The Pause Button That Saved Her Family – Sharon C.

thank you joel my name is sharon i'm an alcoholic and it's good to be here sitting down i've been out with my dog and it'S hot today and she didn't she wanted to come in before me today so that's a good walk with my talk anyway it'S good to see everybody here um i think today have 16 432 days so it'S like i i'd like to count my days right now because i remember every single day that i woke up sober i remember every single one of those days and that's an awesome thing that we wake up sober um and i know i want to i want a welcome was it katherine or katharina and um yeah kathrina and randy congrats on 30 days stay with us um i just love that the age of miracles is still with us and i'm just going to read this little paragraph it may seem incredible that these men are to become happy respected and useful once more how can they rise out of such misery bad repute and hopelessness the practical answer is that since these things have happened among us they can happen with you should you wish them above all else and be willing to make use of our experience we are sure they will come the age of miracles is still with us our own recovery proves that and i uh i love that um i constantly find new things in in the book Alcoholics Anonymous I think because of they say any spiritual book will continue to grow with you and that is very very true in my experience and as my friend Sandy Beach said that the big book it is not the treasure it is the treasure map so if you have that book in your hand and you have a guide because you know if we go out there looking for treasure you know we're going to have to have a guy because you can't go climb a mountain you've never seen before without a guide or something a map uh you know so i'm so grateful to have had guides in my life the last gosh almost 45 years um so yeah it's amazing um i've been a little bit nostalgic because i think that happens at every milestone in life whether it's a birth and death a great joy a great sadness i think that milestones as my sponsor clancy says he's been my sponsor the last 35 of my almost 45 years. He said, they're just signposts on the road telling you you're on the right path. So it doesn't matter if you have two days, four days, 30 days, 50 years, we're on the right path if you're seeing those signpost and that's a good thing. So I guess I grew up in Iowa and it was my first resentment and I couldn't wait to get out of there. I was a seeker and I was seeking, I don't know what I was seeking, something bigger than me. That's it. You know, I think I was seeking something bigger than me. I used to think I was, uh, seeking, you know, Gandhi's teachings and, and seeking, um, you Know, the mothership, where is it? Um, you And I was seeking those things, but I was Seeking something bigger Than me because I knew whatever I had, my father couldn't fix it. And he's got four children and everybody, everybody, but me kind of followed the yellow brick road to what you're supposed to do in life. And I Was the one that I was the rebel rebellious one, the defiant one. I didn't start out that way, but that's where it started after I started drinking. I had a change of personality really. And I started to do things like skip school, find the booze, steal the boozes, whatever it was. I loved it. I love what alcohol did for me. It connected me to you. It connected мне to, to whatever the, that I needed to be connected to, Whether it was you, whether it was something in the sky, something way out there, I felt connected. And alcohol could do that for me in a room alone. It made me feel connected. So I was connected to alcohol from the beginning. And they say that one out of 10 people have that adverse obsession, which I had to write down for my first step. I had a write-down how I could only have one drink. If there were some times, my sponsor had me write that down. And there were sometimes. Um, but as I went along my, uh, my defiant way in, in, in my life, I began to have to slide across the bar. My dad's love slide acrossthe bar, my art talent slide across the bar, uh my dignity slide across the bar the you know, the love of my family slide across the bar my loving God slide across the bar my passion for life slide across the bar everything important to me because anytime there was a fork in the road I took alcohol and that's where that's what I got kicked out of places that people were living on the edge, like a commune in Huntington Beach that ended up panhandling for a living. And I was a terrible panhandler and I'm a drinker and they're not. They're not drinkers. So of course I stood out. So, of course, when I drank their bong wine, they got mad at me, took me on a picnic and left me on the mountain. Of course, I was going to have some physical problems as I had a gallbladder not working. I had pancreatitis and the end of my drinking um i i got i got asked to leave the organic well i left before the organic people came up came back i ended up in an organic community in northern wisconsin where somebody said let me take care of you and it was not taking care of me it was working if you're on an organic committee you're working but they all went off and did primal therapy and i you know i was already kind of you know persona non gratis around any of those people um because i told them what i thought about them and when i get drunk i i'm rebellious and i'll kick their banjo and take off their hootenanny records you guys are boring um so they went off to do primal therapy and i we had 50 head of organic sheep which i got drunk and screamed at and that was my primal and and i i went to harvest the my crop back in the woods maui waui seeds one seed at a time a lot of organic sheep dung on it short growing season tall beautiful crop and so I thought I'm gonna harvest that before they come back and getting out of town and that was that was a place where my mother thought maybe Sharon will make it because she knew the guy I was with we had grown up together and she thought okay maybe she'll make it I mean I remember we gave them um like maple syrup we had made if you've ever made maple syrup it's a lot of work it's a lot and we had given and i had made some logos and so everybody that holiday got maple syrup we had make and you know it was just uh they she thought okay well maybe this will work so when i harvested my crop and and didn't make the money because i forgot the crop back on the farm and I joined the carnival because it was there. That was my way out of town. And I called my mother from Arkansas, and she said, I said, Mom, I'm in Arkansas now, and I, I joined a carnival called Mad Armstrong Shows. And she was really quiet, really quiet. It's not a day you want to hear your daughter call, say, hey, Mom. I'm with the carnivore now. So I'm not hurting anyone but me please don't cry i'm not hurting anyone but me i'm writing a book mother i'm reading a book but that was the time i saw that my mom kind of just she couldn't believe my life anymore my mom stuck with me all the way my dad and i you could cut the tension with a knife after after i was in in my 19th year of life because i always i always had to argue with him about anything, anything. And one day my father asked me, how are you? You look weird. I know he knew it was a weird, but you look not good. Tell me what's going on. Okay, dad, sit down. And I told dad things that dads don't need to know about their daughters. So I saw my father look away, set his jaw so that he wouldn't say anything. That's the way my dad and I lived for eight years. never rode in the same car never had breakfast at the same table and um you know if i called home and he answered the phone went right to mom so now my mother is crying and she's not buying it and she had to literally go back up to that farm in northern wisconsin from eastern iowa which is a five-hour trip to get her things back that she had given me for possibly making a life for myself like some of her antique furniture and things like that she gave to me to use in that non-insulated schoolhouse that we were living in. Cold. It'd be minus 30, and we'd have to stoke a fire to get warm. If you want to have tea or boil anything, you've got to stope a fire. It was, oh, what am I doing here? And I am the drinker that stands out. So after the carnival call with mom, it was like don't even call home anymore so i felt very separated from my family by king alcohol but it was a fork in the road and i took it i took that because i could still count on alcohol working in my life and eventually the carnival um uh said to get rid of me too so i didn't even fit in with the carnies which are all off the grid they're all offthegrid and um you know because i had this little shooting gallery and i didn t want to give away teddy bears even though those little 12 year boys you know they had their bb guns and they shot down the appropriate amount of targets to win a teddy bear and i would say no you didn't and they say yes we did no you did you know and i'd pop that target up and i'd they'd say well we're going to tell our dads go ahead go whine i'm drinking tequila i am not nice and so the dads would come and then there'd be some argument and then it would be bigger and then if all the other carnies you know that was the code we had to help each other so they would come and then i would mace somebody because i hitchhiked a lot so i always had mace in one of my boots and uh then we get closed down matt would have to peel off some of his money in his pocket and buy our way out of town and the second time it happened it was in louisiana and that's where the owner of the show that's Where He Wintered that's his home base that's what he knows all of all of the cops all around i don't even know what they call him we called him the parish finest because it was parish by parish by parish down there so matt said to those guys go get that little girl she's staying at this motel she's trouble i don't want her in the carnival anymore i'll get my stuff back but she's got stuff in that room and you can find it here and here and here and they came in at 8 a.m one morning which of course i'm not awake and pushed the door open and that was me going off to Bogalusa, Louisiana lockup. Talk about a big bug. Oh my God, they could drag your shoes across the floor at night. You know, somebody was like making a wagon and trying to train them to pull a little. I mean, it was insane. And I had actual DTs there. I had auditories, I had things that happened from time to time, but this was actual DTS with things that on the TV talking to me that wasn't, it Was in the lobby and I could see it and they were talking to me and people had pointed heads and I'm like anxiety ridden. So I took a piece of glass I found and made little cuts all over my face and arms because they came in at night in this big pen of women and took one out one at a time and then brought them back at daylight. It was a crazy place, but they left me alone because she's, they said, she's crazy. And I would just like with my blood i would go and they did leave me alone i'm a survivor my defiance will keep me alive that's the beauty of being as defined as i was when i ran with these people that really didn't care for human life you know they cared about themselves and the carnival never came back and so i they cuffed me one day i was there maybe a week and a half threw me in this room drove me somewhere threw me into this office building and there was my father who had gotten on a plane in iowa Nobody in my family is alcoholic. Nobody in our family has been to jail. Nobody in the family has caused so much heartache and broken hearts. So I'm so grateful we got to the amends process in the beginning of my sobriety. I'm just so grateful. I think I had 35 years with my mom sober and 24 years with my dad sober. so we had a lot of time to mend the fences but um i didn't know that then but i just remember how i felt that day he tried to buy they said they were letting me go and he wrote a big check to this bail bondsman and the lawyer and the judge so it was kangaroo court and they sent me back to jail and they didn't let me out and my dad went home to iowa and thought they let me out and that's he was just doing the patriarchal thing because that's my dad but I talked to my dad when I was 20 years sober about that day and he said all you said the whole time they asked you anything was I'm not guilty and it's not my fault and I totally believe that I am building a case I am the victim I amthevictim and I'm good at building acase and so I found the French Court of New Orleans when they finally let me outand that's where I drank hard and heavy and my blackouts were getting longer and my blackouts were um i i said to myself i remember saying to myself after i woke up in florida swimming with dolphins i thought they were sharks i had started drinking in a bar in the french quarter and i and i was with these people i didn't know who were really mad at me and they finally someone said well you know you drove the wrong way on the freeway we were all screaming and you wouldn't get off and i Was like oh i was kind of shocked with that one and I didn't remember any of it. So I thought to myself, I better take better care of myself in my blackouts. It's not like, oh, my God, you're drinking too much. You've burned down your life. You're sick with this pancreatitis that comes. Your gallbladder has been removed. You're starting to lose jobs in the French Quarter, which is hard to do when you're working at a local bar. and um so in 1975 from april to when i got sober on august 20th it's it's when my alcoholism really took me down and um because i was always looking for another way i was Always looking for the easier softer way somehow but now um in april i'm unemployable i got asked to leave my very seedy sorry little bar in the french quarter because i have a bad attitude and my alcoholic friends aren't drinking with me anymore because they don't want to because i was hitting bottom before they were they told me two of my friends are sober and they said yes you were hitting bottom way before we did and i um found myself trying to get out of town i ended up at barney's beanery in west hollywood where um i saw the big book alcoholics anonymous second edition big white letters on that navy blue and it's it was she was passed out by the book and coming to and some people were signing something which i think it was her court card but i'm drinking in there and feeling sorry for her she's got to go to alcoholics synonymous and the bartender called her a taxi she took her book she wobbled out the door and fell into a cab and we i had my jose cuervo nice and neat no lime no salt big rock glass that's the way i drank my tequila and we all gave her a toast as she fell out the dark good for you chris go to a and a and um i was going to not be able to get a job i was i was asked to leave um after i don't know just a short shift because I couldn't remember where the glasses, where the drinks on my tray went. And the owner came over and had to help me as I stood in the middle of a floor. And he said, we'll pay you for tonight. Please don't come back. And I gotta tell you, I was bloated. I was wearing this red dashiki and I had a Panama hat on so you wouldn't look at my eyes. I had all my possessions that I cared about, which was not much in a backpack. And I had book by Baba Ram Dass called Be Here Now, which meant to me was in a big spiritual search it was I can do what I want when I want to do it and that's the way I live no more dogs no more boyfriends no more calling home my mother didn't know where I was and I was unemployable and I had no place to live and somebody was kind to me and I lived in one place for a while until I locked him out of the kitchen and threw food all over the walls because I don't even know I'm doing this I don'T EVEN KNOW THAT I'M AT THE END OF my drinking. And I ended up back in New Orleans for a brief period and met somebody going to Hawaii and I said, let's go. Because it seemed to me I couldn't even get my job back anywhere in the French Quarter. And it seemed To me all my friends didn't want to hang with me anymore. And it was true. So there I am again, stuck at Barney's Beanery. And And I meet this girl who I stay in touch with her through a friend of mine who's sober. I stay InTouch about her, and she's the last picture I saw of her. Oh, man, she doesn't look anything like the person I remember who was rough when I met her. And she's still – her brother died, and I don't know how she's alive. But that's what scares me if I would go out. i don't know if i die right away but i might look just like just like my friend and live a long time in pain and agony and be too chicken to jump off a 44 floor building and so that's a reminder but i met her and we partied together i had no place to live and i'd sleep in a garage with cots where there's somebody always provided the vodka in the freezer and that's we'd all get up and hit on that vodka. Now, my mother thinks I'm back in the French Quarter somewhere. My mother has no idea that I'm homeless in Los Angeles, and it's not a friendly city to be homeless in, but most of the people that took me in were drinkers like me, and on July 27th, my friend and I met some guys at the bar, and we went out to Palm Springs on Harleys, and I think they just needed a little extra weight it was very windy going through the desert we left at like three in the morning or something and so they needed a little extra weight so i was about you know i weigh 140 but i was like 175 pounds i was very bloated and very sick and very toxic and um i unbathed water hurt i don't know about you but showers hurt and that was that was what was getting ready to come to you, to Alcoholics Anonymous, but it took one final thing for me to slide across the bar. And that was my life. Because at some point, this girl left me in the car. I'm so grateful for this moment in my life, I'm sorry, it's like this emotion of gratitude for my bottom which got me here. And I hope, to goodness sakes, you've hit a bottom if you're new. and there's going to be other emotional and spiritual bottoms in sobriety too which to me signify growth if you stay that the hallway the hallway is crowded with people between what was and what could be and and going back that way going back where you came in doesn't guarantee anything but to me if i stay one day at a time in whatever hallway i'm in the door opens on a new beautiful view i didn't even imagine so my last drinking bout i ended up in a car she left me in a card with people we didn't know they took me somewhere they broke my jaw in three places they smashed my nose they basically drugged me around on the cement the doctor said you were very lucky that another bone in your face didn't break because my cheekbones were just so sore i couldn't even touch them for six months and uh they rolled me up the side of the road. And that's when I had my spiritual experience, because I lifted my head up even though I had a concussion. I lifted My head up because I heard the car go slam and I thought they're coming back. And I thought who cares. But what I heard was a voice deep down with that fact deep down within us. I heard a voice, I believe that's where it came from. It said, get up. I want to live. And I guess I did. And I guess i ended up somewhere where I someone called the ambulance and I was in the hospital being prepped for surgery to put my jaw back on and set my nose. And I was the victim because the police were there. And this was, you know, my name was after the word victim that I wrote. And it was like, oh, my God, finally somebody knows what I am. I mean, really, it's like, you know very macabre but I was thinking if I could have smiled and said thank you for that I would have and I was in the hospital for two weeks and they just morphed me up it was like and they I saw the chart one day it said addictive personality because they weren't coming fast enough I never was a morphine girl or a heroin girl or you know a reds girl or any of that I'm up and running and you know people that were face down going let's party you know was like okay have your party on the floor i'm out of here you know it's just the way i was and and so but with that morphine they kept giving me and then they didn't come in time and so addictive personality on my chart but i got no cards i had no friendly direction i had nothing i didn't know what i was going to do and this man who was actually dating the girl with the big book in the bar who had heard about what had happened to me because my friend came back to Barney's and said well this happened to Sharon you know and um so she knew what happened so I think she sent her boyfriend out to get me because I had nowhere to go she was in and out of AA until she died a wet brain at 31 years old her name was Chris and he came and got me and said I know you don't have a place to go you can sleep on my couch and I was grateful for it and then on August 20th he was buying me cheap red wine and I'd have to unscrew the top and stick a straw in that cheap gallon of wine and stick a strap through the wires on my face where the tooth had been kicked out so I could suck on the line. I'm just sucking on wine there is no more let's go start over Phoenix has drive-thru liquor stores it's on a grid north south east west I thought well I could always go to Phoenix because I could find my way around and go through drive-through liquor stores I thought that was fabulous i had never seen them before but i was bone tired and he said to me sharon you got to leave you're depressing me and so i called my mom i had nobody else to call and i talked like this and my mother said sharon we can't help you anymore go to the salvation army and if my mother would have sent 20 you'd have another speaker norm lp talked a lot when i was knew. And he talked about seconds and inches, seconds and inches, that we are the lucky ones to be here. And if that $20 bill would have come in the mail where I was staying, I would not be here because what I did was pick up a phone number which was on the table with the telephone. We used to have these phones and the telephone book. It could have been slid under the telephonebook and I wouldn't have called her. But that girl Chris's number was there. I don't know she's dating this guy. I just know she was always nice to me. So I called her and I think about the seconds and inches of that phone number being there looking at me and she said Sharon I can't help you I heard what happened to you but this girl Suzanne can because she was drinking that day so she gave me a five-year sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous to call I don't know that I'm calling a member of AA I just need help so what happened was she sent over two beautiful girls to get me she knew what liquor store I was living above she knew where to tell me to sit she knew she just like knew she said put your drink put your joint down I thought where is she how does she know this you know she read my mail got my attention i went out and sat on the steps of going up to that apartment where we live at that liquor store and this car pulls up with these shiny beautiful faces and i was like no their hair's shiny they're shiny the car's shiny but i was so tired they literally just each picked me up by one arm and took me and put me in the back of the volkswagen where i couldn't get out and all i remember was they talked incessantly about themselves trying to you know share their experience strength and hope with me but i don't hear anything i just think when are they going to ask me about me i've got this newspaper clipping in my pocket i don'T KNOW WHERE THEY'RE GOING i JUST THINK I'M GETTING A PLACE TO STAY i DON'T KNOW THEY'RE MEMBERS OF aa i am NOT TRACKING ON THAT AND WE GO TO A CHURCH AND i go oh a church i mean god had a big fight one finger peace sign when i left that catholic church and gave it to the priest. And I just thought, God, stay on your side of the world. I'll stay on my side ofthe world. AndI thought, okay, I got to play the game because I need a place to stay. So I'm sitting there, people looking at me like or shaking my hand and saying, welcome. I thought, well, this is weird. And you look tired, kid. Take your pack off and stay with us. How does he know I'm tired? I was a mess when I came here. And the guy at the podium, I thought it was the preacher, and he rang my bell. He said he always waited for the spaceship to land and say you can come home now, Bill. And I thought, oh, my God, I'm with Spaceship People finally. Finally, that's what connected me. That's what woke up a little ember of life in there. So I was like, oh! Spaceshift People. And then this guy came up to me and put a big book down in front of me, Alcoholics Anonymous. Man, is that where I am? Okay. You know, they're nice to me. I don't know what I'm doing. And he wrote in my book, My Sobriety Date. He got my name out of me. I couldn't talk the first three months I was in AA. So let me tell you, everybody talked to me. They're going to talk to people who can't. We like to talk. I mean, if you can't talk back, you're just a willing person in this conversation to be a good listener. And I learned a lot by listening to you guys. But Maurice Salatau, who was a Hollywood writer, he wrote about Marilyn Monroe and all kinds of people he met all the stars he was a great guy he was a smart man and he wrote in my big book Echo Park LA California August 20th 1975 and my name Sharon and it's in pencil it's intense I love it I can barely read it now I don't know I'm gonna put something over it to read more to keep Maurice's writing in there because he's at that big meeting in the sky and that's what started their sponsor had said, don't send her up until those liquor store lights turn off. Because I'm still in touch with both of them today. They're still sober. One went out, but she's back. And they remind me all the time of how I was when they picked me up and how we sat in that car in an August, unwashed, detoxing, sitting in the back of a Volkswagen, can't get out, just sitting there trying to breathe and listen to them who are sharing with me things I didn't understand. And as soon as the liquor store lights turned off their sponsors said they could send me back upstairs to sleep one more night and then they moved me out and i slept on floors and i i was not able to go to a recovery house they had one recovery house in west la for women and they wouldn't take them because i my physical appearance they couldn't feed me i couldn't see me my mother finally sent me a blender so i could eat through the straw oh my god and then a spy got a sponsor because they and leave me alone and the sponsor said you know you can come sleep on my couch i was like oh my god get a sponsor your life gets better that's how simple it was for me in the beginning you know but you saw that it was worth saving and it gave me a shot and chuck c talks about that he said everybody gets a shot everybody gets grace everybody gets compassion love is a thousand to nothing it's not a thousand to one it's a thousand and nothing we do this for fun and for free and uh you know if you're new there's there's a couple of you fairly new that 10 people's lives have gotten better the moment you come in and sit down with us that they know you're okay so um now you know one of my big awakenings in my my life sober has been man it wasn't even about me from the beginning it takes a long time to get there though i'd be awake and then to understand And even my coming day A was healing for my parents. My mother used to say when I would call home at the holidays, because the family knew, the family on both sides knew something was wrong with me. Because I would have fits. I would come drunk. I would Have to drive alone. I would sit with the children at the card tables instead of the big table at Thanksgiving. Well, he actually put me there. So it was like, all right. and I just was not cooperative and I didn't engage with my family so when they found out I was doing better and I would call it the holidays and my mother would be with one family or the other family but I'd have to call both and tell her Merry Christmas and she would get off the phone and my brother said all of the aunts would come around and grandpa would come around and go, how's she doing? And my mother would say in a whisper, she's an AA. She didn't know what AA was, but she knew it was anonymous. So she knew to whisper it. I was going to be the example for Alcoholics Anonymous to my family, which is a ripple. If you think about what the example is that we give, whether it's pausing and not reacting, getting in your car and driving to call your sponsors somewhere and coming back and helping the family do the dishes or helping the family wrap presents or, you know, volunteer to go get food. Be just a good daughter, a good family member. Boy, that pause button made a big difference because I could have blown it with my family. There was one time in the van that my dad picked me up. It was my sister's wedding, my younger sister's I flew in from California. I was tired. It was a night flight. They're picking me up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at like 7am. And when I connected in Chicago, I found a place to sit to do my morning meditation. Thank you, God, because that's what I need every morning. I need to find my pause button again. I can't discriminate compassion. I can't have that kind of compassion that way. You get it, you don't get it. Because that's coming from me and I want to come from intuitive thought and a higher source so I had found my little spot to meditate and so my dad picked me up everybody's in the car and we're going driving down Cedar River Road it's a beautiful place I grew up in a beautiful part of the world and my dad's driving my sister's in front seat and they're talking finance and it's like always with the Mensa always with The Brilliant One always you and her talking about your business okay and then I listen to my younger sister who's getting married in the backseat with my mom and they're talking about fashion and what she's going to buy for the you know the bridesmaid and all of her people standing up for her the gifts and I thought I just got off a plane to California you're not going to ask me what's what's hip fashionista here mom sister but no they didn't ask and then my brother this was the big one sitting with the brother-in-law in the second seat talking about fishing. And he's a commercial fisherman in Alaska to this day. But my brother is talking to him and I almost said, come on, Miles, I taught you how to put a worm on a hook because we live by a river. I taughtyou how to fish. And then I'm realizing that I'm having this sobbing cathartic in the middle of the van making noise, slobbering, making noise. and my dad stops the van turns around that looks at me and he said are you okay oh they're all here all of them i i've got to pull out my my case list i've been i've had a lot of trouble this this you know soapbox that's just i can put it right down and get ready but what i had was a voice from that pause button it said get out of the van so my dad gave me some water i got out of the van, they're back to their conversations. Like I just didn't have this big upheaval and I stood outside of the band and I was like, I felt like I was in a different zone. And I looked at the sun and the beautiful morning sun and there was a beautiful cornfield there and it had, the sun was shining and there's like a layer of life above the cornfield. I mean, you can listen to corn grow. It is just the most beautiful thing to lay in a cornfield and hear grow. I've done third steps in cornfields as they've been, it's been fabulous, but I saw the life. I saw The Clouds. I Saw the Beauty and I said, it okay to be from Iowa. It's okay to be part of that family. And I got back on the van and I kept my mouth shut and I can't my mouth shut so much because I, you know, I went home and made my meds after my inventory, very cursory with my dad he just wanted me to be happy my mom and i were fine i at five years i got another sponsor my dad walked me down the aisle at two and a half years and and we went to a meeting and you took him to the literature table so my father's a reader and he read the big book and he's got books stacked by his chair that's the way my dad is he's maybe has the tv on but he's reading he's always reading and that's my older sister just like dad always reading that's why they were smart I think. So I thought, well, they're reading. I'm not going to read. I was reading the classics and sobriety that I said, I'm Not Reading That. It's funny. So my dad read it and he ran a calculator tape because he saw there in the book, most alcoholics owe money and the amends part. And my sponsor had said to me, you know what? It's time to call your dad and pay him back the money you owe him. I was five years sober and I went, okay, he doesn't need it. So I called him and he gave me a total. he answered the phone gave me the total i like my mouth hung open it was so high i called my sponsor back she laughed and my mother told me after my father my father was killed in 99 on a freak accident on his land he was gone in a second but um my my mother tell me some things about my dad after he was done because she knows i'm defiant if she would have said your father read that in the book went out to the office took out your dossier put every receipt everything in there i had forgotten about the car i took that's what made it so high everything in there he ran the calculator tape he put it on page 78 where most alcoholics owe money circled it in red and my mother said he told me if i call and ask there it is and he's not home but he was home and he gave it to me it was like oh my god it's so high she laughed and then i called him back because we talked about my better job and payment terms i said he accepted she said okay then you're not going to be late with that check. Bill and Bob are watching you. What? So I always sent that check on time because Bill and Rob are watching me. And then she said, because I have been loved by the giants and alcoholics anonymous and many aren't here. Many aren't there anymore. okay so she's even up there now but um she said i'm willing to grow through this with your dad which meant to me something more she wants because she knew the experience strength and hope she had she could she could show me a new view that i didn't think was possible it says in the book my little designs and plans my little it also said she she showed me remember at the beginning we agreed that we'd go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. We agreed. Okay, I don't remember, but they pull these things out at the right time. So I said, okay, what do you want? And she said, put a note about your life with that check. Do not send the cold hard cash alone in an envelope and don't be late because Bill and Bob are watching. So she'd check on me if I wrote the note and yes it was hard it was very hard but somewhere in those four and ten months of my dad getting a consistent check and a consistent note and letter something started to heal and after four years and about 10 months my dad called me the day after christmas he said merry christmas daughter i don't want your money anymore no more it's done but don't stop sending me your notes and the healing was there because are you willing to grow through this with your dad my sponsors have always given me truth with kindness truth with a solution that's the kindness you're not going to tell me that i'm i'm a defiant you know loner or whatever it is but you're going to give me the solution to that and that's i've never heard anyone in alcoholics anonymous say we don't stay sober through that you gotta leave there's an answer a solution for everything here. You just stay through it and get through the hallway. And yeah, so my mother also told me that, did you know your father 12-stepped the town drunk? I said no. I think I could have blown it that day in the van, right? I could Have blown it so that he would have said Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work. What he said to this guy, John, who was the town drunk came to my dad because people came to My Dad. And he said, nope, it's not your wife's fault. you're not getting a divorce john you're an alcoholic alcoholics anonymous has helped my daughter maybe it'll help you and gave him the book and this was after my dad was gone had no idea and i spoke about it because it was on my heart at a meeting north of north of la i didn't want to go that night i was tired i didn'T want to have a carpool i was grumpy but i have smart feet and if i say yes to something my feet show up first before my head can catch up. And so I went that night and it was raining and it took me forever. And I started at the talk with what my mother had told me about the town drug and my dad. And after the meeting, this girl came up to me and she said, hi, can I talk to you? And I said, sure. And she said you recognize me. And i said kind of but not really. And She said what her name was. I said oh my god i used to babysit you in lisbon iowa. I smoked pot are you okay? I was like i wouldn't drink when i babysat, but I smoke pot. And she said, yeah, but I got to tell you something. You know, you talked about my Uncle John. I said, that's your uncle at Town Drunk? And she says, yeah. That's my Uncle John and he's still sober. And two years ago, I went home to a family reunion and my Uncle Judd 12-stepped me and I have two years. Could have blown it that day in the van. It's so important to be a good example because I have no idea who's watching. no idea where the ripples are going to go but every once in a while every once in a little while if you stay in the game you get to touch the veil and see the ripple hit the shore but everything's for fun and for free a thousand to nothing and um i'm just about done but i want to tell you about um my casey my husband left me for a newcomer that was terrible clancy became my sponsor then because my sponsor had 21 days off of a plane smoking pot in paris france and so he was louder than my head thank god and he he didn't let me throw hot coffee on the new couple he didn'T let me become a victim and stay betrayed I was very pissed off at all of you and one night this lady came and looked at me and looked at the newcomer and I wouldn'T move my legs for her to get in the aisle because I'm I'M pissed off AT ALL OF YOU AND MY UH MY FIRST SPONSOR'S HUSBAND WROTE IN MY BOOK SHARON Humility is what is left after the pain has been removed from humiliation. I was like, well, thank you. Okay. I did my inventory again. I stayed on my side of the street. I didn't make my son hate them. I bit my tongue off practically. And then one year, one month and 14 days later after healing from that, I met my man Casey and we were together 24 years. 24 years! And we did AA and our house was full of AA. and we had a lot of fun together and he had a diagnosis of malignant melanoma and they gave us seven months and he got two years and two months and I want to thank the men in AA because you took him to the treatments he didn't want me to go to those treatments he didn'T want me to see somebody that was in there last week is never coming back because he has an expiration date he knows it and then at the meetings people would want to talk to him about their cancer or their great aunt Martha who went to Lord's and here's some Lord's water. And he said, Sharon, I'm just here for an AA meeting and I can't get one. So I talked to somebody I knew and the next week at every meeting my husband was at, you men sat around him and you talked about golf and you talk about your day. Thank you. Thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous. There's always a solution. And I got to hold him on his last moments, and it was beautiful. And I miss him every day. And I'm taking his ashes all over the world. I know, get over that, right? I think broken open hearts heal bigger. You know, I bungee jumped with him in New Zealand. He's in this beautiful glacier in Alaska he loves. I got a pilot friend to take me there. When we turned that corner and I saw that glacier, he got in the plane with me. I am open to being the best Sharon I can be today. I am open to intuitive thought. I am opened to helping all these beautiful women that ask me to sponsor them. And look at the in-the-line meeting. We had 124, no, 143 girls and we had 24 newcomers. Don't tell me Zoom's not working. It's working good. I'm sitting here with my loving God today and you're sitting there with your loving God today. And I just want to thank you for being with me on this ride. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Absolutely amazing job. I believe you came and spoke at a convention in Bend many years ago, and that was the last time I heard your story, and it's a beautiful thing. It's hard to not be choked up. So, that is all the time we have today. If you currently don't have a home group, I would like to join our group. Our business meetings are on the first Tuesday of every month, directly following the meeting. our group believes in sponsorship a sponsor is someone who has recovered through the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous outlined in the big book and is willing to take someone else through the same work thank you again sharon for sharing your story with us today i'd like you to carry too thank you our next meeting will be monday at noon and that will be our newcomer meeting so please come join us do any new horizons group officers have any announcements since i believe i'm one of the few group officers here i'll start um we every month we have a newcomer orientation i also fully agree zoom is amazing and we're pulling newcomers left and right because we try to because we make an effort to so if you know somebody at your group anywhere in the world who's new to alcoholics anonymous and and wants to find out the nuts and bolts basics of you know simple things like what sponsorship is what a big book is what a home group is you know the things that we consider shorthand uh that newcomers don't get you know come send them to our monthly aa orientation it's the last saturday of every month right here same room same code and you can find us at our website for more information or you can reach out to me directly our website is please correct me if i'm wrong carrie it's the new horizon group bend aa or aa bend newhorizongroupaa.com newhorizongroupaa.co perfect uh there you can find all of our individual offers officers contact information and recordings of our previous speakers including this one which will be up shortly and you know it's an amazing resource including we have recordings of ourselves and we're going to our aa orientations too if you've got somebody new who can't wait till the next the end of the next month carrie do you have any announcements um my name is carrie and i am an alcoholic and i am this group's gsr jerry if you are in a place where you can post um some of that information that joel just uh that joe just announced that would be great in the side chat or if any other secretaries vicky anybody i'm on vacation so i don't have access to my copy and pasties which is what we call those um but that would be great or at least the website uh in the chat so that we can um so that it's easy access um yeah I just I just want to thank you know Sharon and since we do have a couple of extra minutes I just wanted to um what I heard today that stuck out to me which is one of the reasons that always sticks out tome when you talk Sharon is that I have smart feet. And I love that because when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, they told me that you couldn't be too dumb, couldn't Be Too Dumb for this thing, but you could be too smart. See, this is why I need I need to keep it simple. And for me, what's been working is that i have smart feets, you know i suit up and i show up regardless how i feel regardless if i'm on vacation, you Know, um, if it's my home group, i'm going to suit up and I'm going to show up. And that's, that's my commitment. And I don't take commitments while my home group's going on, you know, because I'm committed to that. And, and that is what, you know I've been taught and that smart thing, feet thing, that is exactly what has kept me sober. And what has kepped me in the middle is, is having smart feet and saying yes, and showing up and putting my home group first. And I love you know, I visited you at your home group, Sharon, and in LA a few months ago, and I love the fact that none of you guys speak on Wednesday night, you know? And you're there, and you each have a like a service position. I mean Hilda greeted us in the parking lot for you know she was the parking lots leader, and you guys are all there. And you wouldn't do service outside of you know on a Wednesday night at that time, because that's when you guys meet. And I just really appreciate you showing me how this thing is done and being one of my giants. Thanks. Yeah, God forbid if I only showed up on meetings on the days I thought I needed a meeting. Anyways, let's see. If you'd like to stay after and briefly speak, thank the speaker, please feel free to do so. I have failed to ask somebody to lead us out. Vicki, would you be able to lead us out with a third of the seven step prayer you're muted hun sorry I don't have I don' trust myself to know anything out of my brain right now that share was just amazing I'm kind of in another world thank you so let's just go with a simple one with a three step prayer 63 thank you yeah okay all right god i offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt relieve me of the bondage of self that i may better do thy will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those i would help of thy power thy love and thy way of life may i do thy will always