no and his reaction to the no which was simply I'm gonna make her sweat it out see but without you I wouldn't have this beautiful gift of knowing that up until he took his last breath that he knew that I loved him right without you I wouldnít have been able to walk in that funeral and get stand up and give a eulogy and carry his ashes in there and comfort my parents and they're never ending grief. Without Alcoholics Anonymous, without this fellowship, I wouldn't have any of that. So all this stuff, this life beyond my wildest dreams, this being rocketed into the fourth dimension does not look the way I ever thought it was going to look because this is it. This presence, this being able to live this life on life's terms and not run from it and not hide from it see everything that I've experienced is something we're all going to experience the big book actually promises us that certain trials and low spots we're always going to lose loved ones we're also going to have experience betrayal, loss of pain all of it it's just part of life you come in and people are like life shows up life's been here the whole time. The 12 steps are like a design for living that allow us to show up for this thing called life and experience every single beautiful, painful moment of it. And there's so much beauty in my life today. Relationships that have been made completely whole through these 12 steps. I am finally the daughter that I always wanted to be. My mother literally calls me every day. Now, my brother's going through a nasty divorce. I'm finally getting my way in that last argument I had with my brother, right? I finally won that one, right, but it's this gift that I get to answer that phone and be present every single time the phone rings. I get to be that daughter. I getと be that sister, that friend. Iget to bethat sponsor, sitting with women watching their lives be transformed from the inside out, watching the eyes light up, watching women who were just like me, sitting in the back of the room with multiple years of sobriety, looking out the door, thinking the solution's back out there, and lovingly pulling them by the hand back in their rooms and opening up the book again, taking them right back to the beginning. Watching them light back up. I get to do that. I getto experience that. Iget to be a part of all of that.I get to be the mother I always wanted to be to a daughter who has every single right to hate me who is now my best friend. I know everything about her life. I wish I knew less. But I am the safest human being she knows because of you, because you taught me how to be a mother and not just the person I was who could only have babies before I came in here. She trusts me more than anyone, including her father, who raised her every single day. He was always there, and she trusts me most. Not because he's not the better parent. He was. He's a good man. He's great friend. We have the beautiful, messiest, blended family. I babysit he and his new wife's midlife crisis kid. We celebrate holidays together on this like never ending amends with that family, but it's such a gift. That's what Alcoholics Anonymous does. It makes things whole. It makes families whole. If it makes our spirit whole, this is the life beyond my wildest dreams that I get to experience. And even if things are not physically made whole for me, not everything will be perfect. Like I have a son now, it's been 19 years since I've seen him, 19 years. I used to stand up at podiums and say, I lost custody of my son when he was six years old. That's a lie. I abandoned my son. I'm here to tell the truth tonight. I abandon him. And prior to abandoning him, I caused suffering in his life and the lives of every single person around him. And I remember when I first came in, I wrote that letter asking to make this amends to his father and his stepmother. They said no, nobody responded, nothing. Followed up, no response, no respond. And I member at a couple years sober, I got angry. I became exactly what it talks about in the book with a farmer coming up out of the cellar, right? Everything's destroyed after the tornado. Yeah, it's fine, the wind stopped blowing. This is me. I've got, like, three years sober. I've destroyed everybody's lives. And I'm like, I don't see the problem. I'm sober. I'm sore. And I did this thing I used to do where I ran around AA and asked for a lot of suggestions, waiting to hear the one I liked the best so I could say AA told me to do it. And a lot people told me, like get a lawyer, do this. And you know? And this is how I know. This is how i know there's a God, right? That instead of doing what I want to do, I have this experience where, like, I had a thought that came to me. Like, maybe you don't get to do what you want to do anymore. And what I want to doing is, like listen, I know where my son lives. I send a card, money, letters all the time. And I send them with love and hope and no expectation. And I receive silence in return. What I want do is I want drive to his house and I want throw my arms around my boy. And I want tell him how much I love him and how sorry I am. And then I'm proud of him. but I don't get to do what I want to do today. I can't get free at the expense of one of God's kids, especially my own. So instead of doing what I wanna do, I did what the big book asks us to do, which is ask God for an intuitive thought or decision. I begged and I pleaded, God, show me something. I hadn't seen my son in 10 years. I didn't know what he looked like. Just show me some things. Show me something, God. And in a few years sober, you know this happened I typed his name into Instagram and here was my boy and in that moment I experienced this peace and love wash over me and a knowing within my soul that the restoration of this relationship will be on God's time and not on mine what I know today the deeper truth I know today is that that restoration may never look the way I want it to but I can still remain whole. That's the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous, that I came here tonight to try to burn the idea into the consciousness of every single person in this room that we get well regardless of anyone. All we have to do is trust God and clean house. Because when I'm well in here, I don't need the outside to fix me anymore and when I're well in there, I'm not when I am well in hear, I do not need alcohol to fix any more. We all can experience that gift as long as we work for it. I love you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.