Step 7 Prayer Became Her Mantra – Carla R.

Hi everybody, my name is Carla Rowland. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Teresa. She knows from where we come, you know? You heard her Friday night. I love you too. We'll talk after. Well, I come from a little town in Los Angeles or California called Tujunga, which is a suburb of L.A., and in Southern California, we like to call ourselves the Mecca of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, I'm going to have to go back there tonight and let them know that there are about 8,200 people in Minnesota that would beg to differ with them. I just want to thank Connie and the committee for inviting me and my husband to come out here and share this weekend with you. It's just been magnificent. The speakers from Teresa and Scott and then Carrie and Andrew. And I know I'm going to miss, I'm just going down a bad road here. And Kelvin and I know, I know. Paul! Right there! Yeah, and you know, okay, I am not going to do that. And then Bob and Chuck yesterday were so inspirational with their history talk on how this got started. And, you know, we are responsible when anyone anywhere needs help and reaches out. We're there, and there are so many different ways to do that. My sobriety date is September 25th, 1987. That's Alcoholics Anonymous. And the ways that we can reach out and reach back and everything, there's just so many. So I've been inspired, and I'm going to go home full. And I want to thank my loving husband for coming out and taking his weekend to come out here and support me and just be here for me. You know, I was 21 years sober and 51 years old when he and I got together. so I'm glad when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I wasn't standing around tapping my foot waiting for that one to happen you know what I mean my boyfriend's going to be here any minute you know I can't stay sober if I don't have a boyfriend but you know it's funny about perception you know when my first year it seemed like lots of people in my first home group they'd get a year they'd meet the love of their life, get married and go to law school and it just seemed like that was the fast track in Alcoholics Anonymous or something and it wasn't happening for me in fact I forgot that I was still married and it took me four years to pay for the divorce I was a little foggy but uh but he is the love of my life and he was well worth the wait and alcoholics anonymous taught me um that uh just anybody is not a replacement for nobody um and you guys walked me through all that um i want to thank jackie for picking us up at the airport and just making us feel right at home and and getting us settled and and she's been a whirlwind. We don't need a lot of hosting or anything, but boy, she's let us know where she was and she's been running around this place just on fire for Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the way. That's how it is. I hope that if you're new, you'll come in and fall in love with AlcoholicsAnonymous. I'm so glad that I clamped on to the idea that whatever is going on in my life, if things are the way I like them, the way I don't like them that I let them drive me in instead of out all I have to do is come in. When I'm a mess, I'm here Alcoholics Anonymous is the best place to be a mess you're not feeling so good, we'll give you a paper bag, sit you in the back it's okay and when you're feeling good, come in here and share that with us too you know I've had to look bad and good and I've been upside down and all around in Alcoholics Anonymous and I haven't had to go anywhere and I couldn't do that before I got here you guys packaged these principles in a way that I could hear them and pick them up and use them when I got there I didn't have to be any more than I was or know any more then I knew I just came I just gave it to me so who am I to say no to someone who's asking me for it when I got here I thought it was very important like a lot of people have said this weekend that I figure out why I'm an alcoholic is my crazy dark dramatic violent perverted family if you had my family you'd drink too I've been in AA now long enough to know that there are people who live far worse lives than me and charm Charm childhoods as well, you know, charm childhoods. And they sit right next to me in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are people out in the world who lived like criminal minds' violent lives, you know? Just unspeakable. And yet when they pick up a drink of alcohol, it doesn't do for them what it does for me. So they've had to find another way to get through that. So it's not circumstance like that that made me an alcoholic. It shaped the way that I look at things. It gave me an inventory, that's for sure. It didn't make me alcoholic. What makes me alcoholic is that allergy of the body and that obsession of the mind. Once I start to drink, I can't guarantee if I'm going to have two or 22. And once that habit is formed, it's well established in me, that's all I can think about. So in the end, for the last few years of my drinking, I'm either drinking or thinking about drinking. I'm drinking or Thinking About Drinking. It's all I can think about when I'm not drinking. And I don't know how to get out of that. I don'T want you to think my childhood was all bad anyway. I had a great time in elementary school. Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade were just horrific. I had great time. I was a new kid on the block a lot. My mother was a single mom of two daughters, and we moved around a lot for the rent. And so I found my way in. I was kind of an outgoing kid. I don't know if I was a people. I hate that term, people-pleasing. I think that we should use self-seeking. That's what it is. And our friend Ron says, and while you're using that term if you can find anybody who you actually pleased as you were going about that. That might be a journey worth taking. But I found my way into these school situations just by figuring out, what are we doing here? You know, are we running track? I've got to be the first. Are we doing school politics? I've Got to Be President. Are we, are it, do, are doing academics? I've Gotta Know All The Answers. You know I had to be first and the most and on, in charge and on top, you know. And by the time sixth grade was over, I was tired and I needed a drink. You know what I mean? Because when you're running the world and you're ten, that's a big job. You know, I was going to be the first woman president, the first women to run a four-minute mile, the first major league baseball player. You know? It was just like, oh. I got my first social resentment behind a game of spin the bottle. I know they don't even play that game these days. They just get right down to business. But we played it back then. And I was at my friend Leonard's house one summer afternoon. It was that summer between sixth and seventh grade, you know, going up into middle school. They call it middle school now. It was junior high back then. And a few boys, a few girls sitting in a room, and we're spinning the bottle and passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey. And those weren't the first drinks I ever took, but these were the ones where I really started to connect the dots that alcohol would do something for me I couldn't do for myself. You know, it had an effect, and I started to catch on to that. And anyway, the bottle we were spinning landed on me and I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys and we were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell. But when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him a player and me a slut and I did not think that was fair. I still don't think it's fair if you want to know the truth. But every sponsor I've ever had has told me the fair comes around once a year and it lasts two weeks. That's all you get. So, so much for fair. We were in kind of a conservative area. It was a lot of time, racial tension and a lot of gang stuff and a whole bunch of people. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to A lot of stuff going on, a lot of anger, a lot of angst. You know, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated. It was just troubled times, and the teachings of parents were coming down through kids. Kids that had been my friends, good friends, the year before where now it was changing. And boys my age were looking at me funny. I got a reputation after that game of spin the bottle that ran through junior high like wildfire. And I found out years later that I wasn't doing half of what some of the other girls were doing. But, you know, I didn't get those principles of those unwritten laws like good girls do and say they don't or don't and say they do or something like that. I don't think I still get it right, but you know, and so I had this reputation and the way that I am is for a while I'll fight and then I start to back away. I just set it down, I back away, my pride kicks in, my feelings are hurt and I just back away and I started hanging out more in the girls' room than I did in the classroom with the other girls who were backing away from their lives and we'd bring stuff from our mother's medicine cabinets and from their liquor cabinets and hang out And after a while, school just wasn't working for me anymore. And because of all the stuff that was happening at home, school had been my last bastion of refuge. It had been where I went to. There was no, you know, when you're doing schoolwork, there's no emotional subjectivity. You know, you do the work, you get the grade and you move on. It's, you got the validation right there. And so that was all over. And at a very early age, any talent or gifts or potential that I had, I began to trade away for the effect that alcohol would produce. And I did it willingly. I didn't understand the gravity of the consequences, but I just saw it and alcohol was better. Alcohol did the growing up for me. Alcohol was the cool for me, alcohol was the maturity for me It did it all. It was the spiritual experience for me I believed in God. I believed In God up till then before that I'd taught Sunday school I'd been out in the parking lots helping you find Jesus you know, in the parking lot. But I'd go to church and somebody would show up with a bottle of Strawberry Hill and I'd be all over. And I started to leave home. I just started to leave home because for me hope is out on the open road. Hope just seems like it's just a mile away, just up there, just over the hill. All it takes really for me is a long slow train whistle and a Willie Nelson song and I'm on the road again you know what I mean so I'd get out there on the on ramps of the 10 freeway going east and the 101 freeway going north and I'd stick my little thumb out and I crawl in the car or the truck going wherever with whoever and I'll be on my way to somewhere else and I love that feeling for me that felt like the bottle in the glove compartment you know I didn't even have to have that sucker open you know, I just knew any minute now it was all gonna be okay. now consequently because of that I was young and I started getting picked up and I found myself being treated to some of the Southern California hot spots like Indio Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and Central Los Angeles Juvenal Hall and they sent me home to mom and home to dad and we did that whole dance for a little while and when I was 14 I found my life in a place called North Beach. A girlfriend of mine and I had gotten a long ride all the way from a place called Isla Vista, just outside of Santa Barbara, all theway up into San Francisco. And this guy plunked us down in the middle of North Beach, North Beach in San Francisco, a little party town. We got out there and looked around and there were hookers and dealers and pimps, oh my. and um we weren't on that street 10-15 minutes before a couple of guys approached us and offered us money for sex and we said yes and did the next indicated thing and boom a whole new career path opened up for us and i started living a day at a time in a way i've not had to live in a very very long time and i starting letting old men stick needles in my arms and my life began to change dramatically from there. Our book talks about our alcoholic life seeming the only normal one, and it certainly was that for me. It just seemed to me that there were more people out there doing what I knew to do, what made sense. You know, you trade it away, you traded away a little piece of this, a little peace of that, my dignity, self-respect, anything I knew to be true, I'd trade away for a better idea. When I was 15, I was being admitted to a mental hospital. They weren't talking to me a lot about alcoholism. They were talking to me about disorders. I was a very disordered-looking child by that time. I was alternately violent and withdrawn, and living with a level of frustration down in my gut I didn't know how to talk about. I didn' t know how to describe. I did' n't know what made sense. I did'nt know what mattered anymore. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous many, many years later, I heard someone describe it as like being a scream without a mouth. And I thought, you guys know, you guys know. But I didn't know back then. So they were treating me with daily nutritional supplements of Thorazine, Melaril, Valium, down main sleepers. That was the treatment for what I looked like. I'd become intimately familiar with five point restraints. You know, they didn't know. I didn' t know. You know, thay find out by trial and error as well. And I didn't know how to tell the truth. I didn' t know what the truth was. I didn''t know what the questions were. It wasn' t until I was tired enough and out of ideas enough that I came crawling into Alcoholics Anonymous 14 years later and picked up the tools you handed me and when I started to use them, they worked. That' s how I know I' m alcoholic. That' d the only way I know. But I had to be... Father Tom always says you' ve got to be pretty sick and tired to find us interesting. you know it's okay I'll try but until then man it's a wall and if you don't want to go crazy in the nut house you got to get busy and one of my favorite ways to be busy was out was uh was alcohol was boys you know you got no alcohol and uh you know I've already told you that I love all the boys but my favorites are those sexy smoldering types you know the kind they just sit back there and simmer you know you just never really know when they're going to blow I know we got some of those in here this morning I see the smoke curling up from the corners but the trouble with guys like that in the nuthouse is they're usually hiding from a junior prison sentence you know they're they're trying to stay out of YA they're trying to lay low in the nut house you know what I mean yeah that'll work lay low until they blow and um and they blow eventually you know like my first boyfriend he blew and he threw a chair through the big plate glass window of the boys unit and then they uh my second boyfriend he flew and he drew a nurse through the big plate gas window of that metal of the boy's unit and they've since replaced that big plate glass window with plexiglass. But, you know, we'd sit around and we'd play those romantic sentimental jailhouse songs, you know, like, ooh, when will I see you again? And, you know, just press our little faces against the plate glass window in the girls' unit and long for what we couldn't have across the pool. You know, the boys' unit was right over there. Isn't that where that feeling is, though, too, in the longing? Isn't it in the longings? It's never in the getting. You've got to get another one. It's not good enough. But it's in that anticipation, isn't it? As soon as I get there. But I remember one afternoon sitting outside on the smoke break bench watching my boyfriend Terry being cuffed and escorted off by security. He's the one who threw the chair through the window, and he's gone. He's going. He's out of here now, out of Here for Good. And I can't believe it, and I'm smoking my tragic cigarettes and channeling Greta Garbo. And just inside, you know, I've always thought I should have a soundtrack to my life, you know, music playing in the background of all this drama. And just inside the girls' unit, I can hear Diana Ross singing a top decibel touch me in the morning and just walk away. And it took me a long time to realize I was brokenhearted and blue before I ever had a real date. Because it's the way I'm looking at my life and it's what I'm working with. And the trouble with that is I'm always about half a bubble off what I'm looking at anyway. You know, I mistake what's out there. I'd mistake arrogance for confidence. I'd mistakes sex for love. I'd mistaken brute strength for strength of character. And I'd get it up in my hot little hands and it would just turn to dust because it wasn't it. It wasn't it. I had to come to AA to learn that it's when I'm giving up myself that that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller. Never going to come from out there It's deep down inside But I chased it you know I chased it with the fur I was a busy girl in the in the uh in the mental hospital I went from the girls unit to the co-ed unit to uh ward d where they put all the patients they just don't know what to do with anymore I turned sweet 16 I was supposed to be there two weeks I ended up being there for a year I just you know sort of made myself at home I'd found every escape way route out of that hospital whenever I'd get thirsty enough I'd go over the wall or under the gate and be out for a week or two and have a party. And when I was tired, I'd come home. I'd come home through the front door because that's where I live in the nuthouse. And they'd park me again. And I went over for the last time and met the love of my life there on that last unit. And I was a vision for you by that time. I had casts on both my arms up to my shoulders because I've been cutting because that was a whole different way to change my reality. Had nothing to do with suicide. It was just a release. I was no longer bathing or getting dressed because you don't have to do that to date in the nut house, and I met the love of my life there on that unit, went over the wall with him, and word had it, I heard just a couple months later that they saw my little foot go up over the chimney and over the wall eventually and back into the car, and they said, wait, just give her a minute, and that was the last time I left. You know, I'm back in juvenile hall and waiting for placement, sitting in front of a judge, waiting for placement. My dad used to say, they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla. And perhaps they did. Perhaps that's what happened. I'm one of two remaining siblings in my family. We had out of four. One died of suicide at 17. The other died of drug addiction at 30. And my youngest sister is in Wisconsin now, and she's just had a double mastectomy, and she can't stop drinking. No matter what, no matter what. She can't stop drinking, so most of my adolescent life was in one rehab or another. They're just trying to find the thing, right? Sometimes I'm in, and sometimes I'm not. I can walk the walk, or talk the talk inside, and I tell you everything you need to hear. And I went into the rehab that was kind of based on Synanon was working, you know, way back then. And so they had this adolescent program where you wear signs and, you knows, two very prophetic signs they made me wear. The first one they made me wear was, I think I'm tough but I'm only a cream puff. And the next one was, know it all starts again. And, I hope I never forget that one. You know, when I think I know it, and when I think I know, I got no chance of learning what really is. So I ended up in a girl's home at the end of all of that. I was 17, and I met my roommate, and we were on the same page. You know, here's where I just want to tell you that I've always believed in God. I told you a little bit about that earlier. I've believed in Gott. I never doubted there was some great power that runs in and around and through us. I felt it before I ever had a resentment or ever had a drink. I was very, very young, you know, three, four or five years old laying in my bed. I knew there was something, but I just couldn't stay tapped in. You know, I just could not establish and maintain some kind of good relationship with that. And I did not understand it. And then the more ideas that would come at me, the more confused I would become. And when alcohol came in, man, it just smoothed the edges over all of that for me. It seemed like it hooked me up, hooked me right back up to that spirit that I knew. And the trouble with that is like Teresa said Friday night, then it dumped me. And that's why I'm here. Alcohol became the power and then it jumped me. I had to find a power bigger because even though it dumped me, I was hanging on to its ankle. You know, I tried it all. I was born into a Southern Baptist home and that religion worked very well for my mother until the day she died just a few years ago. It worked very well for her. I couldn't hear it. We always talk about how they don't have it. No, they have it just fine. Kelvin said it last night. We're on the short bus, man. We had to have it delivered special. We rent from them. Do you get that? Then I tried being a Catholic for a couple of weeks. you know i i love the idea of uh and you know i see those little girls in white dresses and the missiles and the rosary and the candles and the prayers and i thought god something like that's got to work you know and uh then i burned black candles and prayed to the other guy for a couple of years you know I uh just hedging my bets really you know I just want to be on the side that's winning. I don't really care. In the television series, Kung Fu came out. David Carradine was a star of that show. Man, that dude walked the Wild West in bare feet. He was cool. His name was Kane, and he just walked from town to town. and people would greet him. Whole groups of men would greet Him with great hostility sometimes just because of the way He looked. You know, they didn't like the way he looked. He was, you know, just didn't look like them and they'd greet Him and they would attack Him verbally, you know? And pearls of wisdom just rolled off His tongue, you know. Just... And they'd change and they go off to help somebody, you know! Just like in a minute. I thought, oh, that's power. that's real power and then he'd walk to another town and they'd greet him with great hostility again and this time they'd attack him physically you know and when they did that he kicked their ass and I wanted what he had you know it seemed like he was a perfect balance of strength and serenity you know and so I've got all these ideas and I get to this girl's home later on and my friend she's on the same page. Now that combined with the idea what I thought the 60s were, might have been had I been out there in them. I was 12 and 69 so they were over by the time I got out in the world but I used to watch the news. I watched those people in the 60's. I mean they were tough. They marched. They said no. They stood up right? They stoodup they said no and they said they had Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Grateful Dead and traffic and blind faith you know yeah. They had peace and love and free love. And I wanted what they had. And so my friend, she's on the same page, my roommate in this girl's home. And we're talking to our friends and our friends said, yeah, man, those people, San Francisco's gone to sea, but those people moved to Oregon. And we said, there's people and they're in Oregon. So we went out the second story window of that girl's house and down the tree and into Randy's truck and off to Oregon where God might be. And life was supposed to change from the outside in up there. You know, we went up there and we were going to live off the land and they rented a little house in the eugene springfield area and they let me come with them and and we planted a garden in the front yard and that's where i learned that when they talk about hoeing in oregon they meant with a tool it was a whole different deal two things happened to me that i could couldn't see while it was happening of course but i saw it later and and uh one was when we couldn't always drink the way I needed a drink up there. I was trying to lay low, too. I didn't want to go back to lockup. I just wanted to be unnoticed and kind of wander through the world, you know, untouched anymore. But we couldn't. So I didn' t try to steal or anything. We couldn' t always drink the way I needed to drink. And when I can't and when I' ve got no steps or fellowship or God in my understanding, I' v got no booze, I' m restless, irritable, and discontent. And my life becomes quickly your fault. Everything that happens to me becomes your fault and I'm edgy, and you can't approach me. And I'm just like that all the time. And when I can drink the way I need to drink, I'm always overshooting the mark. And that was happening again and still at 17 years old. And i was asked to leave there, and I was asked to leave a lot of places. Andi always ended up in the woods out there. You know, the woods was an alternative I learned about in Oregon, and i like that. It's a little cooler, a little more peaceful. It's a little, you know, a little more worthy of the delusion, I guess. I don't know. I'd just sit out there, eat LSD and look for hobbits, you now, and just one minute now. Hoping. It's got to be true. I ended up back down in my father's house against his better judgment and he let me stay there for just a few months. And now my father, he comes from a long line of alcoholics and his father was a violent, violent alcoholic. My father's an untreated Al-Anon and he does not like the idea of being detached. He thinks that we're trying to tell him not to care. But he had this beautiful liquor cabinet in his den and he never drank from it so I figured it was there for me and every morning we'd get up at the same time and he'd take off for work and I'd go sit in his din and I'd drink from his liquor cabinet until he'd come home in the afternoon and he'd see me sitting in the very spot he'd left me that morning. And I'd see that look in his eyes, that broken-hearted look we all know when we look into the eyes of our loved ones. And I had nothing to say for myself. I didn't know how to tell him I was afraid. I didn' t even know that was what I was. I didn''t know how tell him where the last few years of my life had gone. After a few months of that, he just couldn't take it anymore. And he came to me right before my 18th birthday and he said, I'm not going to watch you die and I'm nicht going to help you do it. You've got to go. And on my way out the door, all I could remember was that one of the counselors at the rehab had told me I was a great actress. And I know today I must have misunderstood because I ended up out on Hollywood Boulevard and not a lot of auditioning going on out there, I can promise you that. I was 18 years old, starting my days off with a pint of pop-up vodka and I'd just go wherever the day took me and some days it was a party and some ways it wasn't. there was not a lot of hope about it getting any different and to this day I love driving down Sunset Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard and I get to see a whole new generation of the same girl sitting out there with very little hope about getting any difference only now I get to say a prayer of gratitude for myself and a prayer hope for her that maybe someday she'll get to find what I found here in AA if alcoholism is a problem a few months into that I met a man walking down Hollywood Boulevoir and I saw the light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was orange sunshine, but we hit it off. And I moved in with him that night and I didn't even know his last name. And six weeks later, he's asking me to leave and I still don't know his last name, but I like to bring him up because years later he was on my eight step list. He was someone who just, I barely got the writing done when I knew, you know, we just got some of those people we know were ready, willing, able, boom. I'm, you Know, I know what I need to do with him. And I mean, he'd been nothing but kind to me. He had his own problems, but he had been nothing but kind to me and I went through his life like that proverbial tornado in six weeks so I spent the last part of my first year looking for him to find a year of sobriety looking for him to make sure to make those amends and and you know I of course I couldn't find him I went everywhere I knew to look and not knowing his last name makes it more difficult but there was something there was something in my heart that took that search you know and and on that search when I went to this one place where we had lived it was right off of Highland on Camrose right behind the Hollywood Bowl and there was a little section of houses there and what the day that I went there just to ask around about him they were having a big old yard sale because they were getting ready to transform that little neighborhood into the administrative offices of the Hollywood Bowl and I felt like it was just you know doing my eighth and ninth steps such a such a symbolic idea of transformation for me. I got to go and they were moving on and so was I and so I went back and told my sponsor that, and she said, you've got to stop looking for him now. You're being unproductive. You've kind of chasing your tail. If you're supposed to find that guy, you'll find him, but in God's time, not yours. So leave it alone for now. There are some things you can do in the meantime. Go about your business. Try to finish your other amends, but you can change your behavior now. Start by trying to be a friend to a man in a vertical fashion. Why don't you start there? All these years later, I got friends of both genders. There's nothing like that feeling of self-respect. Right up there with that feeling of being useful is that feeling a self- respect and you can't take that away from me. I can give it away but you can take it. Right before my 13th AA birthday, I had to go give a talk on the other side of town it was a hot sunday afternoon and i didn't feel like going and thank god you guys have taught me it's not how i feel it's what i do that matters you know i went out there i used to think i could blow off a dinner for two and not be missed really you know it doesn't really matter but don't you dare not invite me you know so i went on and gave that talk and of course i felt better. And when the meeting was over, this man stopped in the receiving line and he said, hey, where were you in 1976? And it was a guy from Hollywood Boulevard standing in front of me with eight and a half years of sobriety and I was almost 13. So I got to make those direct amends to him and we went to dinner and, you know, I'd ask him, you Know, I told him what I knew and the harms I was aware of and what I could do to make those right. And I asked him if he had anything he needed to say, and most of his sentences started with, are you sure you want to hear this? And yeah, I guess so. But he said, you know, Carla, that's long forgiven, long forgotten. I just can't believe you're still alive. And he's right. You know, if we're in this room this morning, we're the lucky ones. We're the luckiest people. lucky ones. Somehow, some way we've managed to slip through that window of grace one more day to come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup and then see what we can go back out there and pack into the stream of life. You know, grace falls on all of us, but we got to do something. I'm responsible for answering that call. Sobriety was a call to wake up, but I've got to answer. At least it seems to me, because there are an awful lot of people that belong here that aren't here. A lot of There's this much payoff and that much price. It just seemed like it's worth it or something. It's just no fun if you're not hurting. I don't know what it is, but I hooked up with another guy from another rehab because that's where they keep the boyfriends and girlfriends. We're both loving the idea of peace and love and all that stuff. We just couldn't stop knocking the hell out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love. And we beat each other up and down the California coast and pitched a tent in the mountains in Southern Oregon and lived there till the rains came and then moved into a roofless cabin just north of Grants Pass and threw a plastic tarp over the top and called it a skylight and then the baby came and, you know, back out in the woods again, you knows. And prayer and meditation, I tried that, you now, meditation and, but I was drinking and taking a lot of things too to kind of try to, you know, expand and access that. And what I discovered when I got sober was that everything I'd put into my body trying to access, that were the very things that blocked me. And then when I Got Sober, the only thing blocking me now is me. And that's a handful in itself. But we had this little girl and I thought having this little girls going to change the way I live, change the world. I look at things. I love this little girI. I loved her. but we all know that alcoholism doesn't care who you love supposed to be a little girl everything else and it became booze and little girl and everything else and then booze in everything else she got in the way of one of our fights you know again we love the idea of peace and love we just you know couldn't couldn't hang you know our book talks about moral and philosophical convictions galore you know i want to be that but i have to be this. I don't know how to get from here to there. I want to be, I swore I'd never be this and I'm this more than ever. She gets the, she got in the way of one of our fights and I had to take her up to Idaho. It's gotta be better up the road, right? We're up in Idaho. I've got three jobs, tending bar and cocktail waitressing up there. I still can't bring home enough money to pay rent for more than a week at a time. My kid's one of those kids that you see in her t-shirt and underwear and yesterday's lunch down the fun of it because the mom's not paying attention. We live in the little rent by the week motels up there. We keep moving, keep moving. After a while, Idaho's not working. We're back down in LA. I'm renting a room from my aunt and in an area called Covina and we're just about 35 miles from Hollywood where I got my job tending bar again. Never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have those jobs? It seemed to me I was very efficient in my thinking. My daughter was almost four years old, and every afternoon I'd kiss her goodbye, and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood, and stop at the halfway point, which is a bar in Arcadia called The First Cabin, stop in there every afternoon like clockwork and have my shots of Cuervo Gold and Bud Backs. Those are the primer drinks, the drinks that got me ready to go do my shift. Get up off the bar stool and go out there in Hollywood and pour drinks and drink with everybody until the wee hours of the morning and crawl back home and start all over again. Did that like every, for months. And one afternoon I kissed my girl goodbye and I got up and I went and sat on that same bar stool, had those same shots of gold and same bud backs. And to this day, I don't know what was different on that day from the day before except for 24 hours because I didn't love my daughter any less on that day than I love her today. But I couldn't suspend my drinking. I couldn'T stop long enough to get up and go take care of business in either direction. So I sat onthat bar stool and I lost them both in one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. And I stayed, and I lived off the kindness of strangers in that little area in Arcadia for about a month until I fell into another job at another dive bar. And that's just how it went, you know? I met the man that I would marry. I thought maybe if I got married, made my life look like I thought yours was, that would do it, right? We'll move indoors, we'll get out of this business, it's this business. And he and I got buried about the time we should have split up, and We moved into that apartment. We became the neighborhood entertainment. Settle our arguments with a shotgun. That's how we did it. Whoever got to it first wins. My first exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous was after one of our fights. We were at the bar where we drank, and we were fighting over whether or not I should get off the bar stool. And I lost that fight. I ended up with some black eyes and broken ribs and nothing real new. It's just, you know, another one. Nobody in that bar feeling sorry for me, just glad I was leaving. My husband had to pick me up and take me to the hospital, and I can't tell you how many times I put him at cross-purposes, too, of having to save my life and kill me all at the same time. You know, it was just always a dilemma for him. So he took me to The Hospital, I got fixed up, and then he brought me home, and he had to leave for work that weekend, and before he did, he set me up with a giant ice chest full of beer and a bottle of Beefeater gin chilling on top, and now I'm drinking gin because tequila had been making me so mean. You understand. I started drinking the gin and dialing the phone, and I don't know all of who I called, but I know I felt like a battered woman, so I called a battering woman shelter and I asked the woman who answered the phone to fix my life. And she asked me if I'd ever been to an AA meeting. I don' t know how she made that leap, but she did. So I went to an AAA meeting that night. It's funny, you know, how all of a sudden you hear, and I found an AA perfectly wonderful meeting that night, not far from where I lived. It was there then, it's there now. And I went there with everything but willingness, everything but readiness. And you can't make me ready. You just can't makes me ready, I can't even make myself ready really except by taking the walk. But I went in there and there was a woman speaker and she talked for about an hour or something and all I heard her say was that somewhere during her drinking career she switched to beer, so I did. i thought aa says switch to beer because beer is not really drinking anyway is it it's just more like a breakfast food as far as i'm concerned you know it's got the hops and barley and you know it's a whole grain breakfast food really is quite healthy and it allowed me to drink for another couple of years you know what gave me the illusion i was controlling my drinking You know, I got a little further into my day before it was really, really bad and couldn't do anything else. And, you know, so I'm under the illusion that I'm controlling my drinking. And a couple of years later, I've got the kid back for better or worse and made our life look just right for just long enough to get her back. My husband and I and my daughter were living across town in a little tiny apartment in Pasadena. And I'd gotten a job. I tried to hang on. And, you know, once in a while I'd make that leap and I'd try to come in, make the reentry into the real world, you know. But I'd drink and then I'd slide right off. And I'd take a sip of the beer and I would make the leap and slide off again. I couldn't work in the bars anymore because I couldn' t finish a shift. I couldn''t stay sober long enough to finish a shift. So I got this job answering phones for the city of Pasadena. And it was just, you know, it was a simple job. And I really wanted to do well. I really wanted to do it right, and so some days I'd try to get there without having those morning drinks, you know, to stop the shakes. I'd tried to get their just for a few hours, if I made till lunchtime, make it till break even, that'd be good, you know, and when I couldn't drink, it would be all I could think about, all I could think until I could get to that next drink, and so I spent a year of that alcoholic torture, you know, drinking and thinking about drinking, drinking, thinking about drinking, and drinking, think about drinking. And I was the girl with the hollow you know whenever we'd go out for drinks all together you know sanctioned drinks the kind that everybody goes out for you know I was the one that says where are we going next you know and everybody else is going home I was no longer welcome in the neighborhood bars where I used to drink I just um my life was becoming very small my daughter and I we couldn't go anywhere really I knew we could get places but I didn't know if we could getting back so our life just got real real small. We were there about a year until we had one more of those fights, my husband and I, one more Saturday afternoon with the cops in the driveway, one more time, and the neighbors peeking out the window wondering what's going on at Charlie and Carla's house, one More Time. The kids over there in her unkempt hair and her mismatched clothes, and she's just looking at me with that look, that fear in her eyes, just One More Time? Our friend Mickey says it's not the yet so much that used to bother him it was the oh no not agains you know oh no not again and I didn't know I have anything to say for myself the cops left for the last time the husband left for the last time they took the gun everybody's gone it's being the kid in the booze and I can't stop drinking I can'T stop drinking and I see my life falling down around me and that's not it I canT stop drinking my first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with a power greater than myself why don't I start by counting the coincidences that happened in my life. Let's see how God's been working. Can we check that out? One of the first things that I could see was that I had moved in next door to a woman who had five years of sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous. Didn't know that. Didn'T know that, and a couple days after that fight, now my husband's gone, it's just me and and the kid, and this lady from next door came knocking on my door a couple days later, and she brought me a big book and a 12 and 12, and I invited her in, and she sat on my couch and she just told me her story. She talked about her, and in her story I could hear me. I could hear that she used to drink like me. And I'd seen with my own eyes that she hadn't been drinking anymore for a whole year she wasn't drinking, you know, in front of me. What impressed me more about that was it didn't seem to bother her that she wasn t drinking. That got my attention. When I'm untreated, I've got no steps of fellowship or God in my understanding. I've got no booze. I feel like you've stripped the coating off my wires, you know? I feel oversensitive and underloved, and I don't know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way. And my head closes in on me from there. It just gets so loud. Sooner or later, I've gotta look at that first drink. I'm gonna start eyeing it. I gotta start, you know, thinking that's an option. Even though I know that I can't guarantee if I'm gonna have two or twenty-two, even though I know that trouble doesn't have to—I don't have to invite trouble anymore. It just comes to visit me unsolicited, even though I know all of that. I'm going to have to take it. Even though I know that window of relief gets smaller and smaller and smaller, I'm gonna have to take it, it's got to be a good 10 minutes anyway. So I don't know if her 12 little thinly veiled Sunday school sentences are going to have any effect on me in the face of what I'd become. I just didn't know. It seemed like I'd heard them all before, you know? It just seemed like too pale, you know, but I was sick. I was getting real sick and I didn't stop drinking that day, but it was about a week and a half later. I just didn't go back and buy any more booze and the kid was somewhere else. I think she was at her dad's and I just Didn't go anywhere else and get any more boos and I stayed home and I shook it out and I saw and heard things that weekend And I just spent the weekend alone, and into Monday and into Tuesday. And by Tuesday, I was stark raving sober, you know, terrified. And that was the moment I was afraid of. I always thought that if I got sober, I'd OD on over-awareness, really. You know, it would just be too much. I went back to my neighbor, and I asked her what to do, and she set me up to a meeting in Sierra Madre, and that became my first home group. I went up there and the hope I heard in that meeting that night came in the form of small talk it just came in the from a small talk, I sat way back by the exit sign, back by the door and I watched you guys and you seemed to care about each other, you were asking each other how you were doing, how you doing didn't you have a job interview yesterday how'd that go didn't your kids start school, didn't you start school how'd that go, did you have a job interview, do you get a sponsor do you need a big book how you doing how's your lawn your lawn and i thought god could my life ever be so elegant and simple as to be concerned about a lawn you know not just to sleep on either but and you know it said over and over and over in these rooms I don't know I couldn't if I had to put a formula to it I just I don'T know if I could but there was stuff going on in that room and I was I stayed sober till midnight and you told me to keep coming back and I hadn't heard that in a long time you know and I started going to meetings I was going to two and three meetings a day you know I was running off from work and running to lunch meetings and then coming back and then going to the early meeting and going tothe night meeting. And I stayed sober 89 days, and then I had to have that first step edge came back, and I thought, whoa, a big book and a beer sounds a lot better than this. You know, I just... And I hadto have another 24-hour drunk. I hadtofinishthatdrunk, and then my sponsor came and picked me up, and she took me to the big book study that night, and I was not sober, and Iwasnot in any pretty condition. and I went up there and you guys didn't wait a guy came up to me and he said you want to come up and make coffee with me on Tuesday and I thought dang somebody thinks I'm going to be here on Tuesday and I came up and I was making coffee on Tuesdays and then he stopped coming and I was the coffee maker on Tuesday nights for a long time and I love that coffee commitment I love these little jobs we get in meetings, you know. I'm responsible. That's what I could do. That's What I Could Do to be a part of the meeting. That's WHAT I COULD DO to be part of the group. That's WHAT I COOULD DO that would get me in. That's WhAT allowed me to be in and be purposeful without actually having to talk to you very much too, you know. I was very busy making coffee and stacking packets and counting stir sticks. but i'd get off work at five o'clock and and i'd be in the meeting because even though the meeting didn't start till eight o'clock you know because i was in the in the store buying stir sticks and coffee and creamer and trying to figure out whose birthday it was and where's the cake and you know when it kept me thinking about you when it was the first introduction to to the absence of the noise on the inside of my own head when i'm thinking about you. I'm not thinking about me, and I didn't know that. I didn'T understand what self-centeredness was by definition or anything else when I got here, but to experience it, to experience the lack of self-centeredness just for a few minutes, you know, I want more of that. Stacking chairs and pouring coffee and how you doing and being able to finally stick my hand out, you And most of that stuff, most of the new stuff I had to try was like close your eyes and hold your nose and try it. You know, how you doing? If I could have come in here and stolen what you had without having to talk to any of you, I would have. And then I started taking the steps with my sponsor, and I was showing up. And my first round of amends happened with my family. I was about nine months sober. And coincidentally, when the obsession to drink was lifted from me, all of a sudden I looked around and I hadn't thought about drinking. That horrible, horrible obsession was not on me like it had been. And my family required a lot of follow-up on making amends. I mean, a lot. You know, I'd followed up on breaking their hearts for a long, long time. And so, you know, it has gotten increasingly better, better and better and besser. To this day, though, there's not one member of my family He'll stand in the doorway and say, no, please don't go to the meeting tonight. You know, that never happens in my family. But one of the first texts I get on my AA anniversary every year is from my daughter. Then other women started asking me to sponsor them, and I've got to tell you, the only fifth step I like better than mine is yours. And I'll tell you why. because in your eyes, I see redemption and I see forgivability and I see lovability and i see growth where i don't always see it in myself and i'm a big believer that we got to give it away to get it something happens when the light comes on in your eye, the fire burns brighter in me after a couple years i had you guys and my daughter didn't have anybody she was 12 years old now coming home at all hours of the night beat up and bloody. She'd been jumped into a gang and starting to find her sense of family and camaraderie out in the street where I used to, and I was getting scared it was going to take more than just a couple of readings and a meditation for this one. She was saying things like, I'm going to have one of my friends bust a cap in you. And I'm like, oh, that's not good so I had to lie to her to get her into a treatment center and you know and I'm thinking God am I signing her life away am I doing what I wasn't so sure was good for me to have done with me and all of that but I don't know anything else I'd kind of done this I had insurance I was working at a good place I had the option to looking up one of these places. Found a place, the director was 17 years sober so that helped me but I was signing the papers and she was not happy but she was in the other room and she was starting to calm down and I felt a hand on my shoulder while I was signed in the papers and I looked up it was a guy from my home group who was the recreational guy there at that program and I thought somebody's going to be here with my daughter you know and Billy S in Las Vegas says God sees around corners you know God sees around how to how all of this stuff is supposed to work out I just take care of the footwork and he takes care of the results and I don't know I'd been taken picking up young adolescent girls from the treatment center over near where we lived on Saturdays for a couple of years and taking them to meetings on Saturday now somebody's gonna be taking my daughter somewhere and she was in that treatment center for about six months and in the meantime I was going to work and showing up when they asked me to, just doing the footwork. You know, that's it. That's it, they told me mountains are moved a spoonful at a time and every day is my best spoonful, that' s it. That' s all I got to worry about. But it' s got to be my best spoon full. And she got out and she wanted to go live with her dad for a while and I had to step out of the way and let her go do that. And while she was gone, you know, and it' S been said over and over and over here, you know, I live on a foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous does not remove the problems from my life. that allows me to live my life awake and alive and facing them head on. So I'm five years sober, and I came home from the gym one night. I've gotten better jobs. You know, it just, you know, rolling along, rolling along in AA, active, and taking the steps. And I come home fromthe gym one day, and I took my shower as usual. I always find it necessary to tell you I showered after the gym, just so you know. and I went to bed and in the middle of the night I woke up and there was a man standing over my bed with a knife to my neck and his hand over my mouth and he said don't say a word or I'll cut your head off and he took the telephone cord and he tied my hands behind my back and he raped me and he robbed me that night in my room and at five years of sobriety I want to tell you that I had a much bigger God than I got here with I told you about all the disjointed ideas about God that I'd had before and when I got her I kind of laid them all out and didn't know which one to take. And a lady named Susan said, why don't you just call him God and let him get as big as he needs to be in your life? Just call him god and let them go from there. And at the end of our chapter to the agnostics, it says when we drew near, he disclosed himself to us. So it's my job to draw near in any way, whatever way. Emmett Fox then says that we're a spark from the same fire. I've got God's DNA. God's got no grandchildren, and I'd hear that, and then I heard if is God everything or is he nothing? What is our choice to be? And if God's everything, there's nothing else. I'm a part of that. So at five years of sobriety, there was a man on my back in the middle of my room in the middle of the night, and i've got a God, and don't know how things are going to go. I know things are as they should be, whether I like them or not, and got a chance to say a prayer for my daughter if she was going to hear some bad news about her mom. I didn't know. And after a couple of hours, we got in kind of a tussle and a wrestling match, and instead of getting madder, he got out, and he left out the kitchen window, the same window he'd come in. And it turned out that I knew this guy. I'd watched him get sober 30 days before I did. I watched him give his life, his wife, his kids, and everything back, and then I watched him join the church and leave AA behind. And when he went out, he went out like that. And what I chose to learn from that is while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right, AA is where I learned the terms and conditions of my disease. This is where i learned that i'm not one of those people who can go home after a sunday sermon and have a glass of wine. I come here and anything else i do is in addition to not instead of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have to do that. so there was a trial that followed and my sponsor told me i was going to have to forgive him i know she's right i know we're people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments but the guide scared me five years of sobriety i still go to anger to to to self-propel you know it's my self- propulsion it'smy protection it makes me feel purposeful like you can't hurt me And yet again, you know, it's like a suit that doesn't fit anymore. It can't be angry. It can not be angry, you know, I don't know how to be something different. I want to be that. I am this. Seventh step prayer became my mantra. As part of the defense, they had a lot of the guys I'd known years before get up and testify as to who I used to be, including my ex-husband. And that's the mark I'd left on him was the fact that he was more inclined to testify on behalf of the rapist than he was for me. he's never been interested in any of my amends that has to be okay now and then by that time i was working at a big investment firm downtown los angeles a big fancy place i mean henry kissinger used to walk the halls he sat on the board of this place you know and i was walking undetected through the halls you know just doing what they asked me to do and um and the division head there of the department where I worked volunteered to come and testify on my behalf as a character witness and he showed up and they told him all about who I used to be and he said yeah but she shows up early and she stays late and she was where she said she was and see that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself he didn't have to be coached he just got up and told the truth as he'd experienced it through me Then it was my turn to sit in the witness stand and to testify. And it was for me to testify, you know? It was for мне to testify to learn to forgive and testify at the same time, to be responsible and yet not harbor a resentment. And footwork, you Know, one step at a time, one step At a time to let life unfold instead of trying to rip it open. And I was sitting in the Witness stand, and I look out, and I saw him. And you know, on page 67 in our book, and I'm a page quoter, I don't apologize for it. If I misquote things, then you'll know exactly where to find it. But there's a little recipe for forgiveness at the top of that page. It says, though we didn't like their symptoms and the way they manifest, they, like ourselves, were perhaps spiritually sick. He, like me, was perhaps spiritually sick, I saw Him sitting in a place where I could be sitting again if I were to take a drink that could be me and I saw me in him not me from a spiritual mountaintop but me like he and we were two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom and just like a crack of light under the doorway you know I started to begin to be willing to relinquish that fear that fearthat held me up that counterfeit that counterfit power for a real power and it took about 18 months for all the nightmares and the stuff attendant to the jumpiness you know you just kind of involuntary stuff that happens with something like that but it went and I changed and I didn't have to let all of that that incident again because I by that time I had done some inventories you know and I know how the past can color the present it can color who I see in front of me you know in a way that they're that they are not and it colors me on the inside in a way that I'm not so to relinquish that was a freedom a great freedom and he was sentenced to 20 years and he did 17 and as yet he's not been able to stay out of prison and the only way I know that is because I get the letters from the prison when he's being released again and I know it works in prison because I've had the privilege of going into the prisons and talking to those guys and I Know That Some Of Them Are Never Getting Out And yet through Alcoholics Anonymous, they found a way to be available to each other and to the people that they've harmed. The detective who worked that case came to me and he said, I don't know who you were back then, I'm not even sure, I want to know, but whatever it is you're doing now, keep doing it because it seems to be working. And that's AlcoholicsAnonymous speaking for itself. You know, I brought some troubles down on myself over time. You know that our troubles are of our own making. I've had big jobs, little jobs, no job, lost homes, found homes. You know, all kinds of stuff has happened in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I bring it to you, and we sit down and we have a meeting and we stay sober and find out what's next. You know? I find out What's Important, What's Not Important. Supposed to have the house for a little while, not supposed to have it anymore. You know whole different ideas of what success really is. my daughter came back to live with me and I got to be present at the birth of my first grandson I just called him yesterday morning and wished him a happy 18th birthday in a couple of weeks I get to go watch him graduate from high school and this didn't hit me till just now but then we get on a plane and we go out to Akron and we get to celebrate Founders Day with I don't know how many of our closest friends out there but to say thank you. Thank you for the life. Thank You for allowing me to see my grandsons grow up and to be a part of their lives and for them to see Grandma Carla just like the old lady who comes over to visit once in a while, you know? Some of my sponsees think that too. I forget, you know, I feel, you know, 23 and I look in the mirror and think, whew! Who's that? My dad doesn't have to sit up nights anymore watching the news to make sure his daughter's name isn't on the list of the victims of the serial killers of the day. You know, he sleeps well and he knows why. About two years before I got sober, my baby sister committed suicide at the age of 17. It took her all weekend to die. And while she lay on life support in a West Covina hospital, the family would gather in the waiting room and then I'd go out to the parking lot where the booze was and I'd drink in the van. And then I go back in and I'd rake my mother across the coals and I talked to her in a way a daughter should never talk to her mother, especially when her baby lay dying in the next room. And I don't know how you make amends for that, except that I started by calling her once a week and trying to find out how I might add to her life instead of take. My mom had had a long, long, long relationship with prescription pills, and she wasn't always there. She didn't understand. She didn'T even know she wasn'T there. She just didn'T know that she didn'T know. I didn'T know that either for a long time, and what I discovered in making these calls was that she just needed me to listen. I just, just listen. And we got closer and closer and closer over time. And so much so that about 11 or 12 years ago, my baby brother died of this disease. He was 30 years old, 6'10", 160 pounds when he lay on life support in a Spokane hospital. His heart was disintegrating from the crank and he wasn't going to stop drinking. And mercifully when he died, I got to go up and be the kind of a daughter my mother needed while she buried at a second child. And I don't know what kind of pain that is for a parent, but I know that this time because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I got to be part of the solution rather than part ofthe problem. AndI love that. I love that when my family sees me come and they smile and their eyes light up and they're glad to see me. Ilove that my mother-in-law loves me.I lovethat that she wants us to be apartof, that shewants me to be a part of their family. I love that. About 17 years sober, I don't know if this has happened to any of you guys, but sometimes I tend to take myself a little too seriously. Maybe not in this room, I don't know. But, you know, you just get, I don't know, start out enthusiastic, then it becomes real enthusiastic, and it becomes plain God, and then you're just like, yeah. You know, my sponsees are like, I don't want to call her. You call her yet. I love her, but I don' t want to call her or talk to her. Just unapproachable, I dunno. Perfectionism doesn't mean you're perfect. It just means you're now obsessed with the idea of becoming so. So that makes you a lot of fun. All my sobriety, I've had to do something physical. It kind of takes the edge off a little bit. It provides serotonin and a whole lot of other things that we go looking for in other places but you know a little exercise doesn't hurt quick walk around the block or something but um you know i've tried and it's a good meditate always been a meditation for me you know repetition in the gym you know whatever rollerblading me and the dolphins at the beach you know you see the curb you don't argue with the curb the curb is tried surfing for a little while and my friend lisa describes surfing as like being in a domestically violent relationship without actually having to have a partner and for me that was true you know i got beat up a lot by the surfboard so i had to try something else and i i found an arthur murray dance studio that's what i did next and i so i'm a little stiff and brittle. You can't, you know, I went in for my complimentary rumba lesson and you can't be stiff and brittle when you're trying to do the rumba, can you? You got to get some wiggle on, you know. So I'm about halfway through this dance lesson and the teacher, he stops and in his beautiful French-Haitian accent, he says, oh Carla, do not try to dance like a good girl. I don't think they will believe you anyway. That's a true story. I don' t know how I knew. But in the ninth chapter of our book, it says our dark pasts are our greatest possession. My past has been woven into a huge tapestry that is my life. It's there for those who need to see it, they see it. And yet I walk a free woman in the real world. Was that two, Roger? Five. Five. Okay, thank you. I work at Home Depot now, so it's like, yay! there's no polite it's just gratitude you know i we were getting on the plane here to come here and it hit my heart to call my sponsor marguerite margueri every sponsor i've ever had has given me something and taken me somewhere shown me something but marguerie gave me my soul back she was the one who agreed to be my sponsor when i turned when the rape happened. And I had had a man up till then, and he was wonderful. He was just one of those good old boys, Lee, you know, who he'd say things like, well, that's going to feel a whole lot better as soon as it quits hurting, you know. But Marguerite gave me a map to my soul. And, you know, there were times that I mistook her kindness for stupidity and times that I took her for granted. And times I thought she's just an old lady. She doesn't know, but I'll play along. And I was overwhelmed. I was overcome everything she's ever said. God, you know, sometimes don't you just want to go back and buy those old timers flowers or something, take them to breakfast when you, when you realize what, what they were giving you and you didn't know and they didn't care. They're just like, ah, okay. Keep coming back if you don't die first. But I had to call her and thank her. God, I was on the plane. I just had to call her because all of a sudden it hits you, you know? But I guess my best example of gratitude, and then I'll sit down, was when we had this little pup come into our lives a couple years, a year or so ago. And her name, we named her Sammy and she's a little pit bull sweetie. And she came in and she was, Doug was in the workshop and, and she Was licking his toes and he looked down. And so we ended up taking care of her for a little while. And this is what, this is What she showed me, you know, every day I'd get up and I get go get her food, you Know, I'd go fill her bowl up with the food, the same food she saw last night and yesterday and the day before and the Day before that same food, you know, and I'd set it down in front of her and she'd look at me and she looked at the food and look at Me and like, we're going to eat. Thank you. Then she'd eat and she's run into the bedroom where Doug and I were, you know, we just be hanging out and she jumped on us and she look at him and at me and look at him and look at me like the same faces she saw last night and yesterday and the day before, the day before that, you know, and she'd be like, it's you. Then she'd hop off the bed and run out in the backyard and she'd run around the yard the same yard she saw last night and the days before and the nights before that. You know, goldfish mentality. Ooh, a castle. Ooh,a castle. Ooh, A castle. And I just see the glee, you know She'd just be in the gmee The glee of this moment The moment I never wanted to be in Teresa talked about it Everybody's talked about this weekend You know, this moment The moment that I was always afraid of This moment where the God is This is where I feel the God You know And I learned that in dancing In dance, when I'm worried about the step I'm about to take and upset about the step I just took, you know, I can't be in this moment. When I stand in frame and I allow myself to be led, I never know what pattern I'm executing until it's over. And then I get to really feel the bliss, the excitement, the wonder of this moment, the moment I never could be in before, awake and alive. If you're new, answer the call, the call to sobriety. wake up and the awakening has to continue and i'm going to stay i hope you do too thank you for letting me share