Six and Seven Are the Keys to Freedom — Please Remove from Me, Fill in the Blank, at Any Conscious Moment – Mary S.

About This Speaker Tape

Mary shares her story of growing up as the oldest of seven children on the west side of Cleveland in a loving Catholic family. Her father worked at the local ABC television station and kept an elaborate liquor cabinet that fascinated her as a child. She describes the warmth of family dinners, prayers together, and her father's unwavering belief that faith and love could carry his children through anything. At thirteen, she was sexually assaulted by boys from her grade school near an I-90 construction site, an event she buried in shame that ignited a deep anger she would carry for years.

Shortly after the assault, she got her hands on a bottle of altar wine before a football game and experienced an instant sense of power. By fifteen she had a borrowed driver's license and was buying beer. She was expelled from her Catholic girls' school, drifted to Kent State where drinking became performance art, and married a fellow art student whose ceramic pieces she would later fling off the walls in fits of rage. The marriage imploded violently on her twenty-fourth birthday when she attacked her husband over dissolution papers, and he drove her back to her parents' house.

Back in Cleveland she took over a bar, dated the owner, and shrank her world to a single barstool. On February 12, 1988, she woke on a friend's floor with the clear thought that another drink would kill her. A sober friend from the bar scene took her to her first meeting of three hundred people, and she never drank again. Women from the Edge Lake home group marched her through the steps with no delay and taught her the first big lesson of sobriety: learning to do things she did not want to do.

Sober, Mary returned to college and eventually earned a PhD in communication from Kent State. She defended her dissertation the day after her beloved father suffered a fatal brainstem infarction, whispering in his ear that he could call her doctor now. His death opened the door to reconciling with her mother through Saturday mass, where hearing her mother sing healed years of rage. She married Tim, a fellow AA member, wearing her mother's altered wedding dress with a grain of rice from her parents' wedding sewn inside. Today she is on the faculty of a major medical school researching hope in women with terminal cancer, sponsors other women, and credits the steps — especially six and seven — as the keys to the freedom she chased her whole life.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mary introduces herself, thanks the conference committee, describes arriving grumpy and leaving with five new best friends
• 4:30 Growing up on the west side of Cleveland, father's job at the ABC television station, the elaborate liquor cabinet with drink recipe cards
• 12:00 Sexual assault at thirteen near the I-90 construction site and how it seeded a lifelong anger
• 16:00 First drink of altar wine before a football game, the instant sense of power, banana bike ride home covered in vomit
• 22:00 Kent State years, Mad Dog in sewer pipes, failing jogging class, meeting future husband the RA drinking martinis from coffee cans
• 30:00 Wedding day hangover, marriage in Columbus, prescribed Valium and Elavil at twenty-three, escalating rage and broken ceramics
• 37:00 Divorce at twenty-four, attacking husband over dissolution papers, driven back to Cleveland, installed at a bar within a week
• 43:00 Last drink and moment of clarity on February 12 1988, calling the sober friend, first AA meeting with three hundred people
• 50:00 Edge Lake women's home group, old-timer telling her to sit down and listen, working the steps immediately with a no-nonsense sponsor
• 58:00 Father's death, defending dissertation the next day, reconciling with mother through Saturday mass, marrying Tim in her mother's wedding dress with the grain of rice sewn inside