Willingness as the Thing That Overrules Your Own Judgment When Your Judgment Is the Problem — Pat Y.

Hi everybody, my name is Kat, and I am alcoholic. I might be here wanting to drink, I am drinking to come to this great conference full of everyone, a lot of fun. I apologize to the people who were just in the workshop twenty minutes ago. It's really more than just drinking; it's like we're going to see this morning. Just call myself a girl, woman. I love alcohol, and I love living my life the way that today. Can we we were talking in the in the workshop about miracle that happened here in this room? It's full, you know. Just it's hard. It when you look at my life, you can't get from there to here, you know, and yet here I am. It's a new morning. I am drinking alcohol. It's almost like hope that you stay here, hope that you find what I found, and other people in the room have found. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I believe I am born an alcoholic, but it doesn't really matter. I say that because I drank alcohol completely from the gate. I didn't think I was drinking alcohol. I thought I was drinking socially. I suppose because I was drinking with people, you know. I was not my first drink was when I was thirteen years old. I was at a party. People were drinking, and so I drank, and I didn't have any feeling. No one was drinking, and not drinking. Just the awfulness. I drank. I always felt like I didn't quite fit in. I always felt that this was my self-esteem, and I was shy, and alcoholic. And almost you call things by different names. You call that self-deception. I am shy, better shy implies I can't help it. It's not really my fault, you know. But self-deception is what really makes me all the time. How do I look? How do I sound? How do I feel? What do you think about me? So, at this party, I am feeling all that, and somebody handed me a rum and coke, and my life changed. I drank that rum and coke, and I made another one. I was thirteen years old. I was drinking so much. I get drunk, but however much I drank, that much, and then and that's how I drank until I came to alcoholics Anonymous. I, the magic happened for me that night, which for me, I completely relaxed at that party, completely just felt totally comfortable talking to people without trouble. Said funny things, made people laugh, got up and danced, felt like the best dance there. It was just magical. Now, and I started drinking too much. There I blacked out, passed out, and I woke up in bed the next morning with no idea. Just kind of more than I am to do. You know, I drank Newport beer, the real microbrew, not even the way, and I felt bad that day. I felt, you know, ashamed embarrassed terrified that I did it. Imagine that feeling at thirteen years old. I have under that sort of standing. I had all those bad feelings, and yet I drank and very nice, possible, a lot of people without a thought. I was carrying away the price for drinking from the gate. I say here because I didn't think any of this was all I had. Great insight into my life. Believe me, I didn't have when I was living it. And I got along after I came to alcoholics Anonymous anyway. For while I was a period, I was only thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. I didn't have access to alcohol every day, but I sure drank every time. The opportunity presented most of that was weekend parties. Mostly, it was beer because that's what we could get. My, I, you know, up until the time I got drunk that first time, I was straight. I was church every Sunday. I was very involved in church, church, church group, and I did all of those things because I wanted to do those things. I meant to be a person who would grow up and get married, stay married, and be a person forever, and maybe have some kids and go to church, be a man, work in the garden, we can live a really wonderful life. But I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, and drinking every opportunity. When I drank, I get shy, say friendly, and so I did all this self-deception and I spoke for being friendly, girl, and you know I understand right then that life that sort of had to be true wasn't going to happen for me, you know. I my first drop right away. I was getting dizzy, I was going to church, and my parents were very concerned about me. They sent me to boarding school from that all-girl boarding school from my last couple years of high school, hoping to, you know, keep me independent successfully. And you know, I had this very structured school. It was one of the school kind of like the last before formal school, and I never had formal school anymore. Maybe I was old, I don't know what that was. It was a very, very structured environment, very difficult to alcoholics and. And so I studied. I think alcoholics Anonymous playing the self-debate before the school or whatever actually worked harder than anybody else. Problem obviously we don't applaud ourselves at all, but I because I was in such a structured environment and wasn't drinking there, I studied hard for my grades. I graduated successfully. I got in trouble there, but not too much because it was hard to get in trouble there. Actually, I graduated from high school and I moved out with my folks and I went to a little college and was pretty much a party school. And I was right in there with the best woman. I met the man who was to become my first husband. At the the rendezvous in Newport Beach, the place to go when I was growing up, surfing music was totally different myself without one. It was the big thing at the time, the old time, so I met my man, the boy who was to become my first husband. Now we met in the ballroom, and music was very all the time. Our dating life consisted: he would pick me up my parents' house, we would go to the liquor store, but sell myers out the door, buy beer, sit in the car on the bluff in Newport, drink our beer, go to the ballroom they'd sell alcohol inside, stick your hand in, and keep going out to the car. You know, drinking more, and yeah, so we never really, you know, that's that's it. That was our courtship. That was it. When we asked me to marry him, I remember thinking this is great. We have so much common. We never really had a conversation, so now now we're playing this way, and this way, and and I have these little doubts about my mind. I read books and books, tried to be feeling, but I did not seem to be feeling, and I kind of worry a little bit about that. Of course, not to discuss this with anybody, and and so the day came closer, and I remember walking down the aisle, my dad's arm, thinking this is probably the day. Now I know that's not what you supposed to be thinking when you walk down the aisle, but it's like I was somebody else watching me. I just marched down there and said I do. So now we're married. You know, we were dating. He lived at home with his parents, I lived at home with my parents. So the money we had from our little jobs that we had was spent on drinking and partying. Now we're married, and we have money and all that stuff, and we have money for drinking, and in retrospect, I was restless, yearling, discontent, and needed to drink real bad. I didn't know that at the time. We were married for five months, and my brother, my brother, was only nineteen years old. My brother was very badly injured, and he was very badly injured, and absolutely shied. I should have been at the time to take off the ship, but couldn't handle the ship. They sailed, so now my brother's in the foreign country waiting to speak to me. We had nobody there, you know, and he's very badly injured. So I started sending him cards every day. Sometimes double cards a day. Trying to cheer him up, you know, spend a lot of time in the car, looking for funny cards, and about a month by and my mother was getting telegram from whoever the Navy Department or whoever sent me. After about a month, she got a telegram saying that his condition had improved enough that they thought they were going to be able to ship back to the states. They thought they were recovering, but they thought he would be able to come back. And we were very happy to celebrate that news because it meant that he would be able to handle things, and he goes, "So we'd be able to see him. " So we were very excited about that. Right around the time we heard that news, I had sent another of many cards that didn't end up. The card was intended to be funny, but the friend said it was very, very poorly written. But not to worry. Inside it said only the good die. I said, "Any die, " and you know, I don't think I could have felt worse if I killed myself. I couldn't believe I sent such a stupid card. I just couldn't believe in that stupid. My prayer was that the card didn't get there in time. My prayer was that he died before that stupid and sensitive card arrived. Took a I think a couple weeks for his belongings to be shipped back to my mother. I remember opening her opening the wrong day. That card was in there, hadn't opened, and I took it when nobody was looking. When the dad came, I tore up little pieces and flushed them down the toilet. And I cried. I tell you that story because that happened when I was nineteen years old. I got sober when I was thirty. I never told anybody until I didn't even talk to alcoholics. Because I couldn't, I just couldn't. I felt so terrible about that card, and that's how I lost my footing. More secrets on top of other secrets that were already there. I I couldn't talk to anybody about anything that really mattered. My mother somewhere in that time between that time and time I got sober, sent me to psychiatrist. She said to me one day, "Why, before it would you go? " And I said, "Yes, I by the news that something terribly wrong with me. I didn't know that. I'm never saying that someone was thought I was a potential alcoholic. Whatever that may be, but but the news was not really wrong with me. So when she offered to just send me to psychiatry, I I agreed, and I didn't have a cavalier attitude about it. I really thought it's not too easy to get some help, but I didn't discuss it. And I liked the guy; he was really warm and caring, and I felt like the kind of connection that I I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't tell him anything that really mattered. I never told him about that card, and my brother. I never told him about the stuff that was going on. My husband was going to put my stepfather because I couldn't. I simply couldn't. So I sat in his office every week talking about sort of nothing, and I would leave and I would feel worse the whole night after. And and I would go. I remember it was on some old board. There was a little bar right around the corner. I would walk that little bar and have a drink, and then I'd drive home. So I completely and totally wasted my mother's money. I have things I can't talk about. I think it's kind of a waste to not practice alcoholics because we're capable of telling the truth. You know, so I was anyway. So now my brother died. I cannot grieve on my grief and my guilt, and so crying all the time. My husband said to me, "I don't know after a couple weeks or something he said, I don't have help to get over the grief of your brother's death. Maybe you should go stay with your mother for a few years. Your parents will maybe she can help you get through this. " And I said okay, and and I went back to my parents' house, and I never lived another day with that husband. Now he didn't find out what happened there. He was trying to help me, and and now I'm not coming back. I'm married. Alcoholics are often very counseling. I I couldn't even talk to him because I just knew I couldn't go back there. And so I divorced him. Now clearly, when I came to alcoholics Anonymous and took the step, this is clearly somebody new. I admit I didn't see my divorce until nineteen. My divorce, I said I got sober when I was thirty. I didn't see in all those years that sober about six months. And I said, "Well, it's pretty incredible. " And so I came to alcoholics Anonymous and got jobs. Got right after that opportunity to make ends. My next job was I'm not sober all that long, and I'm not actually that bad yet. And I left the opportunity, but I was thirty thirty one, and half years ago, and haven't seen from that day to this. I like to tell the story when I talk to my party room invitations. When opportunity to make ends present themselves, I should have done that. I I hope I get another shot at that. It's been ten years, and I just can't sure you have me ready, willing, able to to do that anyway. I got divorced and moved to LA, which is about an hour's drive away from Newport. I got a job in the apartment nineteen years old, having ideas and being fired something, and I look about twelve. And I, my first job was at a trucking company in LA. As a secretary, my father, my parents had divorced, and my real father was by a traveling company. I was a very, very good secretary, skilled, but we were young and you had a job, but hard to get that first job. So I asked my dad he would hire me, and I remember him saying, "Oh, God, I don't know, honey. I'm a little reluctant to hire a family member. " But I did, and so he reluctantly hired me for a year. And I was grateful. The job was to be good solid year. I have a resume. It would give me, you know, a foot into the working world, and so I went to work for the trucking company. There was a problem. My dad should listen to his things because I behaved at the trucking company pretty much the way I behaved in high school, which just said before that job was over. I had no more skills than the people around. As you might well imagine, this caused my father some anguish, and very called me one day. I didn't know eight or nine months maybe, and called me and tried to talk to me about me. Not about you, but I can't talk to me. You know, if I look at this too closely, I'm going to have to meet some problem, and I know where you're ready to do that. And so I said some kind of ugly things to my dad on that that day, and the after that conversation was I didn't speak to him again for many years. Absolutely, not the sort of way in which you're supposed to be talking to people. And that sort of thing until I got sober and was able to make ends meet. And actually, the job for the year was because it just got too uncomfortable there. And then I began my whole career was jobs of the year because I did the job, and I when I'm doing the job, I'm not sober, so I keep my drinking separate for a while. You know, my drinking is not involved with this job until I get comfortable on the job, which is a month or two, and I know there's at least a very good secretary. So there can't be with me, and then sort of relax about how I'm acting, where I'm drinking, and who I'm drinking with, and now I'm drinking sometimes lunchtime, and and I'm always going out for work or after work with my coworkers and drinking with my coworkers in the office and the clients and sleeping late while one or the other spouse is matters not to me. And and so, of course, I create a mess here, and and I have to leave and go on to the next job. And I convince myself every job I ever left, I convince myself I had perfectly good reasons for I did have good reasons, but other perfectly good reasons for leaving. If I had a big corporation, I would convince myself that a smaller company would be probably better for my particular talents. I was a little company. I think a big corporation would be better, and and I had to leave every time because I needed to leave it. I had quit jobs after Christmas parties without going back to my dad because I know I couldn't face people on a holiday. I drank a lot of blackouts and drank me a dreadful four. I remember plenty of more for me. I here's how I drank. I went out with my boss and coworkers. Now with my boss and coworkers, one night after work we were parked in the downtown downtown LA. We were all drunk. I was not the only person who was drunk that night, but evidently I was a little bit drunker than the rest of them because we wound up in the strip. I was the only one auditioned for a job. Now I know when alcoholics and you're sitting in the meeting, how this happened. Really, was my fault. The stage was like here, and we were sitting around the table drinking from the stage. We were maybe eight or ten of the art group. I excused myself from the table to use the ladies' room, which is down the hall, kind of behind the stage, but I didn't just own the bar there in the hallway and had this big memory of making some drunken, terrible remarks about the caliber of entertainment there. And you know how it's when you say something like that, I was such a tough ship. What did you do? So, how remember? I'm going to go sit at the table with my boss and my coworkers, and I'm dressed essentially the dress now. And now I'm on the other end of the stage, dressed in essentially nothing, and there was that moment when my boss and I and my dad, that we realized that was there. I will never forget the look in his face. It's probably my mom. He won't like it if he ever. This actually began what I like to refer to as my show business career. I now I change to the next day, and I realized what I had done. I was a little bit embarrassed, and I struggled to not be too awkward at the strip for so long. All the way down, but it kept me. I did. I thought I had talent there, and I go go and things was kind of a popular area in LA. All the nights clubs and stuff were packed. Go go dancers, and so I went and got jobs. I go go dancers. I did not work in nightclubs. I was on the strip. My first paid job the dancer was on Woodward Boulevard in Los Angeles. I never made any money. I was broke English. I'm sure I got the job because I was the goody dad, but whatever. I moved down from there. I saw two places on the outskirts of Chinatown, and I saw them. You know, a career move where move because they broke English there. I'm at the the outskirts of Chinatown, as all the outskirts get rowdy sort of. I'm getting there so I'm getting there. So I'm getting there. I'm gettingYou know, married a so you can either go away in this courtroom, where we have open for couples, or you can leave and come back another hour. So, so first we went into the courtroom, we sat down with other couples, and we sat there while we're looking at other people, we're talking about, we're looking at these things, these people. This is bad. I mean, he's like really the drake, never dining. I must say, there were you know. I'm sure those people were saying the same thing about us. Because that's that couple over there. So then we thought a cocktail would be nice. Now, in Vegas, you can get a cocktail anywhere. I mean, you can drink and see no just any. We went to a liquor store, bought a pint of the current drink, and then we went up to the court house and got married by the judge. To actually was wearing a different slipper set. Not so many. Now we're married, but I'm still behaving like a single. I don't mean to do this. I don't mean to be a wife. But this is how I live. I don't know how this happened. I never meant to be this kind of woman, but there I am. This kind of woman. So we had a lot of trouble, you know, married a lot of trouble. Excuse me. You know, we drank in bars and a fair amount. He was a drinker, so I never married anybody who didn't drink. But now I'm drinking, not much drinking. Might be heavier behind drinking. Got to be the big cocktail conversation rather howls and things were tense. He was the gambler, so he was going a lot at the races. Which was actually just fine with me. You know, I can just drink, and not worry about how long the drink lasts. You know what color it was. You know that you if you drink too dark, looks like you're drinking too much. If you drink too fast, you drink. I mean, I know all that, but I don't know how to make the proper drink. I don't know how to make it. I still to this day drink glass and mill down. I mean, that's how I drink. Not much drinking. There's so it was just felt like a lot of work when he was home. So he went to the track. I was just at the cab cab. He'd go off the track, settle, settle into my chair, my purple flannel bed robe in the living room, and I would just put the bottle on the table beside me. I did use glass, not like common drink. Then water, ice, and water, and all other stuff. You know, Scotch by the way, I drink twice, but I will and have just about anything. I remember having with the chef at a restaurant, and Christmas time, vendors would give him gifts of booze. You know, he'd drink all month. I remember one year I gave him the bottle of brandy, and we had a friend who introduced me to a very alcoholic. And he came over that night, and we never came over. You know, we all drank together, and he came over that night and opened the bottle, and we all drank it. And he called the next day, and he said, "Oh my God, that is the worst stuff I have ever drank. I was up all night, sick with rage, and it was horrible. Now it did the same thing to me. But I started buying stuff because then when he came over, he wouldn't drink it. I don't think that's social drinking, you know. Anyway, that's Scotch. Well, I drink twice, so I settle in there with my purple robe and I would play those sad records over and over again. I was personally very fond of the Charles Moore blues. That wonderful drink can feel sorry for yourself, kind of. You know, sometimes I get tired of calling people. If you don't ever hear now, and you receive the call, you know that no one's to do never comes to seven thirty in the evening. Two in the morning, and I never speak to stay. Call the White House and demand to speak to the president. I would never do anything like that. I call people like boyfriends I had when I was twelve. You know, I wonder what he'd do each day. I of course I have no idea what he'd do, and his wife might be me. But I wake up thirty other people, and my quest to find him, I'm sure they would just thrill to hear from me when I finally did catch up to them. I, my mother, and me would be the only ones still taking my calls. My mother got us all we loved me, just by how we were living my life. And she would take these terrible drunking middle of the night phone calls, and try to say say something that might comfort me or calm me, or not knowing it was really nothing, but she could say to me, "I'll call again, say my body is quite helpful, " that much, but but she she would take those calls, tell you what I've tried. Didn't get any more alcoholics, and I was so pretty. And that, that I don't remember my mother anymore like that. You know, I'm overpaid and it's made me cheerful. I remember one hot summer day sitting in my car, and for some reason, I remember it was ten in the morning. It was very hot. I was wearing a purple flannel bed robe, a dress, I was sweating buckets. I was watching the neighbors, we lived in a second floor apartment. You could see their backyard from the window. By where I sat, and they were a young couple about my age, twenty-three. They had a couple small children and the kids were running back and forth in the sprinklers on the lawn, and the parents were sitting on the back porch steps, talking and drinking coffee or something, and just talking laughing and watching their kids play. I cried that day watching those people cause that time to be living my life. I never ever meant to be living the way I'm living here, and I knew that day when the shadow of that guy somehow swooped in and handed me that life that people thought couldn't do it. I knew because I had been, I had been trying not to drink on my own, and I couldn't not drink. I tried every day. You know that girl over there wasn't that. So the next morning, started with these really terrible hangovers, and so I wake up and I'd be filled with memories all night drinking today, and I get dressed and get ready to go to work. I always had a job. Everybody knows alcoholics don't have jobs. The only thing about this stuff, now, my dad wasn't much of a job. I peaked in my career when I was twenty-three, and then kind of went down hill. My last job was a little secretary when I was twenty-three. My last job before I got sober was a lawyer in the YMCA. My job was if you were ever about why you came into here, do something who wrote the receipt. I barely know that job, but it's getting my teeth barely know to it anyway. I would get up and be, you know, not drinking today. I'd take a shower, my car dropped over, and I don't know why I'm not going to drink, but I'm going to go back to college and finish my education, and pull into that YMCA parking lot and think. I'm going to take some of these glasses here. This wine is really good. It's really going to be really good. It's going to be fabulous. But I'm an alcoholic, you know. Before then, I'm drinking, and often it's as simple as this: I get home after work, I get home after work, I get home after work, and my beer bottles got on the kitchen counter, and I don't know about you, but I can't quit with no bottles sitting here. What I'm going to do? I'm going to drink this now. Tomorrow will be nothing, and how's that? And I'm into it. Maybe it's me only. Only a few people not their heads. And you say that such a thing. The problem, of course, with this beer is the level that bottle goes down. You'll never rest until I'm calling liquor store every day. And tomorrow I have tomorrow. I have to get the Scotch and I did that day after day after day. And the end, all I would do is when I got off work, I'd come home and and I'd put my purse on the table by the door. I would write a check to the liquor store, and that's one of those things I did without thinking to strongly about. It was the same now. The bottle got too expensive to drink it for the liquor store. The same now. Every night, and so I would write that check. The reason I did that then I got moments is by now by the time I finish whatever it is, how's alcohol and by the time I get there, I'm sometimes too drunk to to write the check. So I'm just just something I did without trying to really think about what I was doing. I was such a good customer, bottle and liquor that occasionally, you know, was sad and others something were really busy. By the time I called, they got over there. I might already be passed out, and not the right to be passed out. They would actually leave the bed of my porch because they knew that I would come down the next day and pay them, and I would do drinking those last couple years. I often had my utilities turned off, and never paid any bill. I would pay late payments on everything, but I never ever passed that bottle and liquor. When I had called alcoholics, now I was drunk. When I called, I know what we're doing. The idea that particular night to call a direct call, we're not answering the phone, and have to call without calling. Said that wasn't, and I started to cry. He stayed on the phone for a long time and talked me to me a lot about the way more than we'd ever did. But he was talking to me, and people weren't buying. On he told me we're meeting Wednesday night. He said, "Don't take it to tomorrow. Go to the meeting tomorrow night. The other night, Saturday night. Now I drink very much, and I can not drink tomorrow. Drink every day now, but okay, you know the right answer. So I, you know, we hung out the night and we did drink the worst liquor I've ever tasted. Came to the next morning, and I remember making the call, and I remember having a little piece of paper with me that said, "The meeting's down in the lighted day. I thought I'd been a little premature. I was pretty sure that the meeting was to be now called, and I just thought I, you know, overreacted. But I heard myself say, "My husband and the table that night going to be in the alcoholics. " He didn't care. We were not going to call. He went to the track. I went to my first meeting, and I had no idea my life was about to change. It was a big meeting. There were maybe three hundred people there. I remember parking my car, and there was no way because they were like you, and walking these streets, and they were laughing and talking to kids, and I couldn't think of no way I could answer the call. And go down there, but somehow I did. There was a man standing at the door with that woman he was with. Welcome to alcoholics. Now I must, you know, I think that's the most important thing anybody ever does in meeting. If you will, if you really did, who knew he was to be my dear friend? You know, I used just the door and we in the room at thirty minutes. Of course, I got there at twenty-eight, and we in the back of the room with the waiters, waiters around the sides, but I'm one of these waiters, and I now six drinking, drinking, drinking, and drinking that day. The guy in front of me was drinking, but he didn't drink heavily. Some of my eight thirty morning passed out. I didn't drink that. So six drinking, and drinking terrible clothes, and sweating buckets, which was sort of sad that I was drinking that I had, and man, he made me feel new. And I thought how in the world did he know that? With all the people, and I acknowledged that wasn't like that. There's about fifty women coming in there all right, and there was a little group of men and and seeing excited to see me, and they found me and and meeting again. It was a big meeting, and by the name of Norm, I'll be speaking that night, and I know the table has I'm not really calling table, but he was wonderful speaker. He talked really fast. The joke about him was thick, but too hard to talk him for the next slide. So I found myself sitting in the back room, leaning forward, so I wouldn't miss anything that I said because I, I heard him. I really, we actually drank one of the same places many years apart. He was a much older man than I, but another thing that happened that night that I really got is that he said something made me laugh really laugh, totally laugh, and I couldn't remember having laughed that hard ever. And of course, laughing, laughing, laughter by education again. I know it's the time to meet the meeting was over, and we said the worst for any people dropped my hands out the door. There was no way I can hang around fellowship with you. Starving sober, like it. So I went, but I didn't get the book that night. I went home and I sat at my desk and I read. And I remember thinking this is crazy. I'm going to go to that meeting every Saturday night, be a member of alcoholics, and I heard just say go to a lot of meetings, and I thought every Saturday night sounded like a lot. I drank again Friday. Now on the one hand, Saturday Friday I didn't drink. I stayed in the right and drinking all Friday. I remember everything. It's a thing really to work, but on Friday I was drunk and I couldn't believe I, I mean, I can't be drunk. Well, wasn't that really in a and I wasn't that drunk. So I went to the meeting Saturday night and raised my hand for being under the Friday. I got some more phone numbers of these ladies just to buy actually want to call one of you, which of course I had done. I drank a couple more times that we can call that one who said that to me, and I was drunk. Actually, when I called her, she said, "You might want to get sponsor. " You know, things to be doing to all your own and most of us are sponsor pretty helpful, and I had no clue what to sponsor. Which is probably just as well. I know I would never have that. She seemed to think it was important, so I said, "Well, I'll do that. " She said, "Well, be your sponsor. " You know, give chance to meet people. She said, "Meet me. She just seemed quite excited about this too. " She said, "Meet tomorrow night for your big welcome talk about it. " So I, that tomorrow night was the first day. That's not meeting night. I kind of said, but I ought not to point that out to her. And so I went down Saturday night to the meeting, and you know before the meeting started, the first thing she did is she took my big book and she opened it to the front cover and told me that day and there, that day, she said that the first Friday. I thought she didn't see me. She just smiled. I didn't think she'd care. This might be I'm very happy to report that's my Friday day. I was twenty nineteen five. The next thing she did is she took the meeting every night. She circled the meeting for every night of the week. She didn't suggest that the meeting every night. She didn't recommend that I go to meeting every night. She said, "I'm going to go here Tuesday night. There, and the way I'll go over here. " I said, "Excuse me, I'm married. How possible do this? I can't possibly go to meeting every night. " She said, "Well, perhaps you could do that, but not with me as your sponsor. " She said something like, "If you want me to be your sponsor, I seem to think that you want what I have. If you want what I have, I only know one way to get that to do what I do. There's no argument as to one. You know, there's just no way around that. I found me, I believe the miracle happened in that next second because I found myself doing to do what she said. If you do, it's important to know that I didn't drink happily, and I didn't do it happily, but I did it. It had to matter. You would have to be a big drinker and be much smaller meeting night. Here and see that. I was first famous in my group for crying. My sponsor had to get every meeting one hour early, sixty minutes early, not fifty-five minutes early, sixty minutes early. I was up early, and it's like the first day of school. There's something I was getting there sixty minutes early and doing my command, and then when I finished doing whatever I was wondering about the room and shaking. The other people thought they were going to do something, and I said, "I said, I'm getting three phone numbers of women that I didn't already have, and the next day following the meeting, in addition to calling my sponsor, I was calling three women whose numbers I got the night before, and I'm having trouble calling her. " I can't imagine calling it's simply a total stranger. I couldn't imagine. I would say I always thought that you wouldn't know who I was when I called the night that I was going to have to do like big exclamation who I was. I could just say I'm having the girl who cried for the entire meeting last night. I'm sure you would remember me. That's what I did. I never thought of doing that, so I would sit by the phone, so no one was about making me call. I would sit by the phone, and I would just be thinking about it, and I'd kind of hear my name every night. Dial my first number, and I'd take a giant breath, and you'd answer, and one giant exhale. I'd say something like, "Hi, my name is that. How long have I been here? " And then just me and that night, I knew my sponsor told me I had to call three people every day, and I was calling anyway. I don't even know they ever understood the word I said, but they all seemed to get that I was new, and everybody was kind to me. I don't ever remember hanging up on those phone calls feeling bad. I especially was grateful to the actually people who could make me laugh. My friend dear friend Mary came to this day. I believe our friendship started one of those early phone calls. Cause I called her and made me laugh out loud. She said something so funny, and believe me, I laughed much more today. And so, and I never got particularly comfortable making these calls, and never really saw the point. I think sponsor drinks are happy to sort of repeat that you know you do something you get a reaction when you knew you were not so new, and we never did it, and you of course that actually lies somewhere down the the result from that actually coming somewhere down the road that you can't even possibly see it. Your sponsor can't even see really, and now with two of those phone calls when when I was three years sober, my guess three years sober, my husband was dying of cancer. I had just skipped over huge big part of my story, but we actually talked about a lot of workshops. So that came in. But I had by then made me and my husband, we, we, you know, we were married twice, and completely different. But he was cancer free, and I was really in for a year, a hard year, no question about it. And I was hospitalized one day, and I it was just that day for me, you know, not that I wanted to drink, but I just remember thinking I can't do this anymore. I can't be strong. I can't be a hospital. I just can't do it anymore. I just can't want to run away from my life. I guess it'd be a way of expressing it, and that thought made me have to probably be good idea to call my sponsor. And so I said, "There's a telephone meeting today waiting. " And I stepped on that telephone and I called my sponsor, and she wasn't home. This is long before the worst meeting. I didn't even know anybody. I didn't answer. She didn't know anybody did, and the phone just rang and rang and rang and rang and the night came back, and I even thinking about it, I put that in the phone, I carried the phone book, and I called somebody else. I called eleven people that day before I reached somebody who was home. That's why my sponsor had me call three people every day. So when the day came, I will come for everyone. When when I absolutely reach out to them, there's so many people calling. It's not my the habit of doing that would be so much harder for me. That I would just do without really thinking about it, and and what happened, you know, that something that that thing about those phone calls just this very day, and me and good good dad four years ago would have had a calling answer. He wasn't as silly or open either. I'm not three weeks that time and taking care. I was so scared. I'm really thought he was going to die. And I, I was having you know another one of those kind of days where I just said, "I can't do this anymore. " And I, now the quarter of my cell phone was.You see the graduation time, and and I called my friend Rita, and and her wife picked me up, and I said hi to Patty, and then I burst into tears. If I hadn't identified myself, I would have just hung up. But now that I identified myself, I feel obliged to try to do some kind of message, but I couldn't, I couldn't not give it. I simply stopped trying. I just stopped. I found it just out. I was it was useless to keep trying. I'm not going back. I was put over with me, and about ten minutes later, I thought I really need to call Rita back again. But I don't have enough office for something, so I went back outside and called back. I got her voice mail, and I said, "Please just ignore my prior message. Feeling ever so much better. The point of the story is it didn't matter that she wasn't home. What mattered is that I picked up and made the call, and reached out to another someone I remember calling. So I really wasn't going to have magic answers there for me that day, you know. She can't hear the answer, you know. I'm saying that, but the the thing for me is to remember who I am. That I'm now calling can't do any of this on my own. I simply can't do any of it on my own. To go back, to go back where? Where am I going back to? With my late husband, when he passed away, I went down to this little chapel and made some funeral arrangements. And a couple hundred people from our colleagues and others came from where to be there. They didn't know him, you know, but they came that day for me. And that's what we do, you know. That's what we do here. I then started to have quite a few laughs, but it happened after my parents' death. Seemingly, then I started dating. I was in fact passed away. This is the first time I ever dated my friend. Ever relationship I ever had up until then was I'm a man. We go to bed, and maybe we embark on a relationship. Then said, "Be my friend, and now colleagues and others for a year, and and so we started dating, and we fell in love, and we got married, and you know, we had a really great life. I mean, we we really had a great life, but I can't believe that I lived the way I lived. I can't believe that I married the same person all these years. Twenty almost twenty years of marriage. You know, I'm married for a really long time. I'm kind of a stranger, you know. You know, I love him more than they did. They married, and that's just like not me, but but here we are with you all. You know, learn how to do that. I sponsored a lot of women and colleagues and others, and most of the time I'm grateful for it. Not always, you know. Actually, about sponsoring, nobody asked me to sponsor them for a long time. I was ten years sober before I sponsored anybody. That stuff, you know, I mean, I would get people to ask me, and they'd call me, sponsor me, never, you know, but and I worried about a lot because all my peers and colleagues and others were sponsoring people, and so, you know, I didn't even want to have a friend. So I'm still talking to other people and old timers about it. You know, nobody asked me to sponsor them. So started praying that God would send me somebody to be so careful about what you pray for. I started praying that God would send me somebody to sponsor. So he did. I sent me this woman who everybody knew by the sponsor for a little while. I was kind of my turn and the barrel. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met in my life. She she wanted to do this. She said, "I remember I said something at the party or something at the party. I'm not coming. I'm not going. " She said, "Oh, I can't go. " And then I said, "Why? " She said, "Because I have headaches on Sunday. " So she gets to the party, and it was a cool party, you know. And somebody came out, so everybody that keeps the is keeps out. Everybody's in the in the pool, and they're doing some kind of thing. Just me, just telling all the back. Everybody's in the pool doing some kind of game with the ball, and in this group sitting on the side of the pool, he says, "Keep saying, 'Come on, come on, come on. '" And she's like, "No, no, no, don't come on, come on, come on. " And she finally said, "I have to be here. I don't have to have a good time. " So you have to get the idea. So now I'm sponsoring this girl, and and I really got that I didn't actually want to sponsor anybody. I wanted the party where we take the cake, and then give the candy, and then that's the party. I wanted to know I didn't want to actually take a call. Worried about stuff. Once I realized that sort of call down, and then old timer women said to me, "No matter what you give your phone number out to new callers, you know, not asking whether they ask to sponsor or not. You're doing what your supposed to be doing. " Little happened, and eventually did happen, and I'm grateful that I sponsored him because the thing about sponsoring is, you know, you pretty much have to call like twice. You can't be making do stuff, and not doing, you know, and so it's pretty helpful to me. I could do it, please, if anybody has one. Somebody is pretty much one, and they'll be any minute. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Um, let's see. What am I going to talk about? My stepfather, resentment. You know, I said I didn't have a big resentment. The big deal here is the thing we got to get rid of. When I got sober, I had a real resentment. I didn't see resentment, but I saw it. From my stepfather, there was stuff going on. My house had children going on. I was growing up, and I hated it with a real good reason. I didn't see a problem for today because I don't live there anymore. So you know, problems over. But what happened to me is the longer I did write about my emotions, the more I kind of thought about it. And the longer I stayed sober, the more it seemed like every speaker, whoever got to be with me, every man was that sort of me into the microphone. Started to react me and say something like resentment, kill our colleagues especially justifiable resentment. And I said to myself, "What am I thinking about this? " And I think I got to get rid of resentment. So I started praying, asking God to please remove resentment. And nothing happened. It's my experience. Nothing ever happens. If all I'm doing is praying, the way I see the improvement is I ask God for help, and then there's some kind of work I'm supposed to be doing. Always there's work, and so I asked God for help, and then I talked to my sponsor, always the great, and she just said, "I was going to make him end to stepfather, " and I said, "Well, wait a minute here. " Happy for God, my inventory. If men should be made here, he should be making me. I was a kid. I mean, I have no guilt here. She said, "Well, let's look at let's forget what he did for a moment. Let's look at your teenage years when you were drinking, causing your mother all that grief and anguish, and worry. " We caused your mother all that grief. I had my own, you know, had the conversation with my mother, making deals with me, and man, I'm sorry I did those things to my mother. I love my mother. I'm really sorry that I caused her all that trouble. So making deals with my mother is not my choice. I hate my stepfather. What do I care if he was a little worried during that time? So what, you know? But I guess the book is pretty clear. That we got to get rid of resentment so readily and not immediately. I agreed to go and have a chat with him. So went out there and talked to my old ways. And I had a talk with him, and I said, "You know, I know that I caused pretty much what I just said. I caused a lot of trouble and worry and anguish and grief. " And all that. Well, I was drinking, I was living this house, drinking, and I'm sorry. You know, I know that you know, not a good daughter, stepdaughter, and I'm going to try to be better stepdaughter from now on. And that's right away. I said this because I knew about my own. I'm going to wander off and just get things. Sure, coming in the big was very clear about that. You know, things were coming to not my business. So I kind of spit out what I had to say, and I fled. And I was driving home, and I thought, you know, what these stepdaughter work. I made my man, and I still hate him as much as I ever did. Well, I actually made the man. I made the stepfather. The man was coming. The actual man is that being kind and loving stepdaughter. Oh my God! I never realized I just can't do it. I cannot do it. I really can't. I got a lot of help from people, and I remember a girl that very new said to me, "Who knew what I was trying to do? " Said to me, "And me just before Christmas, she said, 'You know, a kind and loving daughter would rush out on Christmas Eve and cut the tie and have the short the story. ' But you know, she might actually pull a fraud in this. What she might be doing, and I forgive her for it. " So I thought about that. Remember, I sat on my couch, and I said, "Okay, God, I'm willing to give him something he might like. " You're free. She said, "No, no, you know, some people just hard to buy for. " He really was one of the people he didn't have a problem with. And so I said, "You know, you're going to have to help me out, God, here with a little inspiration, " because I really don't know. I'm willing, but I have no idea what it should be. And I sat on my couch waiting for inspiration, just right. And it didn't. It hurt me. Perhaps my work was to go to a mall where things are. Now I'm walking around different stores. I'm in the needlepoint shop, but the needlepoint shop never did the needlepoint shop. There was just things to needlepoint, friends, and all the same about fathers and daughters. Just sitting, sweet, saying about fathers and daughters. I thought I didn't know it, but that thing just followed me around the shop. You know, I just didn't get away from it. Lots of things I took from that. People would know needlepoint takes a lot of time. You know, I did my nice work. I prayed really, really, took over there, and I and I gave it to my Christmas. There was a moment, just a moment here and gone, that we got a little talk here and there when you read that. That little moment had me for a long time. Here, really, you know, I knew in that instant. Here and gone, that quickly. That I kept trying to act as a kind and loving stepdaughter. That somehow God was going to make this resentment bearable enough that I was not going to have to make a big deal out of it. I knew that. I knew it in that instant. I kept trying to do. Remember, a couple years later, I then I had gotten somebody to just speak and a conference, and when my mother married my stepfather, I think the first year they were married, maybe the second year, it took us a vacation to somebody can't be proud. And it was maybe one of the happiest marriages of my childhood. We had a fabulous time. We had never can't be for we can and we had my particular wonderful moment from that trip was we had to do a little fall and I was I was young and I was like seven years old or something, and and I was too much high for me, you know, too little to do it. And it was kind of a high thing. We put on the shoulders, and we were all singing. And just this wonderful happy memory, so we went to the end of the studio there and then we had a picture of our fall. And I on the car that company that I wrote essentially what I just said. This happy child of marriage love, and I gave it, and he loved it. He gave it away. Maybe a year later, I was out there having a dean, and I sat in his chair. You know, everybody had their chair, and on the table by his chair was that car that we rented, and it was completely dug in. He must have picked that car up hundreds, hundreds of it. You know, when we died, a number of years ago, now I knew that that my man for me, I grew to love him. I don't know how that happened. It's impossible you cannot get from where I was to loving him, but I did, and what I feel today, thinking about it, is I think that he was a man, and I think that he was doing the best he could with the little things the world could. I really almost believe that I have no resentment. No, nothing is left about that to torment me. I am so grateful. I was willing to do this when my judgment was just ridiculous. This was never going to work, you know. My judgment is terrible, terrible. You know, everything good in my life since coming out called and not just in the stage. Somebody else or the wrong direction. Somebody else, more than the point. I'm so willing that I have so grateful. I'm willing to take direction. I when then I went into business. We got married, went into business for ourselves and we're making a lot of money. And here are the kids, the kind of children, and I I had to go to job, but I was really kind of grateful about that. You know, I worked for him, but not for a hard. And you know, I didn't want to go to job. I remember I cried all the way to work that first day, but you know, this is great. I had to work for like you know you have when you put down you worked for husband for fifteen years it doesn't look great to me you know me they don't believe it so I'm thinking how in the world am I going to get a job you know and a woman and a said to me one night are you looking for a job and I said yes and she said we lived at the dean which is a fair distance away from where we lived meeting and she said I just took a job as an office manager here and I we need to separate there you know I never would have gotten I didn't have the kind of experience they wanted I didn't know computers at the time and and as I said my resume looked like crap and she said I said I don't have the kind of experience she said I know you and I know your work ethic and I know you can do it she was only on that job for like four months just long enough for me to get higher there I'm still on that job today you know I I love that job I you know it's great but anyway so so we have to work and then you know now working then just recovering from heart surgery is recovering was not quite as bad as we had hoped and our business was things were really bad I was making enough money to to support the lifestyle we had become accustomed and and we had to sell our house and I remember being so grateful about that I remember saying God this is so unfair we you know shared this house we had great parties we had many weddings at that house this is just not fair that God would take this house away from us it's really you know and the last party we had but we had them it was just the worst party we put on the last party that we had there was a twenty year party twenty five year party maybe for our friend Chuck and that and it was one of those perfect southern California days where the sky is clear and you can see the mountains we just below the mountains you just see the mountains so clear and the air is fresh with a good day like that that's why I'm sort of going on about it just a perfect day and there being I don't know three hundred people and our backyard that day for the party was much loved and the party was winding down with late afternoon most everybody had gone but standing on that porch looking at the patio and the people were there for me and the others so our really close and dear friends and I think when we were still there and I remember marrying and and the back paper there or the other day the back paper was walking to the car and he was I can hardly talk about this he was playing and raising great on the back half but he was walking away I stood there in my porch and I thought I'm the luckiest woman in the world you know it's not about the house it's about this it's about the memories the old memories that old parties old ways everything those memories are ours forever you know it doesn't matter about the house it just doesn't matter I'm so grateful that we had that house for the time we had I will have another house someday but whatever you know we're very happy where we are today we lived a little little tiny apartment we moved there because we could it's I'm sorry to say we're old enough to live in senior complex but we moved there so we can move my ninety year old mother to the apartment next door so we can watch over her and it's been perfect because lots of that they're there for her to do what what a wonderful way to be able to make memories with my mother you know I get care right to take care of all our doctors appointments to be there for her when she needs me to be there I just how blessed am I you know I I really if you knew I went well to meet all my colleagues and all my staff all these days this is if you haven't gathered by now the best thing that ever happened to me I recommend you do everything if you knew that I think it's important one is to sponsor you know to show up around the phone just the right sponsor I I get a lot of that people come up to me I can tell they're interviewing me if you knew how would you know I mean you have to be a friend or ask somebody you know the second thing I recommend you do is get a home group place where you do bring the cookies just up the chairs and make the coffee make the tea and you were you know maybe somebody will miss you if you don't show up and give a call and maybe say goodbye and the third thing I recommend you do is make a friend somebody around you know like this so you can hang out with and talk to it's really important especially when you knew I I had my friend Betty I told her every day before I told her to my sponsor if I see her I'm just going to send out a call before you call your sponsor you know so I call that and I say here's what I'm thinking of doing or here's what I just and sometimes she'd say what I hope would just but mostly she'd say oh I'm going to have to call your sponsor right now that's a very good friend and and so if you knew I welcome you all colleagues and all my staff all these days I'm very happy to be here.