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Source: Winnie E – Al-Anon Retreat, McKenzie Bridge Part 2 1989 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: winnie-e-al-anon-retreat-mckenzie-bridge-part-2-1989-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:17:57
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The influence that I had over my own life because of my own actions was really kind of a startling revelation to me. And it still is to this day, you know. I didn't understand the word powerless. Can you believe that? I sometimes use as an example this flying business. I'm not the world's greatest flyer. And I probably wouldn't fly if I didn't have to. But the reason I'm not a good flyer is because I'm out of control.
I'm absolutely powerless when I step on that plane, you know. And the first time I ever made a plane trip, one of the Al-Anon gals gave me a little card as a going away present. You know, Al-Anons are sadistic. I don't know whether you agree with that or not. But I've found them to be sadistic. And this gal gave me a card which I thought was so nice of her, you know, until I opened it up. And on the front of it, it had the worst looking plane you ever saw in your life.
You know, even the wings turned up. And up at the top it said, I have just spoken to your pilot and he's not the least bit worried. And when you open it up, the pilot looked worse than the plane. And it said, drunk, yes. Worried, no. So she had managed to pick up on both my fears. But anyhow, getting back to this meeting and with these people, it was just about this time that the word release came into existence.
And I don't know what they call it now. But my sponsor, because I was one of those people that had to be kept busy. See, I couldn't stand to do nothing. I'd sit there and I'd say to Wilma, I have to do something. And she'd say, you are doing something. And I'd say, no I'm not. And she'd say, yes you are. And I'd say, what am I doing? And she said, nothing. And I didn't realize that doing nothing was doing something.
You know, I still don't quite understand that. But I was never still for a minute. See, I always went through life like something was chasing me. And for me to sit still was just almost more than I could stand. And so she used to give me little things to do, so I'd feel like I was earning my keep in life, I guess. And when this thing about release came out, she gave it to me and she said, now we want one for each member of the group, a copy for each member of the group.
And there's about 15, but make 25. We may need some extras. So I typed it 25 times. She didn't mention carbon paper. I never thought of it, you know. And when I took it to the meeting, every place that the word release appeared, I had spelled it R-E-L-E-A-S-H. Because that was really what I did, you know. She always said it was a Freudian slip because they'd say let go and I'd let go until you got just so far and then I'd pull you back.
And so I was just never able to just let it go, you know. It was just like nothing. I didn't understand letting go or nothing. I finally got to the second step. I kind of ignored that. I gave that to Eddie too in the beginning because of the unfortunate word, came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Now I'm sitting in Temple City, California in my own house with my car and my kids and everything and he's sitting in a California state hospital and they want me to admit that there's a power greater than myself that's going to restore me.
To sanity. And if you analyze these steps one at a time you'll find that very few of them apply to you. You know. I left that one for him too. But after Wilma found out what I was doing
[00:04:59]
I had to go back to some of these
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and really that second step, well I began to think of some of the things that I had done, you know. For instance, one of my favorite pastimes was hiding his car. I'd find out where it was and then I'd put it in the one place I knew he'd never look for it, the garage. And then I'd watch him while he just went all over town looking for his damn car. And when I thought he had been punished enough then when he wasn't there I'd take the car out of the garage and put it right back where I'd gotten it from.
Now, maybe that isn't crazy but the pleasure that I used to get out of listening to him mumble I know I looked there, you know. He thought he was losing his mind because he had looked and there it was, you know. And my other favorite thing was if I wanted to keep him at home I had various methods. In fact, I'm living with some of the methods that I used. If I'd have known I was going to be married to that jerk for this long I'd have trained him differently because a lot of the things that I taught him I'm now stuck with, you know.
Like serving him his meal in front of the TV if he's watching a baseball game or a hockey game or something, you know. Right in the middle of Perry Mason which is what I like to watch. Anyhow, he's a very neat individual and everything is arranged just so. He could go into a dark room in the middle of the night reach into the right drawer and come up with the right pair of black socks. Now that's disgusting.
And when I used to get the idea of keeping him at home, you know I used to switch the drawers on him because that used to drive him crazy, you know because he never thought of just switching the drawers back he'd take everything out of that drawer and arrange it all back. And yet, I couldn't relate to the word sanity. You see, I thought I was the saner of the two. But in the final definition of the word sanity to me, do you know what it was?
It was you. I couldn't understand you people. You did the damnedest things I'd ever seen in my life. I wouldn't do what you were doing. Of course, you were happy. That did make a little bit of a difference. I don't really care why I'm that way. What I care about today is that I have a way to live that doesn't necessitate me going back and looking for reasons. That's one of the primary reasons that in my opinion I don't like to listen to the non-alcoholic or the al-anon or whatever they happen to be start studying about alcoholism.
They're never going to understand alcoholism. When I got to al-anon, I knew all I wanted to know about alcohol and didn't know I knew it. I was fed up with something I didn't even recognize because I never blamed Eddie's drinking. I did not want him to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and quit drinking. I wanted him to learn to mind. And that was the only thing that I had that I had on my mind. If he would do what I told him to everything would turn out alright.
But he wouldn't do it. And when I first got to al-anon there weren't near the al-anon meetings that they have today and my sponsor, God love her, took me to a lot of AA meetings. I don't know whether it was because she cared about me or it was some way to keep me busy. But I'm grateful for those meetings because I believe it was in Alcoholics Anonymous that I learned the true meaning of the healing of laughter.
I used to go to those meetings and I'd listen to some guy stand up and tell the most horrendous story I'd ever heard in my life and them idiots would laugh. I was the only one in that whole room that felt how he had suffered. And then maybe 30 or 45 minutes or an hour later somebody would get up and walk to the front of the room and take a one year birthday cake. And you could look around at those selfsame people and you could see in their face a look that I have never found words adequate enough to describe.
That look of thank you God that one more person has found this way of life which has meant so much to each and every one of us. Because I believe, which is only my opinion, but I believe the strength
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of the fellowship of al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous and Allatine is the fact that as far as many people as there are involved with it, there are that many ways to work it. We don't share situations in this fellowship. We share feelings. And even though our situations can be miles apart, we feel the same way inside about all of those things. It's like the difference between liking and loving. I love people, but there's a lot of them I don't like.
And I don't love them for their sake, I love them for my sake. Because one of the things I do not want to do today that I did all my life is resent anybody to the point where I have given them a hammer and a license to beat me to death and they're never even going to know I hate them. Because I'm not going to tell them. Not knowing that was a form of insanity as far as I was concerned. Because I went through life disliking people, eliminating them from my life for whatever reason.
As I sometimes say, usually say in fact, when I got to Al-Anon I was one of those people that put, one of those individuals I should say, that put people in categories. Those you encourage, those you tolerate, and those you ignore. And all my life, once I had you placed there, it didn't make any difference how much you changed, I never changed. You were still what you were when I put you wherever you happened to land.
That's a form of insanity. That inability to allow people the dignity to live their lives the way they want to. Maybe that's also one of the reasons why in my opinion, as far as the Al-Anon is concerned, I hope and pray that it's never necessary for my husband to take another drink. But if he does, I hope God gives me the ability to keep my mouth shut. To allow him the opportunity to come back into this fellowship.
And I think sometimes, and it's just my opinion, which is all I'm offering while I'm here this weekend, but in my opinion, it's against our traditions to go and say, he's drinking again. Because I did that once. And I know what it did. Not to him, but to me. Because when Eddie was sober a year and three days, somebody said they were going to give him a cake to celebrate. And he hadn't been sober long enough to know that in celebrating, people do use cakes.
They don't have to have a beer. Excuse me. And he went out and had one beer. It took him 24 hours to get over his slip. It took me three weeks. Three weeks before I could feel comfortable enough to watch him walk out the door without that knot that I had gotten so accustomed to in the pit of my stomach. Now you would think that I would be smart enough to just let him alone, but I didn't. What I did was, I went down to Long Beach to the Long Beach AA office, and I got Chuck Chamberlain's telephone number, and I called him on the phone, and I told him that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous in our area had not found it necessary to give my husband sufficient information to stay sober.
Yeah. He laughed, too. He said to me, you know, he used to chuckle. He didn't laugh out loud. He just… And he said, how long did you say he'd been sober? And I said, a year and three days. He told me later on, years later, that he knew how sick I was because I had it down almost to the minute, how long he had been sober. And so when I said a year and three days, he laughed again and I hung up on him.
And I left the AA office and walked right directly across Pine Street to the thrifty drugstore that had a public telephone I wasn't even going to use there for. And I called Alcoholics, or called Al-Anon and reported to the Alcoholics Anonymous. And Lee Carty, God rest her soul, she's gone now, but Lee Carty was on the phones at that time. And I said to her, how could anyone who has spent one year rebuilding their lives choose to go back to what it was like?
And she said to me, I don't know, Winnie. Maybe he hasn't reached his bottom, but I think you have. And she said, And she sent me to an Al-Anon meeting, and that was, I believe, where I began to understand some of the things that that second step talk about, a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity, could keep me from doing these strange things that always, when I was alone, seemed to loom up to embarrass me.
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Have you ever been embarrassed when you were alone? That was a pastime for me, you know. I've always kind of likened it to when the drunk wakes up in the morning and realizes what he's done, you know. That was me. Only he only did it when he drank. I did it every time I opened my eyes, you know. I was constantly being embarrassed. But the other thing that bothered me about this Al-Anon program in the beginning was the fact that it was nothing but Protestants. After my first meeting, I knew they were all Protestants because at that time, you know, the Catholics didn't say, For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. We stopped at a certain point. And here I am, trapped with all these people that are saying it the wrong way.
I wasn't quite sure what the priest was going to think about that. And it's one of the times that Wilmer said to me, Well, just keep coming back. Maybe they'll change. And I'll be darned if the Catholics didn't change, you know, because we now say that too. But anyhow, I had a lot of trouble with the spiritual part of this program because I was a person that came to Al-Anon. I had a lot of religion. I had absolutely no faith. You know, I went to church because I was scared. I wasn't afraid I wasn't going to be good enough to go to heaven nor bad enough to go to hell. But I had purgatory in mind. And to me, purgatory was like an elevator, you know. And once or twice a day, they'd dip you down just to remind you of all the things you've done.
And so I was a little upset because these women seemed to be right on the ball, you know. They didn't quote the Bible or anything, but they said spiritual type things that I'd heard those nuns say, you know. And besides that, they were talking way over my head. I didn't understand a lot of the things that they were saying. And so when they got to the spiritual awakening, because see, I was one of those people, one of the reasons it's hard for me to talk about the steps in order is because I went from the first one to the twelfth one. See, I went right from getting the message that I was powerless over Winnie to making twelve-step calls to tell them they were powerless over Winnie too.
And there was never a call too far that I wouldn't make, you know, because it said you must go to any length if you want what we have. Now that's in the A.A. book, but I did a lot of reading in the A.A. book. So anyhow, I was making all these twelve-step calls and I hadn't had a spiritual awakening, so I wasn't really doing a good job on the twelfth step. And I kept saying to Wilma, what am I going to have a spiritual awakening? And she'd say, it'll come, it'll come. And I was getting a little impatient and I had moved from Temple City to Garden Grove. And my twins that I told you about last night had gotten to an age where they decided they wanted to be filling station attendants and they were constantly putting water in the gas tank.
And this kind of upset Eddie because he never got anyplace he was going. It didn't bother me because I wasn't going anyplace. I was doing nothing, which is what Wilma told me. I was working the program, that's what I was doing. And so Eddie kind of let me know that if he started out someplace again and got stuck because those kids put water in the gas tank, that there might possibly be a divorce in our family. So when I caught those little rascals putting gas in, you know, I thought, oh my God, I've got to do something. So I decided I would drain the gas tank.
And I got one of those big pipe wrenches and I got underneath the car. Now my kids used to stand around and watch me do some of these things, you know, like when I was new and studying Al-Anon, I used to do it in a playpen. And that may sound a little crazy to you too, but if you don't have eight children, you don't know that that's the safest place for you because you don't have to worry about where they are, they're standing outside.
Watching you, you know. But anyhow, I got underneath the car with this pipe wrench that stuck about halfway out, you know, because it was about that long. And the nut on the gas tank was a pretty good size too. And I wasn't having any success loosening the darn thing.
[00:20:07]
So I got out to get some of that liquid wrench that Eddie always said was marvelous. And my washer and dryer were in the garage. And as I passed by, I saw there were some things that needed to be washed and I thought, well, I might as well put them in the washing machine. I'm out here anyhow. So I did. And got back underneath the car and was working with the liquid wrench and the pipe wrench. And I heard the washing machine stop. So I got out from underneath the car and went over and took the things out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer and turned it on and went back underneath the car.
Well, it worked. I got the nut off of the gas tank and now I had a bucket about that big of gasoline and water. And I didn't know what to do with it. I mean, you can't put it in the gutter. You know how irresponsible people are. And I didn't want to put it on the grass because it would kill the grass. So I put it in the stationary tub between the washer and the dryer. And as soon as I realized what I'd done, I reached out to turn on the cold water to keep the fumes down. And that's when the garage left. The washing machine passed me on one side. The dryer passed me on the other side. There was a fire you would not believe.
And the only casualty was the guy next door that owned the house. He was trying to put it out with his hand, you know, and I kept saying, I've turned it over. But he didn't believe me. I guess it didn't make any sense to him. And he was really the only casualty. I don't know who called the fire department. I went right in the house and called my sponsor. And I told her this was not working. And she made a trip from Arcadia to Garden Grove, which is probably 27 miles or thereabouts. And she stood in the middle of what had been the garage and looked at what had been the washer and the dryer.
And then very quietly she said to me, what kind of a spiritual awakening are you looking for? And I had to admit as I looked around to see what she now saw that I had just had one of Bill Wilson's best awakenings, you know. Because I even had bells. My ears rang for three days, you know. And the fire marshal, he just stood there and shook his head, you know. And the end of that story is almost as funny as the damn explosion because I didn't want Eddie to know that I had taken…
I didn't want him to know I was responsible for all of that. And I couldn't get the nut back on the gas tank. And so I just ignored it. He took the car to the filling station. I guess there was just enough left to get him to the filling station. I don't know. Except he was putting it in one end and it was running out the other. And he came home. But that's more or less a combination of the first, second, and the third step, if you know what I mean.
Because when I got here, I was not willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him. Because I understood him, he did not understand me. That was obvious, you know. And at the time that I first started working on that, Eddie was in the hospital at the time and I really didn't hate him enough to turn him over. So I skipped that one for both of us. Now, I was never willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. But I used to give it to anybody else on earth, whether they asked for it or not. And the example that I always use is our L.A. freeways. When I get on the freeway, I go right over to the left-hand lane because that goes straight ahead. That's where I'm going and it's supposed to be the fastest lane, you know. It's not, but it's supposed to be. It's like every other thing that's supposed to be. It ain't.
But anyhow, there's always some sucker that will get right on behind me, rush past me, move over and then slow down. Which means I gotta get over here, get ahead of him, move back over and slow down. So he will know how I feel, see. So he gets ahead of me and then I get ahead of him. Then he gets ahead of me and I get ahead of him.
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About five miles over the road, he puts on his right-hand blinker, moves over and leaves the freeway. Because he's home. I'm usually three miles past my turn. Because he has had control of my life. But I wasn't going to turn it over to God. However, I did notice when I would call Wilma with little situations, you know, and she'd say to me, well, just turn it over. But she never said to whom, which I can understand. It's an anonymous program. You don't tell everybody who handles the problems.
But on this one particular day, I was having a pretty big one and I thought anyhow, you know, everything was big to me in those days. And I called her on the phone. She wasn't in too good a mood. And when I started to tell her my big situation, she snapped at me, which was the first time she'd ever really done it. She said, oh, for heaven's sakes, Winnie, turn it over. I said, you don't have to get yourself so upset. That's what you used to say to me. I said, you just don't realize that you've never said to whom. Well, she said, I thought you knew. You turn it over to God. I said, not me. I haven't even told him I'm going to Al-Anon yet.
And I could tell by her tone of voice that this upset her, but I didn't want to upset her. See, this is a sick woman I'm dealing with. And so I began to wonder, what could I turn over to God that he couldn't allow something that would make her happy? And it took me about three days. And finally, when I called her on the phone, I said, okay, Wilma, I'm turning something over to God. And she said, good, what are you turning over? I said, my ironing.
And she said, your ironing? I said, well, you said it didn't make, oh, no, no, no, no. She said, it's all right, it's all right. And I don't know whether you realize or not, but God don't like to iron either. I used to keep my ironing in a cabinet, you know, in case I got the urge where I could pull something out and iron it. And I turned it over to him and his flopped out of the cabinet, ended up in boxes. Boxes eventually got to the rumpus room. It was a horrible mess.
And whenever she'd come over to my house, which was quite often, and I'd say to her, come on, I want you to see the ironing. And that's when she always gave me routine number one, you know, it's all right. I figured if it don't bother her and it don't bother him, I won't let it bother me either. And then one night after an AA meeting in El Monte, this guy walks up and he says to me, Winnie, you got a bunch of kids, don't you? And I said, yes, I was admitting it by then. And he said, well, I go to an orphanage down in Mexico and those little guys could sure use anything that possibly your kids have outgrown.
So I promised him faithfully I would go right home, I would arrange everything, and he could just pick it up at his leisure. But I am a procrastinator by profession. He didn't follow me home. By morning, I forgot he asked me. Now, it was sometime after that, and I'm not sure of the span of time, but I came home from an Al-Anon meeting and Eddie said to me, Bill was by and he picked up the stuff for the orphanage. I said, he did? He said, yeah. I said, where did you find it? And he said, those boxes in the rumpus room.
Now, if there are those of you who have not yet put it together, I want you to know that he got my ironing. And from that day to this moment, I have had no problems turning things over to God. Because my God, as I understand him today, has some of the most unique answers. Because I never would have thought of sending him to Mexico. And besides all that, you know, he made me look good. And I didn't have to put any effort for it, you know.
I've had so many manifestations in my life of, of how I have been gotten out of holes, you just wouldn't believe.
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A few years ago I went to Germany with my son Frank to visit my son Arthur, they're both very much like me, when I was sick. And, uh… Laughter Warriors, you know, warriors. Frank was about 12 years old when he said to me one day, Mom, someday I'm gonna own a boat, even if I have to go to work. Laughter And, uh, he finally realized his dream, he went to work and now he's got a boat, but he don't have anything but a swimming pool to put it in, that's…
Now he's praying for a river, but anyhow, um… We got off the, the plane in, uh, in, um, Berlin, or in Frankfurt, and, uh, the first English words we heard, Your luggage is lost. Laughter Frank went into orbit, you know, he said, what are we gonna do? I said, well, we're gonna be the first people through customs. Laughter That's first things first, you know, that's what Wilma kept saying. And we were the first people through customs.
The next day, we, uh, we were in Berlin, the luggage was in Berlin, they even delivered it. And Frank said to me, how do you explain this? And I said, I don't know, I guess God just didn't want to stop in Frankfurt, that's all. Laughter The whole purpose of that whole story is that it proved to me that all the worry in the world is not going to do anything about anything. No matter how much I had worried about that luggage, if I wasn't supposed to get it back, I wouldn't have gotten it back.
But what worry has done in my life is robbed me of the only gift that I have been given that I cannot replace, and that's time. For every second of every minute of every hour of every day that I spend worrying about the things I know I can do nothing about, I have just spent that much time of the life allotted to me, and I'm never gonna be able to get it back. So I try not to worry. Now it doesn't work 100% of the time.
But what does? Nothing works 100% of the time. And at least in my particular case, the fact that it doesn't work sometimes is what keeps me coming back. If I had been able to figure this program out, this way of life out, and if I had been able to, uh, breeze through it the way I thought I was going to, I wouldn't be here today. I'd be back out there fighting shadows that I had fought all my life. And so the first three steps to me is sort of like planting a garden.
It's the seed. The seed that begins to blossom as you get into the 4th, 5th, and 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, and 10th, and 11th, and 12th. Because each section of those steps to me is like raising a garden of flowers. I've watched people, and I'm sure you have too, that have walked in that look like death warmed over. And you begin after the 2nd, maybe the 3rd, or even maybe the 4th meeting, if they keep coming back, you begin to see a sparkle in their eyes that they don't even recognize is there.
Maybe it's good they don't recognize it's there. I know it's good for me to see that it's there because I have a manifestation of the fact that I know it works. Last night when I, uh, mentioned that I'm not one of these people that puts a lot of stress on longevity, I haven't got any more idea how today is going to turn out than you do, no matter how many years you've been around. It's a one day at a time way of life.
And I like it that way. When I first got to Al-Anon, my Bible became just for today. I went around trying to do the things that it listed in that just for today. Sounds simple, but it's not. Trying to do something for somebody without letting them find it out. Trying to be happy when you're really not happy. I also like the prayer on the back to St. Francis of Assisi because I, uh, I went clear through school to the nuns.
I've done a lot of praying in my life, but they were never prayers for me. Never prayers that I might be able to understand rather than be understood. Or that I'd be able to love rather than be loved. Or that I'd be able to forgive rather than be forgiven.
[00:35:02]
I had never thought of it that way. I'll also tell you that when I first got to Al-Anon, I quit going to church. To me, there was a conflict of interest between my church and my meetings. And I don't know what it was. I never have really figured it out and I haven't tried all that hard because it really doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of difference. I just knew, maybe it's because I couldn't play the game.
See, church to me was a game. I used to sit on the front row with as many kids as were ambulatory that could go. And, uh, because I wanted the priest to know that I was doing my Christian duty. And I want you to know I ran into a priest from the parish that I belonged to in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he remembered me, I'll tell you. I didn't remember him. He said to me, have you any idea what it's like to try to say a mass when you've got a female sitting on the front row with a whole bunch of kids and she isn't paying a bit of attention to what you're doing.
She's sitting this one back and sitting that one back. Because that's what I used to do, you know. And, uh, I don't think, I don't take credit for driving him into Alcoholics Anonymous. I really think it was a sacramental line. But for him to remember me, you know. I got mad at the Catholic Church really before I actually got to Al-Anon. I pulled every one of my kids that were in school out of school.
And I sent them to a Baptist school. Because I figured that was the worst thing I could do to the Catholics. And, uh, it didn't seem to bother him at all. So I went down to the diocese office to tell the cardinal about this monsignor that was in our parish who had hired that order of nuns that had no business being nuns. I hope the priests are all busy today. Anyhow, uh, I never got quite to the cardinal.
I got a hold of another monsignor. And I just told him what I thought of that parish and that priest and that monsignor and those nuns. And he just sat there and listened to me, you know. Didn't change anything, but I felt better when I left. And, uh, after I'd been in Al-Anon for, oh, probably three or four years, I went to a luncheon. It was when the Council on Alcoholism first came into existence.
And Marty Mann had come out to kind of give a, you know, a little push to it in our area. And I went to the luncheon at the Biltmore with Cecilia B., who was a friend of mine. And sitting up on the dais was Marty M. I keep forgetting that they're taping this, and I'm using all their names. Well, what the heck. They all know who they are. And there were movie stars. There was the sheriff of L.A. County.
And among the other dignitaries was this monsignor. And I saw him and I thought, oh, my lord. Because, like as always, I began to think of my last meeting with him. And I didn't know how to let him know that I was better without him knowing I was there. That's a very difficult type of situation. And after all the speeches were over and after all the… They started to leave, you know, and people were breaking up into little groups.
And Cecilia said to me, come on, I want to go over and talk to Pete Pritchett. Because she worked for the state of California and she knew him. And I figured, what the heck, it won't hurt if I know the sheriff. And so I went with her. And as we approached him, he was talking to this monsignor. And I said to Cecilia, I can't go over there. And she said, why not? And I said, because that's the one I read off.
And she said, oh, for heaven's sake, he won't even remember you. That's been a long time ago. And I figured, well, she's right. It had been a long time ago. And we walked up to where the two of them were standing. And the monsignor took my hand in both of his. And he said to me, Winifred, you look a lot better than the last time I saw you. So that ought to give you an idea of how powerless I was over myself, how insane I became, and what the search for spirituality has meant in my life.
Now, everybody don't have to go to those extremes. You have to be really well in order to do what I did. Because I think when the Al-Anon comes in, they're well. That's their problem. You take a drunk to a meeting, maybe you don't get him sober, but immediately you can see a change. I could not see the change in me until I quit looking for it. That was the change in me. When I quit looking for improvement, looking for this, looking for that,
[00:40:05]
that's when I began to really know that I was changing. I didn't have that knot in the pit of my stomach. It was okay, you know, if things didn't go my way. I will tell you that when Eddie first came home from the hospital, I had put up with all his drinking, but his sobriety was driving me crazy. And I happen to have just mentioned in passing to Wilma one day that I thought I'd put a little ground glass in his dinner sometime because I couldn't stand it.
And she said to me, why don't you work the 12th tradition on him? And I said, oh, for heaven's sake, the traditions are for the group. And she said, well, at your house you have a group. And I did. I had more members in my family than some of those groups had in their whole group, you know. And she said, put principles above personality. And I tried it, and it worked. I began to listen to what he said and forget who was saying it.
And, you know, he began to make sense. And it suddenly dawned on me that probably from the very beginning, I was always so busy trying to figure out what he meant, I never heard what he said, you know. And I had a manifestation of that, too. One time we were sitting at the kitchen table or the dining room table, whatever you want to call it, it's the same table. Depends on the time of day as to what it is.
And I have one wall that's kind of, it's glass. It's a sliding glass door and a big window. And I was sitting here and Eddie was sitting there, and I looked out and I said to him, there's a hummingbird. And he just kind of glanced over his shoulder and with his usual charm said, that's a sparrow. Well, there was one time in my life when we would have sat at that table for the rest of our lives if necessary until he admitted that the sparrow he saw was a hummingbird, you know.
But because of that little tip that Wilma had given me and because I had been practicing it a little bit along the way, I said to him, where do you see a sparrow? And he pointed and I turned a little bit farther and sure enough, there was a sparrow. And the miracle or the coincidence of that is that I believe that in the final analysis, that's what this fellowship is all about. The ability to see through other people's eyes, to hear through other people's voices, because I can't see everything and I can't hear everything.
But if I'm willing to let you enlarge my world, to point out to me the things that I can't see because of my limited ability to take in what's going on, or if I allow you to tell me the things that you have heard that have made an improvement in your life and can possibly make an improvement in my life, then that's what it's all about. That's why one hand reaching into another hand make the strength of this fellowship what it is today.
And that's just my opinion. But I've never ever seen a failure in this way of life. Now that don't mean that the drunks all stay sober either. I have a firm belief that those who find it necessary to go out and take another drink, God forbid that they ever should have to, are sort of a miracle in themselves because they prove to the rest of them, something that they've only read in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, that this is a day-by-day reprieve from a disease that is so horrendous that people don't even recognize it, don't know that they have it.
And that works on both sides of the fence. I don't believe that it was a bad thing that God tied me up with an alcoholic. And I'm not sorry for all the things that I had to or thought I had to go through in order to get here. Because if it hadn't been for the fact that Eddie had to find a way to live without drinking, I'd still be out there fighting those windmills that I fought all my life because I did not know that that wasn't the way the whole world was.
I don't know for sure whether I would have been able to make it if I came in today. And I'm not knocking anybody or anything. Whatever works for you is great. But if anybody had walked up to me and said, Do you come from a dysfunctional family? I'd have said no. I'd have said no. My family was absolutely normal. A few little idiosyncrasies, but nothing dysfunctional.
[00:45:01]
When I came into Al-Anon, they didn't have the scientific knowledge about alcoholism that they have today. They said very strange things that I grew to understand, like we're all here because we're not all there. All those things, you see, that made sense. They also said, this is a place where we learn to laugh together about the things we cried about alone. That made sense to me, too. The guy that I first heard say, one eye on yesterday and one eye on tomorrow will make you cockeyed today.
I can understand that. But the one that I've held on to that I enjoy thinking of on a regular basis is the one I heard about. We all know that God never closes one door that he doesn't open another. But it can be hell in the hall. And when I begin to get those funny feelings back, that's one of the things that I think of. I say, please, God, I'm in the hall. Don't forget to open the door. I'm going to close here in just a second, but do any of you know what Rule 62 is?
Rule 62 is don't take yourself too damn seriously. And at our Woman to Woman that we had in March, we had a workshop on this. And they made up these little books, you know. And I think that's one of the secrets to the success of this fellowship. Don't take yourself too seriously. And that's what I try to practice one day at a time. I have on my watch, which I can't see, so would you tell me what time it is?
Ten after ten? Oh, I'm on time. Okay, thank you very much for listening and see you later. This is the end of session. This morning to thank the committee and everybody connected with it with all the little goodies that were in my room. It's been a long time since anybody gave me a stuffed toy, but I took it, put it on my pillow last night, my little pink rabbit. And he sleeps better than Eddie. Didn't miss him at all, you know.
In fact, I think sometimes I'm getting too well. I don't miss him as much as I suppose I should. Anyhow, now we have come, as far as I'm concerned, to the cultivating part, as I call it, of the fellowship. And that's the fourth, fifth, and sixth steps. And I had just as much trouble with those as I did with one, two, and three. Maybe a little bit more, you know, because I had listened to these gals in these meetings talk about when I took my inventory and if you read that step and it says, made a searching and fearless moral inventory, I didn't see of myself.
I never bothered to read beyond where it was necessary for me to comprehend what they wanted me to do. So I more or less figured that what they wanted to know was how bad Eddie had been that would make it necessary for me to be considered a member of the Al-Aman family groups. And so I had kind of a running diary of all the mean, lousy, low-down things he'd ever done to me. And I jotted down a few of them and I'm ready for the fifth step.
And we used to have what they called a telephone line or a lifeline, they called it. And some unsuspecting people that didn't think I would call them gave me their phone numbers. And after I had finished my inventory, which took me almost 20 minutes, I think, I started at the top. But she'd sit there and she'd just knit and knit and talk and grumble and all that other stuff, you know. And I couldn't do that and so it upset me.
And one of the first things that I got hung up on, I guess, is anonymity. And I used to give the people in that meeting nicknames. And I gave Glennis the nickname of Madame Lafarge. If I was talking to Wilma, I'd say, did you hear what Madame Lafarge said to me? And one night she said to me, do you know who Madame Lafarge was? And I said, certainly. She's that female from the Tale of Two Cities that used to go to the executions and she would knit while they executed the noblemen of the French regime.
And every time a head fell, she'd drop a stitch. And then when she got home, she'd count the number of stitches she dropped and she knew how many people had hit the dust.
[00:50:02]
And so I explained that to Wilma and she said, well, as long as you know who she was. But it might help you a little bit if you knew that it's your head she counts when she goes home. But I had gotten down to her name on that list. And I called her and unfortunately she was at home. And I started to tell her about these terrible things that Eddie had done to me. And she said in her usual charm, listen, I don't have time for that crap.
And I hung up on her and called my sponsor. And I gave her the names and telephone numbers of the people that I had called that were not willing to work the fifth step with me. And she said to me, I don't want to hear what he did either. So when you get around to making a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. And I said, it didn't say that. And she said, read it. And I read it again. And I don't know how many times before I got to that point I had been asked to read the 12 steps.
And I had said of yourself, but it never penetrated. It never hit me for some reason or other until she brought it to my attention. So I started writing. And I had a fourth step that was about that thick. And I would write, I lied comma because. And then I would explain what Eddie had done. That had made it necessary. And when I finally got it finished and I edited it. So that I had the right punctuation and everything was right.
And then I typed it. And then I took it to Wilma. And she took about two sentences, maybe even just one, I don't know. And she said to me, you know it isn't going to do you a bit of good to do all this. And I said, why not? And she said, because it really doesn't make a bit of difference why you lied. You lied. Just write that down. And do you know, I couldn't write it down. Because I had never considered myself a liar.
I had always looked upon myself as a diplomat. Because I didn't lie. I just didn't tell the truth. And when I talk, I usually use as an example an instance when. As some of you probably know, I happen to be married to a thinker. Sometimes he thinks two, three weeks before he answers you. You know, which isn't as bad as it sounds. It's a marvelous memory course because you've got to keep in mind everything you've been talking about, see.
Because when he comes up with the answer, he never connects it to anything. He just says, yes. I'll give you a better example. Since he's given up drinking, he's taken up dusting. And that's almost as bad as drinking. And one day when we happened to be playing golf, I just sort of looked over, you know. And that son of a gun was dusting the golf cart with my sweater. And I took almost an immediate exception to it.
So when I got back in the cart, I merely said to him, when you die, I'm going to bury you in a plastic bag. And he didn't say anything, so I didn't say anything either. But about two weeks later, I thought we were having a friendly cup of coffee one morning. And all of a sudden, he said to me, I don't think that was very nice. He thought it over, and he didn't like the bag idea, I guess. But that's the way he is, and I'm getting used to it.
But on the example that I usually use about not lying and yet not telling the truth happened when I was asked to come down to Chula Vista, which is down near San Diego. And I was having, as I always say, a moment of growth, or whatever you want to call it. I knew I wasn't well enough to go that far with him without running over him. But I didn't want to tell him I didn't want him to go. You know, because he still gets hurt so easy.
And then he mopes around, and I have to make amends. I don't even know what I've done. And I want to get involved in all that stuff. So I said to him, Eddie, I'm going to a meeting. And he said okay, and I left. But that night, I didn't get home at 10.30 or a quarter of 11. It was closer to a quarter of one. And when I walked through the door, there he stood, right in my spot. With that age-old question, where the hell have you been?
And without even thinking, I said to him, well, how far do you think it is to Chula Vista? Now that night, he accused me of lying to him. But actually, I didn't lie to him. I didn't tell him I wasn't going to Chula Vista. And if he had said to me, Winnie, are you going to Chula Vista? I was going to say yes.
[00:55:01]
That was the way I operated. I would say just enough to give you the idea that I wanted you to have, and then I'd stop talking. And usually, most people will guess what you would have said if you had gone on, but they've never guessed right. I've never had anybody guess what I meant by what I said. And so I really didn't think that that was lying. It took Wilma a long time to convince me that I was purposely leading him up the garden path, because I figured if you aren't bright enough to ask the right question, you're stuck with what you're thinking.
That's your problem, not mine. But when she told me that I had to just write, I lied, comma, and go on with something else, I couldn't do it. And so I hit on what I thought was a very brilliant way of taking the fourth step. I wrote it about the lady next door. And it was almost like a piece of fiction that I was writing. And yet when I read it, I realized that the lady next door was me, because everything that I had written down there about what she did and how she was was how I was and what I did.
And after this morning session, Earlene and several of us were standing up here talking, and she was mentioning the fact that when you have somebody that you resent and you put their name at the top of a piece of paper and you write down every single solitary thing about them that you do not like, and when you have written everything you can think of, erase the name at the top and put your name in its place and you'll have an absolute picture of what you're like.
Because I believe that's true. I believe the things that bother me and other people are things that I'm guilty of, that I'm not ready to take care of. But when I finally finished this, the fourth step kind of got to be fun for me. Now, I know that that probably sounds crazy to you, but that's okay. I kind of took a pleasure, and I still do it, during the month of October, I call that my birthday month, and my birthday month is spent taking an inventory of the past year to look and see just how much progress or how much whatever you want to call it.
I don't want to say failure, because I don't like that word. But I get a chance to see whether I am still working to the best of my ability the principles of this program. And I got kind of tired of working on me one time, and I decided to work on us. And so one October, I took an inventory for Eddie and me, and I got out a bunch of papers to put down all his defects of character and a few sheets for mine.
And what I was trying to do was I was trying to come up with the good things that we had shared. And I really didn't think that the good things would outweigh the bad, but they did. I started with the good things, and before long I was borrowing a piece of paper from this side to put over here. And I got to see the balance. And before I was through, those things that were so terrible were so few that I realized how much time I had spent worrying and being unhappy about such insignificant little things, things that he didn't even know anything about.
But when I finally got that first inventory to the point where my sponsor would take care of it or would accept it, I guess would be a better word, then I had to do the fifth step. And I didn't too much care for the fifth step. I knew she had already read most of what I had written, but there were a lot of things that she didn't know that I hadn't written. And I wasn't too sure. You know, it's funny.
When you start practicing self-honesty, how scared you can be, at least I was, that somebody was going to find out that that was one of my biggest defects of character, that I couldn't be honest with myself. And instead of going over it liability by liability, what she did was she sat down and we shared with each other experience, strength, and hope. She gave me an opportunity to say some of the things that it had been impossible for me to write on that piece of paper.
And she allowed me the dignity to find them out for myself. And they were usually things that she had pegged from the very beginning because I didn't know. From the very beginning, because I didn't know that in Al-Anon and in AA, you can't con a con man. And she knew the games I was playing. But she allowed me to play those games until I got to the point where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
[01:00:07]
And that's when it all began to come together. In sponsoring people, I don't insist that they do the fourth step at a certain period, or I don't insist that they do anything. Because that's the way I was brought in. Now, there are lots of different versions of how you do it and why you do it. And in that respect, Murp and I are exactly the opposite. She tells people what to do and I don't. But what works for her and the people that she sponsors works every bit as well for me and the people that I sponsor.
Because to me, sponsorship is a two-way street. I refuse today to take the responsibility for another human being's life. And if I make 12-step calls on people that I have to think for and do for, then I haven't stepped too far from the alcoholic. Because basically, what got me here was the inability to live my life myself without having to depend on somebody else for my life or my livelihood. It's strange to me how this damn thing works, you know.
When, as I told you the other day, I didn't get to choose my sponsor. God chose her. And I watched some of the methods that they use today and I don't know whether I could have made it then or not. You know, when you take somebody that was as screwy as I was, they have to find out for themselves. And there are days when some of the people that I sponsor have to sponsor me. Not too awfully long ago, I called Carol Thornton to tell her that I was thinking very much of disowning my youngest son who got married last February because his wife and I do not get along.
And, well, she drives me crazy. She's always, if they come to my house for dinner, she'll say, I hope you don't have so-and-so because George really doesn't like it, you know. Now, you don't tell me that because if that's what I have, that's what you're going to eat. And one time she even brought McDonald's. That didn't go over too well either. They just dropped in for dinner and she brought McDonald's because she knew George wasn't going to like what I was going to have.
And so I called Carol on the phone and I said, I'm disowning George and he can take that female with him. And I told her a little bit about what was going on and she started to laugh and she said, God, doesn't that remind you of you and me? And it did. That's what I used to do to Eddie's mother. I used to get so darn mad at that woman because she was always telling me that this is what my son really likes, you know.
And I'd say to her, well, he hasn't eaten that since we've been married. And she'd say, well, that's because, darling, you didn't know how to cook. That was true, see. That was, I could pour a mean cup of tea, but I didn't know how to cook. And so what Wilma did was bring me to a point, or not Wilma, but Carol did, brought me to a point where I could see exactly what we had been talking about earlier today, that we were talking about.
What I saw in her is something that I had done, but that I had forgotten about. And it made it possible for me to let her be however she is, you know. She doesn't call me very often, which is okay. I don't know what advice I'd give her anyhow except kill him because he's very much like his father, you know, opinionated and so forth and so on. But it was amazing to me how easy the fifth step went, you know, because it wasn't a confession.
That's what I thought the fifth step was all about. I thought the fifth step was similar to when I used to go to confession, you know. And I have to be very honest with you and tell you that I used to tell the priest what I thought he needed to hear in order to give me absolution. And after I'd been in Al-Anon for a while and I decided to go back to church and I decided that I would make an honest confession.
And I took my two older sons and we went over to the church and I let them go in first because I knew it was going to be a while before I got through. And after they got out, they went out and sat in the car and I went in and I told that priest, I went way back, you know. I even confessed to the fact I hadn't been confessing. And he looked a little bored, but he gave me absolution, you know. And when I finished my confession, he said, five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, a good act of contrition and go your way in peace.
And I couldn't believe it. That after everything I had told that man, this was the only penance he had given me. And when I finally did the penance, went out and got in the car and Butch was sitting in the front seat of the car with his comic book. And I said, I just don't understand Father Mahoney.
[01:05:01]
After all the things I told him, he only said, five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, a good act of contrition and go your way in peace. And Butch never even looked up from his magazine. He says, if you'd have told him you shot the Pope, he would have said, five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, a good act of contrition. Because, you see, I always thought your penance depended upon how bad you were. I never really got hept in all the years I went to school.
I never really got hept to the fact that by being able to tell somebody else some of these things that bothered me or that I knew were wrong, that I kept pushing down and pushing down, actually were part of my discomfort. Being able to like myself to the point that it really doesn't make any difference whether you like me or not. See, I can get away from you. I can walk out that door and I'm gone. You're here.
The person I can never get away from is me. And regardless of whether I find it possible to be honest with you or not is not going to do one darn thing for you. It's only going to do something for me. My mother was a person that used to quote poetry at me for various and sundry things. And when I would do something wrong, she would say, I have to live with myself. And so I want to be fit for myself to know.
I don't want to stand with the setting sun and hate myself for the things I've done. I want to go out with my head erect. I want to deserve all men's respect. Whatever happens, I want to be self-respecting and conscience free. And I had been in Al-Aman for a very short period of time when mother and I were talking one day and I said, you know what? I finally know what that poem is all about. And she said, you knew what that poem was all about when you were about 10 years old.
And I said, no, I didn't. Why would I tell you that I know now if I knew then? And she said to me, Winifred, when you were about 10 years old, you did something and I don't know what it was. But I started to recite that poem to you and you threw one of the biggest tantrums you've ever thrown in your life. And you said to me, I don't ever want to hear that again. I don't like that and I won't listen.
She said, that was the day that you understood what that poem was all about. You see, because I had even at that age begun to play that game of self-deception that usually ends up in what they call insanity or death. Because I believe that the non-alcoholic is just in just as grave danger of insanity and death as is the alcoholic. Maybe in a little bit different way. But we have people who will practice self-deception right to the jaws of death.
Sometimes it's their death and sometimes it's somebody else's death. We had a case in California just a couple of weeks ago. A little gal that was found murdered. And her husband was one of these people that was violent. She knew he was violent. She had left him. But he had convinced her to come back. And somewhere along the line, and I have no idea where, but somewhere along the line she evidently did something or said something or something happened.
And they found her dead. But you see, that had to happen. Because she proved just as somebody that finds it necessary to go out and drink again proves what we only read in our books in Al-Anon and in the big book of AA. That there is no answer to this illness that we all suffer from except insanity or death. When I got to the seventh step, however, was ready to have God remove all my defects of character, I didn't have any defects.
In fact, when I came to Al-Anon, I didn't have any resentments. I hated a lot of people, but I didn't resent them, you know. In fact, Wilma asked me one time, or told me rather, that I was going to have to get rid of my resentments. And I said, I don't have any resentments. And she said, oh really? I said, no, I hate a lot of people, but I don't resent them. And she said, who for instance? And do you know that I could relate incidences that had happened five, six, seven, eight, nine years before as though they were happening right now?
That is how vivid they were in my mind. And when she proved to me that I did maybe have a couple of resentments, I said, Drew, well how do I get rid of them? And she said, you pray for them. And so I put her name at the bottom and I started at the top, you know, because I thought anybody that would ask me to pray for some of these people that had done to me
[01:10:03]
what they had done has got to be on somebody else's side, not mine. And it's amazing how they began to disappear. How I would begin to forget somebody. Have you ever done that? Been trying to get rid of a resentment and you go down the whole list and then all of a sudden you start to go to sleep and you think, oh, I forgot to mention so-and-so. Trying so desperately to hold on to something that I really wanted to let go of.
But I finally, excuse me, in the resentment field got down to one guy who happened to be a very good friend of my husband's. The one I always figured was responsible for his misbehavior. And he was driving me crazy. His name was Al. And I could be driving down the road and see a sign that said Allstate and I'd never get past the AL. You know, I'd see Al and I'd think that's so-and-so. And then I'd begin to think of the things he'd done and the situations he'd gotten Eddie into that I had to get him out of and all this stuff.
So I went on a retreat up in Azusa and Father Barney was the retreat master. And I made up my mind that I was going to go talk to him about this Al. And I did. I went in and I told him about Al and all of the things that Al had done just like they had happened yesterday or maybe even today. And he just sat there in his usual bored manner. I don't know how many of you knew Father Barney. He was from this area up around here.
I think Portland, somebody said. But anyhow, when he got through, when I got through, he didn't say anything. And I said, Well. And he said, Well, what? I said, What do I do about him? He said, You pray for him. And I know that the look on my face told him that was not the answer I had been waiting for. I wanted absolution to kill him. And he said to me, Oh, come on, Winnie. I didn't tell you to pray he gets a million dollars.
Pray he gets what he deserves. Don't you think God knows what a son of a bitch he is? And you know, I tried that. I tried that with other people, people that would upset me, you know. And I'd say, Did you see what he did? You know, so that I could get rid of that resentment as it occurred. But then on the defects of character, I didn't know what defect of character was. I had a terrible time with that, trying to figure out what they were talking about.
Because when I came to Al-Aman, all I had was assets. No liabilities whatsoever. No defects of character. I was a very conscientious individual. I was a very charitable individual. I was a whole lot of things, I thought. But I didn't realize then, and I didn't realize until I had gone into it in a little depth, that the motive behind why I did the things I did were the defects that I had to take care of.
You see, I didn't do things because I wanted to. I did them because I thought you thought I ought to. And that's a defect of character. That's a people pleaser. At least that's the way it was pointed out to me. They told me that in coming to the realization that if I was not capable of being able to be honest with myself, I was incapable of being honest with anybody else. And that was a defect of character.
That I had to ask God to help me get rid of. I ended up with a whole lot more defects than I had liabilities, believe it or not. And yet today, after a period of time, I have thoroughly come to believe that my assets and my liabilities are exactly the same thing. It's how I apply them in my life that it makes them either an asset or a liability. Because as I have said many times, I'm a procrastinator by profession.
But there are some people that rush headlong into things and get into just as much trouble as I get waiting. Now if I have a little bit of what she's got and she's got a little bit of what I got, then we both got an asset. And that's what I have been learning in this program. Haven't got it down pat even yet. But at least I know where to start. And that's what the importance thing is all about. That's the sixth step. It's the seventh step that says the shortcomings.
I'm like a lot of other people, you know. I said to Wilma one day, why do they have to have shortcomings and defects of character? And she said, well, I don't know whether it's true or not, but somebody told me that Bill W. wanted 12 steps. And the only way he could do it was… Twelve Steps, and the only way he could do it was to slip in a shortcoming instead of a defective character. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not, but I found out that my shortcomings were just little things that were exactly like my defective character except I didn't practice them all the time. They were things that I just ran into my life from
[01:15:04]
time to time to make things come out right. That was a shortcoming. And I had kind of fun getting rid of those too. You know, it really amazes people. When a defective character is being unable to tell the truth as the truth is, and you begin to tell the truth, you'd be amazed at how you can really snow an awful lot of people because they don't know whether to believe you or not. If I had known it was going to turn out that way, I'd have told the truth a long time ago, you know, because people are geared to disbelieve you or to minimize what you say. And I didn't know that. I didn't know that if somebody said to you, do you want to do so and so, and you said no, it really frustrates them because they expect you to say yes. And when you say no, they don't know what to say, you know, because that's sort of a final answer. And I used to have trouble with Eddie, you know, he's one of these people that used to come home, still does once in a while, and try to get me to do something I didn't want to do. You know, like the example I use a lot of times is when he used to come home on Wednesday afternoon and he'd say to me, you know, Winnie, I think you could use a game of golf. That's what he said. But that's not what he meant.
What he meant was he'd already called everybody and they were either already playing or weren't going to. And I was second choice. Well, I don't like being second choice. If I can't be number one, the hell with you, I won't play. And so I used to keep a list of things that I never quite got around to. And I'd use those when he would come home and say, I think you could use a game of golf. I'd say, gosh, I'd just love to go with you, but I'd more or less plan to defrost the freezer or clean the closet or God forbid iron. And he'd try to persuade me and I would stand my ground. And pretty soon he would let me win. And he went off to the golf course. He had a beautiful day playing golf. I'm stuck with the freezers. And I wasn't too happy about the way that game was going. So I decided to turn it over and I did. And I went to a meeting one night and I heard this gal say, whenever Paul asks me to do something that I really don't want to do, I merely say I'd rather not. Now, I like that because it had kind of a kind of a classy ring compared to what I usually said. And so I kind of filed it away. And a few nights later, I go to another area, completely different area. And there she is again. Nobody even asked her this time.
But all of a sudden she said, whenever Paul asks me to do something that I really don't want to do, I merely say I'd rather not.