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Source: Maggie L – Ohio Al-Anon Convention 2025 Maggie L. Painesville, OH – Date Unknown.mp3 File: maggie-l-ohio-al-anon-convention-2025-maggie-l-painesville-oh-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:00:07
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I've got to get situated. You've got to move me around, huh? Oh, yeah. Get it right there, will you? Well, I'll tell you what, when you've got more than 30 years, you're old. Just saying. Look at this goody bag. Can I find what I need? There we go. Alrighty. Can we say the serenity prayer one more time, please? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
Yeah, the one thing I needed, I forgot. Alrighty. Hi, I'm Maggie Ellen. I'm from Painesville, and I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon. And I came in in September of 1988, and came in in search of my mental sobriety. And I wish I could say that I've had it every day since, but then my sister called, and that went right down, so I had to start over again. And then Mom had her issues, and I had to start over again there.
And, oh my gosh, now it's into grandkids and everything, so it's always an adventure. That's why I can't go. I don't know how to live life on life's terms. I had quite an interesting background, so that's why I'm here. I've been very nervous with this. And emotions, you talk about emotions, Karen, they've been running like crazy. And I have actually been doing an awful lot of work lately on buried emotions.
It's been something that I've really had to face a lot lately. And I don't remember that much about my childhood. But I have to stop for a second to make sure that I do this. Sue and Denise, Chico's, okay. And Kim, back of the closet, I found it. So this is why I look the way I do tonight. Anyway, that's my warped sense of humor. But I have been dealing with a lot of emotions. And like I say, I don't really remember my childhood.
It may not make a lot of sense to some of you, but when you're raised in an alcoholic home, things get a little skewered. Maybe little is a little understated. That's all I'll say. I am the oldest of six kids. I was raised on a dairy farm in the Canadian border of Vermont. We had 100 cows. We milked night and morning. We had hired help. We sugared. We cut Christmas trees. We logged. We worked. And that's a lot of the reason I don't remember my childhood is because it was work.
We had children. My dad had kids for labor, bottom line. My mom is someone that I am concerned or was concerned about the consumption of her alcohol, although she never found the rooms and she never found recovery. What got me into the rooms is my brother. He got me into these rooms in 1988, and that's quite an interesting story. We just had such a different background growing up. I'll tell you a dad story.
Dad was a rager. Dad could rage in a heartbeat. And you never knew what was going to make him mad. So one day, he couldn't drive a lick. So he's backing up into the – now, you're going to hear Vermont terms now, all right? You may not understand them, but you're going to get them. He's backing into the dooryard, okay? And he hits the split rail fence. Bam. And you can hear the expletives coming out.
And what does he do? He goes forward and he guns it backwards. And there goes that split rail fence. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, you know? And I'm standing on the front porch, and I'm watching this.
[00:05:00]
And what's a kid going to do, 10, 12 years old? You're going to laugh. Oh, he said, if I catch you, I'm going to catch you. I'll beat your ass. And I never ran so hard in my life to get out of there, I'm telling you. Well, another time he's driving along, and the cow had had a calf out in the pasture. Well, he caught it out of the corner of his eye. Huh, I think that cow had a calf. So he decides to back the car up.
Backs that car up, hits the highway patrol. Bam. And the car gets out of the car and goes, what the hell are you doing on this damn road? Now, you've got to understand, I lived in the boondocks. There were no major roads. It was dirt roads. Why he was out there, that highway patrol, is probably a good question. But he'd come home, and he was bragging about how he told the cop off. Never had the nerve to ask him if he got a ticket for that.
You know, oh, that would have been interesting. He just had this weird thing. I don't know how else to explain that. But in my family of origin, as crazy as he was, if I was going to know I was loved, it would have come from him, and it never would have come from my mother. It never would have come. She could be pretty cold. So we just went along in life, you know. I milked cows. I took care of five kids and just tried to keep up with the routine in life, you know.
I thought that was normal. I thought that's what everybody did. And so we're cooking along. One time I go over to a friend's house, and I stayed the night. Now, they had eight kids, and they were poorer than we were. And they did not have snow tires on the car, and it was in the dead of winter. So we're coming along now. I live on the top of the mountain. And to get to this home, get home, you had to go down this valley, up.
There's a plateau, and then there is another steep grade up and a curve at the top on the level road to get to my house. So he goes to his family. Kids, get in the car. We're taking Margaret home. Karen and I was known as Margaret. So we all get in the car, and I'm thinking, why are there all these people in this sedan? This doesn't make any sense. Well, it does. That story gets better. So we're cooking along, and we're going down that first hill, and I notice we're going about 100 miles an hour.
And then we start up that next one. And we get up the next one, and we're maybe going 40, 45. And we've got to go across that short plateau to get to the next one. So we get up on that plateau, getting away up that second grade of that hill, and we get to the top, and we're just spinning. So what does he say? Okay, kids, bounce. And we're bouncing in the back of that car, and we literally bounce that car up that hill.
I tell people some of these stories, and they say, you ought to write a book. I'm thinking nobody would believe it. Nobody would believe it. But then there was never any training in growing up. There was never any guidance growing up. I can remember my dad decided one day I needed to learn how to milk cows. Okay, so I go on out in the milking parlor. Well, milk the cows. Well, how do you know when they're done, you know?
And you'll figure it out. And so you do this. And it sounds funny, but if you don't milk a cow right, they can get sick. They can get pretty darn sick from it. And you really need to know what you were doing. Well, after some shots in the cow to get them healed up again after they got the sicknesses and stuff, you learn.
[00:10:08]
Well, dad decided another time he was going to have me learn to drive the tractor. Now, my father never took care of a thing, ever. I mean, if it were a tractor, it was parked on a hill. There was a block holding it up there. You had to get that block out, and you had to get on that tractor and get that tractor started before you got to the bottom of that hill. I couldn't have been any more than 12, maybe 13.
And I said, dad, I don't know how to drive a tractor. Come on, I don't know how to do it. And he literally grabbed me by the shirt collar and kicked my butt around that door. He said, now you know how to drive a tractor. I said, okay. Well, I get out there, and don't you know, I get my pant leg caught in that tractor wheel. And I'm trying to get my pant leg out of that tractor wheel before that tractor gets going and runs me over or I get, you know, whatever.
And I somehow got on that tractor. I am sobbing at the end of this time. And I get on that tractor, and somehow God was watching out for me, and I got that tractor started before I got to the bottom of that hill. It's like, again, that was normal. My mom, she had a temper, and I'll never get this. And I can remember my brother, when he was older, he was talking about mom's temper. And he never talked about the farm very much, especially with me.
And he goes, yeah, one time mom took a rubber hose to me, and she knocked him right down to the ground. He was down on the ground, and he was beating her. She was beating him, I mean. And I go, I saw that. I witnessed that. I saw that happen to you. He was just shocked. He didn't believe anybody else saw it and believed that it happened to him. But that was the kind of stuff that we were grown up with.
You were expected to work. You were expected to work hard. You were expected to show up. You were expected to do this stuff. And there was no option. Every decision in my life was pretty much made by my parents. Now remember that. It's going to matter. When I was about 15, my dad, of course, he had a scheme for everything. And he was up in Canada, and he was buying hay for the farm. And they would haul the hay across the border and then come back up, get more hay and take it across the border.
Well, this one time he leaves me alone in the hay field with this transient guy that he had hired off the street. Well, I'm sorry, we're talking Vermont language, road, yard, whatever. Probably the local bar. And I'm out there alone, and he gets going on something that something's wrong and gets me off that tractor. And he starts attacking me. And, I mean, I'm here to tell you today it's a miracle I'm here alive today.
Because I fought that man like you would not believe how I fought that man. And we always had a nickname for the hired help. If Skyball hadn't have come by, he beat the crap out of him and got him off me. And I thank God because, like I said, I don't think I would have been here today. You know, that was never acknowledged. That was never talked about. It was like it never happened. And if it had have been brought up, it would have been my fault.
You did something to make him do that to you. It wouldn't have mattered. That's kind of how it was. We had another hired man. Oh, my God. I don't know why he was around. He would always be exposing himself when he got drunk. So you never knew what kind of clothing attire he would be in. That was another experience. Well, one day he's in his room cleaning his gun. And the gun went off, and it went right in the headboard of my bed.
Never, never, never acknowledged, never said anything. The guy was still working for us. Just that kind of stuff. It's crazy to think that that was kind of the norm. It's crazy to think that that was kind of the normal.
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The one time, it was so damn cold up there in Vermont, and there was no, there's one room heated, that's it. So we would have an electric blanket, and all these blankets piled on top of the electric blanket, but one time the bed caught on fire, because it was all, you know, it was my bed, and it went on fire. And my mom comes up and, huh, you're on fire. So she's throwing salt on it, because it's going to put it out.
No, you put the fire out. She goes, no, you go back to bed. It's okay now. Okay. You got this molded bed. Uh-huh. Yeah, so anyway, there we are. So, when it gets to be close to my, they never liked, I dated one guy, they did not like him. I was supposed to go to the state fair with him, and they left me with the kids, and they took off that day, and I couldn't go to the state fair. Now, I probably could have gone to the state fair, but I would not do that to my siblings.
I was not going to leave those kids alone. They were young. So I didn't, and shortly after that, he broke up with me, and I think that that was God's gift to me. So, just before I graduated at 17, now, my mom didn't have a lot of opinion about us or anything about us as kids that I remember, but I had gone to a one-room schoolhouse. There were four grades in a room, and then we unionized, and I went to two grades in a room, and then I graduated the eighth grade and went to high school.
Now, you could go to high school over in Derby, or you could go to Brownington. All my friends went to Brownington. I went to Derby. So, Derby had the kids that were doctor's kids, lawyer's kids, this kind of kid. Not as many farmers went there. Brownington was the farmer's school. So, I'm out of my element again, leaving my friends, going into this school, and we get into the guidance counselor. Now, my mom was about 5'3", and about feistier than hell, and that guidance counselor told her, you know, she went to a one-room schoolhouse, and she really doesn't have the background for this school, so we're going to put her in the general classes because, you know, she'll probably get married and leave school anyway.
My mom went about over that guy's desk, and she said, to hell, too. She will graduate from here with enough classes in business that if she has to get a job, she can get a job, and if she wants to go to college, she can get herself into college, and you will make that happen. So, when I graduated from high school, you needed 16 credit hours, and I graduated with 24. So, we get to the summer after graduation, and all of a sudden, my mom is walking across the hayfield.
My mom doesn't come out in the hayfield. She does everything else. I mean, she literally did everything else, and okay, what's up, mom, and she goes, well, is that an airplane coming in? She goes, well, you're going to be 18 next week. Where are you going to live? And I said, what? She goes, you're going to be 18 next week. You can't live here anymore. Where are you going to live? And I said, mom, I've been working on the farm all the time here.
I haven't found a job. I haven't found anything, and besides, at that time, and yes, I'm that old, one-room schoolhouse, there were more cows than people in Vermont. So, jobs were not that frequent. So, she goes, you either get a job or go to college, and I said, well, I'll go to college. You know, big choices here. Because I got to go somewhere. So, I went away to Johnson State. Now, remember, if you know me, my background has always been business.
I like business. I made a living in business. Business was my thing.
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So, I'm at this liberal arts school. Oh, lord, biology, and la, la, la, la. And I swear to God that God has had a sense of humor with me all my life. Because I had never, we had had this, he was so cute, English teacher, come up from New York City. He was really a good-looking guy. And you know what he taught us our senior year of high school? How to conjugate sentences. I spent all my senior year learning how to conjugate a sentence.
I never knew how to write a paper or footnote or do anything like that. I had no clue. None. No background. So, I wrote my first paper, but I told the professor, I had not done this. This is my, you know, first time. Okay, go ahead and write the paper, and we'll go over it after. So, I wrote the paper, and of course, I plagiarized all over the place. And so, she goes, well, why don't you come on down to my apartment at such and such a time, and we'll go over, and I'll explain to you what you should have done.
Okay. So, I arrive at her apartment at the appointed time, knock on the door. She answers the door and said, what the hell are you doing here? You're nothing but a crook and a plagiarist. Get the hell off my property. She was drunk on her butt. Drunk on her butt. So, I have a radar. I can find them, you know. Let them be the ones to teach me. Let them be, you know, because that's what I know. It's not anybody's fault.
It's what I know. So, I had a friend that was in the biology lab, and she had been in a car accident, and in her hand, it's all in this cast. And so, we're to dissect this frog, and all right. And so, we go to the assistant. It wasn't the professor, but it was to fill in for the professor, and said, can we work together on this because she's got this cast? And they go, yeah, no problem. Next thing we know, we're called into the dean's office for cheating because we had the same answers on dissecting a frog.
Now, can you anybody tell me how many parts are in the stinking frog in the first place? I don't get it. I just don't. But it was like, I can find them. So, I had a pen pal, and the pen pal, I had, well, there was a neighbor in Vermont. There was a neighbor in Vermont who had been in Future Farmers of America, and he had lived in Massachusetts. And he had a buddy of his that was still in Massachusetts in the Farmer of America.
And so, his buddy came up, the two Future Farmers of America in our area. Anyway, and so, they got me to go on a date, well, with the Future Farmer from down the way. Okay, I'll probably get it, knock it down six times before we're done. This thing does wobble. So, anyway, we didn't do real well together, but his sister and I started pen palling. And when I got done at Johnson State, I could have gone back on academic probation, but I knew this was just not for me.
So, but I wrote her and said, I have no idea what I'm going to do now because I can't go home. So, she said, why don't you come on down? And she checked with her parents, and I went down, and that I could live with them. So, I go home one more time. My dad calls up and says, I want you to come on home. We'll probably never see you again. So, we want, I'd like you to come on home so we can say goodbye to you.
And that's really encouraging. Thanks, Dad. So, I head on home, and, you know, and there's, you know, we do all right. We do all right, and as he's, as I'm leaving to get, so they hand me, as a going away present, $50 and a bus ticket to Boston, and that was what I had to go to Boston with. And then my dad said to me, as I was going away, he goes, and by the way, Margaret, if anybody starts to attack you, just go stand under a street light,
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because once they see what you look like, they'll leave you alone. And I'm like, thanks, Dad. So, that was, I mean, that kind of summarizes kind of what it was like, you know. So, I get down into Boston, and I live with this family, and they're just a wonderful bunch of people, and I have not ever, ever found where they are to thank them for what they did do for me. But they were, they did the best they could.
They had very little themselves, and they would get, in the day, you would get food rather than food stamps, and so they would get these canned meats that we would have and stuff like that. Well, they found out that I happened to like bananas. So, you didn't get a few bananas, you got a case of bananas. And nobody in the house liked bananas. So, I had bananas for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, forever.
And that's my memory of them, as much as they did for me. They fed me bananas, so I didn't starve. I got a job at John Hancock Insurance, and I met this nice lady, a young lady, and she said, would you like to be my roommate? And I said, yes, I would. And I moved out of their house. Well, when I moved out of the house, the mom sent a letter to my parents saying, she is so naive and dumb, she's going to get killed down here, you know.
And that, I didn't even know she wrote the letter until years later, you know, that she did. But I may have been young and dumb, but I had a higher power that was there for me, like I couldn't even begin to tell you. How many times on that farm, and stuff that happened on that farm, and what happened in Boston. I have a higher power. So, I get to this bar, and I like to party, just like anybody else.
And by the, but God just decided, you may think you like alcohol, but you really don't like it that much. So, we're going to get you to stop. Thank you. And, but I love to dance. And we would go to the dances, and we would dance and have a good old time. And my friend, another friend, fell madly in love with this sailor. She just loved him to death. And he had a buddy. And she wanted me to date his buddy.
The last thing I was interested in was dating anybody, to be really honest with you. I was having the time of my life. I was loving life. Finally, freedom. Finally, no one telling me what to do from the minute you get up. And nobody expecting a whole lot from me. And it felt wonderful. Having my own money. Having my own place to live. Having a little bit of responsibility and freedom. It was fabulous.
So, I met his, the buddy. And I swear to God that he said his name was Clyde Moonbeam. And I go to my friend, do you think I'm going to date a Clyde Moonbeam? You're right out of your mind. This is not happening, you know? Give me a break. Well, it wasn't his name. We met in December and got married in February. Isn't that just so special? Well, that's the southern northerner coming out of me. So, we got married and my friend, see, I told you, Kat.
Look at that. You're good? Hey, June might have had a good story to go with this one, who knows? You're good? Hey, June might have had a good story to go with this one, who knows? I'm telling you, see my higher power? He's hysterical. So she had planned a going away
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party for me. She was going to take me out to dinner. We were going to go see, are you ready for it? We were going to go see the play Hair, okay? Opening night, only night, you know? And my wonderful husband said, no, get in the car. We're going, I hate Boston. You can't keep me here another minute. And we got in the dang car and moved in van and went to Wickliffe, Ohio. Why that wasn't more of a sign for me, I have no idea. Well, let's just say I'm not the brightest watt in the plaque here. So we got this place. If I'd only had more time, if I'd only had a brain. We got married and he had this fabulous road runner. It was beautiful. It was that copper road runner and it had the, you know, it was a Hemi motor and oh gosh, it was fast and it was good. But the payment, the payment on this Hemi was over $300 a month and he made $160 a week, you know? I mean, his mom was helping him with the payment. His mom said, you're married now, I'm not helping you anymore. Okay, but I don't want you to work, honey. I want us to start a family.
Okay. Well, how are we going to afford this car? I don't know, you're going to have to figure it out. Oh yeah, I'm sitting here in this apartment knowing nobody. The only person that he wanted, that was around that I knew, I couldn't go anywhere, had no car, no means of transportation, no anything. And he goes, well, I got a cousin over in the next apartment complex, go over and see her. I'm 20 years old. She's 65. She's a drinker. I'm interrupting her drinking. I was about as welcome as the plague. Oh yeah. So isolation, isolation.
Started that relationship off. Then he decided he was going to take me to a party. And see, this is the emotions that have been coming up that I've been burying for years. All of this stuff has pretty much been buried, to be honest with you. And it's coming up in this, a lot of this lead. Some of it's come up before, but not all of it. And he takes me to this buddy's party. And they're all stoned. They're drinking. And there's this woman in the bedroom screaming. She is so drunk and so high. And the men are just going in the room and out of the room, in the room and out of the room, and in the room and out of the room. And I'm the only other female there. And I'm like, I didn't feel safe. Every warning bell was going off inside of me. And do you know, he got mad at me because I said, we're leaving. I'm not staying at this party. And we did leave. But I paid for it. I paid for it with a lot of silent treatment and a lot of, you know, not happy. He loved, he worked at, there was the panel at the beginning here, The Basics of Al-Anon. And one lady said she worked at the phone company. Well, so did he. And I think she had a job where she was told to be nice to people. And isn't that great? Mine was told, go shopping at the mall. Go at the mall and go and buy yourself some fry boots. You need some fry boots. So then he'd come in with, you know, $300 pair of fry boots with $160 a week pay. And the rent was $160. You know? Well, you need to help me figure out how to do this. Well, how am I supposed to do this if I can't get a job? So I finally said, I can't do this anymore.
I never stood up for myself ever. And this time I said, I got to get a job. I got to. So I started one place. But then he'd call all the time. And he'd call all the time. You know, you get a lot of personal calls on this job. You need to be doing your work.
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You don't need to be talking to your husband all the time. But he would call all the time. And of course, then I'd lose the job. Well, then I got a job at downtown Higbee's. And I loved that job. I did. But I think I loved the people I worked with more because we were like the odd couple. Triplets. That's it. Triplets. And there was this beautiful, beautiful black lady. There was four of us. There was this wonderful, wonderful gay guy. And if I'm saying it wrong, I apologize. There was myself. And then there was this little, quiet, little, young, sweet little thing. And my God, we were the rowdiest things. We were so bad. And if, again, the people I worked with would try to undermine us. And if something came in for me and my desk was as far away as Maureen and I are, instead of handing it to Maureen, she would send it back to the store that had sent it so that they have to resend it so that I would look bad and not make the deadlines. So I did okay there. But again, he kept calling. And he kept calling. And, you know, kind of undermining anything, any chance I took to break loose or to have a life of my own was kind of put under that thumb. So I finally had got a job in Eastlake. And my supervisor and I became real good friends.
And I thought, man, this is where, you know, maybe I'll make it longer here. And as soon as I made… Now, we had gotten married in 1971. And I wanted a child. I thought, okay, a family would settle us both down. It would fill my loneliness. Kelly had talked about the black hole. We have a black, you know, that if you're in another program, they say you've got the black hole. I'm here to tell you it's in an Al-Anon hole, too. We are not immune to that black hole. And so I thought that the child would fix that. Well, five years, no child. Five years, no child. And finally I got to the point, okay, God, you don't want me to have a child. I get that. And I'll just go ahead and stay working and try to stay out of trouble that way. Well, as soon as I made that declaration, guess what? I'm pregnant. And I have my son. And I got laid off from that job. And they said, well, at least you can be home now with your baby. Now, can you imagine that being told to a woman today, you know? They'd probably smack them one. But you know what? It was a blessing. Thirteen months later, I had my daughter. Yeah. And at that time, now this is my opinion, and you know every story has another side. So just remember that. My opinion is that's when my husband gave up being married. Because he went, he worked all the overtime that he could. Now here I am with two small babies. He went back to school. He only went for the money from the GI Bill. And the only complaint he ever had about me was the fact that I had a dirty diaper in the toilet every night when he came home, and he had to rinse that out. Otherwise, the house was spotless and everything was done. So we moved over to Grand River because we needed a bigger house with these kids. Or actually, we moved before the kids were born because we knew we would need a bigger house. And my neighbor, we got along really well. And over time, this daughter and the brother, son of the neighbor, we became really good friends. And they would help me with the kids. We would go places.
We would do things with the kids. And they were really great for me and with me, and they helped me with that. I didn't know at the time, but what it was called was postpartum depression. I was severely depressed. I really didn't know how to cope anymore with two babies
[00:40:03]
and someone that technically didn't want to be around anymore. So over the course of time, Hank and I, that's the son, became more than friends, and we wound up having an affair. And it devastated me. It really was never where I wanted to be. It's not who I am. It's just not. Anybody that knows me, it's not who I am. But that black hole, that black hole, it was trying to fill it. So I went to Florida with my son, and my girlfriend watched my daughter. And I got down to Florida, and I said, I can't do this to these children.
I was wrong. I admitted I was wrong. I've got to go home and try to make this work. And I get home, and he goes, don't bother. We're getting a divorce. I've already found somebody else. And so we got a divorce. We got a divorce on my dad's birthday, and that was about where it was at. And in the scope of things, we divorced in May, and he remarried in July. He seems to like those fast marriages, that's all I can say. But it was, and so Hank and I, I had so much guilt, and I had so much shame, and I had so much guilt, and I had so much shame. And then on top of all of it, I became pregnant, and I was making $4.25 an hour, and I had two small babies. And Hank goes, I can't, we cannot have this child.
So I aborted that baby. And so add that to the guilt, and the shame, and the hurt, and it was just, I was suicidal. And I went to a counselor, and the counselor had said, I don't know, there's nothing we can do. I don't know what to do for you. I don't know. And I swear to God that my higher power just loved me so much, said go home and look at those babies. Go home and look at those babies. And what I did at those times, my sponsor so eloquently said to me just recently, I used a method of escape to what was going on at the time. And what was going on at the time wasn't pretty. It was hard. So Hank helped me. I owed my ex-husband $10,000 to keep the house. We worked two jobs to pay off $3,000 of it. And I went to work for the cleaning, and he watched the kids, so we paid off the rest of the money so we could buy him out, and he could have it.
But here I am. I'm in a relationship with this man. For lack of better words, and I don't mean to be offensive to anybody, but with all this shit in my life that had happened in the childhood, the stuff that I had buried, all of that had happened. The choices I was making, the mistakes I was making, the shame I was feeling, the guilt I was feeling, the guilt I was feeling, I bring this into a relationship with this man.
And we struggled. Well, I had a close friend, and she was going to be, we were going to get married in October. And she was moving to California, and they had the date moved up, and they were moving in September. And I really wanted her there, because she was the only one that had been with me. All my friends disappeared, and there weren't many, because I'd been so isolated. They all disappeared. So she was the one that knew my story.
And, oh my God, my husband was so mad. Hank was just, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just, no, no, we're sticking to what, no, we're not having somebody tell us what to do. And I said, it's September, it's nothing. It's September, it's nothing. I don't, see again, I never stood up for myself, but that time I did. So, we got married in September, and my son was the best man, and my daughter
[00:45:06]
was the maid of honor, and we had a simple little ceremony, and off to the races we were going. And, oh Lord, we walked on eggshells for the first five years of our life. It was a struggle. We'd fight about his mom, we'd fight about his dad, we'd fight about my mom, fight about money, we'd fight about this, we'd fight about that, but we never talked about the fact that both of us had such guilt, shame, and backgrounds to try to make a relationship work. It was just really hard. So, we get into 19, yeah, I think that's about where I am right now, 1988. And, my brother Harry had just, had he gone to prison or had he gotten out of prison, because he had got in trouble for selling drugs. He was one of the biggest drug dealers up in the northeastern kingdom, and they had finally caught him and put him in prison. So, he went to prison, and he was trying to change his life around, and so he went into rehab in 1988. And, I'm working at a CPA firm, and this is, he goes in in January, or early in the year, I know, and I'm doing taxes and all kinds of W-2s and all that type of stuff. Anybody that's in that world knows that. And so, they call me and say, we need you to come to family week. I go, I cannot go to family week. This is tax season. It can't happen. Well, you need to come. So, they would call me every two weeks, I think, to get me to go. And finally, my boss said, you know, if you go, you may not have a job when you get back. And, I, something in me said, I have to go.
I have to go. I was trying to find out from my brother exactly when family week was, and he says he thinks it was in April, which again, would have been the end of tax season and the payroll tax things and blah, blah, blah. So, anyway, worst time for that type of job. And, I go home and I tell my husband that I'm going to go up to family week. And, he goes, to hell you are. And, I think my mom and my dad and all that, that I learned so well at home came out because I took that suitcase and I threw it across that room and I said, I'm going and you cannot stop me. So, I packed up the car, I packed up the kids, we get in the car and we go to family week. And, they told me, thank you for coming because if you hadn't have come, your dad wouldn't have come and your sister wouldn't have come and we wouldn't have had family week here. Well, my dad goes, well, we couldn't bring your mother because if we brought your mother, she'd have to stay. I never had a clue about alcoholism until that point. Our disease in my life never had a name. But, man, when it got a name of alcoholism and I stayed there that family week and realized what alcoholism does to a family and how it works and how it destroys and how it isolates and how it does all of that, it made sense. It just made sense. So, my husband, he's going to come on up. He's going to get us out of there. We're not staying the full week. We're going to get in that car and we're coming home. He arrives.
I know the place you're going to go. Somebody else wants this meeting, I'm telling you. Anyway, he's going to get me out of there and bring me home. He had a terrible plane ride up there. God was having fun with him. He went on one of them things that went up and down, over and around. He had quite a plane ride. He gets up there and he goes, okay, let's get in the car. So I go to Sister Alice. I said, Sister Alice, he wants me to go home. Tell him to get in the car. She goes, let me handle him.
[00:50:01]
Sister Alice and Claude handled my husband for the rest of that time. He and my dad, if they could act up, they acted up. They were brats. They tried every trick in the book to throw everybody off and not talk about anything. The more they threw it off, the more it came back to them, which was kind of interesting. So we get in the car finally at the end of the week. He's madder than hell that he did not get his way. We are going home. We're heading through the northern mountains of New York State. I think there was a snowstorm going on or a rainstorm, but I know the windshield was freezing. We're going along and he's going 80, 90 miles an hour on these secondary roads. He was like a fool. He was going to prove his point that he was mad enough at me that I was going to pay that price.
Well, the highway patrol came to my rescue that day. All of a sudden you hear woo-woo and he gets pulled over. I thought, oh man, if he's like my dad, I'm in trouble because we'll be getting whooping. He never had laid a hand and never has and never will lay a hand on me, but that was where my fear went. He got his ticket and we get going. He just starts laughing. Before you know it, I'm laughing and we're laughing and it just becomes hysterical. It was like it broke the ice. It broke the ice.
We get back to Ohio and he did not want me to go to meetings because someone would think that he was the alcoholic. I said, Hank, that's not what this is about. He goes, I don't care, you're not going. I went to a meeting that was five towns away where nobody would know me. The first meeting was a great meeting. One guy makes a comment and he's since passed. It's sad to hear this, but he made this comment about how excited he was about Al-Anon. Oh my God, I love Al-Anon.
It's the best thing that ever happened to me and he's just so excited. I walk out and I'm talking to this other newcomer and I said, well man, if I have to be that excited about Al-Anon, I ain't going. I ain't going because of course I was afraid. How was this going to work out at home if I kept coming? That was really what was going on, but I couldn't figure that out at that time. She goes, oh yeah, I understand, but did you hear the speaker? Oh shoot, yeah, I did.
So I started coming to Al-Anon and I walked in the doors in September of 88. I'm still trying to reach mental sobriety a day at a time, but it's been the best journey that I've ever been on. It saved my marriage. It saved my marriage because I finally knew who I was. It says in the ODAC book on page 209, it says we, all of us, need some kind of philosophy to live by, commented by an AA speaker. So I'll just settle for the 12 steps. And that's it. I finally had a philosophy. I finally had a home.
You know, before I came out here to talk, I cannot tell you this week how many phone calls and how many texts I have gotten encouraging me, telling me to come, that I was loved, that I had something to say, that it would matter. And it was awesome. It was awesome to be able to do that and to feel that. So I told you a little bit about my mom and I brought a show and tell. Now my mom would never tell you she loved you. She never would tell you she cared. It didn't, you know, she had her kids. She got along with us so much better when we were adults than when we were kids, I have to say. She really did well with us when we were older, but not so much when she was younger. So I went back. I had always been told I was too dumb, too stupid, and too lazy to amount to anything. So I get into these Al-Anon rooms and I decide to go back
[00:55:03]
to Lakeland and I get my degree from Lakeland. I decided I want to learn how to ride a motorcycle. So I went out and learned how to ride a motorcycle. I decided I wanted to go down to Cleveland State and see what I could do down there, what kind of trouble I could get into. And I did it. I went to Cleveland State. So when I graduated from Cleveland State, my mom says, hey, Margaret, let me see, let me have a copy of your diploma. And I said, okay. So I sent her a copy of my diploma. And this is what she had made up.
I don't know why they did that. That's okay. I can't help them either. And then she goes, she's looking at it and she goes, let me see where I can file it. Oh, she goes, with a degree of Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude. She goes, Margaret, do you know what Cum Laude means? And I said, well, no, mom, what does Cum Laude mean? She goes, with honors. You know, this one-room schoolhouse kid finally got a degree with honors.
And then about two years ago, I've been having issues with my back. And two years ago, if anybody remembers, I'm making all kinds of noise here, I was in a wheelchair down at the Ohio area assembly. And I swear that I'm here with you today because of this program. Because it kept reminding me, listen, girl, have you realized how much you've already lived through? Have you realized how much strength you really have? How much courage you really have? Use it. And I'm telling you, I wanted to quit a lot of times. It was hard work.
So today, I get this. Because this spring, they had at the YMCA a program for water safety for second graders. And I volunteered to help second graders with water safety. I got out of that wheelchair and I went down and I helped them. And I got a safety around water T-shirt. I picked a button that says, expect a miracle. And if you haven't gotten anything out of this tonight, I am the miracle. And I want to close with this. Dear God, I am powerless and my life is unmanageable without your help and guidance. I come to you today because I believe that you can restore and renew me to meet my needs today. Since I cannot manage my life or affairs, I've decided to give them to you. I put my life, my will, my thoughts, my desires, and ambitions in your hands. I give you all of me, the good and the bad, the character defects and the shortcomings, my selfishness, resentments, problems. They'll have a resentment thing tomorrow, too. I know that you will work them out in accordance with your plan. Such as I am, take and use me in your service. Guide and direct my ways.
Show me what to do for you. I cannot control or change my friends or loved ones. So I release them into your care for your loving hands to do with as you will. Just keep me loving and free from judging them. If they need changing, God, you'll have to do it. I can't. Just make me willing and ready to be of service to you, to have my shortcomings removed, and to do my best. Help me to see how I've harmed others and make me willing to make amends to them all. Keep me ever mindful of thoughts and actions that harm myself and others and which separate me from your light, love, and spirit. And when I commit these errors, make me aware of them and help me admit each one promptly. I seek to know you better, to love you more. I am seeking the knowledge of your will for me and the power to carry that out.
Carried That Out. And that's from, as we understood, page 214 to 215. Thank you.