The Doctor Who Told Her She Had Six Months to Live – Liz B.

About This Speaker Tape

New York City, 19 years of sleeping on Liberty Park benches and waking up in places she didn't recognize. Liz B. remembers the rice wine her mother made from welfare ingredients and the bathtub booze she sold by the gallon to buy better shoes for her siblings.

She recalls the wreckage: a marriage to Mr. Bailey that began with her crying in a courthouse, a leopard fur coat she hated because it made her too easy to spot, and legs burnt like raw meat from frying a frozen chicken while drunk. She describes the depths of the "sauce," jumping out of second-story windows and screaming at a Higher Power from a basement.

After 52 years of sobriety, she speaks of the hard road—the son who still hates her guts and the daughter lost to Lou Gehrig's disease. She tells the room she is a "36-year arrested cancer patient" who outlived the doctor who gave her six months to live, turning her scars into stars.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Liz B. opens with gratitude and a joke about her anonymity being 'shot to hell'.
• 4:15 Childhood: Liz B. describes her mother making rice wine from welfare ingredients.
• 8:30 Marriage: Liz B. recounts marrying Mr. B. at 14 and the 'sorriest day' of his life.
• 13:10 Hitting Bottom: The story of the second-story window suicide attempt and Mr. B.'s reaction.
• 17:45 Surrender: Liz B. describes her desperate prayer to a Higher Power and her first visit to AA.
• 21:30 Sponsorship: Liz B. discusses her tough Irish sponsor and the importance of not using 'half measures'.
• 26:15 Amends: Liz B. shares the emotional moment of making amends to Mr. B. in Sloan's Kettering Hospital.
• 31:00 Loss: Liz B. speaks on the deaths of her father, son, and sister, and the necessity of telling one's story.
• 35:45 Health: Liz B. discusses surviving cancer and a stroke, using jazz music to 'jazz the stroke right away'.
• 40:00 Traditions: Liz B. emphasizes the importance of the 12 Traditions and protecting anonymity.