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Source: Kathy H – Twelve Steps of Al-Anon – Part 1 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kathy-h-twelve-steps-of-al-anon-part-1-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:53:07
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Thanks, Paul. Cool. Yeah, where'd you go? Wow. I'm going to move that here. Oh, gosh. I don't have room for all my stuff. Okay. Is this okay? Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? First of all, I want to thank you. I thank all of you who were in on inviting me to come here for this Twelve Step workshop. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my story, but certainly it's much, much more than that. It's certainly an opportunity to share the recovery that's changed my life and to give back what continues to be given to me.
And I have to say, and I'm not kidding when I say this, but I'm really pretty much of an idiot, to tell you the truth. I mean, I just have the story and that's really what I have. And I'll share with you how I work through the steps, but it's pretty simple. You know what I'm saying? It's pretty simple. So I'd hold off on ordering anything to tell you the truth. Sorry. Anyway, you know, it was funny today because Paula, when she had called me to set this up, actually a couple of sabbaticals, I just decided to take off this little semester from school last year and so we couldn't do it last January so we decided to do it this January.
But when Paula had called, and Paula and Bob picked me up at the airport tonight, when Paula had made the arrangement she said, you know, maybe what we should do is just give you a little window of time in case there's a delay. Well, yikes. The headline of the Cincinnati Enquirer this morning said Delta and Comair have lost $20 million just over Christmas when we had this huge snowstorm in Cincinnati.
And last night there was a forecast for less than an inch of snow, a dusting as they say. Well, by midnight, I mean, we already had six inches. And so I was sure, I knew I'd get out all right, but I was sure as a teacher I was having a snow day. Oh my God, I was so, I mean, I was sure I was having a snow day. We were all sure we were having a snow day. So I didn't set the alarm because I used to get up, you know, really early and I didn't even pack because I knew I'd have all day to do it.
What I forgot was that we have a new principal who comes from Kentucky and doesn't realize that in Ohio when Cincinnati Public calls off school, which they did, those of us that rely on transportation from Cincinnati Public have to call off school too because our kids can't get to school. So Cincinnati Public's off and I'm like, oh, this is great. I got up about 7.30 and my son said to me, Mom, are you guys off? I said, yeah, but you know, it's so strange I didn't get a phone call. I bet it's because I was on sabbatical last winter, I mean, last January and they just forgot to put my name back on the call list, you know.
But maybe I ought to check the TV. Now, we've got to be at school at 7.30. So at 7.30, I'm watching the TV and just waiting for our school to come up and it never came up and I was like, holy mother of God, I got to get out of here. I ran upstairs, I mean, I raced off to school and we had school. I mean, we had school today. So during my planning period, I had to run back home, pack my suitcase, take a shower, wash my hair, I mean, it was pretty crazy.
But anyway, when I got to the airport, we were in a delay and it was perfect because we were delayed the exact amount of time that Paula had allowed for. So it just couldn't have been better, it just couldn't have been better. But so, I come to you not really very serene at all. I have to say that. I'm going to do this really quickly because this is why I hate workshops. I hate them because I can either, you know, when I see how much time I have, I think, oh, I could talk, you know, for that long, but maybe not, but maybe not.
[00:05:04]
Or, you know, I might go for two hours and I won't do that, but it's really hard to try to figure out how long things are going to take you. So, you'll just have to bear with me. Oh, my God. That doesn't bother me. Let me just give you a little bit of background here. I'm a kid that can't, you know, I'm third out of six. I love being the middle child, always have. Middle child, I think, you know, it's a good spot to be.
I was born to a delightful couple. Actually, I've said it a million times. My mother and father were crazy about each other from the time they met until my dad died in 94. They just had a great marriage, and in our house, it was very clear that the important relationship in that house was the relationship between my mother and father. And not that we didn't know, we knew we were loved, but that was the primary relationship.
And I always thought that when I got married, that would be my primary relationship, my relationship with my husband, and that the kids would just, you know, fall in the line somewhere along the line there. But what I found out until I met you, and because of the disease of alcoholism, how it did turn out for me was that I was always aligned with all my kids. And my main relationship really was with my children, and I had somehow, I don't know that I had done it, I certainly didn't do it on purpose, but the disease of alcoholism works in families in such a way that he, you know, was on the outs.
It was always me allied with all my children. But I didn't grow up that way. I grew up with a marvelous example of what it means for two people to be in love. And I think for me, what was most difficult in my own marriage was that I had seen how it could be, and I just couldn't make it happen. I saw how good a marriage could be, the love between a man and a wife, and I just, I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, make that happen.
So we grew up in a time where, as kids, we were just, you know, back in that time, I've heard people say before, you know, when we were kids, we weren't allowed to feel. Well, nobody was allowed to feel in my neighborhood. I mean, nobody was allowed. We weren't allowed to say, I'm angry about this, or if I had ever said I hate you to my mother, you'd have a different speaker today. Or I'd be speaking out of a hole in my throat. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we just weren't allowed to say that.
But it was the time more than anything else, I think. Nobody cared about, you know, nobody wanted to be introduced to my inner child. I mean, it just wasn't, it just wasn't the way that it was done. I was raised to believe that you just always, you know, put forth your best self. You just put forth your best self. And you never discussed things that were of any great importance outside your family. We just learned to keep private things to ourselves.
Now, I didn't happen to come from a family where there was a lot of private things going on, but my mother still would find it necessary to say, oh, what will the neighbors think? Oh, Jack, that was my father, who was really a very loud and funny guy. Jack, what will the neighbors think? Or, you know, if you'd go outside and, you know, a little raggedy, oh, come back in here, what will the neighbors think?
There was an emphasis placed on what other people thought of us. And I have a feeling that same conversation probably went on in a lot of other homes in the neighborhood. But we didn't know any better. We just grew up, or I did at any rate, and I don't think that my experience was terribly different from my other brothers and sisters. But we just grew up, and, you know, life was pretty normal for us.
I know that in my own particular background, my own particular upbringing, you know, faith was very, very important. I've said it. I was, I went to school, and I was taught by nuns for really over 16 years. I had nuns as teachers. And I happened to have a great group of nuns that taught me. Nobody terrorized me or hurt me in any way. They were just a wonderful, they really were a wonderful group of generous women.
There were a couple of, you know, I mean, there were a couple of them, but we all as kids knew that they weren't not right. You know what I mean? Well, I'm saying that because, you know, there was damage control immediately because all of us in the classroom would be like, I mean, it was very clear to all of us that we had a couple of them in there that, well, they just weren't happy people.
[00:10:06]
And as kids, we knew that, and we just kind of, you know, just whatever they would say, we would then talk about it and laugh about it and go home. And, you know, I'd tell my mother about it, and she would just, you know, kind of roll her eyes, and we just let it go. Most of us just let it go. I was very lucky in that respect, but I certainly was raised to believe in the importance of putting myself last.
I mean, that was not considered, you know, caretaking or enabling or interfering. I mean, that, when I was a kid, was what you were supposed to do as a woman. You were supposed to manage, manipulate, be a martyr and mother. I mean, the four Ms. Those were instilled in me as good things. So imagine my surprise when I found you and those very things that I always thought that I did best. My greatest character assets turned out to be my biggest defects of character.
Yes. So I was a kid, so I grew up in this family, you know, there's six of us, and, you know, really enjoyed my childhood as much as I can remember. I'd always had this thing about how things looked and doing the right thing, you know, and raised by a lot of religious that talked to us about doing for others, talked to us about the importance of suffering and how it would, you know, make you a better person and what doesn't hurt, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you a better woman.
And had to suffer silently or it didn't count. That was all there. But I was the kind of kid, quite frankly, who really always wanted to hang out with the bad guys. Not because I was a bad guy, but because I was always fascinated by them. I was a kid that always followed the rules, but I always was attracted to people that broke the rules. And to tell you the truth, there's a piece of me that still is.
I mean, the kids that I teach, I teach high school, and of course the ones that I really like are the ones who are absolutely always on the brink of being expelled. And I like them because they're, you know, they're spontaneous, they're original, they have a lot of creative energy, and that's the kind of person I generally am attracted to. So it wasn't a great leap for me when I met my husband that I was immediately attracted to him because he was just the kind of guy that would always do the opposite of what you wanted him to do.
I also was attracted to him because he was kind of a dangerous person, and I'm a very, very safe person. And so he, you know, was always taking risks, and I thought that was, I just really thought that was fascinating. I always tell the story because it's, it really underscores what it was about him that I liked so much. When I met him, he came from a family, his father raised quarter horses, and so he and all of his brothers and sisters, they'd all been in the 4-H, and they all knew how to, you know, catch a horse and saddle a horse and ride a horse and break a horse, they just knew all this stuff.
And so while we were dating, he was a Marine when I met him, he was a Marine Corps pilot, and it was prior to his being sent to Vietnam. So we were invited to go to this horse farm that friends of his owned over in Indiana. So a big gang of us went from Cincinnati, and I thought, oh, this is going to be so much fun, you know. I mean, I had never done anything like that. You go on a date over to Indiana, and you're going to ride horses on somebody's horse farm.
I mean, how cool would that be? I mean, I'm really a city kid. Really, there is nothing I love better to this day. What I feel more secure is when I put my head down at night to go to sleep, and I can hear sirens. That really, it just makes me feel really safe and secure. I grew up in the city, I just like that stuff. So now I'm going to this horse farm. And so we all arrive, and one of the guys in the group got himself in a situation where he was trying to saddle a horse that was really not being cooperative.
It was rather large and feisty, and he got cornered. I mean, he had the saddle in his hand, and this horse just had him cornered, and the horse began to thrash. And so they called out for a wreck. Where's the wreck? Get wreck. Get wreck. Well, you know, I loved being with Rick, because Rick was going to save the day. Rick was always saving the day, because he could do everything and anything. He was a marine, for God's sakes, you know? I mean, he just could do anything.
He was a marine for God's sakes, you know, I mean he just could do anything.
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He was just like that. And he jumped in to that stall with that horse and wrapped his arms around that horse's neck and grabbed its ear and bit that horse's ear as hard as he could, which paralyzes a horse, as it would paralyze you. And then he took that saddle from that, you know, this guy in the corner and he put that saddle on that big horse and let it out and that was it for me. I mean I thought that's, there he is.
I mean that's the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with because what could ever go wrong? I mean what could, what would you ever face that he would not be able to fix? And so actually when I look back on it, you know, here was a guy that could do for me what I could not do for myself. And so we decided very, very quickly to get married. I mean within months he'd made an announcement to his family that we were going to be married and I wasn't aware that he was going to make that announcement.
But I thought, well, you know, that probably we're going to get married and it'll work out because if there's anything that I've learned as a kid is that no matter what, everything really does turn out. And that's something that I carry with me from my childhood was that, you know, no matter how it looks today, all is well, all is well. And I had that firmly planted in my mind and so I assumed that all would be well.
And it was, you know, that it really was. It's just that I thought all would be well immediately. That was my mistake. So very quickly, so we got married and he was in the Marines and so we go down to Marine Corps stations and he's flying. Then he gets the orders to go to Vietnam and he goes to Vietnam and then he comes back and got out of the Marine Corps after his time was up and he used the GI Bill and became a dentist and then he moved back to Cincinnati and he became a dentist and then he got thrown out of dentistry.
Because all along, you know, we're running into the problem with drinking and now drugs. And so I don't know what's going on but I know this, from 10 days into my marriage until 1982 when I found you, I had no idea what had happened to me and to us. Because I don't even need to go into detail for all of you to tell you, I was always bewildered. I was always trying to figure out what he was going to do next so I could, you know, so I could be prepared, I was always trying to keep him away from these kids.
I mean, I was always in the midst of great chaos and I never understood how it had happened. And for years, I didn't connect it to drinking. All I knew was this, when my husband drank, somebody got hurt, somebody got hurt. And I would rather, I would have rather been, had it been me than you. I was just afraid, really, more than myself. I was afraid he was going to, I was afraid he was going to hurt you.
And so I was always just going, always thinking. I mean, it was like my hair was always on fire. I mean, it just, you know, I always had to know where everybody was and what was going to happen next and what was going to do. You know, I was just a nervous wreck. I was just filled with anxiety and that's how I lived. I mean, I lived that way for 12 and a half years. And then, and then I got to, and then I found you, and then I found you.
And so that's, you know, I'm just trying to keep it as brief as I can because I have three steps to get through and they're really more important than my background to tell you the truth. So, I don't know who did this program. My gosh, it's just gorgeous though. It's just lovely. Keep that as a bookmark. All right, this is the way that I thought I'd do it and I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if this is a good way to do it, but it's just the way that I thought I'd do it.
And if it's lousy, then I'll change it. Not this weekend, but sometime soon I'll change it. Okay, I thanked everybody. Bob, Paula, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, this is a book that actually, I love the other book, Ellen, on how it works. I love that book and I've used that other book to do a workshop that I've done before. But I have really started recommending to the women that I sponsor and it seems to have worked that we go through these questions at the end of the chapter.
[00:20:00]
And it's just really been a very nice way to work ourselves through the 12 steps. So when Paula called and I really started thinking about this seriously, I thought, well, you know what, maybe I'll just use this book and just see how that goes. So that's what I'm doing. But I'll tell you one thing. Now see, this is why I'm, blah, blah, blah. This is what my students say to me, Mrs. Eakin, why don't you have another cup of coffee?
Anyway. So, rewind, I forget what I was saying. Oh, you know, one of the, I've been in a lot of meetings and sometimes people bring in outside literature and then everybody goes crazy. And I think people go crazy when it's not conference approved because to tell you the truth, we've just got so much literature that's really good. A couple of friends of mine and I started a literature meeting a few years ago.
And I, I mean, there are pamphlets that I've never even seen before that we're reading that are terrific. There are pamphlets that are out there that were there when I came in and they were old when I came in that are brilliant. I'm like, why didn't I read this years ago? I was so much further in my recovery. I mean, brilliant stuff. I like our stuff. So, step one. Actually, I'll tell you, okay. It says, many of us come to Al-Anon filled with despair and hopelessness.
Some of us come to find out how to get another person sober. Others grew up in alcoholic homes or left alcoholic partners and no longer live with active drinking. We may not see the impact of having lived with alcoholism until we begin to acknowledge that there are familiar difficulties in our present lives and in our relationships. Many of us would not have voluntarily walked through the doors of Al-Anon if we were not in some sort of crisis or pain that forced us to seek help.
Though we may not have labeled it this way, we come to Al-Anon because our lives are unmanageable. We come looking for relief. Now, I came looking for relief. When I got into Al-Anon in 82, I was pregnant with my, with child number 7. And at the time, my mother-in-law was drinking. And I'll tell you what I have learned lately. I am really reluctant as I should, I'm really reluctant anymore to name names.
Because when my kids were little, I mean, I'd talk about them. I'd go all over the country and talk about all these kids and ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, now my kids are old and they don't think it's very funny. And I don't blame them. So, I was at an Al-Anon meeting a couple of years ago and this couple were talking about one of their kids and they said, you know, we just made a decision not to use our kids' names.
And I thought, you know, that is so wise. That really is so wise not to name kids. So, I'm not going to name my mother-in-law, but I don't know. At the time, her, you know, her kids thought that she might have an issue with alcohol and there were a few of them that were already in AA and they were going to do this intervention. And oh my God, my husband was like livid. I mean, he just was livid that they were going to do this to his mother.
So, who was supporting us at the time. So, he ran over, you know, and said, you know, they're going to do this intervention thing on you and you better, they're going to try to put you in some sort of a hospital or rehab. And then he got her all nuts. And then he came back to me. Now, I wasn't even a part of it. I mean, they had not even approached me about it. And he said, and I'll tell you one thing, if you take part in getting, if you take part in this intervention, I'm going to have your mother committed.
My mother? I said, Rick, my mother doesn't even drink. I don't care. I'm going to have her committed. And I thought, well, you know, when you live with that kind of fear, I was sure that he would have my mother committed. So, I'm pregnant now and I'm a nervous wreck that somehow or another he's going to go get my mother and throw her in some sort of a rehab place and I could just see her saying, but I don't drink.
And there would be this staff of men and women that would say, that's what everybody says. And she'd never get out, you know. So, that scared me and I tell you the truth, it scared me so much. I was so anxious about it. I was really fearful for this baby that I was carrying. I thought, this cannot be good, all this anxiety over this baby. And the next thing that got me was this. I'd always had, my husband was four years older than I was and in Al-Anon, I mean not in Al-Anon, in America, you know, women generally outlive men by about four years.
And so, I always had this, what I would call my eight-year plan. I always thought at the end of my life, I'd have this block of eight years, you know,
[00:25:02]
where I wouldn't have to worry about what I said, I wouldn't have to worry about where he was, I wouldn't have to worry about being in a party and you say something politically, you know, explosive. I mean, I wouldn't have to live like that. So, I had this nice little eight-year plan in the back of my head. And now, the sisters, his sisters who had now joined AA, they were always coming up and around because we all lived in this little compound.
They were always coming around where I lived on the compound and they were talking about alcoholism being a disease and about it being a family disease. And I thought, oh my God, there goes my eight-year plan. I will have seven kids, you know, God willing. And you know, if this runs in families, I will never get away from this insanity. I'll never be free from this chaos and anxiety. And that fear alone, I'll tell you, that alone, that fear of the future drove me to my first meeting.
Because people, and of course, I went to a meeting that was so far, I mean, I made sure that nobody knew where I, who I was. Because on the outside, I'd spent tremendous amount of time making it look like it was fine. Making it look like life was exactly how I wanted it. You know, I was thrilled. I was just thrilled with the way things were. Now, at the time, my husband had been thrown out of dentistry and had become a fox hunter.
But I made that look like it was the most natural progression of events. People would say, well, what do you mean he isn't a dentist anymore? He went to dental school for all those years and all that time and money. And now he's given it up. And I'd be like, oh yeah, way too boring for him. Now, of course, they knew nothing about the arrest and the felony. And I was like, oh no, way too boring for him.
I'm married to the Renaissance man. So, always look good. But I'll tell you what, inside, I was exhausted. I was absolutely worn out. Inside lived, really, lived a 90-year-old woman. I was just burnt out. And so, I was just so ready. I was just so ready to do something else. And so, I went to my, that's when I went to my first Al-Anon meeting. Because I didn't know what you had, for sure. But I knew this, I would go out at night and I would look up.
And where we lived, without getting into a lot of detail, it really was a family compound. It was out on this horse farm. I mean, it was just gorgeous. Overlook the hills of Kentucky and the Ohio River, a lot of land, beautiful quarter horses. I would go out on that hillside that overlooks the hills of Kentucky and the Ohio River. And I would look up at that sky at night and I would say, you know, God, I don't know what your plan is here.
And maybe because I had such a spectacular childhood, I mean my first 21 years I thought were terrific. And maybe I'm just going to get this, you know, rotten adulthood to balance the whole damn thing out and that's okay. But you know what? It can't be okay for these kids. I mean, it can't be your will that these kids suffer like this. That's what used to just absolutely floor me, is how can this be the will of God, to have a house full of kids who were just frightened all the time and uneasy.
It was tense, it was just always, always tense. And so when I came in, it was very easy for me to recognize that, I'll tell you, my life was unmanageable, I knew it. I mean, I could feel it, it was just simply unmanageable. And I came, as the literature says, I came looking for relief and that was the long and short of it. The book says, not understanding that alcoholism is a disease, many of us have tried to take things into our own hands.
We may have poured out liquor, made excuses, nagged, pleaded, protected or punished the drinkers in our lives. We may have hidden our feelings, isolated and avoiding contact with the alcoholic, thinking our problems would go away. We may have taken over the alcoholic's unfinished. We May Have Taken Over the Alcoholic's Unfinished Projects, Answered Phone Calls, Recovered His or Her Mistakes, No Matter What We Did, Our Lives Did Not Improve, and the Alcoholic Did
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Not Change. I didn't nag my husband. I erased him as a human being. That's what I did. I just simply blanked him out. When I went to see Chicago, the movie, and, you know, they have that song that was Mr. Cellophane, I thought, shh. That's what I tried to do. I tried to erase him because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know how to be in a relationship with somebody that I was frightened of and that I just couldn't trust from minute to minute.
When I was first married, I thought I was adjusting to marriage, and what I was trying to do was adjust to alcoholism, and there's just no healthy way to do that. There was just, for me, no healthy way to do that. I spent my first 12 1⁄2 years of marriage with one foot in the door and one foot out of the door, and that's no way to conduct an intimate relationship, I don't think. What I used to do was I was always gathering evidence because I was trying to build a case against him, and, you know, that's just not, you know, that's just not what, I just, there's just no, there's just no foundation in a relationship when it's built on that kind of motivation.
I really am serious when I said what I used to do oftentimes is when we would go out, I was just always afraid that you would say something that would set him off, and so I was always, when we talk about manipulation, I was always trying to manipulate the conversation or manipulate you because I was trying to keep the rough road smooth for him because I knew a bump in the road would cause great anguish for you and for me, and so it was really, everything that I did was really very, very self-serving in a sense because I just didn't know what I was up against.
The book says that to find peace and serenity in our lives, we have to change. A challenging and perhaps fearful thought, we may have to relearn to take care of ourselves when we are focused on another person's alcoholism and behavior. Many of us develop the habit of putting that person's needs first. We may suffer from low self-esteem and not believe that we deserve to take time for ourselves. Whether we judge ourselves as good or bad doesn't matter.
We are always defeated by alcoholism. In Al-Anon, we will find help. Wait a minute. We will always find help. I must have skipped something here, and I did, but you know what? It's just about this, you know, how sick we get. Many of the symptoms of the alcoholism are in the behavior of the alcoholic, but the people who are involved with the alcoholic react to his behavior. Eventually, they become emotionally disturbed themselves.
That's what I wanted to talk about, emotionally disturbed myself. There were so many things that I did that led me to conclude, even before I found you, but particularly after I found you, that I was not a sane person any longer. I was at a convention last weekend that was in Cincinnati, and I was listening to the speaker, and when the Al-Anon committee got up to introduce that particular speaker, a few of them got up and said, you know, my name is so and so, and I have been emotionally sober for 12 years or something like that.
I said to the woman next to me, damn, I haven't been emotionally sober for more than five minutes here. But I know this. Based on my behavior and the things that I was doing, I was absolutely, I mean, I would sweep, you know, the whole upstairs, weeping, weeping profusely, because I was so afraid of what was going to happen next. One time at Easter, you know, I went downstairs to get all the Easter baskets hidden for the kids who were still asleep, and I found my husband lying on the floor with carpools of, oh, whatever they give you when you're, you know, whatever that stuff is when they give you to calm your nerves.
What is that stuff? I guess, I don't know. If you ever go to the dentist and you're really nervous, they give you a little bit of something. Well, he had car, I mean, he was just flat laying there, and I, you know, what I did was I just closed the door and picked up the needles, and I, and then I went and got the kids, you know, it was Easter Sunday, and just carried on as though we were going to have this great Easter egg hunt, and, you know, the whole time inside, I'm dying because I don't understand it.
The whole time inside, I'm dying, and I am becoming absolutely unglued emotionally
[00:35:07]
so that what I had to do was simply just shut all my emotions down because I didn't know what to do with those feelings, you know. I just didn't know how to deal with them, but there are many things. I mean, the cats, for example, some of you know that story. When my husband was hunting fox, he would go out at night on this, you know, in this area where we lived, and he had infrared glasses, and he would hunt fox, but God forbid, you know, a cat that got in his crosshairs.
I mean, and even though we lived in the country, we had encroaching suburbs, and these women, I used to call them the Stepford Wives, the Stepford Wives would call, and they'd want to know where their cats were, you know, have you seen Boots? And I, you know, I just knew that Boots was sleeping with the fishes. I mean, I knew Boots was gone, and I, you know, I just got to the point where I, I just didn't want to answer the phone anymore, but in my mind, you know, Rick would always say, if they're fat cats, and they're being fed, they shouldn't be in, they shouldn't be out here hunting the quail and the pheasant.
If they're scrawny cats, and they're hunting to survive, I let them go. I let them live, and you know, eventually, in my head, I'm thinking, that's right. Fat cats must die. Thin cats may live. I mean. In Al-Anon, we say we find help. When I found Al-Anon, back in April of 82, the first meeting I went to, the women met me, that were running the beginners group, and they said to me, alcoholism is a family disease, you can't cause, you can't cure, and you can't control.
And I have never forgotten those three important things. I didn't cause it, I can't cure it, I can't control it. My life was unmanageable, because I was trying to do those things. I was trying to cure it. I was trying to control it. I never thought that I caused it, but boy, I thought, you know, if I were a loving wife, I should certainly be able to come up with enough love, enough unconditional love, you know, to just love him into health.
And I found you, and you told me that that was not possible, that I was really powerless over it. And you taught me that wonderful, you just taught me that wonderful slogan, to let go and let God. When I was on sabbatical in January, or just last January through May, I ran into this darling little nun, lived with her actually for a little bit, and she used to always, when I would say let go and let God, she would always, this is what she would do, she wouldn't use that phrase, but she would just go.
So, I've kept that image in my mind, because now, in addition to saying to myself, let go and let God, sometimes I just go. Because that's what I've learned in this program that I have to do. I have to do it particularly around my children, and particularly around my children when they're making choices that I don't necessarily agree with. Instead of nagging, complaining, controlling, I simply just have to go and let it go.
That's what I think this first step, that's why I'm always back at the first step. You know, I really do have the heart of a beginner in so many ways, because I always find myself back to the basics. You're the ones that taught me that my husband was not a bad guy, he was just a sick guy. And that just changed everything for me. Because then when I started to look at my behavior towards someone that was sick, I had to really stop, I mean, that just stopped me cold in my tracks.
This was not a bad guy, this was just a sick guy. You taught me that wonderful phrase, you could be right, you could be right. I've gotten mileage out of that for the last 20-some years, you could be right. I mean, if you teach high school, what a great line, I use it all the time with kids, you know, you could be right. And it's not a blow-off line, I mean, it's really a stance almost that Al-Anon brought me to at any rate, which is that I'm not the keeper of the truth, you know, not the keeper of truth and justice.
I'm not always right, I'm a lifelong learner and I'm a woman who is in constant recovery. And generally, when I introduce myself, which I don't think I did, I usually say, hi, I'm Kathy, and I'm recovering one day at a time in the Worldwide Fellowship of the Al-Anon Family Groups. It might be in our literature, I don't know, but that whole idea of failure being the beginning of wisdom has always been really important to me.
I'm sure that I heard that in the meeting. Most everything that I've heard, I've heard at a meeting, I think. But, you know, that idea of being powerless, it's one thing to accept it, it's another thing
[00:40:01]
for me to accept it and to be okay with it. And I think that's for me where step one is constantly comes into play. I can accept that I'm powerless, but it takes me some time to be okay with that, you know, to be all right with that. In one of our daily readings, it says, the beginning of love is to let those that we love be themselves perfectly. And that is what Al-Anon has taught me that I really have to work on.
The beginning of love is to allow those we love to be themselves perfectly. Step one is the, really, step one is the beginning of our path to recovery. All right, I've got about seven minutes to cover step two and three. I think I'll do it, don't you? Skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. Okay, step two. Well, step two, of course, is I came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Basic spiritual principle involved in step two suggests that there is a power greater than we are that provides hope for sanity whether we're living without active alcoholism or not. Step two reaffirms that we may be powerless, but we're not helpless and we're not alone. For many of us, the introduction of a power greater than ourselves is difficult to understand. Some initially believe we are speaking of a religious entity, we are not.
We are speaking of a loving, caring, nurturing power that provides us with guidance in dealing with the effects of the disease of alcoholism. You know, when I was at school today, I had to go to the library to sign something out for Monday and the librarian has this plate with all these little cards on it, you know, with different wise sayings and whenever I'm up there, I always pick up a card. So this is the one I picked up this morning.
It's by Nancy Thayer, I don't know who she is. She's probably somebody I should know, but whatever. This is what she said, it's never too late in fiction or in life to revise. Now, isn't that just such an Al-Anon thing? I mean, it's never too late in fiction or in life to revise. That's what I think, that's what the power of the group has taught me and that's what I found when I came to Al-Anon, more than anything else, the power that I found in that room to revise.
Because Al-Anon is what really led me out of that isolation that I had, that alcoholism had led me into and brought me back into this wonderful sense of community. It brought me back into a place where I never, where I, for the first time in many, many years felt that I wasn't alone. You people, both men and women, when I came in, you talked about choices and that for me was a very, very powerful thing.
You talked about having choices. In this little high school where I teach, there was this little nun who used to teach in the classroom next to me, she's not there anymore, but she had this saying all along her, you know, the top part of her chalkboard, you know, in two sections because it's a long quote and it says, our true work, I love this, our true work is to complete our birth, to fulfill our destiny, to live the dreams that free our enormous souls from living a life too small.
When I came in Al-Anon, you, because of the recovery that you were willing to share with me, you showed me how far I had veered from the kind of woman I believe that God created me and wanted me to be. And I would never have seen that without the power of your example because I was living a life that was filled with constant anxiety. I would wake up in the morning and my first thought was, I hope he's in a good mood.
I was terrified that one of those kids would spill milk at the dinner table, you know, or laugh at the wrong time. Alcoholism robbed me of my hopes, of my dreams, of my spontaneity. Alcoholism took from me what it will demand from all of us, I believe, without recovery and that is my dignity as a woman. I was doing, I mean, I was doing things, when he and I were at a restaurant, we just never even had anything to say to one another anymore and so I was very much aware that I, of course, I was sure everybody in the whole restaurant was saying, look at that couple, they don't even speak to each other.
And so when he would bend down or turn around, I would pretend like I was talking to him, I'd go, just so everybody would think that I had this normal relationship going on. Now, that's pretty sick, I mean, that's insane. Insane people do that but that's what I did because I so wanted you to think that my everything was great, everything was going along. That's pretty crazy. Not in this book, but in another book, we talk about the rules.
[00:45:01]
The rules are unspoken, but rigidly enforced. And anybody that's lived with this disease knows that, I mean, that, you know, that's just so true. With Step 2 and the support of a loving fellowship, we begin to learn how to recognize and accept our own part in the family disease of alcoholism. In Al-Anon, the love and acceptance we find helps us learn to love and accept others with all of our imperfections.
There was a woman, after one of my first few meetings, she followed me out the front door and she said to me, you know, Kathy, unless you can admit you're sick, you'll never get well. Unless you can admit you're sick, you'll never get well. And I was so angry with her because I didn't want her to know how screwed up I was, really. And I really, at that point, wasn't even willing to admit it to myself.
But when I talked to my sponsor about it, she said to me, well, look at it this way, you know, can you relate to being sick with fear, sick with anger, sick with resentment? And that made sense to me, being sick with those things. There were days when I was so angry, I really was sick to my stomach. There were times when I was so resentful, I was not well. I mean, I spent years smoking, you know, two packs of cigarettes a day and eating nothing.
Why would I need anything? I was just fueled by my anger and resentment. That's what used to keep me going. And I mean, my health was just shot. And so when you talk to me about a step that involves restoration, it's a beautiful thing, you know, because we restore things of value. And I had lost all sense of value for myself. And that's why I think I like that little card. Because you taught me that it's never too late to revise my life.
It's never too late. I hear men and women say, oh, I wish I found this program earlier. I wish I found this program. Well, geez, I wish I found this program when I was 12. But I didn't. I found it when I did. And you know, I'm so grateful I got here when I did. Because I wouldn't have come any earlier. I got here as we are all told, I got here right on time. I thought that my being perfect. I always thought that my living a life above reproach would offset the damage of alcoholism.
That's what I thought. And you told me that, you know, being right and being perfect were the very things that were going to keep me sick. Were the very things that were going to keep me sick. Only self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, willingness to recover, open to my part in it. You know, none of those things would have been possible for me without the group. And so I found sanity really through the power of the group to tell you the truth.
I really did. I have a friend that works for Hamilton County and she takes the 911 calls. And she said to me that when she was trained, in her training they brought in these experts who said to her, you know, and to the other people in the class, when someone is badly injured, badly injured, if you can talk to them and tell them that they're going to be okay. That help is coming. That they're going to be all right.
They have a much better chance of surviving than if you don't comfort them in that way. And when she told me that, I thought, my God, you know, that's what Al-Anon did for me. I had no idea that the promises you spoke of, how they would possibly come true in my life. And yet, what you said was, keep coming back. It'll be better. Keep coming back. It's going to be okay. Keep coming back. We're going to be here next, we'll be here next Monday at the same time.
Just keep coming back. And that encouragement and that promise and that hope were a huge part in restoring me to some sense of sanity. You calmed me down, just like the 911 operators are trained to do. You did that because you were willing to show up and share with me what you had. As a teacher, as a teacher, we're, you know, we're often told that we tell the story, or we're told the story, I guess, in training, the story of Michelangelo about the time that a block of marble was delivered to Michelangelo's back door.
And, you know, day by day, he chipped away at it. And there was a little neighbor kid that watched him just chipping away at that marble until finally, weeks and weeks and months and months later, he had, what was standing there, of course, was the created statue of David. And the little neighbor kid came up to Michelangelo and said, how did you know that guy was in there? You see, that's what I believe is this great message that Al-Anon gives to all of us, both men and women, and that is, is that when we can chip away, you know, the fear,
[00:50:02]
and when we can chip away at the anger and the resentment, eventually what will be left is that guy, is that guy or that woman that got always, you know, always, we were always there, it was just always there. And really, it's that love and great hope that allows us to one more time have our dreams, to live a life that's big, you know, to imagine the best for ourselves and to believe that really the best is yet to come.
Step two is about possibility and that's, our literature says it's about possibility and that's why it's about hope and that's why it's always about hope. When I was new and I would, oh, and I would hear in that Al-Anon meeting and that closing that there was no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened. I could have wept, I mean I just could have wept, that meant so much to me.
I thought that you had written it for me because I just, I just couldn't hear enough of that. I had no idea the shape that my heart was in, I just had no idea. We talk about truly beginning to experience the hope that so many speak of. You know, I've been to many meetings where, you know, we've discussed kids and I've had people come up to me afterwards and say, yeah, well, where do you have to start dealing with your grandchildren?
And I thought, what does that mean? I mean, okay, and now I know and that's, and that's difficult. I mean, that's a whole other, that's a whole other ballgame, but I think that's why we rely so on the serenity prayer. We say that we also have a new found trust, trust that we are being restored to sanity and I think for me, laughter is a sure sign of that. I don't know how it is in your Al-Anon meetings.
I know in our Al-Anon meetings, we laugh a lot. On this one particular, this literature meeting that I go to when we walk out of the parking lot, it's held in a church. I don't, I don't even remember what kind of church it is, but it's some sort of a church. But when you walk out of the parking lot, there's a big sign that says, go with peace and love and joy in your hearts. And every Thursday night as we leave our Al-Anon meeting, that's the little sign that we all, that we all read.
Well, I don't know what to do here, Paula. It's five after. I don't know, do you want me to race through step three? No. Okay, I think so too. So anyway, that's, that's really all that I have. It's short and sweet, but it's an hour and it's been a long night, so maybe I'll see some of you tomorrow and thanks for being here and be safe. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.