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Source: Barbara G – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: barbara-g-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:14:45
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One minute to the starting of the meeting. Would the people in back kindly move forward? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the sixth intergroup conference of Alcoholics Anonymous. May we open this meeting with a quiet time, please? Our anonymity, like our sobriety, is a treasured possession. We ask the help of our guests, especially those of the press and radio, in protecting the anonymity of all alcoholics present or mentioned here today.
We hope you hear something at this meeting which you can take away and use. We respectfully request, however, that you leave the name of all AA members, both those on the platform and those in the audience, here where they belong in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. AA has no dues or fees. We are self-supporting to our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. We are going to ask the people in the rear of the room if they would show some kind consideration to the speakers this morning.
We had a bit of a problem yesterday, and it's rather difficult to concentrate when you're up here when there's a lot of noise in the rear. So we ask them to take this into consideration and keep their conversation down, please. Also, there's still an awful lot of literature in the rear of the room. Literature is free. The books are for sale. We hope it will be put to good use. Our first speaker this morning is Barbara G. from Wheaton. And without further ado, I will turn the meeting now over to Barbara.
Thanks, Bob. My name is Barbara, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Hi. This is a real privilege for me to be standing up here this morning. I can't get over the miracle of the whole thing. But the subject that we have chosen today to talk on is a real new thing to me, acceptance. Because I spent about 27 years trying to prove that I could go through life not accepting anything, that I could exist by fighting.
My definition of acceptance before the AA was very limited. It kind of was accepting praise or flattery, accepting gifts or favors, and it stopped dead right at this point. Life was to be fought. Reality was not to be faced. It was to bonk my head against. It was not ever, ever to be accepted. I didn't even know that you were supposed to try to accept life. I didn't have the slightest idea. I was rebellious, obstinate, and stubborn. These were characteristics that I was very proud of.
My family and friends would say to describe me, well, you know how Barbara is. She has a mind of her own. And I thought that this, too, was something to be proud of. I thought it was good to have a mind of your own. Well, I still think that this is true, but of course not the way I used my mind, not the way I used my will. Through the grace of God and through AA, I have learned that I can go on fighting life and reality just as long as I want to fight it. And I can be miserable just as long as I want to be miserable, if that's what I want.
But they told me when I got here that I didn't have to do this anymore, that I didn't have to go on existing by fighting life, by fighting reality, that there was a way out of this.
[00:05:09]
I really truly believe that acceptance is a gift, just as my sobriety has been a gift, and given by the same giver, my higher power. But I, being a human being and with a will, I have the choice of what I'm going to do with these gifts, whether I'm going to throw them back or whether I'm going to accept them for what they are. In the case of AA, the gift of AA, I could say, well, thanks God, but I have tried your way of AA and sobriety, but I think I'll go back and drink and kill myself. He will permit me to do this.
He's not going to stop me because I have a will. And in the case of the gift of acceptance, I could say to him, thanks God, I know that your way of acceptance is an awful lot easier way to live and a lot less painful, but I've always been the kind of person who likes pain, and I think I'll go back to fighting life a little bit longer. He will let me do this. He will permit me to fight life as long as I want to. But I have got to be very careful about this gift of acceptance too, just as I've got to be careful about the gift of my sobriety, because if I throw it too far away from me, I may not be able to find it again.
And in the search, I may find the vial very comforting, because this is why I drank before. I did not want to say a sign. I would not say it's reality. It's being anything but pretty, and it wasn't pretty when I was sober, so I had to be drunk. I've come to believe that what they told me when I first came to AA, and a long time afterwards too because I didn't hear it first, was that I didn't know what was best for me, and that God did know what was best for me, and I leave that decision up to Him. The chances are that I wouldn't get what I wanted, but I would get what I needed.
What I wanted was not always best for me. Now this was very hard for me to understand, that what I wanted was not best for me, because I thought if I got what I wanted, I'd be happy. But I had proved this wrong so often. I don't know why I still believed it. I had proved it wrong that it didn't mean that what I got, what I wanted, and I got, that made me happy. This was not so. When I got what I wanted, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I didn't want it. So they did tell me that I leave this whole problem up to God.
Now this experience, this learning of acceptance and the practicing of it, has been kind of like learning to walk or talk, or read or write. Sometimes painful, and when it was painful, it was because I said I won't. And this is a very serene and peaceful time for when I said, I will. I will accept life. I will accept it. I will pay good attention to this problem. My dreams, my fantasies of before AA and earlier AA were of a picture of me sitting somewhere being waited on, receiving things before I had to ask for them by people who knew what I wanted before I asked.
And this, of course, omitted the responsibilities of keeping a house, and planning cooking meals, and changing diapers, and cleaning mud cake kids. These things were not included in this. This wasn't my idea of living. Today, the things that I have just mentioned to you are the most important things in my life, besides my sprying. Because, thank heaven, I have learned, it has been given to me, the realization that wife and mother is what I am. This is all I'm going to be. I am not going to be anything else.
This job of mine, this most important job of mine, of giving love and security to two little kids, is not a job to be flipped in between other things that are more fun and more to my liking at the moment. This is my job, whether I like it or not.
[00:10:12]
Life, to me, now, is not that dream anymore. The drunken dream. The drunken dream. Of course I had it before I started drinking, but I will say my drunken dream of everything being happy. Because this isn't life. There's no life for me without problems, without decisions. But now that I have a higher power, whom I call God, now that I have God in my life, these problems don't have to be troubled and worried. They are problems. They are to be dealt with by working the 12 steps.
By calling upon God for the strength for me to understand the problem, to see the other guys part of the problem too. Not only my own, all the time. So, for the first time in my life today, I can't tell you the joy that I feel right now at not wanting to be somebody else. Not in being somebody else's position in life. Today, I want to be me. I want to be, I want to have the family that I have. And I want to live in the house that we live in. I want to drive the car that we drive. And I don't want to be in another town, another state, or another country. I want to be right here, right where I am.
I want to be an alcoholic and I want to live the AA way of life. It's the best life in the world. The best life there is. This has been a very short time for me on this program and learning to live this life. Completely opposite of the life that I've bulldozed my way through before. With no exceptions. Never. It's been a very short time. And of course I know that as I practice acceptance, it will get better. Just as everything else I have practiced since I've come on this program has gotten better.
I start out the day with a very simple prayer to begin with. And this is, God, I know that my life today is not going to be without a problem, without the decisions that I've got to make during the day. This would be too much to ask. And I don't want this anymore. This is not what I want anymore. But just please give me the strength and the courage and the help, the acceptance, to accept what it is that life deals me.
Life is not going to be a business, I know that. But the comfort is in knowing I'm not satisfied. I'm not satisfied because I've found out that there are too many things wrong with me. In working the 12 steps I have found this out about myself. There's too much work to be done for me to be satisfied. I best not be. But I am content in knowing that today is the only day that I can work on these things. Today is the day that I've got to make it the best possible.
And I can do it. I know I can do it with the help of all the 12 steps. All of them. Not omitting none. I can get better. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be easier if I work those 12 steps today. I want to thank the conference committee for giving me this privilege. This is very truly the high point, I would say, probably in my very short sobriety. It's a real thrill to be standing up here talking to you. Thank you.
Thank you Barbara for a wonderful message. I started Barbara out at a very distinct disadvantage and for this I apologize to her. I didn't announce that our subject for this morning was acceptance. I offer my apology to you also. Being that we are non-professional, I'm sure you will excuse me for my nervousness. If you think I'm not nervous, you're crazy. Man, you ought to see all those eyeballs out there.