The Discipline of Step 11 – FOTS Step 11 Workshop – Part 14 of 25 – Heather A.

Heather. And hi, everybody. I'm coming here and I'm a little winded for a few reasons. I'm winded because I'm emotional. It used to be that when I got asked to share, I had the luxury of reading throughout the day, taking a walk, meditating for 20 minutes about step 11 or whatever topic. And it looked a lot different today as I sit in my living room and I have three children under seven, and we're all in lockdown and in one house with husband working in the bedroom. And as many of you, it's a challenging time, but the truth remains the truth. So to be asked to come here and speak about the truth is such a gift. Now for those of you, hi Teresa. I've met Teresa and I know many of you. I live in a place called Palos Verdes in Los Angeles County. And basically what that is a really, I get bad reception. So I am on a phone and I can't see you, which is an odd feeling. I can scroll through. So if you're sleeping I won't notice um I don't know how to start uh uh except for asking uh thanking Ali for asking me and let's start the step 11 meeting with a few minutes of silence I live in California but you know my home for many many years was Toronto and uh and so um I've missed all of you terrible. And if there's any silver lining to this strange time we find ourselves in, it's that I get the opportunity to be in rooms virtually with people that I carry throughout my sobriety every day. And that's a very privileged stance in Alcoholics Anonymous. Every time I practice Step 11, many times my heart swells for the newcomer or even the person with time who is lonely and isolated. because uh for the alcoholic of my nature to be isolated and unable to do that thing that we do especially at the beginning but really what i've come to understand is the power in the rooms is is tangible i can be anywhere on the planet and find an address and hidden alcoholics anonymous room and the minute i get there i'm home and my soul knew that pretty much from the get-go um and so uh if you're new or if you'RE lonely with time I practice and I pray every day what I do know after leaving Toronto I guess going on four years now and leaving the group that every group that I had ever known every old-timer newcomer coffee shop every place I did this work in this book look at my book when I left there I left a part of my soul back there and I'm at home in California but Toronto in terms of sobriety I carry Ali with me every day in my sobriete I carry afsi every day I carry many brothers who are in sobrieti back in Toronto and I carry my brothers and sisters in the room. So this thing is transmittable on Zoom, and it's transmittible on the phone. And I've had some powerful, powerful fifth steps and 12-step calls during this time of lockdown, and It Works. It says that in step 11. It works. It really does. So let's just read the topic. I have to mention too that Mildred F is somewhere on there. I can't see Mildread, but Um, I wouldn't be able to have the current consciousness I have about Step 11 if I hadn't, by the grace of God on Founders Day in Akron, had the courage and the foresight to get Mildred F's number. And I'll get back to that a little bit later. But Mildред is family. And every day, the way I practice and understand myself, Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 steps, particularly step 11 is due in large part for the teaching and the time that she gave me. And I will always be grateful for that. So hi Milton. I call you Millie behind your back because it's, you don't know Lil Wayne, but it's a reference to million dollars and you're the jackpot for me. So here we go. We Alcoholics Anonymous, or sorry, We Alcoholic is from 88 and step 11. This is like the last paragraph. And the topic I chose after doing a little meditation on it was we alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined. And we'll get to that outline in a minute. And the reason why I chose that was in part, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous on a gurney. I came here on a stretcher after a 24-hour pass from my second treatment center. I'll be 50 this year. I was 23 at the time. And I don't do the math because that's not my surprise. I'll be 17 in a couple of weeks, but I came here literally on a gurney after drinking charcoal in a diaper with femur paddles where a doctor said, there's no medical reason for you to be alive. You have stage one of cirrhosis of the liver and however you've been living, something has kept you alive. And so I'm going to do my best. And when I leave here, you better start praying and thinking differently and doing something differently. And he called for the chaplain to come and bring me a Bible. It offended me too, don't worry. But when he left the room, there was a woman in her 70s dying of cirrhosis of the liver. And she was probably frightened and she was muttering under her breath, the Lord's Prayer. Now you got to understand at the time I had a shaved head and a real attitude. And for me, the topic of God was something I had neatly evaded. I took the parts I liked when I was high or broken or on a jail cell floor. But then as soon as I got up and my ego woke up or I got a little bit better, I sat on a bar stool mocking people of religion for being so weak they needed crutches, as if man had this weakness that I didn't have and I didn'T need a crutch, glug, glag, glog. And when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and I looked back at the cause, the root causes of that understanding of God or that apathy towards God, even the word or that mushy thinking around spiritual things. It's because when I was younger, I came, I was the middle child of some California artists. We moved up to Peterborough because my dad didn't like America and we will just leave that there at the time in the seventies was the Vietnam war. And, uh, I Was the middlechild. We Moved up to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and, um, we didn't talk about God. We didn't not talk about god but we didn't talk about god we we may be saying um our father who art in heaven from uh the the uh hair musical but we really didn't talked about god um church was something we went to because my brother was a singer we would go to choir uh on easter and occasions um and so but what i do recall is as life happened and uh and you guys taught me i had a soul sickness So as things like divorce and my mother's cancers, things happened in life happened to me. I remember the feeling of going to bed at night and being frightened, a frightened child. The book talks about underneath it all is this deep, this basic understanding of God that we all have that in our nature. And I remember when I look back with you that I would say, God, if you're there, make my curtain move. And I would stare at the curtain and the curtain wouldn't move. And then later on, I would say, god, if you're there, make my parents not divorce. And the divorce would happen. And so by the time I found booze and I was a rebellious 12-year-old, I was young, look at a 12- year-old. I was angry at God. It wasn't that I thought I didn't believe in God. I was just angry. And I thought if there was of God, he certainly wasn't listening. And that was when the undisciplined Heather was born because what I started to do was push away anything good, God orderly. So I got here and I had the physical dependence and I could not stop. And I was at a place in life, I was at the jumping off point in my sobriety. Um, when I, when I cried out to God and I said the alcoholic prayer, if you get me out of this, I'll never do it again. And I remember being 24 years old. What led me to treatment that first time is I was in Miami. I was a daily drinker. And for me, I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety that will take anything and do anything. If it's going to get me outta me, my will is, is as is not working I pray every morning to make it all stop make the madness go away but I don't see that alcohol and drugs are impairing any any uh any of that so so I uh in a blackout I beat up a cop and in Florida that's a felony and I wake up on a jail cell floor with people called Uzi who just yeah used an Uzi um and I am scared and I'm sobering up and I start saying the Lord's prayer out loud. And I say the alcoholic prayer that if you get me out of this, I'll never do it again. And, uh, I go before a judge three days later. And the first thing I do when I get out on the Monday, he says, you better get sober. You've gotten a problem with alcohol. Here's this, this, and this. And uh, the first things I do is I'm like, I'm going to get out first thing. I do was go gather everything I need to anesthetize how I'm living, how I'M thinking and how I'm behaving. And I'm off to the races again. So flash forward to this overdose. And it's basically the same thing. I had been in my second treatment center and, um, I was paying a lot of money to go to treatment. If this isn't step one in powerlessness, paying a lot of money to get well, there were two parts of me. There was the essence. Milton taught me the life force this ember deep deep deep underneath all the madness that was still there um and and yet there was this other part of me that thought the alcoholic life was the only normal one and so i i i am in treatment and i'm paying a lot of money to get well because the ember knows there must be a better way and um and i am conning the eating disorder girls out of their drugs and I'm drinking Listerine in the bathroom. I'm buying ListerINE and I'm keeping it with the eating disorder girls and I'm sneaking down and I'M DRINKING LISTERINE and paying to get well. And they decide that I should have this pass. And that's where I overdose on everything I can get my hands on. So this woman next to me in the ICU is dying. And I start saying the Lord's prayer, just like I did on the jail cell floor. And, and so that's my confusion with God when the chips are down and I'm at that breaking off point, I'm reaching out and saying this prayer for help. But the worldly clamors mostly within me slam that shut door shut the minute I come to because I need booze in any form. So when I get here on a journey, after I left that treatment center, I went back to a three-week program at Homewood turned into about six months of long-term treatment. and the concept of god you know i hear people bob t d talks about this in his talk on step 11 he talks about you know step 11 is one of these ones that it was kind of like yeah you know i was so beaten i'd say the serenity prayer over and over i didn't fight that but i wouldn't hold your hand in a meeting and say the lord's prayer because that was my business not yours So I was still confused when I got here, but I had been beaten and had such a powerful experience in that hospital bed. I couldn't deny that something existed. And the spiritual experience you just read was I had the sudden variety after that doctor left. And I said that prayer, I had The Most Powerful Presence of God that I've had in my entire life. And no one from that day until now has been about cultivating what I felt in that room. So I get to Alcoholics Anonymous from the gurney and the cocktail of charcoal, and I get out of treatment, and God presented the teacher that I needed at the beginning. And the teacher was someone who was a fundamentalist, we'll say, in Alcoholics thank god and we sat in coffee shops uh and we sat in parks and he we got a big book and we read this book line by line by line and um the language of alcoholics anonymous uh is is powerful it says we were rocketed to the fourth dimension and i certainly was rocketed to the sixth dimension i was praying anywhere you wanted me to pray i was doing fifth steps in the middle of parks i i found that a pentecostal church and got baptized right and the reason why i chose not that that gives you a little bit of background to why i choose this um and and my journey with step 11 over the last you know 20 years in alcoholics anonymous anonymous has been um an understanding of alcoholism and how that plays in my life. Because when I get to the concept of step 11, I think, yeah, oh my God, I love yoga. I want to meditate. I want it. I want a study. I want us to study the course of miracles and very, very subtly more of our literature talks about there is ego involved with spirituality. and Bob D talks about this he talks about very subtly I'm slightly elevated in Alcoholics Anonymous because I 20 I meditate for 20 minutes and God has revealed the world to me and I don't see it at the time because I'm just I'm high in the spirit I'm in love with Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm running out to every single drunk I can find and I'M GOING THROUGH THIS BIG BOOK right and um you know and and for a while there i'm reading page 80 86 so so here's what here's what the simple so we let god discipline us in the simple way we have outlined okay so where what does it say we get to step 11 it's in italics i know it's step 11 then on 86 it says it says, it would be easy to be vague about this matter of prayer and meditation. Right? And it starts off with, so we're going to give you some suggestions. They're just suggestions. And then it says on 86, when we retire at night, it starts with the nighttime sort of ritual. When we retire tonight, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which I should have discussed with another person right at once? Maybe my sponsor. I should have called my sponsor Were we kind and loving toward all? Could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? And it goes on. And when I read that simple outline, that sounds more like step 10 that's not studying a course in miracles that's not meditating for 20 minutes see meditating for 21 all that stuff has been wonderful and and i'll get to it and then it talks about upon awakening we start to talk about our thinking or we look at our thinking let's look at the next 24 hours just 24 hours let's consider our plans for the day what I think I should do. Let's just consider that. But before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, let it be divorced from self-pity, dishonesty, self-seeking motives. You see, I can look back at my walk with the steps and what I have learned getting up to this point is some harsh truths about how I treat people as a result of my alcoholism, my defects of character so when I go through these steps and I'm humbled by booze and I get a good sponsor who takes me through this and then I get honest in steps four and five you know I walk into step 11 understanding that it's the way I think and the way I treat people that needs to change right the first 10 steps don't say you better start to be a guru in Alcoholics Anonymous. You better start to get really good at speaking so that you can transmit what you found. No, no, no. It talks about building a daily reprieve where we get honest about how we're doing with what we've learned through the steps, right? What I learned and so very subtly for me, that first teacher who took me through taught me this, but I got so far off track with seeking God through the church, through all these avenues. I was helping alcoholics. I Was Powerful in Alcoholics Anonymous. I WAS speaking. I WAS starting meetings. I WAS doing all of that. But I got very off track and pretty soon 80 to 86 was something I gave newcomers and told them they best be doing. But you know, I'm year two, I'M year three, I'm year four. And I'm getting baptized and I'm speaking in tongues. So what happened for me is I had to drink again when I came back. My next teacher, again, we went through the book again. And the same thing sort of happened. Right? I'm wallowed the book that our literature talks about wallowing in emotionalism and mistaking it for spirituality. And what Bob D says is all that stuff is great. I'm going to get to Mildred because what happened for me was I wasn't connecting that there was that divide. I would get off of that 20 minute meditation and go about my day and I was in a dysfunctional relationship. We broke up every two weeks. I couldn't really go back to page 52. I was preyed to misery and depression slightly. And I was a mess emotionally in my relationships because jealousy and anger. I was quick to temper, ask any of my relatives. I was not great with money. I didn't pay my taxes well. I declared bankruptcy at the time. But I couldn't connect because I was meditating and praying and helping a bunch of drunks. See, Alcoholics Anonymous can be a self-fulfilling prophecy for ego. And when I got to Mildred at year, I don't know what it was, year five of, I was divided. I loved Alcoholics Anonymous. I loved God. I loved helping others. But I was in an unhappy marriage. My finances were still a mess. and i walked into her house um in north york and i walked into our house poor mildred and she looked at me out of the side of her eyes the way she does head cocked and she said my dear sit down please and she had two chairs kind of like this mildred i've set up two white chairs it's kind of your house um she said my dear i don't know about and she said tell me about your life and i went and she said i don't know about all that but here's what we're gonna do and she set an egg timer in the in the uh table between us and we meditated for 20 minutes and it was the most powerful thing um that another human being doctor shrink uh any sponsor by far, a pastor. It was by far the most powerful thing that had ever happened to me because what happened there was another alcoholic admitted complete defeat. She didn't have all the answers for me. She said, I don't know about all that, but we're going to do the steps again and we're gonna do it thoroughly. And this time when we got to step four and five, we looked at eating disorder. We looked at taxes. We, you know, I wasn't writing letters to my exes and running out speaking everywhere. We did the hard work and, um, and we meditated, but we did 80 to 86 and she called me on my stuff. And, um. And that practice, uh, I want to do a time check here Ali tell me how much time there is um that practice that practical way of separating um what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous so step 11 in terms of alcoholism right we're not talking about becoming spiritual gurus because it feels very good to do all that We studied Joe Goldsmith. We studied Eckhart Tolle. We had women's groups. We, good, 15 minutes. We did all this stuff that was wonderful. But it was in addition to and outside of the humble taking accountability for continuing what we learn in my inventory process in four and five to six and seven, once I've made my 10th step list and I know who I am. Oh, amen. It's it's how did I do God? How did I do today? And that's when I started to change. That is when step 11 started to grow and be something very, very practical. And what Mildred did by separating those two things is she gave me something that I can do today, 3,000 miles away, that I know will make my marriage better. See, it's not sexy alcohol. It's not the nice part of spirituality. It doesn't, It's not very ego-fulfilling, spirituality, to sit here and say, do I owe anyone apology? How did I do? How did i do? Because I wrote the 10th step. I reviewed my bae the night before. And then I get to the next night again. It's like they didn't want us to miss this, right? they're repeating the necessity to commune with god and think about my my actions right and um you know these last 17 years on the outside um have been uh i've been through a lot you know talks about it works it really does but the thing i want to i want to say that i've experienced in the 12 and 12 on page um it reiterates this this thing about relying on on on spirituality step 11 in terms of alcoholism in a very practical way it talks about you know not being the two kind of pitfalls that ego alcoholic see i got this ego uh chuck chamberlain always talks about this ego but i f everything up i f up my relationships i f up my finances because i'm a freight frightened you know alcoholic so it talks about the pits the pitfalls that we can fall into in step 11 um right after it describes the the saint francis prayer it goes down to um the hazards and it kind of breaks it into two things why can't we take something to God. So a problem we're having, why can't I take that directly to God? This is page 103 in the 12 and 12. And it says, why cannot we ask God's guidance on specific matters ranging all the way from a shattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minor personal fault like tardiness? Quite often, however, the thoughts that seem to come from God are not answers at all. They prove to be well-intentioned, unconscious rationalizations. The AA or indeed any man who tries to run his life rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand for God's replies, right? God has spoken through others and I've had many, many revelations, but basically God replies to how I'm doing in very random things. I will go to get an apple like i won't even say it because it's going to sound crazy i get confirmation all day long that i'm right where i need to be where i needs to be god confirms but it's in wacky random ways walking into a meeting hearing what i need here um it's not in how do you need to you need to uh rip up the uh change your last name so you don't pay taxes right it's not in the way that I want it to come out. To any questioning or criticism of his action, he instantly proffers his reliance upon prayer for guidance in all matters, great or small. He has forgotten the possibility of his own wishful thinking and the human tendency to rationalize has distorted the so-called guidance. I did that. I wrecked a marriage that way. i wrecked um i wreckged relationships that way right i made decisions based on self after meditating and thinking i got an answer rather than what it asks me to do is to look at my my step 11 in a very practical way and go to my sponsor with with the honest truth about my days and my problems right the other thing it talks about is we fall into another similar temptation in step 11 when we think we form ideas as to what we think god's will is for other people right oh i've prayed and that works try it with your husband i've played and meditated in a warren i have an alcoholic husband who's in sobriety we have we have an aa home and aa babies and and it wouldn't go over so hot if i came out of meditation with direction for him um uh we say to ourselves this one ought to be cured of his fatal malady, or this one ought to be relieved of his emotional pain. We pray for things of others. Basically what we're doing then, and I've done it. I've been through a lot. I'm not going to do it again. I don't want to do it. Like, I've done it, you know? So I chose kind of a not so hot topic because the trials that I have gone through in sobriety would not have been met um when i was in that disconnect between step 11 really transforming my life um what what i would do is i would mistake um the good things that happen for the work i did mildred talks a lot about i'm not getting these uh if i get something good in my career and my relationship it's not because i've said the right prayer it's generally that i've worked a very simple tight program and continue to look at my my you know to continue to own when my fear jealousy selfishness has shown up in my relationships in my finances at my work you know um when they talk about the promises it actually before it talks about finances this fear of people and of economics insecurity leave us, right? And so what I found with this practical approach to step 11 first, and then seeking all the yummy stuff that I seek, because it feels great and does clear the channel. But if I do it this practical way, what's happened is I have, I'll be married 12 years in a week. I've been married a decade. The problems we had day one don't exist we may have new ones we don't fight really anymore that's I know Mildred you might not believe we we have three children and I can show up for them my big big um my big big things that made me quit to anger and cut people off in my life um I have a choice in that or did they disappear completely no but i have a choice in how i act you know had i not had this this uh sponsorship that made it very practical and humbling proposition the 12th of the 11th step had it not been humble and practical i would have been screwed when i got on an airplane at whatever year sober 12 years sober and come to california 3 000 miles away i would have been very lonely and what i found is that um as it says is is it works it really does i have a daily discipline that i practice and i have away of understanding um where my wrongs are and who to go to to make it right um this 12 of the last uh 17 years we've had these three babies and, um, and we've moved. I've, I've had losses in sobriety, um uh that I've had to grieve, um big ones. Um and the last year on top of global pandemic I have had some pretty heavy-duty health diagnosis, diagnoses that, um I've been okay with you know um eight weeks ago i had an operation that disfigured me to save my life in a pandemic and i don't need to get into those specifics really but i say those things because i want you to see what 12 steps good sponsorship and a practical program of change that i can access a higher power has done for me. I didn't do this by myself. I've had many, many, very, very large spiritual experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous over the last 20 years. but that does not replace and give me what i need what i'm seeking is the transformation that is talked about in groups like this with people like this and mildred um and many meant teresa ali um i walk amongst giants and i'm very very grateful for that um i i think that what god wants for me is to um be rid of those felt those chains that bound me and and yeah i have 24 hours to do that you know i have24 hours to do that and i have a pathway out you know i can call mildred and it could be months i'm much better at sponsorship than i am that sponsee-ership. And I like to think it's not ego, but honestly, I work 24 hours in this way and for the most part, I'm free. But I can call her standing out. The ocean is right here and I can stand out and walk away from the children and walkaway from my husband. And in about three minutes of hearing her voice, she will say to me, I phoned her last time and we spoke tears streaming down. And I don't go there with really anyone. And, and I said, I'm lonely and I'm scared. And she just said, you know what? It's not about all that. And she could in two sentences, just like Apsi and I have, in two senses, she could clear away the noise, the human noise and get that ember that maybe was uncovered with the calamity of my life and she could spark it and it could grow and that's step 11 in my current consciousness with my current understanding and my current circumstances so I'm grateful to be here and I'm thinking of you all if you are new if you're new or not new and you are struggling, uh, if you're a woman, I'm happy isolated. And, um, I can't wait to connect with you if you are a struggling. And I also can't weight for you. If you haven't had the experience of walking into a room of Alcoholics Anonymous and sitting there in the room with the power um i i pray that that that time comes again soon um uh and in the meantime it works just like this um so thank you ali i'm alina an alcoholic and uh i love how you talked about the loneliness of um of when you've been around a while loneliness um because uh i came in here 35 years ago in June and um I was four years sober and I remember feeling like I couldn't raise my hand and say I was lonely and I was afraid and that I wanted to drink um and I ended up obviously picking up a drink um the only thing I ever did right was I continued to come continue to come no matter what was going on um and i also have been home with three children and a husband that was gone all day also an AA marriage and um I remember the incredible loneliness of that I mean and you know we I always thought well if I come in here and I get sober I'm gonna be like um that old Norelco commercial you know when the Santa was was riding Norellco down the hill like a sled that's what I thought it was going to be like and it was not like that um and I love how you bring in the practicality of step 11 because no it's not all about chanting and and and being in yoga I mean have you ever tried anybody ever tried to do yoga with three kids and two dogs around it's impossible right and I remember you know I choose these sponsors who would say yes call me at seven o'clock every morning right and not if not a minute later I won't take the call and I'm like I got three kids I mean I could be up all night with one of these kids sick it was just like nothing i was trying to work things and it just wasn't going the way i thought it would go um so i just love that you bring that up and to be able to reach out to to a woman who um and i have that connection with a woman as well um and a few of them actually i'm so blessed um because honestly it's like i call them like my little my little valiums or or quaaludes around, you know, that'll chill me out no matter what's going on. Never being at this beautiful place in, I don't know, we were at some vacation and I'm standing on the seawall crying and I'M IN A FIVE STAR RESORT WITH MY KIDS AND MY HUSBAND AND I'M LIKE, WHY DON'T I BE HERE? AND I REMEMBER THEM JUST SAYING, EVERYTHING'S OKAY. GO HAVE A NICE TIME. JUST RELAX. JUST GET THROUGH THE DAY. THAT'S ALL. AND IT WAS SO GOOD FOR ME. LIKE, IT WAS JUST, thanks a million uh heather you were fabulous thank you so much that's all i got thank you eileen mildred come on up please what a pleasure uh to be here i have been asking ally for the last five weeks is she coming is she coming it's true because you're very precious to me and to have this opportunity to hear you speak uh about what has happened in your soul it's um you're just absolutely a wonderful human being i think back to some of the times that we had and i have tell you heather i have grown as much from being with you as you have grown from being avec me and And I can't find the right words, the nice words, except to say you're absolutely wonderful. And I feel so privileged to be at this meeting tonight. And I'd like to grab my computer and your picture in it and just hug you and let you know how much I love you. Thank you. You're welcome. she's my big sister or my aunt or my i don't know i love you so i will say this too about mildred can i just say something i'm sorry before someone comes on and this might be a little controversial and i don't mean to be i really don't i'm a mush ball i don t mean i love alcohol it's anonymous alcohol alcohol it s anonymous disillusionment some of my uh you know sometimes fill back the curtain the person, the talk the post it can be longer I think there can be that despair and you know what I've watched her I've watched her blossom is it me is it me or are you breaking up anyways I don't know So, you know, in terms of Mel D, the one thing I will say is that in 25 years of alcoholism. I'm an alcoholic and it's good to be here tonight. Hey Ali, how you doing? Man, and I want to say before I get started, man, my group loved you last Thursday night, man. You touched my heart dearly. And Heather, you brought such a good strong message. And when you start talking about being here a while and you start Talking About How, you You know, now when you went through the steps with Mildred back the second time and how you had that other awakening was simple and basic. And it was really, really good. You know? And I really touched me deeply. And you talked about your taxes and overeating and different other things that we have to look at as we get here and we start to get better. You know. I really appreciate the honesty that when I come on to this meeting that I get here. You know and like I said, And I'm really, really grateful that I met a whole – through the Zoom process, that I've met a full group of people that I probably would have not ever met. And I am really grateful to God for that. So, Heather, thank you for such a strong message tonight. And Ali, thankyou for what you do, man. Peace be with you guys. God bless you. Lots of love to you, my brother. Thank you for being here, man, Eddie M., come on up, please. uh just like hello everybody my name is eddie i'm an alcoholic hi eddie grateful to be here hi heather you were just breaking up heather i was i was hoping to hear what you were saying i wanted to hear whatever you were seeing but you just broke up but uh anyways as far as your messages because thank you so much for taking the time and being out here and uh just reminding me what the 11th step is all about. You know, I haven't been in a Zoom meeting in quite some time because we're doing face-to-face meetings. I'm in Illinois, so we're going to do face-To-face videos down here already. And coming back into Zoom, I couldn't have picked a better speaker. It's just God's way of telling me, you know, that I'm in the right place. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your experience. God bless you all. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Eddie. jane mckinnon come on up please hi my name is jane ann and i am an alcoholic um i just wanted to say thank you like i'm so blessed to have signed on here today i was working with a sponsor and i was saying this to her like not knowing if it was right or not but i was like no it's not so much the prayers you're saying but the person you're being and i thought to myself where did that come from but just hearing you say that lets me know that god is working right and um but i just wanted to say that i love i loved it when you said like if you asked me how god talked to me you would think i was weird because that's exactly how i feel so it's just lots of confirmation tonight that perhaps um god isworking in my life thanks to this program so i just want to say god bless you thank you so much for your service everybody thank you very much thank you thank you a little comment i just wanted to let you know i appreciate your talk so much it is exactly what i needed to hear today i related to how you were talking about sort of the self-destructive behavior as well in sobriety um i i currently um i'm just sort of in a period of growth and I'm finally sort of connecting the dots in terms of my role and things and the things that I severely need to work on because I've been sober like four and a half years but I still have so much more to do and I talked with a very good friend of mine me a and she made some recommendations and then I heard you tonight and it was just like that's the missing puzzle piece and thank you it's amazing thank you thank you Thank You Thank You Becky Heather you you mentioned so honestly about the mistakes and and the pitfalls and that and the ego resurgence in recovery and the pain you know that life sometimes throws at us I myself have also some of the most profound spiritual growth opportunities have been through my mistakes, the isms of alcoholism running the show and my ego, the pain in recovery. Can I ask you if you were to say right now, share with us, what comes to mind as one of the most painful yet spirit awakening moments in your time and how that occurred? Yeah, let me know if I'm still breaking up, okay? You're good now. Okay. um I've had I've had many I had a father who died in sobriety and we were given a will that was made with my with my stepmother and my father they had the same will and nobody knew that five years later at 52 she would my father died at 54 and that was my number one on all my inventories and Alcoholics Anonymous taught, taught me how to forgive him. And he, and in one sentence, Alcoholics Anonymous taught me that I had to stop looking at what kind of father he wasn't and start looking at what kind OF daughter I was. And the book talked about forgiveness. So that was, um, that was a literally what, what the book talks about is the ill. I watched my father's cancer go to his brain at 54 and leave the planet. And that experience of understanding that I'm to look at myself and who I am, rather than blame the world for my problems, it really, that translates when I go to the bank, and someone looks at me the wrong way, right? That thing that the book talked about happened to me i saw that the man was spiritually sick and that my job and then five years later my stepmother um got very very ill with four young children who i love who are most of them are sober uh that's a whole other talk but um she she got bad advice on her deathbed and probably out of fear, wrote another will with her family. And I won't get into the details, but at about eight years sober, I had to make a choice. Did I want to hang on to that thing that went to the core? See, I learned in the inventory process that the reason why that was so detrimental because it went tothe core of who I am on the planet. i am equal and my i am my father's daughter right and i was justified and even even everybody involved knew we were justified but i got to a place on the planet with no no uh adults and i got to place with mildred and where it was like do i want to be right or do i wanna have brothers and maybe be there for them because they have no parents and no family home two of them are addicted to opioids and you're sober. And I stood at the turning point at whatever it was, four years sober, five years sober. And I had to step away from ever discussing that again. That was it. And that was, I could say so many more practical, practical, real ways where I stood at the turning point, and I had to decide, was I going to be a woman of God? Or was I going to let this world and its problems dictate my daily thought life and how I act in my relationships? And Ali's done fifth steps with those boys. I've had the pleasure of nothing to do with me, but 12-stepping four of my brothers who joined the group that I started in toronto with my husband love and tolerance we started the love and tolerance group and so i mean there's so many times i can tell you practical real life experiences where this stuff i had to make a choice i hope that's what you what you meant it was beautiful thank you so much thank you so much both absy and i are so blessed to have you in our lives my friend jack w come on up brother hi jack hi there thanks heather i just yeah that was amazing i just want to know i mean i know i know i how i approach this meditation my practice of meditation and prayer and how important it is i'm just for any newcomers on the call right now who don't think that this is going to work you don't thing you know that what we're offering is going to have any real effect in their life. In the early stages where they're just, you know, just maybe a few days or a few weeks sober, what advice would you give them in terms of like just starting to do this stuff? Just starting to incorporate prayer meditation, like even like just at the outset of the steps, like what kind of encouragement? Thank you. Yes. Awesome. Awesome question. What I will say to you is that what do you have to lose? what do you have to lose and um i think that was also the choice of my why i chose the topic and and to emphasize this very simple discipline doesn't it doesn't it talks about yes we can go to the sunlit beach but it before you get to step step 11 i was so beaten that i i was willing to do what anyone ever ever said and my first sponsor said you have nothing to lose by bookending your day with, help me. Are you there? And it's funny, every teacher I've had, when I first went to Mildred, we might've started with 20 minutes of meditation, but the first assignment, spiritual assignment I would give you is many times a day, pause if you can and take a deep breath. That is the life force. You're not keeping yourself alive. And, um, and if you can start to just say utter to something, your breath help, you know? And it was what happened in the early days for me was that, that mushy girl who would say, yeah, yeah. Yeah. God. Oh yeah. God, God, right. I can't meditation in the early days was me running for five miles cause I was anorexic and I, I was afraid of fat and listening to Radiohead. I just had to be busy, I had to be busy. I used to say, I can't meditate, I'm ugh, and I was. I think if you can start leaving the idea of prayer and meditation for down where it belongs at step 11 and start with something simple as understanding that the way I had been living wasn't getting me anywhere. So if a suggestion in a meeting is for me to start my day and end my day on my knees, on my head, cross-legged on a pillow, and say whatever it is that helped Heather A. on the Zoom call, are you there? I need help. You know, and at first it's about the booze. It is about the boos in any form. Booze in a baggie, booze on a mirror. it is about the booze at the beginning. And so if your prayer can simply be whatever helped Allie, whatever helped all those people at my meeting tonight, be here with me. Show yourself to me. You know, and then there's these simple prayers that I learned the serenity prayer. And I remember going to meetings, walking in Kitchener-Waterloo. I went from New York City, manhattan to kitchener waterloo in ontario and treatment and i said that serenity prayer over and over a thousand times a day i was so afraid of myself i was afraid of my self because i woke up every morning saying i'm not gonna puke today i'mnot going to drink today i am not going to do it and hours later i'd be running to get what i needed so what do you have to lose start simple Keep it simple. Keep it very, very simple. And find someone at a meeting who shares a message of depth and weight. What does that mean? Something that stirs you a little bit and references the big book. If they got a lot of answers and they tell you to go read this on your own if they tell you let's meet at the coffee shop and break it open together that's probably that's the direction i would go and then and then god does the rest my higher power does the rest i left meetings going holy crap where god would just go to my thinking in my spirit and the same thing will happen to you give it time don't pick up a drink ask for help that's it and and i got a phone number if you're a girl thank you jack thank you heather one of our co-hosts samantha would like who has a question come on up please samantha hi there heather um hi friends and heather i don't know if you would remember me but you used to go to a prayer meeting on wednesday evenings way back in the day and and i was somebody who also went to those same prayer meetings amazing yeah there were some of you probably came to my house in toronto i made your house i yeah i think i did and um anyhow so uh that was yeah a long time ago and nice to see you're you're doing well it's good thank you very much for your message i what i was wondering about is if i have noticed in my own sobriety that i um things are fine you know whatever you want to define fine by and and then there is some kind of major upheaval and um i know i'm digging back into the work and in a way that i haven't before because of major people but i keep getting hit like i think i was slammed last week i'm hit this week again like it's it's and it's not just little stuff it's big stuff and um and i guess life's like that it just seems so strange you know so i guess my question for you is do you is there extra practice that you do yeah i mean um first of all if you want to get get get in touch you know i i you know it helps to have people who can ask why fills us a card that rocks our faith you know I tried to describe after two minutes of talking with someone like Mildred who has a message of depth and weight on a molecular level doesn't matter what's going on it's it's she gives me the Alcoholics Anonymous or the spiritual stance on that problem um i i what i will tell you is that that is why it is imperative i think what happens as we stay the human tendency and especially the alcoholic tendency would be to let up it talks about that in our literature to let off on the spiritual way of life and in fact what i have decided uh about year six was my daily reprieve and the 15 things that I do, no matter if I have three children and a husband and a breast cancer diagnosis. And no matter what is going on, you know, I wake up and I do the same thing I did day one. I'm doing day year 17. and it talks about if i didn't have that skeleton the meat would fall off the bones do you know what i'm trying to say if i didn'thave the hanger of the triangle that the garment wouldn't stay and so through uh divorce and cancer and you know all these things that have happened in my infertility so much has happened in myself i shouldn't be sober. A drunk of my nature would, at very least, if I didn't drink, get really depressed and think that I need X, Y, Z to fix that depression. So what I would say to you, and it's a boring answer, is get in touch with someone who can get you back to that daily reprieve of waking up and understanding that step one is no longer about booze. It is about life, circumstances and then accessing the process that we do to go from self to spirit and apply it to that thing you're going through. And I can expound on that even if we only talk once and we never talk again and you rely on your sponsor, I just think you need people who can take the circumstance and then plug it into not my idea of your circumstance of the steps and where it falls into and what you're experiencing and what your thinking. And we do that with each other. So I'm sorry for what you are going through, and I'm here if you need. Hey, everyone. Damien Alcoholic. Hi, Damien. Heather, thank you very much for your brutal honesty tonight. When I came on, my sponsor and his wife sent me this flyer. And I had no compulsion to share tonight. But I guess my higher power kicked me in the butt a little. And your honesty just moved me. And six years in, I had hit a spiritual bottom. And got on my knees in a hotel room and said that foxhole prayer once again. And I was, you know, six years in the program and very active in the program. But I was dying inside. And, you know, I asked God to help me. And he put a new sponsor. He put a new teacher in my life. And we sat down. We opened that big book line by line, word by word. And the last three years have been amazing. And then we hit a quarantine and I personally liked being quarantined because it was a legal excuse to isolate. But I dove in with both feet into this Zoom thing and loved it. Was on Zoom all day, opened up my own Zoom account, heard Fifth Steps, did another Fifth Step with my sponsor. and um according to my sponsor and the men in my life they claim over the past three months that i have just grown so much spiritually and um this is what they tell me then i had to go back to work and it's like the shit show started all over again and you know i have a 20 minute routine in the morning i have a 20 minute routine at night um you know heather you made me laugh because i'm a way better sponsor than i am a sponsee and um even though it's funny my sponsor knows what's going on with me before i do and i think i guess i just needed to share tonight that just in the past two weeks being back out in the world um i just feel a little afraid and a little more broken than normal and i guess i just needed to admit that to another group of drunks who would understand that where other people won't and i know it'll be okay and you know my sponsor is calvin s no doubt calvin and um you know heather much like you i only need to hear his voice i only needs to hear his voice and it all just gets better and i have a feeling after this share and after this meeting i'm going to hear a lot of his voice but um i just needed to say i am afraid and i am feeling just a little broken lately but that's okay because i have a program and a group of men and a fellowship to fall back on thank you everybody very much and thank you heather for your honesty can i just say something i don't think you could be awake in the planet today and not be a little bit afraid I think you couldn't be a little bit awake with your eyes open and I'll just say very quickly a very practical thing I've done is I've limited how much outside noise I take in I know we can't always do that with our work but I did a year I've gone almost a year without social media I've I've done certain things to harken back to a simpler time because it's gotten very not simple and I stay informed for about 20 minutes a day and then I focus on the here and now and the task at hand I hope that helped you. Thank you, Heather. Bill W. Oshawa, come on up, please. Oshawah, Oshawat. Yeah, hi, Heather, it's Bill from the One Day at a Time at Jane and French, and anyway, Heather I must say I just got so much out of your message tonight and And before I forget, I got to mention that Damien, my friend, you're on a good journey. Just stay with it with your sponsor and all you guys there, my friends. But anyway, Heather, you opened up a whole new world to Step 11 for me tonight. And all I have to do is apply myself and the help of other people like you and my sponsor and other people. You're just an inspiration to us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Damien. Thank you. Thank you Bill. Ken and Ken and Tracy come on up please. Ken or Tracy and. Hi, I'm tracing alcoholic. Thanks Heather. I really appreciate what you had to say to, and I feel like I've been held accountable and that's really, really good. But I love it when I get that out of somebody's share. I do have a question for you out of the big book on page 86. There's one little part here. I've never been quite clear on it, and it says, For after all, God gave us brains to use. Can you tell me what's your personal understanding of that little bit there? give me one sec it's talking about the misuse of how our imaginations um and and and it goes on to say if we align our thinking of god so it says um we pray only for knowledge of god's will for us and the power to carry that out well you know I think when I first got here like the book says I wanted to be rendered white as snow and become come out of these prayers having the defect of jealousy and rage magically lifted out procrastination I prayed and it was removed and what I understood was um that we have to align our thinking so that our actions can fall in line with how God might want us to think. And I only discover that through inventory and the proceeding steps four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And I don't know where you're at because that's a pretty ambiguous answer, but our thinking is there. We have this working part of the brain when we first get here and we're starting to introduce accountability, and saying I'm sorry. I don't know about you drunks, but for me the hardest thing I can do is when I do this step the way it's outlined, my husband walks in, I say I'm sorry, I was rude, I Was really rude. I was stressed out and you didn't deserve that. Oh, anyways, so I hope that helps. It's just it's not it's more than just that line. But what they're talking about is if we align ourselves with thinking and acting from a principled place, you know, and we get that in six and seven. We get that pause when agitated. Mildred was the first person that made six and Seven actually make sense. It wasn't just in the morning I pray to have jealousy removed. When my husband, I perceived looking at a woman, I've kicked people out of my house for looking at a Britney Spears video because my father left my mother and I learned all that but it's that very practical thing is I know that I'm armed with the facts about how my disease shows up so the next time Britney Speirs comes up and I'm policing my husband's eyes it's incumbent on me to say that's your wound showing up maybe don't kick him out later on see if you still feel that way after praying and talking to your sponsor if you need to talk to him come to him and say i know this doesn't make sense right it's about learning to apply what it says and you know at first this i remember the first time i didn't want to steal or i was i said i'm sorry to the woman at the bank or you know i started to do these actions that were right living i'm like wow who was that right it says in the spiritual experience it talks about our reaction to life is where it first shows up that this god consciousness is taking hold of the way we think and the way react so i hope that flushes it out a little bit but i i you know i think that's what i've been taught and what i'm experienced thank you heather theresa frisa alcoholic thank you fire um i just feel like we could chat for a while right rather than a question uh but i i really enjoyed again hearing someone articulate my experience thank you for that i think uh what i've come to understand is how i grow spiritually is the less no how i growth spiritually is letting go of all the things that are blocking me and so that these steps are aligned in such a way to help me to constantly see that, right? See where I'm at. And what I wanted to ask you is after a while, do you arrive at a place of less judgment about that? Right. So I think I've gotten to that place where I am not judging that as much, right. Judging of the awareness of self that stands in the way of my usefulness. Uh, I get an opportunity to see it. I have these steps that help me to do something with it and then i get to do what's in front of me so do you see less judgment of all of that for yourself yeah you know what i mean yeah well first of all we can meet up you're down the street um when you're not talking uh and traveling the world but um love to have you to come over um i i i think there's an arc an arc that happens and um i know who i am and i understand um i was talking with a non-alcoholic about the pandemic and and and some uh she was asking my advice about a relationship and making amends in that relationship and i gave her an answer and she said oh my god you why aren't you becoming a shrink during the pandemic you could go and get your license and make hundreds of dollars and i'd like but I think when you sponsor other people it yes it happens when I'm being sponsored and I'm practicing this but don't you think when I've you're sitting in these rooms with these people who are bearing your souls God's message to me is that we are much more alike than we are different and we none of us are rendered white as snow ever and I do not do this thing perfectly why would they give us so many opportunities to make make our mistakes and make it right. Right? This, the difference now is there's less judgment. I understand who I am. And it's easier when husband walks in the door to say, I'm sorry, let's, let's make this right. Let's get help if we need it. Like, like I'm softer, you know, I am not perfect. I'm soft. And in doing that, you see what Mildred in the last 17 years has, I'll end on this it's revealed to me what makes me more most uncomfortable in life is intimacy and this step 11 gives me an opportunity to either become pious and put myself above you or it allows me to be humble and commune with you right it allows me to be humble and commune because there's only one of us here as Mildred taught me we are one and I can fight that and I could fight that. And I can want to be perfect and I couldn't want to go to the podium and tell you that it's just, I, you know, it's. You know, my life, my husband's a little like that. He, he gets so happy about his life. Uh, he dove off a seven foot building, like he was diving into a pool. And now we have the ocean and three children. we you know we kept trying to give our life away and God gave us our life back and three others to take care of so yes a long answer is there's less judgment and I think the biggest key if you are having a tough time is get busy with a newcomer because it's in those discussions in the early days where the person is suffering from the drink or the chaos or the mess where I go wow okay here's what got me out of that then I apply it a little bit more it's fresh in my lobe and in the fifth step God has shown me over and over and over wow we're not different you don't have to be ashamed and so that's how I've grown judgment is the 12th step so that should lead into the next step thank you awesome love you