She Learned to Listen When She Came to AA as a Newcomer – Sharon C.

uh thank you denise my name is sharon i'm an alcoholic and thank you john and the community and uh just having having this for us to be together today um thank you heather for your talk i love you i've watched you grow and change and um just become who you are today which is a you know we become citizens we become cities in the world and who would have known it i just i picked up i always like to read something right before and i picked this up from as bill sees it and it's just you know it's it's from the word is in the big book but it's also a letter that bill wrote part of the letter was um is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word that's for sure it is a story of suffering chant transmuted transmuted i like that word under grace into spiritual progress i looked up the word transmuted and it means to change from one form to the other. So we are pretty much changed people when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous and we get changed by doing the work and beginning to have some sort of a faith and a power and the love and the we, first word and the first step, we. I can't do anything alone. I definitely know that but um i've uh i've had quite a day um just with uh you know just dealing with sadness with people who lady lost her son at 28 it's his 29th birthday today he took his life two weeks ago so we had a beautiful zoom and it was a lot of people from all walks of his life and uh you know he was quite talented snowboarder and it just you know it's uh i don't know it just felt beautiful but you know you just wish that you could have been there somehow to change it and and another woman uh lost her son 40 a couple months ago and they had a tree planting ceremony this this week and these are mothers in alcoholics anonymous staying sober walking through it um um and then I just heard from somebody else just in this little break time that her son 16 had taken a bunch of pills but he woke her up and so he's got a chance they got him to the hospital and he's Got a Chance and I think uh maybe one of them drank I don't think you know the 16 year old's not drinking and I don'T think the 40 year old was drinking he had a big career uh the one in between was just too sensitive for the world and didn't find a solution but the thing that we have in common is that they were all seekers too. And I think that we come to Alcoholics Anonymous by the grace of God, and I find out that I'm a seeker. I've always been a seeker, and that's why alcohol allowed me to sit in my skin and not jump off a bridge. I remember as a little girl, Heather was talking about her head. We went to Colorado once, and we're at this precipice. And you know, back then they let you get pretty close. Now I think they keep you further back. But you know there's four of us, four kids and everybody else seemed to be having a good time but I'm like trying to not jump even though my life is good. I have hope in my life but my head is telling me to jump. It's like so I'm backing into my mother and I'm just kind of like why is it saying i'm supposed to jump so that's just the you know the mind that took over in my life uh from a little girl and when i discovered alcohol at 12 it was like oh my god why go follow gandhi he's been assassinated anyway you know why go to india why you know i try to you know take a pledge why don't you just drink some of this whiskey and you found nirvana it It was like, it was that powerful for me. It allowed me to just shut the head down. I actually, all the voices up there just got drunk and they said, let's party. And we did, we partied. So I loved what alcohol did for me from the first moment I had, I mean, I sipped it here, sipped at there growing up, but there's no alcoholics in my family. I'm a bit different. I'm the one that they had to keep busy. so i was in i played all the musical instruments they could get me into i did all the dance things i could do i took art lessons it was they kept me busy my mother said to my sister why is sharon doing all this because we have to keep her busy she knew that she just knew that and you know i have a lovely family traditions history grandma grandpas all of that community i grew up in a small town in iowa it had community it had uh support and had a lot of really good things and i don't remember um i don t remember hearing that somebody was smacking somebody around or i don' t remember uh hearing that something was happening in their home i mean they're probably people didn't talk about that stuff back then i'm sure but i didn't see it and there was a lot of love and that's how i grew up but there was a there was wildness in me there was intensity in me, there was restlessness in me that when I drank I could drive you all home I had the best plans. I was hitchhiking to Chicago when I was 16 ending up on Rush Street in paper dresses they would let us in the clubs and then we would go sit on the beach where they were at the lake where they were having campfires. And we would just sit outside drinking with people. I had the worst beer I ever had in my life, but I didn't spit it up. I drank it. It was called Black Cat Beer. It Was From Chicago. And I think it probably was fermenting for about a week. But we still drank it and then I hitchhiked home and my mother thought I was staying at Mary Ann's house. She had no idea I was hitchhiking like three, three and a half hours into Chicago. um and that just continued my mother i don't think worried about me until uh i was a freshman in college and my fiance cheated on me and i came home to tell my mother about it and i sat at the table i remember i was dunking oreo cookies and milk i was drunk and dunking cookies in milk and my mother looked at me and she said aren't you gonna cry and i said nope nope i wasn't going to give anybody the satisfaction of knowing how much that hurt so alcohol uh started to help me help me harden up and i was gonna have to harden up to go down the path of this i alcohol was my friend um i really didn't um love deeply again for a long time until i was in sobriety i really did every everything that was just the partnership it was just uh you know it was something that worked out for a month or two months or an evening but there was no commitment and and that didn't bother me at all you know because I wasn't going to get that heart broken I hardened it up and I was the 60s it wasn't just say no it's just say thanks and all that good stuff that was out there we had a lot of fun with it and it kept me going and it keep me up and there was a lot going on in the world there was a lot of that. There was a lot of protesting. There was a lot of unrest. There was a lot of stuff going on. And I got caught up in it. I went to this convention, the Democratic Convention in Chicago. It's a nice little sorority girl. I actually had clearance going in the big convention center. And I had a little hat on and I had my old badge on and I stood next to Paul Newman handing out leaflets. That's what came to Chicago in 1968, the Democratic Convention. By the end of the convention, I'm drinking in People's Park. Those Bobby Brooks clothes never ever saw my body again. Now I'm in t-shirts and somebody else's jeans and we're in the park and the doors are going by and they're playing and it was craziness and there was drinking and carrying on and they were pissed off. And you know what? I was pissed off. I wasn't pissed off about what they were all pissed off about. It was just a place I could be pissed off. So I was pissed off and we start marching. I don't even know I'm just chanting and yelling and, and I got tear gassed and it was like, bring it on, you know. I had this huge transformation that I had no idea was happening to me. And yeah, I was not going to be a nice person from that point on really you know i had agendas my agendas were about me they're about me any cause any seeking any helping the world out anything i wanted to do that was take a big back seat because it's all about me and and keeping the party going and having it exciting i don't know about you but i like excitement if it gets too boring i mean my last boyfriend we gave each other knife fights and black eyes because that's just the way i felt i i didn't feel anything unless we were really passionate. And he had a pet skunk and crank and a snake and all of that too. And the skunk didn't like me and the snake didn't Like me. And, you know, that was, we liked each other for a week. And we stayed together for two years, because nobody's leaving first. That was me was like, loyal to a fault. There was no reason to stay in that relationship. But you leave first. No, you leave First. And I think we both slept with one eye open and he would work nights and I would work nights and then whatever. He would work on a tugboat and come back with his leg all broken because he shot some heroin and hung it over the side and got it smashed between the... And so he's like jumping around on his leg that's only the good one and he's coming at me with a knife and I'm going, come on, bring it on. That was a two-year relationship, whatever that meant. Whatever that meant. And my mom and dad saw me living in that. They saw me living in there. Now, you know, my cry has always been I'm not hurting anyone but me leave me alone. Leave me alone, leave me alone back off. You're gonna ask me what's wrong? I'm going to tell you. And then I'm gonna get you upset. And now I can call you a hypocrite because you're not trying to help me or trying to judge me. I did that to the priest in the confessional. I backed my father up with all of the things he would say to me what are you doing? You look awful. And I would tell my dad, my dad didn't need to know that stuff from his little second girl, his little girl that brought joy into his life because I just wanted to back you up. And that was my way of letting you know I'm in trouble, but am I going to let you help me? There's no surrender. There'sno acceptance. I'm on a tear and I don't even know why I'm so pissed off. I don' t even know why. I didn't even want to be here. I looked for the mothership as a little girl, and it didn't come back. So I was upset. I was upset. So drinking took me to a lot of places, and it broke my family's heart. Drinking took me to a Lot of places where I had to give up my dignity. Dranking took me To a lot Of places where i had to Give up any sort of god-given talents, whether It was, you know, any sort Of musical ability. I couldn't paint Anymore. I went back to art school after i lived in new york for 10 crazy Wild months that we never slept, and we drank all the time till four o'clock in the morning, got two hours of sleep and went back to work. And then we'd have martini lunches. It was a big ad agency. It Was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. And we could close our doors and have hangovers. People didn't care. It was just like I was on a drinking floor. But I got tired and I called my dad. He said yeah you can go back to art school but I'm not paying for the party anymore. And I thought okay. And I went back with good intentions. It was the first time in a long time, I think I had good intentions. And I couldn't paint anymore. I couldn'T paint anymore." And I felt like, what happened? Where did that spark go? And I guess I had to slide it across the bar in New York when I was living there, because when I came back, I was empty of it. And things like that were going to happen as I went down the path of alcoholism. But I either was going to justify it, find something new to you know to focus on or who cares i started to get into the who cares um no it was it was the summer of uh the summer love i i came to aspen colorado i met bob dylan i came to california um i don't know if it was him or not but you know i didn't ask him for his id and ended up in a laguna beach and he went his way and i went mine and i ended up at a commune where they asked me to leave because I'm a drinker. They just smell pot. And they left me on a mountain after a picnic and I had a hitchhike back to the Midwest. And I came home with mom and dad in Iowa. My mother said, okay, you can stay here, but stay out of your father's way because you break his heart. And that was a big one. That was a Big One break his heart. Come on, Mom. All right, fine. We won't sit at the same breakfast table. Yeah, we won't ride in the same car together. I get it. We won't do that. You know, I'll just stay out of his way and he'll stay out on my way. And that's what we did. That's what we did until well into Alcoholics Anonymous. And that didn't last very long because I met somebody that said, let me take care of you and taking care of me meant what? For him it meant an organic farm in northern Wisconsin with 85 acres of land with other organic farms with about 80 to 85 acres of land. There were like eight farms up there. And these people were serious about organic farming. I just thought it was going to take care of me. I had no idea we were going to have to chop wood, split wood, buzzsaw wood. We were goingto have to, you know, have honeybees. We're going to have to tap maple trees. 50 head of organic sheep make a lot of sheep dung. You got to clean that barn. Oh my God, it was what? Take care of meat. This isn't happening. And they didn't drink like me. Once again, I found people that could just be satisfied with a little glass of organic wine they had made and smoked the pot. So they were just boring. They were boring, boring, boring. And so I would get really drunk on some cheap wine and I would disrupt their hootenannies. And they would say, I remember I was humiliated because they taught me to play the spoons because they made me sit in the corner and play the spoons at the hootenanny's because Cause I would maybe just get my aggression out and leave them alone for a moment. And eventually they went off to primal therapy and they left me there, which I wasn't going to, you know, they wanted money for that. It was like, what? I don't even have any, where'd you guys get all this money? Well, somebody got some sort of a inheritance or something. So I got some cheap wine and I sat in my hayloft and I had my primal. I knew what it was about. I screamed at those sheep. They would all run back because I give them some food and then I'd scream at them some more and they would all run it was like you know i don't think it was sheep abuse but it might have been i'm really sorry for sheep i just thought of that maybe i maybe i owe amends i have no idea but um i'll tell you that sheep dung was great for a short growing season in northern wisconsin though because i planted one seed at a time out in the woods with some rototill wheelbarrows full of sheep duff and it was about i don' t know i'd say half acre it was probably not that big, but there was a lot of seeds. One at a time, one at a time, black flies biting my back because I was serious about making some money. They left and they forgot about that patch. They just left me with it. The time came where I felt the snap of winter and I thought, okay, it's time to harvest it. 10-12 feet tall, harvested my horseback. I was pretty paranoid. I'm drinking wine and I'm living in that pot patch. I're not smoking it. I'M EATING IT. i'm eating it and the low-flying planes had come over i don't know if they did or didn't but i thought i better get this stuff in a barn you know i better give it to them and i'm going to get this in the house and make the wood stove so i can put the you know the roots in and hang it upside down and do everything that i read in that organic magazine out into it right and it was in hefty bags as much as i could get in the car and i got in the card my dog and i drink wine and i go to this town that's 45 miles and i had set up this this was you know i set up this with a small college town i set out my big deal so i could make some money and leave and i forgot the stuff i knocked on the door and they said where is it and i was like oh hey dog you forgot to remind me you know and so i turned around and this is the way i make decisions because um heather talked about movement i made a lot of movement i used to think that um yeah the grass was always greener and i would get there and it was like man no it's not it's not green it's yellow you know and I would go somewhere and it seemed really good and after maybe a month yeah I even changed my name it would be like ah it's not it either and then I come to Alcoholics Anonymous Norm Alpe who was a great speaker back in the day he said you want to know why the grass is greener newcomers because the other guy took care of his lawn it's like oh I get it I get it. Okay, I'm not taking care of my lawn, that's for sure. And then he added, and I swear, I was in the room, he said this, I've never heard on one of his tapes, but he said, you know what you're made of newcomer? And I thought, oh boy, this is a good night at Ohio Street. Norma's telling the newcomers what we're made up, you know, and i was in my first year, so i'm excited. He already told me why the grass was greener, that was cool. He said fertilizer, you're Made Up Fertilizer, and it was like, I know what fertilizer is. Does every, all these other newcomers are you laughing or crying it's like he says we're made of you know what and he said but you know fertilizer does we're gonna dig it under there make a beautiful lawn and you're gonna have this beautiful lawn people are gonna want to come and sit on and then you're gonna have to weed it and pick you know put it's Like you're going to make a Beautiful on one day with all the fertilizer that you brought in here you know he's saying work through the steps and you'll have an awakening and i understood the way he was talking to me because i had done all i had done that fertilizer i know what that's all about i grew up in iowa we used to drive by fields as they were getting them ready and it would all of us would go oh that smell my dad said smells like money you know it's like okay i'm glad it's money to you dad i'll smell a hundred dollar new bill but you can go ahead and smell that manure and think it's Like Money but that's just a total aside I've never said that so hi daddy I guess he's coming through um anyway uh yeah so that organic farm I the you know the deal didn't go through and I turned around and I was really kind of upset that I forgot it and there was a carnival there and my first thought because I make really good decisions on the fly is let's let's go be carny let's going to be a gypsy and so that's where i went that night and i went shot for shot with matt armstrong the owner of the show somebody showed me where he was and he was drinking some tequila so we drank a bottle of tequila we drank a lot of tequila and he knew i was a little farm girl from wisconsin and that i wanted to have this exciting little life and i guess somewhere in there he thought well she can steal she looks like she can lie she looks like she might be some fun you know and then he said at the very end of but you do have a trailer hitch on your car, don't you? I was like contingent upon the trailer hitch so I could put what they call my joint, which was a shooting gallery on my car. Because if I didn't have a trail, I was going to have to get one before tomorrow when I was gonna leave with them. So I packed up my hefty bags as much as I could get in there. Some clothing, told my dog to get in, painted on the hood, I painted the sun. I don't know what that was about. name my car Cheshire and off we went joining the Matt Armstrong shows. And that was not a good decision. My mother thinks I'm up in Wisconsin with the guy I bought the land with that possibly, possibly, we know his family, maybe it'll work. Now he's primal therapy at somewhere and I'm in Arkansas at the carnival. And she just went, what? You joined the carnivale? And she started to cry because she knew what they were about. She knew what they were above. And I just thought, come on, mom, I'm writing a book. It was the best I could come up with at that moment. That was digging deep. And she had to go up there and take care of the sheep and take care of the horse and take care of the cat had been kicked by the horse and get her furniture back she had to take it was like four hours at least to get up there another four hours back I don't know how many trips she made with my cousin to handle all that but I'm not hurting anyone but me just let me keep flying by night you know just flying by night not worrying about anything and I just thought all right can't talk to dad now I can't talked to mom but they say when an alcoholic new one I didn't know if we had any on this call. I hope there's a couple of you because transmutation can take effect here. It just takes, it takes some beautiful step work with a guide. It takes some time, but I don't know how it happens sometimes. You know, when I was new, I had little sacred moments and now I get to sit with people and watch their light go on. It's so beautiful. You can just, you know all the work they've done to make that happen. And then one day there's a change. There's a healing. There's the God. There's The Love. I want to give it away in their eyes. And I think Alcoholics Anonymous is safe because of that. Because one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, sharing our experience, strength, and hope. Because I know that works for me. I'm not going to tell you, oh yeah, that might work. I can't do that. if I don't know something, we're going to go to somebody. We'll find you the answer. But I've never heard anyone say you can't stay sober through that. You have to leave ever, ever, never. We have examples all over the place. But yeah, so I ended up with this carnival breaking my mother's heart. And I know that if you're new here, your mother's sleeping at night or your child got fed today or you had a peaceful sleep, that your life is better already. And the people around you that love you, their life is bitter already. Boy, I look back, man, this whole sobriety thing has been not about me. Took me a long time to get there. My mother slept at night every single night I was with you. Every single night. Thank you AA for that because norm used to say i'm overpaid and just that my mother got that i'm overpaid so the carnival was kind of bad and they didn't want me either i was trouble and uh i don't know we got closed down on the show a couple places down south i remember one was opelousas louisiana i do remember that i don' t remember if the other one was but i would cause a stink on the free on the freeway i wish it was like a freeway but on on the you know on the fairway i would i would cause a stink and then people would like come and want their teddy bears and i'd say no you didn't win and they go we did too no you Didn't who you who's lying you or me you know so i wouldn't want to give them their their teddy bear and then the dads would come and then they would get mad and people would argue and then everybody would get in the argument and then i'd have to mace somebody then i have to take that mace out of my boot and mace somebody so even though i don't think they the first time i did it they really didn't know it was me but then we got closed down the show got asked to leave town early which means no money for matt and his crew and uh and bogalusa louisiana i know he said he he was getting into his area now because he would he would he would uh winter in sulfur louisana so he's getting into His Area of Louisiana now bogalusa not a good place to get busted i'll tell you that and that's where they came in at i don't know 7 a.m they knew where i was they knew Where to find all of my bartering it was all for bartering and i had gotten into other things too to barter at that time and they knew exactly where to find it it was like you know i was definitely fingered and they came and took me to jail and the carnival did just left town. They just left out, they didn't care. And so I was in jail without booze. And I was In jail without having my Miranda rights read, I was a jail without getting my phone call. And it was after two or three days, they let me make a phone call, I called my brother in law in New York City who was a lawyer and he said, I don't know anything about Louisiana law. It's all different parish to parish to perish. But he did call my dad. He did call my dad because I wasn't going to make that call to my dad. Nobody in my family has been arrested. Nobody in MyFamily is going to, you know, worry everybody like, what the heck and where is she? So my dad got on a plane in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, connected at O'Hare, went down to New Orleans, and then he rented a car, looked at a map and said, Bogalusa, go north, Lake Pontchartrain. So he went north, found Bogalusa, found the jail I was in. And since I had had DTs, I didn't know. I just, I did not know. I did NOT know I was having them at first. I just knew that something was wrong and they are coming in every night and they're doing stuff to people. And I was scared and I wanted to keep them away from me. So I took a piece of glass and I cut myself all over with tiny little cuts so that I would have blood. So they did not come near me because I had blood on my arms and had blood on my face, just little cuts just to make myself bleed. And they left me alone. But there I was in cuffs, thrown into this room after they took me in the car somewhere. There were three men standing there. It was a judge, a bail bondsman, and a lawyer. I didn't know who they were. They were just standing there behind this desk. And then they threw me in their room. And I looked to my left, and there was my dad, who had hired the lawyer and the bail bondsman, and they had gotten a judge. And I'll tell you, if I ever, ever think I'm not hurting anyone but me, I just want to remember that day. I felt like a piece of grease on the bottom of your old shoe that you could never, ever get off. And i slid down the wall and sat there when i was 20 or so over my dad and i talked about that day and what he said was all you said was you weren't guilty and it wasn't your fault. That was it every time they asked me question. You know, I don't know what they asked me. They probably said, how much did you have? Who did you sell to? I don' t know. My dad just said, all you said was you weren' t guilty and it wasn' t your fault. And when you left to go back to jail, they took you back to jail. They were supposed to let you out and they didn' t. They took my dad's money. And he went back and he was disheartened and sad and worried. But just stand back and watch me die, Dad. Not hurting anyone but me. Yeah, just, you know, it' s like just, you know, divorce me from the family, whatever. I couldn't even look in that direction anymore. I wouldn't even think about them in my heart anymore. It hurt so much. So I, boy, I drank. I found the French Quarter and I drank and I drunk and I drink and I was, that was my last three plus years of drinking. And that was French Quarter drinking, darkness drinking, never without drinking. Now, wake up in a blackout in Florida, wake up in the blackout, you know, I'm in St. Louis. I just thought I better take better care of myself and my blackouts. That's what I thought. I didn't think it was drinking. I didn't. You know what? If you didn't drink like me, I didn''t party with you. If you don't drink, like me. You weren't my friend. If he didn't drank like me you weren't in the French Quarter in the darkness like we were, you now come on. I was ready to probably get sober, maybe a couple years before because my life had turned to crap. And I got, I couldn't dance anymore, because I fell off the bar. You know, I could, I wouldn't bartend anymore, cuz I drank too much. I drank to much for some of the local bars that didn't want me. It's like, I was a troublemaker. I was trouble maker, I'd have my amyl nitrate in the beer cooler, I've leaned over to have some more amylnitrate. And they would like hang on to the bar and then take your order. And then I would either like hit the deck sometimes, or I would have a drink with you. And this guy at the lamplighter, which is not a tourist spot said, you know what? You just got to go. It's like, what? Oh, and my alcoholic friends, two of them particular didn't even want to come party with me at the end of my drinking anymore. And the beautiful part about this is a year now it was it was eight years and seven years after i went to the international convention when i was five years sober in new orleans they had it there out of drinking and i went back with group in tow and all of you aas in the city to try to make amends to try To make some financial amends to some of the guys I had stolen out of their tills and some of them were alive and some of them are dead and people that we knew, you know, that drank with and that were fun. And, you know, one of them was just sitting next to the guy in the barstool in the 70s where the bullet was meant for the guy next to him, but he got it. I mean, we die in like stupid ways sometimes. But they told me that they didn't want to party with me anymore because I was hitting bottom before they were. and these are bad drinkers in the french quarter and a month and a half we were all on a zoom meeting and maybe a couple of the girls are on that were on that zoom meeting um but i went back to try to make amends to both of those girls too and they didn't recognize me one of them doesn't remember meeting me i was reading the big book to her um the other one kept going what's that girl doing in front of me get her out of my way it's my bar and it's like they're playing music i gotta I served drinks, and then I told her who I was, and she couldn't believe it. She was my roommate. Just how you changed me physically spoke volumes. So then they got sober seven years, eight years ago, and it was a great homecoming we had together in the Canyon Conference in Oklahoma. It was beautiful. We all sat in a small little cabin with pouring rain, and the three of us sat there and talked about our gods. It was like, how do we survive this? And the Zoom meeting a month and a half ago, I was on with all of them. It was a Zoom women's meeting and I got them to admit it that I had hit bottom before them and they didn't want to party with me anymore. They were like up until now, they were like, oh no, oh now. It's like, I knew it. So all good things come to those who wait and wait and wait sometimes. times but I got to go um back and make those amends to some of those people that were kind to me that I stole from um I remember um one of my bosses he was he was very stubborn German his name was Dutch and the place was Fritzl so there you go and he brought in Dixieland guys from Europe to play on his place and he would give him a place to stay and he had an apartment above his his bar and I he was so good to me. He was so good to be with me. And I stole from him. So I went to talk to him and it was like, oh, no, no. I don't want anything to you. And I know. And then I said, well, I'll be back tomorrow. Think about it. And so then we started a bunch of us sober people were out listening to music and I would turn around and at the door I would see Dutch. I thought, what's he doing here? And I kind of waved at him. I fought and then we went somewhere else and he was at the door again. I thought, he's making sure I'm not drinking. He doesn't believe I'm drinking. So I motioned to him like I'm coming out. So, I came out and we talked for a while and I said, look, Dutch, this is really what's happening. I've got to pay you some money. I've Got to make these amends so that I can stay sober. And he sat there and thought about it a while. He said, no, I don't want any money. And so what I want you to do is I want you to come back here. And when you come back to the French Quarter, I'm going to put you up here at the bar and I'm gonna buy you a Coke. And I want you to tell me you're still with it. He wanted me to come back and show from la she says hello he met so many of you before he died it was fabulous i love i love that he gave me a way to do it and i love that he knew that um so in july um july of 1975 i was partying i'm not partying anymore i'm passing out i'm standing catatonic by a wall for hours i'm i'm there's no partying in me anymore there's i can't even figure out alcohol is going to work or not work but i keep drinking because that's my buddy that's the one that has never let me down and it's letting me down but i know it will be different tonight because there was always promise in alcohol always promise in alcohol and I had my backpack my book be here now by Baba Ram Dass in that backpack and I always had a bottle because I wasn't going to be without anymore and I'm in my red dashiki my Panama hat I had pancreatitis and my gallbladder had been removed and I wasn't somebody that you go hey let's go let's go just go oh you need a drink it's like yeah I need a trick yeah that's it and I went to Palm Springs with these guys now I had been to that bar before I've been back to New Orleans couldn't get my old job back at the stinky bar on Lower Decatur Street I ended up trying to go to Hawaii ended up at Barney's Beanery every time but I had seen the big book in Barney'S Beanery there was a girl that was really drunk and the bartender called her a taxi and he said you're not going to drive drunk to your A&A meeting so I'm calling you a taxi and give me your keys. And we're watching this happen. And she's got this big book and she's really drunk. And I'm thinking, poor thing. Oh, we gave her a, she went out the bar and we gave her a toast and she fell into there. AndI didn't think about her really after that. She was a, she'd come in the bar occasionally and she would give me earrings. She Was just always nice to me. Her name was Chris. So on July 27th, I'm trying to make my way to Hawaii, but nobody's really saying, let me buy you a plane ticket because I was stinky. I didn't wash. I didn't have a place to live. Sometimes I slept off of suites or there was an apartment complex with a door that they never locked in. Sometimes that would go to sleep in the hallway. And then sometimes you'd give me a floor. Sometimes I got to be in a garage and I can't even, that whole April to July thing was kind of, I don't really remember. My mother didn't know where I was. She didn't know her daughter was sleeping. I didn't call home. I'm so glad we have living amends and we have a chance. We have a chance. My husband used to say, he used to get one mom and one dad and you got to make it right even if they're not up here breathing anymore. It's got to be made right to move on. And I'm so grateful I had that chance but I'm on a motorcycle and I'm partying with these guys on the motorcycle but they don't want to party with me because I'm no fun. Maybe I threw up in their shoes. I don't know. I come to and I had been left in a car with some people I didn't know because my friend left me there. And she said they got fresh with her and she got out. So I ended up in a situation much like Heather's. We have some tandems there that are kind of interesting. I come too, and I'm being beaten up. And I remember one thing. I just quit fighting for my life that's what i remember and then i come to and i'm laying in the sand and the sun is i can feel the sun must have been about six in the morning and i hear the car door slam and uh i'm hurting i'm hurt my jaw was broken in three places and my nose and a concussion and you know they they drug me around i'm 175 80 pounds there were these little slight guys that i don't know i ended up having to go to court because they caught them and i i don'T even remember a lot of it luckily but what I remember was I'm laying in the sand and I heard the car door slam so I wake up because I'm a survivor and I'm thinking I gotta get out of here they're coming back and I remember my head hurt like hell but I remember hearing the voice that said get up I want to live and I heard that voice and I got up I don't remember what happened but I was some gardener found me by a pool and I ended up in the hospital and I came to on a gurney where the police had me write my name. And I saw the word victim because I couldn't obviously talk. And I said, yes, victim in writing. And I ended up at the hospital for two weeks and nobody got me an airline ticket. Nobody bailed me out. And a guy that I had met at Barney's heard what happened because the girl that left me in the car went back to Barney'S and told everybody she's never been able to stay sober, poor thing. I don't know. I I don't know if she's alive now, but the last couple of times I've seen her, she's not been able to stay sober and she really doesn't want to talk to me. So I, you know, other people have, but I think I need to check up on her. She just came into my heart. But so she told them this guy came all the way out to Palm Springs when I was getting out of the hospital and he said I could stay with him because he knew I had nowhere to go. And he drove me back to LA, lived above a liquor store. He bought me cheap wine, wired up for sound stuck that straw where the tooth had been kicked out and i would suck on that wine and i think i was there about six days the best i can figure sucking on the wine that had no more kick i don't think i wasn't even looking for a kick i think my head was just so rattled i just sat there drank like kool-aid i said you buy it i drink it you buy and i drink it i buy it drink it he said you got to leave you're depressing me oh man i had nowhere to go and I was bone tired and that's the best way for me to lay down any sort of weapons my biggest weapon is defiance and it was laid down that day I had no way to bring it up and I called my mom collect and my mom didn't know her daughter was okay for two nights she had gotten a call from that girl somehow called my mother or had somebody call my mother didn't tell her what hospital I was so I took her two nights and my sister in New York called on every hospital until they found me didn't sleep awake for those two nights and she said she could have said Sharon this is the last time but she didn't Norm Alpe talked about seconds and inches and I get it I get from the moment I start looking at the history of this beautiful program called Alcoholics Anonymous that every brick was put in place as it had to be when it had to be to have this beautiful path for us and if one brick would have been missing I don't know I just think when you know when Ebby was shooting the crows off his roof he was pissed off and that's how he got arrested with a shotgun if it would have been a day of rain no crows I mean that was a brick laid in place seconds and inches it's just it's it's divine that we are here we are dead people we get another chance abstinence who thought that was even the beginning to anything I didn't get that either but I was so broken and my mother said seconds and inches Sharon we can't help you anymore go to the Salvation Army and I looked down and the phone number of that girl Chris was dating the guy I was staying with because she had been the one in the bar with the big book. It happened to be there that day. And I called her because she was always nice to me. Now, what if it was turned upside down? I didn't see her name and the phone number. I don't know. I just know it was my day to come. It was my way to have grace and to grab the grace because I was so tired. I had nowhere else to grab onto. I think grace falls on all of us all the time. I thank grace. Everybody gets grace. It's the moments that I can let go of my little designs and plans, as it says in the big book, and grab the grace to a bigger purpose. A bigger purpose that's not about me, that has my feet. Yeah, my feet have to take the action, but the purpose is not about mean. I'm so grateful because if it was about me I'd get bored. I'd look for something else. It says we can continue to have our head in the clouds with him, but our feet ought to be firmly planted because that is where the work is to be done. And I love that Bill gives this the option to keep seeking? But I, my feet are in AA and you taught me to have smart feet. And that day I had no friendly direction. And I grabbed that grace and I sat on the steps of that liquor store because she had me call somebody who knew Alcoholics Anonymous, who knew where I needed to go, who sent some people to pick me up. Now I am wired for sound for three months. I can't talk. I Can't Talk. I Cannot Talk to You. I Cant Talk. I Drool on Myself. I Have to Eat Through a Straw. That's what came in AA. And you guys were glad that. I just had to learn to listen. I had to learn to listen. I was so rattled it didn't matter anyway. It was like some things got in and half the things went over my head at my very first meeting. It's a church and I think oh my god I have to now give up myself for eternity but I'm gonna have to leave because I'd be here now. You want me to show you my book? No, didn't know what that meant. So he's up there and I'm thinking okay they're gonna you know say what happened to you, look at you, do this, do that. I was ready for the other shoe to drop, but what he said was he always waited for the spaceship to land and say, you can come home now, Bill. And I went, oh my God, I'm with spaceship people finally. It was kindling of identification thrown on my Amber of life. And he was perfect for me that night. You know, I heard Chuck see a lot when I was new, but for a long time, I didn't know what he's talking about, but you know, over my head, oh, Sharon, did you get something from that. And I don't know. What I got was the feeling in the room. What I got, was I felt safe. What I got is all of you guys, there was something happening here. What I got was when they said, raise your hand for 30 days. That's the new sponsor I got. And at 31 days, because I'm used to raising my hand, I put my hand up and I went, I have 31 days. And for a minute, I had that feeling of just chills all over my body, because I don't stay sober for 31 days. How did that happen? We, we, we. And it was my first kind of moment of there's something bigger here. And I'm so grateful that I've had those little sacred moments. You know, I got slept on floors, and then I got moved up to a couch and got a sponsor, you get a couch, you have to say a prayer at night because you're in her house and she wants you to hit your knees, whatever that means. I don't want God to know where I am. I had a fight with God. No, no, no God. So I waited till two in the morning because I'm not sleeping really. I'm laying there. Three pages of the big book she wanted me to read. I'd read a page and I go, hmm, I don' t remember anything. So I'd go back and I'd write a couple of lines and try to remember it. And I would just be awake till about two in morning trying to get through three pages of remembering something in that big book. And I would go, okay, the house is quiet. God is asleep. He's helping other people and I would slide out of that borrowed sleeping bag on her couch. And i would get on my knees and i would say this little prayer she wrote down for me because i couldn't remember it. And it was, i think it's a Thomas somebody's prayer. Oh you'll tell me, i know. Thank you for all you've given me. Thank You for all You've taken away from me. thank you for all you've left me oh yeah Thomas Moore and I would say that little prayer with my little and then I would slide the little prayer to the pillow I crawl back in bed and I fall asleep maybe for four six hours maybe maybe depending on what time the kids and her got up and that was the beginning of starting to have some new faith because she believed in me that I could do this um then we went into steps and then the life started and then they took off the wires and then they made me get a job. And I had a bartending job set up, but she said, nah, I don't think so. I was not very with it. She said, well, just go get a food waitress job. And so I went to Hobo Joe's and they hired me and I didn't make any money and I couldn't figure it out. But I guess what I was doing because the Culver City Clubhouse would come by after their studio group on Friday nights, this place called Hobo Joes, and they would come back and work in the graveyard shift and they would sit with that little girl from the Pacific group who just is trying to have a, you know, a life. She's a newcomer. We'll go sit in her little station and leave her a nice tip. Well, what would happen was they would ask me how I am. And so I would tell them, you Know, my sad, sorry story. And they're like trying to eat food and they just had a great meeting. And somebody called the queen Al-Anon in our group, Sally Carpenter, somebody from the studio city told on me so sally walked up to me one night i think it was a saturday night because everybody had a date and that was oh and i have to go off to work in my orange uniform poor me right so she walks up to msally and she's like oh yeah no it's just scary i didn't really know what alan on was in my first year at all and she walked upto me and she went like this with her fingers it's like sally she said try that tonight when you go to work but when they ask you how you are. Do that instead of telling them how you are because they just want hot food. They don't want a waitress bringing them down. Try it tonight. I thought, oh man, that was a little violent there. I was like, but I'll try it because I want to prove them wrong. So I went and I tried. I did this all night long because they're going to know I'm a phony, right? Nobody knew. They got hot food, they were happy. I had dinner halfway through my shift. I made twice as much money as I normally do and I thought okay, maybe they got something there and uh Hank Johnson God bless him he was a he was an insurance salesman and I and I uh he used to talk to God he was great he was Great if you left one little part out of his story it's like hey you forgot the toot in your jazz record tell us about the taste like oh my God these guys just made me laugh at oh I was identifying and Hank Hank found out that I didn't have car insurance and that my sponsor took away my keys because they let me drive because she said, Clancy says we're going to get you. We want you to have insurance because we want to be safe from people like you. What? Who am I? It's like, okay, you know, they were intimidating. There's just something that was, it made sense because I remember my dad said to me when I was small, Sharon, you have no common sense. I do too as I would walk into traffic or something, you now. So you guys taught me common sense, you taught me commonsense. So he came over to my little $24 a week room because that was my first apartment. They turned it into storage units years later, so that's how small it was. I had a Mr. Coffee. I had an old teddy bear somebody left at the restaurant they didn't come back and get. So I had my old teddy beer. I had Mr. coffee. I had me telephone. I had bed. I had toothbrush because she made me brush my teeth twice a day and say – I had to look from the door jam into the mirror. she said, you have to say I like you in the mirror. What? They don't like me. What was that about? Therapy. She said, I want you to catch your eye in the mirrow and say, I like you twice a day and do something nice for someone without getting found out. And she would ask me what I did and I'd tell her. And then she'd say, well, now I know, but do something else. She was like, oh my God, Janet. So I would stand by the door jam and I would look, I would catch my eye in the miracle. I like him. So that was my apartment. There was really not much else going on in there. Although my very first phone call was an obscene phone call. I thought, oh, you get a telephone and it's exciting. Look at this life here in AA. So Hank knocks at my door. He comes in. I don't have a table. He has his insurance policy. He came over to Inglewood to this little hovel from this little waitress trying to get insurance. And he wrote on his little app because we didn't even have a place to write. And I gave him my first payment and dollar bills and fives and tens. And he shook my hand and said, welcome to being a citizen. And I got the keys back to the car. And i've had that same car insurance all these years. Now they thank me for my 45 years of service. I think that hangs at the big meeting in the sky, and I hope he's getting residuals. I really do. But that's the way you treated me like I meant something to you. You walked me through things. I'm going to go right into some amends with my family because it's so important. I'm going to go right into having to change sponsors at 10 years of sobriety because my sponsor got off an airplane with 21 days instead of 21 years. And that was a hard day in my life. My dad had come out and he had walked me down the aisle. I had my first amends at one year and he said he always wanted me to be happy. It was very cursory, very short, nobody locked eyes, the earth didn't shake. And my sponsor said, then you go home and be happy, you call home and be happy. That's what he wants. And at five years, I sponsored Jenny who was with me until she smoked pot in Paris and gave up her time. She had me for five, I had her for five years and she did some beautiful work with me. And my, she says, it's time to call your dad and pay back those financial amends. It's time pay your dad back the money you owe him. And I thought I didn't do that big old inventory with her. How does she know that I owe him money? I think they go to sponsor school and they wait for you to call like something that they don't want to talk to you about. Like he's being mean to me today. Okay. Well, let's talk about something else. My sponsor Clancy said he used to have at the mission, something called an aha machine when people would want to call about relationships. It's a joke, but he said he Used to put it on the aha machine, the phone, because like every 30 seconds as they're talking about their relationship, I'd go, uh-huh. And then another 30 seconds, the machine would go, uh-uh. So she didn't want to put on the aha machine that day. So she said, time to call your dad and make financial amends. All right, I'll call. At two years when he walked me down the aisle to marry my first husband, he went to a meeting and he took him to the literature table. What can I say? He's a reader. And he read that book and it said most alcoholics owe money. And he ran the calculator tape so much so that when I called my dad, he was ready with the total. He gave it to me over the phone. He didn't say, excuse me, I got to go look it up. And I called by sponsor. I went, Oh my God, he's, he told me already and it's high. It's really high. And so we, cause she kind of laughed about that. And she said, well, you know, we made a man, we made the, the, I made the financial amends, but I made them in a payment payment plans. So he accepted that. And then she said, don't be late with your check because Bill and Bob are watching. She used the founders. Not fair. Bill and Bobby are watching, so I had to make sure that check was on time because that sticks in your brain. Bill and bob are watching and because she was who she was and because he had seen the vision down the road with amends, because she knew that I probably had a small little my little designs and plans again about how dad and I are going to live the rest of our lives, barely looking at each other, barely talking to each other because there's just so much pain with what I did and I can't even stand it. She knew that there could be much more with working the spiritual tools of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, spiritual tools don't care who you are. They don't cares when you work them. They just got to work them and my spiritual toolbox got a big makeover. So she, my dad, she said then, you know, don't send the cold hard cash alone remember she said that don't send the cold hard cash alone in the envelope put a note about your life not your older sister not your sisters don't talk your dad wants to get to know you I'm the alcoholic I live in LA he doesn't really like even coming to LA okay I don't care tell your dad about your wife and don't forget so she would check up on me and yeah I took little note, little note, and at one point I had the stationery and I knew it had little turtles around them. It wasn't like a big piece. It was about that big. It's a small piece of stationery had turtles along the bottom. And I wrote my dad a letter and I got to the turtles and I was about ready to turn the page and I went, I just wrote my data whole page without thinking and editing what I was saying to him. That was kind of a little sacred moment for me. And my dad got the check in the notes, the check on the cards, the checking, you know, whatever there was, because I could buy my dad cards now. I could write my dad a letter now. For four years and 10 months, the best I can figure. And the day after Christmas, he called me dialed me himself. And he said, Sharon, Merry Christmas. I don't want your money anymore. It's done free and clear. But don't stop sending me your notes. And I didn't know because of that sponsor that there was going to be forgiveness there on both sides. I didn't know because of that sponsor that there was goingto be mercy given on both side. I don't know, because that sponsor had me write that note and be consistent that the record was going be rubbed out as Chuck C used to talk about. So much so that when I was ten years sober and Clancy became my sponsor because Ginny smoked her pot and I was getting ready to leave life and leave AA and I had this baby. And I ended up at Clancy's door crying because I was like, ah, I was ready to drink because my husband had picked a newcomer in the room and they were always in the room. Nobody got custody in the meetings and it was pregnant and married in that order. And I was pissed off at all of you and I felt betrayed and I was mad, but I kept showing up. I kept show it up because my feet were smart. I wasn't pleasant to be around. One of the ladies that was an old timer in our group took a look at me and took a look at the newcomer one Saturday night as she had to walk over my feet because I wouldn't move him for her. She said, look at Sharon. She's got 10 years. Do you want what she's got? It was like, oh man, I heard her. I didn't want to hear her, but I heard Her. And Clancy became my sponsor and all of that. And my car died. I had this car that died. And I called every Sunday night and my dad and mom were on the phone. We talked about it a while and talked about other things and let their old grandson get on the phone and make some noises at him. And that Tuesday, my father called me from Iowa. He said, your mother and I found a car. It's got 7,000 miles on it. We're driving it out for you so that you and your son can be safe. Now, if my dad, if I wouldn't have finished those amends, my dad would not have been free to do that because he's a businessman. He's a man of that generation. but he was free and clear. The record being rubbed out was for my father to be able to be his father to daughter number two in trouble in California. Thank you, God. Thank you God that I, his parental rights came back. His, yeah, his patriarch came back and beautiful. So after one year, one month and 14 days, I walked into a new life with my sweetheart, Casey And they were still married. My sponsor made me walk through that with dignity and grace and being louder than my head, he said, so you can be an example with others. And guess after he left her, guess who did she look to for the example? It was me. Now she would have been the one I would have said, you don't get my example, everybody but you. And that judgmental compassion, it hurts me when I have it now. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, that awakening i'm on to me and if i've done my morning right if i'd done my evening right if i said yes to life today if i put kindness in my day when that when those defects come and get in the way of the sunlight or the spirit yeah maybe i'll say a self-pity for a little while until i just go oh i can't stand this anymore and i'll go do the spiritual tools that are necessary i'll tell on myself i have five people in my life there's a couple that never change There's some that do change, that know where I am at all times in my life. And one of them is my sponsor, who's 92 going on 93 years old. Two months ago, I was sitting by him in a knee meeting and he nailed me. He nailed me because he said, it's because you're defiant. And I went, oh yeah, you know, two minute talk with him. It's because your defiant, okay. I know what to do with that. And I just love the old timers, the love, the Clint's and Vince's and the Byrons and the Norms and the Jimmy Ryans and the Alabams. Oh, there's so many that are gone at a big meeting in the sky. But they are the ones that have lifted us up. Those of us that know people that love us and care about us and want us to have more than we think we can have. They're the ones that have lifting me up and given me the vision so that I can lift the girls I work with. I can let people in trouble. I can lift anybody who asks up to say, look what you can have. Believe me, I've been there. I'm walking back here to be with you, to give you that hope. And that's what you've done with me. You've walked back to wherever I am in life to spend some time with me on that rock I'm sitting on and I won't budge for a while, but you give me hope and you take my hand and it's we again. It's we. It's beautiful. There's a way out. And if you're new, you can Have A Brand New Life. If you would have told me that, I would have said, I don't want a brand new life. But I got to be with my Casey 24 years. God bless him. And it's been nine years ago last Wednesday. And those of you who knew him, you're going to say, has it been that long he's been gone? Yeah, it's Been That Long. But I think broken open hearts heal bigger. And my heart has been broken open by the love we had, by so many people I care about, by the the love I see with your light going on in your eyes and all the women here that I know, and I've seen the light go on in their eyes. And I watched them help others with the light go out in their lives. My son is 35. He doesn't seem to need it. He does not seem to need it." When we started this whole quarantine thing, he came home to work because he works a lot outside in different countries. So he came to work and he said, Mother, if you want to get along with me, there are three things. I thought, God, he's so grown up and he's asking for what he wants. Where did he learn that? You know, he said don't yell at me from the other room knock on the door come in and we'll talk Let me think now because I got a thing cuz he's been gone all weekend so I've been having fun with myself. Um He said oh, yeah He said if I say yes to you mother don't ask me again. I said, yes, I'll do it and Oh, yeah, don't walk in the door and bark orders. I guess you just say hi. How are you? how was your day it's like oh my god this kid was raised in AA and he took all that good stuff you gave him so I have to behave with him sometimes he's the adult but yeah so I got to hold my Casey in my loving arms and it was nine years ago last Wednesday and he's never left me and um I get to share the memories and the laughter and the fun and uh I don't even know what to say I just know that um i love alcoholics anonymous i love my life um he's always he was a big reader like my dad my dad got killed in 99 i got to write one more letter and put the chip in the coffin and we were good and my mother went it'll be five years ago um in august on casey's birthday which was beautiful and um i've got a sister who's now in rehab my older sister 72 who knew but she's had a brain bleed and now she's in a hospital and they tried to stop the brain bleed last night and they couldn't so they have to go in today and they're putting a drain in and we're hoping that this woman that has lost her husband last November and has been drinking herself to death has a chance pray for Nancy the biggest most beautiful thing in the world would be to sit in a meeting with my older sister who is my protagonist my whole life who has loved me deeply the last couple of years. Loved me deeply. It took 40 years for her to want to love me though. So that's 40 years of sobriety. She couldn't look me in the eyes. I don't know what it was. It was the wedge of alcoholism, I think. It was The Wedge of Alcoholism. I just got that. Thank you. This whole meeting was just for me to get that. But out of my husband's book fell this little note. He leaves me notes. I look at his books and little notes fall out. And I'm just going to leave you with this because he's in my heart. He wrote, we give thanks for blessings already on their way. And I know that's true because you have given me hope. Thanks for having