Writing the Fourth Step on the Woman I Was Afraid to Become – Cecilia R.

Take me where the promises are real, are real, the promises are real.
Welcome, everyone. Let's have an AA meeting.
My name's Tim, and I'm alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the Nava Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Each individual and our personal story.
Each individual's story describes in their own language and from their own point of view
the way they establish their relationship with God.
These give a fair cross-section of our membership
and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight
and listening later on,
AABlueChipSpeakers.org, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing our souls
and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
Yes, I'm one of them, too. I must have this thing.
Our speaker, Cecilia, spells her name C-E-C-E.
I misspelled it on the flyer, but she forgave me.
She's that kind of A.A. member.
And she drove down and brought quite a crowd from Gwinnett.
So, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
And this is no April Fool's.
This is for y'all.
My name's Cecilia and I'm an alcoholic.
I'm an alcoholic.
I thank everybody for coming here.
Helping keep me sober tonight.
And I'm hoping that, you know, possibly something I might say
that I can give back to what was so freely given to me when I first came in.
So, here we go.
My sobriety date is February 16, 2006.
I'll give you a little background on my family.
I'm an only child.
I've been married twice.
One time for four years.
Both for four years.
And then the last time was for 30.
I am currently divorced from him.
And I married him because he drank like I wanted to.
And we were the best drinking buddies in Atlanta.
And we had a wonderful time until it got just unbearable.
My family life.
My mother.
I did not grow up in an alcoholic home.
However, the genetics of the alcoholism, this disease,
were coming down like eight ways into the family.
I learned later that my mother did have, my mother does have alcoholic thinking.
And she will promptly tell you, you didn't get this from me.
And I'd say, oh, okay.
And my dad, my family, the family life, my dad was a very calm person.
He was very smart.
He worked for IBM in the 50s when it was just getting started.
And they approached him.
And he was just a mild-mannered person until you really, really took him off.
And then it was Katie barred the door.
His.
His family called him Jack.
And the rest of the world called him Bill.
And my maiden name was Bailey.
So this is how I described their relationship.
It was hit the road, Jack.
Or won't you come home, Bill Bailey.
And it was always, somebody was always coming or going.
I never would bring people home or dates home or anything.
There was never any of that kind of activity because I was so embarrassed.
It seemed as if all of the other families were so perfect.
And, you know, they had such a great life.
And I grew up in the 60s in Birmingham where everybody was kind of, you know,
they were already really ticked off at each other.
And I just was always embarrassed.
I mean, because I never knew what I was going to be walking into.
My parents, they provided what they did the best they could.
I know that today.
But if you had told me that when I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous,
I would have said,
you're crazy because my mother is crazy.
She was my biggest resentment also.
I was in eight schools in 11 years.
And I lived in Birmingham.
We were there for four years.
And I can absolutely say that that was the most stable part of my childhood.
There I met the boy that I first loved, my first love.
And I've,
and the boy that,
the first boy I ever kissed with any passion.
He was the boy next door.
And they both came back into my life.
The one that I kept up with for years.
And they both came back into my life later in sobriety.
I owed an amend to the first boy that I ever loved.
And the first boy I ever kissed with any passion owed some to me.
So it was good.
I had basically a good childhood.
I was a good student.
And I never got into trouble.
I never caused any grief to anybody.
But I just never, I did not fit in anywhere.
And somebody told me, shared this in a meeting about Alcoholics Anonymous.
They said, you know, when I, I was the black sheep of the family.
And when I got here to Alcoholics Anonymous,
I had found the rest of the herd.
So, y'all are the herd.
And that was absolutely, totally true for me.
My drinking, I used to say that my drinking career started in Athens, Georgia.
In the fall of 1969, I went to a party and I had my first beer.
And I remember standing close to that refrigerator
because I was definitely going to have some more of it.
And as has always been shared, that's when I got that liquid courage.
And I fit in then.
I was a party girl.
We had a gentleman out at the Gwinnett room one time.
He walked up to me.
He said, I just know, he said that you were hailed.
You had a good time.
And I said, I absolutely did.
I had a, I had a, I was a party person.
But in reality, as time wore on,
I remembered an incident when I was living in Birmingham.
And I remember, you know, I was in about the fifth grade.
And I remember having a really, really bad cold.
And to the point where I couldn't, I just couldn't breathe.
And my mother fixed that honey, bourbon, lemon combination for me.
And, and I thought, oh, I'm not going to be able to handle this.
But, but I drank it.
And it burned going down.
It tasted terrible.
But it worked.
And I can remember sleeping like a baby throughout.
And getting up the next morning and thinking, well, you know, maybe, maybe something's going on here.
I, I, I, that's a, that is a solution to this problem if it happens to me again.
I didn't, as I said, I drank through college.
I, my first roommate in college was, she came down from Virginia.
And she had gone to an all-girls school.
And she, she was a junior.
And she was ready to party.
I mean, she was ready to hit.
Hit the, hit the strip in Athens.
And, and we did.
I cannot remember me not really, not being cognizant of where I was.
I can't remember waking up in the bed where I didn't know who, who was there.
But I would go back to the room.
And I'd, I'd, I'd, and I'd wake up in the morning.
And I'd ask her, I'd say, you know, did I have a good time?
And she'd say, oh, yes.
And I'd say, well, when we got home.
And I'd go and do it again.
And so, and my drinking was, it, it, it took off there.
I don't believe, one thing that I've learned is, and I fully believe this, that,
and I learned this from my grandmother, that God was in, in control.
And I, I so believe that today.
I also believe in.
The statement that's in the acceptance paragraph.
Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems.
And absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
And I, what this program has done for me is I have been able to go back and look at my past.
And recollect, recollect all of these instances.
So, my drinking career, as I stated, I, I met my first husband at the University of Georgia.
And he was, he was a junior.
And he had gone to one summer of OCS for the Marine Corps.
And then he had said, I'm not going back.
He said, because this was the Vietnam era.
And then they had the draft.
And he ended up, his number came up eight on his birthday.
And he said, well, if I'm going to go in, I might as well go back and go in as an officer.
And that's what he did.
And that, the officer thing was pretty significant.
Um, all the pictures that I have of our relationship and relationships that, like I said, parties,
I was always asleep.
I was always already passed out on the sofa.
Because if you didn't keep me moving, you didn't keep me talking and jumping around
or playing a game or dancing or something, then I was out of here.
Because the minute I got relaxed, you know, I, I'm, I'm gone.
I'm, I'm asleep.
I'm on the sofa.
You know, we'll see you tomorrow.
Um, so he, um.
His first duty station, he did go back, and he got his commission, and we got married.
And I have to say this about the April 1st thing.
We got married on April 1st.
And I never knew who the joke was really on, whether it was me or him.
But as of today, had we stayed married, we would have been married for 47 years.
We got married in 1972.
And I always think about him.
I mean, it's ironic that I'm up here telling my story on his day.
But he, you know, I haven't since made amends to him.
So he, his first duty station was Iwakuni, Japan.
And I had, I was a senior, and I was approaching my senior year at Georgia.
And I knew that if I didn't go back to school, I couldn't go with him.
And, but I, however, I did go over there at Christmas.
And.
And I would also have liked to say this.
That my first, my GPA, I was on an academic scholarship at Georgia.
And my GPA the first semester, or the first quarter that I was there was .43.
And my dad said to me, he said, what the hell happened?
And I said, well, and I had discovered alcohol.
That last semester, I did have.
I had to get, I redeemed myself.
My last semester there, I got, I did end up finishing at, while he was in Iwakuni and in Japan.
And I had to, we were on the quarter system.
15 hours was your minimum load.
And I had to get 28 hours credit in order to graduate.
And I made the dean's list.
And I, and I kept, and that was a year where, that I did not drink.
Because my nose was in the books.
And I so knew that I would not go back.
And I would never finish college had I, not, had I done that.
However, at Christmas time, I did go to Iwakuni, Japan.
And I visited him over there.
I was there for three weeks.
And this was in the, Iwakuni was very close to Hiroshima, Japan.
And they were still a little angry with us.
In 1972, they still would give you very dirty, dirty looks.
They were upset with us.
Because we had leveled that city pretty much in its entirety.
As we all know, as a result of World War II.
And that was where I had one of the scariest drunks of my life when I was over there.
He, we had to stay, we stayed in a BOQ, which is the bachelor's officer's quarters.
And they had a gentleman, his friend that had a room over there, had a, he had gone on R&R.
Or whatever they called it.
And then the other gentleman in the other room, it was a room and it had a bathroom in between.
And then we had, we had these separate, separate rooms.
And both of them were out.
So they said, well, you can come over here and stay.
And so my, my, his name was Stan.
And Stan had, had gotten promoted to second, a first lieutenant.
And they have what they call a wetting gown party for them.
And I made, I mean, I made sandwiches and all this kind of stuff.
And a rice cooker.
I mean, we had a big spread.
We got ready to go over there.
And we told the taxi cab driver, you know, he was going to have to stop by the concert.
Because we had to get, you know, tons of beer and take to the party.
And we got to the party.
And the taxi, and he was the taxi cab driver.
I mean, he was furious that we had to make an extra stop.
And we got to the, we got to the place.
It was like a little hooch house.
And he went over, he ran over into a ditch.
And so he got out and he was cussing and screaming in Japanese.
Of course, we didn't know what he was saying.
And these six Marines, they came out there and they picked his car up.
And they sat him on the ground.
And he was, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And, but it's the evening when we're on.
We got, you know, we got dropper and dropper.
And it started snowing.
And it was, it was pretty bad.
And I thought, you know, we got to do something.
We got to get back to the installation.
And, um.
And we needed, we needed to go.
And when we got out on the road, I've never been that scared in all my life.
I mean, there was nothing there.
And I had, and the Japanese at the time, what they did was they just threw you in jail.
I mean, you know, they didn't have a problem with people stealing stuff.
They didn't, anything, you could leave something out on the street, you know.
And it'd be there four days later or five days later.
They would never, they would never move it.
But, um.
And I remember telling him.
You need to do some of that Marine Corps stuff.
You need to get us a ride.
And, and as God would have it, there was this lone taxi cab driver.
Taxi cab came down the street through the snow that night.
And I said, oh, thank, I can remember thanking God that, that I was going to be safe.
Because I really was in fear that, um, that we were going to get thrown into jail.
I mean, nobody was ever going to find us or whatever, you know.
And they have a big thing about knives over there in Japan.
But that was scary.
We, um.
The B.O.Q. room was, um, a, um, somebody had started a collage of boobs in there.
There was, they had no head, they had no faces.
But it was, they had a chair rail.
And it was, there were boobs everywhere in that room.
It was here a boob, there a boob.
Here, boob, boob, boob.
And I thought, oh, no.
You know, and you wake up.
And I said, we got to get out of here.
But anyway, I did manage to get him.
And, and, uh, he owed me a lot of amends that night.
And I owed him amends, too, because we, we were both, we were both pretty drunk.
I don't think that he was alcoholic, though.
But he was, he, he loved me, but I did not know how to love him back.
I mean, he was my romantic one.
And he, he would write me the best letters.
And, but as it says in the fourth step, I had that inability to form a human bond with another human being.
And, uh, that relationship ultimately ended in divorce.
And it was my fault.
And here comes my secret.
Um, and God, and I'm going to kind of back into this.
Um, I, his next duty session was Virginia Beach.
And I got a job in a one-girl office.
And he was a, um, um, I had a boss.
And my, and Stan would go out to sea.
I mean, they would send them out to sea on, on long tours.
And his friends would always say, oh, we'll take care of her.
We'll take care of her.
And, you know, then they would go and then take me, take me out to dinner or something like that.
And then it would hit on me.
And the whole time that I had been at Georgia, I had never, ever, ever looked at, at, in another man.
But anyway, so this boss and I, I mean, we got along okay.
And one day he asked me, he said, would you like to go out?
And he liked tennis and I did too.
And just hit the ball.
And it was on a Sunday afternoon.
And, um, and we, um, I thought that's a harmless thing.
He was a lot older than I was.
I, he, he turned around.
He turned out, he was very wealthy.
I did not know that at the time.
And so he asked me, he said, would you like to go out for a bite to eat?
And I started drinking.
And, um, and I ended up at the Holiday Inn with him.
And I woke up that next morning and I said to myself, I really, really like that.
And I'm going to have some more of this.
And that ultimately was the demise of the relationship.
But I do want to say some things about him.
Um, that gentleman impacted my life more than anybody could ever, um, imagine.
And I don't know whether it was in God's plan, but I know that he influenced me in other ways.
We made a promise to each other that, um, we would never, um, lie to each other.
That we would always be honest.
And no matter what happened to the relationship, we would always be friends.
No matter what.
And as I said, he was, he was pretty wealthy.
And, um, I, he was a great American.
Um, he was a fighter pilot in World War II.
And that gives you some idea of his age.
And I used to ask him, I said, were you ever, and the average life of a fighter pilot was 52 minutes in the Pacific theater then.
And I asked him, I said, would you ever, uh, I said, were you ever scared?
And he said, no.
He said, because them son of bitches weren't going to get me.
And he, I later, I later learned at the very end that he had, uh, was a tremendous war hero in it.
Adamant Nimitz had tried to give him all these awards.
He wouldn't take it.
Um, he wouldn't take them.
He said, I was just doing my job.
Uh, he sunk a Japanese destroyer by himself.
And I never knew that because he was an extremely, um, humble individual.
Uh, he, he taught, and I, and I can't describe.
I was just comfortable with him.
I, I was just, I mean, I was comfortable reading a book, going to a movie, sharing a meal, or do whatever.
And, um, I would like to, to describe our relationship.
Um, um, and I, I don't know if you, these, if you've seen these three movies.
Um, he was my top gun.
Has anybody seen that movie?
And I was his pretty woman.
And we did.
And I did a whole lot of dirty dancing.
And that was the, that was the relationship.
Uh, however, there was a lot more to it than, um, that.
Um, he, he loved me.
He never kept me.
He never, he, he would have bought me a car.
He would have set me up in business.
And he would have bought me a house.
But I, I, you know, he would have done all those things for me.
But I could not, um, I, I knew I could not do, I did not want to be the kept woman.
Because I didn't, I couldn't.
I couldn't deal with that obligation.
And here you go with the relationship.
And I knew that if his family had ever found out about me, that, um, we would, um, a lot of people were getting hurt.
And I knew then that I could not have lived with myself.
So, he, I kept him, he was my secret for 35 or 40 years.
I never, ever, ever talked, I never talked to anybody about me, about him.
He taught me things like in the workplace.
Um.
You be the first one there and the last one to leave.
He said, and that's how you get ahead.
He said, nobody is indispensable.
And I cannot tell you how many times I used that in the workforce.
And I used it today.
Um.
Also, no matter what, nobody is, and that was a humility for me.
Uh.
He could examine something, you know, buy some gadget or something.
And if it didn't work, he could let it go.
Uh.
He, he told me, he said, if you, if you see in the workplace that there's something that you need to do.
That there's something that can be done better.
And you, he said, you go and you make the suggestion.
He said, but if they tell you that they're going to do it, you're going to do it their way.
He said, you, you do it their way.
He, and, and that was a let it go, let it go.
And I used that frequently.
Um.
There were so many things, uh, he would tell me, you know, sometimes that people, you know, I've heard this, let people be stupid.
And, and he, he'd tell me, he said, sometimes people have arms and stuff that don't work.
And he said, and then sometimes people just have brains that won't work.
And, um, there was a lot of that.
So, what happened was, we were friends and we would talk several things.
My, my second husband knew about him.
And I ultimately did get a divorce.
And we didn't really have a drinking relationship.
And it, and I don't know, it was just a, it was just a comfortable relationship.
And we did end up being friends.
And God started working in my life.
Very, very.
Uh, early when I came into, I came into the realm to the Alcoholics Anonymous in September of 2005.
And I had not spoken to him in a, in, quite in a year because I was too embarrassed to, I had gone through detox.
And, uh, the year before I stayed dry for, uh, six, in 2004 I got out in 2004.
I stayed dry for six months.
But I had no mental defense as the book says against the, that first drink.
I went gambling with my mother.
This lady walked by.
I was some, uh, with a daffodil up there.
My mother took one and I thought, well, you know, I, I think I'll have one.
And I was back out there for, um, for six or eight more months before I made it into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in September of 2005.
Um, I called him about two weeks, um, into my sobriety and talked to him.
And I, and I found out at that point, uh, that his wife had died.
And that he was a, um, I got to speed this up, and, and his wife, his wife had died and, um, and he was dying of cancer.
And he told me, he said, he said, sweetie, he said, they've given up on me.
And I asked him if there was anything that I, he could do.
And I said, I could do, I said, is there anything I can do?
And he called me back and he said, yes, he said, you can come up here and help take care of me.
And I said, okay.
And I said, okay.
And he said, and I, and here I am, I've, you know, I'm, I've been sober.
And I ended up going back out, picking up a white chip.
And that ultimately led, on October 28th, that ultimately led to my first sponsor.
Uh, I picked up the white chip on October 28th.
Well, I went, I got out to the parking lot at the Gwinnett Room.
And this gentleman named Frank Ward was standing out there, who is now deceased.
And I said, I've been back out drinking.
And he said to me, he said, have you got a sponsor?
And I said.
No.
And he said, you need to have one by Monday morning.
And I said, okay.
I ended up, uh, I did get her as a sponsor.
And I sat out in the parking lot at the Gwinnett Room.
And I had to do a fifth step.
I knew I had to be honest.
I had to, and I did a fifth step with her.
And I, it was the first person that I had ever told about that.
And I drank at that situation.
It was almost like he was my higher power.
I knew that he would help me no matter what, when I called.
When, if I called him.
Yeah.
And, um, ultimately I ended up, and there were people in this room that saw me, that
the, that were there when all of this was going on.
I went to a retreat and my sponsor talked me to, I had 10 days sober.
I got the book and I headed up to Virginia Beach.
Um, and I got there and he told me, he said, I really didn't need you to take care of me.
He said, but he said, I just wanted to personally invite you to my funeral.
Okay.
And during what, for me, what God did for me, he, what I was put in a position at that
point, uh, he, he was dying, he was going, but I, we got to make amends to each other.
And, and I am eternally grateful to God for that.
And so I got really into the program.
I went out.
I did.
He, he died on November 26th of 2005.
Yeah.
That's right.
And there's probably some people maybe that know what that day was.
That was Bill Wilson's belly button birthday.
And it was almost like the power transformed that day.
And so I did go back out that morning, and I think it was, I know I picked up a white chip maybe the first week of December.
It was bad.
I would have had 30 days that day.
And that 30-day chip was the elusive one for me to get.
So God started working pretty early for me.
When I first went to my first meeting, I knew the solution was in there in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I knew it was.
I knew that no matter what I had bet, promised, did, said, thought about, pretended as if, I could not stop drinking, no matter what.
But I knew when I walked in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I knew in Alcoholics Anonymous that the solution was there.
And the things that I stayed sober on with that first sponsor was the acceptance.
Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems.
I've since learned that it's not necessarily going to be approval, but it is that.
It is, see, once I get that acceptance and that approval married up, then that's when the peace comes for me.
Okay.
I cannot control people, places, and things.
I had to say that.
I said that over and over and over and over again to myself.
And I knew that God was in control.
And I had gotten that spiritual message from a very faith-based grandmother, very young, who was at peace with the world.
And I always wanted what she had.
So he was my secret.
The next thing was my resentment.
And that resentment was my mother.
And people would tell me, and she did these things that I just couldn't, I couldn't believe.
And she was not emotionally sober.
She did a lot of things.
She would aggravate my dad.
I never could understand what was going on with, I mean, why.
I mean, he would be perfectly, he would work hard.
He'd come home.
He'd give her her paycheck, his paycheck.
And then she would start in, and he would, and like I said, that was the turmoil in the whole relationship.
You know, for me, it's growing up.
And I would go into the Gwinnett room, and I would bitch and moan about her.
And I'd say this and that and the other.
And there was people in this room that heard all of that.
And the person, my sponsor, did, helped me with my fourth step.
It took me four years before I could do a fourth step on her.
One time, she, she, and my fear was that I was just like her.
And, and I, and I did not.
I wanted to be like this woman.
She could push those buttons in me because she installed them.
And I, and, and she could still, I mean, just, it just was one.
I mean, she could, I could talk to her on the phone, and she could breathe.
And I would get a resentment against her.
And they would say, God, they'd say, you know, she did the best she can.
You need to say the fourth step prayer.
God, save me from being angry.
For this is a sick person.
And I'd say, no, she's not sick.
She's just a, you know, she just is.
She's mean-spirited, and she's, no, no, she's not.
And then one time, we bought the same dress.
And, and, and she had hers.
I saw hers hanging across, and I thought, oh, no, I have one hanging in my closet.
Just like it.
I am like her.
I am like her.
And, and, so when it got time to do my fourth step, you know, I could, I knew,
I,
on her, I knew that I was a, um, I, I knew that the drinking part was absolutely, totally wrong.
I, that I, I, I mean, it was totally bad behavior on my part.
And, and, and I drank at her.
I ate at her.
I drank at her.
I would just, you know, I, I got to have a drink.
I mean, I got to drink before I go to dinner at her house.
I had to have a drink when I got home.
I had to have a drink when I was there.
And, um, so.
She, um, and so I told my sponsor, and, um, I said, I can understand the bad behavior.
And then there was this behavior after I had been sober for four years.
I mean, she was still acting in the same manner, and I could not understand it.
I, you know, because I genuinely had tried to try to cultivate some sort of relationship with her,
and had just almost given up.
I said, but I don't know.
And I had to look at my part.
My part.
I didn't know what my, you know, I really had to look at my part.
I didn't know what my, you know, I really had to look at my part.
I didn't know what my, you know, I really had to look at my part.
I had tried to keep myself outside of the street clean after, um, she, um, after I had stopped drinking
and I had gotten into Alcoholics Anonymous.
And then the second, um, but I said, I don't know what my part is when I was out there.
And I was just born.
I mean, I didn't have anything to do with it.
I was just there.
What was my part in the abuse that was going on?
And this was such a significant part of my sobriety.
There were two things.
And when it came, when it came to her, my sponsor said to me is the problem is you can't forgive her.
And that was it.
That was the ticket.
I could not forgive her.
And that's what needed to happen.
Uh, the other thing that happened for me with her, there was a gentleman, his name was Jerry Barber.
And at the very beginning, he was bitching and I was moaning and groaning.
And, and he, he, bless his heart, he'd had a stroke.
And, and I, and I followed him out too.
And I got in his car and I was still complaining about her.
And, uh, and he reached over and he, it was his left arm that he couldn't use.
And, and he reached over and he got in his car and he rolled down the window.
And he said to me, he said, Cecilia, he said, God loves her too.
And, you know, he was right.
You know, and then I said, oh no, oh no.
You know, he likes, he, he doesn't, um, he likes me.
So he, he couldn't possibly like her.
And so this was just a process.
The fourth step took, um, about, um, ten, two or three, I mean, I, it took a long time to do on her.
And I, I wrote down everything that she'd ever said or done or that I did.
And when I got, when I started writing down the same things twice, I knew it was time to do the fourth step on her.
And I went over every single one of them with my sponsor.
Every single one of them.
I know she probably got, she was, probably needed more confidence.
She needed more coffee than I provided.
And, um, but, and then when I went to do my amends to her, the one thing that I knew that I could be in gratitude for, to her was that she gave me life.
And that is, you know, I knew the woman had to have done something good.
You know, and that was, that was what the, the ticket was for me.
I did an amends.
And, and I read the part to her where.
If I could write this, if I could possibly write this, I would.
But I couldn't.
You know, it was that, which is in the book.
And in addition to that, I did a gratitude list to her.
And I read that.
And she took care of my son.
Uh, uh, she provided him a place to live.
She did a lot of things for me.
I look back and, and there was a whole bunch of things that she had done.
And I was able to forgive her.
Today.
I am, um, I retired and, um, and I got the message that she really, really needed me.
And I'm actually living with her.
And, and, and is she still pushing my buttons?
Yes, she is.
You know, but today I have a way to get into the solution and, um, try to get back with, to, um, to, um, manage it.
I'm, I'm learning slowly to detach.
You know, to detach myself.
To detach myself from the conversations.
She, she knits.
She's a perfectionist.
And she passed that along to me.
And she really can knit, pit, and do, do that.
And, um, the other thing that I would like to say in reference to, that I forgot to say about my secret was,
the, the way that I made amends to his family is that I just don't do that behavior anymore.
Uh, with her, my amends.
Um, with her is that I try not to treat my son the way that she treated me.
And those are my, those are the ways that I do my living amends.
Uh, now I'm just going to talk a little bit about fear and then I'll run through the steps, what the steps have done for me.
Um, that fear, I heard this the other day, um, in a meeting where it, that everybody needs love and everybody fears rejection.
And for me, when I, in my main, my main fear, one of my, I had a lot of financial fear when I came in.
And I also had a lot of, um, of, um, fear, fear of abandonment.
That was the main thing that, that, from my childhood that I had.
And she, um, and, and, and I still have that today.
I mean, I, I can get into it.
But I've also, I've heard this, I believe this.
If, if there are two emotions.
Love.
Love and fear.
And if I'm coming from fear with me, then I'm coming from myself.
From inside.
But if I'm coming from a place of love, I'm coming from a place of God.
And when I can make that switch from that fearful Cecilia to that loving Cecilia, then, um, then that's when the peace comes for me.
Uh, and forgiveness.
So, and then the financial fear that all worked itself out.
I was able to, um, to.
Um, to, um, get all of that in order.
I left my husband.
I didn't divorce him.
Um, I was three years sober before I got a divorce from him.
And there are people in this room that helped me go through that whole divorce process.
I'd been married for 30 years.
And my divorce cost me $203.
And I was happy.
Um, and of course he didn't want anything.
And I pray for him every day that he gets sober.
So, let's go to the steps.
We admitted we were, step one, that was about honesty for me.
Um, honesty, the definition of honesty for me today is lack of intent to deceive.
That means that I cannot, um, um, that means that I don't need to be leaving information out.
And I don't need to be exaggerating.
I just need to tell it like it is and go down the.
I was always cash register honest.
But that honesty, I was not honest here with myself.
Honest to myself.
I was in denial.
Do not even know I'm lying.
Um, came the second step.
I knew God was in control.
I knew he was.
And the reason that I knew that he was in control was that I was here.
I was in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because as I said, there was no way that no matter what I did, bet, promise, said, thought about, I could not stop drinking.
And there had to be a power greater than myself that got me into these rooms.
Because I could not have done it alone.
Um, three, uh, for me, step three is about trust.
There's a difference.
Two is about believing in God.
Three is about trusting.
Uh, this is a picture of my God of my understanding.
He has my, the God of my understanding today has the power to make anything happen in my life.
Anything.
He can make it, he can make it happen.
Um, the, he also has what I have, is what I call the control.
This is the control.
Which is the timing.
He knows exactly when it needs to happen.
And I need to just wait on him to work it out.
And, which is the toughest things to do because, uh, I wasn't a very patient person.
And the third, the third quality that the God of my understanding has is he has the information.
He was there, I believe, when I was doing all that bad behavior.
He was out there.
He, he knows all about me.
He has, he has the information.
He knows all of my needs and all of my wants.
And he provided every away, every drop away for me to have every drop of alcohol that it took for me to get into alcohol.
It's a lot that I needed to get here.
Four is, um, the fourth step.
Uh, the, that was a release step for me.
I made, I've done, um, two big ones.
The big one was my mother.
And she was my biggest resent one.
She was also, uh, my most thorough.
Um, five, I, I shared it with my sponsor.
Uh, there's been a period in my time that, in my life that I was, uh, uh, not long.
I always heard that if, um, your sponsor's such an important person, and if you're sponsoring yourself, you're sponsoring an asshole.
And that was the, what, what happened with me.
And, uh, I am eternally grateful to those sponsors that listened to those fifth steps for me.
And it was, it's, um, um, six.
I had so many character defects.
I, I led a, my first step study, I led a, uh, they led the, uh, lead, the meeting on the sixth step.
And I thought, I just can't, I can't, I've got so many of these things.
I don't know how I'm never going to hear them all straightened out.
But today, um, uh, I know basically what they are.
And they're all based in fear.
Uh, the third step prayer says take away my difficulties.
And, um, and my difficulties are my self-centered fear.
Every, all, my character defects, when I get into self-centered fear, all of my character defects, one or more are going to be activated because of that fear.
Fear, I, I'm not going to give them away.
I'm going to lose something I have.
Um, seven, I ask God to help me and to remove these shortcomings.
I need help.
Uh, A, my list of the persons, um, we had harmed.
I had to, uh, become willing.
And I did make a list.
And most of them, you know, those amends have popped up, you know, at the various times in, in my life.
And, um, I've worked in a hospital as a pharmacy tech.
And, and I had a couple people that showed up at the hospital right there that I was able to make amends to.
Um, they're an old boss, in fact.
Um, that, uh, nine, my, um, my ex-husband, Stan, was one of the people that, um,
that I could not, when I had, when I made my amends to him, he was one of those people that I could not tell what had happened.
But in that conversation with him was, he said it was all my fault.
He said it was all my fault.
And I said, no, it wasn't.
And I said, please do not beat yourself up not one more minute.
But, um, I said, you are a fine husband.
But he was one of those people that it would have harmed had I completely done, had I, uh, that would have been very selfish of me.
And it, he would have been terribly hurt.
Um, maybe we've been related.
He may have come down here and beat the hell out of me.
I don't know.
But, uh, anyway, um, amends are, are good.
There's all kinds.
You know, the living, the, the ones that you say in person.
You know, there's different kinds of ways to make amends.
But you have to be, that willingness, um, it's about, it's about willingness to go to any length.
And, uh, that's what it's all about.
Uh, Tan, you know, I love that paragraph.
And, you know, continue to watch for fear or anger, self-pity, worry.
That's a, that's a great paragraph for me.
You ask God at once to remove them.
That's our instructions.
You, um, talk to somebody about it.
And inevitably, I would, it worked particularly.
I would, something would happen.
I was a pharmacy tech.
And, um, and I would be able to, I would ask God to please.
I would get really angry.
I had this one pharmacist that really drove me nuts.
And I would, I was able to.
Then this, um, let's see, um, and then I, um, you make amends.
And, um, and that's, that's how, and then you turn to help.
And as a pharmacy tech, I could deliver one aspirin and I'd help somebody.
So that was, that worked really good.
It works good for me.
Salted prayer, I stay somewhere between 3, 10, and 11.
Uh, that prayer meditation is really important.
And then in 12, I, I really thoroughly feel.
I mean, I jumped into it.
I mean, I jumped into the bed of service work when I first got in here.
And it helped me.
It was very minimum.
So, those are how the steps worked for me.
And now I want to just read.
I want to, this is, I'm going to end with this.
This is one of my very favorite passages from the big book.
And this has worked for me.
It, this program really works for me.
To drink is to die.
In this program, it works.
It really does.
Um, it's on page 100.
It's on page 100.
And it says, both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress.
When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned.
Follow the dictates of a higher power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world.
No matter what your present circumstances.
And I have found that to be so, so true in this program.
So, if you're new, please come, keep coming back.
Because you can have an absolutely wonderful life.
And I was an old fart when I got here.
And I got, I got 13 years and I can't believe it.
Anyway, thank you all so much for listening.
Thank you.
Uh, thank you.
We're hanging on every word, weren't we?
Let's give them one more hand.
First I slept and then I crept.
You rescue me, and finally, awake in there I see.
I look into love's window, for a soul that's meant for me.
It takes me where the promises are made, sometimes quickly, sometimes slow.
We get just what we need.
On a broad day.
On a broad highway, stride for stride, we walk eternally.
I look into love's window, for a heart that beats for me.
It takes me where the promise is.
Our reason.
And I always long, for something that sets me free.
And I do love, to a world in harm.
And I do.
This beloved soul's vision, that one day would appear to me.
It takes me where the promise is.
For me.
For me.
It takes me where the promises are made.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
For me.