Conversation with Penny M.

Interactive Transcript

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0:00

Moderator Welcome to the Tuesday Night Recovery Speakers History Workshop. Thanks for joining us tonight. My name is Tim and tonight's presentation is a conversation with a long timer as it is our last Tuesday of April. And tonight we have Penny M. from Virginia having a conversation with Penny P.

0:06

Moderator from California. And looking forward to tonight's conversation. We meet here every Tuesday at the same time using the same Zoom ID number. And next week we'll have a presentation from J.S. on Bill W.

0:10

Penny Conscious Contact and the new movie to book being released. And I'm sure you all will enjoy learning about that. And this meeting is recorded. All past audio presentations are available at recoveryspeakers.com. We are not affiliated with any 12-step organization, though our focus is on the history of AA and other 12-step fellowships.

0:17

Moderator And recoveryspeakers.com is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to preserving and sharing the audio of AA and the 12-step movement for today and for future generations. We send a daily email featuring a speaker talk from our archive. If you would like to receive our daily emails, you can send me a message at info at recoveryspeakers.com and I'll get you added to our email list. Or I will also be sharing a link in the chat where you can find all of our information. And tonight we should have some time for questions for Penny at the end.

0:29

Moderator And so if you have any questions throughout the conversation tonight, please write them down and be ready to ask some questions at the end. I am going to close the chat during the conversation and I will open that back up at the end of the meeting. And that is it for me. I am going to go ahead and turn it over to Penny. Thanks, Tim.

0:37

Moderator Hi, y'all, I'm Penny P. I'm an alcoholic in Livermore, California. My Friday date is October 9th, 1977, and I want to welcome you all to the conversation with a long timer. We've been doing this meeting for a little over three years now, and I know that we have some people with us this evening that haven't been to this meeting before. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we got started and how we got our format.

0:47

Penny And then we're going to have a conversation with Penny M. from Reston, Virginia, and who many of you are here to support. And thank you so much for coming in and being with us this evening. So this meeting got started because the Recovery Speakers does a lot of history talks. They host a lot of people who have an interest in a particular part of AA history.

0:55

Penny And I was sitting and listening to our friend Nancy Kay talk about pioneer women in AA. Some people in the room, in the Zoom room, were asking her questions that we couldn't answer because they've gone, they're past. And I'm sitting here thinking, wait a minute, we've got people that have our living history. Let's talk to them. So I don't know how many of you were raised this way in AA, but I was raised in AA and my family of origin that the first person to complain or the first person to make a suggestion is the first volunteer.

1:08

Moderator So when I approached Mike F. about the possibility of doing something with our long timers, I told him that I would be willing to, unless he had someone else in mind, and I can't tell you, I will tell you that my fingers were crossed that he would say, oh, I know just who should do that. He didn't say that. He said, well, Penny, that would be wonderful. Why don't you take that commitment on?

1:18

Penny And so I did. So it's a little different format than most meetings. We have Penny M. from Reston, Virginia with us this evening. And what we're going to do is we're going to have a conversation.

1:22

Penny It's going to be a little bit like an interview. I'm going to ask her some questions. We're not going to talk about her drinking at all. She's been sober for 58 years. We want to talk about her recovery and her adventure in Alcoholics Anonymous and how did she walk through the program all of these years and practice these principles.

1:30

Moderator So thank you for joining us. We're here on the last Tuesday of every month. Our long timers are always 50 or more years sober. There are a couple of people in the room with us this evening that have been on the other side of the screen from me and had the conversation. And I'm always grateful to see them back.

1:38

Moderator I've made some great friends through this commitment. And isn't that really what service happens to do for us is that we think we're there to be of service to other people, and we get fed so much more. So thank you all for being here. Penny, I'm going to ask you to unmute, and Tim is going to spotlight us, I think. And we're going to have a little conversation.

1:46

Penny So if you would unmute and come in. And there you are. So would you introduce yourself? Give us your name and your sobriety date and where you're located. And if you've got a home group, the basic statistics of your sobriety.

1:52

Penny Sure. I'm Penny Miller. I'm from Reston, Virginia. And my sobriety date is January 29th, 1968. And do you have a home group, Penny?

1:55

Penny Yes, I do. And what's your home group? Toronto. Oh, the Toronto, yeah. Toronto Secular Meeting.

1:57

Penny Oh, that's wonderful. Well, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being willing to do this. And as I said, we're not going to talk about your drinking. But I do want to know.

2:01

Penny So January 29th, 1968, how old were you when you got to Alcoholics Anonymous? I was 30. You were 30. So what was going on in your life at 30 years old that you thought it was a good idea, or someone else thought it was a good idea, that you come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, I thought it was a good idea.

2:09

Moderator And I'll tell you why. At that time, I had seven children, four of which were under five years old. And my life was unmanageable. And I didn't know it. But I thought that moving to Virginia was just the perfect thing to do.

2:14

Penny New life, new everything. Where had you been living, Penny? In Michigan. Okey-doke. And we moved to Virginia.

2:16

Penny And about 28 days later, I looked in the mirror and I said, nothing's going to change unless you do. And that spurred me on to have a couple of vodkas on the rocks. And after I had enough vodka on the rocks, I called AA. Now how did you know about Alcoholics Anonymous? I had known about that since I was a little child.

2:24

Moderator I had two uncles that were alcoholics. One died in his 40s of bleeding out from cirrhosis and one dying at 60 with 10% liver function and gangrene of the heart. So they were talked about at the dinner table from time to time. And AA was brought up. I realized much later that my dad had gone to AA.

2:31

Penny And now I wasn't a blood relative of any of these people. I was adopted. So there's no blood connection there. Yeah, reading my dad's diaries after being sober, I discovered on my 10th birthday, he talked about buying me a tennis racket, about what he ate for all three meals that day. He worked on it in his law practice.

2:38

Penny And at the bottom, unrelated to anything, it said, stayed sober. Wow. Now, you know, a social drinker wouldn't say that. And I remember a conversation my mother was having with somebody on the phone. And she said, Les is not coming home to dinner tonight.

2:44

Penny He's staying in town for an AA meeting. And my thinking was, as a child, he's giving advice to alcoholics. He was a lawyer. And I thought that was pretty cool. I didn't think he was an alcoholic.

2:49

Penny So if you were about 10 years old when he was saying that, that would have been in mid to late 50s? Oh, no. 40s. 40s? Yeah.

2:52

Penny 47, maybe. If I was 10. OK. Oh, yeah. I did the math wrong there.

2:53

Penny Yeah, I did the math wrong. So you're in Virginia with these seven kids. And after your vodka, you decide to call out. How did you know how to reach out? Did you call information?

2:58

Penny And can you reach out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:59

Penny Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:59

Penny Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

3:00

Penny Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So did you call information and get the phone number? Or did you have a phone?

3:02

Penny I don't remember. A number for Alcoholics Anonymous? You don't? OK. We had phone books back then.

3:04

Penny Remember? Oh, yeah. We did. We could look it up in the phone book. I called information.

3:06

Penny I couldn't be bothered to try and find a phone book. I just called information. So when did you go to your first meeting? Did anyone come out and talk to you? Yes.

3:10

Penny Oh, they did. So when did you go to your first meeting? Did anyone come out and talk to you? Yes. Oh, they did.

3:13

Moderator So I think it was the first time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So when did you go to your first meeting?

3:16

Penny Did anyone come out and talk to you? Yes. Oh, they did. Yes. So who came out and talked to you?

3:18

Penny The next day, two ladies came out and talked to me. And they stayed a couple of hours. And then one of them came by that evening and took me to my first meeting. And where was your first meeting? In Falls Church, Virginia.

3:24

Penny Oh, do you remember where in Falls Church? It was the Falls Church City Group. And I can't tell you exactly where. It was a well-used old church. Yes.

3:27

Penny Yes. I went to the Falls Church City Group. I wasn't a regular there, but I'd been to the Falls Church City Group when I lived in Virginia. So, yeah. So, and have you stayed sober since your first meeting then?

3:32

Penny Yes. Oh, that's wonderful. So your first meeting and your sobriety date were January 29th of 1968. Right. And so what did you think of your first meeting?

3:35

Penny I laughed and I cried. It was a speaker meeting. And I left with this thought, I'll play your silly game. I won't drink and I'll go to meetings. And, and if my life has changed in a year, I'll hang around.

3:41

Penny If it hasn't changed, I'll have to do something else to stop drinking. Okay. So... I was terrified of psychiatrists. Okay.

3:44

Penny So how many meetings did you go to in the beginning? Did you go, because you have seven children that need to be taken care of. How many meetings were you able to get to? I went every night. Every night.

3:48

Penny And most of the meetings were there in the Falls Church area? Falls Church, Fairfax. Okay. And how long did it take you to get a sponsor? Did you get a sponsor right away?

3:53

Penny Or how did that work for you? Maybe a couple of weeks, three weeks. I asked one of the ladies that called on me. Okay. She was Jewish and I was an atheist.

3:56

Penny And the two of us got along pretty well as far as all the religion was concerned. AA was not very religious back then. Right. Not at all. It was very broad and, you know, it just wasn't a point.

4:01

Penny They didn't care. That didn't happen until mid to late 80s when they got, I say, when the Christians hijacked AA. Okay. So did your sponsor, did you get a big book? And I know today when I got sober, we didn't go through the steps the way people go through the steps today.

4:08

Penny Did you get a big book and read the big book or did you go to big step meetings or book meetings? What were AA meetings like in those days? They were discussion meetings and they were speaker meetings. Speaker meetings, you had two speakers and the discussion meetings were like a regular closed discussion meeting. And were your meetings mostly an hour long or were, okay.

4:16

Penny Yes. And what about the steps? Did your sponsor take you through the steps? How did you? Oh, no, we didn't do that at all.

4:19

Penny Okay. We believe that AA was an individual program and each individual get out of it exactly what they needed. Okay. And when I sponsored people, I never took them through the steps. I told them to go to step meetings and they would figure out how the steps applied to them.

4:25

Penny Okay. I mean, I didn't want a bunch of clones. I was screwed up enough. So you were married with seven children, you get sober and what was going on in your life? You're going to meetings every day and how are your kids adapting to the fact that you're now out every night and you're a sober alcoholic now?

4:33

Penny Well, the meetings were an hour long and I could leave the house at eight o'clock and most of them were in bed. That's right. Yeah. The meetings were later then. Yeah.

4:37

Moderator And I think if they had any brains at all, they appreciated it. They didn't have an angry mother all the time. Did they notice that you said you had four children that were under five years old when you got sober? Did your older children recognize that something was changing and was your first husband in the house at that time? Yeah.

4:44

Penny Okay. Yeah. He was real good with the kids. He was like a kid himself and as irresponsible as a kid. And what happened with that marriage because I know that you got married to someone in the program.

4:49

Penny Right. It dissolved. When I was six years sober, well, when I was three years sober, I figured it wasn't going to go anywhere. And when I was six years sober, he... We decided to separate and two weeks after that, he called me and said that he wanted to take the kids to Virginia Beach and take his girlfriend with him.

4:56

Penny And I told my friends, maybe he'll marry her right away. And sure enough, he got back from his week at Virginia Beach and said, is there any way we can get a quick divorce so Roz and I can get married before school starts? And we separated July 8th. So I called my lawyer and he said, yeah, he can go to the Dominican Republic, but he has to take all the papers from here, the settlement papers. And I said, fine.

5:06

Penny And did the children stay with you or did you have joint custody? We had sort of joint custody and no, they stayed with him. I knew I couldn't actually afford, even though I was working, staying in the house with seven kids. And his mother had moved in with us when I was three months sober. And kicking them out would have been ruthless.

5:14

Penny So I figured, you know, he was a great dad. He was just irresponsible as hell. And I said, when he said, I'll fight you for the kids, I knew we didn't have finances for that. And I said, no, I'm not gonna fight over my kids. So he married this chick and a year later headed to Florida.

5:21

Penny With all seven children. Oh my goodness. And her three. Oh my goodness. So you're now single and your children are living with your ex-husband.

5:24

Penny How did that change you? Did that change your participation in Alcoholics Anonymous? No. Okay, so. Were you, did you have any service commitments in AA?

5:28

Penny What kind of, how were you active in Alcoholics Anonymous other than just going to meetings? I did everything they told me to do, except believe in God. Okay. I had to rewrite the steps for me. Right, right.

5:32

Penny How did that work for you for, to be an atheist in AA and put the steps into practice? How does, how, I mean, it works very well. It's worked for 68 years, but when you talk with people who are atheists, newcomers maybe that are atheists, how do you explain how you put that into practice for yourself? Okay. Um, I was in a meeting and I couldn't have been more than a month sober.

5:41

Penny And I'd walk out of meetings where they were talking about turn your will and your life over to the care of God. Humbly ask him to remove your defects. You know, all that crap. And I call it crap. And then, and they, and they said that love had nine elements and the elements of love were being patient, kind, courteous, generous, good tempered, unselfish, with guilelessness, sincerity, and humility.

5:50

Penny And that if you practice those things, you would minimize your defects. They would, they would counterbalance them. I understood that. And the meeting was on step six and seven. But that made sense to me.

5:54

Penny So I started trying to practice those things. To practice those things in my life. And I went back to step two and said, came to believe that trying to be a loving person would make me healthier than I had ever been. And turning my will and my life over to being a more loving person was step three. And then step six became, do you want to become a loving person or do you want to stay an asshole?

6:04

Moderator And step seven was put into practice the principles of love. And then I just eliminated prayer in step 11. And I didn't meditate. And then I found out I really did. Because I spent a lot of time drinking coffee and watching the birds.

6:09

Penny Well, you shared it before we started the meeting that that beautiful background that you have is your backyard. I mean, what a beautiful place to look out on and enjoy your coffee. And I see you've got a cigarette there in your hand. So enjoy your coffee and your cigarette. And just contemplate nature.

6:16

Penny That's fabulous. So when my sponsor took me through the steps, she had me look for principles. And the principles that I came up with are similar to the principles that you cited. And she told me, we came to the same place from different directions because she told me that putting those principles into practice are how I work on those character defects and those shortcomings and become a principled member of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, yes, yes.

6:25

Penny So I know that you met your second husband in AA. Would you like to talk about that? You can always say no to any question I ask. That was a wonderful romance. It was just great.

6:29

Penny And I got, I married, I was divorced from my husband, my first husband in 74. And Lowell and I got married in 75, in late 75. November. Okay. And my first husband was so unprincipled and unethical that I married a lawyer, my second husband.

6:34

Penny And that was a gift because he wasn't unprincipled and he was very ethical. And he was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, wasn't he? Yes. He had a year of sobriety when we met. And then we got married when we were coming up on eight, nine years.

6:40

Penny I was coming up on eight years and he was coming up on nine years. Okay. And did you guys go to AA conferences or AA events? What was your AA life like as a couple? We went to meetings together.

6:45

Penny Okay. He did not like conferences. Okay. He did not like large groups. I had never been to a international conference until the first one after he died.

6:49

Penny The first one after he died, I went to. And which one was that? Toronto. Toronto. In 2005.

6:51

Penny Yeah, I was in Toronto in 2005. So that must have been quite an adventure if you'd not been going to conferences and to suddenly go to Toronto. And that was a great conference. And of course, Toronto is such a beautiful city anyway, isn't it? Yeah.

6:56

Penny Well, I went with a gal that had lived in Toronto. Oh, that's always good. And she knew her way around. She's on this program right now. Oh, that's wonderful.

7:00

Penny So have you sponsored, do you sponsor women in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? I did for many years. I think they look at me like a great great grandmother right now. Okay. But they stay in touch and they make sure that you're doing good.

7:06

Penny No, they don't. They don't? Okay. A lot of them don't. Well, they should be.

7:08

Penny Penny, they should be. So what kind of adventures did you get to have in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? How do you think that AA touched your life? Oh my gosh. Talk about some of that for us.

7:12

Penny It changed me from saying I can't to I'll try. It gave me the nerve to try things that I had never tried before or felt a failure at. My mother was a magnificent artist and seamstress. She could do anything. She could sculpt in clay.

7:18

Penny She could paint in oils. She could paint in watercolors. She was amazing, but God, was she a bitch. And I'd bring something home that I had done and she'd say, I guess it's okay if you like it. You know, that's not praise.

7:24

Penny Far from it. And I'd enter a flower arrangement competition and she'd change it before I'd make it up and she'd change it. So I figured I did it wrong. And I developed, if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not gonna do it at all, screw it. So I had to reverse that, nay, from the I can't world to I will try.

7:32

Penny And I'll tell you, I started sewing and I ended up making elaborate wedding gowns for my daughters. I came across bird carving, carving birds out of wood. And I was at a friend's house and he had carved a little bird for his daughter for Christmas. And I said, I wonder if I could do that. And my husband said, shit, it'd take you six months to carve a bird that looked like a bird.

7:41

Penny Well, the gauntlet was down. That's all it takes. Yeah. And he said, come up to dance and we'll teach you how. And I came home that night with the crudest little bird, but I came home with something.

7:46

Penny And my husband got enthusiastic. And it was the year, it was 79 and he was going to retire. No, it was 78. And he was going to retire in 79. And we always loved going to craft shows with a nomadish type attitude.

7:51

Penny And I thought if I can do these and sell them and make enough money to pay for our nomadish behavior, it might be a good idea. So I worked at carving. And the first five years I carved, I took over a hundred awards. Wow. Nationally, internationally.

7:57

Moderator It was amazing. It was an amazing experience. And I carved for about 15 years. And then I had to stop and take care of my husband because he was suffering from Lewy body disease. And he just wanted my attention all the time.

8:02

Moderator So it was time for me to quit. Yeah. But what a great experience to have. And you can't do that when you've got a glass of vodka in your hand, can you? No.

8:06

Penny You sure can't. Okay. You don't play with knives when you're drinking. No, I think not. I think not.

8:09

Penny Now, when we were talking earlier today, you mentioned your children and you mentioned that a couple of your children came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Did you, how did that come about and how did they let you know that they were coming to AA or did they come to you and ask about it? How did all of that come about? Well, my oldest daughter was living with us and my husband was out of town. He was in Europe.

8:19

Moderator And she was in a tremendous automobile accident. Second time in three months. And this time it totaled the car. And when the hospital called, they said, we have your daughter here. She's been in a car accident.

8:23

Penny She's all right, but she'll be ready to be picked up and brought home in about 15 minutes. As soon as we stitch up her tongue. Oof. Yeah. Ouch.

8:27

Penny Yes. So I went to pick her up and the police officer came up to me and he said, ma'am, your daughter's drunk. I can arrest her and take her to jail. And I said, well, if you have to do that, that's the way it goes. He said, ma'am, you don't understand she's drunk.

8:34

Penny And I said, yeah, she's so drunk she couldn't find her ass with both hands. I understand that. I said, I know what drunk is. I've been in AA for 14 years. And he said, well, if she doesn't deserve a break, you do.

8:40

Moderator And he never arrested her. He gave her a ticket for not paying full time and attention. And the next day I was gonna wait till my husband got home and then I thought, no, I'm not gonna do that because she'll blame him. And I told her, I said, you know, I said, the way I see it, you've got two choices here. You can live like you're living you can live like you're living or you can go to AA and not drink, go to 90 meetings in 90 days and we'll talk about it after 90 days.

8:52

Penny But you would have to call now and go to a meeting tonight. And the alternative is you find somewhere else to live in seven days. Because I love you too much to watch you destroy your life. Well, she called AA and got a hold of a lady in our neighborhood that was nine months pregnant who was not going to a meeting that night. So I drove her to the meeting and I said, ask one of the women to take you home.

9:02

Penny And she was furious. And about three weeks later, we had gone out of town. I had a bird show somewhere. And when we got back, her room was picked up. Everything was dusted off and put in its place.

9:06

Penny She had discovered boys in AA. She was 19. She was 19 and she discovered there were some pretty neat guys in the program. And she ended up marrying one of them a year and a half later. That was my oldest daughter.

9:11

Penny My youngest daughter, I knew she was screwed up, but I didn't know what was causing it. And you couldn't ask her anything because she was so on the defensive and she'd lie. So I said, you know, there's a lady's meeting in Leesburg where you live. And you might find some help with your living problems. And she went to that meeting religiously for about three months and came out of the meeting one night, burst into tears and said, I'm an alcoholic.

9:22

Penny And that's how the two of them ended up in AA. That's wonderful. And one of them's got 43 years and the other one, 36. That's wonderful. That's great.

9:26

Penny So I'm going to open it up in a few minutes to see if anybody has any questions. That they want to ask you. And so I'm gonna let those of you that are listening in know that if you have any questions for Penny to come in and ask her about what AA was like in the 60s and 70s and 80s, that you have that opportunity to do that. If you have any questions about anything about her adventure through sobriety, feel free to come up with a question and raise your hand. We are going to ask when we open it up, the format of this meeting is to ask questions, not to share what your experience has been.

9:40

Penny We understand that everybody has an urge to do that, but it's the format of the meeting. And so Penny, as we've been talking this evening, is there anything that's happened to you in recovery? You've shared some wonderful things, but is there anything that when you speak somewhere or when you share somewhere in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that you'd like to share with the group about your experience in the program in the past 68 years? I mean, that's a wonderful adventure that you've had and I'm so grateful you're willing to share with us this evening. So anything that I didn't ask you about that you'd like to share?

9:55

Penny Oh, you got muted. There we go. There we go. Re-state, ask me that again. So is there anything that I didn't ask you about that you like to, any experience that you've had in recovery or any message that you really like sharing about your adventure in Alcoholics Anonymous in the past 68 years that you'd like to, or 58 years that you'd like to share with the group?

10:03

Penny My life's an open book. I'll share anything. Okay. I believed that in early sobriety where you're ashamed of coming into AA, you should tell your close friends what you've done. And if you do that, it breaks the ice with them and you, and you don't have to hide.

10:10

Penny I think the more we hide, the worse we end up. And the more open we can be, the better off we are. I never had anybody ask me why, you know? They all knew. Anybody that knew me knew that I had had problems.

10:15

Moderator Okay. And that my husband and I had problems. Tim, I'm gonna ask you to take us off of spotlight so we can see the rest of the room and I'll call on some people. I see we have a couple of hands up and we'll call on some people and ask them to come in and ask questions of Penny. And Lori Miller, you've got your hand up.

10:24

Penny Would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Yeah, I would. Thank you for the interview. Both of you did a wonderful job. And Penny, thanks so much for being an open book.

10:28

Moderator My question is this, you know, life has its ups and downs and there are times that are really difficult. And I just wondered, how did you get through the more challenging times in your life? Put one foot in front of the other. Lots of the time I didn't like it, but I did it. You know, you do what you need to do to survive.

10:36

Moderator And I don't know if you meant any specific time, but I've used my intelligence to make some changes that I had needed to make for a long time. And AA just gave me the guidance to do it. You know, when I knew my marriage was down the chute, I had to wait. I had to wait for him to be ready to do something too. And that was three years of waiting, but it worked.

10:46

Penny He was ripe and ready to get a divorce when I was sober about six years. Okay. Shirley P, would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Yes, thanks so very much for the sharing. I think it's a great question.

10:51

Penny Yes, thanks so very much for the sharing. I missed part of it, I didn't get it all. But what I'm zeroing on was that, how did you pass on speciality to the newcomers that are the new spouses that you had? How did you got them to see about how great of themselves? I didn't do that.

10:58

Penny I never told anybody how to believe. That was their choice. I'm hoping I asked that the right way. It's just that my sponsor was telling me, suggested to me where to go and what to look for. And especially in the big books, there was prayers and there was guidance and an experience that Bill had had.

11:05

Penny And I was just wondering how did you pass that on to your sponsors? Okay, let me try this. I would take a question that they asked me and translate it from their language to my language. And then I would take my answer and pass it back to them in their language. And that was a lot of work.

11:12

Penny When I was sober about 33 years, I quit doing that. I just said, that's too much work for me. My husband had just died and I just, you know, said, you know, I don't believe that. I believe in trying to be a loving person. And that when I'm a loving person, I can live with a peaceful heart.

11:20

Penny And when I'm not, my guts are in a knot. Big difference. Sarah, would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Hi, Penny. Thank you for this tonight.

11:23

Penny This was great. My question was too along the line of the secular belief system. Was that something that you had always felt or had you come into that later? Were you raised in any kind of religious way with any religious beliefs? And then you found your own way to what worked for you?

11:30

Penny Or, you know, did you not even have that background? I grew up in the Unitarian Church. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah. So is this something, so the secular ideas were something that, do you developed in AA or prior to AA?

11:35

Penny Prior. Okay, all right, thank you. Linda, would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Yes, thank you very much. Thank you, Penny.

11:38

Moderator Can you share some of your amends that you made? Any significant amends or family to family, your first husband or some of those experiences? I would appreciate it. Thank you. I made amends to my husband by staying out of his life, not giving him a bad time.

11:44

Moderator And one of the more interesting ones was my mother. My brother had died in 1971 of cirrhosis of the liver and his children were six and 12 at the time. And years later, I was having dinner with his daughter and she said to me, well, it's all your mother's fault. And I said, you know, Leslie, and she was about 19 at the time, she was in college. And I said, babies aren't born with a handbook on how to be a perfect mom.

11:54

Penny Nobody knows how to deal with it. We just fudge through it. And I said, my mother was a tough mother to live with and she was not very loving, but she didn't cause me my problems. I caused my own problems. And she looked at me and she said, well, who can I blame now?

12:01

Penny And she was looking for someone to blame for her dad. And I said, blame alcohol. Blame alcohol, because that's what killed him. And on our way back from having that dinner, I looked at my husband and I said, I think I let my mother off the hook tonight. And he said, you sure did.

12:08

Penny And I said, maybe that was an amend. And he said, it sure was. So that's making an amend to a woman who had been dead for years. My parents had both committed suicide and my dad committed suicide at the University of Michigan in the psych ward on suicide watch. And he committed suicide either Thursday night or early Friday morning.

12:15

Moderator I got a call Friday morning in Oklahoma where we were living. My husband was in the service. And by the time I got home that night, my mother had hung herself in the garage. Not very stable people. How long were you sober when that happened, Penny?

12:21

Penny I wasn't, I was 20 years old when that happened. Wow, still drinking. Yep. Still drinking. Yep.

12:23

Penny And drinking was my buddy at that point. Yeah. I didn't know what else to do. Yeah. Nobody's prepared for that.

12:25

Penny Nobody's prepared for that. Thank you for sharing that. Chris M, would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Yes. Yes, I'm Chris.

12:29

Penny I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Penny. I have a question based on something you said earlier where you mentioned that the steps weren't really a part of recovery when you came in. I wonder if you could amplify on that a little bit. What took its place, if anything, and what were meetings like if they weren't really built around the steps?

12:36

Penny Well, as I said, they were two people telling their stories. That was an open speakers meeting. And the others were closed discussion meetings. And yeah, they would go through the steps. But, you know, you'd have one or two people believing that every word in the big book was written by God.

12:43

Penny And the rest of the room was sort of lackadaisical. And we sort of looked at them as sort of weird. I think you still see a lot of that. Maybe a lot more today than you did before. One thing I hate to hear said in a meeting is you can't get sober without God.

12:50

Moderator I don't care if they say I couldn't get sober without God, but to say to a room full of people you can't get sober without God just pisses me off. And sometimes I say so. I think also for those of us that got sober before the big book renaissance in the mid 1980s, where all of the workshops started up and everything, that for those of us that are a little bit longer sober, and I don't know about some of the long timers that are in the room if they'd agree with that, but it really was a different approach depending on what meetings you went to and where you got sober and who you were sponsored by. All of those things were just very different than the more structured big book studies and step studies that we see today. I don't know if some of the old timers would agree with that or not, but that's been my observation.

13:10

Penny Deb S., you have your hand up. Of course you do. And would you like to come in and ask Penny a question? Thank you both Pennies very much. Yes, Penny, I wanted to know, before you came to AA while you were drinking and realized you were an alcoholic, did you ever find yourself thinking that maybe my alcoholism was because of my parents or my husband?

13:18

Penny Did you ever do that before coming to AA that I'm an alcoholic because? I'm an alcoholic because I drank. Never blamed. No, it was the drinking that made me an alcoholic. Okay.

13:22

Penny Not my parents. They never held me down and poured booze down my throat. Thank you. Yes. Jeff, would you like to come in and ask Penny a question?

13:25

Moderator Yeah, Penny, when you started at AA back then, was there a lot of talk about the early history of AA at your meetings or who were some of the long timers that you met? met when you were sobered up first? The most long timer in our area was Bill Ames. And he would take the train up to New York and go to meetings up there and then bring back the meetings to our area. He started the first meeting in Northern Virginia.

13:35

Penny I, he was sober 30 years when I came in, 29 years maybe. And I can remember going to his 30th anniversary. There was no pressure on anything. I was told, you know, if you don't drink, you won't get drunk. And I believe that.

13:41

Moderator And that's pretty hard to pound into some of these new people at times. But getting drunk has to do with drinking. Yeah. You know, it's a pretty amazing what you just shared actually, Penny, because if Bill was 29 or 30 years sober, when you got sober, you remember going to his 30th birthday party, AA was only 33 years old, had only been around for 33 years when you got sober. So he started coming around with, you know, the long timers that knew Bill and Bob and so that, so there was that legacy.

13:52

Penny And I think that for, it's hard when you're at that point to think of it as historical yet. So I think that, yeah. I want to, Penny, I want to thank you so much for being willing to do this this evening. I will ask you all to unmute and thank Penny for her share this evening. Thank you, Penny.

13:59

Penny Thank you. Thank you, Penny. We love you. You're awesome, Penny. Thank you.

14:01

Penny Thank you. You're awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Penny. Thank you.

14:02

Penny Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Penny. Thanks.

14:04

Penny Hey, and I just want to, I want to thank you all for coming to our meeting this evening. We do this on the last Tuesday of each month. And next month, I'm a couple, last month, the speaker that was supposed to join us wound up with some health issues and we had to fill in. Lee is doing better and I'm hoping that he will be well enough to come in and share with us in the end of May. And hopefully my friend Stan will have the conversation with him.

14:15

Penny I don't know if Stan's still in the room, but Stan was going to, yeah, he's still here. Stan was going to talk with Lee, have the conversation with Lee. So I'm hoping that Stan will, that Stan and Lee will be able to do that at the end of May, but I'm going to, I need to see how Lee is doing and if he's up for it. And, but the last Tuesday of May, we will be here. This meeting is every week.

14:26

Moderator The recovery speakers meeting is every week. It's always history focused and it's always open to anybody who chooses to come. Tim has posted some information in the chat for signing up for their mailing list. They send out a link to a recording on their website every day. And so you're welcome to check that information.

14:33

Moderator And thank you all for allowing me to be of service. I really, I will tell you that I get nervous every month before I have these things. And I think, oh my God, why did I take this commitment? And then I talk with one of our long timers and I'm just so grateful that I get the opportunity to do this and that this gets to be part of my recovery. And I just want to say, I'm very clear on the fact that I could have missed all this.

14:44

Moderator So I'm grateful that you were all here this evening. And Tim, I'll turn it back over to you. If you have any announcements to share. I have put two flyers in the chat for a Sunday long timers speaker meeting and all are welcome at that meeting. All of our speakers are 40 or more years sober but everybody is welcome to come to that meeting and there's two flyers in the chat for both May and June.

14:53

Moderator So Tim, back to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Penny. And thank you everyone for being here and just want to remind everyone, come back next week for a presentation from JS from Sedona. And now I will allow everyone to unmute and enjoy the rest of your night.

14:59

Penny Thanks.

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

Conversation with Penny M.

Conversation with Penny M.

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