Steps Six and Seven: Chipping Away the Parts That Are Not David — Mari G.

About This Speaker Tape

Mari shares her experience with Steps Six and Seven at a Lake Lanier, Georgia gathering in 2013, carrying roughly 29 years of sobriety. She traces her character defects back to childhood in Scotland, where she began stealing and lying at age six despite coming from a devout Roman Catholic family — her father a former Franciscan monk, her mother president of the Union of Catholic Mothers. She uses the fable of the scorpion and the frog to describe how deeply her defects felt woven into her nature, and how she doubted they could ever be removed.

Her drinking career took her to the streets, through four marriages, four years in and out of mental institutions, the loss of her children to Jamaica for 13 years, and a psychiatrist's blunt verdict that her core problem was an inability to live with people in the world with any degree of comfort or grace. She came into AA as an atheist, initially worked the steps without a true concept of Higher Power, and became what she calls an AA zealot — quoting Bill Wilson and telling groups they were doing it wrong until people chased her out of meetings.

Through successive sponsors — a priest, Rini who died with 53 years, Clancy, and Norma — Mari was guided back through the steps repeatedly, each pass revealing deeper layers of selfishness, rage, procrastination, gossip, and an inability to sustain intimate relationships. She describes attacking her husband with a carving knife at nine years sober, and losing her temper spectacularly at a coworker at 28 years sober, illustrating that defect removal is incremental and lifelong. She quotes her sponsor's Michelangelo metaphor: the steps chip away the parts that are not you.

Mari also shares the profound spiritual gift of caring for her ex-husband John through five years of severe global aphasia after his stroke, calling it the most spiritual action of her life because it got her completely out of self. She closes with her eldest son's testimony — that what happened to his mother was nothing less than transformational — and her Scottish aunties still asking whether AA has figured out what is wrong with her yet.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mari introduces herself, expresses gratitude for the weekend and for being recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body
• 2:00 Frames Steps Six and Seven as willingness and humility, quotes Bill that Step Six separates the boys from the men
• 5:00 Childhood in Scotland — stealing an apple at six, lying at six, stealing someone's veil on her Holy Communion day, Roman Catholic family background
• 8:00 The scorpion and the frog parable — believed her defects were so deeply engraved in her nature she could never change
• 14:00 Old woman sponsor gives her the simple formula: quit doing the things you do not like yourself for, start doing the things you do like yourself for
• 22:00 Rage inventory — discovers her rage has its genesis in complete powerlessness and releases a feeling of omnipotence like drinking once did
• 30:00 Marriage reveals the peacock-to-turkey transformation — four marriages, knows everything about sex and nothing about love or compromise
• 38:00 Clancy sponsorship stories — calling from Jamaica, the carving knife incident at nine years sober, the husband who drank a beer after years of sobriety
• 48:00 Cantaloupe theft at eight years sober and the mailbox crash after the Eau Claire spiritual weekend — consciousness of Higher Power overrides the impulse to flee
• 55:00 Son's testimony that what happened to his mother was nothing less than transformational — Scottish aunties asking if AA has figured out what is wrong with her yet