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Source: Ellen C – 12 Steps to Serenity – Part 3 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ellen-c-12-steps-to-serenity-part-3-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:50:54
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My phone off. This is what it sounds like when they call. And that's just to remind me that however bad they think it is, it's not that bad. It really isn't. So anyway, where were we? Oh, I remember. Step seven. Humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. Based on my willingness at sex, at six, oh, at sex. Been so long. My life begins to change. With any kind of luck, my focus clears and my rebellion diminishes. I don't know about you, but I tend to be a fairly rebellious, you can't make me kind of a girl. I live my life at people.
And they don't know I'm doing it. But that's what I'm doing and I don't know who it is that can't make me, but that's what I say to myself. And the condition, the principle of step seven becomes something to embrace rather than an impossible burden. The principle is humility, which AA's Twelve and Twelve defines as a clear recognition of what and who we are followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.
That's what humility is. I read that and didn't reference it at a workshop I did last year or so at a place that didn't want to hear about any big book literature, any AA literature and they thought that was about the wisest thing they heard all day. I didn't have the courage to tell them where it came from. The very first meeting I chaired in Al-Anon was on humility because it was such a confusing idea for me.
When I got humility separated from humiliation it started to look like humility meant never having my own way again. Pretty much the way it still looks today. And if that's painful for me then I know I'm still at step six because I still must have a plan. You know, I've got a plan. Usually my plan involves God changing someone or something else so I'll be comfortable. A couple of years ago, it was a lot of years ago, they're twenty now. My twins are twenty now so when they were he must have been about five I guess.
These are my grandsons and we go out and have a meal with them every month and we were at a Grandy's or someplace having a meal. We were in the big corner booth because there's five of them and there's me and my husband. The twins are very different. One is sitting in one booth having a salad. You know, at five he's having a salad. And the other one is this hyperactive ADHD can't stay in his own lines kind of a guy. He's over the table, under the table, he's on the back of the table, he's in your lap, he's down the hall, you know, he's everywhere.
And all of a sudden he climbs up behind us in that big thing behind us and he goes, wait a minute, nobody can go anywhere because I have a very important question. You pray to the Lord, he will bless you into a Terminator. His mother said that's not what I told you. What I said was if you were determined when you prayed the Lord would bless you. And I listened to Cameron and I thought that's what I've prayed for my whole life.
I want to be a Terminator. He's absolutely right. For a lot of years I was haunted by what do I want to be when I grow up. Don't you hate that? What do you want to be when you grow up? What if I choose the wrong thing? What if I can't do it? I knew my old goals were what led me into insanity. I wanted to be the best wife somebody had, the best mother someone had, the best daughter somebody could have, the best secretary they could have, even the best mistress.
I always wanted to be the best in someone else's eyes. But it had never occurred to me until I'd been in Al-Anon a couple years that I'd never wanted to be the best me. I never wanted to be the best mom I could be, the best daughter I could be. It always had to be evaluated by somebody else or it didn't have any value. And Al-Anon gave me the chance to evaluate my own behavior and become who it was I wanted to be.
So how do I get to be the best me? What do I need to do? My sponsor says, what do you want to do? Ooh, start from there. Yeah, that's the place to start. So I chaired a meeting on needs and wants because that's the way I've discovered the best way to get my questions answered or chair a meeting on that.
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And so I chaired a meeting on needs and wants and I asked these people, what's the
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difference between your needs and your wants? And they went around and I got a lot of different answers. Somebody said, well, I really need to keep my job. I have to support myself and if I don't have this job, I can't support myself and so I need to keep this job. And, well, I need to lose twenty pounds or I need to, whatever it was. And I listened to them talk and I thought, you know what, none of that is true for me.
I don't need to keep this job. I have a new employer and when this job is done, God will let me know this job is done and I'll go someplace, wherever else it is, he would have me be of service, but I don't need to keep this job. I really believe God's going to take care of me. And that was part of the way I began defining myself one more time, what I don't need to do, what I don't, you know, who I'm not.
And I discovered in that that what I really need is conscious contact. As long as I have conscious contact, nothing else is a problem. Nothing else is a problem. And through conscious contact, I discovered that nothing had really changed in me. What happens is that through the process of the steps, everything that stands between me and God, between the insanity of me and the truth of me, comes to the front for acceptance by me and removal by God.
That's what happens in six and seven. You know, when you ask, when I pray for love, when I pray to be loving, everything unloving about me shows up. When I pray for patience, everything that tests my patience shows up. Everything that stands in the way of me, you know, what keeps me from the sunlight of the spirit is what shows up. And that's what happens in six and seven. All that stuff that gets in my way shows up.
Humility has to do with unity and anonymity and being genuine. The basic desire to seek and to do God's will, all I have to do to be the best me is to fit myself to be of maximum service to God and those around me. Resistance is futile. I don't know if you ever watched that old Star Trek thing. Which is why I think I live in six and seven, because those things keep happening in my life. Years and years ago, I heard a speaker one time talk about, they thought that when we died and went to heaven, God had a question for us. And in my life, the truth is God's got three questions for me. This is my story. I've made it up and I'm sticking to it, okay?
My sponsor says I can have this one. And none of us know what's going to happen when we leave here. But the little story I made up is that when my body gets tired of doing whatever we're doing here, and that little part of me that's always been God's goes back to wherever it is God is, that when I get there, God's going to do just what you do when I walk in a meeting. God's going to go, oh, Ellen, there you are.
And he's going to say, you know what? Heaven's heaven when you're not here, but it's just not perfect without you. Yeah. And I mean, that's heaven. And then God's going to say, and I want your opinion. Oh, yeah. Maybe in your heaven, God'll want your opinion, but in mine, he wants mine. And he's going to say, you know, the first one is, the first question is, did you have a good time? You know, there wasn't a single thing I did to torment you. Everything I did was to make you happy.
I did everything I could to support you. There was no reason for flowers to be different colors except I thought it'd make you smile. I knew you'd love babies and I hope you, I put a lot of them in your life and I hope you didn't miss them. You know, and because of Al-Anon and AA, I'm going to be able to say, oh, yes, God, I had a great time at your party. Thanks for asking me. And the second question is going to be, were you Ellen? You know, I didn't make anybody else like that.
I just made you like that and I had things for you to do that nobody else could do. And you could only do them if you were you. And that question scared me because I've spent so much of my life trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be, trying to do what I thought other people wanted me to do that I didn't know if I'd been me. I do a little written inventory at night and we'll talk about it later on, but one of the things I wrote down for a lot of years was today, Ellen. And I wrote down what I knew that day was mine to do when I was doing it. This was mine to do today. You could have had another speaker, had a great time and been just fine, but this was my day to be here with you.
This was mine to do. And if I was still keeping that list, this is what I'd write. Did the steps in Bellevue today. And when I looked back at that list after a couple of years of keeping it, what I discovered was that 99% of what I wrote down that day, what I wrote down in that little line today, Ellen, was what you'd call service work. Service work, fitting myself to be of maximum service
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to God and the people around me, doing what it is I believe is mine to do in that line today, being motivated by the spirit of service. Not because I'm trying to please you, although God knows I hope I do, but not being motivated by that. My job today was to show up and open my mouth, and the rest of it is not up to me. I am not responsible for how this comes out. It is not my deal. This is God's deal, and I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is not me. If he wants a crappy talk, you'll get a crappy talk. That's just what'll happen. Maybe somebody in here prayed for patience, you know, and that's what you got.
I'm just here to be of service, try to help you on your way, you know, if that's what you want. And I know that today. That's how I find the best me. You know, you look at days like today and you say, well, what a great, what a great day this is. You know, Ellen's here and she's doing blah blah blah, but you know what? Ellen is this little piece of today. There's this committee, and there are all these other people that have worked to put this together, who've done service work. There are those, you know, there's the taper, there are the books, there are all these other people who've showed up to be part of this. This is, this is our day to be of service, and when we walk out of here, we're the ones who are going to feel like we're more us when we, than we were when we got here. That's what service offers us. You know, the truth of the matter is, there have been no major changes in my life up to step seven. There haven't been any. I've made some discoveries. I've talked to some people. I've written some stuff down, but nothing in my life is different. There's no change in my behavior. There's no change anywhere. It hasn't happened yet. The directions in, that my sponsor gave me for seven was, you had to read the seven step prayer, and in the seven step prayer says, my creator, I am now ready that you should have all of me. The way it's written, it says the good and the bad. What I've discovered is I can't judge things good and bad. The minute you let me judge it good and bad, we are off.
I am off and running with good and bad. So what she had told me to do at step, oh, I guess I didn't tell you about that. How crazy was that? Well, now I'm telling you. What she told me to do at six, we're going back a little, at step six was, I'm supposed to take this list of character defects that I have owned up to, because she read them back to me when I, you know, she wrote them down, and then she read them back, and she said, do you own these? And I said, yes, I own those. She said, I want you to take them and write the opposites. These are your assets out of balance, and I want you to write the opposites. So if judgment is the defect, what's the opposite of judgment? Now, it's another tricky place, because it isn't the same for all of us. It is not the same. The opposite of fear for some of us is trust. It's different for each of us, and it sounds so easy, but it's a hard thing to do to find the opposite. My job in step seven is to give God both sides, to give God the judgment and the acceptance, and that's what I, whatever the current defect is I'm aware of, I'm not going to say working on, because working on them just makes them worse. It's like picking at a scab, you know. If where I am is judgment and acceptance, when I say that seven-step prayer, that's what I say to God. I'm now ready that you should have all of me, both the judgmental and the accepting. Please remove from me every single defective character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. And then this wonderful part that says, grant me the power as I go out from here to do your bidding. I don't even have to manufacture the want-to if I don't want to, if I can't. I don't even have to manufacture the steam. God will provide it if I ask. That's all I have to do is ask. I have a gal I sponsored one time, and she made little three by five cards, and she wrote those things out on cards. And what I do with the girls I sponsor is I ask them to write out the opposites, and then I ask them to write an affirmation for each one of those. So if the defect is judgmental and my opposite is accepting, then what I might write down is, I accept God's world exactly as it is. And so every time she'd feel herself being judgmental or whatever, she'd whip out that card and she'd say, I accept God's world exactly as it is. You know, okay, fired up, ready to get back in there. But that's what I do at seven. I can't do the good and bad unless I, sometimes I say the positive and the negative because sometimes I'm walking around with a negative head one more time. It's just thinking of the worst things that can possibly be. So I give God the positive and the negative.
She said you should change the prayer if you need it to be changed. Thank you, I will.
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Now, staying centered, that's the way I go through malls today. I have to do a little preparatory work to go in the mall. I have to do a little preparatory work when I meet great huge bunches of my family at one time. I have to do preparatory work sometimes when I know I'm going to be with somebody today who's hard for me to be with for whatever reason. And she taught me to take a deep breath and breathe myself behind my belly button and remember that that's where I live.
I don't live out here on the end of my fingers. I live behind my belly button. And she'd say, just go in there and remember you're behind your belly button and you can do this. And that's how I could stay centered. And it's a way, I almost can feel myself get smaller sometimes when I do that because I'm not out here. I'm in here in this body. Okay, we're going in together. I sponsored this gal, I've sponsored her for a lot of years, love her to pieces, hated her last husband.
He was a sleaze and I knew he was a sleaze, you know, but you can't tell them they won't hear you. Sorry, your husband is a sleaze, you know. And I'd get around him and all my want to would come up. I'd want to tell him what a sleaze he was and tell her what a sleaze he was and I can't do it. It's not my job. I have to love him in a very special way. And so that's my job is love him in a special way.
Okay, okay, okay, but I don't have to like him, I just have to love him. And we were someplace and there was another one of the gals who was with me and they were approaching us, this couple, the girl we love and the sleaze were approaching us. And my friend, let's just say the last name was Frederick, that's not their name, but let's just say that. And she saw him coming and she went, uh-oh, Frederick, shield up.
And I said, she is so wise, you know, just put that shield up. And that, you know, I'm back inside. And the sleaze just rolled right off of me. Sure enough, he had an affair with someone else and she finally left him. And I did not have to say, told you so, told you so, told you, told you, told you so, didn't have to say it. Okay, 6 and 7 is where the transformation starts to take place. Because now I'm, you know, I remember the first time I did those steps, and I don't know how, I suspect this is not how you do them here, but this is the way we did them back when I was new in the program 27 years ago.
At least the way my sponsor did it with me. I finally screwed up the courage to go do the fifth step. You know, it had taken me almost, probably almost a year, 6 months, almost a year, to get the fourth step done and sit down and do a fifth step with her. And so, you know, agonized over those first five steps. And then while I'm there with her, she's asked me a couple of questions, and we read a little prayer, and she says, and she hands me a list, and she says, well, we've now done 6, 7, and 8.
I'm like, whoa, how did that happen? You know, I've gone from not quite half the steps to almost done. That's not exactly what happens anymore, but that's the way we used to do it back then. 8 says, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And there's this really interesting line in the big book that says, pretty much it says, okay, you've got a list, and now you're willing to make amends to them all.
I'm like, what? Who said? Who said I was willing? This is about becoming responsible for my part in relationships. I don't have to be my own helpless victim anymore. You know, the people you can't walk down the street and see them because you're a victim of your own self, your own fears, your own feelings. Don't have to do that. It was very hard for me to believe that I caused chaos in other people's lives by dictating to them how they had to be for me.
But I did. I caused chaos in their lives. You know, the absolute worst thing that I could ever do was hurt somebody else. It was the thing I avoided like the plague. And that's why the first time I went through the steps and got to step 8, it was really pretty simple. My sponsor said, the person you've hurt most is yourself. By not living your own life, by giving yourself away, giving away hours of your life, minutes of your life, days of your life, years of your life.
I don't know about you, but there are great lengths of time in my history that I don't remember. I don't remember. I gave those days away. I wasn't present when that was happening, and that's not what I'm here to do. So she told me to put myself on the list. I put God on the list, like God really needs an amend for me, but I needed to take the action because what I had done was I envisioned myself,
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God was this great sun, all the light. And out here on the periphery were these people in my lives. And between God and these people was me. And I would interpret God to the people. And I would interpret the people to God. Which was sort of how, you know, God, they didn't mean that, but it was exactly what I did with my husband and the children, you know, exactly what I did, put myself right in between that.
And I realized that I tried to be God in these people's lives, and I was really giving God a bad name. I need to quit. Do something else. And see, that's the other thing in 6 and 7, you know, I can't not do that old behavior. I can't not do. I'm not a not-doer. I'm a doer. That's what I do. I do. You know? You've got to give me something better to do, or I'll just do the old things, what I'll do. Or else I will get as obsessed with I'm not going to do, not going to do, not going to do, as I did with do, do, do, do, do, you know?
I can make myself just as crazy with not doing. And that's why I have the opposite to practice instead of. That's, you know, it's busy work. It's stuff to keep me busy while God's doing the work for me. Stuff for me to do. So that whole idea of making amends to God. The deal was it was an amends to everybody around me when I quit trying to play God in their lives. What I know about this step, particularly for us, is that we need to make a list of the people we think we owe amends to, and then we need to check it out with our sponsor.
I had a gal show up one time with 62 names on the list. It was everybody she could think of, and she was pretty sure that she owed everybody an amends for breathing their air, you know, or something. And so I always make my girls go through the list and tell me who you think you owe amends to, what you think you owe amends for, and how you think you're going to make it. That's the list I want to see.
And then let's talk about this. And one way for me to tell if they belong on the list is do I want you happy, joyous, and free, or do I want you to straighten up and fly right? If I want you to straighten up and fly right, you probably belong on the list. Separating, making the list, and becoming willing, you know, there's two parts to this step. And you know why? You know originally the Oxford group that Bill was in when he found any kind of steps at all, they had six steps, six steps.
And now Bill's trying to write the book. It's important. Everybody wants him to write the book. He wants the money. Got to write the steps. Got to write the book. So he's writing the chapter. He's down to writing now how it works. And he's put it off and put it off and put it off. And he just, oh, he hated doing this. And he lay in his bed and he got a legal pad and a pen. And in 30 minutes he'd written 12 steps.
He'd gone from six to 12. How did he do that? And think of how happy the alcoholics were the next day when they'd gone from six steps to 12 steps, you know. They weren't so happy with the six they had. And now he's added more. Well, it's the same process beginning to end. But what Bill had to do in his mind was take out the loopholes he thought the alcoholics might slip through. So this was his way of tightening it up a little.
And this is, you know, the steps are a series of surrender action, surrender action, surrender action all the way through. Well, here we are really at a surrender step, making a list of all the people we've harmed and then becoming willing to make amends to them all. I have to be changed before I can do the next step or else I'm going to end up saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry again just to keep peace.
And that's not who I want to be anymore. My sponsor, as a matter of fact, would not allow me to say I'm sorry when I made amends. She said that's a character definition, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. She said I want you to say I was wrong. Surely I don't have to say that. Yes, that's what you have to say. Can I just say you were right? No. I was wrong. My sponsor said I could make a list of the people I'm willing to make amends to now, people I'm willing, next column is later and the last column is never.
I am never making amends to those people. And that's okay. You can do that. It doesn't matter. Process, process, process, not event. I so want to live in an eventful world but where I live is in a process. The summer that my daughter had these babies, she had them in March and then she moved out and went about doing her things and I'm home with these two tiny little twins and my son who was a rising senior in high school that summer, it was a pretty hairy summer.
It was pretty crazy. One of the babies had a heart problem and he weighed 4.0 pounds when we brought him home
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and he wasn't getting a lot bigger and it was a crazy, crazy summer. And I did not have money in my budget for daycare for these little children and was somehow having to put them in daycare. Oh, you know, it was just one of those things. One day the phone rang and I heard this voice on the other end. Ellen? That feeling you get inside, just from the sound of the voice, it just went. Yes, his old boyfriend from high school.
Hadn't seen or talked to him in God knows how many years. And we had had a deal when I was in high school. He was, you know, I don't know about you but I do better with long distance relationships. Really, I do better. It's a much happier relationship if they're not where I am. You know. I really had a history of that. This one was, this was a guy who, he was a senior when I was a sophomore only because he had to stay back a year.
My kind of people. Just needed a little help. And we were madly in love and we dated, you know, we went together all the way through the rest of my schooling, although he wasn't there. He was either in the service or at college or someplace but he wasn't there. And we'd made a deal that when I turned 18 he was going to come wherever I was and we were going to run off and get married and that was going to be that.
Well, my birthday is in September and in August I went away to college at 17 and I did rush and then I did boys and then I did college and then I did boys and then I did boys. And when my birthday happened on the 19th of September, he called me up and he said, all right, I'm coming. And I said, don't bother. See ya. And that was it. And I had no more remembered that than flying the moon. He certainly didn't make my list the first time I made a list.
But I knew when I heard his voice that there was a huge amend I offered, I needed to make here. And amends is not making them happy. Amends is not making me feel better. Amends is about doing what I can do about my side of the mess. And so I invited him to come over and imagine his surprise when I met him with a baby in each arm. We were a little old for me to be having little babies like that. So I explained to the kids.
And I made amends to him. I said, I'm so sorry. I really am so sorry. I so apologize for what I did. That was unthinking and uncaring. And the fact of the matter is I'm so grateful for all the love you gave me all those years. I don't know how I would have made it through high school if I hadn't had that relationship or that idea of a relationship to hold me together. And he said, you know, it took me a year to get over that.
But you know what? We're clear. We're clear. So the other part of step eight is being willing for the names to come to you as, you know, God doesn't, if it's not ready to be healed, it won't be revealed. If it isn't time for the name, it won't show up. But when it's time, you know. Okay, I'll tell you another one in a minute, but we'll wait. This is also a good place for me to make a list of the people I think I've harmed, my resentments.
The principle in step eight and nine is forgiveness. And it's the goal as we go through this deal is forgiveness. And so maybe what I need to do is look at, make a list of the people I think have harmed me. My sponsor said that one of her directions was give a blanket forgiveness for all unhealed past events. Just say that. I forgive you. I forgive you. And let it be done. And you know, there's magic in that, in that willingness.
Even if I'm not totally willing for it to be done, if I'm just willing to be willing, there's magic in that. So, okay, become willing to make direct amends. Okay, fine. Okay, now we're going to move on. Look at her go. Step nine, make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure one of them. Would injure them or others. Well, see, for a long time I thought I was one of the others.
I thought if I did this, this will hurt me. No, you are not one of the others. It says direct amends. Most of the chaos I caused was subterranean. I didn't really hit them head on. I am more cunning, powerful, and baffling than that. I will go underneath. I will do it quietly. I will do it with a look. I will do it with a sigh. I will do it with silence. A lot of the amends I owed was that kind of, of, of…
of harm that I caused in people's lives, you know, not even directly communicating with them.
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It's the principle in, I think it's Tradition 9 and Tradition 8, Tradition 9 and Step 9 are really the same. It's about communication and responsibility. It might be 8, but anyway, it's the same deal. Communication has everything to do with this. I made direct amends to my children, and then I continue to make living amends to them. My children, don't you love that? They're 38 and, they're 37 and 39 today.
One day, I think this was the second time my daughter got sober, she called one day, and she started giving me the problem du jour, you know, because that's what I do is I listen to the problem du jour. That's what moms do. And then I started offering her solutions because I'm rich with solutions to her problems. I know what's right, so I'm telling her what's right. She took a little breath and she said, Mom, I didn't call you to fix me.
I just called you to listen. So the amend I continue to make to my daughter is I only answer the questions asked. I don't make up questions in my head and answer those. And I don't have to reply to statements. If she just makes a statement, I do the same thing with my husband. I've often had to have opinions on statements. I don't have to have them. It's better if I don't. So the amend I make to her is I allow her to say what she needs to say without my having to fix it, change it, comment on it, improve on it, support.
I mean, I don't have to do any of that. I really don't. And I've got to tell you, sometimes that's really hard because she's still, you know, she's alcoholic. I don't care how sober she is. She is still alcoholic. And she will have a set of issues that really do need a mother's touch, even though she's 39. And I'm pretty sure that's why she's called me. And, you know, when I started doing that with my son, you know, I told you about the universal law of change.
If you change, everybody around you has to change. That's what we tell the newcomers when they come in, you know, and they come in, they get a little relief. They read a little literature. They are learning some new jargon, you know. They got it going on, and they come back, and they tell you it is worse at home than it's ever been. Those people are crazy. And we go, yes, it's working. Because what happens when you change, see, those people around you didn't really want to.
It was not their idea. And when you change, they have to, and they don't want to. So what they do is they do their old behavior harder. They want you to get back in the dance with them again. It might not have been pretty, but it was familiar. They knew the steps to that dance. They knew if they did, you'd do. If they did, you'd do. If they said, you'd say. And that's how you know it's working. If they seem crazier to you than they were before, and your sponsor thinks you're still on the beam, then you are changing.
You are being changed at this moment. When I started doing that with my son and not having an answer for everything he called me about, he got really crazy with that. But, Mom, what do you think? But, Mom, what should I? And I'd say, man, that is really going to be interesting. You know, I'm pretty sure that you've got all the right answers for this, and I'll tell you that whatever you decide, I'm right behind you, bud.
I will support you all the way. Let me know what you think. Let me know how it goes. He's had the same job for 14 years. He doesn't have any college. He's never thought he was very smart, which is a big fat lie. But he doesn't think he's very smart, and he's pretty sure the only thing going for him is his tenure because he's worked at this job for so long. And they laid off 2,000 people in July, and he was one of them.
And I was at Crested Butte Mountain Conference with 600 of my closest friends, and we were having an annual meeting we have up there with my sponsees. There's a galley sponsor who lives in Crested Butte, and she always has us come over to her house. And we were over at Joan's having lunch and having an Al-Anon meeting in her living room, and my phone rang, and I don't usually answer the phone. It's usually off.
But I did have his children with me for the week. So when the phone rang and I looked down and saw it was my son in the middle of the afternoon, I said, you know, and we were at the end of the meeting. There was one person left who hadn't shared and apparently was not going to. So I said, well, I think I'll take this call. And I went over and answered the call, and it was my son. He's so funny. Mom, hey, hon, how's it going?
Oh, it's okay. Are you busy? I said, well, actually I am in the middle of a meeting. Okay, well, here's what happened. He didn't care if I was busy.
[00:35:01]
He was going to tell me what he had to tell me. And he was calling to tell me he'd been riffed, that after 14 years he'd lost that job. And the first call as he's walking out of the office was his wife. The second call was to his mother, you know, he had to tell his mother. And you know, I know why he called me, because I told him, I said, honey, you know what? I said, I know that's awful. You must feel terrible about that.
I said, you know, we talked about that for a few minutes. Then I said, you know what, though? I said, there's a better job. There's a better job. You aren't getting kicked out. You're getting kicked up. There's a better job waiting for you. And he knew that would be the vision I'd hold for him. He knew that. And that's why he called. He doesn't call to tell me how good things are going. He calls me when he's down in the dumps again so I can do another little rah-rah for him.
And then he's back in there. He's ready to go. He called me the other day to tell me about an interview that had gotten canceled at the last minute. And he said, well, I look so good. He was telling me about all these people who had seen him and go, oh, he looks so good. I said, well, I'm sure you do. He said I was practicing last night. They'd given me a speech to practice, and I'm practicing this speech.
And my 11-year-old granddaughter, his child, is rehearsing him. And she says to him at one point, Dad, when you answer these questions, I don't think you should say we. I think you should say I. They're not hiring everybody else. They're just hiring you. And as a matter of fact, when you're talking, Dad, you need to look at me. Don't look around the room. And he said, well, I'm trying to gather my thoughts.
Well, gather them while you're looking at me, she said. I don't have to tell him these things. I've got this granddaughter who can just, you know, whoa, she's got him going. Then he, you know, he knows that's what I'm going to do for him. He knows that's the vision. And I'm not making stuff up. It's really the way I feel about it. I know the truth about that boy. You know, that's the thing about those people of us who love alcoholics, because we wouldn't have stayed if we hadn't have.
And we have the ability to love some pretty unlovable folks. The problem is, and the glory of it is, we know the truth about them. We know who they are under all that crap. We know. The problem is we think it's up to us to dig them out. It's really not. All I have to do is know the truth for him. And I know the truth for my son. I know there's a better job waiting. And I know it's something he's really going to want to do and feel good about.
So that's cool. However long that takes, that's cool. Today, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just talked about that. Amends not apologies. Not apologies. The definition is to make right, to change or modify for the better. For me, it's the action of releasing the guilt and the sense of guilt. That sense, you know, guilt is a power trip. It's a reverse power trip. It's I think I had the power to make things different today if I had done things different back then.
Says who? I was sitting with my sponsor one night in an open AA meeting. This AA was talking and talking, and she leaned over and she said, You know why he feels guilty? I said, No, why? She said, Because he is. And her point was that I tend to carry a sense of guilt, which is not the same thing. I feel guilty about stuff I didn't do that I wasn't involved in. My first identification in Al-Anon was there was a guy in our group who lived in Austria as World War II was beginning.
And Rolf said in a meeting one day that he felt responsible for World War II. And I went, Yes! If I'd have lived there, I'd have felt responsible for World War II. I could have made it all my fault. I really could have. It's not. It's a sense of guilt, and that's mine to let go. You know, my children have turned out exactly the way my children need to be. The rest of it is up to them. An AA woman said one time, she said, You know, I've made amends to my children about the way they were brought up, and I know as a crummy mother, and I know that, and I've made the best amends I can, and what I've told them is all your problems may be my fault, but all the solutions are up to you.
And I know that's true for my children. The best thing I have ever done for my kids is get a program and get a life and get out of their way and let them do what they need to do. I told you they quit listening. God knows when they're 37 they quit listening a long time ago. But you know what? He's watching me still. He's watching me, and he sees how I live my life. My daughter is 18 1⁄2 years in AA, but she's watching me.
She's watching. And what I demonstrate to them, how I live my life, speaks volumes to them. So I'm going to tell you another one. We were talking about high school reunions. Someone over here who shall remain anonymous is going to her 50th high school reunion
[00:40:02]
next weekend, and I said I went to my 45th. It's coming up this month, but I'm not going. Thank you. I was at the 40th, and no, I was right. They were pretty much the same way they were in high school. I don't need to go again. I'm really pretty done with them. Anyway, I had never been to a reunion when I first came into Al-Anon because my memory was that I'd had a terrible time in high school and they hated me.
That was my memory. They didn't hate me. They just didn't like me. I didn't fit in. I wasn't one of the people. It just seemed it was a very painful idea for me, so I never went until my 20th came along, and I'd been in Al-Anon a little while. I'd been in here long enough to recognize that I had some pretty warped perceptions, and I decided that maybe I ought to go. Maybe I ought to just go see what it was really like.
So I went to my 20th high school reunion, and we had a two-day affair. The first event was held in a beer garden. Fabulous. And when I walked into the beer garden, there was this guy sitting at the table right here. I took one look at him. He took one look at me. All my alarms went off, and he went, Are you Ellen Davis? And I went, Yes, I am. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger, Will Robinson. And I scoot as far as I can across the room away from this boy, and those thoughts start coming up.
Oh, my God. What is that? Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. All that stuff that you do in your head, you know, push it down. Push it down. Get away. Get away. Get away. Get busy. Get busy. Get busy. So I'm over here talking with people I actually knew and who actually knew me, and we're having this lovely conversation, and I'm feeling lovelier by the moment. You know, la, la, la, la.
I mean, I remember how I looked in this white dress. I was beautiful standing over there. And about that time, this guy walked up to the circle where I was, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I can see people out of it. You can, too. I can see them from behind my head if I have to. I saw him, and the committee starts in my head. Oh, my God. You don't suppose that. No, it couldn't possibly be.
He didn't go to this high school. What the hell would he be doing here? Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. You're so stupid. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know. And this guy walks up, and he sticks his hand out into the circle toward me with his calling card, and he said, hi, Ellen, it's good to see you again. And I looked at his calling card, and I looked at him, and I'm like, whoa. Well, when I was 12, 12, I fell in love with Fonzie when Fonzie wasn't cool.
Fonzie was not cool in 1957 at the actual moment of the Fonzie-ism. He was not cool. He was not cool in my house. This guy had the duck tails and the slicky hair, and he was a big guy, and he wore leather all the time, smelled like leather, had zippers, zippers, zippers, had taps on his shoes, made sparks when he walked across the room, you know, and rode a Harley Davidson. You could hear him coming.
You could hear him coming. He was three years older than me, and my mother was just scandalized. My brothers played baseball with him across the street, the little school across the street. Well, of course, I'm crazy about him. The more my mother doesn't like him, the crazier I am about him. And I'm 12 years old, you know. And I held on to him until that other one came along, and this was another lovely long-distance relationship.
It was New Year's Eve. So we're getting ready for this reunion that I went to, you know, and my girlfriend called me that I hadn't talked to in a thousand years, and she asked me if I'd ever seen that guy, and I said, no, no, no. And she said, remember that New Year's Eve he stole 20 of something. What was it? Was it hubcaps or cars? It was hubcaps. He stole 20 hubcaps. Don't make it worse than it was, you know.
And, of course, when he did that, he did like all my men do, you know. I am the bad mommy. So he turns himself in to me the next day, calls me up and tells me what he's done, and I tell him, of course, oh, this can't be. You're just going to have to make this good. You're going to have to turn yourself in. He didn't have to go far because his dad was a San Antonio policeman, so all he had to do was go in the living room and tell his dad, well, that's what he did, and they sent him away.
He went to juvenile detention home for a year, and then he came home and couldn't keep it together, and they sent him to the Navy, and they sent him to live in New York, and, of course, I'm home waiting for him with bated breath all the time. Having all my, you know, I told you, long-distance relationships, I'm great. And I was great. I was 12, 13, 14, 15. They told me, well, anyway, this guy that I'd seen when I walked in, his name is Alexander Zoghib.
I'll never forget him again the rest of my life. Alex was our go-between because Marcel and I were not allowed to have communication anymore after that first horrible year when I ran away at 2 o'clock in the morning thinking everyone was asleep. I locked my family in their room. We lived in an old, old house with skeleton keys, you know, and I got one of those skeleton keys and locked them all in their room and hid it in my Nancy Drew's secret of the lock and snuck out of the house just for a little riding around.
Snuck out of the house, just for a little riding around, and we rode around, and we came back by my house, and all the lights were out. He said, I can either take you home, or we can go to Mexico.
[00:45:03]
I think I better go home. Well, we weren't allowed to have any more communication after that, and Alex was our go-between. So, either when Marcel was locked up or in the Navy or wherever he was, he'd write a letter and send it to Alex, and then Alex would bring it to me at school, and I'd write a letter to Marcel and give it to Alex, and he'd mail it to him. What had happened was Marcel had told, he still had a motorcycle gang, he's on his third wife, and he had told his gang that if any of them ever saw me, he wanted to know where I was, he wanted to see me again.
And when Alex saw me at that reunion, the first thing he did was jump up and run to the phone and call Marcel and tell him I was there. And Marcel was across town, taking his third wife and their child on a vacation to California, and they were backing out of the driveway when the phone rang, and he answered the phone and told her he had to go. And he got on his Harley Davidson and took off across town to come see me.
You know what, I tell them, my friend at the party said, boy, I don't get you. She said, 20 years later, they're still sniffing around after you. I don't get it. And I told her then, I said, honey, you've never been loved by an Al-Anon. We are fabulous in that. We can love them. Well, you know, the very first thing he said to me when he stuck his hand in the circle was, he said, are you okay? Is everything okay with you?
And you know what, it took me two more days to process what happened, and here's what I realized. I started crying on the plane home, and I realized what had happened. When I was 12, oh, I was 10 or 11, my parents divorced. I wasn't paying attention because I didn't like it, and that's what I do when I don't like it, is I act like it's not happening. And so somewhere in there, my parents divorced, and we had to move away from my dad, states and states away from my dad, and my mother started into a series of nervous breakdowns, and I'm the oldest kid, and I'm the responsible kid.
If someone had stepped in and said, who's the responsible party here, my hand would have gone up. Nobody appointed me responsible, but the job was open, and I just slid right into it, you know. And what I wanted was, I wanted a big brother. I wanted somebody who would take care of me. I wanted John Wayne. I wanted somebody who would come in and not have to slip food under the door to my mother because she can't come out again, or, you know, I wanted, you know, Mama cried for years on end after that, and I just wanted somebody to come in and clean it up.
And within a breath of time, well, who showed up was Marcel. Every time he saw me, every time he came back to town after one of those stays away, his first question was always the same. Are you okay? If anybody's messing with you, I'll take care of them. And they had told me I didn't get into the social club in high school that I wanted to get into because I had a reputation for being seen with the wrong kind of boy.
Now I was a class officer, and when I dated, you know, when he wasn't there and the other guy wasn't there, so I went out with the other class officers. I mean, that's how I went to prom. That's how I went to things. But, see, every time Marcel came to town, he had one of those great cars with glass packs, you know. You could hear him coming two, three blocks away, you know. And I would slide across that seat.
That's back when you had seats you could slide across, you know, and I'd slide myself all over there and just be all over that boy. And he maybe came to school twice, but I had a reputation for being seen with the wrong kind of boy. And I had blamed myself and him all those years that somehow my crummy picker had picked the wrong guy one more time, you know. And why would I pick somebody crummy like him?
And what I realized was God had sent me exactly what I wanted. I had somebody who would take care of me no matter what. I had somebody who loved me no matter what. Somebody who said, if there's anybody messing with you, I'll take care of them. And believe me, he would have. If I had turned him in, he would have. And I learned about a different kind of amend with that deal with Marcel. And what I learned is that thank you is an amend.
What I needed to say to him was, oh, I'm sorry I thought you were crummy all these years and I was so stupid for picking you. What I said to him is thank you so much for loving me like you loved me all those years. Thank you so much for still caring how I was and what's going on with me. I can never thank you enough for that. Is there anything I can do for you? And he, it turns out, he broke up his gang because they were doing drugs and he didn't approve.
And a third wife is an alcoholic and he's having to raise her child. And he wanted to know how I had spent my life, and I told him about Al-Anon. And that was the best thing I could do for him, you know, and move on out of the way. But I have learned that thank you is amending. It is a sign of completion for me that I'm done there. Her directions were to make amends to all the people on my now list,
[00:50:00]
to pray about my later list and my never list, and to see if there were any more people after I did the now people, if I could move any more, and, you know, that's what happens. That's what happens in the process of doing it is that the later people move to now and the never people move to later, and somehow it all gets done. And you know what? They come to me. They come to me. The face shows up. The idea shows up.
The thought shows up. And there they are in front of me. She said, the way to check to see if I was done with the list for now is, is there anybody in this world that I would be uncomfortable with if they walked in the room? They belong on the list. And if there's not, I can move on. Okay, that's my 45 minutes. And I did it, and I'm glad. Thank you.