When You Block Every Feeling You Block Your Life Force, a Nurse Learns to Feel – Billie S.

That was fabulous. I'm Billy Stork, and I'm an alcoholic. Wow, that was nice. Thank you. I like to start my talks with my feelings, and I'm feeling excited to be here. A lot of gratefulness and appreciation. appreciation um your country is absolutely it's absolutely sacred and beautiful we went to zion yesterday and it was just awesome it was so beautiful and i feel really grateful to era and jim and i want to thank you very much for being wonderful host and hostess and allowing larry and i to stay in your home and for inviting me here and also uh have a lot of appreciation and gratitude for John and Kathy for driving so far to come clear over here to be with me this morning. I try to always start my talks out with feelings because for so many years, almost my whole entire life, I didn't know anything about feelings. What I did is I just pulled the shade right down on all kinds of feelings. If you would ask me how I feel when I came to this program and for most of my life, what I do is I talk about my headache ache and my backache and my toe ache and all of my aches and pains, I did not know anything about feelings. And when I'm beginning, I'm learning a whole lot of feelings because for the last couple of years, what I've started to do is to identify feelings. And what I'm beginning to realize is feelings are energy. And if I block my feelings, I block my energy. And if If I block my energy, then I get all these back aches and headaches and all these kinds of things. And feelings are life. Feelings that come from everywhere, feelings that come From Nowhere, feelings, I don't know what they are, and I don' t know how to cope with them. And what I'm beginning to realize is feelings are Life. And when I block My Feelings, I Block My Life Off. For so much of my life, people said about me, She just doesn't act right. How can you act right when you can't? identify feelings. I came to this program and they told me to live in the now. It's very difficult to live in the know when I can't identify my feelings. And what I'm beginning to learn about feelings are, feelings just are. For so long, see, I thought that there were right feelings and there were wrong feelings and I shouldn't feel this way and I should feel that way and now I'm realizing feelings just just are. For almost a couple of, since I've started identifying these feelings, for almost my whole life, I thought that I was not a jealous person. Now, I might like to have a Cadillac, a white Cadillach, just like your Cadillack, but I don't want to have your Cadilac because, you know, I'm not jealous. And on New Year's Eve, Larry and I went to this party and we got in this horrible fight. I mean, a big rip-roaring fight. And he told me I I was jealous. And do you know it took me about three days, I totally denied it, it took me About three days to get to the feeling of jealousy. And I got to tell you, I was glad to get that feeling. But it's got to be the slimiest, rottenest, nastiest feeling that you ever felt in your entire life. But the deal is, if I can identify that feeling, see, if i can bring that feeling up and put a name on that feeling If I can name that feeling. Then the deal is, I get a choice on how I want to act on that feeling. And before, when I couldn't name the feeling and when I couldn't feel the feeling, I had no choices. The only thing that I could do with all those feelings is just react to those feelings. React in booze or cigarettes or food or whatever obsessive thing in men or whatever obsessing thing was coming around. around and now if I can name that feeling, I get to have a choice on that feeling. Another incredible thing is when I tell the truth about the feeling. You know, sometimes when I start to tell the true about that feeling that feeling comes up and I start talk about the feeling before I can totally get the whole thing out it's so ridiculous and crazy that I don't even have to act on the feeling where if I would have stuffed it down here I would have to act on that feeling. Another really good example of feelings, because I've been really taking a look at my feelings lately, is a few months ago when they announced war. You know, what I did with when they pronounced war, it was like I swallowed a scream, I denied it was even there, and then I was standing there watching the hurt, watching the pain, and absolutely nobody was home. That's how I dealt with feelings almost my whole entire life, is how I deal with feelings. But that is how i survived my feelings. And see now that i know that feelings aren't right or wrong and i can just bring them up and deal with them, it keeps me current in my life. And how i started identifying these feelings? You know, how did i do it? I do medical sales And I drive around a lot of times and I have to stop the car and say, how do you feel, Billy? I absolutely don't know how I feel. So I get those feelings from down here up to here so I get to have choices on it. And so I gets to put the adequate behavior. That's what my recovery is about today, putting adequate behavior with those kinds of feelings. Another place that I really discover how to deal with feelings is in participation meetings. When I get to listen to your feelings, so often I listen to YOUR feelings, then I can hook into your feelings and I can identify, oh yeah! The other day we were in our Monday night, Larry and I were in a Monday night meeting and this guy was talking about feelings he was talking about I felt like crying but the tears wouldn't even come. And do you know that almost my whole life, that's part of the way I felt. I felt just like crying and the tears wouldn't come. They were just absolutely blocked off. My story is about the family disease. I'm the daughter of an alcoholic. I'm a wife of three alcoholics. I'm an alcoholic myself. And I have five drug-addicted or alcoholic children, one granddaughter that's out there. So I have lots of alcoholism in my family. If alcoholism isn't in your family, I hope that you will listen for the feelings and listen for the recovery. My childhood, I talk a little bit about that because so much of what happened to me as a kid are the things that I'm working with and dealing with now, the feelings that are coming up now that I am dealing with. And the way I can best describe my childhood was it was a life that that was full of, it was kind of like one of those lives that Bob described last night. It was full if chaos, struggle, fights, drama, all kinds of cops rolling up and all the nightmare that goes along with the family disease of alcoholism. That just describes mine perfectly. When I was a little kid, my name is Billie Jean and my father called me Jelly Bean and I was kindof like a little heavy, little chunky heavy little kid And I always hated that name, Jelly Bean. And then I went to school and I got called Billy Goat. And I didn't like that at all either. And it was wartime. And I remember I was a little tiny kid. And I used to have the committee in my head was just always going round and round and round and around. Still does that sometimes. And what I was going to do is you could not get double bubble gum anyplace. You couldn't get it, see? So what I was going to do is I was going to get this box of double bubble gum, 32 pieces. And I was going to take it to school. I was gonna give everybody a piece of double-bubble gum and they were gonna love me. And that was the first time that I too started that thing with... I bought that lie for me. The lie that I hear so many alcoholics buying for themselves. The Lie that I heard Bob talking about last night that says, I'm no good. I'm not not enough, and I bought that lie, and I kept that lie for a very long time, and what I always thought I had to do is I had to buy somebody presents. I had to give somebody something. I didn't make them feel sorry enough for me, and then they would like me because almost my whole life what I had was, see, I'm no good. When I was 13 years old, I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. My father took me to that meeting. He was a periodic alcoholic, and I heard a description that says an alcoholic is one who just takes one little teaspoon of alcohol into his system and he's got to get drunk. Well, that was the description of my father's alcoholism because he was a periodic. Since I've come here to Alcoholics Anonymous, I've learned that it's not how long you drink, it's not what you drink. It's not when you drink the bottom line is if you have to continue drinking and it's causing problems in any area of your life, then you you have to really take a look at alcoholism. And when I was 14 years old, my mother died and I became pregnant. And my mother tied and I got married. My mother died, and I came pregnant, and I got all in that order, that's what happened. And I married a guy, he was not a drunk, but he absolutely loved the women. And by the time I was 20 years old, I was eight months pregnant with my fourth baby, and he ran off with another woman. Now, you know, as I look back on it, I told you a little bit about the chaos that I lived in and that nightmare that I live in as a kid in that alcoholic family. But as I looked back on, I got to look at the good part. And the good of that was that I became a survivor. I think pulling the shade down on those feelings allowed me to become a survivor so that I became a survivor and I became an achiever. Nobody else was going to take care of me, so I better take care OF ME and I had all those little kids to take CARE OF. And somehow that's how I did take care Of THOSE KIDS. I met another guy and I married him and we moved down to Indio. He loved to drink, absolutely loved to drank. And I thought that you drank to get rid of all these feelings. And I taught you drank, to feel better. I always drank to feel better and drank to get rid off that stuff. So sometimes, almost always I blacked out. And it didn't take very much, but I almost always blacked out and got rid of those feelings. We were living down in Indio and we got into a fight one night and I drank maybe half a bottle of wine. And I went for a walk and I black out and the police picked me up and And they threw me in jail. I got bailed out of jail. And the next morning, I had to go to court. And the judge, first one, he called me up with me. He fined me $25 for drunk walking. And I was so embarrassed. And I were so ashamed. I was mortified. I never wanted to be an alcoholic like my father. So what I did is I decided I'm not going to be one of those. And I just didn't have anything to drink for the next 13 years. I was not going to be an alcoholic. So I went home and I started looking at my husband's alcohol. And I decided, I'm not goingto be analcoholic. I sure don't want to be married to one. So what I did is I became totally obsessed with his bottle. I mean, I begged and I pleaded. I had another kid because I thought maybe if I had another kid he would stop his drinking. drinking and in the meantime that didn't wasn't working see in the meantime it's really hard to tell you about feelings because i told you i never felt feelings i heard this description in alcoholic synonymous a long time ago says an alcoholic is one with a great thirst for wholeness that was me i was always searching for something a great searcher and a seeker looking for for something, something that was going to fill up the empty, lonely, needy, so unworthy places way down in here. It was always looking for something. So what I decided is I decided I needed a God. Now see, I don't do anything a little bit. What happened is I got baptized baptized in three of the major religions. And what I found is a God that I had to measure up to, and a Godthat I hadto be good enough for, anda God thatI had to quit smoking for, and I know that there's a far different God now, but that's what Ifound. In the meantime time, my children are growing up. And my children are growing out crooked. Say, I didn't know how to be a mother any more than my mother knew how to be the mother. Or I didn�t know how to be a mother. So my children were all out doing their drugs and doing their pregnancies. And I haven�t had a drink for 13�all of their crazy stuff. And I haven't had a drinks for 13 years. And walked I walked outside, and I dropped down the stairs because I remember looking out the window and getting those awful feelings. And I walked down the steps, and then I got under the seat of my husband's car, and I got out his bottle of vodka, and drank the whole thing. And then I had a bottle of Darvon, and took this bottle of darvon. And the paramedics came, and they took me to a place called Parkside West in Covina. That's the psych ward. And they locked me there for three months, and everybody thought I was crazy because I hadn't been drinking all those years. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, too. And finally my insurance began to run out of that place and I got out of the hospital. And I moved out from that husband's seat and I moved into this apartment because I decided that it was all his fault. And if I could just get away from him, it would be okay. So I moved in to this apartment and now I decided the God thing didn't work So what I need to do is find a man, a man that's going to make Billy happy. And I didn't do that just a little bit either. I got love and sex completely all messed up. See, I have 100 friends all over the place. But if anybody starts to get close to me, I get real, real nervous and real scared Larry, because I don't trust people. And I don' t know how to have, I haven' t known how to have an intimate, close relationship most of my life. And Larry and I, we're having this relationship that's been going on. It's a miracle. You know, we've been living together for three years. And I d' n't know, maybe we'd get married, but I have three husbands and they all died. So... I don''t know. So what we're doing now is we're, anyway, we're doing this relationship and it's different. We're doing it a lot different. And we don't take each other hostage. We've been through a lot of things. It's just really a miracle that we're still together, but we've been doing a lot things. We don't each other hostages. I think one of the greatest things that we do in our relationship is we put Alcoholics Anonymous and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous first. And we both do a lot of service and AlcoholicsAnonymous is our guide. It's our spiritual guide for how we live. And it's like the biggest lesson I've had recently is allowing Larry to be different and allowing Larry to Be Okay Where Larry Is. See, as long as I take my control off and decide that Larry Larry ought to go to work now, and he ought not watch videos now, and he out to spend his money here and there. When I take off my hands and I allow Larry to be Larry, then our relationship works a whole lot better. It's just like that surrender in the whole Alcoholics Anonymous is just surrendering over that control. It's kind of like you have two pillars out here holding up one post, see? And if you put these two pillars that are holding up this post together here, Here, the roof rocks back and forth like this, and there isn't a good solid foundation. We keep those pillars out here and allow each other to be different. And I'm finding out that it really, really works. The other thing that we've had in the last three years is we have a 30-day clause. We're both alcoholics, and what happens in our relationship, the minute we get in a fight, what do we want to do? We want to cut and run, be gone. And that's what I did so often And so many times I'd wake up, see, and it was too late. I couldn't get back. So now we have this 30-day clause, and we have a commitment. And the commitment is to ourselves that we want to have a commitment to this relationship. Now, I've had a lot of other commitments that I talked about, but I was always looking out the side because I was sure that this one wasn't going to work. And I was also looking for a way to make sure that I was always looking for who the next one was that was going to come down the pipe. And this time we say that we're in the hall, and for the hall. Anyway, we're going to have to see what happens. Back to my story. Since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, I know that you can wake up in the morning and your entire life can be changed. This was the worst day of my entire life. And having gone through this day, I knowthat I can go through anything the rest of my life. And this day, there was a policeman at my door. He told me that my 20-year-old son Bobby was murdered, was stabbed to death in the heart and the lungs. And, you know, there's so much denial in my life and in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was sure that it was not going to be, that he wasn't going to die. He wasn't gonna be dead. And I went up to Forest Lawn. I made the arrangements that a mother has to do to bury her child. And on the third day, I went up there and looked, and it was him. And I raged at God. I cursed God. Why, God? Why have you taken my beautiful son? What have I done to deserve this? And if anybody would talk about a God, I would turn my back because I totally blamed God. I would have nothing to do with this God thing. I found one thing that stopped the pain because there was emotional pain and there was physical pain. And the physical pain was like a knife was twisting and turning right in here. And what I did is I just started drinking every day, bad drinking, and trying to look good on the outside, but the drinking, it took care of the pain. About that time, I got picked up on a 502, and I got thrown in the Van Nuys jail. And I had called my current boyfriend that I had, and he wouldn't come and get me. And there was this tall, skinny, beautiful woman in the corner, and she was laughing at me. And she said, you know, you give it away for free and your boyfriend won't even come and get you. And I charge plenty and my pimp's coming to get me. And I don't ever want to forget that. Her pimp came and got her and took her out of there. And I stayed in that jail that night all night and I rode one of those buses with the wires all over it to court the next morning and I rationalized it and I minimized it. Anybody with all my problems, you now, wouldn't they do that? So when they go to jail, finally somehow I got out of that. And I totally got rid of that boyfriend. I mean, wouldn't you? And I met another guy and this is now my third husband that I married. And he told me he was an alcoholic, but he had not had a drink for eight years. Didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous. He took Anabuse. And I was thinking, you know, when I was a little girl, I was Daddy's little darling when he was drunk, and I was his billy goat when he were sober. So I really wanted to have a drinking partner. And here we were married, and one night I came home from a sales meeting and he met me at the door with a Manhattan. And, I mean, I was in my glory. I thought this was wonderful for about two weeks. I mean this guy hadn't been drinking for eight years and a lot of newcomers in this room, a lot people knew. You might think that if you hadn't been drinking four eight years he would have been building up some good drinking time right? That is not the way our disease works. You see even though he wasn't drinking for those eight years his disease was getting worse and worse and worse and finally it was so bad that after only two weeks we had to to take him down to the care unit. We took him down to the carer unit and that first Saturday night I went to the hospital and I picked up a whole bunch of guys and I took them down to this big speaker meeting in West Covina and then I took him home and I, I took back to the house and I went home and I looked up in the liquor cabinet and I said, now he's an alcoholic and we have to throw all this booze away so I did her drink it. And I tried to drink it too. And at 2 o'clock in the morning, my daughter came home, and I was trying to kill myself again like I always do when I'm drunk. She took me down to the care unit and put me in the care Unit. And the care Units, they said they could get us sober. But in order to stay sober, we had to come to AA and we had to work some steps. And the next Saturday night, I went down to that meeting, and I met a guy, and I told him I need a sponsor. And he gave me this little tiny piece of paper with the name Daisy on it. And I was real scared to call her, real, real scared. But I wanted to be sober. So I called her up and I asked her if she would be my sponsor. And she told me, yeah, she would be my supporter if I would do two things, if I'd meet her down to the Stepping Stones. And in Covina, Stepping Stones is a recovery house for women. And so I went over to that Stepping Stones to meet her. And I asked Her and She said, yes, she would Be my sponsor if I Would do two two things, if I would call her before I drank and if I would attend this step study and I agreed to attend that step study for almost 12 years now I'm on Tuesday night, I go to a step study, I move from Covina to Pasadena still have a Tuesday night step study and I find in step studies what I find are people that are committed to sobriety, I find long time sobrietry and I just want to talk a little few minutes about my sponsor, I had the the most wonderful, I've had two sponsors. My first sponsor died and when she died I went down there and she said, you know, Billy, I can't make any more 12-step calls and I said, oh yes, you can because forever when I go out to share, what I'm going to share is I'm gonna share the recovery that you gave me and that's really my hope whenever I share anything is to share that recovery that she gave me and I used to tell her I just loved her. She offered me help. She offered my hope. She loved me without any rules, without any conditions. She always listened to me. She was always there for me. And I was very blessed to have her. I used to tell her, when I grow up, I want to be just exactly like you are. And I feel very, very blessed to have had her in my life. I hope that if anybody here doesn't have a sponsor, I highly encourage you to go out and find a sponsor because I think that she saved my life. And so she wanted me to go to this step study, and she was a real stepper, a real, real true stepper. What she wanted Me to do is work those steps, and She started Me right out first of all with Step 1. And She told Me that Step 1 was the desperate step, the surrender step, step, the defeated step, the step that says I just don't want to live this way anymore. I can't stand living this way anymore. And what she did for me is she showed me that I had to give up the illusion. That I had TO GIVE UP THE ILLUSION. You see I had tried to stop drinking so many times. What used to happen to me is I I was so allergic to alcohol and my eyes would get so swollen up and I would wake up in the morning and I Would be so sick. I would look in the mirror and I WOULD promise myself I am never ever going to drink again until about 4 o'clock that very same day and the gnawing would come right down in the pit of my stomach and I'd be drunk over and over and Over again. And what my little sponsor did for me is she made me see that I had to give up the illusion. I had the illusion that if only I had the right husband, if only I had the right kids, if only I have the right job or I was skinny or something else I could control my life and maybe I could drink once in a while. And you know I had that illusion over and over And when my sponsor had me take a look at the fact that I had to totally surrender over that illusion that I could control my life, that was the second part of that thing. Then the obsession, the compulsion, that 4 o'clock in the afternoon, that obsession and that compulsion went away, and I haven't really had that again. I've had like, oh, a desire that a drink would look good, but the obsession that I used to get, yet the compulsion that I used to get, that went away when I gave up the illusion that I couldn't control my life anymore. See, what I used think I had as a Harvard attorney up here used to tell me one more time, oh well, I already drank this morning or I'll quit tomorrow. On and on and on. All those excuses. She told me I did not have one more excuse and not one more reward. I would be good for a little while and I'd say, oh well I needed a reward. Lord, I've got to have a drink now. No more of those, she'd say. Because if I had one little excuse lurking in the back of my head, I would drink again. And for me to drink again down that road meant nothing but death or insanity. Absolutely nothing. And then we came to the second step. And it's just a good thing that the second steps says, came to believe in a power greater than I am. because I knew there was some kind of a power greater than I am, but God, I couldn't deal with any kind of God at all. And you know, when I came here to this meeting this weekend, people kept introducing me as the spiritual speaker and I was going, man, you know that's a thing to blow your mind off. And what I had to decide is all Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are spiritual meetings And then what I had to come to is my little lady. That's what I called my first sponsor, my little lady, because she's only about this high. My little lady used to tell me that all people that come to Alcoholics Anonymous, that are members of AlcoholicsAnonymous, they need to get the spiritual aspect or they really don't ever get the program. So then I had it come to the fact that all members are spiritual members too, and I was okay with that. Anyway, it's just a good thing that the second step said came to believe in a power greater than I am. I knew that there was some kind of a power, something that made the sun and the moon and the stars all work together in perfect synchrosy. I knew there was something like that. But this God thing, I just had to, she told me, just put it up on the shelf and leave it up there on theshelf until you can deal with it. And I started going to this meeting at Stepping Stones, this recovery house with these women. And I was about nine months sober, and it was my Bobby, my son's birthday. And I woke up in the morning. I was totally obsessed, completely obsessed with why me and poor, poor me, poor me and poorer me. And I wake up in that morning, and I knew that it was a Tuesday, and I know that if I could just get to that meeting, I would be okay. I remember concentrating my foot on the gas pedal to get by the liquor stores because I also knew if I could just get a drink, it would get rid of the pain way down in here. And I remember going into that meeting and sitting on the chair and the tears just poured down my face. And the women in that meeting, they listened to me and they loved me. And they said, Billy, if you just don't drink one day at a time, it's going to get better. And I didn't drink. And it did get better, my lady, my little lady, she taught me about death. She taught me that I had to let his spirit go, that it's a physical law of our universe, that energy never dies, and that he is just away someplace, and that I'm going to see him again. And I believe that so much that I put on his gravestone, I am who I am. He wrote this poem that said, I am whom I am before he died. And I put that on his grave stone. See, because I believe he is. And because I know that God only loans us people, places and things. And I feel so grateful that I got to have 20 years of that beautiful child. And so she helped me with that. And i continued staying in that meeting and i continued watching those women. And that meeting makes me remind of Ara because that's where I met Ara. She was the secretary of that meeting. And this morning she was telling me how, I forgot the word it was, but I'm telling you I used to cry. Pathetic, I think she said. How pathetic I was. It was really nice to be able to see her so, to be with her so many years later and to have her invite me here because it shows, it tells me that I'm one of God's miracles, see? I'm a miracle because she remembers how pathetic and how I was crying all the time in that meeting. Poor me. My little lady, she told me I was the biggest victim in the whole world. And anyway, I kept on going to that meeting. There was a young woman in that meeting named Patsy, and Patsi couldn't stay sober. She just could not get this deal. And every time she went through the program twice, a 90-day program. And every time you would see her, her hand would be up because she just couldn't get this deal. She couldn't even put 30 days together after she got out of the house. And she had the most helpless, hopeless lost look on her face that you have ever seen. And one night I went into the meeting and the lights were on on her case. And I said to her, Patsy, Patsie, what's happened to you? She said, I don't know, but I haven't smiled in so many years that my face hurts. That's the miracle. That's the miracle, what miracles are to me are transformed lives and we have a whole room full of transformed lives here and isn't it exciting that we get to be participating in each other's lives and watching this miracle, watching these transformed lives I think it's just really exciting to be part of it and I kept staying in that meeting and something was relieving those ladies that they're alcoholism. Something was relieving me of my alcoholism something was getting their lives back together and getting their jobs and they were getting their kids back and I began to know that there is no difference in my God and in those feelings and in those faces and those ladies it's hard to explain it but I know this lady and she says if you want to see the face of God just look around and I just love that because you see See, that's where I got to know my God and where I Got to Know That There Is a Loving God is in the faces of those ladies. And now my lady, she's telling me that I've got to work my fourth step. And that fourth step is incredible to me. I'm a perfectionist. I just kept procrastinating and putting it off and putting it off. I was scared to do it. She was a really smart lady. What she did is she got me a little tiny stenographer's tablet about this big and she told me just to write the good stuff and the bad stuff. And I didn't know very much good stuff, but she helped me with that about my going to work and doing this stuff. And I just wrote. She told me to turn the page and don't look back. Don't read it again and turn the pages. So I wrote and I turned the page. And I did that for five or six months. Sometimes I'd be driving around and I'd have to put a little note there. And that night I'd write on that thing and then I'd stick it under my mattress. And after about five months I was really scared scared because this lady, you know, she taught me how to love women. I didn't know how to love and she taught мне how to лов and I loved her and I was embarrassed and I was ashamed and I didn'T want her to know all this awful stuff about me. She assured me that it was going to be okay and I took it down and I handed her the tablet and she went, oh no, you got to read it to me. And I went, Oh no. So I started reading and And she started telling me some of her stuff. And I finished reading. It was incredible. You know what happened? Where I had turned the page and turned the page, I was writing about the same stuff over and over and over again. So I got to know where my assets were and where my liabilities were and where my defects were. And then she said, do you believe that your papa can forgive you for all those things? And I said, yeah, I believe that. I believe that. Then she said, you have to forgive yourself. And I want to right now, while I'm here, I want to talk about my papa. This program gives us a God of our very own understanding. I reached out and I looked in all those religions and I was looking everywhere for my God. And in here, I found my very own special God that's the God of my understanding. And I call him my papa, see, because I had this father that died of alcoholism he died dead drunk a very very very pathetic awful life that he lived he tried and tried and trying to get this Alcoholics Anonymous he couldn't get it and I watched that and I watching him go in from his periodic into daily drinking and I watch him with a horrible monkey on his back and I washed him finally when he died be free of it and I always wanted to have I have this loving, caring, supportive, wonderful kind of a father that would always be there for me. In Alcoholics Anonymous, I found my papa and he's always there for me. And how he works for me when I have to surrender all these kinds of things is not in the asking for him, but in the expecting. That's where the faith comes in, where my faith comes into it. Not in asking him to do it, but and in inspecting him to be there for me. And now I got off onto that. I can't remember anyway. I forgot where I was. Oh, oh, that's right. I'm on my fifth step. Thanks, Larry. She asked me anyway, did I believe that my papa could forgive me for all this stuff? And I said, yeah. Then she said, you have to forgive yourself. Right now you have You have to forgive yourself and you're totally, completely free. See, we alcoholics, we want to pick at our sores and we wantto write about it and talk about it and go over and over andover and over. She said, you never have to talk about that again. You never havetowriteaboutthatagain. Now, I write other fourth steps, but I don't ever write about that stuff. That stuff is totally free. Can you imagine being free from all that stuff? And as I look back now, about that time I heard Clancy talking. He was talking about the women on Main Street who never get sober because women are supposed to be Madonnas and so supposed to be so pure. And women are so full of guilt that they have a tough time getting rid of that guilt. And you know, had I written a fourth step on feelings of guilt, feelings of anger, all those feelings, I couldn't have written a fourth a step like that, I didn't have those feelings. Anger, guilt, I didn't know any of those feelings but just able to free hand write that and turn the page, I could do it that way and forgiveness has been a real thing for me. What's happened to me is my little lady, she told me see I had that pain in my heart from when Bobby was murdered and I carried it around forever and my little Lady, she taught me that That hate destroys the hater. And that we alcoholics, we cannot afford to harbor resentments and angers. And that for me to get rid of that pain down here, I was going to have to forgive the murderer of my child. How do you forgive the murder of your child? You know, he was out on bail and he got five years and the trial went on and on and I hated him. him. And finally one of you, I don't know who it was, but finally one of you told me that when I was driving around out there in a blackout I didn't kill somebody. But so many times, actually so many time, I could have killed somebody. And so what I decided is maybe the murderer of Bobby was alcoholic or drug affected. And when I decided that, then I could totally forgive him.And when I forgave the murder of my child The pain in here, it went away and I never got it again. And I learned some things through that forgiveness. You see, for me, forgiveness is just letting go of the pain. Forgiveness is just a decision to let go ofthe pain. So often, I had to make that decision and when I'm working with forgiveness, I have to makethat decision over and over andover to letgoofthepain and to letitgo. go our big book tells us that um that forgiveness is letting go of the judgments seeing the other man as spiritually sick is what that says and now i'm down on the sixth step about i guess that's kind of how i keep places where i am that's a step that in in our step study keeps on talking talking about humility. Humility. The first step towards humility is recognizing my character defects and I didn't have any when I got here. I sponsor somebody and she doesn't have any either. And I understand that. I totally understand that what I'm always doing is is I'm expressing one of two feelings. I'm always expressing either fear or expressing love. And behind fear comes every one of my character defects behind fear. All of the jealousy, the inferiority, the superiority, the dishonesty, all of those kinds of feelings come behind fear and on the other side, I'm also expressing love love. And so I can express either one or the other. I can't express them both at the same time. And behind love comes all of the wonderful spiritual principles that we have here in Alcoholics Anonymous. All of the honesty, this program totally tells me the truth about myself. The courage, the courage it takes to come every day and walk through life and and not take a drink or pill. And it takes courage to do that, but we get the rewards back. All of the love, the gratitude, the sponsorship. You know, sponsoring other women has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I highly encourage all of you out there, because we all have something to give another person, to be a sponsor. My little sponsor, thank you, Kathy, for coming today. The women I sponsor and have sponsored in my life, they give me far more than I could ever, ever, ever dream that I could get or give them. It's very exciting to be part of their lives and part of theirs. Part of their changing. Anyway, so we can only express one of those other feelings. And how do I get out of the fear when I'm into this fear stuff? How do I Get Out of That Fear and get into the love when I tell my babies to go out and do another loving thing for fun and for free. The other spiritual principle is living in the now, all of those things that we talk about. Living in the Now for me is a really, really important thing that I've been doing lately, waking up in the morning and knowing that I only have the Now. You see what happens to me as I've I've been looking lately at what happens to me about living in the past. When I live in the pass, then I live in the what I've done to other people. What other people have done to me. You know, I did a lot of things in the pas that I'm totally ashamed of. And when I live in the passe, what happens is I go down into the deepest, ugliest depressions. But when I stay in the now, when I'm grateful for now and for today because the past is gone. I can only love my Papa right now. I can't love him in the past, and I can'T love him in the future. I can ONLY love him RIGHT NOW. So when I stay in the now, then I get to stay current, and I get this day in the happiness. It's when I get back in there or up in there that I get into the terrible depressions. And now I'm back on to the eighth step, and that is making a list of all the people that I need to make my amends to. And when I made that list is when I first started taking responsibility for my life. What I think being sober is is being responsible for me, being responsible from my life but when I came here it was if only there were peace on earth, if only Jim or Joe or John had come back and make Billy happy and a big one still sometimes, if only I were skinnier, if only we were younger If only I had a better job, then, you know, I would be happy. And what I really know is happiness is an inside job. And on some amends, I'd like to tell you about some amens that I had to make to my husband, the first one who was that alcoholic husband that I blamed for the kids and I blamed for everything. One of the first things I did when I got sober is I put myself up on that amends list. and I think that by staying sober is how I've made the amends to me. To him, I went to him and I told him I was really sorry for blaming him for the kids and for me and all this stuff and he couldn't hear me. He was in the middle of his drinking and he continued to drink for about another year and then he got the esophageal varices and that's the real bad stuff, the real Bad Cirrhosis of the Liver and they did that bypass of the liver surgery on him and one night I was talking from the podium and I looked up and he was standing in the back of the room and it was early on before when he stopped drinking and I was really happy that I got to do that because he didn't drink for the next four years but cirrhosis of the liver is totally irreversible and when he died he did not even have enough left upstairs to tie his shoe to dress himself nothing absolutely nothing alcohol completely robbed him of everything. And my next husband, Bob, my last husband, Rob, I told you our relationship was like passing in the night. It was like this. We just didn't know how to have an intimate close best friend relationship. We didn't know that and we were separated and he went on the table for an antioplasty. Now only about About 1% of people die from that, but he didn't make it off of the table from that angioplasty. And so what happened to me, by that time my other sponsor had died and I'd gotten a new sponsor. And she's always getting me to write these fourth steps on whatever's going on in my life. And what she had me do is she had to write this fourth step on all the men in my live, starting with my father. And I had written this long fourth step and shoved it under my bed. And so that night, that day when Bob died, the next day I went down and I went with his kids and I arranged for the funeral. And that night I went home and I took out that fourth step and I wrote my own amends letter about how she was telling me to write about what my part was, to only look about what mine was. And I wrote this long amends later and the next thing I knew, I went to the funeral parlor and I got there early before anybody else got there. And I got there early before anybody else got there. And I pulled a chair up next to the casket and I sat there and I read this letter about how sorry I was, about how Sorry I was that I was working all the time and I didn't pay any attention to him and I did not know how. See, we both wanted to have this loving, caring, best friend, close relationship. We didn't know how to do it, and now we'd never have a chance to do that. And how sorry, how very sorry I was that I wasn't going to get to do that. And you see, Alcoholics Anonymous freed me. The next amend I talk about is a really hard one. So many people are healed by it that I talk about it though, honestly. My daughter Cindy was hit by a car when she was 17 years old. Her diagnosis was bilateral cerebral contusion, brain stem damage, fractured femur. She was in a coma for two months. It happened in Portland, Oregon, and they brought her home by United Airlines by aerostretcher, and she was in the hospital. Suddenly after two months, miraculously, one day she woke up, and everything had to be reprogrammed. She had no memory of the past. How to walk, how to talk, howto do all those things needed to be reprogrammed, And that was like some 10 or 12 years ago. And today, Cindy, she had to do her drugs and her alcohol. And today Cindy is four years sober. Two weeks ago I gave her her fourth birthday cake. And I'm so proud of Cindy. I'm still proud of Cyndi. She's just beautiful, you know. She sponsors all these young women, and she takes her programs very serious. She has 100% commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous and to being sober. And she's dyslexic. She works in a grocery store, and he's a drunkard. And she fills up the carts. She doesn't read real well, but she has good numbers, so she wants to be a checker. And we're hoping that someday she gets to do that. I'm real proud of her, though. And see, what happened is she called me up and she said, Mom, I need to talk to you. I knew that she was taking her fourth step and it was very difficult for her because she had no memories of the past. And she said、You know, Mom, I need you to talk with me. to you." What came out in my fifth step when I was giving it to my sponsor is that you didn't love me and that you didn't want me and that you rejected me and that you spanked me harder than the other kids. And, you know, I took a very, very big deep breath. And I said, I know that only my Papa could have given me the courage to tell the truth because any other time what I would have said is, Oh, Cindy, you don't have to do this. You know that's not true. Well, what I did is I took deep breaths and I looked at Larry sitting over there. And Larry and I have this deal about trying to tell the truth about our feelings. and I looked at him and I decided to tell her the truth and I said yes Cindy that's the truth the truth is I didn't love you I remember slapping you upside the head I remember being so mean to you I remember spanking you harder than the rest of the kids leaving you with the babysitter I didnít want you and I rejected you and I want you to know how sorry I am you know You know, I was 20 years old and I was eight months pregnant with you and you were my fourth child. And what I did is I just rejected you. I didn't know how to be a mother with you. I was so mean to you. And I want you to know that I'm so, so sorry and that I love you with my whole heart now. Cindy was so upset and she was crying so hard that she had to just hang up the phone. I was so upset that I called my sponsor, Lila. My sponsor said that I validated her pain, that I allowed her to get through that pain, to get though that awful, awful hurt, to get on the other side to the freedom. And so I waited a couple of weeks and a couple months. I don't know what the time was. One day the phone call came and it was Cindy and she said, Mom, I need to come and talk to you. She said, and the day finally arrived and she came and she said, you know, Mom you made your ninth step by telling me the truth and I need to make my ninth step by telling you what a rotten little kid I was. But the best thing is she said you know what I don't have to try to get your love anymore I know that you love me, Mom And you see, I got to receive her forgiveness. And we have the most healed, beautiful relationship that you could ever believe. I'm leaving today and I'm going over to Laughlin to celebrate Mother's Day with all my kids. And it's very exciting because instead of having the cops roll up and having all the chaos and the struggle and the drama and the fights and the brawls, You see, we get to celebrate recovery. We get to live in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the principles. My son Danny was a heroin addict for 15 years, a bad heroin addict. And he was the only kid that was left. And I wanted to save him. I wantedto fix him. I bailed him out of jail. I bought him cars. I tried to fix him in every way that you could possibly imagine. imagine. And he spent a year in the county jail for heroin. Whoa. He spent a year in a county jail of heroin. And I got him, finally I got out of jail and he wasn't even out six months and he was out doing his conning stuff and stealing stuff. And the call came, Mom this time I gotta go to San Quentin. You gotta help help me this time. It's the end of the road, Mom. Please help me. In the meantime, I had gone to Al-Anon. You know, I spent one year every Thursday night in Al-ANon, and those ladies, they taught They taught me how to give him tough love. They taught my how to stop enabling my children to death, all of them. They taught that I had to say, okay God, he's your kid and he's my kid. You love him and I love him but I gotta give him over to you. I cannot take care of him. I can't deal with it. So I had say to Danny, Danny I am not your source. I cannot help you. And somehow the judge didn't send Danny to San Quentin. He sent him up to a place called Crossroads. And Danny stayed in Crossroads for nine months at the drug and rehab place. He became one of the counselors there, and he's a real conner. And he came home, and I was living with him. He got out of there. He decided to move home to Covina, andI was living wth him. I'm six years sober. He didn't have any kind of a program. He didn' t go to any meetings, didn't get a sponsor, didn't work any kind o f a program we all know. We know what happens when that happens. so he came home and I'm living with him and I am 6 years sober and he and his wife they are nodding out on this heroin and Iam walking by in my ya-ya land ya see that my ya ya land that's what I call my denial ya it's going to get better no it doesn't happen that's my denial so Iam walking by the only thing is once we have this freedom Once we know this program, once we know how it is to be free, it just spoils our drinking and using the rest of our lives. Or so they tell me. And so what Danny said is finally one day he and his wife, they got in the car, they went up to Bullhead City, and they decided to get in his wife's mother's trailer and kick the stuff. Eight days they cold turkey kicked the heroin. Got back in the card, drove right by the house to the connection. That's how cunning and powerful and baffling this disease is. The only thing is he was on it for a couple of weeks, and they decided they'd try it again. Back up to Bullhead City, only this time they found old Joe. Now, old Joe is over in Bullhead city, and he is sober 35 years. And he made Danny ride his fourth step when he was 23 days clean. And Danny was four in January. Got a great big four right here. Yeah, that's right. That's right, they had the Narcotics Anonymous, they were rewriting the big book down in L.A. a couple of weeks ago, and Danny was there for the week, took off work and went there with them for this big, people came from all over the world, and I'm so proud of him. And what he used to say is, I can't turn my will and my life over to that God, but I can over to love. And you know what? God is love. And Gloria went through that house, through stepping stones. And she has five years clean and sober. And we have so much, so much wonderful recovery in our life. Just it's really something. And the miracle, you know, the miracle of I don't have to be I'm no good anymore. more. The miracle is that I believe that I'm one of God's kids. That's a real miracle. I've hung around here long enough to believe that. I don't have to believe in that. I'm no good, that I am not enough. See, I got this 11th step that gives me my Papa and that tells me that I don' t have to be that. I can be a unique, beautiful child of God and it's a miracle that I believe it today. And I believe it today because you all gave it to me first of all when i came here you told me that it took me a long time i didn't believe you for a long time but today it's a miracle because i do believe it and my little lady she told methat i go to meetings to give not to get and uh you know but i told her i didn''t have anything to give and she used to tell me stand at the door and And just give them your smile. And just Give Them Your Smile, she told me. And I find out that the gifts that I give to my brother, I give it to myself. Everything that I gave out there are the things that I have given right here to my very own self. And I try to work this program in all areas of my life. And one of them is in my job. In my job, I do medical sales. And when you do sales, the bottom line is, what is your sales? what are your increases sales over last year see and uh eight years now ago my increase was minus four thousand dollars in june very bad terrible but um i heard this chucksie tape and it said show up and go with the flow show up well you know i didn't like used to go to places where where they wouldn't smile at me, places where the doctor knew more about my product than I knew about it, places where I thought they wouldnít buy my product, Iíd go walking right on by those places. And it started showing up, and that meant turn the knob. Every place I came, just turn the nod, and go in, and go with the flow, trusting my Papa, just allowing my Papa to work through me on whatever it would be. And I started going everywhere and not walking by doors anymore. more. And giving my customers love and service, going to them with an attitude of how can I help you? What can I do for you? And what happened to me is for eight years in a row, I've had the High Achievers Award. And that's more than $100,000 increase every single year. I'm the only one in the company that's had that. Two years ago, I got the Gold Cup. That's the highest award American Cyanamid gives anybody. And you know what? I didn't get the Gold Cub. Alcoholics Anonymous got the gold cup. No way could that drunk lady walk down the aisle and get that gold cup. Absolutely no way. And you know what? It looks like this year I'm going to get the gold cup again. It's a wonderful deal. This deal is really a wonderful deal. When I came here, when you said to me, if you said If you said to me, I love you, I would be shut down. No way did I know how to receive your love. I didn't know how To do that at all. Not at all, but I kept on hanging around here, and now I can receive your Love. See, I can only have what I can Receive, and if I can't receive it, I Can't have it. My little lady, she taught me That a long, long time ago. So right away when I was in the meeting one day, somebody came up and said, boy, that's a nice new pair of shoes you have on. And I said, these old things? And she said, you know, why don't you try to receive their love? What you did is you just slapped that lady's gift right in the face. The lady was giving you a gift by telling you those shoes are nice. Why don'tyou learn how to say thank you very much and receive the love? And, you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, the most powerful force of love and laughter that I have seen anywhere in my entire life, anywhere out there, you can't find this love and laugh that we have here in these rooms. But we can't get it if we can' t receive it. I can't have anything unless I can learn how to receive it." And so what I've started to do, I've starting to be on a journey to open up, to receive all the love and the laughter that's here in these rooms. And it's an incredible journey. I hope that you will be able to do that if you haven't done it, and if you're doing it, it's fun, huh? And I guess that's all I have to say. I just want to thank you and tell you I love you very much, and I appreciate being here in your beautiful country. Thank you. Thank you.