Sixth and Seventh Caught Me in the Mirror as the Angry Jealous Gossiping Woman I Swore I’d Never Be – Tina A.
About This Speaker Tape
Tina A. from Hollister, California speaks at the Second Tradition Group in San Jose with 21 years of sobriety, having gotten sober young at nineteen in a strict old-timer culture where her first sponsor made her sit down two minutes into her pitch and banned her from speaking until she had five years. She opens warmly to the 297 people in the room, thanks Jim for the invitation, and riffs on her competitive streak over beating John Ackerland's attendance record before settling into the what-it-used-to-be-like.
Her story traces the arc from a five-year-old who stole a classmate's show-and-tell toy and needed a drink, to a fourth-grader who pilfered her parents' antique coin collection a nickel at a time to buy friends 15-cent ice creams, to giving her teacher her grandmother's mine-carat diamond wedding ring. Her first real drink of scotch with her friend Carrie in seventh grade made her fingers burn and her head blow off, and then delivered the feeling she'd been hunting her whole life. She drank herself out of Burger King and into the Navy at seventeen, became a cryptologic technician with high security clearances, and got exiled to Adak Island off the Kamchatka Strait where she counted down 235 days and took to laying in the middle of icy roads to flag rides to Quonset-hut parties until friends learned to drive around the lump.
After a medevac to Philadelphia rehab, a Librium run across the country, and a legendary Phillies-game relapse that sprayed five rows on Antabuse, she still didn't get it. The moment came in a car outside a hospital when a power greater than herself touched her. She worked the steps with Paul Matson, her sponsor and daily anchor, until he died on October 10, 1986 — her second birthday — and she learned Higher Power doesn't leave even when her Higher Power dies. A second sponsor, the spiritual 'wench' who'd once scribbled on her card, carried her through breast cancer and two decades of motherhood.
At twenty-one years sober, with a son about to ship out for Navy special-boat teams, she finally understood the Sixth and Seventh Steps — the paragraph everyone skips — and caught herself in the mirror as the angry, jealous, gossiping woman she'd sworn she wouldn't be. Her teaching lands plainly: the steps set her free, she's no better, no worse, no different than anyone else in the room, and the newcomer never has to feel discardable again — a day at a time.
Discussion
Be the first to share your thoughts on this tape.