The Long Road to Not Hating Herself – June G.

Hi, my name is June. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, June. Hi. I really want to thank you for inviting me here and allowing me to be part of your conference. I really wanted to thank Mike for the phone calls and the letters and the cards. It's really been a special privilege to get to know him a little bit better, and I really appreciated that. And it's very special to be able to be here and spend a little time with Jack because we go way, way back. I also had the privilege of sponsoring one woman who lives in Texas, and it's her AA anniversary today. So it was pretty neat that I would end up getting invited to be in Texas on that particular date. And so for all of those reasons, I thank you for allowing me to be part of your conference. I'm going to start out by saying those things that I consider to be the most important, just in case the people here are like I was and am sometimes still today as far as not being able to focus for very long. So if I start with the important things, then I can get that out of the way. I guess the first thing, in keeping with the tradition of Texas Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll give you my sobriety date, which is July 13, 1972. You know, I live a life today that I never would have wanted. And I am a person today that I wouldn't have even liked when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And yet for the most part, most of the time I'm happier than I have ever been. So AlcoholicsAnonymous is still filled with a lot of mystery for me. how it has worked and how things have unfolded in my life have often been a surprise to me and in a way that's a comfort when I come up upon a dark path and I'm not sure what the hell is coming down the road sometimes those things have just since I've been through them in the years of sobriety I've seen the way that things can oftentimes work out and I don't have quite as much fear sometimes I want to start out by saying, particularly for those of you who might be new to Alcoholics Anonymous or new to a conference, that I'm not an expert on alcoholism or on AlcoholicsAnonymous. That I'm just a member of AlcoholicsAnenomous. I've been asked to stand up here for a little while and share with you as it suggests that we do in the book a little bit about what it was like, what happened, what it's like today and that's what I'll try to do while I'm here. strongly encourage you to go to lots of meetings about Alcoholics Anonymous before you make a decision about whether this is the place for you because there's all different kinds of people in AlcoholicsAnonymous and I believe that that's one of the most spiritual things about Alcoholic Anonymous is when it says in the book that we are people who normally would not mix and those people who have added the most to my life over the years have been the people that I oftentimes would never have imagined myself having anything to do with. I, gosh, you know, I want to let you know too that I'm not paid to stand up here and talk, nor is anyone paid in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want you to know that for a couple of reasons. One, because after the meeting if you're sitting at coffee, you know, they had to pay her for that, you You know, so I don't want to get into that kind of thing, you know. But the main reason that I'd like you to know that, especially if you are new or not familiar with the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that I want you to note that AlcoholicsAnonymous is absolutely free. Had AlcoholicsAnenomous not been free, I never could have come here. Had AlcoholicAnonymous not remained free, I never would have stayed. I was over 10 years sober in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous before I was able to put a dollar in the basket for the seventh tradition on anything like a regular basis. So this is not about money, and that's important to me that I remember to pass that on to you. You know, I'm one of those people that believes I was born an alcoholic, and I don't want to have a philosophical discussion about that with anyone after the meeting. It's just what I believe, and I believe that because there was something wrong with me long before I ever started to drink. or use the chemicals that I was to mix with alcohol. And my first obsession in life was not alcohol and drinking. My first obsession is alcohol and alcoholism. My first addiction in life is suicide. And from as far back as I can remember, which is about five years old, I began to try and kill myself on a regular basis. And I used to cut my hands and fingers and wrists with razor blades. I used take overdoses of baby aspirin, which was all I knew about at the time. I used beat my hands, face, and body with a hammer. I used to burn my body in a lot of different places and ways. And I did a lot of things to try and hurt myself, and mostly to try to die. And you know, in the years that I've been sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, I have certainly recognized that I have a capacity for being a bit dramatic. But you know up to and including today as I look back on my life before coming to the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous, I have to tell you that being as rigorously honest as I can be I truly wanted to die I can see that some of my suicide attempts were to get a little bit of attention, but I really, really, really wanted to die. And I know again that if you are new to Alcoholics Anonymous, you may not identify with that or certainly you may not identify with any of those kind of feelings until you came to the end of your drinking. And that's why I encourage you to go to lots of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous because we all have a lot of different paths as far as getting here. I've never had a social drink in my life, nor have I ever wanted one. I have never not gotten drunk I have never not overdosed that's all that I know and so you know if you drank the way that I did and you mixed it with the kind of chemicals that I made which were always downers or reds or yellows or barbiturates or whatever you might know them as then you don't have a very exciting drunk-a-log either I've grown up a lot, I've overdosed a lot and that's really about all I did before I came to the program about Cox Anonymous And so for me, I did not have a lot of fun years drinking. But what alcohol did for me was it didn't make me feel good. It just helped me to not feel at all. And thank God it did that. I started to use drugs at seven years old. I began to drink on a regular basis at eight years old, and by the time I was nine, I found that combination that I never altered in any way, which was the barbiturates and the alcohol, because the combined effect of those got me exactly where I needed to go, and that was out. I didn't have to experiment any further. It just worked perfectly well. And in between times, I tried to kill myself. But I truly believe that I would have been locked up in a mental institution. I don't see any way that I could possibly have remained out in the world had it not been for alcohol. And so I'm extremely grateful that it worked for me the way that it did. I grew up in an alcoholic home. I knew a lot about alcoholism. You know, because of that, there was a lot of violence in my home. There was a Lot of different kinds of abuse. There was A lot of broken promises. There were a lot Of the same things going on in my Home as went on in a Lot Of other alcoholic homes. I did not see alcoholism As a disease. I just saw it as a weakness. And in my life, before coming to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and actually after, In fact, one of the most difficult things, old ideas that I've had to work through are those things that I was to decide were weaknesses. And I decided that my mother was weak and I never forgave her for it. And when I was about five years old and my memory basically starts, I went off to school, I guess like a lot of other people do at five. And I can remember, you know, I used to be able to remember with perfect clarity It's no longer that important to me because I'm busy now. But I used to be able to remember with perfect clarity the names that the kids called me and what they were wearing and what I was wearing and just how much it hurt and relive that experience just completely. Because at five years old, when I went out into the world and those kids teased me about being tall and being skinny and having curly red hair and being in the family that I was in and where I came from and those things, I felt like I was being cut up inside with knives. And sometimes I would actually start to cry. And so I found out about myself from my earliest recollection that I was the thing that I hated the most in the entire world. I was weak, and I never forgave myself for it. And the only thing that gave me some relief from that feeling of being weak was alcohol because I didn't have to feel anything at all, and i didn't feel weak then. I could control my emotions, and that was probably the number one thing that i wanted to be able to do in my life. in growing up in this alcoholic home I know today that most of the people that I was looking at around me were alcoholics but I didn't know that then before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I do not ever remember seeing men cry under any circumstances I've seen men stabbed I've see them shot I've seem them arrested I've seend their wives leave them I've seemed their kids overdose I've scene a lot of different things happen in their lives I never saw a man shed a tear under any of those circumstances I saw the women in my life go through each and every one of those circumstances as well. Some of them didn't cry, but most of them did at one point or another. They seemed to have a breaking point. And I looked at those two different groups of people very carefully and I decided immediately which one I wanted to be like. And I spent my whole life trying to be what I thought a man was. And to me, a man was someone who cared about no one, who felt absolutely nothing, and if they did, they never let anyone know it. And the only exception to that was anger and rage were okay. And That's all I thought men ever felt, and that's all I wanted to be able to feel. And again, alcohol allowed me to have the kind of control so that I was able to live like that. When I was a little kid and they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a boy. It wasn't as easy to do back then as it is today. But it was really what I wanted, and my family began to realize that I wasn't just kidding about that. It wasn't like one day a nurse and one day a boy. It was like, no, just a boy, you know. And so they began to take me, my family is and was very active in the Catholic Church and they began taking me to different priests for counseling about this desire that I had to be a boy and somewhere in that time or not too long after we were on welfare and possibly through one of the priests, I don't know, but my mom learned that we were entitled to, that I was allowed to go see a psychiatrist and psychologists, and I began to see these people as well. You know, I really can't tell you why the psychiatrists, you know, thought that I wanted to be a boy or why I tried to kill myself or whyI cut myself up or hurt myself or any of these things because I felt about psychiatrits and psychologists just like my friend Patty Hicks always did. I thought they should have to work for their money, and so I never told them anything. I never answered one question I never filled out one form I never played with one doll I had nothing to say to these people and uh I would sit there the required period of time and then I would leave so I wasn't really able to get help um even if it had been available that way uh anyway somewhere along the line I guess I learned that I was my first lesson in acceptance that I wasnít going to be able to be a boy and so the way that I saw the world uh which certainly as we all know doesnít mean that It was the way that the world was, but the way that I saw the world. The only option for someone like me was to try and be a tough broad. And so I spent all my time before coming to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and a number of years after trying to be what I thought a tough broad was. And I grew up in a town in Los Angeles called Venice. It's a beach town. It's a very interesting town and I fit right in. I hardly stood out at all. And in Venice, because it's a beach town, maybe. I mean, I don't know. You know, it's just my own experience, strength, and hope. I've traveled around the country. I've met a lot of other tough broads. And there do seem to be some geographic requirements that kind of alter how you act and what you do. But being a beachtown, it was very important that you have tough feet so you don't wear shoes. So that was it for shoes. And it was important at that time to me, anyway, to be a tough broad, that you be in a gang. and I was, it was important that you do a lot of fighting, and I did. It's important that I remember to let you know tonight that I've never won a fight in my life. But my ego still wants me to let you know that I have never fought less than five people at a time. And my sponsor was able to explain that to me after I got sober. You know, if you fight one person and you lose, someone might think you're not a very good fighter. But if you always fight groups of five or more then they think hey she must be pretty tough or why would that many people have to jump her you know so you have this chance and I walked around with my um with a swollen lip and a black eye and my face you know beaten up a lot but it was a small price to pay you know for that for that chance that someone might think I was a tough broad obviously I never convinced the most important person that being myself um but I I was willing to go to any lengths I mean you know at At the time, tattoos weren't particularly popular back then. They were a little bit, but not as they have come into age these days. And I'm kind of grateful nowadays because I would have probably gotten something like a shark that would swim on my arm when I did this. Something like that. I don't know. I would Have thought of something interesting, born to die or something. Anyway, I would stand down on the boardwalk with my gang looking tough and we would be smoking and I'd see some touristy looking people and I would take my cigarette and I was like, and I wouldn't even know and I went and I threw it down on the sidewalk and I put it out with my bare feet and I saw these touristy looking people kind of stare at one another and they whispered back and forth and I knew what they were saying. They were saying, wow, that is one tough broad And I was very impressed that I could do this, and I was sure that they were too. Again, after I'd been sober for a while, my sponsor explained that perhaps what some of those people were saying to one another was, did you see that? That person just put flesh to fire. Why would anybody do anything so stupid? But I didn't know there was another way of looking at it. Those were the kind of things that kept me busy before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was brought to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous by my mother. My mother had been in and out of the program of Alcoholic Anonymous for many years at the time with varying lengths of sobriety, and she brought me to that meeting that night not because I asked for help, not becauseI wanted help, not because l admitted having a problem, but simply because she thought that I might get her evicted from another apartment if she left me alone. And I went to the meeting, and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous began for me that night, even though I didn't get sober. And it began because there was a guy in that meeting that I admired more than anybody else in the whole world. And I did not admire very many people. I had my standards and I was very strict about them. But I admired this guy. And again, if you're new or been around a while, you may not identify with the things that kept me coming back, but it's important that I share them, I think. I admired this man because he was from Venice. He was from my hometown. He was actually a drinking friend of my mother's. And he'd been in jail. He'd been imprisoned. He had a tattoo. He rode a motorcycle. He had an knife and had it with him at the meeting that night. And I looked at him, and I just thought, wow, I did not think that people this tough came to AA. You know, I thought it was just for weak people like my mom. And so I was very impressed that somebody this tough would be in a meeting. You know also, if I had to tell you what I wanted out of life in one sentence when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wanted the ability to walk into a room full of strangers and have everyone there back away from me in terror. And when you're 87 pounds, that almost never happens. But that was what I wanted out of life. And this guy Paul, when he'd been drinking, if he wanted to have your table, you just gave him the whole table. You just didn't even discuss it because you didn't know what Paul was going to do to get the table. And so I looked at this guy and he had the ability to clear rooms and tables. everything that I wanted out of life and he was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous so it made a big impression on me I got drunk the next night and then I came back to some meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous and I did not raise my hand because I was not an alcoholic and even if I had been I wasn't going to join an organization that was allowing my mother to belong to it so I just went to these meetings and in between the meetings I talked to Paul he was the only person that I considered cool enough for me to talk to here And I explained to Paul in between the meetings that I wasn't an alcoholic, that I couldn't possibly be an alcoholic. That I was far too young to be an alcoholic. That I had people to see, places to go, things to do. I had my whole life ahead of me and I was clearly not alcoholic. I later learned that non-alcoholics don't have to spend any time trying to convince other people that they're not alcoholic, you know, they already know that. But Paul turned to me and he said, you now June, I'm pretty new in this AA thing. And they've told me that I cannot diagnose anybody's disease but my own. He said, but in your case, I'm going to make an exception. He said I've seen the way that you drink and I've seen the ways that you use chemicals. And I happen to believe if you don't come into this program and take what these people have to offer you within a period of six months or less, you're going to be out on the streets, you'll be shooting stuff, and you're gonna be selling your ass. And he wasn't trying to scare me. He wasn't try to make up a story about something he'd heard or read about or something like a high school teacher might do to scare the kids. He was just talking about facts. He was talking about things that had happened and were beginning to happen in my life, and I thought a little bit about what he said, but I did not want to be an alcoholic. I did NOT want to join Alcoholics Anonymous. And in that two-week period of time as I went to those meetings not raising my hand, absolutely every alternative but AlcoholicsAnonymous was removed from my life. I was living with my mother at that time. By the time I got to the program of Alcoholics Анonymous, the only person that I hated more than my mother was myself. and my mother being the alcoholic in my life I blamed her for everything that had ever gone wrong and take it from me, the short version a lot had gone wrong so I had a lot of things you know, that were going on here and because of the kind of person that I was and because the amount of anger and hate that I carried with me at all times I used to attack my mother physically and because my mother was getting sober at this time she didn't think she had to be subjected to attacks in her own apartment and she asked me to leave and I did the rest of my family had not talked to me in a couple of years and I was not allowed to call or come by under any circumstances, and I didn't bother trying. I'd been in a number of foster homes. I'd be thrown out of all of them. None of them would take me back. I tried to get into some alcohol recovery and drug rehab houses that were in the L.A. area at that time. There were not that many, really, but none of them wouldn't take me, some because of my age and some just because of mine. I tried getting into a program back then called Synanon that was basically desperate for membership. It was starting to go underground, and they wouldn't taking me either, So things were really starting to look pretty bad. And then one day as I walked down an alley, all five members of my own gang beat me up. And so I found myself sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a black eye. I had swollen lip. I had no shoes. Wouldn't have worn them if I'd had them, but I didn't have any shoes. I had No Family. I had NO Friends. I had nowhere to live. I had money. And so raised my hand at a meeting with AlcoholicsAnonymous. You can see where it was kind of simple. It wasn't like, would you like to go to Hawaii or join AA? I mean, it was just very easy. And when I raised my hand in that meeting, those meetings, I know today that there were some people there who did not know about the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, in particular the third tradition, the one that says the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. And the reason I know that some of those people did not Know About the Traditions of Alcoholic Anonymous is because when I did begin to raise my hand, And some of those people knew, because of my mother's membership, how old I was. And they came over to me and they told me that they didn't want a little kid sitting in their meetings while they talked about serious things. And they told мне if I came back, they'd get together and throw me out. And I didn't know Alcoholics Anonymous couldn't do that. I just figured AA didn't wants me either. And that was okay with me, because I didn' t want me either and I hadn' t for a really long time. And I fell back on my number one answer, the answer I've been using since I was five years old. I went over to a friend of my mothers. So I went into her house, I found the bathroom, and I looked for the kind of pills that I needed to kill myself. And I took enough of them to do it one more time. And before I got passed out, before I passed out that day, I ended up going, Wow, this is interesting. Hey, that'll be fun. Anyway, I end up going to a noon meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And by the time I got to that meeting, I could not stand and I could nicht sit. Now, I don't know where you guys go to meetings here in Texas, but where I got sober in West Los Angeles, They almost never called on anybody's share who was laying in the meeting. But they called on me that day, and I certainly don't know what I said. I know they realized I needed to be in a hospital, and that was where I woke up with the doctor giving me medication, explaining to me that the pills I had taken were to slow down my heart, and had I been there five or ten minutes later, I would have been in a coma that they probably could not have brought me out of. And I really can't tell you why that overdose was any different than all the others that I'd inflicted upon myself up to that point. I just know that it was. Because since that time, one day at a time, I haven't taken anything that affects me from the neck up. And that's how I personally define sobriety, you know. And, you Know, I realized at that time and I've known this ever since, you know, that I am not one of those people that stayed in Alcoholics Anonymous because I was afraid of going back out there on the streets and dying. I tried to die as long and as hard as I could out there. What scared me and has kept me sober many times is the thought that maybe I could go back out there and continue to live the way that I was living for another 20 or 30 or 40 years. Because by the time I walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, I could not imagine going on breathing in and out two or three more times hating myself any more than I did. It does not seem possible to me up to and including today. I am extremely grateful for the people who were here when I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous and for those old timers who are here and who tolerated me the way that I was. They were far more tolerant of me than I believe that I am capable of being up to and including today. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous with a bad attitude. I don't want you to think I got sober and suddenly a bad attitude came upon me. I simply came here with the only attitude I had ever had, and it had always been bad. I did not like women. I didn't like any women. I didn' t like me. I didn't like my mother, and I didn' t like any of the other women around here either. And I didn''t want to sit next to women, I didn ''t want talk to women. I most certainly was not going to hug or shake hands with women. And I did not like listening to women speakers, which is something that always makes me feel better because I know there are never as many people listening to me as it looks like. Now, the only men that I had ever known in my life, again, I realized later, were alcoholic. And most of them were extremely violent. And the men here in Alcoholics Anonymous scared me. And I didn't want anything to do with them either. And so I had a problem because in July of 1972 when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, all we had here were men and women and I didn t like any of them. But I went to 21 meetings a week anyway for the first couple of years that I was sober. And I had a commitment at almost every one of those meetings, and my entire life revolved around going to the next meeting and staying until the meeting ended and then cleaning up the meeting so that I could stay as long as possible to be somewhere indoors. And then I would begin to either walk or hitchhike or take a bus or whatever it would take to get to the Next meeting sothat I could do the set-up job so thatI would be indoors again I am I mean I just I had no other life you know I I have to remember sometimes it's difficult it's been a an interesting process of sometimes sponsoring people that come to Alcoholics Anonymous you know with some semblance of a life you know because I didn't have that you know and I I mean I can remember you know like people would say you know I'd say well you know you're in your first year I want you to go to meeting like every night you know I said well Friday night it's Dallas you know and I say well great next time you need a drink you can call JR I mean you know like what's that about you know I just didn't have a lot of compassion for that you know in and now I've got you know people calling me up and they've got to go to the gym you know it was like Jesus Christ you know excuse me. I'm sorry. Oh, well, that'll give somebody something to pray about. Anyway. Anyway, let's I had a very limited vocabulary when I came to the program. It consisted almost solely of profanity, with the exception of a few words like the and mother. I found a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who were extremely offended by that type of language, and so I tried to use it more when they came near me. i did not wear shoes uh most of the first couple years that i was sober i wore motorcycle chains on my wrists and ankles had a motorcycle jacket that on the back said do unto others and then split it was my own little spiritual slogan i smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and i lit all of them myself occasionally someone would hold a match and i allowed them to hold it as long as they liked But they never lit my cigarette with it. And then after I'd been sober a short period of time, I took up smoking cigars and then later a pipe. I wore T-shirts that had sayings on them that most, if not all people, including myself today, would find extremely offensive. And what I want to let you know is if you choose to dress the way that I did, to talk the way I did and to smoke the way that I do, you too can sit in a meeting about this size actually and have an entire row all to yourself. and so for all of those reasons I'm extremely grateful that the people of Alcoholics Anonymous were tolerant and they let me stay here I can remember I was the greeter at the Westwood meeting I would stand at the door barefoot my motorcycle chains and jacket and cigar welcoming the newcomers as they came to AA and when I got sober I was 87 pounds and I had a black eye and a swollen lip and it took a particularly long time to heal so I would stand at the door welcoming the newcomers and sometimes as they'd walk by I'd hear their sponsor whisper you see if you keep drinking you can end up like that at that time people in Alcoholics Anonymous were guessing my age at 37, and I was 13 at the time. But it's been really, it's been a very interesting last couple of years for me. I just turned 40 this year. And it's so odd to me because a couple of my friends or different people have kind of asked me if I'm scared or if I've felt worried or whatever. And I suppose that that's entirely possible for me as the years come up, you know. But the overwhelming feeling for me is that I don't know that it'll be possible for me to ever, ever feel as old as I did when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous because I was so old when I got here that I just don't know that there's anything that could get near that. You know, I can't imagine a time when it would. I just feel, I feel like a thousand years younger today than I did when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. I, oh let's see, where will we go here? I have a seventh grade education. I dropped out of school. You can see they, you know, they don't like, they're not into smoking. They want you to wear shoes, no chains. I mean there were a lot of problems with the vocabulary thing, you know. And I had dropped out before I got sober and I just really didn't fit right in. Um, and so that's what allowed me to go to these 21 meetings a week. And my sponsor who wanted me to get back to school, um, Gail, you know, she said, uh, look, you know, if you're not going to go back to school then you're going to get the kind of jobs that people with seventh grade educations get. And that's what I did. And it allowed me to work a lot of strange shifts, you know, graveyard and split shift and different things, uh swing shift or whatever so that I was allowed to get to lots of meetings. You know, I... The fact that Gail became my sponsor is one of those things that always makes me think about the fact that it says in the book we're people who normally would not mix. I... Gail was a woman and I've already mentioned how I felt about that. And, you know, I really can't quite, you know, put together how she became my sponsor. The best that I can figure out is that it seemed to me as I went to these 21 meetings a week that a woman named Gail Wilson spoke at about 17 of them every week. And so I thought perhaps if I asked this woman to be my sponsor, I could find out ahead of time where she was speaking and then I wouldn't have to hear her all the time. And that was the motivation I had for getting a woman for a sponsor. And, you know, Gail became my sponsor and I confirmed this later in case you think I'm just being, you know, trying to be funny up here. But Gail became my sponsored because she had been taught to never say no to an AA request. You know, we were just people who normally would not max. Gail was three times my age at the time. She was from the South, something that I automatically did not like about anyone. Of course, there were so many things that I ultimately did not like about people that I really wouldn't even have time to go through it tonight. But suffice it to say, I didn't like anyone in AA. So, you know, you can see that it was a fairly extensive list. But anyway, I didn't like that. She not only did not use the same language I was using, she didn't know what a lot of the words I was using meant. She'd come from a warm, loving, supportive family. I really hated people like that. She'd traveled all over the world, you know. I mean, I grew up in Venice. I ran away once. I made it three miles east to Culver City, so, you know, I didn't really think we had much to go on there. And as if all of that was not bad enough, which in my mind it really was, I mean she had been seen on numerous occasions in public wearing pink. So something that, you know,I mean,I didn't wear anything pink until I was ten years sober, you You know, I mean, it was a really slow thing for me. So Gail and I, you know, we would meet secretly after meetings. I would see her at my home group, which was her home group. The Thursday night Brentwood workshop. And I'd go over and I'd say hi. And she'd say, hi. She'd say please don't sit next to me at the meeting tonight. She said, I can't take the cigar smoke. I'd said, well that's okay. And I turned to walk away and she'd said in June, please don'T tell anyone that I am your sponsor. And that was fine with me because I didn't want anyone to know I was hanging out with someone as lame as she was, you know. So we just had this secret, you now, sponsorship relationship. I am, you kno, because of Gail and because of my sponsor and because my home group at the time, which was the Monday Night Venice Group, I'm extremely grateful that I grew up in Alcoholics Anonymous in a very, very active group and learned that it was really important to be of service and to show up and to keep your commitments. And, you know, it's been such an interesting thing to me. I do believe that if I had to point to one major thing that was to change my whole attitude and outlook upon life, It really has been those learning things about being of service in Alcoholics Anonymous that were to totally change my life in ways that just don't make any sense up to and including today, and yet they have. Let's see here. When I first came to the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous, we talked about it was very important to get the big book, sell it for exactly what they paid for it and they wanted to you know they'd say we'll make liberal credit arrangements except for the Venice group they'd Say now if you're too afraid to talk to somebody about it or something you can just go ahead and steal it and I've been stealing longer than I've Been drinking so I sort of you know thought that might be a good idea but then I was a little nervous you know I didn't want to jinx my sobriety so instead I went to the library in Santa Monica and I stole the big book of alcoholic synonymous. And while I was there, I stole a copy of the 12 and 12. You know, I didn't want to make two trips. I didn' t have a car. It was very difficult. And, you know, that was just really the best that I could do, you know. And I didn''t feel bad about it. I just thought I needed the book, and the library had it, and so I stole it, you know. After I'd been sober a number of years, I'm not sure exactly how many, maybe four or five, maybe a little bit more than that. I realized that I had to make amends for that and for the 40 or 50 other library books that I'd stolen throughout my life, great classics like Misty the Seahorse and things like that. So I loaded them up and I took them down to the librarian in Culver City and I explained to her that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and that it was necessary for my sobriety to return those books. And I was wondering if maybe I could make payments because they wanted three to five cents a day and I'd had some of the books for 11 years you know and uh she said oh that'll be fine and she said you know it's so funny she said i used to work in this library uh in laguna beach and this man came in and he'd stolen the big book too i guess you guys do this all the time so another one of those lessons of learning you know that i'm not unique Anyway, after I'd been sober for a couple years Gail found out about this program where I could go to like a trade school I guess really is what it was and learn how to be a secretary and let me just tell you if there's anything I never wanted to be it was a secretary but Gail thought this was important and so I went I started out typing 17 words a minute with 9 errors i typed one day at a time for i think 14 months i'm really not quite sure but an extremely long period of time and at the end of that time i could type 37 words a minute with 19 errors and they told me i'd never make it as a secretary which i had known i mean i knew that you know but i had some other skills you know i'd learned about filing and doing some other things and and now it's time to go out and look for a job and that was the hardest thing i had ever had to do in my sobriety up to that point. I was about two and a half, maybe three years sober and I did not want to go out in the world. I called those people citizen-y type people and I didn't know very many citizen-ly type people. I was very uncomfortable around citizen-type people. I didn' t know how to dress or talk like citizen-type people and I certainly knew I wasn' t as good as citizen-like people. But there were some women on the program that I had become friends with, Patty Hicks. She really knew about dressing up and things like that. I had some other friends, and they would take me to Salvation Army, and they'd give me some of their stuff, and then I'd be like, and they helped me dress up and put these clothes on. To me, I would dress up for an interview the way that they told me I should, and I felt like, look at the little Venice bride in the citizen costume. You know what I mean? It just didn't feel like it looked right. But I just went out there and I, you know, interviewed. I got this job in an insurance company. I knew Gail would be thrilled. It was very square. And I went to work, you Know, and I worked really, really hard. And on the seventh day they called me in. I thought they were probably going to, You know, give me a raise and a promotion or something. And they said, I'm sorry. We're going to have to let you go. They said, You don't seem to have enough experience for this job. But she said, But more important than that, you don't seems to have any common sense whatsoever. Now, I did not know what common sense was, but I knew I was being insulted. And I went downstairs and I called the L.A. Central Office. And I said, hello, this is June Gee. I'm a sober member. I've just been fired, and what are you going to do about that? And they just kind of laughed like you guys are. You know, I mean, I couldn't believe it. I had been going to meetings for a couple of years at that point. I had never heard. I mean, everybody gets fired when they're drinking. But I didn't think that we would allow things like that to happen here in AA. I mean I figured we'd pick it or something, you know. And I can remember, you now, I had, and I was talking to another one of my sponsors that night and I said, you kno, I never got fired before I came to AA. And he reminded me I'd never had a job. And that took some of the fire out of that. But you know, that's why sponsors are so important. They can just see things, you know. Anyway, now I had to go out and look for another job, and that certainly didn't help my self-confidence. But I kept trying, and it seemed like I filled out thousands of applications. And this woman called me up one day that I knew from my home group area in Culver City. And she called me back, and she said, you know, they're interviewing downtown at a bank. I'd never been to downtown. I'd ever been in a bank and she said, you know, let's go down and fill out this application and see what happens and I went down and I started to fill out the application and it gets to the part and it says, due to the fact that as a bank employee it's necessary that you be bonded we're going to do a thorough background check and I thought, oh no I mean, not me I don't want anyone looking in my past I mean first of all they call one library and I have had it you know I just didn't like the whole thing but I just kept hearing people at meetings saying do the footwork and, you know, leave the results up to God. And so I thought, fine. And I turned in the application and they called me back on a series of interviews at this bank and I not only got hired to work at a bank, they put me to work in the vault. And I didn't even know if AA worked that good, you know. But I did not steal anything the whole time I worked there. I'm still amazed at that. But anyway, while I was there, I began to take a couple classes at night at a city college. When I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I could read, in other words, I could say the words like in the fifth chapter, but it didn't have any meaning whatsoever. I would read the same sentence over and over and over and I could not understand what that meant. And I just figured it had a lot to do with some damage that I'd done to my brain and it probably did. But after I'd been sober for a while, I'd heard about this city college class that they called a dummy English class. And I thought maybe if I took this class, I'd learn how to read again. And so I signed up and I took that class at night and while I was there, I took a couple of other classes and I just worked full time and then I went to a couple these classes and I had another part-time job on the weekends and by this time I had found a garage that I was able to rent for $40 a month so that I could become self-supporting and that's kind of what was going on for me and then I ended up getting laid off from the bank And right when that happened, I applied for a grant at the school so that I could take more classes. And I got a job on campus too, actually, so that i could continue to work my way through school. And I was able to take more courses and I continued to do that. And I worked really hard and showed up. And after a couple years there, they called me in the office and they told me that I completed all the requirements for what they called an AA college degree. and I thought that was a nice name for college degree. I had never wanted a college degree in my life but I was amazed, you know, that that had happened and I went on from there. I decided to do the footwork which is what Gail told me I had to do because I wanted to go on to a university and I filled out these applications and I did that footwork and I was accepted to a University and I made a decision about which one to go to and I graduated from there And, again, I was told by Gail I had to do the same footwork as anyone in or out of AA would do to make dreams come true. And I'd come up with this dream. And I don't know where I had it. I don'T know if it had it before I got sober and forgot it or if it came up after I'd been sober. I really DON'T know. But I went ahead and I did this footwork. And now it's been, gosh, 18 years or something, maybe 19 years ago, that I received a telegram telling me I'd be chosen as one of 300 out of 3,000 applicants to go to law school. And I'll tell you, I always planned on spending a lot of time in court. But just not on that side of the table. And so I was able to go to law school and to show up. And I had a very difficult time in law school. And it wasn't just that it was hard to study, but it was. But still it had a lot to do with the way that I felt about myself. And it's interesting. You know, I heard somebody talk at my home group not all that many years ago. It's so fascinating to me how slow I am to learn, you know, big concepts. You know what I mean? But, you Know, like I'm like 20 years sober and I go, oh, you know, so anyway, whatever, you know, and this guy, he was talking at my home group and he said, you know, my sponsor told me that that I was an egomaniac. And he said, you know, an egomaniac is not necessarily someone who thinks well of themselves. It's not even someone who only thinks often of themselves It's simply someone who think only of themselves And as soon as he said that I realized that I had always been an egomaniac I mean, I sat in hundreds and thousands of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for years after I was sober, saying, I'm the ugliest one here. I'm sickest and more damaged. I've hurt more people. I've abused more people I've sunk lower. No one's ever... And it's just very hard to get a lot of spiritual information in because I was very busy. And it has just been a really slow process. But there has always been someone in Alcoholics Anonymous that could touch me just a little bit if I sat through the entire meeting so that I could possibly believe that they, too, may have had a little bit of pain. Nothing like my pain, okay? But there's a few people here who suffered a littlebit. After I'd been sober for a while, Gail began to sponsor one of my closest friends today, Linda, who a number of people here know now. But anyway, and Linda is and was one of the most physically beautiful women you have ever seen. And she came into Alcoholics Anonymous when I was a couple years sober, maybe five. And she asked Gail to be her sponsor. Well, that's fine. I mean, Gail can sponsor whoever she wants, right? Fine. now Linda was blonde and a stewardess who traveled all over the world who'd been married many times and there were thousands more who were just waiting for their turn you know she came from another warm and loving family I mean you know it just went on and on and on and Gail Gail says to me I'd like you to be Linda's friend I'm like wait a minute so she doesn't need a friend look at her you know I don't want to be her friend I mean, we have nothing in common. And Kayle got a little ticked at me, which she could do sometimes. And she said, you know what? She said, when are you going to realize that it doesn't really matter whether you're lying in an alley in Venice or whether you'RE in a hotel room in Paris that when you try and kill yourself and when you feel like dying the feelings are exactly the same? I'm like, really? Because I never really thought about it that way. I really did not believe that Linda could have had any pain. She didn't look like she had pain. I mean, I looked like I'd had pain, you know? I mean... I worked on that look, you now, I mean. Anyway, today, Linda, who also is one of those people with whom I would normally not mix, is one my dearest, most special friends. And I'm so grateful that Gail made me be her friend. Anyway, and so through people like Gail and through people likes Linda and through a lot of other people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was still learning the lesson up to the point when I was in law school that we are all God's kids. And I believe that to include people who are not in AA as well, which I didn't for a while. I thought, okay, we are good. They are not good. And that was sort of how I practiced my spiritual program. I mean, I sort of drove like a maniac, cutting people in and out. I'd see an easy-to-dust cigar. Oh, you can get in. But that was as spiritual as I could get for a while. But that's good. I was starting to be aware of others. It's got to start somewhere. But anyway, and so in law school, I was with these people whose grandfather had been a lawyer or their grandmother had been a lawyer and their father was a judge and, you know, their mother was, you now, in charge of the state. I mean, just all these things and I was just very intimidated by all of that. And again, I mean I can look back and see it was just on how self-centered, you know I was about where I came from and who I was and,you know, the kind of person that I was. And so around that time is when I really began, you know again through these friendships that I've made in Alcoholics Anonymous to really believe that I'm one of God's kids. I think that a lot of the change also had come about through my service work in Alcoholics Anonymous which I alluded to earlier which came about sort of in this fashion I mean, this is the story that I tell which happened when I was around I think seven years sober maybe it was five I really honestly don't know I haven't calculated it exactly but a hell of a long time let me just tell you that it wasn't like 30 days I'm sorry to say but it would sound better I think if I could say that especially for newer people But, you know, I was just a little bit slow. But anyway, I can remember being at the Palm Springs Roundup and everybody was all dressed up and it was the banquet Saturday night. I was looking around comparing myself to everyone else in the room, which I still do sometimes if I want to feel bad. But anyway... I was doing that and I looked around and I thought, you Know, I think I saw someone in like a black dress and I go, Hey, isn't that a beautiful dress? Oh yeah, it really is. Don't you wish you were wearing that dress? I'm like, No. No, I'm fine. I'm glad I'm wearing this brown dress that Patty gave me. It's like, Really? I was like, yeah, this is a really nice brown dress. It's fine. I thought, all right, wait a minute here. What about green? Green's your favorite color, right? I mean, don't you wish you were wearing that green thing over there? He's like, no, no. You know what? I'm really okay wearing this brown dress because it's really okay. All right, wait a moment here. I talked to myself in case you didn't figure that out. Okay. All right. So you're okay in the brown dress? Okay, but wait a minutet. What about the hair? Wouldn't you rather have blonde hair? No? huh? No, I guess it's really okay to have red curly hair. You're kidding. And as if that didn't sound like a lot, it totally blew my mind that I wanted to be sitting there with red curly hair, wearing the dress that I was wearing, sitting at the table that I was wearing at the conference that I was at, not at the fun conference over there, you know, but I mean just right there. A more incredible thing happened to me than I ever believed could happen for someone like me. At that moment, I wanted to feel like I was feeling. I wanted to be living the life that I was living. I didn't wish I had your mother. I didn' t wish I came from your town. I didn''t wish I had your sponsor. I didn ''t wish I had your car. I didn.''t wish I had your job. I didn?'t wish I had anything different than what was going on in my life right there and then for that moment. And I'll tell you when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous there was not one person here or all of them put together and we had some very persuasive members of Alcoholics Anonymous who could have told me as I stood there in the meetings you know as the greeter not being able to feel like I could breathe in and out two more times hating myself as much as I did that someday I would want to be who I was look how I was and most of all feel like i felt i never had that after i got sober i never Had that when i was you know before drinking i mean i never had that when i was drinking i mean i just didn't feel but i didn't feel like it was okay to feel like i was feeling you know so it was the power of alcoholics anonymous being able to accomplish that in my life is still mind-boggling to me now i would love to be able to tell you that from that moment to this it's always been like that but that's not true some days i'd rather be blonde there's some days I'd rather have your car and there's some days I'd Rather have a lot of things that you know could be different but most of the time most of time I would not trade places with anybody else in my life, even on my bad days. And that's unbelievable for someone like me who always wanted to be someone else, look like someone else feel like someone else live like someone I mean you know just whatever it was I am well let's see where do I want to go now I when I was scheduled to graduate in May of 1983 from law school, in January of 1983 became very clear that my sponsor, Gail Wilson, was dying of cancer. She was 48 years old. And in that last five months or whatever it was, I spent a lot of time in the hospital with Gail. And we spent a long time talking. It was there that I confirmed that she'd been taught to never say no. That's how she became my sponsor but anyway and we talked about you know um our meeting and how our friendship had evolved you know and uh when I would sit there you know these nurses would come in to take care of Gail and do different things and you know I didn't know any of these nurses they certainly didn't care to meet me or whatever but Gail never one time had anybody walk into her room that she didn't stop them and say excuse me nurse Smith I want you to meet Junie. Junie's like a daughter to me and she's going to be an attorney. And she would just stop these strangers who had no interest in meeting me whatsoever and tell them that. And we talk about, this is the same woman who used to say, don't sit next to me at the meeting and don't tell anyone that I am your sponsor. And Gail said, you know June, when you asked me to be your sponsor I said yes because I've been taught that I could not say no to any request. She said but I knew with your background and your attitude you were going absolutely nowhere. She said, but I went ahead and said yes anyway. She said and I can remember she said, you know, after I'd been sponsoring for you for a while, she said you called me up and you said I'm going to take a class at a college somewhere. She said I knew you'd never finish. You never finished anything. I mean you couldn't hold a job for a month at a time. I couldn't. I was incapable of it. But, you know, I was just a flake in every area of my life with the exception of my service commitments in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And she said, you Know, I didn't say anything. I knew you wouldn't finish, but I didn' t say anything and she said later on after not that many classes you called me up and you said, Gail, You know what? I think one day I want to go to law school and I want learn how to be a lawyer. She said, I had to force myself not to laugh out loud. She said I knew would never make it. You couldn't do it. She said, but I didn't say anything. And we talked about why she didn't say anything, and she didn's say anything not because she believed in June, not because she ever thought June could accomplish anything, but simply because she believed in the power of Alcoholics Anonymous, and she just didn't know what my path was going to be any more than she had known what hers was going to be. And she had seen incredible things happen in the lives of people here in Alcoholics Anonymous that really can't happen. They just can't happen. But for a power that I believe works here for me, I think that there's a power that works other places for other people but this is where it works for me and I'm very, very grateful that I've been able to find it. You know, one of the things that I want to say and I don't want to be too controversial or anything but I think people should probably pray more so whatever. I should too so it's fine if I get a resentment later but you know the one thing I want to say is that my sponsor Gail was gay and that was who she was but I am so grateful I think about this so often I am such a big fan I'm so grateful that Gail went to meetings outside of meetings where only gay people went because in Alcoholics Anonymous when it talks about people who would normally not mix it means so much in my life that Gale was a part of it And I might not have met her, you know, and I might not have made a lot of other people who mean so much to me. You know, if we get too sequestered, you know, into a certain type of group. And I'm not saying that there isn't a reason for those groups. I know that there is because though there are those groups and we need them, you know, just as we need young people's groups, I believe, and we need the different types of groups that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's why I believe that we haven't. But I just want to ask all of you to please remember that were people who normally would not mix, you know, and you may be the person to change someone else's life even if they don't have the same lifestyle, you know, that you may choose to have right now or that I may choose to have. I, you know, one of my closest friends in Alcox Anonymous who has been here at your conference also was Patty Hicks. And Patty Hick and I got sober in 1972. And, you know, we were a lot alike in our attitudes. We both had bad ones. And we both did speak the same language. So that made it kind of fun. Patty was about the age of my mom, maybe a little a tiny bit younger, though. And I was about the age of one of her daughters, although I was a little bit younger as well. And I believe that the process of my friendship with Patty Hicks was what was to allow me eventually to have a relationship with my mother. I learned through Patty being a woman-mother alcoholic that there were a lot of things that she didn't want to have happen out there. And it began to clear a path for me for forgiveness. And by the time I was about seven years sober, my mother gave me a cake in Alcoholics Anonymous. And at that time, I realized that had it not been for the hell and the pain and the abuse that went along with my mother's alcoholism, I might not have found AlcoholicsAnonymous at the time that I did. And so I began to be able to be grateful not only for my own alcoholism, but for my mother's and the way that it was, you know, the path that it Was to lead us on. I, you Know, with Patty, we had a lot of laughs and we had a lot Of fun. And Patty was able to do a lot OF things for me, as was Gail. You know, and I can remember telling Gail, you It made me so upset that at 10 years sober I was still not able to put a dollar in the basket, that I was so poor that I would come home from meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and people would have left a bag of groceries on my front porch. And I really felt like a failure a lot of the time in AlcoholicsAnonymous that I wasn't able to contribute financially. And Patty bought me a lot of clothes. And Gail bought me a lot OF clothes, you know? And I was over 10 years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, maybe 15 years sober before I wasn't wearing someone else's underwear, someone else'S bra, someone else' shoes, someone else''s pants, someone else ''s shirt, someone else.'' You know, whatever. I mean, that was just the best that I could do. And I would say to Gail, I'd say, Jesus, Gail! When is it going to be my turn to give back? How come I can't do that? And she would say, you know what? We don't get to give back to the same people who gave to us. And a lot of times we don't even get to pay back the same way that they paid to us, and I don't like that. I like to stay even and about 25 cents a head. And so it was a very hard thing. I can remember one year for Patty, I had a friend who had a Gucci box. And I thought, oh, Patty would get... I wish I could get Patty something at Gucci. I'd heard about it from Patty. I'd never been there. But anyway, so I asked my friend if I could have the box. She said, sure, you can have it. So I took the box and I wrote a little note. I said, dear Patty, Merry Christmas. you told me it's the thought that counts at least my thoughts are expensive love Jim and this was going to be her Christmas present Patty had talked at this one meeting down in I think it's Long Beach I don't remember but it's somewhere down south I was just there and that's how I remembered it I think its a Monday night when they do birthday cakes which we do in California they have these popper things those 99 cent poppers so when they give the birthday cake happy birthday to you know whatever then they do these poppers the patty didn't know this was going to happen you know so she's like sitting there and all of a sudden these popper's going just ah you know these poppers it was just you know but she told me about it when she came home this was so cool there was confetti everywhere and it was really this element of surprise and you know it was so pretty so i got a popper to open you know to set off when she opened her gift my note that i gave her so i set off my popper and she opened your box and she was reading the note and all of a sudden she screamed because I had just set her floor-to-ceiling drapes on fire with the popper. And so Patty was without drapes for like three years. But But, you know, we were just friends, part of each other's lives, you know. And Patty died in 1988 of a brain tumor. And, you know, we had stood up together every year at my home group, you know, for our birthday. and so I stood up at suite 16 without Patty and it was really, really hard and I still really miss her a lot. You know, I... I just think that I really do feel though that even though I've suffered some of these losses that I've been so lucky to have these people in my life for the time that I was able to have them. I guess I'll talk about, you know, one other area and then I'm going to sit down. I came down Cox Anonymous and I was single and I think today if you're 13 that's a good idea. But when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I wasn't so sure. You know, I had... My mom had never been married and I was convinced that, you know, things would have been a lot different if she had and so I had this sort of idea that marriage would solve a lot of problems or something, you now, like a fairytale thing or whatever, I don't know exactly. But, you kno, so I really, really, really, really wanted to be in a relationship. I've learned a lot over the years. My first relationship in Alcoholics Anonymous, we were together for about two and a half years, which sounds almost successful in a bizarre way, but we really never stayed together 30 consecutive days. I mean, we never took a chip, you know, without him breaking up with me because, you know, he'd had an affair with someone else and he'd make amends. And, you know, it was a very spiritual thing. And Gail had a very strong opinion about this relationship and it was not favorable. But anyway, when I was going out with this guy. In two and a half years, he never bought me dinner. He never bought me a present. We would go to meetings and he would go in and I had to wait outside 15 minutes before I was allowed to come in and then I was supposed to pretend like I didn't know him. And if I was at his house and someone came over, I'd go hide in the closet until they left. And you might think I'm taking his inventory as I say these things, but what I want to tell you is that I felt lucky. I was so grateful that he would let me hide in his closet. I thought, wow, things are really looking up. and when he would break up with me I would think of the thing that I had always thought about from the time that I was five years old which was suicide and at a certain point in sobriety it became so painful that I really did not think I could stay sober without killing myself and I had never dealt with those kind of feelings or any kind of feeling or pain I mean I just took something so quick I didn't have to and it was very, very painful and I can remember one night I was in the bathroom and thinking about cutting my wrists and there was a knock at my door and I went and I opened the door and there's this guy named Bob. How you doing, Bob? And he said, oh, fine. He says, you remember you said you'd told your central office needed some people to go over to this college and talk a little bit about AA and you said that you'd go with me tonight and I said, listen, Bob, experience strength and hope I really don't have right now. I was just going to go in the bathroom and kill myself. He said, oh, he said, have you had dinner? I said, no. He said well I'll tell you what let's go get something to eat we'll go over to this school thing. He said you don't need to say anything I can see you're upset he said and then I'll bring you home and you can kill yourself and I thought alright. I made a commitment I told him I'd go so we drove along and you know as we drove I wouldn't let Bob talk to me and I wouldn'T let him play the radio because you know if you talk to someone or you turn the radio on or you do something you could get distracted and and if you do that you're going to miss out on some of the pain because If you're going to feel all the pain, you definitely have to focus. And I not only was feeling the pain of this loss, but if you're doing it, if you are going to be able to feel the maximum amount of pain, you have to concentrate on the fact that there will never be anyone else again. Otherwise, you're not really at the point that you can get to. So I was working my way there. And we eventually pulled up at this school and we were walking along and I was deep in thought. and this woman came up to me and she said excuse me do you know where room 315 is and I said no I give very short answers when I'm in pain because I want to get back to thinking about me and she says well could you help me find it and I thought alright so I started wandering around I got her lost and she started talking she said she said I'm here taking a drama class Uh-uh. She says, well, what are you doing here? Well, I came with some people and we're going to talk a little bit about alcoholism, Alcoholics Anonymous. She said, really? She said I'm on the wagon. I said that's great. So I've known a lot of people on the wagons. They usually fall off. I said but that's nice. She said well why would you be giving that kind of a talk? I said well because I'm an alcoholic and I stay sober one day at a time through a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, would you like to go to a meeting sometime? And she said yeah, she would. and we traded phone numbers, made arrangements to go to a meeting the next night. Obviously I couldn't kill myself. You'd think AA didn't work. So I took her to lots and lots of meetings and she did not stay sober at that time. Although this coming August, I think Kay will celebrate 24 continuous years of sobriety and alcoholics. and she has every bit as much to do with my still being sober today as I had anything to do with her being sober but anyway I learned from that what it says in the big book which is when all else fails try working with another alcoholic and that has saved my life on more than one occasion I finally realized that part of the problem that I had in relationships was that I sort of had this attitude like I'd meet somebody and I'd kind of do this thing like, okay, I don't like you. I don' t care about you. And it doesn' t really matter to me whether you live or die. Okay? But we can like be together. Okay? And then, what I was waiting for was for them to say, you know, I really care about your life and I really love you. I have really strong feelings for you and I would really like to spend the rest of my life with you? And I'd say, yeah, me too. That's really what I meant, you know. But there's this funny little secret that I want to tell you about in case you don't know this. When you're like putting out there, you know what, I don't care about you, you don'T matter and nothing is important and it doesn't matter to me whether you live or die. People almost never come up and say, I care about your life and I care for you and I'd really like to spend my life with you, you Know. So I'm just going to share that with you because it was a surprise to me that that was part of the problem that I was having. Anyway, Anyway, eventually when I was in law school, this guy asked me out. And I didn't really want to go out with him because he had not been in prison. He didn't have any tattoos. I just wasn't sure we'd have enough in common to talk about things or whatever. But I finally ended up going out with them and we went out for quite a while. And after we had and after we graduated from law school we decided to get married. and in November of 1988 we got married and when we did every member of my family was there every member that was there with the exception of two, three people I had to pay money to be able to be there two people in my family came from another country who had never been in this family to represent my grandparents and of course lots and lots of my very special AA family and friends were there and my husband's entire family was there as well. And, you know, as I walked down that aisle, I didn't wish I was marrying anybody else. I didn'T wish I WAS wearing somebody else's dress. I didn' t wish I Was, you Know, Wearing somebody else'S shoes, and I WAS Wearing shoes, by the way. You know, I... I didn''t wish IWas doing anything different, you KNOW. I was just really, really grateful to be right where I was, and it was one of those moments, youknow, where it just really felt good and right, and it WAS a very, very special day for me. I had never wanted to have children, and there were a lot of reasons why I didn't. And I also had been told from the time that I first got sober in the early years of my sobriety I had many, many surgeries. I had some severe physical problems, and I was told by the time I was 15 that I needed to have a hysterectomy. And it was just a question of waiting until I was 18 when a doctor would do it and when I'd have insurance so that I could pay for it. And so I really didn't believe that I would ever be able to have children. And I think, you know, again, the way that I hated myself so much that I couldn't even imagine the idea of bringing someone in the world who might remotely look like me or something. So that was just not a possibility for me. But after we had been married for a while, my husband, actually, I mean, we talked about it before I got married, but anyway, my hubby and I were married for three years. My husband really wanted to try and have a child. And so we did try, and I ended up, I did have to get some fertility help, and we didn't think it was really going to happen. And then I had a miscarriage, and then I did end up getting pregnant. And I had little girl named Samantha, and Samantha was just eight this month. And about six months after Samantha was born, maybe seven months, I wasn't feeling very well. I went to the doctor to figure out what this flu was that I had, and it turned out that I was pregnant. And we were all very surprised. And the doctor said it was, you know, kind of what they call Irish twins, you know when you have kids that close together. But anyway, I then had my daughter Jessica. And not too long after, well a couple years actually after that, I had a few more miscarriages and then I had my daugher Cassandra. and I have these three little girls and people all the time come up and say gosh, they look so much like you those would have been fighting words years ago and I'm like yeah, they're pretty cute it's really fun anybody who's ever had kids or been around kids knows that it can be interesting and wonderful and hard there are times if my kids were people I sponsored I might tell them, you know, you need to work with someone else for a while because, hey, you know. But we don't get to do that. So anyway, I just want to tell you a couple of stories really quick about my kids and then I'm going to sit down. A couple of years ago, Samantha and I, I mean, we were all moving and we were moving from this place where I had this tree. I mean, it was this 45-year-old tree that the people who had owned this house before we did had planted. And it was the biggest, most beautiful tree I've ever seen in my life to have. It was just unbelievable. And I loved this tree. And I was very, very, sehr sad about moving from my tree. And I went outside and Samantha was about five and she was sitting next to me and I was starting to kind of cry. And I just said, I'm just going to miss the tree, Sam. I really love the tree and there will be other trees. She said, well, Mommy, maybe it's time for another family to get to have this tree. And I thought, God, I guess I should ask her to be my sponsor. You know what? Anyway, I have this book. It's not a meditation book, but it's an AA literature book that they read that has those daily things. And I read an Ellen on one too, actually. and I'm not really sure which book this was in but anyway I like to read these books and I am really into like stories because I mean that's part of what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me you know is the stories they like come up in my life you know later on I mean like someone says to me do you know Joe I'll go I don't know you know you know Joey had the Doberman that drank his vodka and then they played basketball I was like Joe yeah I know Joe okay so that's sort of how stories work for me and they work for мне when I'm like in the middle of you know like having a hard time you know I remember Hal Marley saying you know while you're waiting for the elevator this is a chance for spiritual time it'll come to me anyway so I'm not always happy about the thoughts that come but anyway a lot of them are like these funny little stories but anyway so I am reading this one thing one day and it's about Gandhi and Gandhi was with a bunch of his followers and he was running to catch a train and as he had to jump to catch the train because the train was taking off one of his sandals got caught in the track and fell off And as soon as he got on the train, he stood up and he reached down and he took off his other sandal and he threw it back. And some of his followers said, Gandhi, why did you do that? He said, because if there was one sandal there, it wouldn't be of any benefit to anybody. But maybe if someone comes along, they might find a pair. Now, I don't remember what day of the week or what dayofthemonth or whatever that was, but I have thought about that story in so many contexts. You know, like when I lose an earring. okay I'm thinking where is that earring thinking alright now am I really willing to just throw the other earring out there so someone can it's like I want my earring you know what I mean I'm like working on this but I mean it just amazes me that Gandhi could even think about this and plus I wouldn't think of it until like nine months later I think alright I guess I should have left the other earrings they might as well have a pair so I mean how he thought of this just like that so anyway about three months ago I'm picking up my daughter Jessica and we go running for the car because we're going somewhere fast and we're jumping into my giant truck and I open the door for her and she climbs into the truck and her shoe falls off in the street. So she goes, Mom, I dropped my shoe. I go, Jessie! So I bend over to pick it up and I look and it's fallen in the storm drain. I mean like six feet down. And I go Jessie, it's way down there! And she goes, should I throw the other one down there, Mom? I never told her about that story I read. You know what I mean? I'm living with Gandhi. Anyway, I want to thank you all for allowing me to be a part of your weekend. Norm Alpe was one of the old-timers that was here when I got sober and he had one ofthe most powerful messages I've ever heard. He was one of the most enthusiastic members of Alcoholics Anonymous I've ever known. Every time I ever heard Norm Alpe speak, I would think, I want to join AA, and then I'd remember I already belong. That's why I was there hearing him. But he was just unbelievable. And one of things that Norm Alope talked a lot about was he would say, you know what? But for the grace of God, rooms like this and people like you, I could have missed it all. Thanks for not letting me.