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Source: DICOBE-00264 – Elsa C – TARHEEL MIDWINTER CONF – 1978-01-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00264-elsa-c-tarheel-midwinter-conf-1978-01-15.mp3 Duration: 01:09:48
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One of those persons to me who has the ability to say everything in a manner in which I can understand. And she began saying these things to me very early in our days in this fellowship. And for that I'm so grateful. And as I stand here this morning I can honestly and truthfully say, not throwing any bouquets in her direction, only saying what is truth and honesty on my part. This lady perhaps is the sole person that is responsible for me taking a new direction in this fellowship because she had the ability to say to me what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it in a way that I could understand it and no one else had ever been able to do that.
So you see, I was so delighted when they told me that I might have the opportunity of introducing this lovely lady to you because she is so special in my personal life. And I know that she is in many of yours, many of you who are out there today. Not only that, I will tell you this, if she's not already, she will be when she finishes. So it's with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude to this lady that I have the opportunity to introduce to you now my friend, and she's going to be yours when she finishes, Elsa See from Laguna Beach, California.
My name is Elsa and I am a very grateful and happy member of Al-Anon. Hi. I still don't take compliments very well, but I want to tell you that I'm very, very happy to be here. It's been many years since Chuck and I talked in Winston-Salem, and fortunately there are many, many people here that I have known for a long time and loved for a long time. And I'm glad to be with you and I want to thank the committee for asking us to share in this Tar Heel conference this year.
Perhaps my story is a little different from most of you that are here because all of you are pretty much younger than Chuck and I are, and we've been around a whale of a long time. But the thing that's so terrific about it is that no matter how long you've been around, you have to keep learning, learning, learning all the time. And I'm one of the slow ones that took a long, long time to even be able to turn around and take a real good look at me.
Because when I needed something like this program so very, very desperately, there was no Al-Anon and there was no AA. And believe me, it makes a great deal of difference in your life. And those of you who are here today, sometimes I wonder if you're as grateful as you should be for what you have today. When we did not have any answers for living with an alcoholic, no way, no way to find our own peace and our own joy in spite of what's going on around us.
And we just stumbled around and did all the wrong things and made things worse than they needed to be. And I wish that I had known what I know today, because it might possibly, I don't know, but it might possibly have made it possible for my husband to find this program sooner than he did. Because as far as letting go and letting God was concerned, this was something I never, never did. It's a strange thing how you can be raised in a religion that does not teach fear and learn to have tremendous and terrible, terrible fear.
[00:05:04]
Living with alcoholism is not one of the happiest deals in the world. And especially when you don't understand what's going on and you think they're doing it deliberately to hurt you or that they don't love you anymore, they don't love their kids anymore, that they're so self-interested that they just don't care what happens. And if any of you here were in a situation like I was, when you were young and naive and inexperienced, and you meet someone that just bowls you off your feet, the first and one and only love of my life.
I met this young man that a lot of you know, and he was a beautiful man, and he had everything that I wanted in a husband. He was smart, he was the handsomest thing I think I'd ever laid eyes on, and he had all of the attributes that make for a fine person. He was kind and he was considerate in many areas. He had everything that I wanted. But the thing that really caused the most trouble, I think, along the way, was that he had an ego as big as all outdoors.
And he was so strong and so obviously right all the time, you know, that this particular situation gave me considerable trouble in the years to follow. Chuck didn't drink too much when we were married, at least I didn't think he drank much. But he was young and he was strong, and he had a hollow leg. And it didn't show for a long, long time. We had some words over it occasionally, but it never was that bad because it only happened once in a while.
But as every alcoholic's life seems to go on, it grew and grew and grew. And the last ten years before Chuck came to AA was horrendous. The last five was god-awful. He happens to be one of the ones that had to go completely to the bottom before he could give up. And during those years, I did everything wrong that any human being can do and still live. I hid the bottles, just like a lot of you perhaps have done.
I gave him a bad time one minute, and the next minute I wouldn't speak to him. We had many weeks of non-communication, if you know what I mean. And there were times, as I look back on my thinking and my actions in those days, when if I could have had a weapon to my hand, I think I'd have beaten his brains out. And there were times also when I cogitated in the back of my mind, sometimes for hours on end, isn't there some way I can get rid of this guy and not get found out?
Fortunately, in my life around Al-Anon, I find that there are others who have felt the same way. And there was no humor in our marriage anymore. There was no light touch that was all heavy, heavy, heavy. But the time finally came with me, as it does with so many who live with alcoholism, when it seemed as though there was no point in going on. I had spent many, many years on the fence. Because you see, I was one who could not make a decision easily.
It was very difficult for me to make a decision. I was an only child who had her own way pretty much all of her life, but who was never allowed to make any decisions for herself. I had parents who were extremely strict, very loving but very, very strict. And during this marriage, I bet I made up my mind five dozen times to leave and never did anything about it. I was one of these patient people that just sat there and took it.
And that's not a very pretty picture. Because I did not have any strength of will of my own, and yet I had been extremely successful
[00:10:01]
in many of the things that I did. But it was all a big fat front. I don't know whether any of the rest of you have had that experience of being able to put on a facade that nobody could get through. I heard a girl say to me one time, long after I had been in Al-Anon, she said, I used to look at Elsa and wonder if she was as peaceful and serene on the inside as she looked on the outside. And I had to go up and tell her, and this was long after Al-Anon, that I definitely was not as peaceful on the inside as I chose to look on the outside.
Because I'm one of these slow learners and it took me a long, long time to find my own answers. But the thing that happened towards the end of that ten years, the last year, it looked as though my husband was never, never going to get sober. And I finally came to the point, as many of us have, I guess, where I gave up completely any idea that he ever would get sober. And for the first time in my life, I was able to let go completely.
And I didn't even know what I was doing. And I did not give up with love, as we try to learn to do in Al-Anon. I gave up with hate, with bitterness, with resentment, the whole bit. But the crux of the matter was, I think, that I was able to give up. I gave up the necessity, and I'd like to underline that word necessity, the necessity that Chuck should ever get sober, because I didn't think he ever would.
And you know, it's a funny thing, it doesn't seem to make any difference whether you give up with love or you give up with hate. It's the giving up that makes the difference. And it wasn't more than perhaps a month after that, that he hit his own particular low and came to the program. So it would seem as though it doesn't really matter how you give up, just so you do. I had made up my mind that I was going to go to business school, that I was going to find some way to earn my own living, something that I had never been trained to do.
And I don't know why it took me so long then, after his sobriety, to find me, I will never be able quite to explain, except that when he came into AA, there was no Al-Anon. And there was no Al-Anon for six more years after he came into AA. And I'm afraid those of us who went to AA meetings with our husbands in those days had a great tendency to think that, after all, I've been such a good woman all my life.
I've tried so hard and I've done all of these things and this program is for him and I don't need it. And I think there were lots of us in those days, because when Al-Anon first began, we had great trouble in getting the wives of the members that had been sober for a long time to come to Al-Anon, because they would all say, oh, but I don't need it. I'm doing fine. And sometimes I would say to them, but did it ever occur to you that if you found so many answers in going to AA with your husband, wouldn't you like to come and share those answers with the people that need it?
And even then, lots of them wouldn't come. Some of them did. But when Al-Anon began and Lois came to the coast to suggest that the families of alcoholics needed a program very desperately for themselves, three of us were sitting at a table in the old 6300 Club in Los Angeles, and we said to each other, you know, Beverly Hills needs this program very, very badly. Let's start a meeting in Beverly Hills, which we proceeded to do in my home.
Now none of us knew anything about what to do or how to do it. The only thing we had was what little we had learned from AA meetings and the 12th
[00:15:05]
by gosh, just like all the other Al-Anon groups did. Later we finally had a little pamphlet from Toronto, and we had one from Tucson, in the southern part of the United States, and that was all we had. So in 25 or 26 years, it's amazing what has happened in Al-Anon, because we have learned by trial and error, by the help of many, many, many people in AA, and we have, I think, today, one of the most beautiful programs that I have ever seen for the non-alcoholic, and for many, many AA people who are married to alcoholics and have exactly the same problem we have, of learning how to live with one, which isn't the easiest thing on this earth. I was a grandma of that group for a long, long time. You see, I've been listening at AA meetings for six long years, and I had what I thought was a head full of knowledge. I'd read the AA book I don't know how many times, and I'd listened to my husband, who was doing a great job in the program, and I thought I knew a lot. And I think I helped in that group, but my motive, and I think it's not a bad motive, was to help you poor people, wasn't it? But the funny part of it is that you can know an awful lot of things up here in your head, and you can see the other fellow's problem very, very easily, and you can see the other fellow's answer very, very easily. But believe you me, it's something else, again, to turn around and take a real good look at yourself and see what makes you tick. And that's the thing that took me so long, because I was so busy helping you that I couldn't see me. And I had to get so miserable that it wasn't even funny, and hurt like the very devil before I could come to see that I needed to do something about me, and I needed it very, very, very desperately. It took a move from where I'd lived for practically all of my life to a completely new area where there was no Al-Anon before I got to the place where I had to learn this. We moved to Laguna Beach in Southern California, and the funny part of it was that my husband was still in business when we moved down into our home, the home of our dreams. High on a hill, looking out over the little town of Laguna and the ocean and Catalina Island, with a perfectly magnificent view, the home of our dreams. Something that AA had made it possible for us to have, because we came into this program completely out of everything. We had nothing left, nothing left. And in the years since we had come in, Chuck was able to get back in business, and things got better and better and better, and we were finally able to buy this place and move down there. But the trouble was that Chuck's business was still in Los Angeles, and he was going in every day, and that's about 50-some miles south of Los Angeles. And here I sit in my dream house with everything in place, and I'm thoroughly and completely miserable. It didn't take me very long to lose whatever I had learned in the Al-Anon and AA programs, and I slipped right back to my old self without much doing, about doing anything about it. And I got so full of self-pity, and so full of that old thing, I'm not getting my just due, I'm not getting my proper respect, that I got so miserable that I could hardly stand it.
Because you see, my husband happens to be one of these people that talks a great deal. That's putting it very mildly, if you want to know. And he's gone a great deal, talking at meetings and
[00:20:03]
doing a great deal of 12-step work. And here I sit in my dream house about three-quarters of the time, all by myself. Because you see, he couldn't come home like he'd been used to coming home for dinner and picking me up and taking me with him to the meetings. And I'd been used to doing this after night after night. And here I sit all by myself. Our children are grown and gone, and I'm all alone. Poor me. And I began to put pressure on Chuck to slow down. And I said, after all, you've been talking all these years, isn't it time that you slowed down and gave me a little more attention? And the poor guy could see how unhappy I was, and he tried. He tried very desperately to slow down. But the time came when he got so uncomfortable, he couldn't stand it. And it was at Thanksgiving, and the family was all around the table, and he said, I'm sorry, I've got to say something. He said, I can't do it this way. When AA asked me to do something, I have got to go. And you will have to adjust yourself to it. Well, now, as you can see, I'm not the most adjustable person in the world. And I didn't like it. But knowing my husband, I knew I was going to have to accept it, whether I liked it or not. And I wondered what in the world I was going to do about me. And I suddenly remembered something that had happened in the very, very early part of Chuck's sobriety. In fact, I think it was probably in the first year of his sobriety, when he was asked to talk on Christmas. Well, I don't think there's a wife here that doesn't understand why I hit the roof, that my husband would accept a speaking date on Christmas. After all, this is a family day. The kids are going to be here. You don't have any right to make us talk on Christmas. And I gave him a pretty hard time about it. But if you know Chuck, when he makes a date, he keeps it, if he possibly can. And I planned an early dinner, much against my will, and the children were there. But the thing that makes me laugh today, and this is one of the things that you've taught me, is how to laugh at me. And I thank God for it, believe me. But the thing that was so, that I have to laugh about today, about an hour, an hour and a half after we'd finished dinner, our kids all took off. They were young. They had places to go, lots of open houses and parties that they wanted to go to, and so they just up and left. And we were left alone anyway. So I got dressed and went down to the meeting with Chuck.
And at that meeting, there were two very, very drunk winos that had just been pulled out from under the Santa Monica Pier. The following Christmas, he was asked to talk again. And I went a little more willingly this time, not too much so. But lo and behold, one of those winos was leading that meeting, and the other one read the steps. And they had been sober that entire year. They had not been able to hear one thing that Chuck said that night. They were too drunk.
The thing they did remember, and that impressed them, was that a husband and wife would leave their family on Christmas and come to share at an AA meeting. Of course, I didn't talk. Chuck did. But for the first time in my life, I could see exactly what this program is, both in AA and Al-Anon. We are in a life-saving business, you and I, both in each program. We are in the business of saving lives. And whatever my husband has to do in order to fulfill his commitment to this beautiful program, I have to leave him free to do. But then what about me? And my youngest son gave me the answer. He said, Mom, why don't you start another Al-Anon group? It's so simple, so
[00:25:06]
very, very simple, and it had never occurred to me. Here there was no Al-Anon in my area. At that time, there were only about two meetings in Orange County, all of Orange County. There was one in Corona Del Mar and one in Santa Ana, and that was it. And it never occurred to me that if I felt the loss and the need of an Al-Anon group, I'd already started one, why not start another one? And this is what I did, and this is the thing that saved my life. And maybe you'll understand why I was so slow up until that time in finding me. But this time I started it with a completely and totally different motive. This time I needed you. You didn't need me. This time I needed you desperately.
So for the first time in my life, I became teachable. I finally began to learn what it is to change my attitudes and my motives and my actions and my thinking, little by little by little, one day at a time, with your help. And it's made such a change in my life, because today I don't feel like a nothing anymore. I don't have to put up that big fat front and try to make you think that I am so knowledgeable and so good and so serene and feel like I'm dying inside. One of our girls said something one day that just tickled the life out of me. She said, really, this program is trying to make the inside match the outside. And that's exactly what I have begun to learn to do, little by little by little. This is a one day at a time program, and it's a matter of just putting one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and learning as you go along. And the things that I began to find out about myself, perhaps some of you have had trouble with too, and that was that feeling of not quite coming up to it. Perhaps some of you have felt like I used to feel that terrible, terrible need for approval and that god-awful fear of disapproval. And our speaker last night just killed me sitting there because when she was talking about how she used to feel, I could go right along with her because that's the way I used to feel also. Even though I was successful in many of the things that I did, I never really believed it. And if anybody ever came up and patted me on the back and said, my, you did a beautiful job today, or you look so nice today, or something like that, I'd say, oh, really, this old dress? I've had it for years, you know, and I didn't think I did such a whale of a job, you know. I didn't think it was so good.
And one of my AA women friends said to me something that turned me around one time. She said, Elsa, when somebody compliments you on something, why don't you just say thank you and let it go at that? And I think that has helped me more than anything in the world because I always had to act as though I didn't deserve what I was getting, you know. That need for approval did a lot of things for me. It made me what I was. I don't know whether only children have problems in this area more so than people who have brothers and sisters or not, but at any rate, I grew up learning a lot of the things that we are taught in our growing up years, that I have the right to be resentful of something that you do. They used to call it justifiable resentment, you know, and that I have a right to get my feelings hurt if you don't approve of me, poor me, and that I have a right to a lot of these very, very disagreeable things that…
A lot of these very, very disagreeable things that many of us have grown up with.
[00:30:00]
And I was very judgmental, and I was very, very difficult in some areas, but scared to death in others. I don't know whether anybody goes along with me in this or not, but one of our girls said one day, she said, you know, I was in love with my image, but I hated myself. And that was me. I was in love with my image because I projected a very different image from the way I felt inside. Very different.
We had a very dear, dear friend many years ago that said something that has helped me more than anything in trying to understand me and to find out that I don't have to compete with you. He said, if God had made two of us exactly alike, one of us would be unnecessary. Because I spent all of my life trying to be like somebody else or as good as somebody else or better than somebody else, and I never quite achieved it.
And it gave me a lot of trouble, a lot of trouble. And he called this the uniqueness of God's children. The uniqueness of God's children. That each one of us is a unique God's child, and that if we as a unique God's child do not make our own unique contribution to this life, it won't be made. And little by little by little, I began to see the things that I needed to get rid of and the things that I needed to make better and get more of.
And for many, many years, even after we moved to Laguna, I couldn't feel. I don't know how many of you Al-Anons in this room came into this program without the ability to really feel love for anybody or anything. We put on a good show, but I couldn't feel it down deep inside of me. And so it made it very difficult. If one of you came up to me and said, I love you, it was very difficult for me to say I love you back because I couldn't feel it and I felt like a hypocrite.
But after starting this meeting and finally getting it going and working at the things that I knew I needed to do, little by little by little, it's frozen inside of me, melted down, and I was finally able when one of you would come up to me and say, I love you, I was able to say, I love you back and mean it. And I was free for the first time in my life. And it looks to me as though maybe instead of spending our lives in this program, digging, digging, digging for defects of character, pulling ourselves apart and beating ourselves over the head and wearing sackcloth and ashes because we're such terrible people, if we could see it as a problem of overlaying an old pattern with a new one.
This is what I have had to do because I can't stand any longer to beat myself over the head and say, oh, how awful you are. You have so much to undo, and you've got this and that and the other thing that you need to get rid of, and let's work at it and pull at it and get it out of there, and you're miserable all the time. And I hear so many gals come into Al-Anon, and guys, too, who get to the place after they come to the program, to a place where they hate themselves.
And they take a look at themselves and they say, oh, I'm so terrible. And they spend half their lives working on defects of character. Wouldn't it be easier if we took what this program teaches and replace the practice of the program with the old tearing apart? I'm not talking about not taking an inventory, because I think each one of us has to do that. But after we've taken it, for God's sake, let's drop it, and let's get happy on this program, and let's find a way to…
[00:35:00]
a way to be at peace with ourselves, because isn't that what we have to learn, especially when we're living with a practicing alcoholic? Don't we have to learn how to be at peace and serene and happy in spite of what's going on in our home? Are we helping the alcoholic when we go around with a long, sad face and we're so… You know, when the non-alcoholic in the household can learn finally to go around that house singing, you know what'll happen?
It'll drive the alcoholic right straight up the wall. And he won't be or she won't be able to understand how in the world you could be so happy when they're so miserable, you know? Misery loves company, you know? And we feed upon each other that way, and it just gets worse and worse and worse. But wouldn't it be better if we, instead of feeling so sorry for ourselves and saying, how could this happen to me, what have I done to deserve this, if we would turn our eyes off ourselves and onto perhaps our children and say, how can I make this household a happy place in spite of what's going on with the husband or the wife, whichever the case may be?
Aren't our children needing this kind of a home? And I have found in my experience in Al-Anon that nine times out of ten, these kids are not so resentful of the alcoholic as they are at the non-alcoholic. Because they somehow or other are able to understand the alcoholic, but they cannot understand why mama or dad who is sober acts the way they do and thinks the way they do. After all, I can understand this guy's sick or this woman's sick, but what's the matter with mother?
She's not sick. What makes her act the way she does? And if any of you have had the experience that I had during those drinking years of so often taking out my frustration and my anger and my bitterness on my kids, because I had no place else to put it, and I didn't know how to get rid of it. And I wish that my children, my two boys, had had the advantage of Alateen, but of course there was no Alateen then, and it didn't come until many years after they'd left home.
How wonderful it would have been if the harm that I really did to them during those drinking years, because I never had time to sit and listen to my children. I was very good at taking care of everything that was necessary, I thought. They always had proper meals. They always had clean clothes. I was Johnny on the spot at anything they did in school. Oh, I was a worker in the PTA and all the rest of it, and I thought I'd done my job.
But it never occurred to me that I was so obsessed with Chuck and his drinking that I couldn't think about or pay any attention to almost anything else. I was zeroed in on him all the time. Why is it? We live with this sort of thing and we never see what we have to do until somebody is gracious enough to tell us what the answers are. And how wonderful it is when we do find what we find in this program, that marvelous ability to get our eye off the alcoholic and on to something constructive and helpful where our children are concerned, because these kids suffer tremendously.
And I, in thinking that my children weren't having such a bad time of it, have found out after sobriety that it did them a great deal of harm, and most of it was my fault, I am sure. So when I say that I think you are the luckiest people on God's green earth to have a ready-made program for you that tells you exactly what to do and what not to do, and gives you an
[00:40:05]
opportunity, as I said before, to find some peace and joy and serenity within yourself in spite of what's going on around you, it's fantastic. And how tremendous this program is all over the world. Chuck and I have had the opportunity to attend AA and Al-Anon meetings pretty much all over the world. And when I went to Australia with him and I walked into an Al-Anon meeting clear down under and in New Zealand, and there on the table was our conference-approved literature, the thing that unifies us all over the world, so that we are all walking in the same identical direction.
And even though their meetings down there have a little different format from ours here in the United States, it's identical. And those people, as you realize when you read the forum and read the articles that come in from all over the world, how very much the same Al-Anon and AA is all over the world. What has happened to me and my years around this program are unbelievable when I look back on them.
And I wonder sometimes, what time is this meeting supposed to be over? I wonder sometimes if we really, really appreciate what we have. It's a great deal, a great deal. I remember so well the first meeting that Chuck ever took me to, it was six months before he would even talk to me about this program. Because you see, I was in the process of getting a divorce when he came to AA. And he thought, I guess, that we didn't have too much communication in those first few months.
And I was delighted, and I thought, oh God, all my prayers have been answered, he's gone to AA by Georgia. This is marvelous. But I was wise enough, I guess, I don't know how I happen to know this, to keep my mouth shut pretty much. And after six months he invited me to go with him to a meeting. And maybe some of you have had this experience. He took me in the room and sat me down in the corner and took off.
I just have a little habit of doing this, you know. And I sat in that corner for several months, feeling so alone, so terribly left out. And nobody spoke to me, and he didn't bother to introduce me to many people. And I finally got sick and tired of this, and one night I got up my courage and I walked up to an alcoholic woman and said hello to her, and she practically fell on my neck. Because she thought that I was sitting up in that corner looking down my nose at her, and I thought she was over there looking down her nose at me.
Because in those days, alcoholics didn't have much use for the non-alcoholics. They thought we were a bunch of stupid idiots anyway, and we didn't have much, and we couldn't possibly, possibly understand their problem, and that we certainly couldn't understand their answer. And they pretty well let us alone, you know. Things have changed a great deal since then, thank God. But since that time, I have been very, very close to many, many alcoholic people, both men and women.
And I love them very dearly. And hopefully they love me. They seem to. And we share a great deal. And strangely enough, every once in a while I get an alcoholic up there at the house that wants to talk to me and doesn't want to talk to Chuck. Most of the time it's one of them that's married to an alcoholic and doesn't know what the score is, you know. But things have gotten better and better every year.
And the thing that I found was that even though this love of my life that I had learned to hate Love of my life that I had learned to hate, I learned to love again, very deeply, and believe
[00:45:01]
it or not, this last June we had our 52nd wedding anniversary. We don't see too many of those these days, and it takes a lot of love and a lot of understanding on both our parts, I'm sure. We don't always agree, and one of the things that I had to learn that was very, very important to me was how different Chuck and I are, how totally different we are. And it came about in a sort of a strange way, I guess you might say.
One evening we were sitting in our living room, just quietly looking out at the view. There was nothing much going on, there wasn't any radio or any TV or anything, we were just sitting there. Chuck and I have learned over the years pretty much how to communicate without talking. I hear so many wives say, but he won't talk to me, he won't talk to me. We don't have any communication, you know? Well I've had to learn that you don't always communicate talking.
And if you're yackety-yackety-yackety-yackin' trying to make conversation, you know what an alcoholic will do, he'll turn off his hearing aid. And he won't talk unless he wants to talk, believe me. And we had learned pretty much how to communicate without talking. Today we drive many, many miles in the car and never say a word. Where it used to be uncomfortable for me and I would try to make conversation, today I can sit there and be perfectly comfortable because I know that he isn't going to say anything unless he's got something to say, and I'm not going to say anything unless I've got something to say, and it's very, very comfortable.
But this evening we were sitting there and I had been bothered a little bit over the years because my husband speaks very, very well, and I wanted so much to be as good as he was. And it had never occurred to me that there was any competition between us. Never had occurred to me. I just envied his ability because he's far more spiritual than I am. He has a greater spiritual understanding than I have in many, many ways, and he's smarter than I am.
And that used to just bug the devil out of me. But you know, I had to find out that there's a difference between being smart and being wise. And you people have taught me far more wisdom than I ever had in my life. But this time I was envying his abilities, and I said something to him about it. And you know, he sat there very quietly for a minute, and then he said, do you suppose there could be a little competition?
And I thought, how could he accuse me of such a thing? I wouldn't think of competing with him, you know. But I sat there and looked at it for a minute, and I could see, yes, because I had given the wrong connotation to competition, you see. And if I am a unique God's child, and I'm different from anybody else on the face of the earth, why do I have to compete with anybody? All I have to do is to be the best me I know how to be, one simple day at a time.
But this night I sat there and looked at it, and I thought, well, here Chuck and I are so totally different. Why do I want to be like him? He's a, if you want to put it in the way of the stars, he's a typical Leo. He's a lion, you know. And of all things, I'm a Taurus. And you know, they tell us, and the people who read the stars, say that a Leo and a Taurus
[00:50:00]
can't possibly get along, can't possibly get along. But thanks to this program, we've been getting along pretty well for an awful long time. But you see, I'm the earth earthy, feet on the ground, practical. And I could no more be like him than I could fly to the moon, you see. So really all in the world I have to do is to be myself. Something that I think has been spoken of, I think, last night, if I'm not mistaken.
The ability to be yourself and not have to compete with anybody else. And it takes all the pressure off of being, so to speak. I am what I am, and that's all I am, and if it isn't good enough, I'm sorry, that's all there is there today. That's the only thing that makes it possible for me to come and talk to a group as big as this, and sometimes bigger, and not have to care and absolutely kill myself as I used to, with the fear that I wouldn't give a good talk, and that you wouldn't appreciate me, and pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful I am, you know.
You asked me to come here and share. So I come and share. I don't get so nervous anymore. I try not to even think about what I'm going to say before I get up here, because I know if I do I'll fall right flat on my face. I did that once, and that was enough. That was plenty. I was asked to talk, and I think it was Top of Texas, and I worried about it, and I thought about it, and I planned it, and I gave the lousiest talk I've ever given in my life, and I nearly died of embarrassment afterwards.
But strangely enough, today I don't care whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. I'll share whatever I happen to have today, and that's the best I can do. The most I can tell you is that I love you all very, very much, and that's the thing that has melted down that inside of me and made it possible for me to take you in my arms and love you very dearly. Somebody asked me to tell a story today that I don't always tell.
I tell it sometimes when I know that there are people in the audience who are having problems with their children. I have a tremendous love for Alateen. I've been very close to the Alateens in our area. I have not been a sponsor. I tried to be a sponsor and found out I couldn't hack it. But I have many, many friends amongst the Alateens, and I love them very much, and they seem to love me very much.
And I wish to God my kids had had that program, but they did not. The elder boy is married and has three children of his own, and if anybody says that being a member of this society makes it possible for life to be just a bowl of roses and everything serene all the time, they have a hole in their heads, because every family has problems. But thank God we don't have to stay in that problem like we used to, because we have a way now to get ourselves out of the problem and start looking at and living in the answer.
Our youngest son is not married, and he grew up during the worst of Chuck's drinking. And it was bad, and it was very difficult for him. And he didn't have much use for his father. And I think I added to that, probably, by my attitude, and that was one of the things I was talking about a while ago. I helped him resent his father, I think, because I resented him so terribly. And when he was grown, it seemed that his only dream was in the artistic field.
I'm afraid this boy inherited the things that I loved in my life in the artistic field, the art, drama, and music. But he even got them to a greater degree than I had them, because he had the ability to go ahead and succeed in one of his loves, which is the drama.
[00:55:06]
And during those years, Chuck, being a businessman and an athlete, didn't have much use for this boy. He thought he was a nut. And there was something very strange about him, that he didn't want to earn his living in the accepted ways that he wanted to be an actor or an artist or a musician. And he very subtly tore him down and made fun of him during those years. And the boy, strangely enough, never seemed to be angry.
I had never seen him angry in my life. He was a very easy kid to get along with, and he just went ahead and did his own thing. And when he went to university, he took up philosophy and drama and art. And Chuck thought this was stupid. And pretty soon he went in the Army and went overseas to Korea. And when he came home from Korea, we had sold our home in Beverly Hills and had moved down to Laguna, and he came home to a strange home.
And it was a very, very difficult time. And he finally said, I'm sorry, but I want to move back to Los Angeles. I'm uncomfortable here. I'm in the worst depression of my life. And so we made it possible for him to rent an apartment in Los Angeles. And Chuck told him, he said, well, he said, I'll give you three or four months to find out whether you are going to make it in movies or whatever. And then he said, you better get sensible and come down and go into business with me.
But time wore on and wore on, and he finally began to get a part here and a part there. And the first thing you know, he had become a success. Well, during the time that he was with the MGM studios, Chuck was out one evening, and I was sitting at home by myself watching TV, and the phone rang. And it seems that I had given an interview to a gal from one of the movie magazines that he didn't like. And he was telling me that the studio was supposed to pass on any of this sort of thing, but nobody had told me so.
So I went ahead and gave the interview, and it was about his childhood. And he didn't like that. And he was so angry that he sputtered over the telephone. And this, believe it or not, was the first time that I had ever seen this boy angry. He had held all of this resentment and bitterness inside of himself all of these years and had pushed it down and pushed it down and pushed it down. And this was the trigger that allowed it to come out.
And it went all over me. And I found out as he went on and on and on that he hated his father. He thought his father was a phony. He didn't believe a word of all this stuff that he was talking about. And he didn't like me very well, because after all, I'd been such a stoop to have stayed there with all this drinking and stuff for so many, many years. And he went on and on and on, and he absolutely and completely destroyed me.
And when we finally hung up, I was in tears. And I'd been crying till my eyes were swollen. And I didn't want Chuck to come home and find me in that shape. And I would have to tell him what his son had said about him, because I knew it would tear him apart. So I got to bed before Chuck came home. And by morning, my eyes had gone down, and I looked a little better. And I never said anything to Chuck about it at all, never mentioned it.
And this was, I think, on a Thursday. And my meeting is on Monday noon. And I walked into my meeting Monday noon, after having walked the floor and wept quite a bit when Chuck was gone. And I thought I had put on my usual very calm and serene facade. And I walked into that room, and my group took a look at me, and they said, Elsa, what's the matter? You're hurt. You're hurting. And I broke down and told them what had happened, and you know what that bunch said to me?
Why Elsa?
[01:00:01]
You told us this. Why Elsa? You said that. You're not practicing what you preach. And it's a wonderful thing when your group can be as honest with you as they were with me, because they finally made me see that I had to practice this program in that situation as well as in all others. And this is not an easy thing to do. I don't care whether your kids are out there drinking or smoking pot or shooting cocaine or what the heck they're doing.
The situation is exactly the same, I think. I finally, after quite some time, it took me a while, to realize that I could not get in the middle between Chuck and his son. In the early part of that, I sat down and I wrote reams of paper, foolscap, that big, explaining us to the boy, and never sent it, thank God. Because after I had written and written and written, I realized that it was impossible for me to explain Chuck to his son.
It was impossible for me to explain the changes in us, because neither one of us were the same people that we had been when we were together at home. Neither one of us were the same. We had changed a great deal. I finally, at long last, was able to take this boy and put him lovingly in God's hands and let go. But in the meantime, I had to find my own peace and quit hurting about it. Because I could see that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to straighten this situation out, that it was something that had to happen between the boy and his father.
And all I could do was to do what my program had taught me to do, to release completely with love. And what do I mean by release with love? The only way that I can explain it is that we give everyone in the world the dignity of God's child, the dignity, if you will, to find their own answers in their own time, in their own way, without interference from us, to even give them the right to be wrong and the right to make mistakes.
Because this is the thing we try so hard to protect our children from having to go through, the mistakes that they make. It took, believe it or not, and I want to stress this, we are such an impatient lot of people, both the alcoholics and the non-alcoholics in this program. We are impatient people and we want everything to happen yesterday. And it just doesn't work that way. It takes time. It takes time.
But with your help I was able to give it time. And I never told Chuck one word about this situation and allowed him that dignity to find it out for himself. Thank God. It took two more years. And one night we were sitting again in our living room looking at the view and out of a clear blue sky Chuck said, I've got to call a boy and make an appointment with him. I've got to go and make my amends. This is something he had never been able to see that he had to do.
And he found out, strangely enough, but I guess it's the way it should happen, by working with many of the young people that were resentful of their parents. And all of a sudden he realized that he had exactly the same problem that their parents had, that inability to see what they had done to their children. And he called the boy and he made an appointment with him. And we finally went clear to London to make friends with our youngest son.
And the wall came down and this boy who had been so self-wound up, who could not let people into his circle, who was such a terrible loner, began to open up like a flower.
[01:05:06]
I've never seen anything like it. Began to open up and allow people to come close and allow himself to love people and to have the friends, the many, many friends that he has today. And the change in him is so complete that I just sometimes I can't believe it. He's turned out to be a beautiful, beautiful person. And instead of hating his father, you'd just die if you could hear them sometimes in the living room sitting there discussing philosophy.
Because I've had to find out that even though his talents are in the same field as mine, his mind works just exactly like his dad's. And they have a tremendous feeling for each other. But I think the thing that has made it so wonderful for me is that at long last, after all the years of my loner son who wouldn't let me put my hand on his shoulder without shrugging away, comes in the door now and grabs me around the waist and lifts me off my feet and hugs me and kisses me and says, I love you, Mom.
And I just die. It's terrific because it's so different. But ladies and gentlemen, it took time and it took a hell of a lot of doing. And it took a lot of work and what you have taught me, believe me. But it's all worth it. And I still have problems in my family. I don't know whether my eldest son has a problem with booze or not, but he sure looks like it every once in a while. My one and only granddaughter, the only girl in the family, has been going through the living with a guy on cocaine, on downers, on every other doggone thing, both of them.
Last year, she slit her wrists. And for the first time, we thought it was a cry for help. And Chuck went and got her and put her in care manor for a month, hoping that maybe we could get her straightened out. And she seemed to have nothing but resentment for him. And she would be so sweet and so dear and loving to him when he'd go in to see her. And when he'd leave, she'd say to somebody else, Papa came down and gave me another lecture today.
Now, these things are hurtful things if you don't understand where they come from. This kid is hurting. She doesn't want to be the way she is. She finally married the guy, and she seems to be straightening up. I don't know. But I've had to let go of her, too, and put her lovingly in God's hands. Maybe she will find her answers when it's her time, not my time. So all we can do is love her and let her go and get happy ourselves in spite of.
That is the crux of the whole thing. Chuck and I could sit down there in Laguna Beach and just die because our family isn't performing the way we think they should. But because you have taught us how to live joyfully and peacefully in spite of and allow all of our family and all of our friends and all of our acquaintances to have that God-given ability to find their answers in their own time, in their own way, without interference from us, which means completely to me, release with love.
God bless you and thank you. Thank you.