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Source: DICOBE-00363 – Carole K – ARKANSAS STATE CONV – 1980-08-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00363-carole-k-arkansas-state-conv-1980-08-15.mp3 Duration: 00:55:24
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Well, I'll give it this time, Carol Kay from Fishkill, New York. He's going to relax and now it's my turn to get a little more nervous. It will take me a few minutes to calm down because my heart is going 100 pounds a minute right now and it's really beating strong, but I do calm down eventually. I would like to thank AA for inviting me here this weekend. I am a member of Al-Anon. My home group is in Fishkill, New York, and I also work at the World Service Office in New York.
I'm the Alateen coordinator, and part of my assignment the last couple of years has been to work on the International, and my life has been very full, very hectic, very frightening, very gratifying, and I've been on a pace that I didn't even realize that I had been on. Al-Anon has taught me to live, and I live my life to the fullest. The only thing I haven't learned all these years is how to relax.
I'm constantly on a go pace. My day starts 5 in the morning on weekdays, and to sleep late for me would be 6.30. The minute my eyes open up, my mind starts, my smile starts, my feet start, my heart starts, and I can't wait to live my day. But I came down here Thursday, and lately my living has been a little bit grumpy, and I got off the plane, and Joe met my husband Jack, who's with me this weekend, and myself, and I instantly felt accepted and at home, and he brought me here to this lovely, lovely hotel, and all of you that were here to greet us made us feel instantly welcomed, and I started to relax for the first time in a long time.
Well, then I really started to relax, and yesterday morning I didn't want to get out of bed. It was 9, 9.30, and I started to say, Carol, you've got to talk tomorrow. And then I started to think, my name is Carol, I'm married to who? Someone told me to take one of those hot baths, and I said, oh, I can't do that till after I speak. But I thought about it this morning, how relaxed I am, and how good I feel, and how good it's been for me.
And I thought, what a miracle to come on Thursday, and here it is Saturday morning, and it just took a few kind smiles, a few hugs, a lot of teasing, I found out, from these Southern men, to relax, where years ago I was so emotionally upset because of the disease of alcoholism, there was no way that a weekend could relax me. There are many weekends that we took in order to start over, which didn't help.
It took years of Al-Anon, and a fellowship, and a program for me to even be able to get to this point where I could take one weekend, and before it's even over, I'm fully relaxed. And so for that, I'm grateful for my Al-Anon program. I'd like to go back now and share with you a little bit of my past. I will refer at different times to my husband's story, because that's what brought me here. I stay in Al-Anon because of my own recovery, and I hope that I'm able to share with you my feelings going through the disease of alcoholism, what its effect was on me, and how my Al-Anon program helped me to recover.
I go back and I share with you what I was like in order to help me grow in my program. I find that if I forget where I was, I lose gratitude for where I am. So I take you back a few years to when I was a teenager, and I was never afraid of alcohol. I was raised in a family that never abused alcohol. My father, when he did drink, he was a funny man, and we actually loved it when he had a few drinks in him.
I was raised in a very happy, loving, warm home, so I had no fear of drink. When I was a teenager, I loved to dance, and I loved parties, and I loved to go to bars, because in those days, that's the only place that you could find a band, a live band. And so that's where I went. And I had fun, and I enjoyed drinking, and it was fun.
[00:05:03]
And then I met Jack. Now, I don't want to lead you astray, because when I met Jack, he was fun. And when he drank, he was Fred Astaire, and he was Valentino. He was everything that I wanted in a person, but I didn't realize that he had to have the drinks first. To show you how mature we were, we were 19 years old, and we decided to get married. Now, I knew at this particular time that Jack drank more than the rest of the crowd.
I mean, it was obvious. We had to take him home all the time. I didn't know about alcoholism, and I wasn't afraid of it. I figured that Jack needed to be loved. See, I didn't even know his family, but in watching them and observing them, I figured out that they didn't love Jack as much as I did, and therefore, if he got me for his wife, he wouldn't need to drink. I decided to become a perfect wife.
But to show you what a mature couple we were, it was a Friday night, and I'm still not sure whether I asked him or he asked me, but it was kind of, you want to get married? Yeah, you? Yeah. But I got to ask my brother. Me too. Okay, I'll meet you tomorrow morning on the corner of Main Street. Home we went the next morning. Early on the Saturday morning, we met. Can you? Yeah. Can you? Wow. Yeah. And this is how we started out, to set the world on fire and grow up together.
Only because of the disease of alcoholism, it took us a long time to grow up in any aspects of our life. It was only through Al-Anon and AA that we did any growing. In those early days, as I said, I figured if he had me, he wouldn't need to drink, and I decided I would be a perfect wife. Then he would want to come home to me. Now, I didn't know what a perfect wife was. I could use my mother as an example, but I didn't really think she was so perfect.
She did a lot of yelling and griping, and she just wasn't what I wanted to be, I thought, at the time. I used Mrs. Miniver. I loved to go to the movies, and I thought Greer Garson was a wonderful, perfect wife, and that's what I wanted to be. And after all, Mrs. Miniver had a rose named after her. I landed in a rose bush trying to be like her. But let me tell you, this is how Mrs. Miniver or Mrs. Carroll tried to be.
I never let my husband see me without my hair just so and makeup on my face, and I was dressed just so. I believed in organdy, ironed aprons, and they were on. In order for us to survive in those days, Jack had to work two jobs, and he went to school. Therefore, I made sure that when I went out during the day, I would be home every day by 3 o'clock so that I could have clean clothes laid out for him on the bed, a hot tub waiting for him, and I would be standing at the front door with this clean pressed organdy apron, smile on my face, a Tom Collins in my hand, and say, Hi.
Now, how much more perfect can you get, especially for an alcoholic? I knew nothing about the disease of alcoholism, nor did I know anything about the first drink. Jack took that drink, his hot bath, changed, and went out. And it was at this period of my life that most of the damage was done, because this is when I started to walk the floor and wonder why he didn't come back. This is when I looked out the window and the headlights didn't come.
This is when I stopped laughing and started crying. This is when I started to doubt me, and I tried harder and harder. I went to my parents after a while, and they said, Leave him. And I said, I don't want to leave him. I love him. There's a part of Jack, and that part of Jack that I knew he could be is what I hung on to for 11 years. I knew there was something there, and I didn't want to go. Eventually, I got to the point where I had to leave every Friday.
And, of course, Jack came for me every Sunday, and he told me he'd never drink again, and my father would look at him. But I believed Jack for 11 years, that he would never drink again every Sunday. I went to lawyers, and, of course, they said I just wanted them to scare him. But they, too, wanted me to leave him. I went to doctors, and they said that I needed tranquilizers, that I was getting too nervous.
[00:10:03]
Now, none of these people said alcoholism. They gave me tranquilizers, and I decided for myself, I'm not nervous. Jack is. Now, if he was calmer, he wouldn't need to drink. So I used to slip my tranquilizers into his breakfast coffee. Now, I want you to know I had the calmest drunk in the Hudson Valley. He didn't worry about nothing. Nothing. As the disease of alcoholism progressed in our home, I went to priests and ministers.
I went to clergy of any kind just for answers, and their answers were pray. Well, I started out praying in the beginning, and it was, God, please bring him home. Bring him home, and I'll go to church six Sundays in a row. And then it got so, God, don't bring him home. Then it got so, kill him off, God, because I can't live with him. And then I'd get scared and say, oh, no, God, I don't really mean that.
Erase that one. And it went on and on and on. So when they said to me we should pray, I thought, how can you pray through clenched teeth? There's no prayers for me to say anymore. And so I received no help there. I used to beg Jack, please don't drink. I know that's our problem. And he would laugh. And many times, though he promised me he wouldn't, and he went out and didn't come back for a day or two.
Now, in those days, I was an asthmatic. And because I totally believed in my husband, I would go into an attack of asthma. And near the end of his drinking days, I used to have to have a shot of adrenaline every Friday night. You see, I told you I believed in him, and I believed what he told me. And every Friday night, it was a total shock, a total emotional and physical and spiritual shock to me that he drank.
And it got to the point where I had to have these shots of adrenaline in order to breathe, in order to take care of our three children that we had at that time. But before I got to that point, I decided that I knew that I was suffering. I knew that I couldn't laugh anymore, and I knew that I was changing and I was getting very sick mentally. I knew I didn't want to go out with people anymore. I didn't want to go to parties because many times I had to go home by myself because I was left there.
I knew I was embarrassed by his actions. I knew I was ashamed of saying, yes, I'll be there, and then couldn't go because of him not showing up and depending on him so much to do things for me. And I knew I was withdrawing. And I knew that he was having a good time, and I resented that. And I decided that I was going to make him suffer as much as I did. Now, if you're new today, let me share with you what I did.
But let me also share with you, it did not stop my husband from drinking. All it did was make me a very sick woman emotionally. I started out, the usual was calling the bar to find out if he was there or not. And the most aggravating thing, at that time we had two children, was to have the bartender say, he's not there. And I knew he was there, and I didn't know how to prove it. Well, one night we had company, and I said, I'm going out for the pizza tonight, Jack, if you don't mind.
And he said, no, I'm skipping my story. Let me tell you first before I get to that point. I was carrying our son, John. And I called the bar this night, and they said, Jack's not here. And I said, well, when he comes in, tell him I'm in labor. And Jack comes charging through the front door, and I said, I knew you were there. After we had our son, John, that's when we had the company in, and I decided I would like to go out for pizza.
The night before this occasion, Jack had gone out, and he came in, and I said, Jack, how can you afford to drink? We have no money. Now, I must tell you right now, there's two things that my husband did when he drank. My husband never had more than two drinks, and he never spent more than 50 cents. I also would like to tell you that my husband put us in debt because of his drinking, and I cannot say that.
Years ago, someone said to me, Carol, if you keep him in debt, he can't afford to drink. So I proceeded. In the beginning, I started, I had a charge account in every mail-order house from New York to Chicago, in Macy's, and in any place, Sears, Wards. If there was a charge account, I had it. And in the beginning, I used it because I was bored. I used it on the night that he was out. I used it on the night that he was out. I would sit and I would redecorate a room and I would send
[00:15:02]
these outrageous orders in and we had to pay them off. After a while I used it with our children for forgiveness. I used it so that they would just once be able to say to the kids, look what I got. I wanted the kids on the block just once to say I wish they were our parents. You see, I knew what we did to our children at night when they were cuddled up in their bed. I knew when Jack came in drunk and I opened my mouth and the violence started. I could hear Johnny say, don't answer him mama, don't answer him, but I had to get my two cents in there. I knew what was going on when they come down the next morning sleepy because they hadn't been able to sleep from the noise and red-eyed because of the tears of fear that they shed. You see, my husband and I were both violent and I knew the shame that they must have felt when that picture window was constantly broken because I'm a thrower. I was a thrower. I've been cured.
As long as I stay in Al-Anon, I'm cured. So after a while I used these charge accounts and these things to buy love and forgiveness from our children. So when Jack came in this night and I said, how can you afford to drink? We have no money. And he said, I only spend 50 cents, Carol. And he just confused me so I couldn't figure out how he did it. So then the next night is when I decided I would go out and get the pizza. And I knew where Jack hung out and I went to his favorite bar and I got up to that bar and I put a quarter on that bar and I said, Sal, Jack got drunk here last night for 50 cents.
I only drink half as much and I'm not leaving until I'm drunk. The phone rang after a while and it was Jack and I would say to Sal, I'm not here. Sal would relay the message to Jack and all the men in the bar thought I was hysterical because I was turning the tables and they bought me drinks. And I am here to tell you, I got drunk on a quarter. Around two o'clock in the morning, the phone rang and it was Jack and he said, Sal, will you tell Carol I'm in labor?
My favorite story of all, and as I tell it, just realize how sick I had gotten. I wanted Jack to suffer, but really what I was doing, all these things that I was doing to him, I was really saying, love me, look at me, not the bottle. I didn't know how to get his attention, so I tried all these way out things. Well, my favorite story is I found out that my husband is allergic to Clorox and I used to rinse his undershorts in straight Clorox.
I would hang them on the line and you women must know what I had to go through because I had to get rid of the odor because I couldn't get caught. And he would get a rash, you know where, the poor man. He couldn't sit, he couldn't walk and he'd waddle in the house and he'd say, God, Carol, what's wrong? And I didn't dare grin or nothing and I just said, I don't know, Jack, but inside I don't, oh, I got him, I got him.
And I've never made amends for that one and I'm not gonna, I love it. Thank God we can laugh today, but I must tell you that the family, the Cooney family was affected very deeply by alcoholism. And only through the three programs, the Al-Anon, Al-Ateen and then the AA have we been able to recover and we as a family today can laugh and we do laugh about our shortcomings today and those of the past.
However, this merry-go-round went on and on and on and I left Jack and I'd come back and I just, I just didn't know where to go. I, there, there was no mention of AA or, or Al-Anon. I mean, that just wasn't in our area. Finally, one night, it was a Sunday night and I was watching television. There was a panel on about alcoholism. Lily and Ross happened to be on that panel that night and they talked about the disease of alcoholism and its effect.
They talked about blackouts.
[00:20:00]
They talked about progression and I started to understand. I started to understand that when my husband said, I don't remember, that he was telling the truth. I started to get relief because for years people were telling me he was immature. I had to wait for him to grow up and it went on and on and on. And, and I was getting nowhere. None of, none of the answers that I was looking for. But this night I was getting the answers I wanted and I was so excited because there was hope for the first time there was an answer.
Jack had been out for a day or so and he came in that night cautiously. My husband always came in very slowly through that door because I usually had something in my hand and I was all wound up to let him have it. But this night as he came in cautiously, I said, it's okay, Jack. We're not going to fight tonight. And he said, we're not? And I said, no, you're not a drunk. I'm not. You're an alcoholic.
Oh God, we had the worst fight. They didn't tell me on that panel that he wouldn't accept the word alcoholic. He would rather be a drunk. And it was terrible. He just didn't want anything to do with that. But for the next six months, what's happened, what happened for me was, is I stopped fighting and I started listening and I started watching him. I heard him say things like, I don't know why I didn't come home.
I really wanted to. I just stopped for one drink. I don't know why I do this. I watched him go to the window and look out and see if the car was there. I saw the concern on his face and then the relief when it was there in one piece. I watched his reaction when the phone rang and the fear that came over him, wondering who it was or what he had done. And I just watched and listened for about six months.
Finally, as his drinking continued on and it got to the point where bartenders were calling me to get him home and I'd say, you created it, honey, you keep it. I just knew I wasn't going out for that. And I wouldn't leave my children at that point anyway. I watched and then finally I knew that emotionally I could not stay. I knew I loved my husband. I also knew that there was terrible violence in our home.
I hadn't realized at the time how we had scarred our children emotionally, but I had a fear when they jumped in on some of these violent fights that they would be hurt physically and that would be something we wouldn't be able to live with. I didn't realize that we were hurting them physically when our son developed ulcers and never tied it in with our actions in the disease of alcoholism. Anyway, I said to my husband, Jack, it has to be AA or a lawyer.
There's no more. I cannot go any further for our emotional safety and our physical safety. I must leave. My husband took his fist and he put it to my chin and he grit his teeth and he said, you and nobody on this earth will stop me from drinking. And he left. I called the lawyer and I made my appointment. I knew that I had to do what I had to do. I proceeded to clean our home up that morning and it was around 11, 1130.
It was before lunchtime. I was in our son's room and I started to cry. See, I didn't want to do what I knew I had to do. And I cried and I fell on my knees. And for the first time I prayed, oh God, help this man to help himself. Whether he go with me or alone, but please God help him. And I wiped those tears that day and I went on and I did what I had to do. Three-thirty that afternoon, Jack came in and he said, Carol, help me.
I said, I can't help you. I've tried for 11, 12 years and there's nothing more I can give to you. He said, call AA. Now you see, I had watched my husband and I knew he had a terrible fear of phones. And if my husband had to make that first call to AA himself, he never would have been able to do it. I called AA for him and I got someone's mother-in-law. She didn't know too much about it, but she didn't know that there was a meeting in Fishkill on Wednesday night, which was the following night at eight-thirty.
He had, he agreed to go. On our way to that meeting, I was driving and he gave me a thousand and one excuses why he shouldn't go. He was too sick. He was scared. He couldn't stop shaking, but so was I. I was so scared and shaken inside, but something inside me said, don't stop this car.
[00:25:01]
Keep going, keep going, keep going. And I got to that AA meeting and it was in August and Jack was walking in front of me and we got to the door and he said, oh, Carol, I can't go through with this. And I said, that's what you think, Jack. And I physically shoved my husband through the doors of AA. As he went flying through those doors, an AA man was standing on the other side. Now, I know today I could shove Jack through a thousand and one doors and if he didn't want sobriety, he wouldn't have it.
That's his own choice. But as he went through the door that day and he touched that AA man, I heard him say, help me. And I said, sober him up and I'll do anything. And I meant it. I meant it for about two months. What I really meant was, sober him up and give him back to me because I know what kind of a husband I want and I will mold him into being what I want him to be. AA doesn't work that way or it didn't for my husband.
My husband fell in love with AA and he went to meetings seven nights a week and twice on Sunday. There was no Al-Anon in our area and I went to meetings with him. You see, I still was full of fear. I was still full of anger and I still wanted Jack to look at me. He stopped looking at the bottle and he looked toward AA and I was lonely and I was frightened. I went to these meetings and I would talk to some of the women and they'd say, you have no gratitude.
And I'd say, for what? I have no husband yet. He comes home, he eats dinner. We all sit scared to death to say a word and out he goes. He's not the nicest person to be around at the dinner table. He doesn't smile. He talks to me through grit teeth. He gives me the slogans. Easy does it, Carol. You know, Saturday morning we were all still having our fights. I was still uptight. I still had my own effects of alcoholism.
We would have an argument and we would be talking like this and the phone would ring and it would be an AA person and he'd say, hi. He'd say, you don't understand, Carol, you're not an alcoholic. And I said, well, then I'm going to become one. And he'd say, don't try it. I'm not putting up with you. When we had our fights on Saturday morning, he would leave the house and he would come back with this character.
It was called his sponsor. And the two of them would sit there and tell me, sobriety comes first. And I'd say, well, where do I fit into this picture? Well, you just have to be patient. God don't give you any more than you can handle. Three months later, another person came into our life called a pigeon. Come Saturday morning, I was still uptight. I was still frightened. I still was not getting any attention.
And the three of them would sit there and tell me sobriety comes first. Now, let me tell you, I'm so grateful that my husband chose sobriety because for himself, because I did not help him. I wanted him sober, but I wanted a husband. I was confused and I was upset and I didn't understand. You know, I have to tell you just how emotionally sick I was. I suppose I'm the one woman who ripped her husband's shirts up so he wouldn't go to an AA meeting.
He took those shirts and he says, now I got you. Now I can prove you're crazy. And he took them to an AA meeting and I thought you were all coming back to get me. I went down in the garage and I got myself a two by four and I said, let him come. Finally, Jack came home one night and he said, Carol, I heard about this thing called Al-Anon. Will you go? And I said, I'll go any place, any place. And he took me to my first meeting.
It was about 60 miles from our home. And I went in and they said, you're a newcomer. Do you have any problems? And I said, no. I have one, but he's in AA and he's doing wonderful. And they said, fine. Today's meeting is on patience. And I said, oh, wait a minute. I don't have any patience. I think I was a very patient. I don't have any patients. I think I was a very patient woman when he drank, but I'm not very patient with this sobriety. I'm not very patient with this AA. I don't understand.
[00:30:05]
And as I proceeded to talk, they proceeded to smile. I realize now that they started to take my inventory out. I didn't know what they were doing. They said I had a mother complex. I was a martyr. I had a disease, the effects of a disease that were my own. They handed me the Al-Anon literature and the book Living With Alcoholism, and they said read these things and learn. They said get off your husband's back and work a program for yourself. And I know that meeting was a little tough love, and I'm grateful for that because I have a family that has loved me to death. I have people and friends that have said, oh, how do you put up with it? And if I had walked into an Al-Anon meeting and they said, oh, dear, we know the suffering you're going through, I would have been gone.
But they didn't. They said, we understand, and it's okay. But now you've got to work on yourself. I took that literature and the book, and I came out of that meeting, and Jack said, are you okay? I said, I'm great. I got my problems and you got yours. And that's the way it's going to be. And that's really the way it has been. I worked hard in my Al-Anon program, and I must tell you that it took me a long time to learn a lot of things. It took me a long time to even understand the first step. I knew I was powerless over alcohol, but I didn't accept for a long time that I was fully powerless over the alcoholic. It wasn't until I was in the program approximately two years when I read The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage and their breakdown of the first step that I realized that my husband is an individual with a personality of his own. My husband is an individual, a man who has the disease of alcoholism. Before I accepted that step fully, I thought I was married to an alcoholic who happened to be a man, and everything that he did was alcoholic. And that's not true. My husband is his own person today, and for that I'm grateful.
In the second step, power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, the power for me had to be Al-Anon. I had searched everything else, and I got no answers. I always received answers that were directed toward Jack. And you see, that was my problem. My whole life was wrapped up in his actions and reactions to life, and if he acted or reacted, so did I. So I had to use Al-Anon for my personal recovery, and it did restore me to what I consider sanity. It wasn't hard for me to accept that word sanity, because I know where I've been, and I know what I've done, and I don't share all with you. For that, I can't.
I made a decision to turn my life and my will over to the care of God as I understand them. After, and I know these steps were written in order for a reason, but I personally had to take the fourth step. Now, it wasn't the deep and fearless moral inventory that I have taken later on in years, but in the beginning, I had to take an inventory of myself to find out just what was within me. When it said turn my life and my will over before I took that inventory, I was turning Jack and the kids over. And if Jack was happy, I was happy.
If they were miserable, I was miserable. If they succeeded, I was a success. If the children failed or Jack failed, it was something that I did or didn't say. So after taking that inventory, I was able to find out why I react to them in such anger. Why did I sit around and I waste my life, really waste my life? And I don't mean being a wife and a mother is a waste of life, but I waited in between their home visits. You know, they would go out in the morning to school and to work, and then I would sit on the couch and I would waste my life with soap operas waiting for them to come back. I didn't live in between.
They were my life. After taking that inventory, I was able to honestly look at Carol and find out that I had to be super mom and super wife and devote my whole life to them because I had a terrible fear of rejection. I reacted because I was afraid you would reject me. Even in anger, you do get attention. So after taking that particular inventory, I was then able to turn my life over again to God, but really with the Al-Anon backing. After a while, I learned that Al-Anon is a gift granted to me from the power greater than myself who I choose to call God. I have taken a deep and fearless moral inventory. The first one
[00:35:04]
that I took was not necessarily deep, fearless or moral. It was a confused search for self. I have later on been able to take a deep and fearless moral inventory, and I have had to do it the way the big book says, and it had to be written. In those days, we didn't have our blueprint for progress in Al-Anon, and I have been able then to go from the written one onto our blueprint. To tell it to myself, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs was hard. It was hard for me as a person to accept that I had done so much wrong, because I stand before you and I tell you that everything that I did was really in an effort to hold that family together. I really thought at the time that I was doing right. I thought in my controlling we would make it. I was so afraid for everyone's welfare that I had to hang on to them with such a tight grip, that I was afraid to let them go. I was afraid to let our children, I just smothered them so. So I was not able really for a while to just look at my nature, the exact nature of my wrongs. I had to do this with a sponsor. When I share with her me, the real me inside, it makes it easier.
And in that sharing with her, I am able to then share it with God. But some way I feel God works through Marie, and her and I have become very close. There is a part of our story that I have buried. I've buried because my husband doesn't remember it, and I don't choose to. And I thought if I would just hide it, nobody would have to know. Well, I was in the program about seven years, eight years, and I would go to bed at night, and these things started to come back in my head and haunt me. It started to fester, and I started to become frightened again. I finally had to call another dear friend who I trust with my life, and I had to give this to her, an Al-Anon member. Now, I've been released for years of all of these fears. I don't know how she's handling it, but it's okay. I've learned I have to do the way they tell you to do it. There's no shortcuts. I was so sick of being sick, and I was so entirely ready to have God remove my defects of character, because I knew that I wasn't living fully to the extent that I was meant to live. I knew after taking that inventory just what my defects of character were and how they prevented me from living. But it's a seventh step. I humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings is why I stay in Al-Anon. It's the shortcomings that trip me up. You see, when my father was sick, when my defects of character take over my personality, I cannot function. But I can function quite well with shortcomings. And the next thing I know, they have snowballed into defects of character. I have to be very careful, because I can get up in the morning if I don't fully work my program, and I can start with a negative attitude, and I can be a little grumbly, and I can say, oh, what's the difference? I can let that grumbling start, and I can forget my meditation and forget to read my one-day-at-a-time book and forget to get into the books. And I can let it build and build and build until everything around me is not so nice, until I'm not so nice, until I'm negative and I'm angry, and then I'm depressed. And when I become depressed, which I must tell you has been a long time, I go to my room and I stop functioning. So you see, I must be careful of my shortcomings.
And it's in Al-Anon that I keep alive, and I keep aware of them. It's not that I don't have them, it's that I have to work constantly on them. I have made a list of the people that I've harmed, and I have made amends wherever possible. I've made amends to my parents for the merry-go-round, and my amends to them was not saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because I said that for years in the disease of alcoholism. My amends to them was letting them know that their little girl had grown up, that I had become a woman who could handle her own affairs and didn't need Mama and Daddy to pull her out of these problems any longer. They were able to enjoy me as an adult. I still like to get presents once in a while. And I don't mind being called their baby. But they're not, my mother is not involved in my problems. Before my father passed away, he was able to realize that I
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had grown up, and for that I'm grateful. I've made amends in my home, not by saying yes, but by through my Al-Anon program, being the woman that I'm supposed to be, and the parent. I'm not afraid to be a parent to our children, and I'm not afraid to say no. Before Al-Anon, I was afraid that no would make waves and arguments, and I have found that there's times, especially with a 13-year-old, for her good, I have to say no. In saying no, I also am open-minded to listen. If they have a counteraction on that decision, we will discuss it. We have a 20-year-old who is in college, and she sometimes still wants to test, and we do discuss. She said, you know, Mom, before you went to Al-Anon, it used to be easy. It was yes or no. Now we discuss, and we discuss, and we discuss. But you see, before Al-Anon and after Al-Anon, today, for me, it still is yes or no. They lead the discussion, and I am open to it, and there are times that my mind has been changed by their appeal. I make amends every day when I walk the streets, and as I told you earlier, I work in the streets of New York. No, not in the streets. I work in New York City, and I walk the streets to work.
I make amends to strangers by smiling, by saying hello, by giving to them what I have been given from the program, by going to the A&P or the grocery store and letting the cashier be a little grumpy and throw your groceries around. You know, maybe she's got a problem, and I let that happen, and I just say, it's okay, it's okay, and I say, have a good day. You know, and they look at you saying, it's okay. I don't care how they look at me. It's important how I look at them. In my tenth step, it was very hard for me to take a daily inventory, but it was awfully hard for me to admit that I was wrong quickly.
I could take an inventory and tell Jack instantly where he was wrong, and I could tell our children where they were wrong. But to readily admit my wrongs, no. You see, I was afraid in the beginning to let those kids know that their mother made a mistake, because I was ruling, as I told you earlier, I was ruling with a tight fist. I was afraid to let Jack go, because with my threats, I could hold on. I have learned to let them all go, and for that, there's a freedom in me. I do take a daily inventory of myself. I don't do it at the end of the day. I kind of do it as I go along. You see, I have a barometer inside that lets me know instantly when I'm wrong, and I can correct that now, instead of working on it all day, trying to justify my actions. Was I really wrong? Well, she did this, or he did that.
No. When my barometer acts up, I'm wrong, and it's time that I change it. I seek through prayer and meditation to keep a conscious contact with the God of my understanding, asking for his will for my life and the power to carry that out. It's through meditation, and I must tell you, I was in Al-Anon five years, and they would sit around, and they would talk about meditation, and I would go home, and I would try to meditate. And I would sit there, and I would think, I wonder what the kids are doing, what should I have for dinner, and everything else went into my head. I didn't understand what meditation was, and I couldn't do it, so I figured I was a failure, but I wouldn't tell them, because that's only one step I couldn't do. Well, I have learned, you see, and I have Jack's permission, I hope.
After five years of his AA sobriety, my husband chose to pick up a drink. That night that he went out and he picked up a drink, the difference in our home was that we didn't react. Now, I'm not going to tell you that we didn't cry, and that we didn't hurt, because we had come to love him very much, and we knew that he could be a very special person. And the children who had been involved with Alateen and myself and Al-Anon knew that we could go on without him, but we didn't want to, and we didn't want to see him destroy himself. So our insides hurt, but our program taught us to go ahead.
Hurt, But Our Program Taught Us to Go Ahead, Our Oldest Daughter Went to Her Dance, and the children, the younger two, and I, we had our dinner, and we sat, and we went to bed,
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and we slept. If I lost any sleep that night, it was with Al-Anon and AA, people who were concerned, calling to see if I was all right. And you know, I think it was kind of nice to know that they were behind us. That morning, Jack came in, and you know, after five years, he hid his keys and wallet in the same place. He sang the same song. He tried to stir me up the same way, only it had been different. I laid there, and I was quiet, and I waited until I heard him asleep. And then I got up, and I went downstairs, and for the first time in my Al-Anon program, I was able to meditate. I was able to ask God for direction, and sit in the quiet of that morning, and listen to the answers that came to me. And they came through strong thoughts. And at eight o'clock, when Jack woke up, because AA was at our door, I was able to go up to him and say, Jack, we love you dearly, but the choice is yours.
If you choose to continue to drink, we will stay with you as long as we can. But I can't guarantee you how long that's going to be. But the choice is yours. And I went downstairs, and I let him have that choice. And thank God he chose AA. Now the meditation that I was able to do that morning continued on with me. I'm able to do it in how I do my meditation. You see, I was so afraid of living each day that I would wake up with these negative thoughts.
So I have to get up a half hour ahead of my family. I have to take my coffee, and I have to go out in my backyard, and we have like a mountain that I look at. I call it my Serenity Mountain, God's gift to me. I look at that mountain, and I say, God, he created something that's just marvelous. And it's so big, and that's going to be there long after I'm gone, and my problems aren't so big. And I can handle them just for today. But the best way to handle them is with a smile. So after a half hour of pulling myself together, I can come in, and they can come down, and I can say, good morning. And they go, oh. But that's okay. Again, how they react to me is their problem. It's how I react to each day. I do meditate on my way to New York. I have to ride the trains each day. I do seek through prayer and meditation. I do my utmost in my job for Alateen, because it happens to be a love of mine. You see, I learned in Al-Anon how to live, but it was in Alateen that I learned how to openly love. When I was in Al-Anon and not involved with Alateen, I wanted so desperately to reach out to people, and to touch them, and to hug them, and to say I love you. And I couldn't do it. There were too many adult walls built there. But by getting involved in Alateen, and having to listen to those kids who are still suffering so deeply, be able to express love, and to be able to let those walls down, so was I. So it's in Alateen that I was able to express the love that I had bottled up inside of me. I have had a spiritual awakening as a result of my steps, and I do practice these principles in all my affairs. Let me tell you about my spiritual awakening. It was at an AA convention such as this. Before we went to this convention, I had to feel a pain that was deeper than any pain that I think I had ever felt in my life. Jack and I have three daughters and a son. And our son John, to me, was just a miracle in itself. I just thought, and I still do, think there's no one like our son John. One day, John came into our living room, and I had read every brochure, and I had gone to every seminar, and I had been very, very well informed on drugs. He came into our living room, and he looked different. And his eyes were all foggy, and he was staggering. And I couldn't smell booze. I knew it wasn't alcohol.
And I started to get frightened, and I started to cry. And I said, John, what is it? What is it? And he couldn't speak. And his father took him in his arms, and he said, It's okay, John. What's wrong? And John sat down next to his father, and he started to tell Jack what was wrong with him. And I didn't know what to do. I got so frightened. I'm like, God, our son, our son is using drugs. How did this happen? Why didn't he watch his father?
Why didn't he see what we were doing to our lives? Why is he doing this? And again, because I had taken my name into it, I knew when I become frightened, I become angry. And I wanted
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to go to John, and I wanted to pound on him, and I wanted to knock some sense in his head. I hadn't got the ability to take him in my arms like his father did that day. I wanted to say, John, wake up and do something with your life. What's wrong with you? And I watched Jack through my tears as he ministered to that boy. I watched what he did, and we called AA, and we called doctors. We went through the whole route that I did with alcoholism.
Doctors and lawyers and everybody, and nobody gave me any answers again. And I said, Oh, my God, I've done all this. Al-Anon has taught me to stop reacting. What's wrong, Carol? You've done so well in your Al-Anon program, and you're falling apart. And inside, I was ashamed that I could not apply my Al-Anon program to our son. And I pulled that inside. Six months or so after we went to a convention, and I heard an AA gal speak. And she spoke about this. She spoke about her reaction to her daughter's drug problem. And she spoke about the feelings that I had locked up inside of me. And she made me realize that Al-Anon did not teach me to be a robot. It taught me to be a woman who cares and loves for her family and the people around her. And if my husband picks up a drink today, it's not his problem. It's our problem. And inside, my guts will be torn apart. But Al-Anon has taught me to stand and have a life of my own. And I can go on, and I can survive and be the woman that God wants me to be. But I certainly will feel bad that he's not at my side.
So this day, as she proceeded to tell those feelings that I was so guilty about, I started to feel relief, and it started to pour out. And I started to wash my innards with tears. And the tears came, and they came, and they came. And we went out into the car, and I hollered out, Oh God, won't somebody accept me for me? And as that tears started to come and that prayer came out of me, a peace came over my being. And what happened to me for the first time in my life, I accepted me for me. I no longer had to be the wife that I thought Jack wanted me to be. I no longer had to be the mother that I thought my kids wanted me to be. Nor did I have to be the Al-Anon member that I thought my group thought I should be. I have no longer have to worry about my reputation. I work on my character, which is between me and God. I must tell you that I enjoy being loved. I'm grateful and a very blessed woman because I am loved by her husband and her children and by the people around her. But today, I don't need it. And in that not needing is what I've been given.
And in that giving, I have a freedom that is beyond explanation. I am so grateful to my Al-Anon program because today, I can love my family with an open hand. I can let them go, and they don't do everything that I would like them to do, and they don't do it on my schedule. But they get to where they're supposed to be in their time. And when they succeed, it's their successes and it's not mine. I can enjoy their successes today, and I don't have to take any blame for their failures. And I am such a grateful, blessed woman. To be able to work with teenagers is the most gratifying thing of my life. I grumble when I get on that train. It takes me two hours to get in there. And when I'm there, I am so grateful that God has chosen me to lead the life that I had led in order to be able to do the job that I am doing today. The God of my understanding is a perfect God. I happen to have been a little imperfect and messed up my life, but through the Al-Anon program, I am where I am today. And for that, I'm grateful. And I'll stay here as long as I continue to go to Al-Anon. I want to thank you all once again for having me. And I want to end with what, the way I always end. I could have told you the whole story in just a few seconds, but I have to share with you in order for me to grow. Today, instead of hiding in the shadow of alcoholism and fear, Al-Anon has taught me to stand tall and cast a shadow of my own. Alateen has taught our children to stand tall and cast shadows of their own.
And AA has taught my husband Jack, who I love dearly, to stand tall and cast a shadow of his own. And by each member of our family working their own programs on themselves, we've been able to blend those shadows together. And we're a very grateful, happy, recovering AA, Al-Anon, and Alateen family. Thank you. This old boy says, wasn't that good? Man, that was good. He's not a bad Yankee after
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all.