Audio
Transcript
Source: Gordy B – Kentucky State AFG Convention 2024 Gordy B. – Renton, WA – Date Unknown.mp3 File: gordy-b-kentucky-state-afg-convention-2024-gordy-b-renton-wa-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:49:22
============================================================
Good morning. My name is Gordy B. and I'm a grateful member of the Worldwide Fellowship of Al-Anon and Alateen. I want to thank the committee for inviting me here. I may get to this, we're running a little late, but there are some special circumstances that showed up for me and Julie, thank you for your patience, and Laura for having me here, and Becky for paying for my airfare, I really appreciate that. I want to thank the ASL Interpreters, it's a great service. I've been told that I speak very quickly, there's my apology and your warning. I want to thank Carolyn for your share last night, 53 years in the program.
We stand on the shoulders of giants, thank you, I appreciate your work. I've held all of the positions at the group level in Al-Anon, I've been a group rep three times, I've served at the district level, I was the vice chair of the Seattle Al-Anon Information Service, my current home group is the Kent All Men's meeting on Friday night in Kent, Washington, if you're ever in the area, Julie has my number, we would love to host you and show you at what Al-Anon looks like in our area. Let's see, my current sponsor is Chuck Guilford, he knows he's my sponsor because I call him, and we work the three legacies together and we go to meetings. Before our home group meeting on Friday nights, the men get together, we go out to dinner, we have our meeting and then there's fellowship after it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk this morning. Hey, you guys are awake, I appreciate that, most people miss Alan. You know, the first time I was asked to speak, I went to my sponsor and I said, Jerry, they asked me to speak, what do I do? And he said, well, don't swear, don't drool, don't lean on the podium, give them what you got. That's my plan today. I do have a plan, it's one of the reasons why I'm still in Al-Anon after 27 years. The good news is I have a plan for all of you, too, because I've been watching you. And you know, that's how my Al-Anon disease shows up. If I can get you to do what I want you to do, if I can get you to be who I want you to be, I'm going to be okay. If I'm not okay, you're not either. You know, my story starts with my dad. My dad was a child of the Depression, my grandfather emigrated in 1900 from Scotland, my grandmother was from Sweden on that side of the family. My dad came up through the Depression. And you know, hard times raise hard people. And you know, I was very fortunate. We never went without, we had food in the house, but you know, when my dad got mad, rage was an issue and something physical was going to happen. And physicality is a part of my story, we're going to talk about that.
And the other thing in my house was conditional love. If you performed, you got the extras, and if you didn't, you got shut out. And you know, that was really important to me. And because of those two conditions, I got really good at reading a room really fast. I could take my dad's temperature when he walked in the door. My dad was from the generation, he worked hard, he left in the morning before I got up, he got home about 6 o'clock at night, he had a couple of Manhattans, and then there was always wine at the table. And that was the generation I grew up with. And you know, I grew up with the isms of the disease. I grew up with a, I grew up in a non-talking family. What happened in our house stayed in our house. And you know, if my family asked you, excuse me, if my family asked you how you felt, they wanted to know if you were going to throw up if you had a fever. We never, we never talked about the emotions of life. So I never got those lessons. And one of the things I did with my dad was, because he was a child of the depression, whenever he had an opportunity to take a job where he could make more money than he was making at the time, he would do that. And moving is a big part of my story. I went to four elementary schools, one middle school, and three high schools. And so we moved a lot. And because of that, it was, we had a very tight nuclear family. And I, you know, I've also come to understand those were probably geographics for my dad, but that wasn't what I was told at the time. And it's sunk in over time for me. And we always seem to move in the middle of the school year. And I don't know if you've had the experience of walking into a classroom and when the cliques have been formed and everybody knew where everything was and you're the new kid, all the eyes are upon you. And so in the third grade when we moved, I went
[00:05:00]
into a school and, you know, I was in survival mode. And back in those days, you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, you remember when pencils were like this big and, you know, we settled things out on the playground. And I went out on the playground on the third ground and I got my butt kicked by the bullies. And I went home that night and my dad said, what happened to you? And I told him what happened. And he got down on his hands and knees, he took my hands and he balled them up into fists. He said, this is your left, this is your right. Punches are thrown in combinations. The fight's not over until one of you doesn't get up. And, you know, I was way more afraid of my dad than I was the bullies.
And I went out there and handled my business. And I took care of what needed to be taken care of. Because you know what? Bullies are looking for easy targets. They're not looking for people that are going to put up a fight. And that taught me something. I don't need a defense if my offense is good enough. If I put up a good enough fight, you're going to leave me alone. And what I was really learning was to keep people away from me. I was learning to keep people at arm's length. So by the time we got into high school, you know, I've got to keep an eye on the time here because I'm an Al and I guy, I want to make sure we make the time right. When I got into high school, we'd been living all over the country and by this time we were living in Southern California. And, you know, I was a capable kid. I was, but I was getting A's in school and I was getting F's and my parents got called into school and they said, hey, your kid's really capable. We don't understand what's going on. And the reality was for me is if I was interested in the subject, I poured myself into it and I got good grades. And if I wasn't interested or if I was behind in a subject because of all the moving, I just ignored it. And that's really passive aggressive behavior because I could not act out in my house. If I acted out, something was going to happen physically. You know, I was going to do everything I could to keep that from happening. The other thing that happened for me in high school is when I turned 16, I got my first job. And in our house, if you made the money, it was yours to do with whatever you wanted. And that's control. And we're going to talk about control today for a while. So I got my first job at 16. I worked from 16 to 62. I was unemployed for four months. I knew how to work. My dad showed me what work was look like. And I knew how to apply myself. So when I graduated from high school and I tell people, I'm not sure I graduated. I'm pretty sure they just let me out because they were tired of me. My grades weren't good enough to go to a four-year school. So I went to a junior college, got my grades up, and I started a company. And we started working. We used to work for real estate companies cleaning and painting apartments. And you know, I was really independent. It was one of those things that worked out for me. And I learned how to work hard and make money.
I got my grades up and I went up to a four-year school and I studied sociology with a major in psychology. And I was working two jobs at the time. I was working as a dispatcher for the state police on a swing shift. I worked at a theme park while I was going to school. And so I'm out there working hard and met a young lady and we started going out. One day while I was dispatching, I got a call from her on my private line for the dispatchers.
And she called and said, hey, my dad had me up against the fence with a gun threatening to kill me. Now in my family, we don't talk much, but we take care of our own. So I rolled a couple units over there and that guy got arrested. And I went over that evening after I got off and I said, what was that about? And she said, my dad's an alcoholic and he does stuff like this. And I got to tell you, that bounced right off my head. It was all I knew is I needed to keep this guy away from my girlfriend at the time and make sure that she was okay. And the reality of that is that gentleman did die from the disease alone in a house a couple years later. He drank himself to death. That was my first experience with alcoholism. This young lady and I became a couple. I graduated with my degree in psychology and started to work as a therapist. And I had a problem with that because all these people coming in to see me were screwed up. And I was uniquely ill-equipped to deal with it at the time. So I made the decision that all budding humanitarians did, I joined the Marine Corps. So the truth of that is my dad was a pilot in World War II. My grandfather came over from Scotland and in World War I, he went back and served with the Gordon Highlanders.
There's a legacy of service in our family. So I joined the Marine Corps and my dad was
[00:10:02]
a pilot and we had his medals. I still have his medals and I have his what they call blood shits from his jacket up on our wall. And I knew that being a pilot had been a really important part of being a man. And my dad was my role model. I needed to do what he had to do so I could be the kind of man, I thought I needed to be the kind of man he was. And I went into the Marine Corps on what they call an aviation contract. And that contract says if you pass certain tests, you pass the basic school, you pass certain tests, they'll give you an opportunity to fly. So I'm kind of a, when I apply myself, I'm a bit of an overachiever and I went to the basic school and did really well and went down to flight school. And you have to take three tests before they'll let you fly. You have to take aerodynamics, you have to take physics and you have to take algebra. So I passed aerodynamics, I passed physics and I failed algebra. And the truth of that is in high school, I didn't care about algebra. I had been behind in my work from other classes and I just didn't apply myself. But I had to go to the commandant of the school and the commandant said, Lieutenant, you can't fly unless you pass algebra. And so they sent me what they call stupid study.
And in three days, I learned algebra. And that taught me something. If I want something, if I really want it, if I apply myself, I can make it happen. And the Marine Corps also taught me three other things and a lot of people have heard about them. As a Marine, if you're in a situation that you've never been in before, you adapt. If you don't have what you need, you improvise. And regardless of the obstacle, you overcome. Now overcoming something in the Marine Corps is called a full frontal assault. If the Marine Corps places an amphibious battalion off your coast, we're not sneaking up on you. We're coming across the beach and we're going to punch you in the mouth because that's what we do.
And at the time, those were my people. I understood what that was about. So I passed that and the Marine Corps is what they call a meritocracy. They rate your performance from the top to the bottom. And I wanted to fly jets. And there are not a lot of jet slots in the Marine Corps. So you had to be a, excuse me, a high performer to get a jet slot. So in primary flight, I was at the top of my class and I got a jet slot. And I was at the top of my class in intermediate and advanced jets. Now that lady, that young lady that had the father who was an alcoholic and I had gotten married. And at this time, we're living in Meridian, Mississippi. And our daughter, she, our daughter was born. Her name is Bree and I'm going to talk to her about her a little bit later on. But because I had performed so well in flight school, I got to choose the airplane that I could fly. And I chose an airplane that had one seat. And I did that on purpose, a conscious decision, because I was the only guy that could make that airplane do what I wanted it to do. That's control. And I took that. I took my young daughter and my bride and went out into the fleet and poured myself into becoming the best Marine pilot I could be. And I did really well. I'm one of those guys that can make machines do what I want. And I went through the ranks really quickly. I became a section lead, a division lead. I'm captain of Marines. I got to plan strikes. I got to lead strikes. I got to do some amazing things. And I came home from work one day and my first wife said, your services are no longer required. I said, what?
And the reality of that is because of the family that I grew up in, I never, I was never given the foundation of what it's like to select a healthy partner. I had never been given the information about how to hold the marriage together. I got, I was told to do what I was supposed to do. And when an organization tells me to do something, I'm going to do it. So I had to go through a divorce and the legal community, and it's good judgment, would not give me full custody of my daughter because I was a combat qualified pilot and I could be deployed at any time. So I had to sign custody of my daughter over to my, to my first wife. And I have to tell you, I wanted to be the better dad. I know that we always want to be better than our parents were. But I was really filled with rage about that. And I can tell you from my experience, real rage is cold, it's calculating, and it's massively destructive. Because I made up my mind there's going to come a chance for me to get my daughter back. And when I, and if that opportunity shows up, I'm going to wage a campaign to do that. And that campaign is going to look like that Marine amphibious battalion coming across the beach. There will be no prisoners. So you know, I'm a single Marine pilot. I like women. Thought I'd go find another one.
I like women, thought I'd go find another one, and at the time we used to go to honky tonks, go out dancing, and there was a honky tonk near us, and went out one night, and we're out watching the women, looking for dates, and there's this short southern girl, she's got long hair, she's a really good dancer, and I cut her out of the herd, and we start going out, we start dancing,
[00:15:28]
and there's a question you wait for when you're a single pilot, and that question is, what do you do for a living? That lady's name is Connie, and we're talking, and things are going on, and I'm waiting, I'm being patient, and finally she gets around and says, what do you do for a living? I puff myself up, I'm a Marine Corps fighter pilot, and she says, well at least she got a job. I missed a lot of red flags, people.
That lady's with me here today, I'm going to introduce you to her later. So Connie and I start going out, and I fully disclose my position, I'm a single Marine fighter pilot, I have a daughter from another marriage, and given the opportunity, I want to get her back. And Connie says, I'm good with that, so we get married, we have the full sword arch, and the dress blues, do the whole nine yards. And I had to make a decision to either separate from the Marine Corps or continue on with a career, and I decided to separate from the Marine Corps because I wanted to build the American dream.
I wanted the house, I wanted the fence, I wanted the dog, I wanted the family. So I separated from the Marine Corps and found a job with a company that said, you know, we think you can do what we do, Gordy, but we're not going to pay you salary, but you can make as much money as you can. And you know, the Marine Corps taught me if you can do something, I can, and I know you're not going to outwork me.
So I took a job with that company, and we moved up into Washington State, and we started to build our lives together. And my daughter was living in California at the time, and she came up for a visit, excuse me, she came up for a three-week visit, and that three-week visit turned into a year. And I knew I had a tactical advantage. I had my daughter in my custody, my ex-wife was living in California, and I went down into Seattle and interviewed with lawyers and found a lawyer who said, you know, Gordy, I can get your daughter back.
And I looked at this guy and I said, I don't care what it costs. I don't care what it takes. You get my daughter back. And we got into what I used to call a custody battle of epic proportion, but in Al-Anon I've realized it's just a whole movie, but it's mine. And I can tell you, we got custody of my daughter, and I am eternally grateful for that. But I'm not proud of the man I was when I waged that campaign after being in Al-Anon for a while, and we're going to talk about that.
So now I have my daughters in our custody, and Connie's got a job, I've got a job, we buy our first house, bought our first new car, got a Toyota Camry, got a Golden Retriever. And Connie says, you know, I think I'd like to have a child of my own. I said, baby, I'm a Marine, I know how that works. In 1986, our son Travis was born, so now we have two kids and a Golden Retriever. You know, life was really hectic then.
And I thought the problem was that we'd been through a custody battle, we're trying to blend a family, trying to get a business going. And the reality of it was that's when alcoholism started to show up in our lives. And it showed up by the things that we all know about, right? Things aren't getting done, things are hectic in the house, and Connie and I are starting to argue and fight a lot. You know, Connie would be coming home from work, and she'd park the car on the front lawn, and park the car on the neighbor's lawn.
Sometimes there weren't hubcaps on the car, and you know, the only way that happens is if you hit the curb, the hubcap comes off. I bought a lot of hubcaps. But you know, those were the beginning symptoms that there was a problem in our house, and I didn't know that that was alcoholism at the time. I thought it was just pressure. Then the energy in the house increased, and you know, I don't know about you guys, but when I got to Al-Anon, I would not just go off.
What I would do is, things would bother me and I'd stick them in a bag and stuff them down. And eventually something would set me off, and I would bludgeon Connie with all of the stuff that I'd been holding back.
[00:20:03]
And you know, it was ugly. It was not the conduct that I wanted to be as a man, and I didn't know that at the time. But I wanted to bring all the pressure that I could bear to get her to do the things that I wanted her to do. And she was starting to be consumed by a disease over which she had no control. And I don't know if you've been in houses like that, but when we would fight, it would get really cold in our house, and the walls would go up, and we wouldn't talk for a long time.
And you know, I've come to understand that that's abusive behavior. When you deny somebody's existence and ignore them as a person, that's abuse. And that was happening in our house, and you know, our kids got to witness that. So as things were moving along, my business was going pretty well. I'm starting to build a successful business, but the problems were increasing in the house. And Connie had decided that she probably has a problem with alcohol.
Nice. Okay, she's going to go to AA, right? Problem, solution. But she'd go to these AA meetings and come home, and she was hammered. And I had never been to an AA meeting at the time, but I'm pretty sure I understood the premise, right? I gave serious thought to going down there and correcting those guys' behavior, because this was not working. You know, I come from a non-talking family, but my brother's a physician, and he got his degree in Texas, and he moved up to be near us in Washington.
My mom and dad moved up to be near us. And you know, we had the family in the area, and the problem of alcoholism in the family became apparent. And you know, if you come from a non-talking family, you get the looks, you get all of the, it's just really uncomfortable. And in 1996, I got a phone call from my mother, and she said, you know, Gordy, I'm watching TV. They got this thing called Allen on. It's for friends and families of alcoholics. Maybe you should go.
And I said, Mom, I don't need to go nowhere. If she'll quit drinking, my life will be perfect. Well, Connie's got 26 years of sobriety. Life's not perfect, but it's really good. The defining event in alcoholism in my life occurred in February of 1997. And my office was in the house. I was either in the field or on an airplane. I was telling Ben about that. I used to be a road warrior. And I was telling Ben about that. I used to be a road warrior.
And I was telling Ben about that. I used to be a road warrior. I was at a job site in February. It was about 50 miles from our house. And I got a phone call from my brother. I had a Motorola flip phone. You remember those? They look like Star Trek communicators. You talk on them for five minutes, they heat your hand up, right? Yeah, I was somebody. I had one of those. I got a phone call from my brother, the doctor.
And he says, Gordy, we got Connie down here in the ER. She's been drinking. We don't think she's going to live. You better get here. Like I said, I was about 50 miles away. And Ben mentioned that I have an opportunity to come to conventions and conferences. I've been to a lot of AA meetings, and I'm truly grateful for that experience. And I know what an AA blackout is. Well, I'm going to tell you about my Al-Anon blackout.
I drove 50 miles in my car to get to the hospital, and I don't remember that drive at all. The next thing I remember is walking into the ER, and they've got Connie on a gurney. And they've got two large bore IVs in her, and they're trying to get fluids in her. Because, you know, if you drink enough alcohol, you stop breathing and you die. And they're trying to get me to sign papers because they're going to have to intubate her to breathe.
And I couldn't move. I stood at the end of that gurney, and I could not move. And, you know, up to that point, Connie's drinking was a really massive inconvenience for me. It was a really difficult thing. And I promise you, on that day, I took alcoholism seriously. So I signed the papers, and they got Connie stabilized, and they got her up in the room. And I had to call my mom and dad and say, you need to pick the kids up. I'm at the hospital.
So I went home that night and went up into the living room in our house.
[00:25:00]
And my mom and dad are sitting there, and my kids are sitting there. And I had to tell them that their daughter-in-law and their mom almost drank herself to death that day. As a non-talking family, it's just quiet, right? It's just quiet. So I went to the hospital the next day, and I sat down on the bed next to Connie. And, you know, I had a plan. I said, here's the deal. You've been talking about treatment, and you have a choice to make.
You can go to treatment, or I'm going to put you on an airplane anywhere in the world you want to go. I'm going to put a bunch of money in your hand. I don't ever want to see you again. And that was my best response to alcoholism at the time. Connie said, I'll go to treatment. So I drove her up to treatment that night, and she checked in. And for the first time in years when I was driving home, my overwhelming impression was how quiet it was in my car.
For the first time, I wasn't worried about my wife driving my kids drunk. I wasn't worried that she's going to get picked up by the cops. I wasn't worried that I was going to get a call from a hospital telling me that my wife is in the ER again. And I got home, and I walked up the stairs and into the kitchen. This is my golden retriever story. Our dogs are like people to us. At that time, we had one. We've had several.
Last time we had dogs, we had two dogs. They had eight beds, and four of those were orthopedic. I own the house. I've got one bed, right? But my dog talked to me, and she used to go to the office with me in my house. And I went up in the kitchen that night, and I was making soup because I hadn't eaten in a couple days. And if you're in Al-Anon, you know what that's about. I'm going to deal with everything that's in front of me before I take care of myself.
So I'm making soup, and my golden retriever walks up, and she sits down next to me, and she raises her eyebrows and says, you're nuts. And that was a moment of clarity for me. Here's the reality of where I was at the time. If you haven't noticed, I'm a type A analytical linear thinker. Actually, right now, I'm kind of a B minus to a C plus because I'm retired, so I've dialed it back. But everything that comes into my life becomes a box, and I put it in my head.
And I deal with one box at a time. And then I put it back in my head. And that night, all of the boxes in my head fell out. And they hit the floor. And there was one box on the floor that night that I hadn't dealt with in a really long time, and its name was Connie. Because I had no idea what to do about her drinking and the impact on my life. And what I realized, the other thing was, is my life was built on sand.
Everything on the outside, I was making everything look right, but on the inside, my family was dying. They were dying because of the disease of alcoholism and an unrecovered Al-Anon overbearing father. So I'm a classic Al-Anon. There's a treatment center. I go to the family program, walk in the door. Hey, I'm Gordy. What can I do to help? They said, come on and sit down. You need to go to Al-Anon.
I said, seriously, what can I do to help? And they said, you need to go to Al-Anon. And a counselor pulled me aside that day, and she gave me a schedule, and she said, you need to go to a meeting. Don't come back until you do. And Tuesday, March 11, 1997, I drove up to my first Al-Anon meeting. And that's a problem for me. I was raised an Episcopalian. I don't know if you know that, but that's the Catholic minor leagues.
And I had walked away from religion for quite a while, and I didn't know what spirituality was. I open up the door, and I start walking down the hall, and there are people laughing. It's like, I don't know what you're laughing about. I need some help. This is serious stuff. And I walk into the door, and these people are hugging. You try to hug me at that time, I'll knock you out. So we sat down, I went in, sat down, and I take direction.
It's like, yeah, my name's Gordy. I'm here from the treatment center. And there's like fresh meat in the room, baby. We're having a first step meeting. And I want to capture this before I go. You know, I know that date specifically because there were members in that meeting who said, but you need to buy some literature and put the date in it. It's important. So if you know your al-Anon birthday, and you haven't written it down, I suggest you do that.
This is your first convention welcome. I hope you have stuff here that keeps you coming back. But anyway, we have this first step meeting, and they go around the room, and then we get there, there's this one guy in the meeting, and I told him the plan. Connie's in treatment, she's going to get sober, She's in treatment, she's going to get sober, everything's going to be great. And this guy looks at me and he says, you know, Gordy, just because your wife's in treatment
[00:30:00]
doesn't mean she's going to get sober. I look at this guy and I'm thinking, you and I are going to have a problem. You don't know the plan. So I go back to the treatment center next week and they say, yeah, you did great. And this counselor pulls me aside and she says, listen, you need a sponsor. I said, what's that? She said, listen, the heavy meeting, the heavy lifting in Al-Anon is not done in the meetings.
It's done between meetings with a sponsor. You need somebody to take you through the steps. Guys with guys, girls with girls, don't come back without one. So I go back to that meeting the next week and go in to find my sponsor. There's one guy. It's him. So I know how to take direction and I know how to give direction. So I go up to this guy after the meeting and his name's Jerry. I said, Jerry, I need a sponsor.
Will you sponsor me? He said, sure, I'll sponsor you. He hands me his card and this guy's an Alaska Airlines pilot. Ooh, spiritual people. Let me introduce you to Gordy who is there. So I look at this guy and I look at his card and I'm thinking, man, there's only two kinds of airplanes, fighters and targets. This is going to be easy. And here's the reality of it. This guy was also an Air Force F-4 pilot and we're not opening that can of worms up today either.
But my higher power put a guy in my life who understood who I was and how I thought. And I didn't understand that for quite a while. And he said, this is how I sponsor you. You need to go to three meetings a week. You need to read your literature and you have to pray. I said, brother, I'm not praying. That's not happening. That's not part of my life. You know, he was right. It changed my life. I had a deep gratitude about that, but I was still in the hands-off, pushy backstage.
So now I've got a sponsor, Connie comes out of treatment, and three days later she relapses. And I don't know if you've fallen off a pink cloud, but it's a long way to the ground. And I can't explain it. I can't tell you why, but for whatever reason, I leaned into the program. I latched onto my sponsor. We have what they call knee-to-knees. Once a week we get together and we have knee-to-knees. Our first knee-to-knee, he said, Gordy, I'm going to give you your first mantra.
He says, you will be kind, you will be considerate, and you will be tolerant with Connie, with your kids, with everybody you come into contact with. And I promise you that had not been on my resume. And the next time we go to a knee-to-knee, I'm talking to him and I'm whining about what's going on. And he says, you know, Gordy, you've got to give Connie the dignity to be who she's going to be. And here's my problem.
I didn't like who she was. I didn't know how to separate the disease of alcoholism from the woman that I love. We were so enmeshed together that when I woke up in the morning, I look at her and I'm thinking, how are we going to be today? And you know, late-stage alcoholics don't have many good days, which meant I didn't have a good day, which meant the people around me were going to suffer because I hadn't learned attachment.
And, you know, the next knee-to-knee, he says, Gordy, Connie's got a higher power and you're not it. I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me check my hat, because I was pretty sure it said God. When I got to Al-Anon, my street went from horizon to horizon, and if you were on it and things weren't going right, we were going to have a conversation. And if you wanted to escalate that, you're just stepping into my ring.
I'm okay with that. But, you know, I kept doing it. I leaned into this program heavily. My first sponsor came out of Idaho. There were no single Just Al-Anon male members at the time. And his first sponsor was from AA. So the first time I went through the steps, I went through the big book with him. And I will tell you now, I sponsor exclusively out of Al-Anon literature. And Carolyn mentioned it last night.
Our literature is tremendous and it addresses the problem specifically. And that's how I sponsor. But anyway, so I leaned into the program. Connie starts to find her feet in the program. And, you know, like most sponsors, a lot of step work and writing is involved and get to the first step. And I wanted to write, you know, I'm powerless over my wife and my life is unmanageable. Because that was the reality for me.
If Connie would just be who I wanted her to be, it would be okay. But over time, as we went through the second step, I was introduced to a concept of something greater than I was. And we got to the third step and it was a huge issue for me. Because I was not a religious individual. And we got to do the third step and my sponsor says, okay, we're going to get on our knees and hold hands and pray. It's like, no, we're not.
He says, no, we're going to do this. I said, no, we're not. He said, you're prepared to get another sponsor. It's like, no, I'm not.
[00:35:01]
So for the first time in my life, I trusted another man. Because I had learned with most men, if I become vulnerable, you become abusive. And I don't let that happen to me. But I trusted him. And, you know, the reality was my first sponsor was a gentleman who introduced me to what intimacy and trust was about. None of my sponsors have ever given me anything other than guidance and correction. They laughed at me a lot, but I understand that because I sponsor people today.
But that's the reality of my experience of sponsorship. So anyway, we get to the fourth step. He hands me the sheets. And I'm dutiful. I'm a pilot. If you hand me a checklist, I'm going to run it. I wrote those things out in a couple days. And he kept saying, hey, are you ready to do your fifth step? I said, no, I'm not. I was pushing him off. Because I was not prepared to tell anybody who I thought I was at the time.
So I get a call from him one day, and he says, we've got to get going here. He says, Gordy, what are you doing this weekend? And I said, well, I'm not doing anything. He says, good. Pack a bag. We're going to our sponsorship retreat in Montana. Bring your fourth step. Get on this airplane, fly out to Montana, drive out to this retreat center that's out there. We get there at 7 o'clock at night. And people are also, a couple hundred guys holding hands, circled up, and they're praying.
And I get out of that car, and I'm thinking, I am in a cult. The first meeting we go to was a fifth step meeting, and it's a call-up meeting. Excuse me, call-up meeting. I got called up and said, I haven't done my fifth step. And I did my first fifth step at Under the Stars at night in Montana. And I told a man who I thought I was. And you know, it was a transformational experience for me. It was not the best fourth step I ever did.
I promise you, it was the best I could do at the time. And he took me, he says, you know, Gordy, this is the man that you've been. Who do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be moving forward? And I have to tell you, nobody had ever asked me that. I was always told who I needed to be. I was told who I needed to be as a student. I was told who I needed to be in my family. I was told who I needed to be in the Marine Corps.
I was told who I needed to be in my job. I have a choice. And that single event launched me on a path that I'm on today. And I'm incredibly grateful for it. I'm going to push forward here a little bit. Connie has found her feet in the program. She's sober and working her program. I'm working my program. Our kids go to Alateen every now and then. We're starting to recover from the disease. But about five years into recovery, there was not enough in my marriage to Connie to make me want to stay.
And the reality of that is, is I had seen relationships that were far deeper than mine, and I wanted that. And I had a sponsor that was using language about relationships. I said, where are you getting this? And he said, I've got a therapist who's been in both programs for 28 years. And I said, give me that number. And I'll tell you that for two reasons. One is, this is just my story. This is not a recommendation.
This is what happened for me. And the other one is, if you're a sponsee and you think you're bothering your sponsor, you're wrong. Every one of my guys is talking to me about things that I need to be working on. Every man that I take through the steps, traditions, and concepts is teaching me about the man that I want to be. And I'm eternally grateful for that. But during the course of that therapy, it turned out that the tough Marine fighter pilot, the bare knuckle guy, had never done a direct ninth step with his kids.
And I got told to do that. And you know, it was incredibly frightening for me, because I had to take off the armor of being a dad. I had to take off the armor of being a pilot. I had to take off the armor of being the provider and tell my kids that I had done wrong with them and that I was no longer going to do that. And I got to tell you, my kids are some of the most courageous people I've ever met, because they told me how they saw me.
They said, dad, we know you love us. We know we have everything that we need. We don't go without. But if we're not high performers, we don't get the conditional love. And when you get mad, you're dangerous. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't work. I went back to the therapist. And she said, you know, Gordie, your problem is really simple. You insist on loving people the way you think they need to be loved.
If you will pay attention, the people in your life will teach you how they need you to love them. And that has changed my life. And that has become a hallmark of how I move through the world. I want to get into the good stuff here, because we're getting late.
[00:40:01]
By this time, we've been through the program. The family's been working together. We have a daughter and a son. My daughter married a gentleman. And he's the wrong guy. He's not a Nobel Peace Prize winning brain surgeon, right? That's what my daughter deserves. But you know what? He loves her. And my daughter has an eating disorder. And it's a challenge. And we didn't know about that until she was in college.
And the reality is that when you live with a, her mom has, her birth mother has issues. And when you live with a stepmother who's an alcoholic and an overbearing, unrecovered dad, the only thing you can control is what you put in your mouth. And the reality of that for me was is I had learned how to take direction. And some of the direction that we were given made my head want to explode. My daughter had to move out of the house.
And she had to do those things she needed to do to get better. And it went dark for a really long time. And you know, when my daughter came back and she got married, her husband's name is Josh. And we love him to death. He's a really important part of our family. But they gave us our grandson. His name is Dylan. And Dylan came into the world. And I got a call from our daughter. And she said, Dad, I'm really tired.
Can I bring Dylan over? Will you watch him while I sleep? For three months, I got to be the dad for her that I wasn't when she was growing up. I got to be the safe harbor for her while she slept and got better. And we got to take care of our grandson. And it is of immense proportion to me. Our son got married, a young lady. And her name's Annie. And she is an amazing woman. We were playing a game of Uno one night on vacation.
And she slammed a card down. And she said, take that, old man. I didn't think it was funny. Actually, so here's the truth of it. She never met that Gordie before. And she trusted me. She's the only one that gets to call me old man. Be careful. But they gave us our son and daughter-in-law. And they gave us our son and daughter-in-law. Our son and daughter-in-law gave us. They had trouble getting pregnant.
And they went through IVF. And we have a miracle baby. And her name is Isla. Yeah, right? So we have an eight-year-old grandson. And we have a three-year-old granddaughter. And I've got, I don't know, 100 or 200 pictures if you want to see them. But you know, it's a huge part of our lives. And I need to talk about this. You know, I spent a lot of time with my guys on the phone. I sponsor a lot of guys.
They sponsor guys. We have a downline. But on Thursday nights at 5 o'clock, I turn my phone off. That's a date night. Because I need to give Connie the attention that I give my guys. I spend a lot of time on the phone. And I have a few skills, one of which is I make incredibly good popcorn. That's not arrogance. It's just the truth. I make a big bowl of popcorn. And we sit down on the TV, by the TV on the couch.
And we watch some goofy TV, people. But it's her TV, right? She gets to choose most of the time what we watch. I'm lucky she, Connie, likes sports. But all of my guys know at 5 o'clock, I'm turning the phone off. If you've got the gun in your mouth, try not to pull the trigger till tomorrow, right? I need to drop into this really quick. You know, about 19 years ago, I knew I had a weakness in my program.
It's 2005. And I knew that I hadn't carried out the 11th step. And I got into the 11th step in a very heavy way. And the first word in the 11th step is sob, which means it's action. And I did a lot of research on spirituality and programs. And I found spirituality that works for me. And the most important part of that, as I was reading in outside literature, and this gentleman was talking about, he says, you know, he claims the first hour of his day for himself.
He says he meets with his God. And he does the work that he needs to. Because after that hour, the world is going to come crashing in. And you know, I stole that from him. And since 2005, the first hour of my day belongs to me. Nobody gets it. Nobody. I read Al-Anon literature. I read spiritual literature. I journal. I meditate. And I pray. And I did that this morning. make a difference where I am, and I do that for two reasons, one is I'm selfish, because
[00:45:01]
when I do that, my day goes better, my sponsees get a better sponsor, my wife gets a better husband, my kids get a better dad, and my grandkids get a better grandfather, and it's really important to me. You know, when I was working, they used to call me the pit bull, I know, it's hard to believe, but I was walking, I used to work with large contracts, and I was walking by, I was walking by one of my program manager's office, and she was on the phone, and she said, you know, if you don't have your bid here by five o'clock, I'm gonna let Gordy out of his cage. It's funny, but it's not. That was the man that I used to be. And I will tell you, because we gotta wrap up here pretty quick, most days when I do my practice, and I'm in my program, and I am kind, I am considerate, and I am tolerant.
That doesn't happen every day, but it is. You know, this past Tuesday was Connie and I's 41st wedding anniversary. Connie, hold your hand up. Connie is the only person in this room who knows the pit bull. You guys have never met him. My grandkids have never met the pit bull, and they never will. Mess with my grandkids, you may. And that's a character defect of mine, and that's what I'm gonna close with quickly here. You know, my character defects, I've never had them just taken away, all of my character defects shrink. And most of them are right around my knees. And the problem for me is, my character defects don't get bigger. I shrink down to reach down and grab them, because I'm not working the things that I need to do to stay in my program. Don't wanna run too late, so I'm gonna close here pretty quickly. And I wanna, when I told you about the 11th step, the thing that launched me on my 11th step was a reading out of, it's in the ODAT one day at a time. It's on page 169, and it's on January 30th. It's page 30, Encouraged to Change, and it's by Ralph Aldo Emerson. And it says, there's guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, you shall hear the right word. Certainly, there's a right for you that needs no choice on your part. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life, and then, without effort, you're impelled to truth and contentment. Water is my spiritual element, and I do try to stay in the middle of the river of power in my life. Al-Anon is the headwaters for me. I come back, and I go to three meetings a week, because I have to touch the pure headwaters. But that river of power and truth has led me into larger rivers of spirituality. It's led me to many things, and it's led me to come to places like this where there's a community of people who are committed to getting better and carrying the message of recovery. And I can't tell you what that means to me. But you know, I'm not always in the river. Sometimes I hit the bank, sometimes I get out. And when that happens, I do the drill my first sponsor gave me. He said, Gordy, if your life's not going well, you read your literature, call your sponsor, you go to meetings and pray.
If that doesn't work, you read your literature, you call your sponsor, go to meetings and pray. If that doesn't work, you call, right? But it's the truth. That's part of the drill that I use. It's part of the thing that keeps me healthy. My hope for you is that you find your own stream of power and wisdom in your life. And when you hit the bank, you find a way to get back in. It's important for you to know that I know it's an honor and a privilege to be here. Thanks for asking.
Gordy, on behalf of