Scars on My Heart from Motherhood That No Fifth Step Could Reach — Until Wednesday Night at Cowboy Church – Vannoy S.

About This Speaker Tape

Vannoy S. shares her remarkable Al-Anon journey, beginning with a childhood marked by poverty and invisibility in Lubbock County, Texas, where her family revolved around a brother who broke his neck. She describes growing up as a shadow in her own home — doing dishes, cooking suppers, and being told to feel grateful she could walk. Church people came to heal her brother but left only confusion about Higher Power, and her mother barely tolerated her presence.

She found her way into the honky-tonk world of West Texas, falling for a series of dangerous alcoholics. Her first was a professional gambler who threw money at her, got her pregnant, then abandoned her — and later killed a man with a shotgun in a jealous rage sparked by her attempt at revenge. Her second was a famous bull rider who beat her and pistol-whipped her. Through it all, she carried a deep, unnamed guilt and a conviction that if she could just find the right man, her life would be fixed.

In 1969, sitting in a green rocking chair with nothing left, she called Alcoholics Anonymous from the Yellow Pages and was directed to Al-Anon. The moment a man held a door open for her at the clubhouse — mistaking her for a lady, she thought — her world cracked open. Her sponsor Pat Claytor taught her everything: how to believe in Higher Power, how to act like a lady, how to live. She went to nursing school, became self-supporting, and slowly rebuilt her relationship with her parents through persistent ten-minute Sunday visits.

She tells of marrying Jim Shaw, losing him to cancer, discovering they had been embezzled, and rebuilding again with help from the Pacific Group and Clancy I. The emotional peak comes when she watches her son Duke — the boy she had treated horribly, who was kidnapped by his father, who fell into crack and darkness — preach at a cowboy church in Ponder, Texas. She makes amends to him at dinner, weeping, and he kisses her hand and says he forgives her. She closes with Bob White's teaching that the Lord's Prayer makes us royalty, declaring herself Princess Vannoy, a child of the king.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — 43 years in Al-Anon since February 1969 in Lubbock, Texas; mentions sponsor Pat Claytor
• 3:00 Airplane incident — screams at a woman blocking the aisle, considers and rejects doing a tenth step
• 8:00 Starting Back to the Basics group in Ponder, Texas; story of a sober woman rescuing a suicidal homeless woman
• 14:00 Growing up invisible in Lubbock County — brother's broken neck, church people's failed healing, poverty
• 20:00 West Texas honky-tonks and the bloody bucket — meeting the gambler, getting pregnant, the murder
• 28:00 The bull-riding cowboy — marriage, violence, the list of Al-Anon isms (control, drama, caretaking, fear)
• 36:00 Calling Al-Anon from the Yellow Pages — the man holding the door, crystal-clear laughter at the clubhouse
• 42:00 Clancy I. in Dallas — 'I thought my life had ended standing here'; parallels to her own worst-day-turned-best-day
• 50:00 Son Duke's journey — kidnapped by his father, crack addiction, following lights to a cowboy church in Ponder
• 56:00 Making amends to Duke at dinner — weeping, forgiveness, Bob White's teaching on royalty and the Lord's Prayer