The Wall She Built to Keep People Out Also Kept Her In – Eve M.

Thank you for embracing me. My name is Eve, and I'm an elderly alcohol... I mean, I'm a grateful alcoholic. You know, that word, elderly, I don't particularly care for. I remember a few years ago somebody asked me to go talk about alcoholism and the elderly woman, and I couldn't imagine why they asked me to do that. Being a dictionary freak and liking to know what words I'm using, I went to the dictionary to find out what elderly meant. And I found a good definition, I think. And that definition is, elderly is a loss of enthusiasm for life. And I ain't lost that enthusiasm. Thanks to the fellowship. How fortunate we are that we have this program to live by. When we look around us and see so many other people even people in our own families who don't have this program that they can live by which helps us to maintain this sense of love this sense of sharing the sense of fellowship this sense of knowing who we are because that really is what it's all about is getting to know who we are and I didn't know who I was when I first came into AA I had no idea you know I was going to say something and I started off on a different tack and now you know i did this when i was here before i'm just remembering one of the reasons that there are many reasons why i love the corn huskers roundup one i think it's the best one of the best in the whole country it's terrific and another reason is the fact that when i was here in 1980 i brought with me at your request or at your invitation rather my grandson who at at that time was 20 years old and about to be cashiers out of the Air Force. And he heard Clancy on Saturday night, and he said, I didn't know A.A. was like that. And I said, honey, that's not typical. But he embraced many of the ideas that he heard there, and went on and that cashiering stopped and he was let out with an honorable discharge and today eight years later he's happily married and musician and trying to be a successful one and I think he understands something about the program by which his granny has tried to live these last years I didn't give my sobriety date Clancy practically mentioned it last night but it's not really important you know when you come right down to it the important thing is what it means because i like to say by the grace of god and the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous and the love that's been shared with me over these years i have not found it necessary to take a drink or any pill or anything since January 6th, 1945. Now there are a couple of things that that says to me. Number one is that I haven't needed to take the pill or take a break because this fellowship has given me the tools to work with to make those changes within myself and within my attitude so that it is no longer necessary for me to look for something outside there, some chemical, some substance to make me feel like a whole person because through this fellowship I am learning how I am a whole persona. I have learned that I don't have to become anything, that I have to be me. And the other thing that that says is the fact that this program works. Forty, whatever it is, years of sobriety would not have happened if I had not learned that this program works and that through it, I was going to learn that life is exciting, that life ist wonderful, that there is joy in problems. That sounds funny to a new person, but there is joys. There's that joyousness, that joyosness of being able to cope. All those years, I thought I had to have a drink to cope I know people say we drank to escape. I don't know. I don't want to argue about it but I know that I drank to cope. I had to drink in order to face what I thought were all the terrible problems I had in my life. I didn't understand until I began to get sober and AA that I was the problem. I did not recognize that fact and that is the reason for this need to change so that I can grow away from this need of taking a drink and that really is a difference I think between going on the water wagon which I guess we have all done over the years and i always thought that was an event i didn't realize that that was a you know that was not an event but it takes work to go on staying sober but when i would go on the water wagon i was never really comfortable never comfortable with me i was ever happy because i hadn't had an opportunity to make any of these changes and so i think the difference between going on the Water Wagon and coming into AA is the fact that when we get into this program we grow away instead of staying away we stay away from a drink and we fight it every step of the way but in aa we begin to grow away from that need to take a drink and we become whole and we no longer have to have that something outside of us in order to help us to maintain the kind be the kind of person we've always wanted to be you know uh this fellowship i get very excited in aa last night i was i was terribly moved when when we were talking about the early days. I was so sad that I missed Bob on Friday night. I had heard him before, thank goodness, but I'm sorry I wasn't here to hear him. I was sorry that I was in Chicago all night because I missed so much of this convention. I missed some much of the other speakers and that was the thing that I came for. I came from the inspiration that they give to me and I missed too many of them. Of course, I guess Clancy in a large dose is enough to carry one for a day or so. I always loved to hear Bob talk about those early days. And I think it's wonderful that we can remember, and Clancy did it again last night, a little bit about the history of how magnificent this fellowship is. And I can recall that when I first went in, I went in first in October of 44, and I got drunk afterwards, so that's why my sobriety date is in January. But they were planning an anniversary dinner for Bill, which had become a custom, eventually became a custom with the big dinners in New York. And I recall the excitement. Somebody came running down and said they just had a report from the old Alcoholic Foundation office, which was the precursor of a general service office, that they had just had to report that there were now 10,000 members worldwide. I'll bet there are more than 10, 000 members in Nebraska. You know, I mean, how fantastic. And that was only less than about 40-odd years ago. And so how tremendous this fellowship is. And I get excited about it, and I think I don't want newer people, younger people in this fellowship to lose track of where we came from and our roots. And so I'm so happy when Bob talks about the past and that Clancy brought in some of our history last night. And I love to think about it as a worldwide fellowship, which was something that Bill perhaps envisioned, but I'm not sure that he did, when he wrote the last chapter, A Vision for You, when he hoped that someday there would be AA in other places around the world. I wonder if he knew that AA was going to spread so that there's practically no place you can go on this globe without finding an AA group or an AA member. And I know because I've been to a lot of them. I went around the World in 1965. I spent a whole year traveling around, visiting AA groups in such faraway places as Bangkok, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, all over Europe. and it was fantastic and sometimes I discovered that it's quite true of doing this talk about the language of the heart because I would sit in meetings in Germany for example where I can't understand a single word and I didn't have to understand because I could tell by the feeling I could Tell by the emotion what was going on in this fellowship and so I think it's tremendous I get this big excitement about Alcoholics Anonymous and I get very emotional I think I had that feeling when I first got here without having any understanding of what it was going to you like. I sort of fell in love with AA when I first walked in. That feeling, I guess, of the coming home. You'll have to forgive me, I keep drinking water all the time. I can't avoid it because I had something called a dry mouth from radiation for cancer a couple of years ago and it left me without any saliva so those of you who have been a little bit nervous about your Sunday morning speaker sitting up in the front row taking out a little flask and having a little nip I just want to let you know there's water in here I had a sense of belonging or of understanding or of a willingness to share or a sense of love or something of that kind at my first contact with AA I don't know exactly how I felt. I was too frightened to know how I felt, I guess. But I did have that feeling of hope that here was an answer. I didn't know what the answer was. And of course at that time I thought the only thing was necessary was to just put down a drink. That was all I had to do and then I'd be sober. And so I put down the drink and didn't understand the program, didn't want to know much about it and didn' t do much about it. And as a result I got drunk again. And so i had to learn that it wasn't just putting down the drink and that there was a lot that i had to do there is a lot we have to do every now and then you hear somebody say oh he tried AA it doesn't work for him it isn't a question of it's working for him we have to work it and it takes a lot of work and a lot I'm glad they don't tell us how much work it's going to be when we first get here because we might walk away but we do learn that half-bit measures avail us nothing that we have begin to try and work the program ourselves and it's a wonderful thing because you never finish it we don't graduate we never get a diploma we don'y say here now you're fixed and I love that in the book Dr. Bob in the old time they used to say we're going to fix him we have to fix ourselves with the program that we have the 12 steps of AA we are able to do that we are available we are also able to get to know who we are and of course that's one of the first keys how can you fix something you don't know what's wrong and so it's vitally important that we get into that fourth step and begin to find out who and what we are because we have such misconceptions about ourselves our six thick egos you know uh i don't no soul spirit ego i think they perhaps all have a an inner meaning that's somewhat the same but i think it was epictetus who said uh it's more important to to uh to fix the soul than the body because their death is is better than living with soul sickness and i think that's what we've had we've had a kind of soul sickness. And I think that why this program and Dr. Young's telling Rose that he needed to find some sort of a spiritual life or experience or awakening or growth or whatever is the important thing because we have this kind of soul sickness and so we have to learn how to to grow along spiritual lines thank goodness they don't tell us we've got to get perfect because we can constantly find ways of growing all the time it never ceases and so when i first came into aaa i thought that all i needed to do was to put down the drink i didn't understand any of this program i didn' t understand the changes i had to make in myself and i think that willingness to change is the key mark i think that really is the beginning of growth and i think it's that growth that leads us to a kind of spiritual awareness and understanding but i didn't know all that i just thought that i had to put down and drink i didn t really know very much about myself i know now as i look back and of course so much of what we say up here is hindsight so much of what we see here is based on what we have learned over the years if i had known all the things i know now, perhaps I wouldn't have been an alcoholic. Who knows? And I think that this combination of body and spirit are the things that make us alcoholics because there are undoubtedly other people in the world today who have the same kind of feelings that we have, but they don't have that biochemical imbalance. They don't had that physical allergy. And we have the two of them. And the result is that we are hung up. And of course, the spiritual deterioration comes along as we grow along in this business of drinking. And so I didn't understand about myself. As I look back, and it says in the big book what we were like, what we Were Like, I was like an empty vessel. There was nothing inside me. I was full of fear. I was filled with insecurity, full of feelings of lack. And I was so homely, and I was tall. You know, I had all these things. I just felt that I was unlovable. i was the eldest of three girls and uh my father had become a widower my mother died when i was quite young and he tried very hard to to bring up three girls uh in the way which they should be brought up but he didn't understand some of the things i i don't think we can pinpoint exactly what made us alcoholics and i don t think it's important i think the important thing is that we accept the fact that we are and that we're willing to do something about overcoming this illness and getting well and getting into AA and following this program so we don't know necessarily have to know what made us an alcoholic but I think we can all of us look back and find little incidences along the way and say well maybe that was it well one of my little instances along the way was as I was the only freshman in Vassar College in 1924 that didn't have silk underwear and I want to tell you that's enough that's it up I felt like an outcast but my dad didn't think the silk under was necessary for a 16 year old girl and i guess he was right but you see it made me feel that i didn't belong it was just one of the many things that made i did feel i didn t belong i went to school a private school which is wonderful my dad had to sacrifice to get me there but the problem was all the other girls in the private school came from rather wealthy homes and so while i was in the school i didn' t belong We didn't have butlers, we didn't have chauffeurs, we didn't have cars. We didn didn't have beautiful homes. We lived in an apartment, we had a housekeeper, you know? And so I felt inadequate and I felt as if I, you know, I lacked, I felt I lacked. And this terrible lack in my appearance. I was as tall as I am now when I was about 12 and it felt so awkward, you know, and all the elbows and knees and nose, oh God, this nose. Oh well. many at the time I've thought if only I had the money to get my nose fixed someday if I get enough money I'm going to get a nose job and this is really and truly a wonderful example of how important it is that we change our attitudes because all those things that I cannot change like my enormous height of course I'm not so tall anymore, a little bit I think is shrinking but also they're growing brook shields around all the time today so I don't feel as tall but nonetheless my attitude about being how tall has changed and so the result is I'm real grateful to be tall I see my little five foot one daughter trying to get things off a shelf on top and having to get out of the ladder and everything I said wait a minute honey good thing I'm tall unless for this damn nose. I never did get it fixed. Good thing it holds my glasses up there. So I always had those feelings of inadequacy, and when I had my first drink for the first time in my life I felt like a person. Oh, I'm not so bad. Oh. I can talk. Oh maybe somebody will like me. Oh I'm adorable. And that first drink I took at age 17 on board a ship heading for Europe and I know I was an alcoholic from the very beginning because of what alcohol did for me that's the key you know unfortunately we keep waiting to see what alcohol does to people you know wait till they lose everything see what the alcohol did to him you know that isn't the important thing it's what does alcohol do for us if it makes us whole if it make us feel that we're okay and we don't feel like that without it we've got a problem something is going to happen to us you can be damn sure but that isn't the key and i think we're beginning to get that idea across i think beginning people are beginning to recognize that today i think there is more and more understanding about alcoholism although we had a hell of a long way to go my youngest daughter just went through major surgery uh last week and she's fine but anyhow she told me she said you know i told my doctor that i was not going to go see my anesthesiologist until I had a chance to talk to him because there were some things he needed to know about me. And so I refused to take anything to slow me down before I went down to the operating room so I could talk to the anesthesiologist. And he came over and I said, there are some things about me you need to know. Number one, I was born in withdrawal from alcohol. Number two, I'm a fetal alcohol syndrome child. Number three, I am very sensitive to drugs. And she said the guy just looked at her absolutely blank and didn't know what the hell she was talking about. You know? she said fortunately the next day she had other surgery to do as well i had a different anesthesiology so she said i had the chance to educate two of them well you know that's what we have to do we have to go on sharing and educating and uh we were talking the other day at last night at dinner about an old time member in new york wonderful old guy took him 14 years to finally get this program i remember him very well and he's the one who used to go into bellevue hospital on his 69th admissions in the flight deck at Bellevue he announced I'm the president of Alcoholics Anonymous so you see the doctors only see our failures unless we are the ones who helped us that let them see our recoveries and so we do we can educate we can't let people know but of course I didn't know any of this when I first came into AA I was having a hell of a life I thought really awful I had an alcoholic husband and of course up until then I had blamed him for for everything. It's wonderful when you have something, you can put it all on. You know, people come up to me and say, oh my God, Edie, you're drinking an awful lot more than you used to. And I say, ah, no, it's Roger, son of a bitch, I can't stand living with her and I don't drink. Very happily pulling down the memory of the fact that I'd been kicked out of Vassar College for drinking on the campus at the end of my junior year. Forgetting the fact que I'd been put off a training for drunken disorderly conduct and put in jail in Providence, Rhode Island when I was in the theater and had a performance to play that night. There is one thing that can be said for Blackout. I am very grateful that I do not know why I was put off that train. I'm afraid I have a fairly good idea. You know, that brings me... Well, this is Sunday morning, so I... Well, I've started. I had a Methodist grandmother who lived in New England and she was a lovely spiritual soul, very religious. And when I started to smoke, I went up and visited her one day and I started in smoking and she looked at me and she used to drum her hands on the armchair and she looked at me and said smoking leads to drinking and drinking leads to prostitution. Of course I laughed but there was just a little grain of truth in what she had said. so after I got out of college as I said I got kicked out I already knew what I wanted to do so I thought I was going to be an actress I had a theatrical family background and I decided that's what I was going to do and I went on to be a great actress and of course it took me years in AA and the fourth step to understand what that was all about and I think it's something we all have to look at I didn't really want to go through all the hard work of becoming a fine technician in the theater, you know what I wanted. I wanted my name in life. I wanted to be a star. I want people rushing up to me and telling me how wonderful I was. Because you see, I think, and we all do this to a certain extent. I think I thought that if other people came and told me I was wonderful, maybe I could begin to think I was wonderful. And we all do that. You know, we all touch perfection. We're trying to constantly striving for perfection so people will approve of us. And people aren't going to approve of us until we approve of ourselves. And the thing we don't know and the thing we learned in this fellowship is that when we put a wall around ourselves to prevent you from getting in, that same wall is keeping me from getting out. But I had to wait until got into A until I could learn that and I did the usual things alcoholics do I started in getting married and I had a beautiful son from that first marriage and then I got married again had two beautiful daughters the second one was an alcoholic the second husband was an alcohol we didn't know that we had no idea what alcoholism was But our home was full of anger, also full of love. And this ambivalence, this changing of attitudes, I think that's one of the terrible things about children growing up in an alcoholic home. It's the fact that things change. There's no constancy. One minute they're wonderful, and the next minute they get punished for something perhaps they didn't even do. But that's the way our home is. And we had these three children, these beautiful children. And you know, as you go along in sobriety, you're going to find every now and then that things come up and hit you in the head that you hadn't expected and I know when I finally got sober I used to say to myself well thank God my little girls were so little I know I've hurt my son because he was 14 when I got sober but I said thank God I didn't hurt my little children because they weren't my girls because they were only two and four and I adored my children uh I think they were the motivation that helped me come into AA because I couldn't stand myself any longer the way I was but I remember after i've been sober for quite a long time maybe 10 or 12 years uh about that i guess my little girl older one came up to me and she said mommy she's been going to a psychiatrist to get some help for some problems and she says he says that maybe i maybe i i could be helped if i could put things in the proper dates and the continuity of time and would you help me and i said well surely dear ever loving mother going to make amends do everything i can and you know all this and Thank God I'm sober and she doesn't know anything about my drinking because she was only four. And so forth, and she said, Mommy, when was it? What was that time? When was it that you had Daddy over the head with a frying pan and he knocked you down and broke your nose? And so she remembered. And that was devastating to me because I had been thinking that she didn't remember. So we don't always know the kind of damage we have done. And that's one of the reasons why it's wonderful to understand that this is a family program, that the whole family needs this program. And I'm so very fortunate because I have a family like that. My older daughter, Ruthie, came running home from school once many, many years ago and said, Mommy, I know what I want to be when I grow up. And I said, What? She said, I want it. I want her to be a ballet dancer and a member of AA. I knew what she meant. She wanted to feel that love that was in our home because by that time I was separated from Roger. he and I were finally divorced and we had AAs I had AAS in the house all the time something he had not wanted to have and so she felt all this love that's what she wanted she wanted to be an AA of course she didn't want to go through all the pain she didn'y want to do it she didn''t want to get into what we go through but she got her wish and she will have her 10th anniversary of sobriety next week She's quite a wonderful girl, and she's married to a wonderful AA guy. And they have a wonderful AAA marriage. And my younger daughter, the one who told off those anesthesiologists, she is a very active Al-Anon. And what's more, she married an Al-A-Non. I don't know where you find Al-Al-Anon men that are available, but she found one. And he's a delegate, and they're so busy. I have to practically call and make appointments to see them. They're so busy with Al-Anon. Of course, I'm in AA, so that sort of loads us three to two. And every now and then when they get a little Al-A-Non-ish, we just say shut up. You know, that's the wonderful thing about this program. I do think... I know I'm scattered all over the place this morning, but it's such a wonderful way of life and it has such an effect upon so many people. When you think, it's like throwing a little stone into a pond and watching those ripples as they go out and out and up and out. It's fantastic, the effect that this program has on our lives. And I remember one day in the office at General Service in New York, Bill walked down the hall one day and he looked as if he was walking on air. He looked so elated. And I said, Bill, you look happy today. Oh, he said, Evie, I just got through this marvelous visit with an ambassador, I've forgotten what country it was, from the United Nations. We were officers right across the street from the U.N. And he'd come in for a visit with Bill. And he said you know what that man told me? he told me that if the rest of the world would live by our traditions there wouldn't be any need for the United Nations and he thought that was so wonderful and it's so true yet the rest of the people had this program and could live with the sharing and the love and the fellowship and the understanding and the live and let live and you be yourself and I'll be mine you don't have to be like me damn it be you you know we wouldn't have the need for all this crap pardon me and so i guess that the important thing that i that i had to learn when i first got sober was the importance of changing my attitude and you know there are so many things as i said that we can't change but you change your attitude about them and it's a wonderful thing when you stop and recognize that our changing of attitudes can create such tremendous tremendous differences in our lives i think it was william james who said that in this century we've discovered that by changing our mind we can change our life experience and we certainly demonstrate that by changing our attitude about things an attitude of gratitude what a magnificent way to feel and how can we not feel that way and yet we delude ourselves that we that things are going wrong good's happening to me i can remember going to meetings sitting in the last row and hearing some sweet little blonde get up here and say i've been sober yeah six months now and everything's wonderful i've got i'm going to get married and i've got a new cadillac and i sit in the back row and think why doesn't something good happen to me forgetting the fact that something wonderful was happening to me i was sober i was sober and what's more i was learning to be happy sober and what'smore things were happening that were good in my life although i couldn't always see them and so this attitude of gratitude and you know so often we throw these road blocks in our way people used to say to me when i was full of anger about somebody a boss or something whether they'd say act as if you love him act as if and i used to be very sanctimonious and say what do you mean act as it you mean i have to be hypocritical? I can't stand the SOB. You're telling me to act as if I like him? That's quick. Look back on it. When were we ever anything except acting as if? I was always acting as If I was the kind of person I thought you wanted. I was always acting as It because I never knew who I was. Any people pleaser, and I think most of us are people pleasers, you've got to be acting as it. How are you going please people if you don't act as if. So there's nothing new about this acting as if, we just have to change our attitude about it. Act as if you feel loving and it's extraordinary how you begin to feel that way. It's extraordinary. There's a passage in Dag Hammarskjöld's book Markings, a foreword written by Auden which says along... I can't quote exactly but it says along the lines that when you know when you begin make these discoveries about ourselves, which we do if we go into the fourth step it's not like finding some fantastic unheard of, unknown scientific discovery that's brand new on the horizon no, what we're really finding is things that we sort of vaguely knew all along these inner things that are within us that we have not recognized been afraid of been so unsure of ourselves that we didn't dare be ourselves and so when we start building on this program we can learn who we are and start to be the kind of people we always wanted to be. I don't think any of us wanted to do that. We wanted to see the way we were, but I don' t think we knew how to be anything else. You know, when I took the fourth step, it was so wonderful because I found out that I was neither absolutely marvelous, which I thought I was half of the time, nor was I absolutely awful, which I felt I was the other half of time. There was never any in between. As Clancy said last night, the ups and the downs. But I was terrified of being average I ended up that's what I am I'm average you know so it's that beginning to know who we are and that beginning you recognize the self that we have lost because all of this anxiety is so destructive of self and we have lived with this anxiety over these years he's waking up with this horrible sense of doom what's gonna happen today you know kind of thing and so that anxiety has destroyed that inner self that self-awareness and this is what we find in the fourth step once we have come to accept the fact that we are alcoholic and I know I had no trouble with that I was so damn grateful to know that I wasn't alcoholic and that I wasn't insane because I thought I was to do the things that I did and to be the way that I was but I didn't want to be that way why am I always doing things I don't want to do that to me must be a form of insanity so when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and found out that i had a sickness an illness something that was legitimate it may not be totally acceptable but it was legitimate you know it made me feel as if i could do something about it and and the second step came to believe i came to belief right away i knew this program would work i came into belief that a power greater than myself could restore me and insanity just means health restore me to health mental health physical health and above all spiritual health and the third step it was difficult because i didn't know what god was and i put off making the decision because i felt that i had to know what my higher power was before i made the decision but i'm very grateful that someone said well carry on it'll come to you as you go along and i kept working on this step without feeling that i really and truly accomplished it and got into the fourth and the fourth step to me is a tremendously exciting one it's an adventure like no other adventure i really do believe it was for me and i was very helped i was very helped because i did what so many of us do you know stop and think about it stop and think about why have alcoholics all over these five thousand years that we talked about last night i won't mention his name somebody mentioned 5 000 years last night you know when we look back at all of those years and the fact that we had been called immoral impossible lack of moral fiber lack of willpower all these things that we have been called have been based upon our behavior as alcoholics and we come into this wonderful program and we take the fourth step and what is the first thing we do we look at our behavior we look at the things we did and we have to learn that we have to look at the exact nature of our wrongs it isn't what we did don't confuse what you did with what you are and we are all magnificent marvelous human beings there is a divinity within that shapes our ends as Shakespeare said and so we have to learn to know that person and we find as Aden said there are things hidden underneath there that we didn't even recognize or know they aren't brand new they're there all the time and so we have to bring them out and I remember how helped I was because when I started in trying to write down on that yellow fool's cap my you know things that are good about me and things that are awful about me you know the things that were awful about me was miles long and there wasn't much over here that was good And Marty pointed that out to me in a meeting one day. She said, you know, look at the things that are okay about you. Start, you now, building on them. And it was the most wonderful bit of advice that I ever got because I began to try and look and see what there was about me that was really okay. And there wasn't much, but I loved my kids. That's a start. Mother love and apple pie, you don't know how good can you get. so I began to look at that and then I would see all these other things interfering with what I wanted to be as a mother and when I would see resentment and anger and self-pity and rage and frustration and fear all those things I had lived with all those years beginning to interfere with my ability to be the loving mother I wanted to be then I could begin to work on getting rid of them then I can begin to work on getting them out of me and so I think it's important that we look at the good that there is within us don't go on blaming yourself for your behavior get honest about your motivation get honest about why you do things I think that's as important as the things themselves that we do I have to look at that all the time I said to Linda this morning that I always get very nervous before I talk and I said, you know, I'm not terribly sure whether a lot of that nerves isn't ego you know that I want to be good and I hope some of it is that I wanna say something that somebody even though they can't remember what the hell it was like gee we'll carry away with them and I suppose there's a little bit of both and of course we have to have a healthy ego without that we're a non-person the thing is to get rid of the soul sickness as Epictetus pointed out and so I began to try and grow in the AA program I began to try understand my motivation I began to recognize the fact that there were things about me that were lovable and I began to become or able to become my own person because I began to know who I was and the joy of being able to love freely without worrying about whether you were going to love me because always before I've been waiting for somebody to love me and then of course I'd been hurt and so I was so vulnerable and that fear of rejection which we go on all the time and the terrible things that we do we misconstrue as love we don't really understand the word what love means I can remember sitting on a bar stool you know and some guy would come up next to me and give me a nice little hot preposition a proposition you know I'd say isn't that wonderful unlovable I probably was revolting you know but we confuse love we don't really understand what love is until we get into this fellowship and understand that it's sharing and you hear at every meeting but for the grace of God and the fellowship of AA I'm sober and what is grace what is race well I went to the dictionary one of the definitions of grace is love and that's what this fellowship is all about it's this love and it's this love without thought of return it's this commitment to caring it's this ability again to share this ability to get out of ourselves these sick little cells that we were all tied up in you know everything related to self I never liked the word selfish although I guess we were selfish when our need to drink was so great that we abused other people in order to get it. But I think the key word is this self-involvement. Everything was related to self. Will they like me? Will they think I'm okay? Will I say the right thing? Is my dress all right? All of these things, total self-envolvements. And so it's getting out of that. It used to say to me, get yourself out of your own way. And I used to think, what the hell are they talking about? What do they mean? Emerson says it well. He says, get your bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine service. This self-will, this bloated nothingness, out of the way of being able to receive. And you know that's one of the keys, being able to recieve. When I first got sober all the love in the world was here. All the love and the world that you were willing to share with me. But I couldn't recieve it. That wall that I had put up inside myself prevented you from getting in and as I said before it also prevented me from getting out and it wasn't until I was able to know who I was and to begin to work with myself take my fifth step recognize my dishonesty and motivation not dishonesty and stealing but dishonesty and motivation I would do things so you'd like me I would give beautiful presents so you say thank you I would be I would say wonderful things so that you'd think I was okay I couldn't wait for you to tell me how wonderful I was. What a sad, sick way of being, you know? But when I began to get that wall down and began to be able to really and truly receive the love that you were so freely offering, then I could love. The wall went down and this feeling of love that I had within me is so tremendous. I could not help it. And it's wonderful. So grace and love, these are things that we don't understand when we first get sober. they're not things that have been a part of our lives we've been so wrapped up in this little tiny package itself and so the freedom that we get, as the big book says freedom we get a freedom we never thought possible freedom, freedom and happiness a lot of those promises have come true a fear of financial insecurity a fearof not being lovable no there's a freedom in happiness we find that sometimes we don't really recognize it sometimes it'll take some little thing to help us to recognize what freedom really is and I recall one instance I was going down to have lunch with my alcoholic husband before we were separated I'd been sober about a year I guess maybe not quite that long but anyhow I took a trolley a Broadway trolley we used to have trolleys in New York of course they got rid of all those and got buses so now we have pollution progress is really wonderful you know but anyhow I could see an old man beginning to walk across the street and I thought we ought to slow down instead of which the man on the trolley motorman kept dinging the bell and but he didn't slow down sure enough we hit this little guy well I was off that car in one second I can't stand things like that I can to this day and I started walking I thought well I could walk to the officers not that much further and so I was walking on down the line and I'd gone about two blocks all of a sudden such as freedom came over me I thought my god I saw this terrible accident that man hurt and I didn't go in and get a drink that would of course have been my one reaction back in the old days my god was terrible thing I saw and then of course by the time he had two or three you could enlarge upon it for people who'd be willing to listen awful things head cut off rolling in the street you know but you've no idea what that sense of freedom was that I'd no longer had that urge that I had to go take a drink of course we have a non-smoking room here so I don't know whether this little question will be of much value but how many of you let me put it this way have smoked may I see a raise of hand ah how many of you have stopped now you know what freedom is stop and think about it the phone rings now hello back then phones ringing oh my god where where are my cigarettes, where am I cigarettes that's freedom really it is those of you in the other room amazing how quickly one feels okay it is amazing how quickly that problem may not go away but your attitude about it will change so there's no longer a problem you know we we think sometimes there's only one answer to something and we can learn that there isn't just one answer there may be a different answer which is just as good but we haven't thought of and i think that's what it means when we say get ourselves out of our own way we don't have to know the answer you know sometimes god in his wisdom tells us things we don t want to hear and we're hung up on having our own answer and i can remember shortly after i roger and i were divorced After I'd been sober six years, we finally came to the parting of the ways. He didn't want to get sober. And I was grateful to Dot's talk yesterday because she, in a way, helped me to understand a little bit about what Roger was feeling because he was still drinking when her husband had gotten sober. Of course, I found it so hard to understand how he would go on drinking when he could see what wonderful things AA was doing for me, when he could see the differences in our home, when he can see so much of what AA really was. But he did not have the grace, I guess. He did not having the willingness to change. His fear was too great. And so he and I were eventually divorced. But shortly after we were divorced, a nice AA guy began to pay some attention to me. I remember I was 40 at the time. oh my god it's just half of what I am now that seems quite young when I look back at it anyhow I began to get little heart flutters you know oh I'm in love and I began to think gosh maybe there's hope for me yet I'm pretty old but maybe there is somebody who can love me still you know and then after about six months this guy began to pay attention to another girl well i want to tell you i was eaten up with resentment and anger and rage it was terrible i was devastated and i wouldn't go where i thought they would be because i was so upset and so full of resentment you know about two years later i ran into him again thank you father it was all i could say he would have it would have been terrible it would have been horrible so sometimes we don't understand or see the answers that are there for us and so as we grow in this program we become willing to change we become willing to change our attitudes and you know we can always be grateful we always have something to be grateful for and if you start looking at things that way it's amazing how quickly things can change As you've heard, I spent a lovely night, a cloudy night, sitting on a hard chair in the airport in O'Hare. At first, I was terribly upset that I wasn't here, number one. But I was also damn mad because I didn't like being where I was, you know? And I complained to myself about, oh, this is so-and-so, and then, you now, all this. And I looked around, and it was amazing. There were an awful lot of young mothers there with small children who were going to have to spend that night keeping little babies quiet trying to keep them happy trying to eat the content and i thought to myself how grateful i must be that i'm just here by myself i have no one else to be thankful responsible to and i can just be thankful and you know you can every time you're in a situation you can find a way of looking at it that's going to turn your attitude around i have a favorite story which is what most of you old-timers will have heard but perhaps some of the younger members and they may not have heard it but I love it and I tell it all the time every time I can and you're sort of captive here so I'll tell you the story of the two little boys one of them was very very very distressed very disturbed very depressed and the other little boy was always happy and joyous and running around happily and so forth and they decided to study these two little kids and so they put one little boy one little boy and a little depressed boy in a room full of beautiful toys electric trains atari sets whatever the kids play with today i don't know uh i hope i'm going to have to learn i've got a great grandson now who's almost two so i'll have to learning what young children do play with but in any event they put all these things in this little boy's room and then the little happy little boy they put him in a little room and they put nothing in there except a pile of manure over in the corner and they had a two-way mirror that they'd wash these kids and the little depressed boy just sat there he never picked up a toy never touched it never did anything with it at all and the other little boy the happy little boy is over in the corner into that pile of manure digging away digging away and the psychiatrist can't stand this much longer so they finally open the door and they go in to the little boy and they say well what are you doing sonny and he said there's got to be a pony in here somewhere there is a pony in here somewhere the pony is this wonderful way of life this wonderful spiritual program that we've been so fortunate and so blessed to have come part of our lives I use that little story so often in my own attitude my own thinking if I just think about the pony my attitude will change no matter what the problem and so we all of us find little ways to come to accept the fact that this spiritual growth and sometimes we have such problems with it because we don't understand it as I said before I had a great deal of difficulty in trying to take that third step because of the fact but I didn't know what God was and I thought I couldn't make decision until I found out what I believed in and I think the making the decision is the important thing because it leads to the willingness at least in the willingness to search at least to the willing to try and I did that and I did search and I didn't try and i don't know there are so many things that have been said each one of us finds our own spiritual path for each one of us is different and I that's the wonderful thing about Alcoholics Anonymous it's probably the reason that we were guided to get away from the Oxford group because look at the wonderful umbrella we have over us under which alcoholics of any faith anywhere no faith at all can come together without any talk about their faith being the one true faith you know so often religions do that look at the world around us and all the wars that are being fought in the name of ours is the one truth faith and here we each one of us can have our own our own faith our own acceptance our own understanding of whatever this higher power may be each one of us may call it god some of us they call his spirit some may call of nature some of them may call a creator what difference does it make we each of us have the ability and the right to come together with our own faith and together we share this grace this love and so i was able to finally find out what i felt and and i heard a minister once say that that he felt that God was an inner reality, not a distant possibility. And I thought about that. And then I thought of that wonderful metaphysician Shakespeare who said, there is a divinity within that shapes our ends. And then finally I got to the big book and looked at this chapter to the agnostic where it says we find this deep inner reality which is the only true source. And so each of us find our own path in our own way. The important thing is that we are willing to accept the fact that we want to be in touch. We want to have this oneness. These wonderful moments of oneness because you see all those years that we felt so separated. What was that separation? You know, we always felt apart from, never a part of and that was the reason the drink was so wonderful because we had a drink and we could jump into the middle and be the life of the party. All that because we were a part of only with that false outside stimulus but now, now we no longer have that feeling of separation because we have this sense of oneness because that separation in the beginning was that separation from our source and now we are tied with that source now we have that feeling of onemess and it doesn't happen all the time you know we have those moments of I've got it it goes but we know it can come back and we strive for those moments of that wonderful sense of oneness and that's based on who I am That's based on who we are. Each one of us cannot have that sense of wholeness, of oneness, until we have a sense of Wholeness. And so it's important, I think, that we go through all of these steps, that we know who we really are. We go through ALL of these STEPS, knowing who we ARE, recognizing the CHAP from the WHEAT, being willing to get rid of the CHAFF, to live to our utmost as far as our potential is concerned, and to BE ourselves, and to get rid of this idea that we have to become somebody. You know, I always wanted to be somebody. I know now I don't have to be somebody. We're all of us somebody even if we're nobody. And that's a wonderful thing because now we know who we are and we know that we are part of the creation. We know there is this divinity within that shapes our ends. we know that there's a little spark of divine in each one of us the Christ in each one of you will and so we find that walking this spiritual path is so different from the old ideas that we used to have these old ideas that we could never have any fun anymore there's nothing that's more fun than feeling at one with yourself of feeling whole of having a feeling of loving and caring for your fellow man and that's what comes from this sense of wholeness I think Thoreau said it so beautifully when he said when my life is complete without you my friend I will call you and you will come to a palace and not to a poor house I was a poorhouse I was an empty vessel that has been filled up filled up over these years of trying to practice the twelve steps with alcoholics and nuns filled up with love filled up with grace filled up with knowing knowing that each day I have an opportunity to try to live up to what I want to be knowing that I won't achieve it but I can try and each day is a challenge and each day I know that I will be touched by the love shared in this fellowship and when you come down to it isn't that the key it says in the book of John God is love who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him we are love