She Should Get an Academy Award for the Early Days – Pat Y.

About This Speaker Tape

"I should get an Academy Award for those early days." Pat Y. remembers the performance of a lifetime: pretending to be a kind, loving wife to a husband she despised. Under the direction of a sponsor who refused to let her flee a dead marriage, Pat spent ten minutes a day listening to anecdotes about coworkers she didn't know and didn't care about. It was a fake it until you make it strategy that eventually shifted the wreckage. By the time cancer took her husband, the guilt of years of cheating had vanished, replaced by a clean conscience and a capacity for love she didn't know she possessed.

The ripple effect continued with her stepfather. Pat navigated the "justifiable resentment" of a traumatic childhood by doing the footwork—buying a needlepoint gift and learning to chat on the phone without sweating. Through a Higher Power and the blunt direction of sponsors, she moved from being a victim to a daughter who could kiss a dying man on the forehead and mean it.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Discussion on anonymity and the 'program of attraction' regarding a family she failed to attract.
• 5:12 Laughter: Pat Y. discusses the 'Academy Award' performance of being a kind wife.
• 12:45 The 'ripple effect' of sponsorship and the story of picking up Claire and Zelda.
• 18:20 The phone booth story: using the training of calling strangers to survive a crisis in the ICU.
• 22:15 Step 4 and 5: The struggle with secrets and the prayer for honesty before the fifth step.
• 28:40 The 'footwork' of amends: the struggle to make amends to her stepfather.
• 34:10 The spiritual experience of the needlepoint gift and the dog-eared card.
• 38:50 The miracle of her mother calling her first after her stepfather's suicide.
• 42:10 Final plea to newcomers to get a sponsor and trust the direction they are given.