Sponsorship as a Saving Grace for the Self-Obsessed – Nancy M.

good morning everybody my name is Nancy Morris and I'm an alcoholic hi and I meant to pick up those papers from you Ray I just got that one what did I do with it tell the truth okay I've had a wonderful weekend and I too would like to thank Warren and the committee I know Warren doesn't want all this but he's just been great about communicating with me and sending me notes and just taking really good care of me and fixing me up with a nice host and hostess and and I've had a great weekend I love hearing speakers I love connecting with them Deanna and I connected and Karen and Mary and we've just had it I've a great week and I love meeting other alcoholics that I don't that I haven't previously met it makes me feel safe and secure I think about Alcoholics Anonymous in general it's what does this say trusting our future to a principles I think that's very important that just makes me think that I have to keep doing it the way that I was taught to do it It's from the beginning so that Alcoholics Anonymous is here for other people, new people coming in. And I don't know, where do we go from here? Okay, what Karen was referring to, we'll just clear that up so you won't have to sit there and wonder. okay um my recent my latest current husband and i got married um in the midnight mission in downtown la in skid row and we were having dinner all of us on friday night and that just came up about when he asked me to marry him um we immediately got into this thing about when and where and how are we going to do it and neither one of us wanted to deal with that so we said, let's just get married a week from Friday at the Midnight Mission. So we're both sponsored by Clancy and we went down there and we found a judge and we were able to get married. And before the judge came, he was a little bit late, Clancy put on this crown, this Viking crown that he has and he opened up the big book. And so really our wedding picture is Clancy with this crown on his head or this Viking thing and the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and he's marrying us. That's what it looks like. So, and my husband and I live in different states right now. So we get along very well. We have a great relationship. That's what that's all about. And the other thing about if you want to improve part of your body, get a new part, well, figure that one out. So, okay, I'll give you a hint. Get two new parts. Okay? Okay. I have connected with people this weekend. Deanne and I met this morning and talked, and we never met each other before this morning. And that felt really good to talk and to share with each other. And what she said helped me, and maybe what I said helped her, because we're just two alcoholic women sharing with each another. and that just feels really good to me and when, that's really what it's all about for me when I'm in my right mind and trying to be on the right path that's what it is all about it's one alcoholic sharing with another alcoholic it doesn't have to be a brand new person we're all on this path together and I've been sober a while but I have my moments I'm an alcoholic I have difficult times and hard times, and I need to talk to other people. I need you to share with me. So that just felt really good, and I feel filled up this morning. Joanne came with me, I've been sponsoring Joanne for quite some time, 12 years or so, and she's somebody that I just met in Alcoholics Anonymous, and she was fairly new, And I was sharing at a meeting, and for some reason that time I shared about a problem that I had previously had in my sobriety, which was shoplifting. And for some region we connected on that. But I just have to tell you something, and Kate, I don't want to forget about this. But, you know, Joanne is somebody that I met. She was new, and I started sponsoring her. and a couple years ago I got this I hope I don't make this too complicated I'm going to try to simplify it but I had moved back to California from Minneapolis and now I was moving back to Minneapolis because of a job and I had rented this studio apartment and and I just rented it and I hadn't moved into it yet and I I'm a flight attendant and so I had it and I'm on reserve, so I had to keep leaving town. And I hadn't moved into it yet. And somehow Joanne got the key to my apartment. We were going to get a couch, and I had to leave town. So she got the keys, and she went and found a couch and ordered it because she knows what I like. And she has great taste, so that's fine. So she ordered this couch, and then I had to leave and go to California. And I came back. She knew when I was coming back. And I was going to come back to this apartment, and I guess the couch was supposed to have been delivered, so I was gonna walk into this apartment and there would be my couch there. And I had a blow-up mattress that I was just gonna, you know, I'll just sleep on this mattress. But I walked in, she knew when I was coming back exactly, so I went into this department that I had not been in before, it was empty, and turned the light on, and I smelled coffee, and there was coffee cake on the sink. that she had completely furnished my apartment while I was gone. I mean completely furnish my apartment. There were pictures on the walls, the couch was there, it's a fold-out bed. There was shelves and pictures and vases and flowers and towels and dishes and pots and pans and she had put this coffee maker in there and set it, put the timer on so it would just brew coffee right when I walked in the door. And, you know, I mean, when I think about spirituality and what this is all about, I mean that's something that I – I mean I think About That often. It just – I was just blown away. I just sat down and I was Just blown away and I just said, What a fortunate person I am to have people like Joanne in my life. But I meanI have a lot of people in my Life who I love and they love me and they're all friends that I met In Alcoholics Anonymous. and um so you know i just i just didn't want to um you know not say that and not to give her credit because she's sitting here but i'm just telling you that's like one of the warmest feelings that i have ever had in my life and all my life i've been looking for that kind of thing but but in different ways and um and and i have so many of those warm moments in my heart from people that I am associated with in Alcoholics Anonymous. So just to give you a little bit of background, I grew up in a family. I have five brothers and one sister and a mother and a father. My five brothers are all alcoholics. My father died of alcoholism and my sister got sober this past May 21st. She got sober. And my mother is still alive and she is a professional martyr. She went to Al-Anon one time. Years and years ago, she went to Al-A-Nan, and I really think she found out that in Al- Anon you work on yourselves, and I think she wanted to talk about us and all the problems, and she never went back. My father died of this disease when I was about six months sober, andIi was very, very fortunate because I was the only member of my family at that time who had gone to Alcoholics anonymous and so I got to learn that this is a disease and that there is something we can do about it and I got the share that with my father and I was the only one that was that could do that and I bought him a big book and I brought it to him and I found him to a couple of meetings and and he died and I'm you know I and at the funeral now I'd only been in my group for six or seven months and um and uh so i barely knew these people and i went to his funeral and i didn't know but a whole bunch of people from my group came and so when we all walked out we were you know kind of walking down an aisle like this and i looked over and there were just several rows of people From My AA Group and they're all like hi and it just made me smile and be so happy. And that's one of those warm moments that I have inside, that I never got before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Trying so hard to make friends and fit in and have people like me. And these people didn't even know me, and they took the time to come and be there for me. So I grew up in this family, and it was really a pretty wild family. and you know the police were at our house a lot my brothers were really wild I think I was scared all the time looking back I see that I was scared all of the time I didn't know that when I was growing up I tried to be tough I had physical fights with my brothers and with other people but I you know and so I thought I mean I didn�t realize I was scared because I did things like that but I was scared all that time and my brothers are out getting in trouble and getting arrested in the police would be at our house, and I would be home scrubbing the kitchen floor with a Brillo pad to just make it all clean and shiny so my mother would come in and say, oh, that looks nice. But, you know, I could never be filled up. And so I think all my life I just tried to do things all the time to please you and make you like me and make you notice me, like we all are. We hear that all the time. But I grew up in this family, and we all drank. And even as a young teenager, I hid my drinking, of course. And I would save up empty mayonnaise jars during the week. I'd find big jars and clean them out. And my father would put a built-in beer. We had a refrigerator where we could put in this beer keg. Every weekend, he'd put a beer keг in there. It had a spout on the outside of the refrigerator and I would get all these jars and I would when nobody was looking I would fill them up with beer and take them up into my bedroom put them in the closet and leave them there and then I would get as much beer as I could from the keg when nobody were looking and then when it would be empty because it would empty very quickly within my family and I will hear that noise or my father would hear that noise like it makes when it's out of beer and he would be swearing like where did all the beer go and then I would just go up in my room and shut the door and sit in my room and drink beer. And from an early age you know I never had a reason why I was drinking this beer it was just something that I always did. And going to high school I took alcohol with me in a flask and back then the flask it was supposed to be like a transistor radio well you couldn't do that now because transistor radials are tiny but back then it was like big and um and it had these fake knobs on the outside of this case and so inside was my alcohol and I took it to school with me I never knew why it just seemed to me like I always drank and it and I just did and um I and growing up in this family I know one time I went to the um into the kitchen to get some vodka and nobody was around I remember looking around making sure nobody was going to come around the corner and I got up in the cupboard and took this bottle down and opened it up and took a big drink and it was water and I hadn't done it and so it was really pretty just wild and crazy growing up in that house and I didn't really have any guidance or direction I think there were just too many children and my father was working hard and my mother was just trying to take care of all of us and they did the best they could. And when I was 15 years old, I got pregnant and I mention this because to me it has to do with me, you know, the disease part of my alcoholism of wanting to be loved and wanted and noticed and cared for and I would do anything. I would really absolutely do anything that you asked me to do just so you would pay attention to me and I would do my high school annual everybody wrote in there too crazy Nancy you know and I love that it's like okay if everybody thinks I'm crazy I'll be crazy you know but I got pregnant when I was 15 years old I did not have a boyfriend I had never been on a date I was a tomboy so was a very curious thing how this happened you know but I was going to Catholic school at the time and they taught us about the Immaculate Conception and I'm like perhaps you know they might go for it I don't know but you know what really happened was that I lived across the street from a stable and I loved the horses I love to go up there and ride the horses and hang out at this stable and there was a man there who was quite a bit older than I was and I was a very young, 15. And he dared me to come up there in the middle of the night. Bet you can't sneak up here. And I said, I bet I can. I did everything that people asked me, as I said. And everything people dared me do. So I climbed out my window one night and went up there and got pregnant. First time ever I had sex in my life, I got pregnant so I, you know, to shorten all of that, I had to quit going to Catholic school after I started showing because they didn't make maternity uniforms. You know, they might nowadays, but then they didnít. And so I was shipped off to live with a family because my family was, you know, embarrassed about this and they didn'T want anybody to know. And soI had to go live with somebody and pretend I was somewhere else and have this baby. And I gave it up for adoption and then I went back and finished school in another school. But the first time I got married, I got married because a man asked me to marry him. To this day, it is hard for me to ask you a question where the answer might be no, if that's not what I want to hear. That's rejection to me. I don't like it. And so this man askedme to marry him, and as it turns out, he's a very nice man. We're not married today, but we're good friends. But I just said yes. I was really, honestly, incapable. I look back now and I know that alcohol helped me to survive and to get through life until I got here. It's just how it was. I had no mind of my own and no direction and I just kind of went along with whatever was happening. So I married this man, Joe, and I was married to him when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was 26 when I got there. And back in 1971, that was pretty young. There weren't a lot of young people then. But I was married to Joe and I had three sons. I had twin boys who were three years old and another boy who was one year old when I got sober. And you know, a lot happened prior to my coming into Alcoholics Anonymous. I tried not to drink a lot. I tried very hard. I did everything I could not to drink. And, you know, prior to being married and having these children, it didn't really matter that much. But now I'm in this house. I am a housewife living in this neighborhood out in Newberry Park, California. I'm trying to be what I thought I was supposed to be at that stage in my life. I'm married. I have children. And I was always looking out my window, on my drapes. This is how I see my life for years, peeking out my drape at the women. I lived on a cul-de-sac, so they were always out in the street. They were talking. And I would spend hours watching them and thinking, like what are they talking about? And what are doing? What do they do when they're in their houses? Why are they dressed like that? Why does she have a dress on? I didn't know how to dress. I didn' t know how to act. I didn''t know anything. I was ill-equipped for life, really, and I was just peeking out my drapes and then I would have to go out and I'd have to interact. I had children. I had a husband. This house, I had to interact sometimes. It was very painful. I didn ''t know how to do it and I usually drank to go anywhere to take my kids to the doctor to go try to take them to the park to join in things that mothers took their kids to. I had to drink. Sometimes people would smell it. They'd say, somebody's been drinking. Then I wouldn't go back. And it was just really hard. My life was hard then because I tried not to drink and I would drink. And eventually by the time I was getting ready to come here, which I didn't know I was coming here, I was staying in my house more and more with the kids locked in the house. I had them locked in their bedroom sometimes because they were little boys and they could get out, they'd go outside and I'd have to go get them and I would be drinking. I would drink the minute my husband left in the morning, I would start drinking after saying, I'm not going to drink, I am not going to drink. Okay, you could have one drink today. You can go have one drink because he was upset with you and I don't know, it gave me a reason, I find some little reason to take one drink. And then every day I had another drink, another, another. I never realized that every day I said, okay, you can go have one drink and then I had more and more and so my kids would go outside and I didn't want them to go outside. I didnít want to talk to the neighbors. I just didnít want to and so I would lock them in their bedroom sometimes. I felt very sad inside. I would sit up on this mountain. My house backed up to this mountain and I would set up there and the kids would be locked in their bedroom, and I would have a big bottle of Spaniada wine. It was cheap. It was like $1.65 for a half gallon, and I didn't have any money. And I would sit up there on this mountain with this wine, and I would just drink this wine and look out over the valley, and I would cry, and I would just think the world is passing me by, and nobody understands me. And I think the worst thing I thought was this is how I was going to be forever and ever. Not that I was going to die. That would have been a blessing at the time, but I just thought this is how it's going to be on and on and like this. And, um, and I did my best to take care of the kids. They had accidents. They would, you know, you can't lock three boys in a bedroom and they don't have accidents climbing up on things, pulling the dresser over on one of my son still has a scar on his forehead. And from when I went back in and the dresser was on top of him and his head was cut open. And another time they drank charcoal lighter in the backyard. One of them drank charcoal lighter and had to be taken to the hospital. And there were times I had this little motorcycle and I'd put one on the front and one onthe back, the twins, in their diapers. And I'd ride them around the neighborhood and I would be drinking. So I'm very, very lucky that they're okay. And i think that, I mean, I know that God was always watching over me because, you know, I got into Alcoholics Anonymous at a young age before anything happened and I don't know that I could have lived with it. So that's the way that it was for me and it was day in, day out the same thing. The day that I came into AlcoholicsAnonymous, I didn't know I was coming. My husband invited some people over to our house to watch the Super Bowl, and this was January of 1971. And so there were a lot of people at our house, and I remember making Bloody Marys in a big punch bowl, and I don't think I ever moved from the punch bowl from early morning until late at night. I made them drinks, and I drank. And I was to the point where I could just drink an awful lot of alcohol and kind of just be the same. You know, the stuff that was going on didn't go away. And so that evening, actually, I think the last man was leaving our house around 6 o'clock. And I don't know why I walked out the door and got in his car with him, and he drove away. And so I was gone for a few hours, and my kids and my husband were in the house. And I had never done that before. I mean, I had done a lot of things, but, I mean., that was just something different now, and I was going. My husband didn't know where I was. and I thought this man would just drive me around the block and he took me somewhere else and we drank and then I called my husband like maybe 8 o'clock or something and said, would you come get me? And he came and got me and he was mad. Now he had tried to catch me many times. He marked all the bottles in the house and I made new marks on them and so he had never really confronted me. He had looked at me funny And, you know, I would never give in until I was just caught on anything in my life. And so he said to me, driving back, he said, You wouldn't do the things that you do. You wouldn'T act the way that you act if you didn't drink so much. Nobody had ever said that to me. I knew it was the truth. I knew I had a problem and I knewI couldn't quit. I had no hope of quitting. And sohe took me in the house and I picked up the phone and called this old boyfriend of mine from years and years before, but he lived still in my mind, you now. And you could call him and go, hi, it's me. But I called this old boyfriend to come get me. We only had one car. I didn't want to take the car, but I wanted to leave my husband and my kids. And I wantedto go live somewhere else by myself and leave them alone. And my husband came into the room, and he said to me, I don't care where you go, but you can't run away from it. And I hung up the phone, and it was just like, you know, he hit me in the stomach. It was just Like something happened to me at that moment. I hung up the phone and I called my brother-in-law at the time who's a Catholic priest. He lived at that time in Pennsylvania. I only called him because he's a Catholic priest and I thought he could pray for me and it was unusual that he was home, that he answered the phone and I was on the other end of the phone and I wasn't able to talk to him and I finally was able to say to him I can't quit drinking and he had been to some AA meetings so he could see what they were like so he would help people And he told me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I usually wore cut-off jeans, white T-shirts. That's why I was always looking at those ladies out like, Why are they dressed like that? And I was very heavy. I drank a lot of beer and wine because it was cheap. My hair was longer, and it was all different colors, and it would just break off if I crunched it. It would break off because I dyed it every other day. I'm locked in my house. I don't know what to do with myself and my kids, and I dye my hair all the time, and I rearrange the furniture, like the living room is the bedroom, and then it would be my husband would come home, and really, I'd be pushing the couch. We had stairs, and I'd push the couch up the stairs and carry the TV, andI was just busy. I was real busy inside there all the times. and so I was heavy and I had this awful hair and my face was red and blotchy and I went now so my husband he found out where there was an AA meeting and now I don't know what time, it's 8, 8.30 I don' t know and I put on this orange polyester pantsuit that zipped up the back and it was tied around my neck and I was heavy and it didn't fit. I was just bulging out of it and I thought I looked nice because I wasn't dressed in my cut-off jeans and my white t-shirt and we're going to go to this place now. So we went to this space and we found it finally and it was almost over and it Was a small room, maybe 30 people and we walked in the back door We didn't know anything We walked in and sat down There was a seat on the aisle and I sat down and there was a man up here talking and he finished talking and I guess the meeting was over and everybody, all 30 people that were at that meeting came to me and I didn't get it then why they came to be and then to really let them know that I was a newcomer in case they, I mean they already knew it But now I threw up. I started throwing up for them. So now they're all standing around me and I'm throwing up on just, I always threw up, I had broken blood vessels in my eyes too all the time because I just threw up all the Time. So now I'm Throwing Up, this fat orange person, you know, and I knew I was throwing up in front of perfect strangers. I didn't like throwing up in front of people I knew, but now I'm throwing up in frontof these people I just met. And I ran outside to the parking lot and all 30 people really came outside to the parkin' lot. They hadn't had a newcomer in a long time. They wanted to be a part of this thing and they were all really happy. Can you imagine? You all remember your first night and they werethappy and laughing and talking and looking at the stars and they were all standing around me in a circle. And I'm continuing to throw up outside. And this one man looked up at the sky and he said, we alcoholics are such lucky people. We're chosen by God. And they're all like, yeah, here, here. And I just continued to throwup and I certainly didn't... I didn't like go, yeah, we are, aren't we? You know, I mean, I felt miserable. I felt hopeless. I didn't know where I was. I didn' t know what this was all about. I had no idea what was going to happen. So these two ladies, these much, much older ladies who were in their 50s, they asked me if I wanted to stay with them that night there and they would take me home and I said no. and I was like a little two-year-old child and I did not want to go with those ladies I was afraid I didn't know where they were going to take me or what they were gonna do and so I wouldn't go with them and we went home and my husband had given them my phone number and our address and I really, you know, I did want to quit drinking but I didn' t know how and I wasn' t sitting in my living room the next day just staring at the wall, and there was a knock on the door, and it was these ladies came to my house. It was like a good old-fashioned 12-step call. And they picked up another lady who was a little bit younger, and she was in between slips I found out later, but they just didn't want to come because they were so much older than I was, and they didn't wants to scare me off. And so they brought this other lady, and they sat in my living room, and now these people that I had never met sat in my living room and shared with me their stories. And it was, I felt closer to them at that moment than I had ever felt to anybody in my life. I really did. I had nobody had ever talked to me like that in my life. And they took me to a meeting that night. And I remember, you know, in the beginning of the meeting like they do in most meetings, they say, are there any newcomers? and I just felt terrible and it was so hard to put my hand up because everybody looked really nice like they do, like you all do today it was hard for me I didn't know anybody so I put my head down and I felt so ashamed but that was my beginning that was January of 71 and my sobriety date is May 23rd of 1971 so something happened in between there but in case I forget to say what it was you know, that's my sobriety date. I did love Alcoholics Anonymous and I want, I mean, I just, and I still feel this way today which is good. I feel safe. I've heard people talk about that this weekend. And I just feel the best when I'm in a meeting. And, you know I can be having a bad time. Things can be going on and I just kind of feel like my life is in a turmoil sometimes, but I go to my meeting and I can just sit down and I feel good. And that's how I felt then and that's how I feel now. And That's why I've always gone. Nothing's ever changed. And so so I heard a lady talking that night. And I couldn't believe what that lady was saying up here about, you know, she was saying things like secrets that I had inside and things that I was never going to tell anybody and things I was so ashamed that I have done in my life. and this lady was up, you know, giving her story and people were laughing and clapping and that was like, I didn't quite get that right away. But my next meeting that I went to out there was on a Friday. They didn't have a lot of meetings out there at that time and it was all women and the format of that meeting was that they took the book as Bill sees it and they picked a topic from the index and they went around the table and each woman would read a page the next page in order and read it and then say something and I was really you know really new but um you know I would sit there and I would just I like I did my whole life I was self-obsessed all I ever thought about my was myself what you were thinking I was always wondering what you were thinking of me what you thought of what I just said or whatever it was all just thinking about myself so that's what I was doing that morning and I was looking at the you know the ladies counting very quietly how many ladies there were and which page I was going to have to read when it came my turn and I would just turn the pages quietly I didn't want to make a mistake I didn'T want to stumble over a word and then I wanted to say something halfway decent you know about it so as usual I wasn't listening to what anybody else was saying I was just getting ready for my turn and um but you know what that's okay and uh and so my you know sobriety began and um a lot of women gave me their phone numbers and um i would sit there i would sit at home with this pile of numbers and i i really wanted to pick up the phone and call somebody but i didn't know what i was supposed to say i had no idea what i was supposed to talk to people about. And then I thought, I always imagine things too. I have conversations. I do my part and your part a lot. And so I would think, well, I'll call them and then I'll say this is Nancy. And they won't, they'll say, Nancy? Who's that? Who are you? Oh, I was at the meeting the other night. And I was that fat, ugly orange person you know I I thought very little of myself I had very no self-worth no self confidence you know and I didn't even know what that what that meant at the time as I really just wandered through life until now so now I'm being born really in my sobriety is like the beginning of my life. And where are we here? Okay. So that, you know, I would sit there with these numbers and I couldn't call anybody. I didn't know what to say to them. I did not know how to go ask somebody to be my sponsor because it scared me. And I did a lot of things in my life that I did want to do because I wanted you to like me. So I did lot of things I didn't want to do so then I assumed that if I asked you to be my sponsor you wouldn't really want to it but you might do it because you have to and I didnít want to lay that burden on you that was my thinking at the time so you know I try to remember that now when I meet new people and I try to call people and um I try get their number and call them you You know, I'm not going to do this and drag people in here because I think we come here and we get it when we're ready. But I do want to make people feel welcome and I can always remember how scared I felt at the time and I had no clue what to say to people. So I'll try to call people and try to welcome them here and offer them a ride or meet them at the meeting and sit with them or just do something to try to make them feel comfortable. And especially, you know, my sister just got sober, as I said, just a few months ago. And it's really, I mean, I love working with new people because it keeps me fresh. It keeps my thoughts fresh. It keeps me out of the world. It keeps the outlook fresh. And it was especially great with my sister. I hope I don't, like, get off on this and then I have to go right all the way back to the very beginning so somebody try to remember where I was. But it doesn't really matter. But a few months prior to May, I got an email early in the morning. I was on my computer and I had an email from my sister's boyfriend. And I don't talk to them very much. They live in Fresno, California. And I live in Minnesota. And I hadn't talked to them in a long time. and this email said, Nancy your sister is drinking around the clock. I don't know what to do. She's not going to work. I'm going to have to kick her out or ask her to leave. He said I'm going to ask her leave. And I sat there and looked at that like it was a joke. I knew my sister had living problems. I had prior to that and this is the truth. Practically when I joined AA my sister started in group therapy for she hated her job and she wanted to get married now I'm in AA I'm on my third marriage about my 50th job and you know moving right along and she's still in group therapy stuck so um and she used to call me and ask me you know tell me her fears and thoughts and things like that but she wasn't in AA and she didn't have a drinking problem and she didn't want to be in AA um and so I would give her solutions that I had learned here but she didn't really have to she couldn't apply them to her life and she didn't have to because it didn't it wasn't life-and-death like it is for us I have to do things I don't want to do sometimes because I might drink and I don t want to drink so anyway you know I had you know i knew my sister had living problems but I honestly did not know that she had the physical part of this disease but at one time I said to her Kathleen I know how you can be happy I want you to drink and take drugs and do whatever you have to do and get in trouble and make a mess of your life. And then you can come to Alcoholics Anonymous and then everything will be fine. But I, I had said that to her years and years before. So, so I see this email and I think it might even be a joke, you know, and, um, and I wrote back and I said, um. You know, that I would be gone on the weekend and I would talk to him on Sunday night if, uh. And I said unless this is a joke. You know, I don't like to be fooled. And so anyway, I did talk to her boyfriend and he said that she's just, I knew she had had a bleeding ulcer a couple months before that and had been hospitalized. But he said, yep, she just, you know, gets up and drinks some more and does a couple things and passes out and that's how it was going. And she was mad at him than when she found out that he told me, and she wouldn't talk to me right away. And I couldn't, she wouldn'T answer the phone, so I just couldn't get through to her. So I, you know, I prayed about it. But then I sat down one day and I wrote her a letter and I actually designed the letter hoping she'd cry when she read it because if she is an alcoholic and you have another alcoholic talking to you and telling you how you feel inside, you might cry. And so I wrote her this letter hoping to, you know, get inside of her and I put a plane ticket in it for her to come to Minneapolis and I overnighted it and the next day she called me and she said, Nancy, yeah, she goes, I got your letter and it really made me cry and I'm like, yes, all right. And, you Know, and so we were able to talk then and she didn't want to come to Minneapolis. She wanted to stay where she was right then, and she wasn't quite ready, and so I just talked to her every day, and I was planning on going out to L.A. in a couple weeks, andso I tried to prepare her for that, andI said, I will be there, and if you want to meet me or we'll connect up somehow, I'll meet you and we can get together and talk. And so by the time I went out there, she was ready and she took a train partway and then a bus. And then I picked her up at the bus station and I knew when she got off the bus that she was going to make it because she made that effort. And she did have to drink. She said, I might have to drink because I'm really scared and I don't know if I can do this. And I said, go ahead, just don't drink so much that you miss the train but come. Get off the train and I'll take, off the bus and I will take care of you. And so we spent three days together out there and we live on a houseboat out there, and it moves. And that's like a terrible place for a poor newcomer to try to be getting sober. She'd get up and she'd go, I feel really like I'm lopsided. I go, you are because like we're leaning so but anyway you know we spent three days together we went to an AA meeting every night and and she got the big book and you welcomed her you know the first meeting I took her to she just thought everybody was being nice to her because they knew me and and then uh you know the next night we split into groups at this meeting and and everybody I looked over and everybody was talking to And that's, see, that's the strength of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's why I feel so safe and secure here. I can go anywhere, and you're there putting your hand out. And so, you know, originally my thought was, oh, I have to bring her back to Minneapolis with me, and she'll meet all the people in Minneapolis. Well, she doesn't live there, you Know, so I thought, well, you Now, as I was praying about this, I kind of got the message to just let her go back to where she lives and let you welcome her there. And that's exactly what happened, and after three days she went back to Fresno. And I heard somebody say this this weekend, and I'm sorry I forget who said it, but this happened with my sister. Right when she got back there, she emailed me and she said, I know you know how this feels, but I just can't believe how good it feels to be in a room full of people that know how I feel, and I know they know how I feel. And she had spent all those years in therapy, and that's what it's all about. We know how each other feels, and we can communicate on that level. She's doing great. You know, she's been going to a couple meetings a day. She just absolutely loves it. And that's kind of, you know, a spark that I need from time to time and it just keeps me going and it made me really open my eyes again to new people and I meet new people and I go this could be my sister up there so that's why I try to remember to welcome people because she tells me I'm scared I think it is part of our thing here to do that to I go to a regular meeting on every Thursday night in Minneapolis and I think we all do this I walk in and I see my friends and I kind of sit in the same seat every week and I go in as hi how are you what's going on and now you know I have to remember to look around the room there are people there who just walked in that meeting who maybe looked in the meeting directory and maybe they just walked in there and I can always spot them and they're just kind of sitting there trying to look like they're fitting in you know like kind of was like but I know that look and so I'll go over to them and and introduce myself and and get a meeting directory and circle meetings and bring people over and give them all those phone numbers and everything that's what works for me that's whats always worked for me here that's what keeps me going that's the meat and potatoes of this program for me those are the basics and when i um you know get in trouble along the way and we do life goes on certainly you know i've had um emotional up evils and marriages and divorces and in um and just you know craziness going on in my head and i'll fight it and fight it invite it and people say what about the basics and and I was telling this to Deanne this morning, and I'll say, but I've been sober for 12 or 13 years, whatever it is. I've done the basics. I've taken people to meetings. I've had people live at my house. What about me? And it's, yeah, and it's just the basics because I have to continually go back and just, it's very simple. It's really very simple I was sober in my group and I got sober in this Newberry Park And it was about 40 miles out of West L.A. where I started going I met somebody right away out there who said, you know I know this group that I want to take you to It's younger people and they're active and involved And a lot of action going on And so I started Going to the Pacific Group right away and it was 40 miles each way and I did go every day but I wanted to go I really did want to go as I said before that's where I felt good that's were I felt safe I looked forward to it all day long I wanted go and see what was going on and see was happening at the meeting so I got involved in the Pacific group and working with others is a big thing and staying busy and involved and showing up at meetings and taking commitments and keeping commitments, that's what's stressed out there. And once you get into the group, you kind of just get swept along and I think that's how it is with the Northern Plains group and I love to see that and you just get swiped along in this and that's what happened to me and staying busy is the best thing that I can do for myself So I was sober in that group for 15 or 16 years, and then my then-husband Ed, he's my third husband, and he took a job in Minneapolis. And, I mean, he said, you know, what do you think about that? And I said, well, you knows, go. I don't know. I don' t even know where it is actually, so let' s go. And so we moved to Minneapolis in 1987. And, you know, I felt like a newcomer all over again because I didn't really know any... I did not know anybody in Minneapolis. And we would just get the meeting directory and a lot of the women... I had been sponsoring a lot OF people by that time and a LOT of them just, you KNOW, got us sponsoring the group and a couple of them, you know, we tried to do the long-distance thing. But so I had that connection, and that was really good. But we went to Minneapolis, and I just got the meeting directory, and we'd go to these different meetings, and I would just sit there and feel like those people that I see in my meeting who are like, you Know, everybody's talking and laughing, and, You know, I don't quite know what to do. And then you kind of go look at the literature and pretend you're reading that a whole bunch and, you know, go outside and smoke a cigarette and then, hi. And it's like I'm so uncomfortable. And at 15 or 16 years of sobriety, I was uncomfortable. But, you Know, we just went to meetings and we would hear speakers and my husband would say, they sound like they're really involved. Go see what group they go to. And so we, you know, just tried to, we just went to all these different meetings and eventually met people. And eventually people started asking me to sponsor them and people started my husband to sponsor, asking him to sponsor them. And so, you know, we just, it started, you know, building up again. And I started feeling secure. I feel secure when I'm in my group and when I have, you know, people around me and people that I know. And so eventually we decided to start some meetings in Minneapolis. So we did. And we have the Central Pacific meeting on Thursday night if any of you are ever in town in Minneapolis, it's right downtown at the Central Lutheran Church. And it's a good meeting and it's like enthusiasm and action and people are, you know what I love hearing at the podium, it is part call up and then a speaker. And I just love hearing this people say, I didn't know I could have fun in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think we should have fun here. And I love hearing them say that. We have fun and we're serious sometimes but we stick together and we do things and we enjoy our sobriety. So there's a lot of enthusiasm at that meeting on Thursday night and then now we have other meetings. We have a book study and we have a step study and we Have a woman's meeting and the men have a meeting and we do things together and we go to coffee and we celebrate sobriety birthdays and we're there for people having babies and we have a lot of fun and we shower and all that kind of stuff we're just busy people I believe that God has blessed me with sponsoring people it's not something that I said I was going to go out and this is what I'm going to do you know I think there's we just do different things we find there are different jobs to do in Alcoholics Anonymous sponsoring people has been the gift and it's been a saving grace for me I don't know what I would do without the people that I sponsor I have all this stuff going on inside of me whenever it'll creep in it just creeps in sometimes and if I didn't have these commitments and this involvement in these people around me, I would probably just stay home. You know, I'm going to just stay home tonight. You know what? Some show won an award, the Emmy or something, West Wing, and I thought, I have never heard of that show. And I have not ever, and here it is winning awards. It must be on a big meeting night for me because I have, I never saw it, I've never heard OF it. And I thought that was kind of funny. But you know, nowadays I don't ever get up and go, I wonder if I should go to that meeting tonight. It's not an option. When I'm in town, I go to my meetings. That's all there is to it. I need to do that. I'm an alcoholic. I think this disease like alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful. I have terrible thoughts creep in my head from time to time and they scare me and I have seen many people go out and drink after many years of sobriety. So I don't want to change what I'm doing. And Deanne asked me yesterday if I've been active, I'm sober 29 years, have you been active? And I said yes, I have been. And I have. And I just, it's like I cannot afford to give in a little bit. And it was funny when she asked me that question because Wednesday night I was at my home group meeting in California, the Pacific group. And this young woman was the main speaker. She's cute and blonde and young and maybe sober 12 or 13 years. I wasn't quite sure. But she talked, she told her story and she told about how her life was before Alcoholics Anonymous and this poor family and this and that. And she came to AA and somehow in her sobriety she managed to go to college and graduate with honors. And she was the valedictorian and all this. And I was sitting there getting in more and more self-pity as she talked. And honestly, I had tears coming down my face. It was a terrible time I was going through that night because there have always been things I've wanted to do along the way. Thoughts have come into my head. Why don't you go to school I finished high school barely I goofed off and did things for attention and I wasn't even allowed to go to my ceremony because I just couldn't I got my diploma and that was it I didn't really learn anything in school because I wasn interested in it so in my sobriety I've thought of you know going to school and do and I tried several times I tried to and take some classes and I simply could not take care of my kids and go to the meetings that I wanted to go to and take classes and work I simply couldn't do it so I would give it up and and that's fine and then I've had a lot of different jobs along the way I can't seem to just you know this is my career this is what I really want to do and I'm going to do it and just stick with it I'll do something for a few years, and then I'll get tired of it and go do something else. So that's kind of how my life has been, but my focus has been Alcoholics Anonymous. So when Deanne asked me that question, and I said, yes, I have, and then a light bulb went off, and it just said... And I thought, you really have a very full life, and I love AlcoholicsAnonymous, and I have so many people in my life that are important to me, and I don't think it would have been that way if I would have decided to go off and do something else not that it's wrong because it's not but for me I'm just saying for me this is what I need to do so I was glad she asked me that question I think that God puts people in my life that I need to pay attention to I've enjoyed having conversations with different people this weekend and it doesn't matter if somebody is one week sober or 35 years sober it doesn' t matter if I'm asking God to guide me every day I better be paying attention to what's going on around me because that's how my answers come just through people and we were talking about praying and you know sometimes I'm just really undecided about what to do and I used to be impulsive and I use to just pack up and leave sometimes And now I can just say, God, I need your guidance. You know what's going on in my life and I need some guidance here but I'll just sit tight and I'll go on about my business. And you know, I'll Just have to do that maybe day in and day out and not expect instant answers. And you Know, so far that's been working really well. I don't know why I just thought of this so I'm going to mention it. And when I was married to my second husband, it was a very, very tumultuous relationship from the beginning. But I guess I thought, well, I'm going to fix this poor man and make him happy. And so we were married, and my three sons were living with us. And their dad, Joe, had remarried a very nice lady who had been in the convent most of her life and had left the convent after me he had to get an ex-nun and so um they were married and joe really loved his sons and i really like his wife patty and they're very nice people and they they just would do anything they could for the kids but it i always wanted those it was nancy and her boys you know and um and and that was my thing i guess that was my security with my taking care of those kids you know I'm a mother and so when the second marriage was going bad well it was never good so it was going better you know the kids were just you know in the middle of all this and Joe had called me he had to ask me several times he said if you ever want the boys to live with us we'd love to have them and it would just make something terrible happen to me when he said that, like, no, I could never do that. And it's not, I don't even want to think about that. Don't even say that again. And so, you know, I just never thought that I could do that. And so the time came and I, you know I had learned how to pray, as I mentioned, and just turn things over, do my best to say, God, it's all in your hands now. I'm going to go out and do whatever I need to do. But the thought, it just came into my mind one day. it wasn't my thought but it said maybe you should let the boys go live with joe and patty and um and i thought where did that come from and uh and so i prayed about it and it became clear that that was the right thing to do because i then i kept saying but i love them now i talked to myself too a lot and i would go but i loved them and then whoever it was responding said well if you love them so much why don't you do what's right for them if you love them and so it was like wow you know I and so I knew that the best place for them would be to go live with their dad and his wife he could provide for them I was crazy running around from apartment to apartment job to job and and so then I said okay God if this is obviously this idea came from you, and if this is what I'm supposed to do, then just help me to do it in the right way and to be okay and to do It with dignity and grace and do It and be gracious about it. And so all those thoughts and all that happened did not come from me because I don't think that way. I'm too selfish, and I really don't believe I'm capable of coming up with those thoughts. and so we arranged all that and the boys were happy and that didn't upset me because I thought if I was a kid I'd rather live here with Joe and Patty in this big two story house with a swimming pool and dogs than with her, that crazy lady and it was okay and in fact it looked so good to me I moved in with them too but it didn't quite work out I mean it was like this plan And, like, you know, they're so kind to me that they knew, you know, that it was going to be hard. And they said, you could live here. And I tried it for a few weeks and it just made me feel too like, uh, you don't want to live here anymore. You know, you're not that poor lady. And so, but Patty and I would be standing in the kitchen together with our backs, um, you know, the kids would come in and they would, and the boys, one of them would say, mom. And so Patty and I, neither one would turn around because we were trying to be so respectful to each other. And we kind of look at each other like, which mom do they want? And so the boys said, you know what, this is not working. So Nancy is Nom for Nancy Mom and Patty is Pom for Patty Mom. So that's what they started calling us. So, you now, that's worked out good and we've really just shared these kids now over the years. and they're all doing good and they are all married and have children my youngest son Joe moved to Minneapolis when I was living there and met a girl and got married and they have a one year old son and I had just come in from a flight and called and found out they were at the hospital and I went over there and I got to stand in between the doctor and my son and watch this baby come out and watch my son cut the cord and that was just one of those great moments And my life is good, and it's not, you know, if you're going to judge it or if I'm going to judgments by outside things, it's been better. But it doesn't really matter. It's good. I have a great life. I have lot of people that I love and care about and people that love and cares about me. And I'm sober, and I usually know what to do. And I am so glad to have been here this weekend. And I thank you all for being here this week and for me.