Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- 22nd Annual Southeast Woman to Woman Conference Disc 1
- Speaker
- Jessica S
- Date
- 2017-08-18
Transcript
Source: Jessica S – 22nd Annual Southeast Woman to Woman Conference Disc 1 – 2017-08-18.mp3 File: jessica-s-22nd-annual-southeast-woman-to-woman-conference-disc-1-2017-08-18.mp3 Duration: 01:00:37
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Hi, my name is Jessica and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is June 10th, 2005. My home group is the women's book study that meets at the Port Orange Presbyterian Church every Wednesday at 6 p. m. I have a sponsor and I also sponsor women. I just, I'm very grateful to be here and I'm very honored to be a part of this. Bambi did call me and I knew that she was in Hawaii, and I thought, she's in Hawaii, why is she calling me?
And I thought of someone we both knew and I thought it was going to be about her, not a good thing. And she asked me to speak and I thought, that sounds good. And I was excited about it. And sometimes when you have a lot of time to put your thoughts together, it's not a good thing. It's like torture and it's easier when they ask you off the cuff. But I was just sharing with my sponsor yesterday, I said, you know, I've known I was going to speak here for a long time and it's been really a joy to go back. And it really has been.
It hasn't been this harrowing scene in my mind. It's been, wow, and I remember this and I remember that and I remember this girl. And it's really been something. So I'm grateful for that if I ruin this whole thing. My mom's here tonight, and I'm so grateful for that. So I'll start at the beginning and just go along. And, let's see, okay. I have a brother and two parents that are not alcoholic, so I was the only alcoholic in my immediate family.
Just a little bit of history, my great-grandfather was an alcoholic on my mom's side, and her dad was. But when I think of him, I didn't see that. I heard about it, you know, that he was from the wrong side of the tracks and things like those words were thrown. And I guess I heard some of the stories that would have made sense. His brother was also an alcoholic. He was a knock-down drunk, you know, just…
We also have an uncle in our family who was—he died from this disease. He drank himself to death, and they found—I guess my aunt found him, and he had a bunch of vodka bottles around his bed. He was a nuclear physicist. And I remember where I was in my grandmother's house here when we heard about that. And she and I had already been in the rooms for a little while, and she said to me, Oh, he was so smart.
You know, how come he couldn't turn it around? You know, and then it hit me in that part about More About Alcoholism, and it says, you know, if you are an actual alcoholic, you will absolutely not be able to stop drinking on self-knowledge. And so for him, it probably was more difficult because he had all that intellectualism to get through. You know, I too was very self-sufficient. And so I think that it took me a longer time to play out everything before I could land where I did to get this.
So we have a couple cousins of mine right now that are—I have one cousin who lives in Florida. He went to Betty Ford for pills, which has just been ridiculously huge lately and for years. And, you know, he's out, but he has not completed the program, I can tell you that. And, you know, I haven't—he knows I'm in, and I used to say, Hey, what step are you on? What step are you on? Because I could tell, I could see the anger, and he didn't complete it. And right now he's really suffering, and I don't know if he's using or not, but I know that his life looks like mine did when I had untreated alcoholism, point blank.
It's that, you know? And so anyway, we'll see where he goes with that. That's a real big part of my story.
[00:05:03]
And I know that untreated alcoholism can be just as, if more, painful than drinking ever was. And it can end really badly. You know, I went through school, high school. I was in Catholic school from the first grade till I graduated high school. I hung out with all the wrong people in high school. I got in with a complete— Jerk and, you know, went through that whole couple years of a bad relationship and knocking me down, me knocking him down. And from the group of women that were in my family, I had a hard time believing I had found myself in that situation because it just wouldn't have been something that would have been acceptable to anybody.
We wouldn't have took that. But I was in it, and, you know, he was the first person to ever punch me in the face with, like, a closed fist, and the last. Luckily, I did not follow through with that, you know. And I did my own thing once I got away from that, and I got away from that when I got into college because I had left and I got to Florida. And I remember not understanding. He introduced me to drugs and alcohol and all that stuff, and I liked the fast pace. I liked the whole thing, but I didn't like the crashing glass and the threats and the public humiliations. And, you know, I had to tie that up for myself in my own way. There's some clothesline project in Washington, I think it is, and I made a shirt, and, you know, and they marched that down, and then I volunteered at a rape crisis center and I did my time there.
And, you know, I put that where it needed to be. But many, many years later, as I was in the program, I did run into him somewhere, and he tried to make an amends of sorts to me. And what I realized at that time was he was suffering from drug addiction. Young, which it did not get to me until I was older. And because he introduced me to this, I didn't know what it was at the time. I was just in the middle of it all. And so I got it.
I understood it, that I was just on the receiving end of his crappy addiction. And that doesn't make it any better, but it just, you know, and luckily, you know, I know there's a whole circle there, and I just didn't follow through. I met someone who was the exact opposite of that when I reached Tampa, Florida, and I was grateful for that. So, you know, in college, I went four years at the University of Southern Florida.
The only thing that seemingly sticks out there is, it seems like such an insignificant thing, but I remember my senior year, I was studying and I was drinking some wine, and I, of course, finished the bottle. It was only four glasses. In a short time, my boyfriend was at work, and I thought, you know, I better get rid of that because his dad's an alcoholic and he probably won't appreciate that. And so I remember going outside in my pajamas and I just threw it under the bushes. You know, I threw the wine bottle and I just went about my thing. And it's such a small thing, but it's a starting point because when I drank, I drank alone and not many people knew.
And so I hid that first bottle, and it was the first of characteristic of how I would go about it for the next however many years. After that time, I moved out to—my family, my parents got divorced after being married for 25 years. Irreconcilable differences in this. In the hugest of that sense. And, you know, the dynamics of my family shifted. And my brother got pissed off, and he moved down to Cape May, where we had a house, and he didn't talk to anyone and hung out with a bunch of people who were doing, you know, I think there was a couple people shooting heroin where he was, and we were praying that he wouldn't try it not once.
And he didn't. But he got pissed, and he allowed his emotions to come out. And what I did was I just remember making sure that everybody was okay, because my root people were in disarray, and I just felt that I needed to make sure
[00:10:02]
they were okay. And I think during that time, you know, some people eat, some people gamble, some people shop, and for me, I drank. It was normal, whatever, it was good. And, you know, as time went on there, everybody shifted, and everybody, thank God, landed together here now, and all our pieces are back together individually as adults. But during that time, it just kind of started. I remember starting to drink earlier.
So, okay, I'm in Cape May, I drink at 11. I moved down to California, and I was working at a publishing house in Agoura Hills. And I remember I lived there, and I lived in the Hollywood Hills, and the person that I was with, I was with for eight years, and his sister had just gotten an acting job on that series ER. She was Anna Del Amico, and there was a lot of people coming through our house, and it was really an exciting, cool time.
I wanted for nothing. And I remember thinking to myself, not about, wow, this is great. I like to write. This might be a good opportunity for me or anything. I just remember thinking, like there'd be 10 or 15 people at the table, and I think, why isn't anybody drinking? You know? How could there be an 18-year-old bottle of Glenlivet sitting on that table and nobody's finishing it? Like nobody, you know, like nobody finished.
They'd have one, they'd hang out, and that was always my focus. It was always my thing. And, you know, I'd come home from work, and she was the first person to call me and say, You think you're an alcoholic. And she's the one that had the dad that was an alcoholic. You think you're an alcoholic? I said, No, I work hard. I come home and I drink. You know, I have a couple drinks. You know, I'd have some drinks, I'd go for a run, I'd come back, I'd have…
But what happened was so quickly, something shifted out there when I was in California, and they talk about that imaginary line that you cross. And I left him and her and that house in the Hollywood Hills, and I moved myself across the expressway to Laurel Canyon into this little one-room place. I went from all that to my clothes were in green garbage bags, I had condiments in my fridge and a bottle of J&B.
And I remember everything shifted. My insides, I felt like everything just shifted. It's like the lights just shut off. I remember I found this old typewriter, and I, like, dragged it up to my room, and I would just, like, write notes on the ends of, like, fast food napkins and stuff, and I would just rock. I would rock in that room and just tell myself that I was going to be okay. And, you know, I remember when I left work, and it was getting increasingly difficult to get to the end of my day without needing a drink, as I got out of work at 4 o'clock, and I always went directly to the store. So I remember the day I got on the expressway, and I thought, you know, I'm just not going to make it till the end.
And I turned the car around, and I went back up that hill and went to my room and poured a solo cup filled of J&B, and I slammed that down and headed back to work, you know, brushed my teeth, and there I went. You know, I think, well, I don't really do that a lot, but I did. You know, I drank, started drinking in the morning, whatever. And when I got home, I flew home from there, and I remember my mom saying, What happened to her out there?
You know? So for the next, I don't know what year that was, but I know that I went to my first AA meeting in 1998, so I was in my twenties. And I went to this conference down in Washington, D.C. that I really wanted to go to. I saved everything to go, and I got there, and that woman, Marianne Williamson, was running the conference, and Neil Donald Walsch, the guy that wrote Conversations with God, and they were doing some spirituality and politics, and I wanted to be there.
And I got there, and I said to her, I was able to sit right next to her, and I said, Gosh, I want to do what you do. Tell me how you do that. And she said, well, you got— she was eating carrot cake, I remember. She said, You got to listen to your heart, and if anybody says that you can't do that, whatever it is that you want to do, you just keep on and you follow your heart. You have to listen to your heart.
And I said, Okay. And then the conference went on, and we had a break at four o'clock, and I thought, well, I'm going to go get a drink. And I left with my friend. We were there together, and I never returned that— And I never returned that day.
[00:15:00]
I remember being in an elevator with a couple, and nothing happened there, but I just, that was it. That was the last memory I had. And the next morning, my friend was getting ready to go, and we were in the hotel room, and I was taking a shower, but I was so sick and I was so hungover, and there was no way I was going. And so I blew the weekend, and she walked out the door, and I remember I closed the door and I leaned against it, and I thought of what that Marion Williamson had said. And I thought, well, what's in my heart?
And I thought, well, I'm an alcoholic. And that was the first time I ever said it. But I called a cab and I went to a meeting, and that was my very first meeting. It was in the business district in Washington. Everybody was dressed up. There was like a hundred people. But that meeting was getting out, the meeting that was going in had seven people, and that's the one I went to. And it was cross-talking and saying, How am I supposed to not ever drink again? I mean, there's no way.
And they said, Well, you know, you just do it one day at a time and all this. And so anyway, that's what I did. I got back to Cape May, and I started going to meetings. I remember telling my brother that I was an alcoholic and I was going to start going to AA meetings. And I started going, and then the real—I get a sponsor, we start working the steps. So we get to step number five, and I did a fifth with her.
And then I said to her, You know, I'm going to leave the country. And she said, Well, you know, if that's what you want to do, I mean, we're not done, but I mean… And I said, Well, so my birthday is coming up, and I'm, you know, I've worked hard staying sober and saving my money, and I'm gonna… So I looked at the map, and I closed my eyes and I went like this, and it landed on Bali, Indonesia. And I said, That sounds great, and I bought a ticket.
And I tell you, from that point on, I went there. And I remember I had my bag packed, and my brother said, When are you coming back? And I said, Probably a year, you know. And, you know, I rented a house, and I learned the language, and I went and did what I was doing. But what I was doing was I was just, I was always looking for something, you know, to fix my whatever was going on. And in the next, I mean, that started a whole thing for me because in that next seven years, I was in six different countries and 11 different states in this country. And you'd say, Oh, that's geographic, and that's crazy.
But I was really sober in some places, drunk in other places. I was just, when I hear about self-seeking, because, you know, one of my best friends from the third grade, I remember coming in once, and I said, You know, I'm sober now. I'm sober. And she said, Well, where have you been for the last five years? You know, you just roll in here. You know, you know nothing about my life, you know. And I think about my brother and his kids, and, well, you know, I mean, you just, I got to find out what's wrong, you know, so I got to keep looking because now I get to Indonesia and I'm not well yet.
So what happens out there? I get seriously sick. I start, I mean, there was hallucinations. There was, it was, it was… It was crazy. It was crazy. And I came home and I was physically, physically just, I don't know. I mean, I just, I remember landing in Winter Park and I said, we gotta get to some doctors. You know, I went to endocrinologists and blood work and everything checked out. And then I thought, well, okay, so if it's not my body, it has to be my mind. And I moved to Brooklyn, New York and Park Slope and started going to, but see here I'd never finished the steps.
So I'm walking around and nothing's making sense and I have a racing mind and I want to not be here anymore. So I start going to see somebody and I start talking about that. And so I tell her that, you know, I think I'm thinking about killing myself. And so she has to do what she has to do and call me out on it and call everybody. But I really, I mean, I really didn't, you know, I mean, there was no reason for me to be here.
So I landed up at Columbia University in the psychiatry department with my mom and I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on medication. And then I got diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which is, you know, hallucinations with minor breaks in reality.
[00:20:03]
And I remember the doctor calling and telling me, you had to ground myself and I'm taking a shower, like when the water hits you, that means you're there, you know? And, you know, I mean, that's how, because they had to bring me back and I couldn't really work and the medications, I had tremors and my hair was falling out and it was just no way to be. And for two and a half, I wanted to give my license up because when I would drive, I would think about just flipping my car because it would be easier if I just wouldn't be here, you know.
So if I could just, maybe I should give my license up so I wouldn't drive, so I wouldn't kill myself. But it all just didn't, nothing made sense. And my mom became a national, you know, she became a member of the National Alliance of Mental Illness to figure out how to take care of me because I wasn't taking a shower, and she was afraid that I was going to kill myself because that's a huge thing with bipolar disorder. And two and a half years, we did, you know, we're Russian, so we called a Russian cocktail because they would give you those medications, and you would have to wait two weeks for it to kick in, and then you would have to switch it up if it didn't work.
And it was all about, How you doing, Jess? Well, I'm on 350 milligrams of Geodon, and, you know, and it was all about the medications and all about that. And I had worked my whole life two or three jobs, and that wasn't happening anymore. So I was now, you know, I had nothing wrong with me up until I was 19, and then just lights out, me finding, trying to find who, where I went, you know, who she was and whatever else happened.
So I'm going along, and in 2002, I decide, I said, you know, this is not it. Somewhere along the lines, I saw the untreated alcoholism next to the symptoms of bipolar, and they were exactly the same. And I said, Well, this is wrong. I'm not bipolar. This is a misdiagnosis, and I went off of these meds. And so I went to the psychiatrist, and he said, Okay, and he got me off the meds, and I said, I'll treat the alcoholism.
But what happened was I didn't treat it right away. But I did treat it, you know, eventually. And so I would use the meetings to jumpstart my sobriety. I was so angry at alcohol. Don't talk about it around me. Don't pour it in front of me. Don't have it in the house if I'm there. All my rules, you know. And so, you know, anger would keep me away from it for a year. I'd kickstart with a couple meetings, and then I would just not, you know.
But eventually I always go back. And so during that time, it was 2002. I mean, let's say I came in at, well, 2005. And my last drunk, I remember I was in Ormond, right over here. I had a house over there, and I drove a lot when I was drunk. And I remember I was doing like 70 miles down a side street, wasted out of my mind. And I had gotten to my house, and I went to the liquor store three times that night.
And I would make up an excuse, Oh, I'm getting a divorce, or, you know, and just to say to the guy, I remember. But I got to my house, and I remember getting out of my car, and I went in my room, and I was trying to fall asleep, and I couldn't fall asleep. And I reached under my bed for some reason, and I pulled out a letter. It was from my grandmother's friend to her. And what she was saying was that her granddaughter, she was explaining what had happened to her granddaughter. And she was in prison for vehicular manslaughter, and saying how it devastated their family and how, so this girl…
As I'm reading it, she was supposed to—she was drunk, and she was supposed to go to rehab. And she said, I'll go on Monday. And Friday, she said, Let me just go blow it out in Miami, and when I come back, I will go. And Friday she got drunk, and she pulled out of her driveway, and she didn't get out of her neighborhood, and she killed a little girl. And so now she was in jail for vehicular manslaughter, and the letter was describing how that affected them.
And I'm reading it, and I knew at that time that it—I knew that it was no longer going to be about me. I knew that I was going to get in a car and I was going to hurt somebody, because it didn't matter if I died at all. That was what I was trying to do, destructively drinking to destroy myself. No problem. And the reason I did that is not because I hated everything about—I did hate everything about myself, but I had tried in so many forms to fix this, and I could not do it. And I failed so many times that to me it didn't matter anymore. And so, but I knew in that room at that moment that it was
[00:25:03]
no longer about me dying, that I was going to kill someone else, and that wasn't acceptable to me. And God came into my room that night, and He spoke to me in a clear voice, and He said, I'm going to give this to you one more time. Please take it. And He spoke so clear that I answered Him in a voice, and I said, I will. And I woke up that morning. My first sponsor from New York, I called her. I said, Okay, I'm finished. And she was knocking around for eight years with me, never did not one time not answer my phone call.
And she said, Okay, you know what you need to do. And I looked in the mirror, and I had these big old eyes, and it was just blank. You know, it was absolutely blank. A couple months prior to that, prior to all that taking place, I would imagine that, well, what ends up happening is your decisions just get worse. You know, and what ended up happening was a couple—when I was in high school, you know, my best friends and stuff, they were just—I mean, we were from New Jersey—they were getting pregnant and going and getting abortions and stuff, and I never did. I never got pregnant.
And I always made a pact with myself. I said, you know, if I ever have that happen, I will never tell anyone, and I will just go. But if I am 30 or beyond, I will have that child. And that was just something. But I truly didn't think that I could have children because they were always getting pregnant, and I wasn't. And so when I was 19, I actually printed out some international adoption papers, and I had them forever because I figured that would be my road, because I didn't think that I could, because I just never did. Well, I don't know how old I was, but I was past the 30 point. What ended up happening was I did get pregnant.
And so I ended up telling people, you know, and I ended up telling too many people, I think. And anyway, before I told anyone, I had got with a guy, and I said, Well, let's just go down to Orlando and take care of this. And so we did. But when I got there, They said, Well, there's two. And I said, Well, I'm going to leave. And I left. But I did not have those babies, you know. And I went through Christmas pregnant, and I remember my mom saying, We're eating for three, you know, and we were living that for a little bit.
But then I was praying, and I was praying, and I said, Well, I don't know what to do. What do I do? Like, I didn't know what to do. I really didn't. And it says, Do not ask for spiritual direction if you do not know what it looks like or sounds like, you know. And so anyway, I did not have those babies. And I'll tell you something, though. They told me when I came in here that my least thing that I did out there, that I didn't, I didn't, would become my asset in here.
And that is absolutely 100% true. And I'll tell you, not long after that, so I came in here because I thought, enough altering decisions, I'm done. And when I came in June 10, 2005, I got placed with a sponsee not too long after that, and when I could take sponsees. And wouldn't you know, you know, she says, Oh, I'm from Delaware. And I said, Well, that's great. And she was a heroin addict, which I just loved.
And she said, You know, I have twin girls, and I haven't seen them. They're 15 years old. And I thought, Well, isn't that something, you know? So I remember being at a fair with her, and I couldn't look at twins or hear about them or anything for a long time. All the celebrities were having them, and I just couldn't look at the papers and stuff. And these two little girls walked past, and she saw me look away, and she said, No, no, no, you need to look. At those girls.
And she said, Because it is okay. It's okay for me, and it's okay for you. And after I got sober for a while, that took me, took me a while to get past. But my interim sponsor said, You need to get to a place of peace with that, because if you don't, you will definitely drink over it again. So I did, you know. And what ended up happening was during the course of my time in sobriety and going through…
What was during the course of my time in sobriety and going through these steps, I heard this one speaker, and he was talking about forgiving
[00:30:05]
himself, and I was very far from that. I was three years in, but that wasn't part of anything that I was interested in doing or knew how to do. And I had started working with this woman outside of AA in some side work on therapy for, like, anger and relationships and such, because I had a lot of that when I came in, and we went over that. And so I remember when she dismissed me, or I dismissed myself, I had come home to my room, and I remember somebody saying, you know, the prayer. The prayer isn't, God forgive me, because He already has.
But the prayer instead is to, please give me the ability to acknowledge what You have done for me. And so I sat on my bed that day for some reason, and I didn't even get through half of that sentence. I said, God, please give me the ability. And I'll tell you what happened. I got covered like a blanket with the presence of God that brought me to my knees, and I think I cried for like two or three hours.
And that presence stayed with me for like a month. And I kid you not, and I didn't speak to anyone. I went to work. I drove. And I'd say, You still here? And I'd be eating my cereal, Are you still here? And it was, and I didn't want it to go away. And what happened was I used to not let anyone say the word Jesus in my house. And what happened in my bedroom that day. was when that happened to me, I knew that he had entered into my heart and I could not go back if I wanted to. And so, I'm not saying what I had done was right, but he had graced me with that.
He took me all the way down there and then he came in and he changed my faith up until this day as a result of that. And to me, that's who he is. And so, when I hear of women that have troubles like that, I think that sometimes I smile when they're crying because I know he's coming. And recently, we had something happen in my family that we weren't all happy about. And I was talking to my sponsor about it and I said, I just…
She said, Well, this is when God comes in. And I thought, Well, I don't know that he's going to go there, but… But she said, It's out of this suffering that he will show up. And I thought for sure she was talking about my family member, not me. And I thought, I just don't know about that. But what ended up happening was, within a couple of days after I had left her, and we were really on the ground from this, his presence came back. I ended up doing two amends, just this past month, that I hadn't done for 10 years, and I had gotten reconnected with him as a result of that.
So he's constantly showing up for me. And he always has. You know, when I, I went through the steps and I got free of a lot of stuff. And step one was easy for me because I had conceded to my innermost self that I was alcoholic in '98 in that hotel room. Step two was fine for me too because I was already came to believe in a higher power, so I was already insane. I knew that. We already went there. And so I was so happy to know that in your literature you had acknowledged that, so I was right.
So it was validation that the symptoms were correct, and so I can move past that too. And then the third step was important. I didn't quite get the meaning of it at first, but I did use it as my prayer every morning when I had to hit my knees. And then there was a speaker that did her whole hour on the third step, and I still didn't really connect with it. And it wasn't until much later that those words really hit me.
I also like in the third step how, you know, when we come in, I just needed a lot of direction, like I couldn't figure out. I remember sitting on my sponsor's porch and her husband saying, I'd
[00:35:01]
say, God, I don't have any money. I don't have any gas in my car. I have no food in my fridge. My house is a wreck. And he said, you know, why don't you get off my porch and go fill up your gas tank and put some food in your fridge and start cleaning your house so you want to come home and take care of yourself, you know, and it's somewhere where you want to walk in and be. And, you know, that's what I did, but I needed someone to tell me that, you know, and…
But when I was hungry, food showed up. And when I didn't have money, things happened. You know, I had an incident. I guess I was five years sober, and my life was just where I wanted it. You know, I had my job, I had my house, I had sponsees, I was running a good program, and I was doing a lot of things that I loved. And I was riding a horse, and I fell off the horse. And what ended up happening was I broke my back.
And so I had a compression fracture, and what had happened was the bones had shattered, so they migrated toward my spinal cord. So I had to be in a brace because for three months straight, just looking up at the ceiling, because the doctor was afraid if I had too much movement that something would happen and something would happen to my legs. So this was five years sober, and I remember being at the hospital, and my brother was there, and he said, Don't give her any narcotics, you know? Don't let her go home with any scripts. But I did leave with scripts, and I don't know how, but they were in there.
And I remember in the morning, that morning in my house, I was in the kitchen, and I didn't pray, but I took those scripts and I ripped them up into tiny—and my pain was a 10—but I ripped those things up into little tiny pieces and I threw them in the garbage. And I tell you, he took it to a four, and I did that whole three months on my back with ibuprofen. And I don't feel like—I feel like a lot of times that…
I'm so grateful for that because if I hadn't gone out on a ledge there, I would not have seen him do that. And so it increased my faith. So I am not the person to call when you have a toothache and a bottle of pain pills because I'm just not. And I'm not going to tell you to take them, but I get it too. So, you know, it's my experience, but some really incredible things happened as a result of that, that had God show up in my life.
You know, I couldn't work for those three months, so I couldn't pay my bills, and, well, everything just stopped, really. But I had about 11 people in AA show up at my house every day, sweep in and paint my toes and cook meals. And what happened was my boss came and she said, This letter came for you. It's a card, and I'm going to give it to you, and it's anonymous. And I opened it up and it was $2,500 cash.
And I thought, and just tears like sprung out of my eyes, and I put that in a box next to my bed, and I was able to pay people when they brought me food and such. And that lasted till the day that I got up, you know, and that's absolutely Him. And so I went on and I moved to Colorado. I met somebody and I moved to Colorado. And I got to tell you, when I was there, well, it didn't go well. I was out of my routine. My spirituality was real low.
You move somewhere, you don't know anybody. I was trying to get connected, but it wasn't working. And I was with someone who didn't believe in God. And the church girls would come over and say, You're praying for you guys, and it's wrong. You need to just pray for him. It's not going to work. And I thought, Well, why not? You know, he'll catch up. And anyway, I stayed for as long as I could, but I ended up coming home. And now, granted, I had left there with my back broken, and so I had a short sale on my house, and I had sold my car and my business, and everything was gone because I was going to Colorado to start my life with this person, and it didn't work.
So when I got back, I had five years of sobriety, but I had $200 in my pocket. And that was it. I didn't have a place, and I didn't have a car, and I didn't have my job anymore. And I remember, now I'm looking at the girl who took me in, and I became her roommate. And just, I got to share with you what happened there because I always stop at the, you know, I went to my job, and my boss said, Do you want to borrow my bike? And I said, Oh, is that where I'm at?
And she said, Yeah, that's where you're at. And I thought, No, I don't want the
[00:40:00]
bike. And so my mom's friend lent me her car until November. And a couple really incredible things happened at that time. One, as soon as I got home, I knew I was a mess, and I knew I was on the ground, and my self-esteem was on the floor, and I ended up doing a fourth step on the situation out there. And before I did the fourth step, they made me do a third. And I thought, Why am I doing a third again?
Like, I don't need to do the third, but I'll do the fourth. But when I got in my car on the ride home, I knew I did the third. And it ended up I didn't owe an amends, which I was really happy about. I didn't feel that I did, but, I mean, I wanted to be sure. And what happened after that is when I was 19, so I'm living here, I'm living with Patty. She's a woman in sobriety, way more time than me. And we're roommates, and we're just, what am I, you know, I got to get a job, I got to restart it. And what ends up happening, I, you know, when I was 19 years old, I wanted to do two things.
I didn't want to get married and have babies. I didn't want to, you know, I didn't have those dreams. I wanted to go to Africa and I wanted to write a book, and that was it. And if I did that, I could die. And I went to an AA meeting from Patty's house shortly thereafter, coming back, and this girl passes me a note, and it's on a white piece of paper, and I open it up. She doesn't know any of that, you know, because I'm 19 and now I'm 30-something, and it says, You want to go to Africa?
And I thought, holy crap, here we go. And fast forward two months down, you know, I thought, well, I can't raise $2,000 to go. And, you know, my brother and I have a pastor friend who lives in Kampala, in Uganda. And I go to the meeting for the Africa trip, and they tell me I have to raise $2,000, and I leave there all deflated, and I said, I'll go to one more meeting. And then the next meeting I go to, they give me tools to raise the money. And I thought, well, that's it, I'm going because I'll raise the money. And I said, Where are you going?
And they said, They're going to Kampala, Uganda. And I had been trying to get up to him for so long, you know, and I hadn't seen, you know, this is a 14-year friendship. And so within a couple times of me coming back from there, this is where God has me be. Now, I had to wait a long time to get there, but He did. When I got there and I went with people from AA, you know, and He delivered on every turn. He just, I mean, it was the most incredible trip I had ever been on in my life, and I had been on many.
And he was, it was incredible. We helped build a bakery for a widow association that lived on one of those outskirts of those villages, and there was like 300 women coming down that hill, you know, and singing how happy they were that we were there, you know. And while I was there, I wanted to come home because it was hard. And I couldn't believe that I wanted to come home, but it was, I was at a turn, and there's like spiritual warfare, don't go home.
So I'm getting emails from this guy that I had met before I left, who actually, his mother had asked me to help him. There was two, she had two sons, and I knew her from, I used to write for the News Journal, and I knew her through business, and she called me and said, My two sons are in bad shape. Will you please meet with them if they call you? She said, One will probably call. The other one should call, but one's worse off than another.
And he did. He called, and I met him, and this was before the trip and all, and I met him at a Denny's, and he came in with his phone, and he showed me his daughter and told me about his deal. And I said, Well, I thought, well, he could definitely get help here, you know. And I laid it out for him, and I said, You know, this is what we do, and this is the deal, and I can't do anything for you because I'm a girl, but I mean, I'll link you up to people because when you detox off of this methadone, you're gonna need some people around you.
But Patty and I opened our home to him, and we gave him chocolate cake and steak, and we let him hang out, and we all became very good friends. And he used to send me these emails, you know, and when I was in Africa, and I would read them, and he had this, his dad was an assistant pastor, and… And I, and he would say, you know, You are the head and not the tail. You are above and not beneath. And you are the daughter of the Most High, and you're princess, you know.
And it was like a language that I was just like, I was eating it, and I was like, Who is this? And anyway, he turns out to be my husband today. And that girl on the phone is my stepdaughter. And people say that might
[00:45:03]
have went a different way, but I've been taking care of her since she's five. And no matter, you know, it's never easy, right? And so no matter what has been said or done against us, you know, we covered our home in God and sobriety, and we kept that first. And we have not fallen down yet, and our relationships are strong. And I'm very grateful for that because everybody in AA, you know, from day one, you know, taught us how to live and how to get back and how to be in the middle and to lose those extremes.
And I feel like I spent a lot of time not wanting to be here. But I think that that happened because when I got here, you know, it was easy for me to come in and leave. But the last time I needed to learn how to stay here. And so what that required was for me to surround myself with people who knew the program. You know, it says it's a program of action and a spiritual answer, just those two things. And so if I'm hanging around with a bunch of people who are just hitting meetings and that's just fine, I'm not doing that because I know that meetings do not treat alcoholism because I had almost, you know, I had almost, you know, I could have taken myself out in that. And I didn't. So I had that behind me. And I don't, you know, I take it seriously because for me that it is. And I think when you want to take your life so many times, when you get it back, you want to keep it.
And each moment has so much meaning. And in 12 years, I have not lost that meaningfulness in my day. You know, I'm still very much aware of what happens. And when I had to do a 10th step in the beginning, it wasn't about, and we just talked about this at our home group, you know, for me it wasn't about looking at what I had done wrong that day, but instead of blowing past all the moments, you know, that were bad and good, and, you know, I just stuff them somewhere, you know. And I was able to say, well, okay, so we started the day here, and this is what happened, and then this is what happened.
So I was taking a moment to take stock of my life. And I feel like, you know, working the steps in the way that I did, it was a lot of work, and it, you know, but when I work hard for something, I want to keep it. And if I did not work hard for it and something came down that didn't feel right, I would have been very easy to throw that away. But because I earned it, I'm going to hold on to it. And, you know, so I had a really bad attitude when I came into AA. I had a lot of anger, and I broke a lot of things and, you know, windows and things because I couldn't do it to myself, so I was doing it.
If I locked myself in, I'd break the window and I'd let myself in. And I did that like four or five times, and my brother finally came and put plexiglass and was like, really? You know? And so… You know, I had to learn how to, but what I learned was behind that was just sadness, and it was just cease fighting anything or anybody. You know, I had that sign on my door, and in a neon color that I had gotten at a convention, and I put it, stuck it on my door with tape, and I guess I saw it when I passed, but I don't remember, I don't remember ever reading it out loud.
And, you know, and that happened for the most part. And I remember I was, I was eating, went out to eat pizza, which I had to learn how to do, like, I don't want to go, but I gotta go. And somebody said hi to me. A guy said hi to me. He was a teacher, a really great guy, and I didn't say hi to him back, and I sat down because I was such a, you know, I just didn't want to talk to anybody, and I was still raw.
And I said to the guy next to me, I said, I'm so rude. I'm such a, you know. And he said, You are, and it's okay. He said, You know, it's okay because AA is not a popularity contest. You know, you are here to get well and to change your life. And every single person at this table, regardless of how you treat them, if you needed help and you were doing what you're supposed to do to stay here, they will help you. And that's all that matters.
There's a primary purpose. And all the sidebars and the dramatics and, you
[00:50:01]
know, I'm not interested. You know, I have a busy life, thank, you know, thankfully. And when I'm at a meeting, I like to be at the meeting and, you know, I had… In sobriety, I had another baby, and my son with my husband, and nine people were in the delivery room. I don't know how that happened, but that's how it worked out. And he's amazing, and he is my everything. And then I just had a daughter, and she's amazing and wonderful.
So we have a busy home. And just recently, you know, when things get busy, you cannot forget from where it is you came. And I remember hearing a speaker, and he had about seven years or something, and he was—I don't know the whole story, but it resonated with me because he didn't want to go to meetings anymore, and he had gotten a whole bunch back, and he was just sitting outside a meeting not knowing what to do.
And I struggled with that too during that time. And so I went up to him afterwards, and I said, You know, I'm struggling with that same thing. And he said, We need to get with people who are like on fire for this thing again, and you need to show up when you don't want to show up, and you need to just do what you're supposed to do. You know, there's those basic things that they talk about in the beginning, you know, those five things you do: you get on your knees, you read, you go to a meeting, you call another alcoholic, and you get on your knees at night again.
And if you don't ever leave the basics, then you don't ever have to return to them. And someone said that, and I caught that too. And, you know, I think that— Another thing I remember that early on in the beginning, for my first two or three years, I had service commitments and I was consistent. And they were my highlight of my week. And I did one at Tanglewood, and it was a co-ed, like a low bottom.
It was my favorite meeting ever. And when I shared, two things happened there that I always remember. And one of them was I shared and this girl said afterwards, I had known her, and she said, Well, that was a good story, but, you know, I'm heroin. And I said, Okay. And I love that, but at the same time I thought, see, and I was able to see there what she was doing. And before anyone speaks, they say, You stick to the similarities and leave the comparisons out.
And I said, You know, you just compared yourself right out of here. And in two weeks, you're going to be down at that house, shooting up and doing your thing. And that's okay, but that's what you just did. And sure enough, that's what happened. And it just kept it real. To me, it got me mad because I thought, when you're broken, you're broken. It doesn't—it's like, it doesn't matter what kind it is.
It's like when you have nothing left, you have nothing left. And another person that was there, he spoke a lot about the present tense, and that's very important for me today because I can go forward and I can get back. And when you're in the present tense, you're under the protection of God. And that's what he always said. And so whether that meant to look down at the table and where are my feet, that kind of thing, and to stay there, because then you miss those moments.
I mean, how many times have I gone into a meeting and there's a brand new person sitting there, but I fail to put my hand out to her. You know, because I'm figuring something out for later after the meeting, or I'm talking to somebody I've been talking to for three years. You know, and I feel that if people hadn't done that for me, then where would I be? And so that's what I need to keep in the forefront of my mind, and just the primary purpose of this whole thing.
You know, we had a friend of ours die from alcoholism this year. His name was Matt. He was my brother's neighbor. And he was 30. He was our age. And we went to my mom- we went to his funeral and whatnot, and they didn't know what he died from at first. They found him in his condominium, and they thought maybe it was OD or suicide or something. And anyway, the autopsy came in, and it was alcoholism.
And, you know, all those years, I watched him, you know, and it never once occurred to me- I didn't have a relationship with him, but it never once occurred to me
[00:55:00]
to walk over there and be like, Hey, you know, you drink a lot. You know, and if you ever wanted to not do that, I'm in AA. So I'm not putting it on me that he passed away, but what it brought to my mind was sometimes I feel like you need to go out on that limb. You know, I worked at a pain clinic, not a great place. And I saw this one guy come in, and he was dying. You know, he was like withering away, and I thought- and I felt to break my anonymity to him, and I did. And I said- I was, you know, I'm working on him, and I said, you know- I said, You're- you're a- You know, I could tell you're addicted to these things, and I could help you get off of them if you wanted to. Here's my number. And I just left it alone.
And he called, and he met me with his girlfriend. And his girlfriend had a key around her neck because she was in charge of it all, you know? She was dispersing it. And so, anyway, we met for coffee, and they ended up waiting for a bed in detox and stuff, and nothing probably ever came of it, whatever. But it was just another thing where I think that, you know, you had talked about, Candice had talked about that discernment, you know, that sensitivity to the spirit and to pay attention of who's in front of you and what it is that he wants you to do. And, you know, lastly, I know that I've talked about God a lot, and I'm not using this as a platform for my God at all, because I just want to share with you something that happened this year. You know, we were part of a church plant, and that's a lot of work and whatever. And so we were in it about a year and a half, and I was always uncomfortable because he was always talking about, you know, he's the only way and this and that, and he was just kind of denouncing all the other ways.
And I'd leave there, and what was happening was I was building a resentment because he was, you know, if he talked about a 12-step, he wasn't specific, or he talked about a sunset, he said, That's not going to work either. And I would go home and be like, Okay, you know. But he was kind of denouncing the one organization that saved my life, which is this one. And even though I was there, With my faith, I couldn't get on board with how he was handling that.
And so we left, for other reasons as well. And I had a real resentment, and I was just going to cash in my Christian card and call it, because that was not how I wanted to do it. And it bothered me for a long time. This was just this year. And I met with my sponsor, and she said to me, Do you think he's ever been through a 12-step program? And I said, No, but I think he needs one. And she said, Have you ever been guilty of contempt prior to investigation?
And I said, Yes. Yeah, of course. And she said, Well, that's all that is. He doesn't know what he does. I mean, that's all that that is. And in that moment, all that whole year, within two sentences of her saying that, he was forgiven, and I was back to being a Christian and an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. But what that did give me that year was that very next meeting was our home group meeting, and everyone talked about who their God was. And for the first time in a very long time, I was so happy to hear about all of it.
And I think that's very important for when people come in here, because it's my belief that as active alcoholics and drug addicts, we come into AA and we are returned to a God of our understanding through this program. Which is covered by God, but you're allowed to have your own. And we need to leave space for that, because that's why people come. And it says in the book, may you come to call Him by name.
You know, but you're not required to, ever. And, you know, we have a gentleman in one of the meetings, and he's an atheist, and he shows up and he listens, and I think, gosh, how does he sit through this all the time, you know? But he has double-digit sobriety, and he's very happy. Double-digit sobriety, and he's very happy. You know, and I think that AA gives that psychological space that people can wrap their head around to get in the door, you know, and get their lives back in order
[01:00:01]
so that they can make sense of whatever they want to do with it, as it's their right. You know, this is all about to thine own self be true. And to me, it's about the steps, and it's about God, and that's it. And I got to keep it as simple as that because I got a family I got to pay attention to. And I'm hoping it just blows past my kids, you know, I really do. And, you know, and I don't know. I don't know that that'll happen, but if I continue to do what I'm supposed to do in here, I will be ready for anything.
And that's all I have. Thank you.