The Empty Page for Special Talents and Abilities – Nancy C.

Okay. Well, welcome to Four for Recovery. I am usually paired with my co-host Dale, who has a birthday and is in Chicago celebrating that. He may try and bop in and see us a little bit later, which would be nice. But if we could open this with the set-aside prayer, please. God, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, about myself, about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and about my fellows so that I may have a new experience with all of those. And so before we introduce her speaker, I think she has asked, is this right, Mike? We have Audrey Reed next. I believe so. But since you mentioned Dale real quick, yes, because they'll probably listen to this. If you like yourself and say happy birthday real quick and I'll meet everybody back down and we'll do the reading that way. Dale feels a love that he's missing out right now. Happy birthday, Dale. Happy birthday. Hey, Dale. Happy birthday Dale. Thank you guys. Awesome. Now we'll go to the reading. Okay. All right, Audrey. Nancy has chosen a reading from the big book on page one 32. And if you would please read that for us, that paragraph, you just have to unmute yourself. Let's see. Oh, okay. There we are. Thank you very much. Alcoholic Audrey. um page 132 in the big book so we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past but why shouldn't we laugh we have recovered and have been given the power to help others thank you thank you audrey and um i love that passage because it reminds me of so many times in meetings um when you know somebody will bring up something that's just tragic or not or just would not be funny to anyone else and we're all just cracking up uh and that's i think important to remember and uh nancy i heard nancy just once speak on the great facts meeting and um i just i just fell in love with her and what she had to say so when i asked her if she would speak here for us she immediately said yes for which i am very very grateful and uh without further ado i give you nancy hi everybody i'm nancy cook i'm an alcoholic I'm not quite woo ready yet it's eight o'clock here where I'm at I'm not haven't had enough I was afraid to drink too much coffee because I thought I might have to get up during the middle of my share restroom so I I might be a little dull today I'm not sure what to tell you but Nan thank you so much and I love that passage another passage I love I have so many favorite parts of the big book but we'd be here all day reading them I love especially 60 to 63 that's my favorite favorite but another passage i love is i i don't know it's in the same family afterwards where it talks about we constantly need sweets available and i just loved that when i was new talks about sweets smoking and coffee like that's what i'm talking about thank god there was no big lecture about you need to quit all that you know so uh i'm grateful i never thought i'd laugh again oh my god i i when i finally surrendered to alcoholics anonymous i had been trying to do AA Light for a few months after I had my last big debacle, which I'll share about. But I've been trying to DOAA Light, which is just come to a few meetings, look around, say, now I know I got a problem. I can do something about my problem. And the meeting I used to go to was on Monday night. And they'd said, keep coming back. I really thought they meant next Monday night because who in their right mind is going to go to a meeting on Saturday? That's clubbing night right you know so it's friday and thursday and then of course you know there's monday night football there's all those nights that you just can't miss in the bar but monday was the least the least day that uh that i was willing to surrender to try to go to alcoholics anonymous i go to a monday noon or a lot of times noon meeting out here in downey and i'm always laughing at the court cards that day and i identify with them so much it's just like i'll give up a monday noon i'm not giving up any more time to goto go toa meeting and uh but when i surrendered that night in the parking lot so I couldn't drink again, I really thought that I would be sober and somber. I really did not think I'd ever laugh again because really honestly, uh, I, the only fun times I'd had in my life was when I was drinking from like age 20 to 29. I had a good childhood. I'm sure it was because I look back on the pictures and the activities and, and that, and the telling of the family lore with my brothers and sisters. And it seemed like it was a good time by all. But I have a peculiar, I have a bad perception. I still do left untreated like stuff happens out here. It goes in the twistle flex and it just comes out, you know, like one family camp trip that was a really ton of fun for everybody. Great fun camp trip. The whole time I was obsessed because at the campgrounds there was like a dog, but I thought it was a wolf and no one knew that it was really a wolf. You know, so for two weeks I'm like hiding in the car because I knew the wolf was going of it's ridiculous right so the family's telling the story and laugh and I'm just like we're you know so I thought I'd be sober and somber so I really love this passage about cheerfulness and laughter you know really uh because I love Alcoholics Anonymous you know that we can throw our heads back like man there's somebody some the worst possible thing in the meeting right and sometimes it's still fresh for them so it's not funny for them and cracking up more people right jesus and uh i had this one meeting where this guy was there on a court card they asked him to share at the monday nooner he had gotten in a he had gotten a dui when he hit another car and both of them went to jail and both of them ended up in the aa meetings just you know truth is stranger than fiction but anyway uh so i didn't start drinking until i was 20 years old but i really needed to drink when I was in, Jesus, kindergarten. When I was in kindergarten, I was born in 1954 so this is back in the 50s and in kindergarten back in those days there was nothing to it. Like my granddaughter just finished kindergarten and she knows how to read. Swear to God she can read. But back in my day we just ate graham crackers and had recess and you know, it was simple. And I just one day, I just looked around, I guess, and I just walked home. You know, I can't remember exactly my motivation for walking home. But obviously, I wasn't happy there. You Know, I couldn't describe restless, irritable discontent. Back in those days, I didn't have the vocabulary for my mom's Nancy, what are you doing here? And I'm like, I don't know. I really do not know. So I guess I just cannot handle life. Right. and um you know i was a chubby kid a sensitive kid just oh just you had to walk on eggshells to be around me because i didn't think anything was funny and you couldn't josh or joke with me and it's just miserable and uh but i wasn't going to drink because my parents do not drink neither do my brothers and my sister nobody drinks like and they have great success with their life by uh you know this morning i was reading step one with one of my sponsees and it talks about step one, who wishes to admit complete defeat? Practically no one. Of course, like in our whole society, we're not raised to admit defeat. Right. And that's my family. They don't admit defeat if they want something or they try harder. They're well-educated, you know, and that's how we're trained. I mean, I don't tell them, I didn't tell my kid if she flunked the test. Oh, give up. You're defeated. Admit defeat. You'll be happier. Right? You tell them try again. Keep trying. You can do it. Put your mind to it. And then we come to AA and it's like, you know, you got to admit defeat before you move on. Not just about drinking, but about life, right? Just white flag. But so I wasn't going to drink. I'm 20 years old and I turned down drinking a lot of times because, you know that was how I was raised. But at this party that I went to in a college party, they had spiked the punch with Strawberry Hill wine. So it was in a punch bowl. So, it was disguised and I drank the punch. And what happened was before I drank the punch. I had been standing at the, at the wall with my other goobery friends. Right. And what happened? I drank the punch and the whole party came around me and started dancing around me in a big circle going, Nancy, Nancy. Which really didn't happen, but that's my memory of that night. You know what I mean? Like, that's how I remember it. It doesn't matter if it happened or not. The way I felt was what mattered. Right? You know What I mean like this, like, Oh my God, I did not know how bad I felt my whole life until I felt good. Like, I was free. It was the third step prayer right there for me. Freedom of the bondage of self, right? I just was just like relieved of all that that I've always had, right, that, you know, I don't know if it was alcoholism or the precursor to alcoholism or just being a tangled up mess of fear and self-absorption, which I also didn't know. I thought I was just shy. But when you're just shy, you're thinking about yourself and how shy you are. And you know what I mean? For me. Anyway, and so the next day, I worked at Tasty Freeze. And the next Day, I'm taking apart the shake machine at taste at the Tasty freeze. And I'm thinking, I cannot wait to do it again. I already am obsessed with the effect produced by alcohol like right, I went from I'm never going to drink to the very next day. I'm like, I have to drink again. Like I'm just like lit and ready to go. And, you know, I started being a daily drinker, right? I just loved it. And, uh, you knows, six months into my drinking, I was getting gas at a gas station and some of you old timers remember this, they used to call them service stations because the attendant would come out and put the gas in your car for you for 25 cents a gallon, right? The good old days, they would run, hustle out to your car to put the glass in. This man hustled out to the car named Skeeter and we fell in love at the gas pump that night, you know and uh dropped out of school crazy moved in with him and um they just craziness right and he turned out to be a violent guy which you know i've never experienced anything i just came from a nice family i mean i never even got spanked i'm the kind of kid that i already feel bad when i've done something wrong before you know so you don't really have to spank because i'm already going in on myself i'm just no good you know which is also self-centered i found like when my sponsor you hear when you're new, that we're self-centered. And I honestly did not think that applied to me because I thought self-centred meant that you thought highly of yourself, like you were popular and pretty and a cheerleader and like, oh, I'm all that. I'm All That. I never thought I was All That ever in my life, right? Till now. Anyway, my sponsor said, it's not how highly you think of yourself that makes you self- centred. It's how often you think of yourself that makes you self-centered, right? And so even when I'm thinking bad about myself, even when i'm, you know, thinking about, oh, i'm no good, that's still self-centredness. I'm still the bondage of self, right, which i did not know that and um so anyway this guy started, you know, hitting me and, you know, the place we lived at it was just a cockroach infested place and it was just a bunch of low-life people like us living in this apartment complex and just craziness. Right. And, um, one day he beat me up pretty good and he kicked me out of the apartment. I had a broken, uh, rib and broken eardrum and, and I'm sitting out on the steps of this apartment, right? My parents lived the next city over, but I could not call them and ask them for help. Right? Because my pride, my family, we just don't ask for help, right. And they're successful at that. They really are happy people, but i can't ask them for help right because I cannot my pride about not you know not not handling this situation got to me so the only recourse I have is to talk my way back into the apartment which I did probably by apologizing for whatever I said to make him hit me you know what I mean I don't know if you've ever been in a violent relationship but that's just how we roll right so I get back in the apartment but I know something's got to change like I got to get out of this situation and so the next day I'm down at the pool and I'm reading the one ads and it says nude models earn $500 a week. And I'm like, right on now I've found diet pills and I've managed to lose some of that baby fat with the help of Ritalin that I stole from my brother who had, who had ADHD. And, uh, and, but I'm thinking I'm still pretty naive. Right. And i'm thinking that I would be nude modeling, like perhaps for my college art class where I would Be sitting on a stool or on a bear rug or something. And the students would be sketching me with charcoal. You know what I mean? Like, I really did not know what that entailed. And so I go down for my interview at the fantasy nude modeling studio and they lay it out, you know, what I got to do for the $500 a week. And I was pretty shocked, surprised. And I go home and I tell Skeeter and he says, well, that's a good idea. Okay. I mean, just like this is my very first, I never even had a date in high school, not even one date. And I used to think it was because I was fat that my fat was off-putting to men. And since I've been to Alcoholics Anonymous and have exhaustingly examined how, how I am, it was, I don't think it Was my fat that was off putting it's I'm misshapen inside. I'm like fat on the inside with my insecurity and my, I mean, nobody wants to be with somebody who isn't funny at all, you know, or just can't take a joke or just sensitive makes everything be about them like I'm misshapen on the inside right and you know I know that because today I still struggle with my weight when I walk into a room I know nobody says oh there's big fat Nancy Cook you know what I mean like when I come in I bring a lot of something besides just how I look which when I was new I was just possessed everything was about my outsides everything was about how I look because I had nothing I was a shell on the outside but anyway so he's like oh that's a good idea. So I start working at the nude modeling studio and I wasn't there too long before I got arrested for prostitution because, you know, I didn't know the tricks of the game. Like you can't just lay out the prices when someone comes in. I didn'T know, you KNOW what I MEAN? So I get arrested and part of my probation is I can'T work at any nude modeling studio. And I remember, oh my God, and I've dropped out of school. I got nothing right. You know, and I was doing I was living at the living in the dorms like I had had an opportunity for a good life there in school. And I dropped out. I got nothing right. So I got a job as a waitress at this restaurant called Norm's 24 hour restaurant that amazingly I'm still at 45 years later, which is a miracle and eventually a testament to Alcoholics Anonymous. But so I start working at this restaurant called Norm's. I get rid of this guy. I get another guy. Guess what? He's crazy and violent to get rid of that guy, get another guy surprised. He's crazy and violent too. Like I used to just be such a victim. It's like, how am I so unlucky that these guys, you know, are attracted to me. And now I know that I'm a magnet for crazy people, drunk and sober, swear to God, the craziest people come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm just like, don't make eye contact because I don't care where I am in the room. I don't care if there's 5 million people in there. Those newcomers, the craziest women newcomers come right at me. They just know my sponsor says every light bulb draws its own kind of bug. And I am a light bulb for crazy people. You know what I mean? When I'm drinking and when I'm sober, right? But I didn't know that. It was just craziness. But meanwhile, my work started to see something in me. And I started working to become the first woman manager that my company had, right. So, you know, the book talks about the double life. So in the day I'm wearing my dress for success suits, you know, uh, you know, working night and day trying to learn this job. And at night I'm in my, you know, I'm in the clubs. I'd love to be where the action was. I love to be dancing and looking for, you know, whatever, because I'm going home with somebody tonight, right? You know, it's just how I was desperate promiscuous woman alcoholic, right. And, um, I used to have this Datsun B210 is a hatchback and I put the back seat down And I would have all my clubbing clothes and I would Have my dress for success suits and my shoes Like, I used to call it the slut mobile I was really proud You know The slut mobile, you know, I was proud of it But anyway, so What finally happened is I made manager I was about 29 years old And it had taken me 10 years And I made manger And I was so happy to make manager I finally got what I wanted and then there was a big thud Because that wasn't it Again, right? Like I've spent my whole life looking out there for something that's going to change me inside here, right? No more money. I bought a house when I was 25 years old as, you know, a single woman. And just like I have accumulated all this stuff and I still wasn't happy. You know, when I Was 11 years old, I didn't get enough Christmas presents and I badgered my mom until she finally went and got me the thing that would have made me happy at Christmas, right? My poor mom, which was this Elvis Presley album called Girl Happy. And so I get the album. I bring it home It starts to play, you know girl happy girl girl happy and I remember thinking well that wasn't it You know what? I mean just like a lifetime even in sobriety I'll go buy the poster for the lottery Right, and i'll be 10 minutes later into the fantasy of how great my life is going to look even though i've got a great life if I also won the lottery like that, you Know just like it's just a the endless wanting of, I guess the human beings, but alcoholics like me have it even worse. Just anyway, that wasn't it. I made manager and that wasn'THAT. So it's a big thud and, you know, I'm drinking more and more. It's just, you Know, my work days are getting shorter and, You know, it's just terrible. And so it's Christmas time and I have a party for my employees and I was just going to go to the party. It was some guy, one of the servers hosted it at his house and I bought all the food and stuff. And I was just going to go there and congratulate them on a great year and have a couple of drinks and, you know, you don't have a good time guys and leave and go home where I was living with this crazy guy. And eight hours later, I'm still there sipping on gin and juice, right? I can't leave. I didn't know. I had no idea about alcoholism or that I couldn't stop once I started. No idea. I just, you Know, once I drank, I just wanted to keep on drinking. I never tried to quit, never tried to stop. Anyway, I'm wearing this black dress that tied up around my neck and around my waist. And I guess I was rocking the cabbage patch too much. My dress falls off. The top of my dress comes down and I expose myself to the employees. Right. And I was pretty young and cute. Right? I'm 29 years old, but not a single employee said, damn boss, you're hot. You know what I mean? Like it was awkward for everybody. Everybody's like, ah, you know what i mean so i get myself together getting the slut mobile and i'm driving back to where now i'm you know i don't know what I'm going to get when I get home because I'm gone for eight hours we didn't have cell phones back today for them to check up on you or anything and you know I'm not going to pull over to a pay phone and call at this point just take my lumps when I get them but anyway I get pulled over by the police and I'm outside of the of my car and I'm flunking the sobriety test so what happened this is the you know what was like what happened for me, my first spiritual experience. So up until this moment, I thought that drinking was the answer to my problems. And it was like, I honestly think that drinking saved my life. I had a normal life, but I don't think that alcohol diverted me from my life of normaldom. Like I was going wonky somehow, right? You know what I mean? Like I just did not fit the mold. I wasn't okay. Just, you know what I mean? Something would have happened different to me. So I'm grateful for alcohol because it really, really saved my life. And I thought it was the solution. Like if I had a fight with my boyfriend, I drank. If I couldn't pay my bills at work, I drank, if I got in trouble from my boss, I drink like this was the solution to my problems. But this night, like I've just exposed myself to the employees. I'm either going to go to jail or get an ass whipping by this guy that I'm with. It's not going to be happy that I've been gone for eight hours or however long. And, um, just for one second that night, just for one split second, I saw that drinking was the problem. Like I had a moment of clarity, like something's wrong with my drinking and it's a long time. I told you how I ended up getting to AA. It was a long time of surrender for me for that. Cause you know, now I know I've got a problem. I'm going to try some control drinking and that started all that stuff, uh, you know about trying to control and enjoy my drinking, which I had never tried to do and I can't. And it brought me to that place of surrender, you know, outside that meeting where I was going to be sober and somber. And I went into the meeting that night and there was a woman leading the meeting and she was funny. She was fun. And, you have something to say and everybody was the whole room was, you Know, and I found myself like a live meetings when I, when there's newcomer at the meeting that I'm talking to, I always tell them, pay attention to the laughter in the room, right? There is life after sobriety because that was the attraction for me was maybe I could be happy again. Like today, no matter how my day comes, whether I'm laughing or not, I'll take sobriete any way it comes down the pike. However, you know, most days are not like that. And on days that are hard, I know how to tweak my sobriety, just like I used to tweak my drinking. Like if you couldn't get the right effect, you'd take more drugs or switch from scotch to brandy trying to get that same effect. I can do that. We can all do that in Alcoholics Anonymous by... Like I go to a lot of meetings anyway, but if I'm in a funk, I'll add to my normal amount of a lot meetings and I will try to get a newcomer. Nothing works better for depression than a newcomer, right? I can tweak my sobriety by doing a little bit more than I normally do and get that good feeling because I'm a feel-good junkie. I want to feel good. I want create that. I just don't want to be sad, right. That's why I drank. I wanted to be happy, right, in and out of sobri- I want be happy. So anyway, so my sponsor put me on a course action. She started having me go to meeting every day. Sorry, I lost my screen. She wanted me to go to a meeting every day and I, and I asked her how long do I have to go to these meetings? She said, well, you have to Go till you want to go. And I never thought that I would want to Go to meetings. I knew that I had to go, but I kind of equated it with like someone who has cancer and they have to get chemotherapy. Like, you know, you Have to get your treatment to get better, but nobody looks forward to going down to the hospital and sitting there for eight hours on your chemo. Right. You know, that's what I thought it would be, but I don't know how soon it was that I surrendered to the fun in this program, right away, pretty soon in there, you know, and now I actually want to go to meetings and have for a long time. I love it. Love going to meetings. Zoom is a little bit different, but I still like it, right? Miss my people. But anyway, so, and she used to say, I want you to do the things that make you feel good about being Nancy, not to be confused with the things THAT JUST MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD, which I really did not know the difference. The mantra of the women of my age was, if it feels good, do it. It was women's lib, it was burn your bra. It was like women, you can do whatever you want the hell you want to do. Right? And I did. I did whatever the hell I wanted to do, right? And she said that wasn't what she was talking about. She was talking about the things that made me feel good about being Nancy. And her example was, her first example was when the alarm goes off in the morning, if I push snooze, she said it makes you feel better because you get 10 more minutes of sleep because you're up all night long doing whatever, right. She says But if you set off the alarm when it goes off, get up and get to work on time or even early, it's going to start to change the way you feel about yourself. Right? And, you know, I had my well-meaning parents try to make me feel good about myself like every good parent does. I mean, it's a good job, Nancy. I mean they did all the stuff right. But it just, I have a peculiar mental twist. It just never, never felt, never had any kind of good feeling about myself. And, you know, secretly, I don't think that they really thought I gave me back my baby book when she downsized and moved to a senior apartment. My baby book, you can't even close it. It's so full of stuff because I was my mom's oldest daughter that she just adored. It had every birthday card from every, that everyone ever gave me my first seven years. it had locks of hair, teeth. Every saying I said, you know, when I first walked, all different stuff. You can't even close the book, but there's one page completely blank. I kid you not. Special talents and abilities. Not one thing. My mom couldn't even fake it. I think about her just going, Jesus, I'm not athletic. I'm nicht smart. I'M NOT A CHEERLEADER. I'M NOT, YOU KNOW, PRETTY in the conventional set. Like there's nothing, I got nothing. Even my mom knew it. You know, after she gave it to me, I took a picture of that page and I go out with, well, till COVID, like to go out avec my mom once a week. I go see her and we go to the movies or whatever. And I showed her the picture ofthat empty page and they go, mom, what happened here? And she's like, uh, poor mom. Jesus. But you know, what's funny is I knew it, I knew, it just like, it didn't, it didn' surprise me and I'm not heard about it, right? Because it was true. For some reason, I was just weird. There's a lot. I have a lot of gifts and abilities now. Right. I feel differently about myself. But anyway, so I started to take these actions around here and I started to change. And, you know, funny thing. One of the things that happened when I was new is I was so miserable. You know how you are when you're newly sober. You're just hanging on every day, you know, just trying to stay sober. And so I have this bright idea that I'm going to go as long as I'm already miserable with trying to get rid of my bad habit of alcoholism. I'm going to go on a diet, even though I was thin there and I'm going to quit smoking. So I go over to her house and I thought that she would be happy for me because you know, when anytime someone says they're eating right and they want to quit smoke and we all go, yeah, good job. Right, right on. You should be healthier. Right. I thoughtthat's what she would tell me. I thought she'd be proud of me. Right? And I was fairly new. And so I tell her my bright idea. I'm gonna quit all my bad habits. Right you know. Anybody knew out there alcoholism isn't a bad habit, FYI. Anyway, so I tell her my bright idea and she had been sitting on her little rocking chair recliner thing and she was an older woman and she flew up out of that chair, gets to the refrigerator, starts making me a bologna sandwich. At the same time, she put a cigarette in my mouth and lit the cigarette for me, gives me a sandwich and she said, kid, it's going to take everything you have to stay sober, everything. And I just remember thinking that was so weird. I was against anything I'd ever heard in my life, but it's so true. It took everything I had to stay sober. It took the sweets, it took the bologna sandwiches, it took the smoking, it Took a grip of coffee, all that stuff. It Took all that stuff for me to stay Sober just hang on which you know eventually the other stuff you can work on but you know just staying sober was huge you know I see sometimes kids come in another one minute sober they want to get back to school and all this stuff. It's like, Jesus, I did not have the head for any of that for still don't anyway. So I start to change. I start To feel differently about myself, which was amazing because you'd like, I said, I was obsessed with how I looked, which Was never good enough. And I met my husband in the program. We were friends for a long time. And one day we had been sitting out. A bunch of people had been Sitting around by the pool, mostly a bunch of guys and me and the guys were talking about, and they were describing some of the women in AA. And they were describing the women like, oh, Jackie, she's a boy toy. And this other girl, she has big boobs. And this Other Girl, oh she's sexy. And I said, well what do the guys say about me? Right? And my husband to me, who was just my friend at the time, he thinks and thinks and things. And he says, well, he says, I guess we'd say you're enthusiastic. And like, Oh my God, like that was a stab in my heart because if you can't describe me sexually, like as in you want to have sex with me or a sexual term, I'm nothing. You know what I mean? Like I was devastated that he would use that term to describe me right now. Of course I'll know that would be a wonderful thing to be said about someone. Right. But I just, it was like nothing. And, you know, I started to take commitments and work the steps and I started a change and I started being friends with this guy. And then our friendship developed into something and we ended up, you know, getting engaged. It was very exciting because we were like the AA couple in my little home group, Downey. And everybody was happy for us. It was a guy I could finally introduce to mom and dad, you know what I mean? Because, you know, even I know that Skeeter's never going to make the cut at home. I'm not even going to try that one or any like him, which was everybody, right? And so everybody's happy for us. It was just fantastic. And so we're going to get married And we're going to get married at this little church in my city. And we had to have this premarital counseling because we weren't members of the church. And so we were a little worried about it because we wanted to be honest with the minister because we didn't want to pretend that we were like normal, right? And, you know, we both had our past. We wanted to tell them who we really are and why we were trying to do this deal and, you Know, what we were about. But we were nervous because like we talked about earlier, you share anything in Alcoholics Anonymous and you see people going like this. I don't care what it is. We're like, me too, me too. I drank like that. Like it says in our book, I drank like this. I drank it like that and what a beautiful thing for anyone to hear is I drank like that, not judgment, nothing. It's just like I did the same thing, right? But we knew that that wasn't going to be the response and we were worried honestly that he was going to say, oh, I don't think I can bless this marriage, right, you guys are too crazy because you know I'd had the prostitution arrest, I'd had two abortions, I was very promiscuous, my husband had been married three times but only divorced one time long story uh one of them came through the day before the wedding now that's a that's stressful but anyway you know just what we do in aa so we go and i tell the minister my whole story and then my husband tells this whole story and we're waiting for the response we thought we were going to get and the minister bursts into tears he goes i'm an alcoholic and i need help it starts crying right and so we're like and we end have taken him to a meeting that night and he stayed sober until he died a few years ago with over 30 years of sobriety right so it was you never know so at our wedding we have the video of our wedding and like we're emotional my husband and me but you can see the minister like he's full on bawling not I'm sure not because he was so happy that we were getting married but just you know out of gratitude for those simple moments that we all get in this program right so anyway so me and my husband are together and we have a great life we have this house in Downey there it's the party house you know there's always aas over we're working the steps and you know just it's a beautiful time i have a little girl we have a great marriage everything's great this goes on everything my heart desired i was just it was great times and then my husband had stopped going to meetings he got a job he also was a restaurant manager he got his job for his work and nights at this place and went to less and less meetings. And then he got a headache and, uh, he ended up taking a coding for his headache and he lost his sobriety. And right after I found out he lost his sobrietty, I get a call from a girl that's a live screech to a hideous stop. Right. And the way I do sad and pain is mad and rage and crazy. You know, just, just how I roll. You're not going to see me crying oh no you won't see me sad I will take your head off and chop you up in little pieces day after day after date because you deserve it and uh so I've made our life a living hell right and uh and I got deaf to Alcoholics Anonymous and I Got Deaf because in my in my mind even though it says that there's no justified resentments I honestly felt that this was justified. Cheating on your spouse, everybody in the world knows that that's not okay. We all know that, right? And so then I would tell people, you know, my husband cheated on me and many people, almost everybody said, well, I wouldn't stay with someone who cheated onme or like, that's not right. You know what I mean? And I'm like, maybe somebody might've said something else, but I wasn't listening to those people, right. I was just fueling the resentment, you You know, resentment, I'm sure you know, is from the Latin re centuri to refill it over and over and over. So I would tell people and they would say, yeah, I wouldn't live like that. I go, yeah. It was just like a house of hell. And I was deaf and I was crazy. And the only thing I think that kept me from drinking was that I always go to my meetings no matter what. I'm a pretty good meeting maker. I just go no matterwhat. And finally, I got in enough pain to be willing to do something different. Right. And it talks about in our literature that we needn't be bludgeoned into humility well that's not my story you know I'm in my sponsor's remedial group she keeps telling me and it's stuff like this like sometimes I look back and see how God's been trying to get my attention by whispering gently in my ear Nancy time to grow but I'm like it's a fly at a picnic right I'm just like oh oh oh right until I get in bludioned into pain right I'm never waking up going, you know, it's a good day to grow today. Think I'll do some writing. Never, never. Maybe there's some of you out there, but that's not me. Always got to be bludgeoned, right? So anyway, so finally, I'm like the white flag goes up again. Big surrender. So I start working the steps again. And this time I had the ability to be more honest and, you know, I just start doing my four step, you know, part of it, I'd never gotten out of that victim mentality, right, you know, like, you know, and one of the things I've been writing about with one of these crazy guys. One of the guys that I was with had tried to stab me with a butcher knife and I was in my underwear and he grabbed the butcher knife. And I'm running up and down the streets where we live while he's screaming and trying to stab him, right? Huge drama situation, right. And so I'm writing about this, writing aboutthis, writing about this. AndI guess my first interview, maybe I stopped it at what they did. I don't know, but I never saw this before. And this was like 10 years sober. And I realized I kept writing and I saw that right before he grabbed the butcher knife, he had been sitting there being a crazy alcoholic. Right. But I had gone over to where he was sitting and I took a beer and I dumped it right on his head, which he had a bad reaction. He should have jumped up and said, babe, you need anger management. But you know, I mean, if right now someone came behind Nan and poured ice cold water on her head at the very minimum, she'd say, what the hell? Right. I mean no one handles that kind of stuff gracefully. And I inflamed an alcoholic. You know, there's a line in step eight in the 12 and 12. I love it says our behavior when drinking, uh, aggravates the defects of others. And you change that in my behavior, even when sober aggravates, the defects have others like left untreated. I'm a defect aggravator, right? You know what I mean? But this time, and so he overreacted, right. But the thing is it doesn't make it right. Anybody out there that anybody tries to stab anybody. I're not saying that. I'm saying me seeing that I had a part in what happened was just enough of a chink in my ego of self-righteousness and perfection that I Had somehow developed in AA for God to just break it open or just crack my veneer of perfection that i had about myself right and um all this stuff came up you know i started writing you know when my daughter was born and my desire to be a good, sober mom. I had lavished attention on my daughter. I had moved her into the bedroom with me and my husband, right? Because I just wanted her to feel loved. And you know, just like I just wanted to be a good mom, right. So now of course, I can't have marital relations with my husband because we got the little girl in between us, right, because we can't have sex because we might wake her up. So the world started revolving around her, which is not good. But I was off the beam didn't know it, right。 I made her my intimacy. I made her my mate. So it's not like me and Mickey are married, my husband. It's me and Kelsey are married. She was my mate and he was nothing. And not only that, my sponsor started saying stuff like, Nancy, even when you're right, the way you're write is always wrong. Like I'm a defect aggravator. I'm just like right up in your face. You cannot be... There's no room for imperfection and anybody would fear around me. Oh no. Right. You know what? I'm just, I'm a bitch. I'm stone cold bitch. And I did not know that. Right? So what happened was I was able to see part I played in the demise of our marriage and I saw it clearly. And I love our steps because you know, I remember taking my husband into the bedroom and sitting down on the bed and telling him how sorry I was for the things I had done that had hurt our marriage, right? I really hurt our marriage. And that doesn't make it right that he cheated on me, but you know, but this is not our program. The inventory is ours. We set aside the wrongs others had done completely. We resolutely look for our own mistakes, right. Which I could not do because I was focused on his mistakes. Right. So the minute I made that amends to him, what he did disappeared. Right? And he ended up being able to get sober. He got back in the rooms and then he worked his steps and made amends to me. But guess what? I was already free. Thank God, right? Thank God that we don't have to wait for other people to make amends to us because we're already free because big secret some people here in Downey owe me an amends. I'm not waiting around for it though. You know what I mean? Maybe I owe them too. I's not sure. Probably I do. I might have poured a beer on somebody's head inadvertently. I' m like always one joke away from an amends. Sometimes I don't realize it. You know what I mean? Like you think I'm funny and I'm not anyway. So, you know, I know that's not everybody's story with, you know, a big thing like infidelity, but that just happened to be our story. Right. We were able to make it through. Right, right. And we never think about it anymore. It's just the past. Right? You know, and so a few years ago now my daughter Kelsey that the world revolved around when she was little now she's 25 and she sends me a text the you know a few years ago that says, Mom, don't get mad. I'm pregnant. And thank God for restraint of thumb and send because I was going to text her a snappy little vitriolic text full of judgment and criticism. But I didn't. I stopped. Oh my God, thank you, God. And I called my sponsor and she had me do a 10 step right then on my kid, right then. And this is the daughter that I adore. and it's amazing how much victory just how much negative I had to say about her you know she dropped out of several junior colleges you know blah blah blah she's not doing this she's not doing living at home blah blah right and then it gets to what it affects well it affects my pride that she's pregnant out of wedlock with this guy that she just barely met right you know when my daughter was going to school I was friends with a lot of the teach a lot of the teachers had kids my daughter's age and so we were like one big happy family all our kids grew up together. We fellowshiped, went camping, all kinds of stuff together. It was a big community of people and it was great. But I see one of the moms, one of the teacher's moms at Ralph's even before this happened. And I'm like, Reggie, you haven't seen her. And she's like, I'm not sure how the kid's doing. And so she starts going, oh, Jillian, she's on her second master's and Matt's doing his student teaching. She's going through the kids and she's going, winner, winner. How's Kelsey? And I're like, oh, keeping it real, working at Olive Garden 12 hours a week. You know what I mean? Like my pride was already affected, right? It affected my ambition because I want a successful kid that can take care of herself. It affected me. It's affected my sex relations because I'm fighting with my husband about what we should do with her. It affects my pocketbook for all the money I spent on kumon, dance lessons, you name it, trying to get her to find something that she's interested in so she'll be okay, right, you know what I mean? And one of the things that I wrote about was I was obsessed with my kid getting citizen of the month, obsessed with it. Right. And my kid has ADHD. Right? So it's not really the mold of citizen of a month, which is usually a quiet, you know, you know helpful person, which that's not really my daughter's strength. Just little something. My granddaughter that just finished kindergarten on her very first month of school got citizen of the freaking month. I kid you not. She's the very first kid getting, I'm like, what? Anyway, my daughter would come home with words like enthusiasm, school spirit, friendliness, great attributes. I don't care. I'm obsessed with her getting citizen of the month. Why? This is, I'm finding out when I'm ready because when you get citizen of a month, it's the only word that comes with a bumper sticker that I could put on my car. My daughter is citizen of month at Gallatin Elementary School. Why? So people I don't know could drive by, honk and go, hey lady that I don' t know, good job raising your kid. Right? You know what I mean? Like my poor kid had to like no matter what she did it wasn' t enough. Right. Like I would make her jump through the hoop. If that didn' t work I'd make the hoop smaller or I'd put the hoop on the back of a horse and say now jump through it. Or I'd set the hoop fire, jump through this hoops. You know what I mean? So I'll be okay. You know what I mean? You jumped through the hoop, so I'll be okay, right? You know, it's so sad. You know, I went to a Mother's Day brunch when my daughter was a senior in high school with my two winter brothers and my winter younger sister and their kids, right, and so my one niece that's my daughter's age, they were both seniors in high school, she's doing her algebra homework at the table while her parents were showing her glossy pictures. She was equestrian of the year here in California for barrel racing, right. We got the glossies. And then my nephew, he's five years old and he rides BMX bikes. Cutest little guy. He's winning awards. They got his pictures. It was like a reunion. So how's everybody doing? My one niece was getting everybody's email address because this was when the internet was kind of new and she was going to do a family newsletter once a month and keep everybody on the updates of what's going on. And dann the coup de grace is my one niece. If you went to the website of her private school, you would see her face on there. It said Paige Miller, age 10, reads at a 12th grade level, right? So I looked down at the end of the table. There's Paige reading this big giant book. She's like a kid. She'd read this book. I look down to see what Kelsey Cook is doing. I looked out and here's my 17-year-old daughter, right. She coloring the children's menu like this. I got no glossies. We barely made it by we made it through high school. I mean, we barely made It through high school, right? I got nothing to show for her. I'm just like, Oh my God. But you know what I saw about myself in this inventory is my daughter is a beautiful, delightful, enthusiastic, friendly, spirited, helpful girl that you guys would fall in love with in one minute. She's got beautiful gifts, but I never saw them because I was trying to make her be me. And you already have heard, I was nothing, no special talents or abilities. I'm trying to make myself be happy by making her be what I want her to be. So no one can measure up to that, right? Poor, my poor daughter, my core daughter. So I'd love this program. so when she came over a couple days later to tell talk to me about the pregnancy right I had a whole different experience right I was able to be loving and you know accepting and all the things that she should have gotten from the first moment but thanks to AA at least I didn't ruin the second moment right you know what I mean just like you know I want that I want the program that I never make those mistakes. I don't have it yet. I do not have it yet, but I don' t make the second mistake quite as often. So what else? When my daughter goes to when my daughter started kindergarten, my sponsor told me to sign up to be a parent helper. So I signed up to be an assistant. I was very lucky because when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a teacher and um that was my why I was going to school and everything and I ended up you know being a restaurant manager and uh and so but I worked on the weekends I'm off during the week and so I was able to volunteer at the school a lot because I had weekdays off and I was like room mom every year and it was really great because my kids struggled every year you know because she was hyper and you know the teachers were so good to work with her and help her and you know but she was you know had problems and issues that comes from being hyper right But when she made fourth grade, she had this teacher that saw through her hyperness, Mrs. Nicasio, and this teacher saw my daughter for who she was and changed her life. Kind of like how a sponsor sees through all of our craziness and is able to extricate somebody beautiful out of it. That's what she did for my kid. And I loved this teacher, man. I came as often as I put up bulletin boards. I bought her Starbucks every day. I graded papers. I was just like, I was everything to this woman, right? And so every year, every class has a field trip. Right. But I'd always gone on because I was always room mom. Right? It was a great time in my life. Right, right. So the teacher sends home a note that says she doesn't have enough room on the bus for all the parents that want to go only four parents are going to get to go and she's going to have a drawing. well I don't think this applies to me because I know she's going to pick me right but I go through the motions I send in my paper you know with my name on it and my daughter calls me the next day from school and she says mom Mrs. Nicasio picked the names and you didn't get picked so I burst into tears right I'm just like oh my god I can't believe it and so my daughter goes here's dad here's so my husband gets on the phone and he said Mrs. Nicacio felt so bad that you didn'T get picked. That when I picked Kelsey up from school today, she sprinted over to the car to say that she wanted you to go as her special guest, blah, blah. So now I'm really crying because the teacher just didn't casually see my husband. She sprints to the card because she knows I'm crazy. That's embarrassing. She sprinted to the cards like Nancy, not to be mad. She's going to go with my special guest. Right. You know, even more mortified. Right? Like what in the hell is wrong with me? Why am I crying so much? And then I realized I'm crying because I don't get to go on the school bus with the kids. I've always gotten to go on the School Bus, right? This is my spiritual condition at, I don' know, 25 years sober. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I didn't get to go in the School bus. And then I do a little spot check inventory, right. And you know, AA didn't teach me to bring Starbucks and grade papers to get something in return. My sponsor used to say, you're giving with a hook. You're giving something and expecting something back. And so I'm like, yeah, you're right. I'm expecting her to pick me for the field. I'm expecting her to do something for me by doing all this for her. I'm not giving freely. And then my next thought was shame on you, Nancy Cook. You've had everything your heart desires and you still lack the ability to be happy for someone else to get something. You know what I mean? Like I have to have everything and one more thing and one more thing, right? So I'm like free. I'm right on. I was happy for those parents. The day of the field trip rolls around. I go up. I meet the buses. They take off. I get in my car. I take off to meet them at this aquarium, which is down by the ocean here in Long Beach. so i get to the aquarium and i go in the aquarium i go all around it they're not there at all like that's weird so i go start walking out by where the buses park to look to see if i see the downy school buses they're Not There and I'm Like Well That's Weird Because You Know An Hour Has Passed By A Little More Than An Hour So Then There's Like This Frentage Road On The Side Of The Ocean Where They Bring The Buses In At The Back You Know Like A Back Way To The Aquarium So I'm Walking up this road, it's nothing but like a gravel road, some weeds and the ocean. There's nobody out there. It's like nobody out there. And I'm standing there. Buses are going by, buses are going by. I'm like a goober just standing out there, right? And finally the downy buses go by, right. I see the downey buses and the kids, you know, roll down the windows, the parents, the other teachers, everybody starts hollering out the window. Mrs. Cook, Mrs. Cook, right? Shouting my name, screaming my name. Right. It was like what happened when I first drank only this time it really did happen. Do you know what I mean? Like it really did happen in sobriety. Like I had that same feeling of being just loved and needed and, and just, you know, it was a beautiful, beautiful gift but had i got what i wanted which was to ride on the school bus i would have missed that gift that god had for me and i guess that's like the inherent lesson in my whole entire sobriety is stop wanting what i want and want what someone else wants for me for crying out loud let it go but every single day i manufacture self-will i wake up in the morning every day manufacturing, self-pity, all the negative defects. Unless I'm going to Disneyland, I don't wake up and go, whew, it's going to be a good day. I'm manufacturing gratitude. I know how to work for it. I get up and I pray. I take some phone calls from my sponsees. I make some phone call. I do all that stuff so I can maintain my gratitude, but I don' t churn it out on the natural. You know what I mean? I have to work every good thing in this program because I don't see it. And I'm just grateful to be awake today. Thanks, you guys. You just kicked off my morning. I feel great. And thanks for letting me share. Oh, thank you, Nancy, so much.