Stay in Your Lane: Detachment and Forgiveness — Lori G. — Date Unknown

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11. Lori G. (AFG) Oklahoma CIty, OK — Stay In Your Lane Detachment & Forgiveness — Date Unknown

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Lori G

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Source: Lori G – 11. Lori G. (AFG) Oklahoma CIty, OK – Stay In Your Lane Detachment & Forgiveness – Date Unknown.mp3 File: lori-g-11-lori-g-afg-oklahoma-city-ok-stay-in-your-lane-detachment-and-forgiveness-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:55:11

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Good morning, everybody. My name is Lori Gooding. I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon. My recovery date is July 1st, 2001, and my home group is the Start Fresh group. We meet Mondays at 5.30 at a place called the Western Club in Oklahoma City. I cannot believe y'all are here this morning. It's a little early for me. I am not a morning person, just so you'll know. I'm going to be honest with you. I have no idea what's going to come out this morning. We're all going to learn together, because God's in charge, because He needs to be this morning, because I got nothing in my brain. Anyway, this is Staying in Your Lane, Detachment and Forgiveness. That is a lot, I will just tell you. There's a lot to that. There's a lot with that. I'm just going to share a little bit about some experiences I've had with those things and talk about that and what that might be. Then we may, probably, we will open it up after. If you have questions or if there's some experiences that you have that you would like to share, we may do that. We have a mic down there that we're going to pass around. Stay in Your Own Lane. I like that. I also like Stay in Your Own Hula Hoop. I like that too. Problem with that is one time I had a sponsee that said, I think I could get some more people in my hula hoop. In your lane, you can't really get anybody else in that lane. That was probably one of the hardest things for me, is to stay in my own lane.

I was always in this everybody else's business my whole life. I was always trying to run everybody else's life. I was always telling everybody else what to do, how they should do it, what they should do, when they should do it. Then when they didn't do that, I would be really upset with them and take it out on them. I always say, I was the youngest. I have two older sisters and an older brother. I will tell you, since I was a little girl, because I was that way, because I was always telling people what to do and telling them what I thought they should do, I had set myself up to where any time that anybody had an issue in my family, they would call me. My sisters are 10 and 11 years older than me. When I was little, I mean young, they would call me if they had a problem and they'd tell me what was going on. I wanted to know what they thought they should do. When I got here, my sponsor, and I didn't say this yesterday, but I got a sponsor after I'd been in a few months. I'm going to tell you that my sponsor has been my sponsor this whole time. I've had the same sponsor for the whole 22 years I've been here.

One of the things that she taught me when I first got here, is we teach people how to treat us. We teach people how to treat us and we don't accept unacceptable behavior. I had taught my sisters and my family members how to treat me because they knew if we have a problem, we go to Lori. If there's an issue, we got to call Lori. When I got here, I had to learn to stay in my own lane and start setting boundaries. They would call me with a problem and instead of me trying to fix it, which was my automatic, I would say, I'm really sorry you're going through that, but I know you're going to be able to figure this out.

I know this is going to work out just fine for you. I stopped telling them what to do. When I first got here, obviously I didn't know how to stay in my own lane. I didn't know anything about detachment. I didn't know anything about forgiveness. I knew what it was, but I didn't know how to do it. The first thing that had to happen for me is that I had to learn about the disease of alcoholism. I had to understand that the alcoholic and the person that I was in love with, or the person that I loved, were in the same body but were not the same thing. I had to separate that. I heard, love the person, hate the disease.

So, what first happened for me is whenever something would happen, Cliff and I would get in a fight or he would say mean things to me and I would just react and I'd react horrible. My sponsor would teach me things like, that's not him, that's his disease. When he says stuff like that, that's not him talking, that's his disease and you've got to separate the two. You're going to have to learn to set boundaries with him. You're going to have to learn to not react to him. You can respond and not react. I didn't know the difference. I

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thought that was the same thing. She would say, no, no, no, react is something automatic. Respond is you take a pause. Now, I don't know how y'all are, but I don't do good at pause. There is no pause. I think a lot of people struggle with that. My husband even struggled with that. He threatened one time to have a pause button tattooed on his wrist one time to remind him to practice the pause. That took a long time. It took a long time for me to pause and not to react, but to respond. One time, Cliff and I were in Dallas for a deal and we got in a huge fight.

We were pretty early in. I mean, really early in. We got in this huge fight. I'll never forget, I think it was the first time that I actually did something different. He was mad and he was yelling. I was trying not to yell or to get argument back. The first thing is always defend. I've always got to plead my case so that you'll know. I started doing that and then I just stopped. I remember we were walking down the hall and I was getting ready to go into the hotel room.

I just stopped arguing with him. He said, what are you doing? I go, I'm going to go call my sponsor. That caught him up short, caught me up short too, to be honest with you. He stopped and I stopped and I went in and I called my sponsor. He went out in the hallway and he called his sponsor. My sponsor used to say, and still does say, actually, should say, you can't go into an argument with another person who is suffering from alcoholism.

You can't go into that and start arguing because your disease and his disease is going to kill y'all. You have to have something else in there. Before, one of the things that I learned to do to stay in my lane and to set boundaries is I learned that if we were going to have a discussion about something, if there was something I needed to talk to him about, if there was something that we were going to have to discuss, I would learn that before we'd have that, we'd have to pray.

I'd have to pray. And she'd say, you need to get God in the middle of that because your diseases are going to kill each other. And so I learned to do stuff like that. So let's talk about detachment. What is detachment? Detachment is a separation from the disease emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes it's physically, but usually it's spiritually and emotionally. You detach emotionally and spiritually from that person.

And that's really hard to do. Emotionally is tough as it is, but spiritually is extremely tough because I'm going to tell you, when I talked about yesterday, I had been playing God my whole life. I had been playing God my whole life. And I didn't even realize that, but I'd always been trying to get people to do what I thought they should do. And I thought that I knew better than anybody else. So I will tell you, it was a lot easier to detach from my husband than it was from my kids. And I'm going to tell you, I'm not saying that the pain is any worse with your kids. I'm not saying that there's a competition between how hard it is with the, but for me, I will just tell you, it is a lot harder with the kids and my kids are grown. But I started with Cliff. I started obviously learning how to detach with Cliff and, uh, and not to, and not to take the bait and not to get into the arguments and not to get into the fights and to learn to say stuff, which I hated, like you could be right. I remember when my sponsor said, you just need to say you could be right and walk away. And I was like, Oh, I don't think I can do that. And she was like, yeah, there's no argument with that. I mean, what are they going to say? If you say you could be right? I was like, that's not the point. They're not right. And, um, she goes, well, they could be, they could be. And so I, I would start saying stuff like that. You could be right. Not very often, but I would say that, or, um, I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sorry you feel that way.

She used to say that was a lot easier than you could be right for me. But anyway, I would say, I'm sorry you feel that way. And, you know, and, and to separate myself, you know, from the chaos and that crisis, the alcoholism in our family was so horrible. And thank God that we both got a program. I will say this, had Cliff gotten sober and I not gotten into Al-Anon and not continued into Al-Anon, we would have never made it.

I will tell you, I was much more sick than he was. You know, when he was upset or raging or

[00:10:03]

saying horrible things or doing horrible things and had horrible actions, he was usually drunk or high. I did that stuff. So I'm cold, sober. I had no excuse for that other than that's just who I am. And that's the way that I react. Cause that's the only thing that I knew how to do. Cause I always, always happened to be right. So I will just tell you, I've had to practice detachment and forgiveness, um, in different ways with different, uh, situations since I've been in here. And, um, you know, I will tell you that obviously at first it started with Cliff and, and, you know, I was really angry about stuff when I, when we first started getting into recovery, you know, I, uh, for three years, uh, I had supported us. I had a really good job. Cliff, who is an attorney and had his own law firm, didn't work. And so, and he worked a little, I don't want you to think that he like stayed home every single day and never, he, he did work some, but, but not very much. And, um, and, and what I realized, and again, this is stuff that I didn't know, but you know, I would, I've always been taught, you just work hard, you take care of your own, you're responsible, blah, blah, blah. So whenever he didn't work and he couldn't pay the bills, I just took that over, you know? And I think that happens for a lot of untreated Al-Anons is that we, that we become over responsible. We start taking care of things and it, and it's subtle, you know, at first it's, you know, I can't make the car payment this month. And then it's, you know, I haven't had any clients for a while and, you know, we're, we're behind on the bills.

And so you just naturally start taking care of that stuff. And before I knew it, I was paying all the bills. I was doing all the things. I was making sure that everybody got to where they needed to be with the kids and that we were taking, that they got everything that they needed. And, you know, I would have told you that I was a good mom. I would have told you that I was a good mom because those kids did not need or want anything in their lives. They got everything and they wanted and needed. But unfortunately, when you're living with active alcoholism, I was there, I was there physically, but I, I promise you I was not there any other way.

My whole focus is what is he doing? Where is he? What's he going to be like tonight? Is he going to be awake? Is he going to be conscious? Is he going to show up? Are we going to be able to make plans? Or is he going to, what kind of mood is he going to be in? It was constant. And those kids got the leftovers of me. So we, when we started this journey, it was a slow process of forgiveness because I, you know, when they get sober, they start, you know, you start hearing about things that was really going on. All of a sudden they want to get honest. And, and so then I start hearing about the money that we have spent on alcohol and drugs. And I was livid about that just for, and then I started thinking about, because we had went to this counselor for years and, and, and then he had, you know, I told, I told this in my story yesterday, he had convinced our counselor that he was bipolar. And so she had given him medication for that. So we were, we were spending money on medication we didn't need. We were spending, you know, and we were going to therapy, but he wasn't telling her the truth. So it was a waste, but I didn't know that.

And, and, you know, I started thinking about all the money that had went out the door that he had spent on drugs, on alcohol, on wasteful things that we didn't need. And I was livid about that for a long time. I was angry about that for a long time. And, and I thought about all the times that he lied to me and all this stuff. So when they start getting honest and they tell you all this, the first thing that happened for me was I was so resentful. I was so mad. And I, and I remember I was processing through that. I was talking to my sponsor about that and I went to a meeting and I think this is, I think this is key, especially for somebody like me as I was, I was going to open AA speaker meetings. I started going to open AA speaker meetings from the get. And I'm going to tell you why I think that is so important. My sponsor had me do that. She also had me get my own copy of the big book and read through that. And, and I'm going to tell you why I think that is so important. I went to, I'd been going to speaker meetings trying to figure out, you know, hear their side of the story and listen to what everybody else is. And really when I was going, I was just seeing whatever everybody else was doing. What, you know, what was going on in your house? Is that, you know, that's really what I was going for. And, and that's what, how it started.

But then what happened was there was a guy that got up one night at a speaker meeting and he talked about when he got up in the morning, he cracked his eyes open and he was like, and he said, I get up and I'd get ready for work. And I go to the 7-Eleven and I'd be, and I'd grab, I'd have to get a can of beer and I'd be surly with the 7-Eleven clerk and just hateful to her. And until I could get that beer and crack that beer open and drink it.

till I could get that beer and crack that beer open and drink it down

[00:15:00]

so I could go to work and get through the day, and then I'd have another one, you know, ready for when after I got started, and I'd drink that and I could just get through the day just making it to lunch. And he said, and then I'd get to lunch, and I'd go and get something to eat and I'd get another beard so I could get through the rest of the day and and just, you know, just, he said, just on edge all day long, just waiting for five o'clock. And then he said, and I'd get at five o'clock, I'd get done, and I'd go straight home and it would be on and I would drink and drink and drink until I passed out, hoping that when I passed out, I wouldn't wake up the next morning. And he said, and then I'd wake up the next morning, and I'd crack my eyes open. And he said, and that was my cycle for years. And for some reason, when I heard that, and I heard what it was like for him, it gave me compassion. Because I thought, how horrible it must be to live in his head. And then I thought about my husband. And I thought, how horrible it must be to live in his head. And I realized that what he was going through, and the things that was happening in our household, was not because of the man that I knew and I loved, but because of the alcoholism and the effects of that on our household.

And so, before I could ever do detachment, I had to learn compassion. So, I started with, that's how it started for me. It started with detaching from the behavior. You know, not getting, not trying to get, not get involved, trying not to get into the argument, trying to stay away. And you know, some days that would be really easy for me, and other days it was like, you know, I'd never heard of it. It took a long time. It took me a long, a lot of practice to get used to that, to do that, to try to not engage.

And then, we'd been in recovery. Cliff had been sober about nine years. And I don't know if you know anybody that's like this, but him, about nine years, he got over sober, is how I can describe it. You may not have heard about it here in Florida, but Cliff became the sheriff of AA in Oklahoma. Some of you might have heard about it. But, and you know, he was, he became a man I did not recognize. And he was, he had stopped sharing his experience, strength, and hope, and was telling people how to do it. And you know, I don't know how you guys do it here in AA, how you do AA here in Florida, but it's probably wrong. But that's my husband's line. He says that all the time. I got to give him credit. But anyway, but he would, he was, he was telling people how to do it. I mean, and he was, he was very didactic, you know, and he was pounding that big book. And you know, you're going to kill people. And you know, what's wrong with you? And you know, chasing people down after the meeting. And, and, and he was just, I mean, I was just like what his ego was out of control.

And I was, and people were calling me, you know, it's really bad when other people are calling me and going, listen, have you, do you know what's going on with your husband? And I'm like, don't call me, call him. I, you know, and one day it really had just gotten to a point. And at nine years of sobriety, I, he came home, I called him at the office one day and I said, you can't come home. And he said, what? And I said, you can't come home. And he said, what do you mean? I can't come home. And I said, I'm going to have a sober house and you're physically sober, but you're not emotionally sober. You're not spiritually sober. And I do not know who you are, but you cannot be in this house. You have become somebody I do not know. And I, and I can't have you in this house.

And I'm going to tell you when you got somebody at nine years sober who is not drinking or using, but they are, you know, the ego is out of control. That's a hard thing to do. But I, my boundaries had changed so much by nine years that that is not what I wanted in our home. And so at nine years sobriety, he got kicked out of our house. He got kicked out of our house. It was not a fun time. Uh, and it happened right around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cause you know, we always get tied at the right time as the big book says. So anyway, and so, um, he did, he had, he went and he went and stayed with another man, um, in AA and, uh, and he had some stuff to work on and, and, uh, and he did that. And after a few months he was, he, he, he came back to the house and we had to work on that for a long time. And I will tell you, that was a, that was a hard boundary to set, but I had to detach myself. And at that point I had to detach myself physically. I did not even want to be around him. And, and, and because of that, I will tell you that our marriage got stronger. Now, I didn't get to talk about this yesterday, so we're going to talk about it today.

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That, um, I, you know, I told you about my son yesterday and, um, and I told you a little bit about our daughter and I'm going to tell you, and we're going to talk about my daughter right now. When Cliff and I got together, um, and my kids was four, my son was four, his daughter was five. And, um, and I, and that little girl is exactly like her daddy. She's super smart. She's very talented. And, uh, and I love that little girl. And, um, and I watched her grow up and, and I'm going to tell you, uh, here's the other thing about boundaries and staying in your lane is, um, I parented out of guilt and so did Cliff. And, um, and I'm going to tell you, it's one of the worst mistakes that we could make. We gave those kids everything. And there was no, there was, uh, no consequences for actions for a lot of things. We always made it better, you know, give them another chance. Cause we felt so guilty about what we had done in that house.

And so I could see as she was growing up, the writing was on the wall. I was like, Oh, this is not going good. And I think she started drinking. I believe she was about 15 or 16 years old when she started drinking. And, uh, and we could see it. And she went off to college and, uh, and, and I'm going to tell you, she did great in school. She always made good grades. She always did really well. And, uh, when she was in college, she got hooked on, uh, opioids and, uh, she graduated and she came back home and, uh, we didn't see her for, um, uh, I don't know, almost a year, I think. And, uh, and what happened was she was just continuing her, her, her, her, her was just continuing in her disease. And we were having to, and we were watching it. We were seeing it on the occasions that we would see her. You could tell. And, uh, you know, and all the stuff that comes with that, the lion and the, and the stealing and the, and all the things, as you know, and now it's our daughter, it's a lot harder for me. And, uh, and, you know, I used to get on my knees every night and I would say, God, I want your will for Rachel's life. But if it would be your will, could you just keep her safe today? And, uh, and after a few years, uh, she was living in her car and, uh, we got a call and, uh, she had called my phone and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have my phone with me. And then she called her dad. Then she called me again. Then she called her dad and her dad picked up. And she said, dad, I have a problem. I can't stop drinking and I can't stop eating pills. And Cliff said to her, well, honey, I can't help you, but there's a number of a lady in AA and maybe she can't. And so Rachel called that girl and she went to detox and she, uh, started going to AA and she, uh, after about four months she got pregnant because the gifts of the program. And, um, and she celebrated a year sobriety and the, and about a day, I think the day after her year sobriety, she had the most beautiful grandbaby you've ever seen in your whole entire life. And, um, and, and a year later we celebrated that little girl's one year birthday.

And a few days after that, Rachel decided that she didn't need AA and that she didn't have a problem. And, uh, and she, and, and, you know, we, we knew that this was probably not going to work out well. And so slowly didn't take long, but sure, surely after a while, you could see, you could tell that she was drinking and using again. And, uh, and you know, she stole a ton of money from us that we didn't know about. We, we found out later.

And so if you think it's hard to have boundaries with somebody that you're married to, it's really hard when it's your kid, but we had been taught in this program, what to do and how to do it. And, um, and so, uh, we had to start setting boundaries. She wasn't allowed in our home anymore. We weren't going to give her any money and we weren't going to listen to her lies. And we told her, um, you know, if, if you can't take care of that grandbaby, her dad said to her, if you can't take care of that grandbaby, I promise you, I'm going to do whatever I can, uh, to get her safe and to take her from you. And, uh, her, her dad, our grandbaby's father is in the program and, uh, and we could see what was going on. And so we went to him and we said, listen, you've got to get custody of your little girl because she's not in a safe place.

And, uh, and he did that and he got custody of that little girl. And thankfully we have a great relationship with him and his new wife. And, uh, we get to still see that grandbaby, but we haven't seen our, our daughter in almost five years. And yes, that is hard, but you know, we've been taught

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I can't help her. I can't fix her. I can't do anything for her. I wish I could. I don't have that power. So I have to leave her in God's hands because I have to detach from her spiritually and emotionally. I used to be so upset about it. I used to be scared to death all the time. And, uh, my sponsor would ask, would talk to me about it. And one day she said, tell me what you're, what you're scared of. Cause you know, everything is about fear. And I said, you know what I'm scared of? I'm scared she's going to die. And she said, do you not trust that God's going to take care of her? And I said, yeah, I do believe that God's going to take care of her, but she could still die. And she said, Oh, I see you trust God, but you still want to control the outcome.

You see, sometimes God takes care of them in this world. And sometimes he takes care of them in the next and you don't get to choose because you don't know what's best for her. And I'm going to tell you as a mom, that's a very hard thing to swallow, but it was true. And I don't know, I'm going to tell you this. My brother lived a miserable life. He drank himself to death and he died four and a half years ago. And I promise you God's taken care of him on the other side and he is much better off. And that is the only thing that gives me peace about that. I had to set boundaries with my, my brother. My brother, my brother was, he liked to get drunk and call me. And so I would say to him, if you've been drinking, you can't call me. And I'm going to tell you when he'd been drinking, he could talk for hours when he was sober or dry, when he didn't have anything in him. And he would call me, the conversations were short because he did not know how to have a conversation without being drunk. And so we had limited conversations, but when we had them, they were at least meaningful.

And you know, one of the great blessings about that, because I had set that boundary with my brother, one day, um, I went to see him. Uh, he was on a dialysis machine also. He had the same kidney disease as my dad. And I went to see him one day on a dialysis machine because I knew he would not be drunk. And, uh, and he asked me if I would take him home because he usually had, um, a service that picked him up and took him home. And I said, sure. And so I took him home and, um, I'm going to tell you this conversation. And it was one, and I know that's going to be kind of sad, but I'm going to tell you, it's one of the best conversations we had. We were driving home and he asked me, um, if the plot next to my dad was still available. And I said, yeah. And I said, why? And he said, I was just wondering. And I said, is that where you want to be buried one day? And he said, I was thinking about it. And I said, well, hopefully that won't happen for a while.

And he said, you know, here's what you need to know, sis. He said, I know who I am and I know what I am and God knows who I am and what I am and God and I are good. And I'm so grateful that he said that to me. He died a couple of years after that. So forgiveness. Ooh, that's a toughie. Forgiveness is not about them. It's not for them. Forgiveness is not about, um, make it thinking that what they did is okay. That's not what that is. Forgiveness is for us. It's so that we can, we can live in this world and we can not have that resentment and have that stuff eating away at us.

I will tell you, it was pretty easy to forgive Cliff after a while. It was really easy to forgive my brother. It was incredibly hard for me to forgive my daughter. It's, I still struggle with it. I know she suffers from a disease. That the re-injury kept happening and kept happening. And I was good with it until she was doing stuff with our, putting our granddaughter in danger. And that was so hard for me.

And, um, it took me a long time to have forgiveness for her. And I used to have to pray about it. And I would just pray to give me the willingness to pray, to be willing to forgive her. And, uh, and you know what? And I will tell you, there will still be days when I'm thinking, I am good. I, you know, I, I'm really good. And then something will happen. And I told you, she stole a lot of money. She stole a lot of money from our law firm. And so we had to press charges against her. Now, again, that's a boundary, not fun, but it's something that had to happen.

It's a boundary, not fun, but it's something that had to happen, and so, you know, we'll

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get a call, I'll get a call from the DA, and they'll say, you know, they'll give me the latest update on what's happening, or, you know, and then I'll just get re-mad all over again, and then I have to remind myself, this is the disease, this is not your child, and you've forgiven her, and if you've really forgiven her, you've got to forgive this. Because, see, my biggest thing is I love punishment.

I will tell you, revenge is a great thing for me. I mean, that's what I loved the whole time, and, you know, any kind of movie, I'm just going to tell you, if there's a movie about somebody who came in and shot up the family and then he goes and kills everybody that was associated with that, that's my kind of movie. I am a revenge girl. I am. I love to punish. Ask my husband. I love to punish. And so, that is new behavior for me, to not want to make her pay, and not want to punish her, and not want to, you know, that is new behavior for me.

That is hard for me. That is extremely hard for me. But if I have a motto, I will just tell you, if there was one motto I had, if there was one thing that somebody came up to me and said, tell me the one thing that you could tell me that would make my life easier, I would tell you this, God is in charge. He's always in charge. And I don't have to be. And so, that makes it so much easier. When I get a call, or I hear she's doing something, or I find out something else has happened, or my granddaughter comes home and tells me something, or whatever, I always think, God's in charge.

I don't have to do anything. God's in charge. I don't always like what's happening. I don't have to like it. My job is to stay in my lane. My job is to detach from the behavior. And my job is to love the person, hate the disease, and forgive them. Everything else is out of my control. It is God's business. I don't know what's going to happen with my daughter. I have no idea what's going to happen. I really don't.

I pray that she makes it back in these rooms. I really do. I ask every time I usually speak, I ask everybody in the room to please pray for her. Because we can't help her, but somebody else out there can. But I don't know what's going to happen. It's none of my business. And it's really hard. So if you're a parent, I know what you're going through. I know how that feels. It is not fun. But for us to live a serene life, we have to detach.

And we have to have forgiveness. Okay, that's all I have. We're going to open this up. If you have a story about forgiveness, about detachment, or if you have questions, I'd love for you to share. Thank you very much. I'm Andy. At 14 years ago, I'd been in the Al-Anon program about a year. We're doing Blueprints for Progress, and we came against the resentment section. And I told my sponsor that I had 40-year resentments against my father and against my brother.

And he says, don't you think it's time that you got rid of those? So I read 159, Encouraged to Change, I think it's 159, 159 or 259, Encouraged to Change where it says, the best form of getting resentments done is forgiveness. And I read that for 45 and 47 days, and finally the strain of resentment left me, and I felt free. 45 days from my brother and 47 days from my father. And then I called him, and I told him what I'd done, and we both had a good cry.

And then from then on, it's been good. My brother is with me this week. He's with me at the conference here, this convention, and he's got 32 years in AA.

[00:35:00]

I've got 26. And my father passed two years ago at age 100, but I was there for his 100th birthday in November, November 29th, 2020. He was sick. He couldn't get out of bed, but he'd lived for, he wanted to live to 100, and he made it, and he made it two months past that. Thank you for letting me share. My name is Gary, and I'm an alcoholic. I can never get out of the driver's seat and let anybody, I never want to be the passenger.

I want to run, I want to be in the front seat. If a limo's taking me to the airport, I want him to sit in the back and let me drive the car. I have a master's degree in addiction and psychology, and I have another master's degree in behavior analysis. And all of my life, I've been in the fixing business. I fix people. I fix people. I fix people. And I worked for Child Protective Services for 25 years, so I've seen every miserable thing that can exist on earth.

And I picked up a 20-year chip last month in AA, and my husband is also an alcoholic. And in the last 10 years that we've been together, he has been so debilitated by this disease that he has to drag himself to the bathroom. And he's been in rehab in Jacksonville 51 times, and he leaves AMA, and he's had multiple car accidents, and he's the sweetest person in the world when he's sober, but the moment he puts a drink in his body, he's an entirely different person.

And he tried to kill himself about six weeks ago when he was in the hospital one-on-one with somebody because he doesn't want to—he feels overwhelmed by this disease. And I know what it means to be overwhelmed by this disease because I had been there. And I sit, and I wait, and I fix, and I keep putting the life jacket on him when he's in the deep end of the pool, and I don't let him reach for the jacket himself.

And she had shared a story last night about the bedding that her daughter and her husband went out and got and how she made them feel less then because it wasn't the bedding that she would have picked. And then he's in a court-ordered rehab now for 120 days, and he had called me last night, and I had told him about that story of the bedding that she had—her daughter and husband had picked up that didn't measure up.

And I told him, I said, I'm sorry that I kept putting that life jacket on you because I'm just sinking you, and sinking you, and sinking you. And it's the first time I had ever been to an Elanon meeting, and I thought these were the craziest people in the world. And she had brought to my mind the idea that, you know, codependency is a horrible disease that we recycle through, and I've been recycling through it most of my life.

I was the fixer-upper. I've had brothers die an act of addiction. I have a homeless brother in Canada who lives on the street. My father was an alcoholic, and I was the family mascot, the one that cleans everything up. So since I was eight years old, my mother was a schizophrenic and my father was a chronic alcoholic, and I went to foster care. So I always—I'm polishing, I'm always polishing myself.

And it's all about being all front, no back. And at the end of the day, I owe it to him to step back and let him go where he needs to go, and to give up his fight and let him fight his own battle. That's all I have to say. That reminded me of something. A, when you're sharing, please put the mic right up because nobody can hear. The acoustics are terrible in here. And two, part of the whole detachment is letting them have their own consequences for their own behavior.

Cliff talks about when he went to treatment in the 80s, and he talks about he was an attorney, and so a bunch of people knew that he had a problem. And he said that they would always save him. They were pitting pillows under him.

[00:40:01]

People would show up for court with him. They would make excuses for him. And so he never got any better. And then I did the same thing. I was always, you know, I'd lie for him. You know, I'd go to my parents' house, and he wouldn't show up. And they'd go, what's wrong? Oh, he's sick. Well, no, he was just passed out on the couch. And so, you know, the hardest thing for us to do, I think, for some of us anyway, is to let people have the consequences of their own behavior.

You know, I have to tell my sponsees all the time. I have a sponsee, and she'll say, he wants me to take him to work. And I go, why? Well, he doesn't have a driver's license because he got a DUI. Guess what? He's the one that got the DUI. He needs to figure out how to get himself to work. It's not your problem. It's not your responsibility. And so anyway, that was the other part about detachment, in case, you know, you didn't know that.

Sure. Hey, Lori. My name's Jen. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. You said that before you can detach, you need to have compassion. Can you just expound a little bit on that? Thank you. Okay. Well, you know, it's just like I said when I saw the guy, heard the guy talk about what it was like for him to be an alcoholic. I don't know what that's like. I don't know what it's like to be an alcoholic.

I have no idea what it's like. I can't fathom what that would be like. But when I hear the experiences of other alcoholics who have struggled to just get by and alcoholism has taken over their life, I mean, I will tell you, my husband, his whole life was ruled by when he could get the next drink or the next accessory to his drinking. That's all he cared. That was his whole focus. That was his whole life.

I can't imagine what that's like to not be able to exist in life without something inside you and to wake up every day not wanting to wake up, not wanting to even live a life today, knowing that you're existent. You hear it all the time. They either drink or they die. They can't live in their own heads. Even though I was obsessed with him, he's obsessed with the drink, I'm obsessed with him, and even though I know what it's like to have the obsession, I don't know what it's like to have the allergy of the body and to be that miserable.

After a while, obviously, alcoholics are miserable. If they weren't, they'd keep drinking and they wouldn't try to get help. Even then, I think there's a lot of alcoholics who are extremely miserable and they can't even imagine trying to get help because they can't fathom what that's like, and that has to be a miserable existence for them. I started having compassion because I can't really fathom what that must be like for them.

It has to be a miserable existence, and they don't want to be like that either. They don't want to do that. It's not like they get up every day and say, let me think about how I can make the people in my life miserable today so I can be selfish and self-centered and do what I want to do. That's not what they do. They have lost the ability of choice. That has been taken from them. I love what my husband says when he talks about, as soon as I take a drink, somebody else is making the decisions.

They're no longer in control. The alcoholism has already taken over after the first drink. To put myself as much as I can in their place and what that must be like for them is where I learned to have compassion. Let me tell you, before I got here, I had no compassion for anybody, for anything, ever. I just didn't. That was something that I had to learn here, so I hope that helps. I'm Jane. I'm an alcoholic.

I thought I would come to this meeting because I'm an alcoholic and an addict, coming up on 35 years in October. I have a son that has been struggling for the past six and a half years. I keep thinking that I've sent him to countless treatment centers here in Florida, halfway I can't fix him. In fact, I shouldn't say, but he's here this weekend only because his sponsor said that Only because his sponsor said that so he wouldn't get kicked out of the halfway house because he used just a day before the convention.

[00:45:00]

And I have to let him go. My daughter even said, Mom, just the other day she told me, she said, Mom, she said, she lives up in Indiana, she said, Mom, she said, please quit calling me about trying to find where Daniel is. And, you know, being an alcoholic and drug addict, I never realized how much I was hurting all those other people. And yet the thing that I tried to learn is that my kids grew up in a sober household. They grew up knowing Mom went to meetings all the time.

I truly believe is genetic. And it's like I had the hardest time dealing with the fact that I didn't cause it. I can't control it and I can't cure it. And when it's your own child, like you said, it's like I don't want him to die. And there was many times I prayed. I said, OK, God, if you really want him, just take him. I can't deal with this pain anymore. It just hurts so much. And so what you shared about, you know, maybe if that's what God's will is, I have to let it go.

I have to let him deal with, I have to let him, it has to be his journey. It's not my journey. He does fortunately have a sponsor right now that said, Mom, back off. Stay in your lane, Mom. I'm going to help your son. And he's the one that suggested having him come here with us. And like I said, this disease from both sides of it, I don't know, this side of it is really painful. And I'm glad I came here this morning. Thank you.

Hi, my name is John Alcoholic. Thanks for sharing, everybody. And, you know, there's a couple of things you touched on that I could definitely identify with. And the first one was the finances and the responsibilities in the home life where it's easy to just assume responsibility. And I'm on the receiving end of that, as in my wife takes care of most things and I take it for granted. I think that it should just be that way.

But hearing you share about that made me take a look at it and have to do some inventory. The other thing that really touched me was your story about with your children. So my mom, you know, I've been my first treatment. I was 12 years old. I'll be 40 this year. And the last one of the last times I was in treatment, my mom came to visit and she said, buddy, I'm saying goodbye because I don't think I'm going to see you again before you die.

And she said, I've already began mourning your death. And she started to separate, you know, for her own sanity. And then the final straw was I went to rob my sister and my nieces, and she came to the door, the sliding glass door, and said, buddy, I can't do this anymore. And she dropped to her knees and started crying, and I was indignant. I was like, it's cold out here. Let me in. She brought me a blanket, passed it through the door, and I was like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm hungry.

And she brought me a gallon of milk, a box of cereal, and a bowl, and then fell to her knees and proceeded to cry. And I got goosebumps thinking about it right now because that was the first time it was between me and God. There was nobody else, you know. I couldn't blame anybody else. I couldn't use anybody else. I went and sat in my half-stolen truck, which is a different story, with no gas, cold, and I had a decision to make, you know.

Either I was going to continue to go on to the bitter end, blotting out consciousness to the best of my ability, or I was going to try to get help. And to the grace of God, I tried to get help, and my life has radically changed as a result of that. But that's not the way it always plays out, you know. My mom knew that. She knew that I might die in the process of her letting go, but she had to do that in order for her to keep her own sanity.

And we have a great relationship now, and that's all I got. My name is James. I'm a recovered alcoholic. My father did not trust me for the first four years of my sobriety because he had a brain in his head. My ex-wife has not seen her children in the past 13 years.

[00:50:00]

She's still drinking. She's still drinking. And my question for you is, do you have any experience or what I can tell them about trust, crossing over from forgiveness to trust? Because while forgiveness needs to happen, trust does not necessarily have to. Okay, I want to make sure I understand the question. Do I have any suggestions on trust versus forgiveness? Okay. Well, let me just say this. Whenever, by the time that I figured out what was going on and I realized what all had happened in our household, trust had been shattered.

I mean, there was no trust. I didn't trust him with anything, I mean, at all. And rightly so. I mean, just with our daughter. I mean, there's no way I could trust her right now. She's still lying. She's still doing her thing. There's no way I could trust her. I could not trust Cliff for a long time. Trust is something that has to be earned. And that timeline is different for each person. I don't know how long it took me before I was able to trust Cliff again.

And it was a slow process. And it was with different things. You know, he will tell you that he was not allowed to have cash for a very long time. He didn't even have a debit card. He literally would get so much each day because he couldn't be trusted with money. And I don't really know how long that, I don't think it was that long. I can't remember. But I don't remember how long that took before I knew he was trustworthy again.

And then, you know, there's so many aspects of alcoholism. Drinking is just a symptom is such a true statement. I mean, there are so many other behaviors that come out with that. And Cliff never cheated on me or anything else like that. But he did have some issues with pornography, as you heard yesterday. And so it took me a long time to trust him being on a computer or with his phone. I mean, that took a long time to figure that out, to trust him that he was going to have healthy behavior around that.

And I'm going to tell you, you know, it's not talked about a lot, but I'm going to tell you, pornography is rampant in these rooms. And it's not just men. But it is another symptom of this disease, I'm just going to tell you. And so that took a little while to trust. And I'm going to tell you, even when our daughter got sober, because she was sober for over a year, it took me a long time to trust her again.

And I remember, because she had not been allowed in our house, she didn't have a key to our house, and I remember for Christmas, I gave her the code to the front door so she was allowed back in. That took a while. But then she broke that trust again. So trust is something that has to be earned, and there is no timeline for that. Every person is different. I mean, I have heard stories of people who had been sober 20 years before their parents were able to believe what was really going on with them.

I mean, you know, we have been lied to so many times, and we have given trust freely so many times, and it has been broken so many times that it sometimes takes a while. That's why I always tell people, and I'm sure you've heard it a million times, we go by what they do, not by what they say, because alcoholics are really good talkers, and they can convince us of a lot of things. But I watched what Cliff did.

When I kicked him out at nine years sober, it took a long time to see if his actions were going to be different, because he was talking a good game. I got it, I got it, I see what I did. And then we'd go to a meeting, and he'd start talking, and I was like, who is that person up there? I don't know who that is. So it took a while. So trust is something that has to be earned, and there is no timeline.

It is really up to the individual, and sometimes it takes a long time. What is a long period of reconstruction? Long period. And I don't know how long that could be for some people. Okay, we are done. It is 928.

[00:55:01]

Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming this morning. Thanks for participating. Are we going to close? Let's close.