Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00602 – Stephanie O – CALIFORNIA AL-ANON CONV – 1979-06-03.mp3 File: dicobe-00602-stephanie-o-california-al-anon-conv-1979-06-03.mp3 Duration: 01:17:52
============================================================
I'm so glad that I don't have to compete with anybody, and I really am glad that I, you know, I made this mistake this morning. I'm sure through nervousness, somebody could have hollered at me and said, hey, girl, you forgot to open the meeting the right way. But nobody did. Isn't that great? So, if y'all don't mind, let's do this right now. Have a moment of silence. How about a serenity prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Gee, gosh, I don't know how I could have done that, because I've been thinking about it, and it wasn't, I don't know. I would like to read the suggested preamble, please. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength, and hope in order to solve the common problem of living with an alcoholic and to help others do the same. We believe alcoholism is an illness which can be arrested, and the changed family attitudes can often aid recovery. The only requirement for membership is that there be a relative or friend with a drinking problem.
There are no dues for membership. Al-Anon is self-supporting through its own voluntary contributions. Al-Anon is not allied with any sect, denomination, political entity, organization, or institution, does not engage in any controversy, neither endorses or opposes any cause. Our primary purpose is to practice the Al-Anon programs so we may help others with similar problems and aid the alcoholic through understanding and growth spiritually ourselves.
We welcome you to the Al-Anon Family Groups and hope you will find in this fellowship the help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy. We would like you to feel we understand as perhaps few can. We too were lonely and frustrated, but here we found there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be learned. We urge you to try our program. Without spiritual help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us.
We become nervous, irritable, unreasonable. Our thinking becomes distorted and a change in our attitude is boundless to help the alcoholic and often it's the force for good that finally inspires him to join AA. So there is no need for discouragement even though the alcoholic is still drinking. Rarely do we see a family that is not greatly benefited when both the husband and wife try to live the AA program. Working in unity for a common purpose does more than strengthen both partners individually, it draws them together.
The 12 steps of AA which we try to follow are not easy. At first we may think some of them are unnecessary, but if we are thoroughly honest with ourselves we will find that they all apply to us as well as to the alcoholic. The benefit derived from a strict and constant observance of them can be limitless. We thus make ourselves ready to receive God's gift of serenity. And I am so grateful that AA was willing to share their program with us.
I'll try not to take too much time here. We have another, besides I feel very privileged of being here on the program this afternoon, I mean this morning, is having Stephanie with us. You know, when I heard that she was from New York and that she was chairman on the board of trustees, I kind of wanted to get a little bit, you know, gosh, well, I really don't know, but gee, she's such a beautiful person. Right the first time I met her yesterday and having lunch, I felt like I had known her for a long, long time.
She was so easy to talk to and I do love you so much, Stephanie. And her talking and her relating to things that she had been through and how it was at World Service and talking about Loyce, she's a very, very close friend of Loyce.
[00:05:03]
I could just feel as though I was right there with her and as though I really met Loyce. And she just made me feel great and I thought, I know tomorrow is going to be great, just great, just like all the convention has been over all the weekend. So, Stephanie, I know that you've got some beautiful words of wisdom that you're going to tell us and I know that everybody is really anxious to hear you and not have me standing here, so I will now give you Stephanie.
I'm going to do what Teresa did, get short. My name is Stephanie O. and I'm a very grateful member of the Larchmont, New York Al-Anon Group. Hi, you all. Hi, Stephanie. That you all will show you I'm from southern New York. And I hope if you come to southern New York, you all come. I come by the you all, honestly, my parents are from the northern part of the south and I was in Texas fairly recently and somebody said, honey, you haven't got it right yet.
It's not two words, it's just one word. But I want to thank the person who shared their elephants with me that were running around in their stomach, although I didn't ask for them. Like Teresa, I'm not nervous, you just imagine that. I'm terrified and I know it's silly. I'd like to thank the committee and particularly Dot for asking me to come down and asking me to come this weekend. I knew I was going to have a beautiful weekend because everybody that had been here last year from WSO told me how beautiful it was. And I was awfully glad I could say yes that many months ago, but I didn't know then how much I was going to need this weekend.
And it's just another indication of how good God is. I know that none of the things that are of a concern to our family right now are going to change, certainly in the very near future. But I know that I'm going home refreshed, renewed, reformed, all because of you and the privilege that you've given me this weekend, the privilege of trusting me and sharing with me. And not only from this microphone, but at lunch or the meals, sitting around the pool, each one of you have shared part of your story with me.
And you know it constantly amazes me how well this program works because there hasn't been anybody that has either talked to me or talked in front of a microphone who hasn't told part of my story, that I haven't been able to identify with. And you know when you take a six-foot-two Texan male and young people old enough to be my children and alcoholics and I can identify with things that they say, and I know that everyone else in this room can, you know the program works.
Maybe the geography is different, I know I'm a damn Yankee, or where we were raised or how, but the feelings are the same. And each one of us are taking the same tools and trying day by day to change our lives. And I consider myself to be the most fortunate and luckiest person in this room, and in fact in the whole world, and I hope you do, because if you don't, there's something wrong. Someone said they thought, they never intended to marry an alcoholic.
I can't imagine anybody, you know, at five saying to you, I'd like to be a fireman or a doctor, a nurse, or an alcoholic. Or when I grow up, I'd like to really marry a nice, juicy alcoholic.
[00:10:06]
I certainly didn't think that that was going to be in my future. And the amazing thing is that I can stand here today and say that I am so glad that I married an alcoholic. I said that once in a closed meeting and somebody looked at me and they knew why I was saying that, I was living with sobriety. But I could say it when I was living with drinking. And I could say it because of you and people like you in meeting rooms in different parts of the country.
I could say it because AA was generous enough to share these 12 steps with me and everyone in Al-Anon. And if you're in AA and think I cheated a little bit because I didn't get here drunk, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to give them back anyway. I think I was mature enough when I got married that I would have been very self-satisfied with the amount of growth I had made at that time and kind of coasted for the rest of my life.
And that's why I'm glad I married an alcoholic, because I never really would have looked at the decadent case. But starting the first few years of our marriage, I did not. I'd like to say a little something about service before I tell my story. And that is like my mother used to say, and it was even old-fashioned then, so if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go ask your grandmother. It's like bringing coals to Newcastle, or in this case, coals to New Orleans in Louisiana, because there's certainly, it's very, very obvious how much service there is in this room.
Coordinators, delegates, and former delegates, and GRs and DRs, people who are working in institutions and newsletters. And you know, when you do come in from the outside, you kind of see things in a different way. And one of the things that really stands out here, and something that I'm going to take back home, is the beautiful cooperation that exists between AA and Al-Anon in this area. And it shows, and it's great.
The theme of this conference is Bloom Where You're Planted. And I know that everybody in WSO would say, I'm actually glad that you're planted where the International Convention is going to bloom. I know, and I only have a very small idea of how much work it's going to mean. And I know how much I'm looking forward to coming back a year from July. And one day at a time, I think I'm going to make it. But I also know that that work, and those problems that are going to come up, are going to be solved.
And as the theme of this conference that Virginia was talking about this morning, and I hope, I know some of you weren't here, and I hope you read her report, because it was beautiful. I'm so glad I don't have to write a report the way the delegates do. But I'm so glad that I got to listen to Virginia, and she didn't know I was here. She had kidded me. She said, you know, last year you sent down all those people to listen to my report.
Now they're sending you down to listen to my report. So I hid in the back, and she didn't know I was here. And it was beautiful, and it gave all of the strength and humor and the love that exists in that room. And I feel that I'm so privileged, because as a trustee, I've learned about Al-Anon in places I've never been and will never get to go. Because you've shared your delegates and your representatives with us and told us.
You know, they used to call the World Service off at the clearinghouse, and that's much of what we still do. We share the experiences of one area with the rest of the world. And it's the people in the groups that are the strength of Al-Anon. And I'm just one of the beneficiaries of what's being done in that group. It's a rather impressive title being called the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Incorporated.
And if you're impressed, that's your problem. Nobody else seems to want to kiss my ham or my ring or anything. And the chairman before me shaved every morning. And I know in April I'm out of a job, which is great. Out of a job, which is great, although I'm going to miss it terribly, because I really do feel so very, very fortunate, but you know, that idea of a clearing house, and I can remember when I first came into Al-Anon, and I, you know, I heard about the office, and they, you know, they were telling us and our group what to do.
[00:15:23]
And I wondered who they were. I kind of imagined a, I guess, big brother, or a machine-like thing. I didn't think about people. And I don't want to be a they. The most important thing that can be said about me is that I'm a member of an Al-Anon group, and that I benefit from everything that happens as far as sharing worldwide in Al-Anon as a member of Al-Anon. One of the things that I think is so exciting is that this conference, and I hope Al-Anon worldwide, is really going to look at its commitment to our team this year, and the tremendous area of strength that we have.
Now, sometimes I think we say ourselves, as members of AA and of Al-Anon, that this is the greatest thing that ever happened to us, these 12 steps of the whole world of this way, but not my children. They might, you know, be contaminated by going to our team. They might find people who were not living the program. We don't criticize AA if somebody goes out and gets drunk, and we don't even judge Al-Anon completely on somebody who fails or slips in Al-Anon. We seem to fear an awful lot about our children learning this program, and learning by their own mistakes, and how unfortunate that is that we would deny to our children the things that have helped us to grow.
I also would like to see this the year that I felt really came to be in the conference this year, that it's we. I know that there have been problems in other conferences, and I think sometimes the fault, it doesn't really matter where it is. I don't think we ever have to go back to that again. But as I learned about World Service and what they were doing down there because someone dragged me into service in that particular area, I realized that it isn't the World Service office, and it isn't a small group of people who are telling my group what to do.
But that every decision that affects Al-Anon as a whole comes from that conference. The policy digest, the theme for the convention, the decision on how the meetings were going to be this year are all conference decisions, and we're all part of that, whether or not we're in that room or not. And that's the strength of Al-Anon. I have been a GR, and I've been a program chairman, and I've been an Alateen sponsor for five years, and that was one of the greatest gifts this program ever gave me. I went to help those young kids, and they helped me.
If you're not in service, and if you're saying, you know, the only thing I can think about is my own recovery, then remember the theme of this year, that it is recovery through service, and that anything that any of us have given, we've gotten back 10,000 times. I've had the privilege of watching people practice principles on a worldwide level, and anything that I've contributed could never balance that scale. It is we that are making the decisions, and we are responsible.
And if I think of my recovery and forget to say I am responsible, or really forget to live it, I can say it very easily. Then I think I'm talking a good game, but I really am not in it. And I think that there is a place for each of us to serve, and each of us has talents. You know, sometimes we hear in Al-Anon you should never say no. I'm sorry, but Al-Anon's given me the ability to say no, but not no to everything.
I don't know what I'm going to be doing after next April. I don't know what I'm going to be doing tonight, so I don't have to worry about it. But I know that unless I'm awfully stupid, I am going to be involved in service some way, somehow, not because of what I'm going to give, but because I know what I'm going to get.
[00:20:11]
I don't know whether you realize it or not, but this has really been your lucky day. You've now met the chairman of the board of trustees. And I'd like to point out to you that there is no chairman of Al-Anon, and there is no president of Al-Anon. That's a committee, and it's a one-year term of office, and I know I can't even be elected to it next year. But I find that I can live with it because of the second and ninth traditions, that there is only one authority, and that is a loving God, and that we can form committees, but they're responsible to the people they serve.
It's also your lucky day if you've ever heard a rather pleasingly plump attorney from the Bronx, originally in New York, whose name is Ray O., and who talks about his current wife, Mrs. O.. And now you've had the joy. I know you've been spending many sleepless nights wondering what she looked like, and this month I will have been current for 25 years. He says he says that to keep me on my toes, but it's a first marriage for both of us, and I'm very glad to be the current Mrs. O..
I can't say that I came skipping and running happily into Al-Anon, jumping up and down with joy, and they tell us you should tell a little bit like it was, how it is now and how we got here. And in order to explain that, I have to tell you a little bit about how it was before I met Ray, and it's going to be okay because it doesn't take me 25 minutes to get out of the Navy. I was never in there. Though it appeared in my life, I thought four-letter words, as somebody said they did earlier this weekend, that you would have thought I'd had a career in the service in order to learn those words. I didn't think, you know, I was a lady. I didn't think I knew those words. I knew how to spell them, certainly. They were short enough.
But I am not Irish in the sense I married the name O., and my maiden name was Fitzpatrick. But neither one of my parents had ever been to Ireland, and we weren't a terribly Irish family. I never heard that expression when I was growing up. And we were raised in a rich, fluent, sophisticated Westchester County in New York. The only problem was we didn't have any money. And I worked hard on sophistication. I think I was as sophisticated as I could make it in about freshman year of high school, and then I gave up.
And I found that hard sometimes growing up. I tended to be envious of people around us who had more money, seemed to have more of the gifts of, the outside gifts, I guess, clothes, vacations, and that kind of thing. There was an awful lot of love in our house, not demonstrative love. I can remember when my father went overseas in the Second World War, my sister shook hands with him. Now, that was a little extreme even for our family. I do remember we all laughed at that, but we didn't come from a very kissing, hugging kind of family. I really had a tough time when I came into Al-Anon. I thought that was pretty phony. It reminded me of cocktail parties.
And I knew you didn't care. And you know, the great thing is now that I can accept it and I can do it. Maybe not all the time, but when I do it, it's natural and I can accept it and I know that you really mean I love you and I care and that you accept me. But you could feel the love. You could feel the concern. I was the oldest in the family and I found that to be a tremendous burden. I was supposed to inspire my two younger sisters with my behavior. And I was a goody-good. I was scared of getting caught, I guess. I don't think I was good because I really wanted to be particularly, but I once said in trying to tell my story that I had dated, I meant to say widely and I had said wildly.
[00:25:00]
I didn't think I was ever going to. I was a very homely teenager and anybody that took me out took me out because my mother forced his mother to do it. And I had visions of entering the convent, I guess, though I never would have made it without makeup, so that kept me out of there. Little did I know how things were going to change. But I, there was an awful lot of, we fought hard and we loved hard. I had the excuse that I was Irish and I had red hair and that's why I had a temper. And really when I went away to school, I learned, started to learn how to control it because I realized that, you know, my roommate wasn't going to take some of the guff that I gave my sisters.
I used to think my mother and father loved my sisters more than they did me. They didn't, I realized as I grew older. They did like them better for the very good reason that they were more likable. They were nicer to be around. They didn't have the self-centeredness that I seemed to have. But I learned how, they got me out of town. They sent me away to school when I was in high school. My mother had gone there and my aunts and my grandmother and I carried on the family tradition. And I started to realize and I started to grow up at least a little bit. I was surprised at how much my family, my parents had learned by the time I was 18. I thought they had changed a great deal.
They really hadn't changed at all. I had, you know, come to understand my parents. Before that I thought they were a little right of President McKinley and whoever he was. And, but I was, I did very well in school. I did very well. I was a joiner and I, you know, picked up a lot of plaques and cups and medals and things like that. I, on the surface I had, it looked as if everything I had was all pulled together and that I was a very happy, content person. And, but inside I wasn't. I was scared. I wanted, I needed your approval so badly. I needed it so badly that I, you know, I had to succeed at everything I did. And if it looked like I weren't going to do it, then I got out of it.
I pretended I wasn't interested. I didn't do it, you know, because I thought that would mean you wouldn't like me and you wouldn't give me your approval. I went to college and I went to graduate school even. That's impressive. I was, I'm awfully glad today I did because I don't think I would have read this stuff unless somebody was hanging over my head saying a book report is due. You have to take an exam and that, you know, you have to write a report. Really all it did was kind of over educate me for the first, you know, long time job I had which was dishes, dust and diapers. But for myself I'm glad I had that and I'm glad we didn't have the money to do it and I worked my way through college.
It gave me, you know, a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of my own worth and yet there was still that thing inside me that I knew you were better. I tried so hard to get you to like me and I didn't know how to do it and I didn't, I couldn't tell you how scared I was or how shy I was or how lonely I felt. And as in the course of things, you know, I was doing all of this and working. I am also desperately looking for a husband. It may not be the sign of, you know, great success today but it certainly was where I was growing up and when I was growing up that, that, you know, got married and I found him and I was mature enough to know that there'd be problems in marriage, you know, that you didn't get married and live happily ever after.
I kind of hoped he'd be good looking but that also that he would be intelligent because I knew I had a good brain and I knew that, I don't mean degrees, you know, or a whole bunch of titles before we actually knew, but that if you had a good brain it would help and that if you had a sense of humor, because we laughed hard in our family too, that that would help get you through problems. And I wanted a man who was strong because I knew that I gave the impression of being strong but that inside I really wasn't and I didn't want to wear the pants in our family. And I found him and I got him to propose and I was right, we didn't live happily ever after. He is an extremely intelligent man and he certainly Dreaming intelligent man, and he certainly has one of the best sense of humor of anybody I've ever met in my entire life, and he's a very, very strong person.
[00:30:04]
In the first few years of our marriage, I thought he was the stupidest man I had ever met in my life, the least funny, and certainly the weakest person I had ever known because of the way he drank. And I felt that the God I had known and grown up with was a loving God. He was a laughing God. He was a happy God. He wasn't a punishing God. He wasn't a cruel God. And also, along with my feeling about myself and wanting you to like me, I spent a lot of time praying, you know, got wrinkled knees.
But God really was not an inconvenience in my life growing up because my life was fairly good and I felt that God loved me and that God cared and that God was a happy God. But I really spent all that time in churches and on my knees so that you'd notice and think I was holy, you know, and a good girl and a pious person and, you know, I talked about theology and things like that was a thing to do. But God had never really been, I'd never really been close to God and when I got married, I felt God abandoned me, that he dropped me, he turned away from me.
It took me a long time to realize that God hadn't moved at all, that I had turned away from him. I spent a lot of time in church and I prayed and somebody mentioned about thy will be done. I said the words, but I didn't mean thy will be done, I meant my will be done and why didn't you do it yesterday? How long do you expect me to put up with this? How could you do this to me? What have I ever done to hurt you?
What's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? I felt completely alone. I must admit that I belonged to a small religious sect that gave gold stars for procreation. And therefore, we had one, two, three, four, five, six, the pause that refreshes, drink Coca-Cola, seven children in a very short time. My closest friend was the Pope and my obstetrician. Frank thought a baby might cure alcoholism, I sure gave it the best shot I had with that method of curing alcoholism.
Actually we have one child who was born after I was in Al-Anon and it was really funny, I thought I had it then, you know, I was at that stage, I say I think I've got it. And I planned that whole labor because I'd never gone through labor with my husband being sober before and he was having, I don't guess it was sobriety, he was having two weeks of not drinking. So I planned my labor pains and my delivery in order to keep him sober.
You can see I hadn't quite got it but I'd never had that experience before, I hadn't had to let go of that one. The one great thing that you'd given me by that time was when I was in the recovery room they let him come down to see me because I was the only one in there and there wasn't any chance of germs getting spread around or something I guess. And I could, I heard the footsteps and I knew, you know, I mean you don't have to, you know what I mean, I don't have to explain that.
And I started to cry and then I started to laugh and he, you know, said oh it's so funny and I said gee we could have saved $25 on an anesthesiologist, I could have just, you know, inhaled you. You'd given me back my sense of humor at least. And we have one AA baby too, which is, you know, a beautiful gift from God, a child that's very special in very many ways to us. In any case, there I was feeling very, very alone with all of these children and for many years my father lived with us and I felt, you know, alone in our house.
[00:35:00]
I couldn't say anything to my father, you know, intellectually I might have gone out because that was kind of my reaction to run into the library and read about alcoholism. I'm sure I did that, I don't really remember. I was operating under blackouts in those times too I guess. But if I intellectually accepted disease, I certainly didn't in my heart and my guts. And so I was embarrassed and I was ashamed and I didn't even tell my father.
And my father wasn't dumb, he certainly knew something was going on, it didn't look like, you know, your ordinary marriage once we closed the front door, big front on the outside. But I felt very much alone, I felt that I didn't have a husband, I felt that these children didn't have a father except biologically. And I felt very, very sorry for myself, I spent a lot of time crying and wringing my hands.
At one point we had five children and I can remember I would have made a better expectant father than a mother. So I was pacing up and down the floor, moving my hair, thinking, God, how are we going to get these kids through college? And not one was old enough to go to kindergarten yet. You talk about projection, some of the things that I projected at that period of time actually came true. You know, we did have some of the problems that I worried about, all five of them were in college all this year.
Somebody wouldn't know why I went back to work a few years ago and it wasn't to be fulfilled, it was tuition. And I kept hoping somebody would drop out and go find themselves. Well, you see the two o'clock show, I'm not half as cold as when I first came in here. And I, you know, you do that night after night. You don't wake up in the best mood in the morning if you don't have sleep and you don't eat.
I know that I have a friend in Al-Nan who, you know, that ad that says, you know, I ate the whole thing and she was like this and I was like this. I looked like a fugitive from Buchenwald concentration camp when I came into Al-Nan. I thought you were nuts because, you see, I thought I had to do that. I lived with an alcoholic. How could I sleep at night? How could I eat? You know, that wouldn't show love, that wouldn't show concern.
I had to stew, I had to worry, I had to pace. You know, I used to feel that maybe if we lived in Louisiana we wouldn't have this problem. God, you know, nobody, we didn't move. I felt that maybe I were different. Ray wouldn't drink so much. I was a perfect wife and the perfect mother. You know, I'd go to bed and I'd hope that in the morning I'd wake up and I'd be that way. And change doesn't come that way, at least not for me.
It's a very slow process. I, you know, and I try, you know, I try to have the house perfect and me perfect and the children perfect. And really it didn't make any difference except that I, you know, gave up after a couple of days because I couldn't make it. But I felt very guilty. I thought if I were more loving or if I were a different kind of person Ray wouldn't drink that way. I felt filled with remorse.
I had learned to control my temper and I thought that I had to have a temper now because I did live with an active alcoholic. But I didn't like myself and I didn't like, although I really couldn't face it at that period of my life, the way I felt inside, the kind of words I used, the feeling at night that I had gone to bed and hadn't done anything but yell or nag. And maybe not so much at Ray but with five young children, none of them old enough to go to school yet.
And I had a great opportunity. I know now that I affected our children a great deal more than my husband's drinking ever did. And it wasn't easy to face that. And yet you gave me the tools to accept that fact and that in many cases I cannot go back and I cannot undo the things I did then. And the only thing I can do is to learn to handle guilt in such a way that I don't wake up tomorrow feeling guilty because I wasted today feeling guilty about some yesterday.
And you taught me how to do that. I was filled with resentment. I was a liar and I was a cheat. You know, I knew he had a problem but I thought, I mean, given on a given moment, I would have
[00:40:00]
told you that he was the luckiest man alive to be married to a saint like me, a martyr. You know, I was polishing the crown and getting it on straight and the wings all ready. And I couldn't face at this time, even to myself, what I had become. I stole from the children and had, thank God, the opportunity to make amends because I felt I had to. I stole from my husband. I forged checks because I thought that I didn't have a checking account.
It was a very good reason. I didn't have a lot of money. But I thought that, you know, the bills like the mortgage should be paid or the telephone bill. God help us. You know, I should be out without a phone. So I forged his names to those checks and get them out fast so that if there was going to be one bouncing around, it wouldn't be that one. And I didn't see that there was anything wrong with that, particularly since the bank never complained about my signature or my forgery of his name.
And they would call occasionally and say that his signature looked a little shaky. But you see, I had the advantage of doing it sober, you know, and tracing that name so beautifully. And I thought those things were fine. And in any case, one day I woke up and I decided that I couldn't live like this any longer. And though it was against everything that I had learned that I was going to have to get out, which was very typical of me, I wasn't making a success.
It wasn't going the way I had planned it. I wasn't the star. They weren't giving me a medal. And so I was going to get out of it. And I went off to talk to a clergyman that I had been going to once a week for quite a while for spiritual growth. And as you may imagine, I found it a little difficult to tell him what I had come to tell him. And after, you know, starting and crying, and he said, you're trying to tell me your husband's an alcoholic.
I'm living this program, but that each of us is living this program the best way there Because if I let go, and if I live and let live, then I will grant you the same freedom you have granted me. When I got to the first step, I found that the steps were a kind of difficult thing for me. There seemed to be one easy pot and one clinker thrown in. Now it was fairly easy for me to realize that I was powerless over alcohol.
I had tried just about everything to sober this man up. The only thing I hadn't done was pour anything down the sink. There was too much scotch in me, the other kind. To do that, I just knew it would cost more money. But if I forgot anything about any way that I tried to get somebody else sober, believe me I tried it. I lied. I screamed. I used golden or not so golden silence, and then when I broke it, I remembered everything that I had wanted to mention in chronological and alphabetic order.
One of our daughters, when she was about a year and a half, used to pat me on the back and say, no cry mommy, no cry mommy. By the time I got through his drawful of handkerchiefs, we had agreed that this was a very serious problem. And he said to me, I can't understand, I've been waiting for you to tell me this, Stephanie, what makes you think that this does not affect you spiritually? And I was so lucky, because I had gone to a man whose father was an alcoholic and who understood alcoholism.
And he said to me, you should go to open AA meetings and you should go to Alma. Well, he didn't really tell me that right at first. I said to him, I want a separation. I can't live with this man any longer. This is just, I mean, you have no idea, and proceeded to giving some idea of how wonderful I was to have put up with this. And he said just the thing that was perfect for me. He didn't say this is your cross, you have to carry it.
He didn't say married until death do you part. He said, okay, Stephanie, here's the form for a separation. What's your maiden name? You can't get into heaven without knowing that. And I said, hang on a minute. Maybe before I get this separation, there's something else I can do. And he said, I want you to go to open AA meetings. And I want you to know, I did not accept that advice.
[00:45:00]
I really felt very, very bitter, and very, very let down, that once again, I was going to have to do something. When he was perfectly happy, it seemed to me, doing what he was doing at home. And I resisted going for quite a few weeks and months, and used him as my Al-Anon, until I realized that that wasn't fair to him. He had other people in this parish, who needed him. I also knew it wasn't fair to me, he was the only person who knew how wonderful I was, and how much I'd suffered.
So I figured I'd give it a shot, and I'd go off and tell you all how it was to be married to an alcoholic, and get you organized, and on your feet, and then I would disappear again. And suffer nobly. I used to imagine that he would die. I really didn't want terrible harm to come to him. At least I felt guilty when I thought about it. But I'd look stunning in black, and noble at the funeral, and would never let anyone know how I had suffered.
And I certainly wouldn't make the same mistake twice. If anybody was out there waiting to sweep me off my feet with all these children. And I didn't get the impression there were a lot of people out there waiting to do that. In any case, I finally went. First of all, I went to open AA meetings, and I couldn't go in Larchmont. Well, first of all, I thought I had to go into the city. And that's kind of a haul for me.
And, you know, I'd be down on the Bowery with a bunch of bums, and, you know, with a can of Sterno, an unshaven kind of thing. And really, what did I have in common with those people? So I found out that there was AA around. I wondered who went, because I was so sure I lived alone with this problem in Larchmont. But I didn't want anybody to see me, so I went to Connecticut, which is fairly near me, and I went across the county.
And I was a big disappointment at those meetings, because people would rush over and throw up in their arms and welcome me, and then I'd say I wasn't an alcoholic, and they'd go, Oh, gee, that's too bad. And finally one night, I decided that this was costing a lot of sitter money and a lot of gas money and a lot of my time, and that I was going to go to Larchmont, where I didn't know a single soul in the meeting.
And once again, I was a big disappointment, and somebody said, Oh, and there, you know, see those two ladies over there? They're starting an Al-Anon group in Larchmont. Why don't you go over and talk to them? And I did, and they were going to start a meeting the next day, or the next week, actually. This was a Thursday night. They were going to start a meeting, first meeting next week, and they asked me if I'd come.
And I said yes, but I didn't really mean it. And they took my first name and my telephone number. And I was the only one in this, you know, this big group. There were these two people saying, Would I come? And I thought, Well, gee, I really have to show up at least once, because they're going to notice, you know, if I don't come. So I went, and they had kind of cheated, because they talked about five or six other people at that meeting who also showed up.
And I don't know why I went back, and I don't even know why I went back to those first, after I'd gone to those first few AA meetings, because, one, I thought you were all absolutely nuts, because you were laughing, and you were happy, and life seemed good to you. And it made me think that you couldn't know or have known how I suffered and what pain there was in my life and how many financial problems we had and how many other problems we had.
And I thought you were very, very phony. I also thought you were very, very selfish, because I don't know whether there's anybody else in this room who ever did this, but I didn't come to Al-Anon for myself. I came to sober somebody up. And I think maybe, you know, I'm the only person that ever did that. And I thought you were very selfish, because you weren't giving me the magic word. You know, I think that's one reason I came back.
I thought, well, maybe I keep saying come, you know, for three months or something, before you make it, maybe after that they're going to tell me, you know, how do I go home and sober this guy up? And I waited, and I waited, and I finally heard somewhere along there it was for me. I don't know. When you get serenity and when it happens, you know, I say I think I've got it.
[00:50:00]
The reason I picked 19 this morning was because that's what my birthday is going to be this year. And I know that today, after 18 years of being in Al-Anon, I need you just as much as I did at that first meeting. The difference is I know I need you. I need you in a different way. I need you because I see God through you. I need you because you not only told me how you did it. Remember that song, I think it was from My Fair Lady, and talking about love?
Don't tell me, show me. And you didn't tell me, you showed me. You showed me what acceptance was. You showed me what understanding was. You showed me what love was. And you show me today. And you show me today. When Sue spoke yesterday, I thought for just a second, oh my God, I wish I'd gotten it that fast. And yet I know that I'm glad I'm a slow learner. Because if I had thought that I had gotten it for any length of time, I know I would have lost it.
I know today that I never have to leave this room. Whenever I walk into a meeting, I'm home. I know I'm loved. I know I'm accepted. I know I'm forgiven. And I know that you have something to give me. Something that's unique and that no one else in the world can give me. And that's the way you live this program. It doesn't matter whether you're brand new or whether you've been around a long time. I hear things today that I didn't hear five years ago and that I didn't hear ten years ago.
And I know that tomorrow I'm going to hear something I haven't heard yet. The program isn't going to change. The steps aren't going to change. But each one of us can use them differently today than I know that I did. And yet I also know that each day that I try to live this program, I'm doing the best I can today. When I first came in, Boots said something about the serenity prayer. God, I hung on to that.
You know, it wasn't until many years later that I realized that I didn't have to like the things I had to accept all the time. I thought that if I had to accept them, I had to fall in love with them. And I, you know, I made it so hard on myself. And I don't know how long ago it was that somebody said in a way that I could finally hear, you don't have to like everything you have to accept. You just have to accept it.
And a whole new world opened up for me as far as the serenity prayer was concerned. At different times, some of our children have had problems. And one of the hardest things that I have had to do is to allow them to accept the responsibility for their actions. And when I say children, you know, they're going to be my children when they're in their 40s. And I knew how much they were going to hurt. And it's so hard to explain And it's so hard to explain to somebody that you can't hurt me by what you're doing.
I can feel for you and I can care for you. But you know, if you fail high school, that doesn't hurt me, really. If you do something that's very, very wrong for you, all I can do is let you face that action and the responsibility for that action and let you know I still love you. And I know that sometimes that's very, very hard. And I know that sometimes I fail. And yet I know that it was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me.
And there wasn't alcoholism in our family.
[00:55:01]
And it will be one of the greatest gifts that we can give our children. And I also know that out of that pain, it's the only way that I've been able to grow. I don't grow in things that go on rosy, thank you. I coast and I'm happy and I'm glad and I enjoy it. But it's when I have pain that I really think that I really think about using this program. You know, when you have an emergency, a big, huge thing, the fire department, the police department and an ambulance are involved, you know you've got a problem there.
It's the smaller things that I find harder to deal with than Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Here comes Monday again, fellas. And the things don't really change and they don't seem to get any better. But you know what? If I use this program, there isn't any day that has to be ruined. There isn't anybody who can spoil that day for me. There isn't anything that can ruin that day unless I allow it to happen.
I can have problems and I can have pain, but that can still be a good day unless I choose to make it a bad day. The slogans were a big help within the beginning. Oh, maybe not the way they were intended to be. You know, I thought maybe let go and let God at first meant He was going to come down and do the laundry for me. And that's not what the slogan meant. And today, those slogans are like the railings for steps.
I can hang on to them and I can use them. And I know that easy does it also means but do it. It doesn't mean postpone, you know, tomorrow I'll go back to Tara. It means do what you can today about the problems you have today. And that let go and let God means to me that each of us have been granted the most tremendous gift there is, the gift of freedom. This is such a general program that each one of us are free to go home and live it the way I'm comfortable living it, the way you're comfortable living it.
And if we do that, it may be a very, very different way of living this program. But that each of us is living this program the best way there is. Because if I let go and if I live and let live, then I will grant you the same freedom you have granted me. When I got to the first step, I found that the steps were a kind of difficult thing for me. There seemed to be one easy part and one clinker thrown in.
Now, it was fairly easy for me to realize that I was powerless over alcohol. I had tried it just about everything to sober this man up. The only thing I hadn't done was pour anything down the sink. There was too much scotch in me, the other kind. To do that, I just knew it would cost more money. But if I forgot anything about any way that I tried to get somebody else sober, believe me, I tried it. I lied.
I screamed. I used golden or not so golden or not so golden silence. And then when I broke it, I remembered everything that I had wanted to mention, chronological and alphabetical order. But you know, that my life was unmanageable, the saint, the martyr, the woman who was mother and father to these children, why, I thought I was fine, and thank you very much. And it took me quite a while to realize and to face the fact, as I told you earlier, that I really had harmed our children a great deal more than drinking had done.
And I had done it sober. When I came to the second step, I thought, well, now here's another easy one. I already believe in God because that's what I thought it said. And then I realized after a while, a long while, that it said, came to believe that, not in, but that a higher power could return me to sanity, which meant that I had to win. which meant that I had to admit in another way that there was something wrong with me.
And I tried to turn my life and my will over to that God as I understood Him.
[01:00:04]
If I had dropped that the first time I thought I got it, I would have made, and I did, I dropped that step again, because I thought I had it. Only to find that I'd taken my will back, and my life back. Only to find that the God I was turning my life over to was not a God I didn't believe in, but was a God I truly hated at times. And how can you do that? How can you trust somebody you hate? And I had to work on understanding God.
And I don't ever want to stop doing that. And so I have to keep working that step. Because I know that the better I understand Him, the more willing I'm going to be to turn my life and my will over. I think as many Alan and Ana now teen people, when I came to the Fourth Step I was so glad I had joined here. I was well prepared to take an inventory for my husband, and terribly disappointed to learn that that was not the name of the game, and that I was expected to do it for myself.
And when I did that first inventory, I was as honest as I could be that day. I don't take four steps every day or once a week. A tenth step takes care of that. And I'm glad I went back and took a fourth step more than once, and a fifth step more than once, because that first time I really wasn't prepared to face myself. And besides which, there was a period in my life where I turned away from the power that is in this room.
And I know that when I did that, I had been in Hell and on for quite a while. And I know I hurt people. But I also know that the person I hurt the most was myself. And I know that I could come back, and that I could start again because of you. And I don't want to go back there. I hope I've learned by my mistakes. I hope at least I won't keep making the same mistake again and again, like the pig that got in the wheelbarrow.
I'm afraid they're going to have to buy all these tapes to ever get them organized in their minds. Play these at a meeting where the other ones are, or else people are going to think we're all crazy. But, you know, in that terribly dry, and I mean not in the sense of drinking or non-drinking, but that terribly arid part of my life where I turned away from these steps, and I turned away from the power that's in this room.
Allergan didn't fail me. The steps didn't fail me. I just didn't use those tools. I just didn't remember. I just didn't look to see what I was doing to me. And it's why I think that maybe once every few years, at least for me, or every couple of years, that it's a good idea for me to take a fourth and a fifth step again. Because I thought I was living the program, and I was trying the tenth step then, but I was also rationalizing what I was doing and explaining that I had to again, that these things were necessary, and that after all, and but, you don't understand.
And I didn't even give you the privilege of asking you to understand. I shut you out. When I came to the fifth step, I thought maybe a drunk had written it because it said God first, and then me, and then somebody else, and I thought, how can I tell God until I tell me? I'm not sure. I know it was written by a drunk, but it was written by a sober drunk, and I don't know why it's written that way. What I feel is that God knew already what I was going to tell him.
[01:05:05]
I wasn't going to surprise him. And that not only did he know, but it gave me some practice before I told somebody else. I think if I had only done the fourth step, I used to hide my fourth step under the mattress because I didn't want to give Ray any edge on knowing things. As Teresa said, you know, those pages are bad things about me. And I would have had nothing but a lumpy mattress if it hadn't been for the fifth step because once I said it out loud to someone else, then I knew that she knew that I was going to try and work on some of these things, and it made me at least start to begin to try, to start to begin to try.
When I came to the sixth and seventh step, I thought that drunk was coming around again because they both seemed the same to me. One talked about defects and the other talked about shortcomings, and one said I became ready, and the other said I humbly asked. Well, you know, if you become ready, it seems to me it's like playing in a, you know, same football game. You got to get your uniform on, you got to get the equipment, and you got to get out there on the field.
And then you ask somebody to help you, to play on your team. I wondered why they had used the word defects and shortcomings, and I asked somebody, and I don't know whether they knew the answer. They said they just didn't want to use the same word twice in two sentences. But if you look at the steps, it seems to me today it means that in one, I became ready to have the defects that I had faced in my fifth step removed.
And in the seventh step, I asked for, or we asked for our shortcomings to be removed, and maybe that means the things I haven't faced yet, that God will help me even before I know what they are, or can face them, or help me to face the fact that I have them. When I made a list of all those people I had harmed, and when I do it occasionally again, I know that the person I've hurt most has been myself, because I truly didn't want to be that way, and neither did any of us.
I certainly harmed our children. I certainly have hurt my husband, not only before Al-Anon, but after him. And I have tried to make amends, and in some cases where I cannot go back, to try today to live today in such a way that I will be glad for today. In the tenth step, we are asked to take a daily inventory, and in the tenth and eleventh step, it sort of indicates that we spend some time, not alone, but with God, as we understand him.
And I have had the experience so often of having people explain that so beautifully to me, because I sometimes feel that I sound pious again, and yet I don't feel that way. I need that time. I'm working. We have seven children, and dogs and cats, and partridges and pear trees, I guess. And I don't need so much to be alone as I need to take time so that I can truly enjoy that confusion, and that coming and going, and that noise, and that excitement, and all the really great times that there is in having a big family.
I need that time to be refreshed and to be renewed. It isn't pious Polly that says, I try to make that time every day. It's that I need it for me. I need to ask God what his will is for me, and I need to ask for help to carry that out. I need to be able to see why something is happening,
[01:10:00]
or to accept it even when I can't see why it's happening. I need a program that gives me time to think and a time to pray so that I may act and accept my actions, and when I am wrong, go back and try either to change or to truly be sorry. Not just to say I'm sorry, but to make up my mind that I will try not to do that again. I need that time for meditation. I need that time for prayer. I'm very good at praying, thank you God, for the good things that are in our life, and there are so many.
We have AA and Alan on our team. We have jobs and we have children in college. We have a home and we have the beauty of this program. We have friends. I'm not always so good about thanking God for the things that don't feel good, for misunderstanding, for lies or gossip, for pain or loss or even death, even when I know that it's by these hard instruments that God would have me grow and that God would have me happy because if I can accept these things and be grateful for that growth, then I will truly be happy.
I think we all have tried to practice these principles in all our affairs. To go back for just a second, you know, there was a period in my life in AA that I waited for a spiritual awakening of a magnificent character, a lightning, a dove hovering, and angelic choirs, and then I would start, you know. I'm very glad that that did not happen to me because I think I would have put me away. My approach to God has always been a rather down to earth and practical and certainly now, you know, I can talk to God and anything like that would have made me very nervous.
I would have been very impressed if it had happened to you but very, very nervous if it had happened to me. But the step says we've had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. That means it's going on all the time if we're using the other 11 steps. That that spiritual awakening is something that never has to end for any of us. It's something that I can have every day and I'm willing to accept it.
And that we practice these principles in all our affairs. I touched on the fact that our children have had problems, Ray and I have had problems, I have had problems, and sometimes the hardest thing to know is why. We have a child who is learning disabled and the greatest gift of God. We have had children who have had other pain and seen it through. I was prepared to hold a baby in my arms but how great it is that my children have allowed me to hold them in my arms when they're bigger than I am.
I know that it's important that we carry this message and I think that each of us do it very, very well within the fellowship. I hope that we'll remember how many people are out there that don't know we're in here. Yesterday I sat by the pool for a few minutes and got talking to a man that I assumed was here for the same reason that I was and he wasn't. And I told him why I was here. And after the meeting last night, he told me I was nuts.
And after the meeting last night, before the dance, I was going outside and I heard a voice behind me saying, Miss, Miss. Behind me saying, Ms., Ms., and I stopped, and he said, I've done something very bad, and I said, well, what is it, and he said, I came out of dinner in the restaurant, and I went into that meeting, and that door was opening just as I came by, and he said, I heard that man speak, and he said, my wife's an alcoholic, and he said, do you have it where I live, and he had told me he was going to be transferred, and I said, we have it
[01:15:16]
where you live and where you're going to be transferred. I was so glad I got a chance to see Frank this morning because he didn't even know the message he carried, and I didn't tell him that you had to pay a registration fee to get through the door, and I knew you'd understand. I remember, you know, the people that are out there. I know how hard it is for me to stand in front of a microphone even though I don't look nervous, but this is a lot easier than living this program.
You know, it's a lot harder to fight for your principles and defend them than it is to live them, and that's all we're asked to do is to try and live them one day at a time. I have a favorite song, and I don't sing, and if you had heard me sing or Virginia's report, you would know that I don't sing, about the little skit that was put on at World Service. The name of the song is You'll Never Walk Alone, and it's in just that title to explain how I feel about how very grateful I am for all that you've given me because, you know, if each of us would use God as we understand him and would use the programs of AA and Al-Anon and Al-Ateem and would use the people who belong to those programs in the very best sense of using people, using each other and the strength that each of us have and the serenity and the hope and the courage, and if we use these steps, then truly you will never walk alone, and neither will I, because we'll walk together. Thank you so much.
Thank you.