Writing the Fourth Step on the Woman I Was Afraid to Become – Cecilia R.
About This Speaker Tape
Cecilia, sober since February 16, 2006, tells a long Southern story about hiding a 35-year affair and learning to forgive the mother she was most afraid of becoming. She grew up in Birmingham in the 1960s, moved through eight schools in eleven years, and had her first beer at an Athens party in the fall of 1969 — "that's when I got that liquid courage." Her parents were called Jack and Bill Bailey, so the household was a running joke of "hit the road Jack" and "won't you come home Bill Bailey." She never brought dates home, never knew what she was walking into, and only found her herd when she walked into Alcoholics Anonymous.
Her first husband Stan was a young Marine officer she followed to Iwakuni, Japan, where a scary drunk in a snowstorm almost landed her in a Japanese jail and the borrowed BOQ room was decorated with a collage of boobs pinned along the chair rail. Back in Virginia Beach, a Sunday tennis game with her wealthy older boss turned into a Holiday Inn afternoon that ended the marriage and began her secret. He was a humble World War II fighter pilot who had sunk a Japanese destroyer alone and refused Admiral Nimitz's medals; he taught her workplace humility, to let things go, and that being a kept woman was an obligation she could not carry. She called him two weeks into her sobriety, found out his wife had died and he was dying of cancer, drove up to help care for him, and they made amends before he died on November 26, 2005 — Bill Wilson's birthday.
Her biggest resentment was her mother. It took four years of sobriety before she could write a Fourth Step on her, and the breakthrough came when her sponsor named the real block — "you can't forgive her" — and when a stroke-weakened friend named Jerry Barber rolled down a car window with his good arm and said "Higher Power loves her too." She wrote a gratitude list for her mother, read it as part of her amends, and today lives with her in retirement, still learning to detach while the buttons her mother installed get pushed.
She closes on page 100 of the Big Book: when we put ourselves in the Higher Power's hands, what comes is better than anything we could have planned. Thirteen years sober, divorced from the 30-year marriage for $203, she tells newcomers an old fart can still build a wonderful life — to drink is to die, and this program works.
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