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Source: Kathy H – Twelve Steps of Al-Anon – Part 3 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kathy-h-twelve-steps-of-al-anon-part-3-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:45:40
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My older kids have been in Alateen. Some of them not for long, but the top four got, you know, had been to Alateen meetings. All my kids have been to AA meetings, open AA meetings. They love open AA meetings. A lot of them went with friends who were court ordered into AA. None of my kids have ever had trouble going to AA meetings. They kind of like it as a matter of fact. But she said to me, you know what, you know what my husband said to me last night?
And I said no. And she said, he said to me, honey, when you drink, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. She said, I know that. I know that phrase. I think I'm going to have to quit. What should I do? Should I just call AA, do you know anybody? She's out of town. And so I said, well, you know, I know, you can do it either way. You can call AA of that town or, you know, I can get you a number. So she said, why don't you get me a number?
So I called a friend of mine out in Nevada and he called me back with a telephone number, a cell phone number, an office number, and a fax number for a guy in her city. She lives in a major Midwestern town. And I gave it to her and she called that night. And that little, that daughter, who really, I was never, I mean we just, the focus was never on her. She just had two years in September. In Alcoholics Anonymous.
So I am so grateful to tell you the truth. I mean, that just, you know, it just happens. It was such a lesson for me that, you know, this trying to figure out who it might be. And whenever any of my kids would say, mom, who do you think is alcoholic of the kids? They love that game. Whoever asked me, I would always say, you know, you. Me? I'd say, yeah, really, you're the only one that I think might be alcoholic.
Because, you know, you just don't know. You just simply don't know. This one kid of mine that's been into a lot of trouble, he's just a great kid. He's just a great kid. And he drinks today. Is he an alcoholic? I have no idea. He's going to have to figure that out. I have a sponsor that always says, if you are your children's higher power, they'll never find their higher power on their own. And I remember that.
And my sponsor also says to me, let God sort that out. So I don't worry much about my adult kids, to tell you the truth. Because today, I have six out of seven kids who drink. I have no idea which ones are social drinkers, which ones may, it may mushroom again into a problem for them. But it's really none of my business. My business is my own recovery. That's what is my business. And that's what I have to keep the focus on.
Step six helps me with that. Step six helps me to, letting go does not mean becoming passive or not continuing to learn and grow in the program. Letting go means giving up the struggle of our self-will and turning it over to God. And that's what I have tried to do. My kids, you know, growing up on a horse, not growing up, spending a great deal of my married life on a horse farm. My father-in-law used to say, horses are the dumbest animals that God created.
If it weren't for horse flies, they would starve to death. The horse flies, biting them just keeps them moving on, looking for new grass. I've always thought of my children as horse flies. Because they have kept me on my knees. They have kept me in a place of real humility. And they have really, I hate to say forced me, but they have presented me with an opportunity to continue to stay on a spiritual road and seek a spiritual solution to my problems.
There are times, my brothers and sisters and I go to New York City together. And we've done it for years. We just take a weekend in December, and it's usually the weekend that's closest to Christmas, and the six of us go to New York City. We don't take spouses, companions, kids, nobody. My mother doesn't even go, nor does she want to. But the six of us go, and we have a great time. So this year we went, and we decided to do something differently.
We decided instead of, you know, staying up in Midtown, and we long ago dropped going to see a show because it just, it restricts us too much. We just go to museums, and we just hang out. We have so much fun. This year we decided to stay down in Greenwich Village and just, you know, go real casual in corduroy jeans, and that's what we did. We had a great time. But for some reason, one of my sisters, I don't know why, she just bugged me.
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And I just wanted to, I just really, I just had this urge just to hit her in the back of the head. Did you ever, I mean, I just got to a place where everything she said, I wanted to go, I just, I wanted to hit her. And I thought, oh my God, now this is going to ruin my weekend. What is with me? So I took myself away, and I said, you know, God, I'm powerless over this urge just to knock her down in the street.
And so instead of doing what I usually do, which is try to talk myself out of it, you shouldn't feel that way, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you shouldn't. I'm just going to tell you right now, I'm powerless over this aggravation. I don't know why it's here, but I just wish that you'd remove it, because I don't want it to taint this wonderful weekend that I have.
In the meantime, I'm going to act as if. But I just, I just don't know how to get rid of this thing, and I don't want to spend the whole weekend talking to myself, you know, shaming myself. And then I got back to the group, and then I acted as though she wasn't bugging me, and you know what, in a couple hours, she didn't bug me anymore. That to me is how I practice in a real way, that sixth step. Just understanding that there's some things I just can't get rid of, and being willing and to humbly ask God, you know, to get rid of them, but to put myself in a place of readiness for that to happen, to get myself in a place of readiness to relieve myself of that.
It had nothing to do with my sister, to tell you the truth. I adore my sister. But I just was, I don't know. She just said something or did something, just struck me the wrong way, and I got into this stupid little snit. I don't know how else to say it, you know. I think for me, turning it over to God also has to do with getting to meetings, because I go to meetings with men and women, to tell you the truth, that I just, that are remarkable.
I go to meetings with men and women who I've said buried their children. I go to meetings with men and women who don't know where their children are, who have missing kids, and yet they show up. And they make me willing, and they make me ready, because they continue to be there and to live lives of grace and compassion and of great hope. And they are a tremendous witness to me of what recovery looks like, to tell you the truth.
I have four sisters in law in AA who have marvelous recovery and who are still, despite the death of my husband almost 20 years ago, who I still count as being my best friends. They're tireless in their service work. They are just absolutely tremendous. You have what I want, and being with you makes me, I believe, ready. Now that we have acknowledged our defects, step six asks us to be ready to have God remove them.
We've learned that we can't do it alone. We need friends, we need our group, phone mates, sponsors, and most of all, a power greater than ourselves. We reach this point through preparation, through action, and a promise for solutions. We are now humbly ready to consider step seven. Step seven, as you know, is we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. On the surface, step seven appears fairly simple.
We have identified and examined our shortcomings in previous steps. We are ready to have them removed. Now we must humbly ask that God remove them. I came to a point in my marriage where I had to ask my husband to leave. I don't tell that story very often simply because there's just not time. But I was at a point in my recovery, and I just think I'd been in the program for two years, and one of my sons had shot a neighbor's horse, racehorse, which is a serious offense.
He didn't kill it. He just, I don't know, he just had a BB gun, he was screwing around, and to this day, he maintains that he didn't, and he took a fall for one of the cousins, which may be true. But nonetheless, the guy was coming for my kid, and it's sometimes it just, you know, we say we don't create a crisis, and we don't try to create them, nor do we avoid them if they are a natural consequence of things.
And it just occurred to me at that point that something different had to be done, and one day right after this incident of the shooting of the racehorse, I had my youngest one who couldn't have been more than a year on my hip, and my husband said to me, what are you going to do, what are you going to ask my mother for for Christmas? And I had no idea that these words were going to come out of my mouth, but I said to him,
[00:10:06]
well, I think I'm going to, you know, she usually gives you a little cash gift, I think I'm going to take my cash gift, and I'm going to see a lawyer. And I tell you the truth, I was as stunned as he was. It just, I mean, you talk about, you know, God doing for you what you can't do for yourself, it just came out of my mouth, and he was so stunned. It wasn't the first time that I had said something like that, but in years past it was always, oh, I can't live this way, and I'm not a professional, and I, you know, it was just always motivated by fear and anger and rage, and this day it was just totally different.
It came out of such a place of faith and humility. And I said to him, I just can't raise my kids like this anymore. It's got nothing to do with you. It's just about me. I can't raise my kids in an atmosphere of fear and tension and feel good about being a woman and a mother. I just can't do it anymore. And so I'm going to talk to a lawyer. And I wasn't mad at him. I wasn't, there wasn't a battle, it's just where I was.
And he's like, I'll go to a meeting, I'll, and I was like, you know, it doesn't even matter, and it really didn't. It just, because I got to a place in my program where I really knew it was about me. It was about choices that I was going to make in my life about the kind of woman that I really believed that God created me to be and challenged me to be, called me to be, and I couldn't raise my kids like that anymore.
I couldn't live like that and pretend like they weren't afraid. I just, you know, I just simply couldn't do it. And step seven for me, you know, that just humbly asking God to remove those things that stand in, those character defects that stood in my way and looking good and how it would look were gone. And he said, you know I'm going to have to fight for the kids. You know I'm going to have to do that.
And I knew that my husband had access to money and to power that I had no access to. And it didn't bother me at all because I knew that God was, you know, I believe that God is always on our side, I do, in our woundedness and in our brokenness, that God always stands with the powerless of the world. I believe it firmly and I knew that no matter what, even if he went to court and even if he took all seven of those little guys away, it was still going to be okay.
There are moments when that grace of God is just so firm. And so that's exactly what I did, you know. I just went ahead and I did the, I just took the action. I just took the action and I talked to the lawyer and I found out what my rights were and I found out how it would look and just taking the action made me feel better. Because we talked about being victimized in this program and I think for me, the greatest solution, the greatest thing, what's the word that I want, my greatest action to protect myself from becoming a victim is just to take some action, is to take some action.
So what happened as a result of that was that, you know, he did get, I mean he started to go to AA and, you know, I still had my, all my things out there that, all my options and he just asked me if I wouldn't act on him immediately. And, you know, he wanted to do some marriage counseling and I was, you know, I was, I didn't have an agenda, I just felt like I needed to say, I just can't go on like this anymore.
And to tell you the truth, it's pretty much where we were, you know, when he died. Nothing really had been resolved, I hadn't, you know, moved on it as of yet, but things changed in that house. And they changed in that house because I no longer went around feeling like I was victimized. You know, I had in a very real way begun to take back my dignity as a woman, that's all, just by standing up for myself.
And that's what, there were some of the promises that are promised to us in Al-Anon is that our dignity as human beings are restored. And it's not restored at somebody else's expense either. And that's an important thing for me. It's not restored at somebody else's expense. I said to a woman years ago who was seeking revenge, you know, living well is the best revenge. I mean, if you want to get revenge, then recover and live well.
And then what happens is you won't find it necessary anymore. is You Won't Find It Necessary Anymore to Get Revenge, Because You'll Be So Grateful
[00:15:02]
for Where You Are. For me, these are all pieces of Step 7. There is no inoculation for the pain of alcoholism. I've seen several of my kids appear before me in a court of law in handcuffs and shackles, and it is a painful place to be. It is also a place of great humility, because I know that all I can do is ask the God of my understanding to remove any defect that might stand in the way of my children's consequences, and it's not always an easy place to be.
A few days after my husband was buried, my youngest son drowned, and he didn't die, but he did literally, I guess, drowned in the pool that was on this family compound. I happened to be there. I mean, I was close by with a friend that had come to console me. Her son was watching my three little boys swim in the pool, and all of a sudden, I heard one of the kids yell out, Mom, you know, Baby Anonymous is drowning.
So I was like, what? Now I'm a lifeguard. I mean, I really, that's how I worked my way through college, teaching swimming and lifeguarding, I leapt over, I mean, I vaulted. My sons still talk about, remember the day Mom vaulted over that, I vaulted over that chain link fence, and I scooped up this child who was now, you know, very close to this color blue, and I remember standing there thinking, they're all going to die, one by one, they're all going to die, because I'm never going to be able to keep them alive alone.
Well, anyway, finally, this 14, it was one of these kids said, the lifeguard, the young boy who was supposed to be lifeguarding said, Miss Eakin, shouldn't you do CPR? And I was like, oh, yeah. I was so taken with the color, you know, it was like. So, you know, I threw him over my shoulder, and the fountain of water came out, and meanwhile my friend had called 911, you could hear the ambulance coming down the driveway, and, you know, they had paramedics came, and he was now, you know, breathing, but still out of it, and I was just sure, convinced all the way over to Children's Hospital, as I held this child on my chest, and, you know, they had oxygen on him, I just was sure that he was gone, and I have never in my life felt such a feeling of total helplessness and powerlessness.
But through it all, I just knew that God would have to do for me what I was never going to be able to do for myself. That it was only through God's, the grace of God, that I was going to be able to raise these seven, possibly six children alone. And I have never, I mean, that, I have never completely lost that feeling that I felt as I sat by myself outside that room in Children's Hospital when they were working on that little two-year-old kid, who is fine today.
He's kind of an airhead, but he's a good, he's a good, good kid. That loving with a light hand, it's for me only a loving with a light grasp, we call that. It's a direct result of chapter, not chapter seven, of step seven. Oh, we're in such good shape here. On Christmas Day, I'm not here. On Christmas Day of this year, my kids and I, the first Christmas my husband died, we had this wonderful, I mean, I just thought, you know what, I can stay here and on Christmas Day and feel sorry for myself because, you know, I'm here alone, I don't have a husband, I'm left with all these rotten kids, or I can take some action.
So I decided what I would do is I would just start fixing breakfast and I'd call everybody in the family, I mean, most of my husband's family lived right there in the compound, I'd call my own family, and I would just invite everybody over for Christmas breakfast. And then that way I'd have something to do. And not only would it take my mind off this first Christmas alone, I could also be of service.
So that's what I did. And what has happened as a result of that is that over the years, my kids and I do this every Christmas. We have now this huge Christmas breakfast for all my family and all my husband's family, my late husband's family, and we're busy. I mean, on Christmas Eve, my girls and I mainly, of course, the boys are, you know, I can't chop an onion or whatever they do, whatever. I mean, we got it down to a science, you know, we make all these breakfast, blah, blah, blah, and we stay up until 1.30 in the morning and then on Christmas, you know, we usually go to Christmas Eve mass and we got, you know, I hate to say we got that out of the way, but we got that out of the way, and then we, you know, Christmas Day, you know,
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we got the breakfast thing going and the isolated son comes in and he and his wife join us and we exchange gifts. And we had a great Christmas Day, but we were worn out this Christmas morning. I have a son who is, he's just got a complicated situation. But he lives far away, lives down in the south, and he has two children. And of course, he has two children within 10 months and so they're two little babies.
And he was not coming home for Christmas. And we knew that. And I was sorry about that because this is a son that I love and his one little baby I've never even laid eyes on. And she was almost a year. I've never even seen her. I had to speak in Atlanta this summer and I thought that I might get to see her, but you know how it is. You know in your heart that it probably or may not work out. So I went down there hoping that I could see these two little kids knowing because of this chaotic situation in which they live, I might not.
And I didn't. And that was all right because I know that going in. Didn't have any expectations. Expectations are the seeds of resentment. That's what you've taught me. So I've never seen this one little baby. That's okay. I guess it's okay. It has to be all right. So Christmas Day, we're all exhausted. Everybody's left. And I'm thinking, whew, now I can relax. The phone rings. It's my son. And you know how you know when your kids are in deep, deep trouble.
I could tell it from his voice. And he said, I'm coming home. I was like, you're coming home? He said, yeah. I'm in the truck. I got the two babies in the pack. We got all of our things in a garbage bag. I'm coming home. I said, where are you? He said, I don't know. I'm in Arkansas. And I said, well, do you know how to get home from Arkansas? He goes, no, I don't even know where I am. So I said, well, let me MapQuest this.
God love it. So I'm like, what? I mean, you know, whatever. You just never know what's going to happen. So I'm MapQuesting it. Well, I used to teach geography years and years ago. So I MapQuest, you know, Mountain View AK. And I hit Enter, and it says 88 hours. And I'm like, 88 hours to drive from Arkansas to Ohio? Where the hell is he in the Ozarks? I mean, 88 hours? Then I realized I had put in Mountain View, Alaska.
So it's like, 88 hours? It'll be Easter by the time he gets here. So I said, OK, this is the way I think you need to do it. And I gave the phone over to another son who was home. And he got on. And I'll tell you about my kids. You know how they say about alcoholism? It's like that mobile. You know, a lot of recovery places do that. They have a mobile. And they say, if one person has alcoholism, and they grab that person, and they yank it, and everybody else, you know, it's just what happens.
It's just what happens. Because this kid calls, and he's in trouble because of the chaotic situation that he lives in, which is a result of the disease, however you want to cut it. And all my kids are, it's like they're all called into action. All of a sudden, my girl's like, I can't go home. I'm like, you gotta go home. No, I can't go home. It's my brother. I said, you gotta go home. I mean, your brother may get to Lexington, change his mind, and turn around and go back.
I'm telling you, expectations are the seed of resentment. If you want to put yourself in that situation, you can do it. But to me, step seven, humbly asking God, it's just always understanding that our efforts to change things are to no avail. The situation, the kids. I have to recover for myself. So to make a long story short, I sent the one back who was unwilling, the other one really just overrode my decision and called work.
She's out of town, too, and just told her there was a family emergency. And you know that at quarter of four in the morning, and Cincinnati, I mean, we had 15 inches of snow. So it's a mess. At quarter of four in the morning, here comes this little truck. And there are four of us looking out the window. And out of the truck gets this kid, two babies. One in each arm. And one of the boys went out and grabbed the garbage bag of clothes.
And they came in. And we'd set up a little room with a crib and a pack and play and a bed. And we had the heater going. And those kids came in, and my son. And then basically, they slept and ate for four days. And that's just what they needed to do.
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They just needed a peaceful place for four days. And then he went back. And you'll know it if you've seen it. It's so hard to see kids who you know are living in chaos. It's just so hard, not only to see them, but then to say goodbye to them when you know they're going back into a place of great chaos and confusion and violence. And the only thing that I know to do to keep my serenity is to just truly believe in a God who is bigger than me.
Humility means that I know my place in the universe. And that's why, for me, that six and seven are very, very important, because God works in very, very mysterious ways. And I have to believe that. And I have to believe that God has put people in my life who lead me on a spiritual path. And I have to believe that those people are in the lives of my children as well. I just simply have to believe that.
I don't know what else to say. Speaking of humility, I have a friend that has a friend who lives in a monastery. And he says to this guy, what do you do in a monastery all day? And his friend, the monk, says, you know what? We fall down, we get up, we fall down, we get up, we fall down, we get up. And that's the truth for all of us. That's the truth for all of us. I said to this kid when he was home, what I caution people doesn't work, but right out of my mouth as he's bathing these two children, who are now, as of today, he's got two one-year-olds, because they're so close together.
So he's bathing them, and they're slipping and sliding. And they're just the cutest little things you've ever seen. God knows they're God's innocent children. I said to this kid, you know, you ought to get back into AAA. And he said, what? What are you saying, that I'm an alcoholic? I said, I don't know what you are, but it looks to me like you need a program for living. And I said to my home group, you know, I don't know.
I think I just let it go. I think you're allowed to say that if you just don't have any expectations that you actually will. Can't you just say it and let it go? Aye, aye, aye. At that same home group meeting, there was a woman who spent her Christmas vacation trying to get custody of her grandchildren. And I said to her, oh my god, I spent my whole Christmas break afraid I was going to get custody of my own.
Oh, shit. Oh, sorry. Rewind, rewind, rewind. Anyway. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. It's tough. It's just tough. Oh, my golly. OK. Eight, nine. I should be all right. So humility. Yeah. So I think that idea of falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up. You know, I just do the best that I can. I have never said to a kid of mine, I think you should. I've never said that. But you know what? Two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, came right out of my mouth.
It just seemed so clear to me. And there it was. I have to let that go. I mean, that particular child has been in a very, very good place in his life. And now he's in a really, a place of great pain and frustration. And I just have to believe that somewhere along the line, you know, he's not dumb. The seeds have been planted. But I won't be the one that gets him where he needs to go if he should decide to go.
I know that. And thank god. Thank god that won't be me. We say, it's in here, that recovery is not a journey. I mean, recovery is a journey, not a destination. And I know that. And I know that for me, part of that recovery, part of that journey means just being there for kids. Just showing up. I mean, just showing up. As I say, this woman in AA was very, very helpful for me in that idea of you just have to parent your kids.
You've got to show up for them. And that's what I've done. I've got some who are wired differently. I don't know if they're alcoholic or not. But I know one thing. They are wired differently. And I have to be willing to show up in court with them, as I have done. I have gone through when they've been placed in adolescent units. I've had to go to the parent meetings. And I do so. I'm not, of course, so crazy about doing that.
But I do it because that's what you told me to do. You've told me the importance of showing up and parenting my kids, of going to Al-Anon meetings,
[00:30:02]
of taking advantage of Al-Anon conventions, of, you know, going to retreats, some of which are sponsored by groups, some of which are not. I have to pay attention to my spiritual life. It's never what happens to me that's important. It is what I do with what happens to me that's important because we all have different stories. And quite frankly, most people in my life don't really care if I'm in Al-Anon or not.
They care about my behavior. They care about how I live my life. And that's really, that is what is important for me, the choices that I make. When I was on the sabbatical from January through the beginning of June of last year, I hooked into a meeting out in California, in Central California, and it was a great little meeting. I was amazed how wonderful day meetings are. Because I work, I go to meetings at night, you know, and oftentimes I look around the table and we're all like falling asleep.
My God, 10 o'clock in the morning, these women were like wide awake. It was a whole different way of recovering. Anyhow, they were great. But they didn't have a designated beginner's meeting. But one of the women, they would just kind of, if there was a newcomer, someone would always volunteer to talk, you know, give it, you know, Al-Anon in 70 seconds or a really short little five-minute pitch. And as we were going around the room one day, this one member said to the newcomer, you know, don't be put off by our laughter.
There is great grief in this room. But we have just found another way to live today. And I was so grateful that she said that because sometimes I think it's easy to forget that we live with great grief in our lives. I mean, that I call it woundedness or brokenness. We live with that. But there is a way that this program allows us to spin that into gold by sharing it with one another so that we don't have to walk through those painful places or those painful moments in our lives alone.
And there's great power in that. There's great humility in that. And there's great power in that as well. Because we, you know, we are there for one another. I have never, sometimes people will say to me, well, oh my God, how did you get through that? Well, I've never had to go through it alone. I have this wonderful network of men and women, not only in my city, but throughout the country that I can call on.
Women that I've never laid eyes on. I've been talking to Jeanne for a long, long time. I've never even met Jeanne until last night and never laid eyes on her. You know, there are people here, you know, Lee and Rose and Mary and that I've, you know, that I've met maybe a while ago, but still are a network of women that I consider to be, you know, a part of my program. That humility really comes out of this seventh step, I believe.
You are the ones that taught me, too. You know, you don't act your way, you have to act your way into new thinking. I've never been able to think my way into new acting, ever. I just have to act my way into it. And I'll tell you, when I, the way that I sponsor is generally, as I've said, not with advice, but with questions. Were you the woman? Were you the woman today that you wanted to be? No. Well, what would she have looked like?
Well, I think she would have done this or I think she would have said that. Well, you know what, then the next time say that or act that way. I mean, for me, I've heard it over and over and over again. We act our way into new thinking. We just have to take the, we just have to, you know, we got to do something differently. And then, you know, who do you want to be? I have to be willing to act like that woman.
Our willingness to take action for our own recovery combined with our willingness to let God remove traits that no longer serve us gives us spiritual muscles to continue our spiritual growth. I have a friend that says, my character defects are always just overused assets. We are learning how to surrender. As we give up each shortcoming, we experience change in ourselves and we know we are not alone.
We know we can rely on a power greater than ourselves to be with us in facing life's challenges. That's pretty cool. Seven. Step eight. In step eight, we are given a new task to perform in specific direction for approaching that recovery work needed. Our specific assignment is to make a list of persons we have harmed.
[00:35:00]
The second part of step eight challenges us to become willing to make amends. Many Al-Anon members having completed their fourth steps already have a list of persons they have harmed. Looking at our fourth step inventory provides us with a base to build on. You know, how it worked for me then and how it continues to work for me with the sponsor's help is to, you know, I think for me there was always a, you know, I either wanted to make amends to everybody or you go from that extreme or to thinking really do I need to make amends to anybody?
This one woman that's new in our group says, I don't think it's fair that we should have to make amends to the alcoholic. We were just trying to help them. Well, you just keep coming back. You know, my kids, I don't think, were on my list to tell you the truth and yet I went to a meeting early on in my recovery and this woman, it was a big meeting, we all met at little tables just like this, so you really were at a big meeting but you were at a smaller meeting of eight.
And this woman that was sitting across from me said, you know, when we were growing up, it was clear that our father was a drunk and we knew that. And so we didn't really pay much attention to what he said or what he did because we thought, pfft, dad's drunk. But my mother, she was awful. She was just always angry and raging and spiteful and out of control. She's the one that caused great damage in our house.
And I thought, ew, ew, and then I knew, of course, that I had to make amends to my kids because the disease of alcoholism happened to all of us. When it came to my home, it did not just come from my husband, it came for all of us. And even though I had great motives in raising my kids, I always tried to protect my kids. The fact of the matter is, I was emotionally absent from my children because I was always living in the past, nursing wounds and hurts or I was focused on the future and all the tragedy that that was going to bring.
And so I was never present to my kids. Physically, I was, but God knows, emotionally, I certainly was, I wasn't at all. When I was home, I spent a lot of time on the phone with friends or with his family, you know, talking about him, always trying to figure him out, giving reports on what he was doing next. I was not reading books to my children. I tell you, I really wasn't. I was somewhere else. And so my kids had to be on my list.
And you are the ones that taught me that the most powerful amends I can make, and it's still for today, continue to make to my kids, is to give them a healthy parent. It's the most powerful amends I can make, thank you, is to give them a healthy parent and to concentrate on my own recovery. You don't know how badly I want to drive down to the south and fix that kid. And I'll be honest with you, it wouldn't take me seven days.
It wouldn't, it wouldn't take me seven days, especially if I'm drinking my coffee. I could do it in six, but I know I can't. I know that I can't do that. I just simply know that it would not be, it would not be a healthy thing to do. It simply would not be a healthy thing to do. Not for me, certainly not for him. Because in doing that, we deny our children their journey. We deny them their journey.
And I know this, no matter how rotten, oh, no matter how rotten things can be, it's one of my favorite little quotes in here from Agatha Christie. I stuck a page in it. If anybody was missing this page, it's because I stuck it in this book last night, August 25th. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable. But through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
It's from the August 25th Courage Change book. I love, it's Agatha Christie. I love it. I love it. I know that. And I know that despite what I've had to go through today, I know that living, just being alive is a grand thing. I would not want to take that away from my kids. And I got that. I got that attitude from everything that I have walked through with you and with the God in my understanding.
[00:40:01]
And I can't deny that to my children. I just simply can't deny that to my children. And that's why it's important for me to work always with a sponsor. And I have a sponsor today that I had from the get-go. I have a sponsor that knew me all through my marriage, knew me through, you know, has walked me through, you know, being alone, raising these kids. It's been a marvelous thing. But I know too that when, on that list, I had to make amends to my husband.
I had done great, really great, horrible, all kinds of damage to my husband when I look back on it. And it's becoming clearer and clearer to me as I get better and better, really how rotten I was to the guy, how rotten I was to the guy. I've had to go to that Spring Grove Cemetery and sit there and say, jeez, and now this, and now this has come to light, always making him responsible for my happiness, always making him out to be the boogie guy, setting it up, really setting it up.
I set up that line of division that I talked about last night, me and the kids and him. He was the designated enemy. And I made sure everybody knew that too, made sure that everybody knew who was wearing the white hat in the family. Awful thing to do to a human being. It's just an awful thing. And I had to be willing to make amends to that. And yet, step eight provides us with an opportunity to learn the differences between what is and what is not our responsibility and to take a more realistic look at the effects of our actions.
You know, before Al-Anon, I took responsibility for my husband's emotional and spiritual health. I took responsibility for his relationship with his kids. And I even took responsibility for his relationship with his friends and families. And you told me that I simply had to detach, that it was none of my business. And as I said earlier today, you've taught me that detachment is neither kind nor unkind.
It's just getting out of somebody else's way. That's for sure. And I have had to do that. I have had to go to court with kids and to sit back and absolutely almost look at it as though I were in a movie between the judge and my child and not get into it, and not get into it. I've had two sons that were thrown out of the high school where I taught. And the second time it happened with the second kid, both were given chances.
But the second time it happened, I had to go out and sit on the steps of the school and remind myself that I had not been thrown out of high school. I did. I really had to say, Kathy, you were not thrown out of high school. You went to high school. You loved it. You had a great time. It was just four great years. They weren't the greatest years of my life. I think every year I live is the greatest year of my life.
Really, since I've been in the program, I think every year's the greatest year of my life. They were really good years. I was not thrown out of high school. But I had to really go outside, sit down on the steps, and say that to myself. And as my sponsor says, let God sort that out. Step eight continues to keep the focus on me. When we started this literature meeting that I talked about, which is one of the meetings I go to, we used the book, Alan, on how it works.
And we all started out. And in the early pages, it's all about the problem. And we didn't know that. All we knew is we were leaving the meetings. We were all like, goodbye, see you next week, OK. And finally, it was like, oh my God, we're still reading about the problem. I mean, because we would just take short passages. And we'd all be in the, oh yeah, that happened to me. I mean, it was horrible.
We were all so glum. And that's what happens when you stay in the problem. I mean, we were just left always feeling so victimized. And that's the danger when I don't keep the focus on myself. And that, for me, is a huge part of becoming entirely ready to make amends, when I continue to keep that focus on me. Now, I didn't know if I was going to tell this story, because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or anything, but we have a lot now at this literature meeting of people who are in both AA and Al-Anon, and it's great.
But sometimes, you can tell the difference. Because in one of the, and I'll tell you how, in one of these books, it just happened once, but I was like, oh my God, we had some new people, new Al-Anon people. And we were reading a section in that blue book where it talks about Christmas. And it's one of the stories, and the woman's talking about Christmas. And I don't know about you, but before recovery, Christmas was a painful time.
Just putting up the damn Christmas tree, it was always a huge blow-up fight. Well, I'm not going to help you, and it was just ugly, always ugly. And a number of us have painful memories of Christmas and those Christmas lights and everything that went with it. But we're reading it, and now we've got in this group a lot of people who. Reading It, Now we got in this group a lot of people who were drinking during Christmas and they're reading this story when it's their turn to read and they're like, ha, ha, ha,
[00:45:00]
and then our husband fell off the porch, ahhh, remember when we fell off the porch, ahh, and the rest of us are like, it really wasn't all that funny when you fell off the porch because we were not anesthetized when you fell off the porch, you know, it was painful about it as I was the one that had to deal with the children. I was the one that had to try to explain to the kids why dad just slammed the door and went upstairs and why dad threw the box of ornaments on the floor and why, you know, it wasn't funny for me, that story will never be funny for me.
I can look back on it with