You Are My Shadow and My Mirror — Every Bit of Growth Came from Women I Couldn’t Stand Being Around – Teresa F.

About This Speaker Tape

Teresa shares her story at a women's conference with raw honesty and humor, describing how alcohol was her survival mechanism from before birth — her mother drank during pregnancy, and she grew up surrounded by addiction, violence, and sexual abuse in New York's projects. She explains that alcohol allowed her to endure being raped, sodomized, and beaten without feeling anything, functioning as her only companion and coping tool for 24 years. She never questioned her brutal reality until the day alcohol stopped working and she suddenly became painfully aware of everything she had been numb to.

Her bottom came when she sat in a bar for two hours waiting for a man with a contract on her life to come kill her — and he never showed. She crawled into a church and prayed a prayer that changed everything, then detoxed on a Greyhound bus to California, arriving four months pregnant with a baby that had no heartbeat. Her sober mother dropped her at the Crenshaw Alano Club and left her with the people who had saved her own life.

Teresa describes learning everything from scratch in sobriety — how to dress, how to parent, what her own body was, what intimacy meant without exploitation. She shares how women in AA became her mirrors and teachers despite her initial hatred of being around women. Her nine-year journey to make amends to her mother is a centerpiece of her recovery, culminating when another woman asked her to tell her mother's story and she realized she couldn't.

Now with 19 years sober, Teresa cares for her mother with Alzheimer's, her brother with stage four cancer, her father with Parkinson's, and even the uncle who was her greatest abuser — not for revenge or to prove a point, but simply because she can. She speaks about her ongoing relationship struggles, her role as a priestess in her cultural tradition, and her unwavering belief that the program works through action, sponsorship, and trusting a higher power.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Teresa introduces herself, thanks the committee, jokes about nerves and Angie P. singing Amazing Grace
• 5:00 Talks about growing to love women's meetings after initially hating being around women, how her sponsor put her in the middle of women
• 10:00 Welcomes newcomers, discusses the traditions as a safety net, shares her Puerto Rican pride and humor
• 18:00 Examines her relationship with alcohol — given alcohol in the womb, it allowed her to survive sexual abuse starting at age five
• 25:00 Describes the moment alcohol stopped working — suddenly present for the violence, seeing herself in the mirror for the first time
• 32:00 Her bottom: waiting two hours in a bar for a hitman who never came, then crawling into a church to pray
• 38:00 Arriving in LA on a Greyhound, four months pregnant with no heartbeat, mother dropping her at Crenshaw Alano Club
• 45:00 Stories of old-timers — Miss Iona teaching her she doesn't have to sleep with everyone in AA, Marcy giving her a candle for her year cake
• 55:00 Nine-year journey to make amends to her mother — asked to tell her mother's story and realizing she couldn't
• 62:00 Now caring for the family members who weren't there for her, relationship struggles at 19 years, closing on being a vessel and channel of peace