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Source: Kathy H – Twelve Steps of Al-Anon – Part 2 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kathy-h-twelve-steps-of-al-anon-part-2-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:58:26
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Thanks Peggy. Good morning everybody. I am still Kathy and I'm recovering one day at a time in the worldwide fellowship in the Al-Anon family groups, worldwide fellowship, the Al-Anon family groups. Before I begin I'd like to thank you one more time for your kind hospitality. When I got to my room yesterday there was a lovely basket and a big thanks to Teresa and Susie for putting that together. I said to Teresa this morning, you know what's really so nice about a gift basket is when it's really, it's truly a gift basket because she had in there not only fruit but little things that were home grown from St. Louis. I said to her I thought Bissinger, I always thought Bissinger Candies was home in Cincinnati but it's not, it's St. Louis and it was just a very thoughtful, thoughtful gift package and I thank all of you for that. I'd also like to thank all of you who do that, do all the work that's involved in putting on a workshop like this. My home group put on a 12 step workshop two years ago and so I know first hand how much organization and time it takes to do this and I'm really grateful and thank you and admire your service. Yesterday I left off and we were on step three. I only covered the first two steps and so this morning I will attempt to get through three through six before 10 o'clock. I think that I can do that. Step three is made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Our literature says some members shorten the first three steps as they shorten it to I can't, God can, I'll let him. Obviously if our past efforts have been futile and if we believe that a power can help us it makes sense to allow that power to do so. My mother has a prayer in her refrigerator that she has had on her refrigerator I would imagine for the last 20 years and it says reach up as high as you can and God will reach down the rest of the way. That has always been an attitude that I have found in Al-Anon, that idea that our willingness to recover, our willingness to allow God to work in our life only requires of us just that, that taking action, taking action to reach up and to just do the best we can one day at a time and to believe that all will be well. I tell a story sometimes when my husband was alive, somebody asked me last night about my husband and I just sometimes assume that everybody knows that story but that's ridiculous to assume that everybody does. When I was in the program for about, I was just really over three years, my husband had had a hobby of flying helicopters and this was a helicopter that he had built, it was an experimental aircraft and he used to take it up on the weekends primarily or in the afternoons as I said, he had this fox business going on selling furs and so one weekend he took it up and he crashed actually, the rotor dipped back into the engine and stopped the engine blades from going and he died. At the time I was, let's see, at the time I had these seven children, the oldest one was only 14 and so this step three has always been an important piece of my recovery over these last 20 years because I have always been aware that I could not do what it looked to me like had to be done by myself.
When my husband was alive, we decided one day to take the kids to this little water park over in Indiana and we didn't want to tell them that we were going to take them over there because they would, you know how kids are, they'd all argue about having to bring a friend and they'd want to bring three pillows and all their toys and we just didn't want to deal with that. So we decided that we would just surprise them and the night before I packed the car, at that time we had one of those old station wagons, I packed the car and used to be able to pull up the back section and stuff things in there so I stuffed in pillows and their swimsuits and we were all ready to go.
So the next morning when they woke up I said, you know, come on you guys, we're going to go on a trip.
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Well, none of them wanted to go. I can't go on a trip today, I was supposed to play baseball with a friend. I can't go on a trip today. I mean there were a million reasons why they couldn't go. And then of course they wanted to bring people with them and they wanted to know where they were going, they had to know where they were going before they got in the car. And finally I said to them, look, you will love it, just get in the car.
So I was able to round them all up, get in the car and Rick and I drove them over to this water park in Indiana and they had the time of their lives. It was great, they loved it. But why I talk about that when it comes to the third step is because I believe for me the third step is everything about just getting in the car. Just get in the car. That is the decision that I make every day. To get in the car and know that I don't have to drive it and it's already packed.
All I have to do is to trust the driver. And that's what I ask of my children. Trust me to get you where you want to go. And that's my relationship with the God of my understanding today. I don't know exactly where we're going. But I make a decision every day to get in the car and to believe that everything that I need for the journey, I've got. I've got. I'm not missing parts. I think as a result of working this program and really as a result of my life, I have come to believe in a God who is much bigger than I can imagine.
And a God who is much bigger than any of my problems. That's a gift of Al-Anon. And I believe it comes as a result of my willingness to trust the process, to trust this God of my understanding. And more importantly, or most importantly, or just as important, I suppose, is to trust you. Is to trust you. We don't give advice. And I have a huge problem with people in this program that give advice. But I'll tell you what we do, which I think is much more powerful than any advice that can be given.
Is that we share our experiences with one another. And we practice these principles in our lives most days. And that is a, that living example that you give me is more powerful than any advice you might be willing to throw my way. This step three has led me to believe in a God who can, who can bring good out of evil. Who can bring serenity out of great chaos. And who can bring a tremendous amount of healing out of deep and great woundedness.
And that's, you know, that's a tremendous payoff for those of us who are willing to give ourselves to this program. I have to make a decision. I have to make a decision every day. And a lot of times I have to make a decision more than once a day. Because I have a friend that always says, I have to go to meetings because I leak. That's why I have to make a decision more than once. Because I leak. I mean, I just can't, you know, I can't hold on to it.
I went to a meeting one time, though, this is just so, I just always take these left hand turns. I went to a meeting one time and it was very clear to me this woman that was coming to the meeting, it was her first meeting. And we have a beginner's meeting at our, at my home group. Well, we thought the best way to handle that was to have a beginner's meeting where we would talk about sponsorship and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it seems to have worked. And we have given temporary sponsor lists and the whole nine yards. And it really seems to help. Because some of these people in our home group were like, well, you know, I may or may not get a sponsor. And we're like, well. So we did this beginner's group. So this woman came in halfway through the meeting. And too late for the beginner's group. So I could see that she didn't know where she was going.
So I went and got her and I plunked her down next to me. And I would imagine she must have been in her late 70s. I'm guessing. So when the meeting was over, she said to me, I don't know if I'm in the right place. And I said, well, why do you say that? And she said, well, I'm here for my son. And he's, you know, he's 45. And I said, well, you know, I don't know if I'm in the right place. And she said, well, why do you say that?
And she said, well, I'm here for my son. And he's, you know, he's 45. And I said, well, you know, you're in the right place. We're all brought here for a lot of different reasons. But basically we all stay for ourselves. So it really doesn't matter why you think you're here. You're here for a reason. And she said to me, well, how long have you been coming to these meetings?
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And I said, I forget what it was at the time. But I think I said, well, I've been coming for about 20 years. And she looked at me and she said, is it that you just don't get it, honey? And I was going to say to her, no, it's that I leak. But I, when you're in your late 70s, that has a whole other different connotation. So I didn't, you know. So I have to make that decision every day. Okay. Turning our will and our lives over to God means that we put the outcome in God's hands.
We put the outcome in God's hands. That for me today is still the most powerful thing. I keep saying most powerful. There's just so much power in this program. That idea of taking action and letting go of the results. That idea of taking action, doing the best that you can with the information that you've got, doing something and not becoming attached to the results. That to me is difficult. But it's something that I know that I have to do.
I have this anonymous child who… It's formerly known as Michael. Anyway. Anyway. I have this anonymous child who… Now you have to remember, when Rick was killed, there were seven kids. The oldest one was just 14. Those little guys were two, four, and six. And they don't really… The six-year-old, who is now 26, he remembers. He said to me just the other day, because he's back home, he's like, you know, Mom, I can't believe those two little guys at the end.
They don't remember Dad at all. I can't imagine that. And I said, well, you know, you've got to remember. They were two and four. I mean, that was a long time. That was 20 years ago, almost. So that doesn't surprise me, that they wouldn't have that memory. But one of these little young guys, I don't know. You know, it's just I often say… I make my students… I teach this course in social justice, and I just make these goofy juniors read The Grapes of Wrath.
And it's difficult to do anymore, because they download the synopsis off the Internet. Whatever. I still make them read it as best I can. Which, of course, you can't make a kid read anything. But I keep plugging away. And whenever we read The Grapes of Wrath, and I'm talking to them about the Dust Bowl and the dust storms, and I bring in pictures, you know, those famous pictures by that wonderful photographer whose name is beyond me right now.
That's what this kid was like for me. I could see him coming on the horizon. You know what I'm saying? It was like a dust storm. Even when he was in like the 4th grade, 5th grade, I'd start to get calls from teachers, and it's like, you know, God, I don't want to have to do this again. And I would go to my meetings, and I would say, because we'd already gone through this with another anonymous child who was older.
I was like, you know, God, isn't it enough that, you know, wah, wah, wah, isn't it enough that, you know, I'm trying to do this alone, and isn't it enough that we already went through this whole rehab freaky juvenile court thing with one? Don't tell me I have to do this with another one. I just can't. I really can't. So I'd go to meetings, and I'd be like, I can't do this again. Everybody would say, one day at a time.
You don't have to do it today. One day at a time. And that helped. It helped. Keeping that focus on one day at a time. But eventually, this kid got in enough trouble that he had now been thrown out of the high school where I teach for the second time. And, I mean, everybody's bending over backwards for this kid, because they love him. They love him. He's a darling kid. I mean, the wrestling coach, who is as tough as nails.
Oh, my God, the wrestling coach. Oh, God, he's so scary. And he's allowing this kid of mine with these dyed gold dreadlocks to not only wrestle for him, because this kid's filled with anger and makes a great wrestler, but the umpires, or whatever they're called, the referees, won't let the kid wrestle because of these dreadlocks. And you can't, because that grease, you know, he would always wear this grease called dreaded or something like that, or I forget what it's called.
Some greasy stuff they'd have to put on his locks. They didn't want him on the mats, you know, because they have to be very careful when you're a wrestler with all that stuff, because, you know, those boys are sweating. Oh, it's just so gruesome. I would always say to the wrestling coach, how do we allow this in a Catholic high school? How can we allow this? I expect at halftime for them to pull up a cart filled with Christians Time for them to pull up a cart filled with Christians and they release the cage and then
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the lions come out. I mean, this is barbaric. I've always scored a lot of points with the wrestling coaches, believe me, you know. This is how I used to watch my kid wrestle. And I would sit next to this woman and say, is he hurt? She'd say, no, but I think he's going to get a, I think he's going to get carted because he almost broke the neck of the kid from Roger Bacon. But at any rate, oh my God, I'm going to cut to the quick here.
Everybody's been backwards for this kid. He's thrown out of school for the second time, I don't know where to go with him. So somebody said to me, talk to this woman who runs this alcohol program over at the VA hospital, she's great. So I go to her and she goes, ah, he's got to get out of town, he's got to get out of town. I mean, you keep throwing him back with his friends, he's never going to get sober, he's got to get out, you've got to get him out of town.
I know of a place in Montana, I'll give you the number, blah, blah, blah, and see what you can do. So I call this place in Montana, and there's just no way. I mean, I've got all these kids, I teach in this Catholic high school, there's just no way I can afford anything like this. So at Christmas of that year, this is in late November, and Christmas, my brothers and sisters and I exchange, we just exchange gifts, and we've got this little limit on the gifts.
I mean, it's supposed to be about 50 bucks. So my brother, whose wife is now dying of breast cancer, my young brother, his darling wife is dying of breast cancer, he's three little kids, he gets mine, I mean, you know, we never know who's got our name until Christmas Eve, and he's got my name. He comes up to me at Christmas Eve and he hands me this envelope and I think, oh, my poor brother, he didn't have time to get me a gift, you know, he's back and forth with chemo, it's probably a gift certificate, God love him.
I open up this little card, I don't know that I've ever told this story, I know you're taping it, but please, I hope you never repeat it, I open up this Christmas card and there's this little note my brother wrote me, and he said, Kathy, my wife and I have been thinking all the things that we wish we would have done and hadn't, and one of them was, we wish we had helped you out more, we wish we had helped you out more raising your kids, please take this money and get your anonymous son help.
And there was a check that covered the entire cost of this place out in Montana. So I went to my brother and I said, I can't take this, because I'll tell you what, this is like taking money to Las Vegas, I mean, there is no guarantee, and you got to know that, but this is a gamble, and if you have any expectations, you're setting yourself up. And he said, I don't even care about that stuff anymore, just do what you need to do.
Now when you're facing the death of a loved one, you know that very quickly priorities shake themselves out. So I put this kid on a plane, I did the best I could, I called this place, they told me what the deal was, I called a woman out in California who is in AA and runs a rehab for teenagers and I said to her, I don't know what to do, Montana is really far away from Ohio, this is what she said to me, well, why don't you flip a coin and remember that God's in charge.
And so I made a decision to trust the God of my understanding, I talked to my son and said, you know, what do you think? I don't know what this place is going to be like. And he said, you know, Mom, I don't either, but I know one thing, I need help, and I trust you, and I'll go. And so the weekend before, that kid, this little 15-year-old kid, I had to put on a plane to Montana, one of my nephews had gotten married downtown in this old church at Christmas time still, and when I went there, I'd never been in this church before, it's a historic church in downtown Cincinnati.
It is said that the bricks, the bricks of which the church is made were baked by the old German women in Cincinnati, I mean, it's an old, old church, and when I went down there for a wedding, I noticed in the back of the church, there was the statue of the Blessed Virgin holding, you know, her son after he'd been taken down from the cross. And Al-Anon is not allied with any sect or denomination, but in my faith tradition, it's a very moving image of the love a mother has for her son.
And when I had to put that kid, that weekend, when I knew that kid had to go on that plane, I remembered that figure, and I called the church, because it's in a very rough neighborhood in Cincinnati, and it's often locked. So I called them and said, you know, when are you open? And they said, well, we're open for, you know, noon mass, just between 12 and 1. So I went down there, and I sat way in the back of church, and I sat down in front of
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that statue. And I just, you know, in prayer and meditation, I just prayed. And I was as honest as I could be with the God of my understanding that I really was terrified to put my child on a plane and turn him over to a group of which I knew nothing. And as I prayed, and as I just sat there, knelt there, actually, I had an image of women from all over the world and from every century just walking together shoulder to shoulder.
And I was reminded one more time that I was not alone, that I was in a place that day in the presence of a loving God, and that I was kneeling before a statue that women like me had knelt before for years and years and years as they sent their sons off to World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and I was joining their ranks. Because alcoholism, as you know, in many ways resembles warfare.
It's chaotic, it takes its toll, it's confusing, it's bewildering, it's heartbreaking. It's just simply heartbreaking. And I left that place feeling, you know, just feeling this sense of serenity, this wonderful sense of serenity. My mother often says to me, why aren't you in a mental institution? I say, well, Mom, because I have this program, you know, I mean, I have this, I'm not alone, I don't do it alone.
My son came back from Montana six months later, and for him it was a good decision. It was just a place where he will tell you today, even though he chooses to drink today, he will say it saved his life. He will say it saved his life. I mean, he'll say, Mom, that saved my life. No matter what I'm doing today, that saved my life. A few months ago, I was driving down the street and I was listening to NPR, and some of these places would be investigated as being, you know, using corporal punishment, being too strict, and some were being sued, kids were being hurt.
And my ears perked up because I thought they were mentioning a place in Montana. I thought, oh, my God, oh, my God. My son liked it. But my boys always like incarceration. I mean, they just, they do. It's terrible, but they do. They like the regiment. I don't know. They do well there. They know how to do it. They're city kids. They get it. They know how to, they just know how to play the game. It served them well.
So I'm listening to it, and there's these women on there saying, and my son, we sent him there, and they removed him and put him in this isolation room. And this other woman saying, her son, they did this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Finally, they get this father, and they say, and your son is in one of those places. Are you worried about him? He said, oh, I'm terribly afraid. And they said, you are?
What's your fear? He said, I'm afraid they're going to send him home. And I thought, there's a very small percentage of NPR listeners who understand exactly what that father means, you know? I have a sponsor that always says to me when I call her about things particularly relating to my kids, almost always relating to my kids, she says to me, weep and pray, weep and pray. And sometimes that's the best that I can do.
I weep and I pray, and I just simply have to make that decision to place my children in the hands of a loving and compassionate God and to believe that no matter what happens, all will be well, all will be well. We can practice talking to God. Some members find that starting and ending the day with a serenity prayer is helpful. Others ask directly for God to take their will and their life for the day.
Yes. If we lack confidence, we can ask our higher power to provide it. You know, I have a friend, a problem can be handed over to our higher power by writing it down and putting it in a special place. Some people make a God box to hold their written requests or prayers. I happen to use this little God pocket. And instead of my children, although I do have a child in there, I have a couple of grandchildren who are in there because I am really powerless over, I'm powerless over these grandchildren.
They do not live, these couple that I'm talking about, they don't live near me. They live far away. They live in a very unstable situation and it breaks my heart. But I recognize that there is not, there isn't anything that I can do about that, except to continue my own recovery. It just makes me feel better to place them in that pocket and in the morning to know that I'm placing them as well as the other people that I place in the hands of a loving
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God. I'm a big candle lighter, I've always been a big candle lighter. When I go to churches throughout the country, you know, for different things, I always look for, make sure they have those little candles that you can light and I just light candles. For me, doing something concrete, visuals are helpful. They're just helpful. Just taking that action of lighting that candle, taking that action of putting that name in that God pocket, those small little things help me visualize the actual turning over things to God, to the God of my understanding.
Some of you know that I do this. I, at Christmas time, always, when I pack away that cribscene, I take a little piece of paper and I write down all the big issues that are on my mind for that day in January. In December, when I unpack that cribscene, I pull out that little piece of paper and it's miraculous. All those little issues that concern me in January have all, one way or another, resolved themselves.
And I've been doing that since 1988. It is a wonderful holiday reminder for me to know that God's presence and God's grace is always with me. I think a lot of this program has to do with passion and with patience. I have a very, very dear friend whose mother died not so long ago and she told me she had a very vivid, vivid dream of her mother. And in the dream, her mother said to her, from here, it all makes sense.
And she often talks about that and to tell you the truth, I don't know how that works, that mystery of life, but I just have to believe that in the long run, everything makes sense. I live today with, you know, I live today without answers and I think we all do. And that's just the practice of faith. The opposite of faith is anxiety. And you know, we just, you know, in this third step of making a decision, I think that's what we do.
We are opting for living with faith, one day at a time. I swim in the morning, but I've also started this biking regimen and this man was sharing that this elderly guy that he runs a marathon with. This guy's in his 70s and he said to him, how do you run 50 miles at your age? And the guy said, oh my God, I could never run 50 miles. I run one mile 50 times. I like that. Steps one, two and three, complete our preparation to begin taking action in our recovery with the steps that follow.
We know that we cannot control everything and everyone in our lives, that turning our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God is our hope for serenity and peace of mind. And that's pretty much what I have for the third step. Moving on, oh my gosh, the fourth step. What a great, you know, when I did a fourth step, that's when I knew I was really serious about this program. Step one, two and three taught us about the disease of alcoholism, that we were powerless over the disease and that a power greater than ourselves can return us to sanity if we so desire.
As in climbing a staircase, we are at the next step, a step for spiritual self-discovery. In nine simple words, step four challenges us to take a thorough look at ourselves, the positives as well as the negatives. I have a friend that lives on the Ohio River and two years ago or three years ago, we had a terrible, terrible flood in Cincinnati. And I called her and said, Judy, do you want me to come over and help you as the water receded?
And she said, Kathy, you've never lived on the river. You have no idea what this place looks like. It's filthy and I would be too embarrassed for you to come over and help me out. She said, I'm just ready now to go down to the basement and take an inventory. I want to see what's still intact and what's been destroyed. And when she said that, I thought, well, you know what, that is the inventory. That's exactly what happens.
The flood of alcoholism comes through our lives and a fourth step is really about taking stock of what is still in good order, what we still have, you know, the positive and what's been destroyed by the flood and what's been destroyed by the flood. And I've always liked that idea because I'll tell you the truth, there are some things that I do well and there are some things that I'm terrible at. One of my brothers thinks it's very, very funny when we all go on this big, huge family vacation to Cape Cod, which we only do about every five years, where the whole family goes.
He likes to take all the kids of his older sisters. There's three girls. So he likes to take all of our kids and when you add them all up, I think there's six and seven, there's 18 of them. And he does the survey with them. He has them all rank their mothers. Thank Their Mothers. You know, only a little brother would think this was a fun idea.
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And then he calls us together and then he gives us the results, you know. Yeah. Thank God I've already done a fourth and fifth step. So, I mean, it's not a threat to me at all because I know what's coming. And it always turns out the same way. I lose for the cooking. Who cares? I hate to cook, you know. My sister Karen always wins for the cooking. I lose on discipline. Well, that's a no-brainer. I have no discipline, you know.
I lose on housekeeping, which is kind of a little bit of a surprise. But I'll tell you where I win big. I win for fun. That's where I win, you know. I mean, hands down, I'm the fun mother. And you know what? That's all right with me because I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm lousy at, and it's okay. And that doesn't mean that I don't continue to try to be a better person. I mean, that's what, you know, for me the sixth and seventh step is.
But the fourth step is a very freeing step because for me, you know, we say we're only as sick as our secrets. The fourth step for me is an absolute necessary step if I'm really serious about my spiritual development. Before I got into recovery, I was always readily defined by other people. I was always willing to accept what people said about me and thought, oh, they're right, they're right. A fourth step allows me to make those distinctions, to be really clear about, you know, my strengths and to be clear about my weaknesses.
And I think that's very important as a parent because I have learned never to take what my children say to me personally. I just never take what they say to me personally. Either it's the truth and I know it, or it's not about me. It's not about me. I remember one time driving down the street and having one of my daughters who was at that horrible age, you know, that 13, 14, brutal age where they're so vicious, and she was going, and I was in one ear and out the other, and finally I said to her, you know, one day you're going to feel horrible about what you're saying, but you know what, don't worry about it because I'm not listening to you.
I mean, and really it's the truth. And these kids and their adult are like, Mom, we were so awful. And I'm like, no, you weren't. I mean, maybe you were, but I just have learned through this program and what you've taught me, I can't hold on to that stuff. This son that's moved back home with me, he said to me a month after he'd been in, you know, Mom, I was really a horrible kid. I was really a horrible kid.
I was like, you weren't that bad. And he goes, no, I really was horrible. I don't remember that he was horrible. He probably was, but I don't remember that. Because that's the gift, you know, that's what I hear in meetings all the time. Let go of that stuff, you know. We look at the past without staring at it. I can't take kids personally. And when I've done a fourth step, I don't have to. My sponsor and I work this, you know, we work very hard at my honesty about who I am.
I can't, you know, my kids don't come into that. And it's true for my students as well. I just said to a kid, it's something I say all the time. Yesterday, they're mad about having to come to school on a snow day. And they're really mad that half of the school didn't show up. So this kid comes in, slams his books down, blah, blah, blah. And I said to him, hey, I'm not her. I'm not her. He said, you're not who?
I said, whoever that woman is you're angry with, I'm not her. I say that all the time to high school kids. I'm not her. And I'm not. Okay. I was in the grocery store about a year ago, and I just happened to be in line with a guy from AA who was behind me. I guess it was closer to two years ago. And, you know, the National Enquirer is all, you know, in the checkout line. And so I was just kind of looking at the National Enquirer and putting my stuff on the conveyor belt or whatever, and all of a sudden I feel this tap, and I turn around, and this AA guy said, look.
And he pointed to this National Enquirer whose headline was, whose headline was, I dated a terrorist. He said, look, an Al-Anon story. But, you know, what's funny about that is because sometimes AAs, God love them, they don't understand that we aren't about them, we are about us. I mean, the focus is on us, and it has to be on us if we're going to recover. I spent 12 1⁄2 years asking the wrong questions.
I spent 12 1⁄2 years asking what was wrong with him.
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I never once thought about what was wrong with me. And that's where, you know, that's where recovery, particularly the spiritual recovery that's gained through doing an honest and fearless searching moral inventory, it's all about, it's got to be about me. It's about, you know, the imperfections I brought into that marriage. It was about the imperfections that I carried during that marriage. You know, it cannot be about somebody else.
You know, culturally and socially, for me as a woman, I have to be very careful about what I'm responsible for and what I'm not responsible for as a woman. As I get better and healthier, I'm in a much better place to protect myself against other situations. Now, my mother, who is really a big force in my life, I adore my mother. She's just a wonderful person. But she doesn't get the program very much, and that's okay.
She doesn't have to. But whenever I say something to her like, Mom, I'm not going to worry about that. That's not my problem, she will say, You better call a doctor. I think you need some hormone replacement therapy. I'm like, Mom, it's not menopause. It's recovery, for God's sake. Always she's like, Kathy, have you called that doctor? Because, you see, for her that's a very foreign thing to detach.
And we say detachment. It's not kind, it's not unkind. It's just not suffering somebody else's consequences. But in a lot of people's eyes, that's cold-hearted. That's why I keep coming back. I slip into that. The key to step four is that it be taken fearlessly, free from judgment. By looking at and accepting ourselves as we truly are, we can make decisions about who we choose to become. See, that to me is the greatest.
I have a choice today about who it is that I want to become. I didn't know that before recovery. I thought everything that I did and everything that I said I had to do and I had to say it, you know. I had to straighten him out. Oh, my God, to be free of that. To look at those four Ms I mentioned last night, that mothering and martyrdom and manipulation and managing. For me, boom, that was hitting the nail on the head.
You want to talk about weapons of mass destruction? I had an arsenal. And we say, you know, you can't. They destroy those. That arsenal of weapons that we use, that I use, they destroy love and respect in any relationship. I had to take a look at those. That satire, that smart aleck, you know, we were talking last night. I used to say it was true. My husband, God rest his soul, he supplied me with great material.
I mean, half my married life I'm making cracks about that guy. Half my married life, behind his back, I'm making fun of somebody that was just doing the best that he could. I had to take responsibility for that, you know. The expectations that I placed on him. You know, nothing makes me want to do a fourth step more than hanging out with people that haven't done a fourth step. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound like a, as my students say, the B word.
I don't mean to sound like that, but honest to God, I mean, whew, you want to talk about fueled by anger. You know, I don't live a life that has no anger in it, but truly for me, a fourth step, when I did a fourth and fifth step, I turned a corner somehow. And that revising my thinking was critical and stays critical because up until then, everything I fought, I became. Everything I fought, I ended up becoming.
And a fourth and fifth step puts an end to that. My sister-in-law, who I love dearly, she has eight kids. She used to live down the driveway from me on the family compound. We spent all of our days together. I mean, I had seven, she had eight. We used to lay out 15 pieces of bread and take peanut butter and whoosh down that end, dip it in jelly, whoosh, go to that. And all we would talk about was her brother.
I mean, what's wrong with him? I mean, our focus was always on him. It was a crazy way to live. And, you know, that had to change for me. I hang out with men and women today whose lives have been transformed by this program.
[00:40:02]
I sponsor three women whose kids have died. I sponsor a woman whose son was murdered a few years ago. They still have no idea who murdered this kid. She has taken that grief and she heads up a group in Cincinnati, a group of mothers mainly, who lost children to unsolved homicides. I mean, I look at a woman like that, that courage and that decision to take that kind of grief and channel it into a positive force, and I am in awe of the women that I sponsor.
I am in absolute awe of them. I have a very hard time with women who I know who belittle the women that they sponsor. I have a very hard time with that because I am in awe of the women that I sponsor. They are courageous women who give themselves to this program, and I have a deep respect for them. I sponsor a woman whose child died not even two years ago and whose husband this spring committed suicide.
She continues to be of service. She continues to show up at a lot of meetings. She continues to give herself to this program. I am just in awe of this woman that I sponsor. She just blows me away, blows me away. So that pride, that perfection that I always strive for, that being right and looking good, you know, today that fourth step that I can, you know, and I have done more than one, it just gives me a willingness.
It gives me a willingness to do what our literature says. In step four we have begun the journey to self-trust through self-knowledge. As we continue the journey through the steps, we gain trust in ourselves, our higher power in other people and in life. The path to recovery using the 12 steps, one step at a time, continues. Before taking the next step, congratulate yourself, call your sponsor, and share at your next home group meeting the excitement and relief you feel from doing your own personal fourth step.
There are all kinds of ways to do a fourth step, all kinds of ways. I mean, we've got literature that will guide you through it. We've got workshops that people put on. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on. For me, what I tell the women that I work with is just do it. I mean, just do it. We can use this. We can use Blueprint for Progress. You can use, you know, you can use from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
What's important, though, is that we're honest, that we're thorough. Just do it, you know, and it just doesn't have to be perfect the first time around. We just so know some people who remain in pain because the fear of not doing it right is greater today, I suppose, than the pain of not doing it at all. Step five, admit it to God, to ourselves, and another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
We sometimes hear in Al-Anon meetings that we are only as sick as our secrets. What goes on in alcoholic homes is often kept very private. Many of us have been taught not to air our dirty laundry in public. In step five, we begin to unburden ourselves of our secrets. Step five does not ask us to show our faults to the whole world, but to our own hearts, to the God of our understanding, and to a trusted friend.
Step five gives us permission to talk about things in a healthier manner. You know, when my husband was sent to Vietnam and I came back home to Cincinnati after four months of marriage, I called the parish priest that had married us and set up an appointment to talk to him. I was walking out the door and my mother said to me, I hope you're not going to tell him anything personal. That's how I was raised, you know, so that's just the way that it was.
Last Christmas I went on this workshop for school, and because so many of the students that I teach come from generationally, what we call generational poverty. They come from homes that for generations have been in poverty, and we did this wonderful workshop. This woman that gave it said that for the kids that we teach, they have a vocabulary that is limited. So when people who, you know, from the middle class and on up, when you get frustrated you have this huge, you have this reservoir of words to use to describe your feelings and what's going on with you, and you often can talk things out.
Kids from generational poverty have this many words to use, and when they run out of words, they start hitting, and I know that to be true. The reason that I bring that up is because I think it's important
[00:45:02]
What a wonderful place you provided for me because you gave me words that matched what I was feeling. Bewilderment, deep grief, I mean words like that, confused, you know, resentment. Well, I knew resentment, but I just, you know, I couldn't talk about what was going on for me in a healthy manner. You provided the vocabulary for me and that was really, really very important. I didn't have the language, but you gave me the language and you allowed me then to spill it out and to empty out a lot of that.
And that's what I found to be true in the fifth step. I never understood the exact nature of my wrongs. You know, that many of our, what we call our past errors were merely symptoms of an underlying problem or a weakness of character. I didn't see that, that for me alcoholism was, as I've often said, like Miracle-Gro. It took defects of character that were already present in me and they mushroomed out of control.
That wasn't someone else's fault. My sponsor said then and she still says today, for a lot of what's going on with me and my family, lay that at the feet of alcoholism. Lay that at the feet of alcoholism. This is a family disease and a lot of that stuff I brought into that marriage with me. I come from an Irish Catholic background, which does not in and of itself mean much, except that there are characteristics from that particular culture.
I have a friend that brought home from Ireland a gift and it's a quote from Yeats which says, Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy that was interrupted by temporary moments of joy. We can be a very tragic, dramatic people. We can be very funny, but we carry with us this deep sense of tragedy. When I pick my mother up, now that she's widowed, she and her friends, she runs with this gang of widows.
Really, it's like the Taliban of widows. They go on all these trips and when I will pick her up to go to the airport, invariably after she gets in the car, she looks at her house and she says, Gee, I hope my house doesn't burn down while I'm gone. And I think, where does that come from? I think that's being Irish. I do. My kids always accuse me of being cheap. I'm not cheap. I'm very, very frugal. My son from the one that just moved back in temporarily with me supposedly from Denver, he said to me the other night, because they keep my thermometer at 66, he yelled down last night from the third floor where he's staying, Hey Scrooge, where's the coal?
Come here. Oh, geez. Okay, so, you know, I do have this wrap-up hour at the end, which we're probably going to have to throw a lot of steps back there, so don't panic. I mean, we're all right, okay? Because I have no wrap-up. I mean, I've got nothing to wrap up. Okay. All right, then I'm going to tell this story, speaking about being Irish. My grandmother came over from Ireland, and I nursed my kids, most of my kids, and I can remember going over to visit her with this gang of kids, and I was trying to wean one of the little ones, and she said to me, Oh, so you're going to wean the little one?
And I said, Yes, I'm going to wean him. Well, she said, You know, in Ireland how we used to wean the babies. And I said, No, what did you do? And she said, We used to take our fingers and run it through the soot in the fireplace and draw a frightening picture at the end of our breast. It scared the little ones, and they didn't want to nurse anymore. And I think, You wonder why they drink? Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Anyway, when my father's only brother died, speaking of the Irish again, I know I don't have time to do this, but what the hell. I think I'm going to get stuck here anyway because of the weather, so we might have to carry it over to Sunday. My father had one brother and one sister, and they all died young. I mean, they all died very young. My Aunt Jane died in her 40s. She had seven children or eight children.
She died on the operating table.
[00:50:00]
Her veins collapsed. It was a terribly tragic thing. And my father's only brother had a heart attack at 48 and died. But my father's brother was a typical Irish. You know, 48, he lived with his mother. He wasn't married. But he was a member of the Hibernians, which is a big Irish organization all over the country, but it's got a big network in Cincinnati, a big organization in Cincinnati. And he had been president of it.
So at his funeral, the Hibernians, they did the whole wake. I mean, they planned the whole wake. They had a big group rosary and everything, and they arrived with their capes and their swords and their plumed hats, and it's a huge deal. And it was very impressive at the wake. So when I got there, I saw my father was standing at the casket. He opened casket. At that time, that was his last living relative, his brother, 48 years old.
And I went up to my dad, and I stood next to him, and there's my poor Uncle Murray and all these men in their capes and their plumed hats, and I said to my dad, Oh, my God, the Hibernians, they've done such a beautiful job with the wake. And my dad said, This is nothing. Tomorrow they're going to execute a Protestant at dawn. So, you know, when you're Irish, you always got that dark humor in there too, which I had to take a look at and share in my fourth and fifth step, you know.
Because my husband used to remark on that, and even though he was Irish, he must have come from a branch that had been diluted somehow because we were, we really, that's still my family today. We had a big family reunion, and one of the cousins did this family tree on the back of the parish hall, and she traced it as far back as we could get records in Ireland, and my brother, who was emceeing, had said, You know, if you look, and it was true, if you look at that family tree, there is not one divorce, there's not one divorce in my mother's entire side of her family.
Well, up until last year, when one of my anonymous kids broke the record. But I know we'll have it annulled anyway. So my brother says, You know, that tells me either we have incredible luck or a tremendous capacity for pain. Lay that at the feet of alcoholism. You know, Patty, you know, that's my sponsor, Patty, she mentions, I mean she just always says that, and I don't know if it's true for you, but what's true for me is I was always the hardest on myself.
And the fifth step allowed me great self-forgiveness, great self-forgiveness, which I believe is a huge, a huge piece of Al-Anon, is that I have learned to forgive myself, that I have come to believe that I am enough for today, that I do not have to do it perfectly. I just have to do it the best I can. We fear that our wrongs are worse than anyone else's and that we will be humiliated if we ever admit them.
If we can summon the courage to challenge these fears, we take a huge step towards personal freedom. That comes from our literature, you know. It's in Al-Anon that I connect, not with our strengths. It's in Al-Anon that I have always connected with my brokenness. What draws me to men and women in Al-Anon is our brokenness, not our perfection, not what we do, what we're so good at. It's really that, you know, as I said last night, that wisdom that comes from failure.
Because if I hadn't failed, I never would have come here. I just never would have come here. I need to watch that ego. I need to watch an ego that separates me from others. That's why for me, meetings, being on the phone, because I'll tell you, otherwise I will step out of the human family and that's not healthy for me. For me, Step 5 brought me back. It brought me back in. It brought me back into the human race.
It brought me back in touch with my humanity. It allowed me to love myself. It allowed me to forgive myself. It taught me how to teach others how to treat me. It taught me how to teach other people how to treat me. When I was standing waiting for my luggage last night, and I just had, you know, that curbside thing, but they do it inside now, there was a kid who was talking to his mother on his cell phone about when he was expected to get out of the airport.
[00:55:01]
I have no idea why she listened to what he had to say. You know, I was like amazed that the connection had not been broken. Because I know today, I don't have to listen to somebody talk to me that way. I don't have to do that. I have a choice to hang up on people or just simply say, I can't talk to you any longer. Boom. Step five taught me that, that I have to teach people, and I can teach people how to treat me.
After Rick died, and I always had big birthdays for my kids, I would bake, you know, I'd fix dinner, and I hate to cook, but I'd fix dinner and invite all my family members over. I would make a cake, and I would have a huge birthday for all my kids. Now, they didn't get much, but they had a big ritual. You know what I mean? Big ritual. On my birthday, zip. So I said to this friend of mine, those brats, they haven't given me anything for my birthday.
And she said, you know, Kathy, maybe they don't know to do that. I mean, Rick's dead. Maybe they don't know to do that. So I thought, you know, maybe they don't know. So I sat them all down at the dining room table a week after my birthday, and I said, you have to give me something for my birthday. I mean, you can't ignore my birthday. You've got to either make a card or buy a card. I don't even care about a gift.
But you've got to give me something for my birthday. You can't not do that. That's wrong. And that was the last time. And that's the truth. I mean, now every year, by God, they send a little card or years they've made cards, and that's it. Sometimes I just learned I have to teach people how to treat me because sometimes they don't know. They don't know. And I always thought it was noble to accept unacceptable behavior.
I always thought somehow that made me this really gracious woman. Oh, walk on me. That's okay. I'm big enough. I'm big enough. Hit me again. I can take it. Well, that's crazy. That's very sick thinking. I've learned from you. So the other thing that the fifth step helped me do was really to let go of the pain. I mean, you know, it says in our literature in one of these books, forgiveness is not forgetting.
It's letting go of the pain. And that's what, for me, that fifth step did. It taught me because once I could admit to God, to myself, and to another human being, the exact natures of my wrongs, it allowed me to let go of the pain that I was carrying. So that's, you know, that's boom. That's the fifth step. I've just really kind of – when we complete the fifth step, we have accomplished a difficult task and learned more about ourselves and our actions.
Some of us feel great relief as we unburden ourselves. We discover that we are not alone in our human frailties and we are not the worst person in the world, as we might have believed. Whether it brings great relief or a small beginning of acceptance, step five brings us closer to our higher power and helps us to learn to trust both God and other people on our spiritual journey. Why don't we – you know, why don't we – do you want to stop for a little bit now?
Is that okay? Want me to charge through step six or just let it go? Okay, why don't we do that and then I'll pick it up. Thank you very much. Thank you.