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Source: Leslie S – Sunlight of the Spirit (2021) – Part 1 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: leslie-s-sunlight-of-the-spirit-2021-part-1-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:58
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Oh God, that's frightening. Thank you so much, sir. Wow. Look at that. Ooh. You know, I'm never nervous. I'm not nervous. My name is Leslie S., and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Hey, boo thangs. How y'all doing? Hey. And for me, when I'm doing God's will and I'm in perfect center and I'm in perfect balance of God's will, as perfect as I think he would have me to be, I'm never nervous. I come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm not scared of you because you are mine and I am you. And I basically know when you have the same last name as I have, that means we all cousins. How y'all cousins doing? Hey, boo. We're sisters, we're cousins, my last name alcoholic, and guess what? We might look different, but we got the same DNA. How about that? All right. Thank you. Thank you. I first got to give homage to You'll Hear Me Call Him, Her, It. God of my understanding, you'll hear me call him, her, it, the most high, sometimes the universe, sometimes the spirit, the thing, the being, the something, the that thing, whatever. You may hear me call it several things, but you won't ever hear me a day at a time call it Leslie S. Because that's what got me in trouble because I thought I was it, her, him, them, those, and all of that.
Thanks to that, that brought me here to you today. I'd also like to split this up into two different categories because I don't want to miss anybody and mess up names or anything like that. I'd like to thank bus number one, which is of course our bus. And of course, bus number two. Yesterday I had an adventure of a lifetime and I was able to get here and they swept me from the airport and especially Jeanette. Jeanette was just so humble and so beautiful and she picked me up in a nice caddy. I said, oh girl, after my own heart, we go together now. Me and you, boo. Tell your husband, your ex-husband, it's over.
It's really, really over. And Dolly, I have never in my life seen somebody get teary eyed and choked up throat chakra on talking about Dr. Bob and Bill W. I've never seen anybody. She had me sitting there talking about, then what happened? Like I don't know. What did Ann do? She took me through a binge watch. I don't know how many of you girls binge watch, but I binge watched Dr. Bob and Bill W. walk through this thing because she was the one to give it. She passed it on. It's almost like we used to do before there were tape recordings and all that stuff. And generations back and your elders and your grandmothers and great grandmothers, they used to sit around and they used to tell the stories of the previous family members and they'd have everybody around, the sage of the family, have everybody around the fireplace or whatever it was and they'd sit and tell the stories because we didn't have any other way of communicating those stories in the past and making them real and telling about your great, great, greats and all that. And those of you who are fortunate enough to have that kind of lineage, listen to your elders because they can fill in the blank spots and they can tell you who you are and where you come from and you can get a little bit of joy and healthy pride about who you are, whose you are and where you come from. Dolly, that's who you are. You're our sage. You're our elder. And along with that, we have the blessed, I know her, yeah, Sharon that was sitting there. I had to remember.
I'm looking at Sharon that was sitting there. It's another sage that was confirming and adding into the education that we got yesterday. So I'd like to thank you, too. I'd like to thank everybody that's in here within the sound of my voice, whoever will be listening to this long after I'm gone, if it's still around, the taper guys. I hope that you get some hope and I hope you hear something that may jar and create a riot and inside a riot inside of your soul. I'd like to thank my two sober children. They're not in this program but they're sober children because I had them in sobriety. I have a 32-year-old and I have a 22-year-old. The 32-year-old is totally different than his mom, thank God. His name is Jonathan and I call him a humble giant, a quiet riot, very humble. You guys taught
[00:05:06]
me how to raise him. And then I have a 22-year-old. Yeah, there's a 10-year gap. That's a whole another story. Yeah, there's a 22-year-old running around Los Angeles, California with his father, the man that I hated, that I didn't like. I wanted to cut him off at his go-nance. I wanted him to lose a leg, all three of them. I wanted him to die. I wanted him to just sober. Who's now today my best friend? I'll tell you about that story of recovery, 9th step, how that looked. A 22-year-old that likes to be creative and exactly like me, the energy, the wherewithal, all of that and out loud and vocal. He's just a brilliant child and he's a man child. He and his father and I are a trio and his father and I raise him healthily. My children, and I'm going to start a little backwards and I'll go into my story. My children call me their spiritual advisor, literally. The way that I do, and if you have any children, you can use this, you can borrow this. This is one of my tools I use in my toolkits. I ask my children when they call me, I say, okay, are you talking to mom or you want to talk to the spiritual advisor? Tell me which wig I'm going to wear today. My youngest will call me, he says, I want to talk to my spiritual advisor. I say, okay, what's up, son? He goes into his expletives and he starts talking just like he talks. I treat him like a newcomer. I treat him like he's in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
No shame, no fear. We have an awesome communicative style. Thank you, mama. Appreciate you. He's a good kid. He's a good kid. I give him what you guys give him. He does an asset and liability list when he doesn't know which way he's going. At 22, if you're anything like I was at 22, you're confused. You don't know who you are, whose you are. You give yourself over to the last person you slept with. You don't know what you're doing at 22. I'm going to talk about what's real. So he calls me and he asks me for things and I give him exactly what I give to my newcomer friends, my sponsees, or any woman that will come to me talking about she's hurting. I talk to him about those things of the spirit. I send him meditation and he asks for them. Both of them do. I send them meditations. I will break out in a moment of prayer and silence with them any given moment when mama doesn't have the answer because mama doesn't always have the answer. Neither do I in the role of sponsorship. I don't always know. But I'd rather do this. I'd rather have my half a brain and your half a brain and that means a whole brain. We could probably brainstorm and figure this out. You know what I'm saying? Let's just kind of figure this out. You've got some brain cells and I've got some left. Let's try to figure it out. And all I have is that and I have a brother who is a part of this program who has a disease and has the disease, had the disease and he lives in Milwaukee and he's my twin. We're musicians. Now I'm going to go into my story.
What it was like for me. First of all, I want to start out with this. My sobriety date is November 2nd, 1988. I have 32 years. That means in a minute I'm on countdown but I won't tell you what comes after 32 because I'm going to stay in the right now, which I already know. I was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I'm a result of an Army family. My mother was in the military, got out to become a mother. She had four children. My father was a paratrooper at 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. My mother had myself and three boys. I was the oldest. But the incredible thing about my mother was that she did like we did in the 60s. See I'm a 60 baby. I'm 61 years old. I'm proud of that because I know how to stand in heels. Now if you see me shrink about four inches, you know I done took these shoes off behind this podium. You're like, where'd she go? I'll be like. But in the meantime, I do like my mama said, don't wear no shoes you can't stand up in. So I'm just going to stand here. I did it in the bar and I'm going to do it in sobriety. Hello. My mother had these four children and I had a father who was very abusive. See I'm a 60s baby. Don't say nothing if you were born in the 80s, get out. I'm a 60s baby and back then when it was domestic violence as we call it today and domestic abuse, you just stayed out of that man's business.
You don't say nothing. That's his wife, that's his family. And that's exactly what they did.
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In the meantime, my mother's getting beat repeatedly with his paratrooper boots on, with his jump boots on and he's doing what men do back then. Now whether he's an alcoholic or not I don't know, but my mother got tired. What was more incredible and what was more traumatic for her and I see that now, you know, it's something about this program and about life. I live life forward but I learn backwards. I don't know if anybody's like that with me. I was like, well dang if I had a thought, if I had a new, dang what if, should have, why didn't I, you know, that's how I live my life even today in sobriety. I live it forward but I learn backwards. And I think my mother probably was like that. She lived it forward, she learned backwards that this was not going to work for her and her four children. But the trauma and the tragedy that happened was I was the oldest. I had a brother that was 18 months younger than me and he died of meningitis before they even knew what meningitis was. And I had a younger brother who was a little bit younger than him and he died a month later of pneumonia. So she has two infant sons that died a month apart from two different things. Not only that, my mother was a dark-complected black woman, dark-complected black woman so she's got that over her, looming over her. See black wasn't cool back then, wasn't cool back then. So with me in tow and some luggage and a few things she could master up and pack up and stuff, she was pregnant with my brother who's five years younger than me and she left and decided to go home. Home for her was Los Angeles, California where I was raised. I'm an L.A. girl until I die, but I live in Atlanta.
So you know an alcoholic like me, they say, where are you from? I say, well, see, I have to go through the whole story. It's like, okay. See, I'm from L.A., but I live in Atlanta. And when I'm in Atlanta, people ask me, where are you from? I say, I'm from L.A., but when I'm in L.A., where are you from? Atlanta. I like to be colorful. So that's why I was raised. And just to fast-forward through all of that, I'm pretty sure that she had some grieving processes and some fear and she went home and started to get different jobs and my mother was a medic in the Army and so I guess from that skill set she started out working. And the reason I'm telling you this story, see, once again, it's like sitting around the fire hearing from your elders what it was like and who they were in your lives and who set the tone and whether my disposition or my character is genetic or inherited or is it extrinsic circumstances that made me like I am or is it something that I nurture or nature? Was I born that way? Why am I like this? Why am I so funny? Why do I pick people like her? Brenda J to hang out with, immediate magnet, bam, you know what I'm saying? And so I find out that through my mother, my mother was definitely into music because my father was a musician and he was a contracted person. He was on Capitol Records. And as my mother began to work, she started out working at County General and then she went from there to Lockheed Aircraft and then she went from there to the movie industry. See, I used to be ashamed to say that. I used to be trying to dumb myself down, but there's something about me, I know me, to that. I can entertain you, I can BS you, I can Svengali you, I can do a whole lot of stuff, but I can take those defects and make them assets with God's assistance and God's guidance. Come on, I talk fast, stay up. I'm no longer ashamed of who I am.
Oh, Leslie puts too much on and she does too much. Yeah, I'm extra. I'm a whole amusement park. So strap on your seat belts and them overhead things they put on those rides, strap on girls, just strap on. It's going to be a bumpy ride. So my mother had these kids and she got into the movie industry. Now she wasn't in front of the camera, she was post-production, which means that when they get finished filming, they bring it in and then they have to thread it up and make copies. That's what you would see in the movie theater and they make copies to send out everywhere and that's what my mother used to do. Very good job. And then she decided at one point to send me to Catholic school, my brother and I. So I'm a recovering Catholic. Any recovering Catholics in here? Dominus and Dominus and bless you, my children.
Yeah, okay, thank you. I'm not the only one. Thank you very much. That was a God that I didn't understand and that's where I'm going to go right now. I'm going to talk about this God that was introduced to me early on. Now I don't have a problem with Catholicism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, to the left power, to the left, to the left, whatever it is you need to burn incense, sage, hit chimes, whatever it is that brings you Incense, Sage, Hit Chimes, whatever it is that brings you closer to the spirit outside of self.
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I have no problem with any of them. I can go to a mosque. I can go to read Tao Te Ching. I can read any of the other books that are recommended reading for spiritual growth. I can do all of that today because my mind has been opened. And they said in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that God is broad, roomy, and all-inclusive. I said, ooh, so are my hips. But anyway, I just made that up off the top.
Can you erase that part? That was a good one. God, thank you. I have never said that before. Okay, so stay with me because we're just going to act like we're in my mama's living room right now. We're just going to act like we're in my mama's living room and we're just going to talk. You know what I'm saying? It's just not that serious. It's like, you know, I'm silly and this is how stuff comes out of my head.
So you can imagine when I was drinking, I was creative as hell. You know what I'm saying? Well, why don't you put this leg over here? I don't do so good. So the God of my not understanding when I went to Catholic school just went a little something like this. First of all, they told me I can't get into heaven unless I talk to this Irish priest. O'Doul, no offense to the Irish. Where's that O'Toole lady?
There she is. I knew your name because I said O'Toole. She's got like, yeah, yeah. Welcome to your home. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. You know, and Father O'Donnell or whatever his name is. And they had the priest who were in our parish. They were alcoholics. I mean, the altar boys would come back and tell us. He had us pouring like a whole dang talus full of alcohol. And they were always real red in the face and all that.
So I was blessed, though, really, to be able to go to private school back in the 70s. And I went to a private school my mom sent us to. And I was on the side of town. If you know anything about Los Angeles, I was on the west side of town. Most of my friends were either Jewish, some of everything. It was an eclectic environment. And I won't say too much to insult anybody, but I wasn't raised in a hood.
I wasn't raised with nothing in the refrigerator. And none of that matters because the bottom line is I have something in my body that makes me bodily and mentally different from anybody and everybody else that's outside of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can't just take a sip of anything and keep going. I have to finish it. I have to be the first one to get to the party and the last one to leave.
In fact, you probably will have to put me out. So when I'm going through this whole adventure, so they have this god thing, and they've got all these big, giant, looming statues. When you go into the chapel, and it was scary, and it smelled like that incense. I think that's what's wrong with me first. I like the smell of that incense. I took big inhales. And when they passed the communion around, not only did I take two of those little wafers, I had to get two or three of those little.
That's in elementary school, so I was already jacked up early. But the funny thing about the religious part of this thing that I was learning is that God was like watching a Stephen King movie. God was like Stephen King. I like scary movies, but God was one of those, okay, if you don't act right, I'm going to flood the whole land. Oh, you want to act right? Okay, you're going to die, and I'm going to raise you from the dead, if I feel like it.
Or he was that kind of guy. Oh, you made those crops wonderful. I'm going to throw a whole bunch of locusts in there, and I'm going to eat all your crops. That was the idea I had of God. God was a punishing God. He's going to smite thee. He's going to slice you down. He's going to upside down, crucify. And that was as a kid growing up. You hear all that. It's like, I don't know if I want to mess with a dude like that.
You know what I'm saying? He was too much. He was mean. He was scary. He sat down long enough to explain to me what that meant. I mean, if you're going to crucify the dude that you created, I know you don't care nothing about me. Right? So that's where my separation from God really started that I consciously can remember. It's like, I can't depend upon this guy. It's too much. I've got to go through this priest.
I've got to tell him all my sins. I've got to get 4,700 Hail Marys and Our Fathers, and then I've got to sit there and pray them all out while everybody in the classroom is saying, oh, she must have really messed up. She's been up there a long time. And my mother wasn't a religious person. She just dropped us off and went back home and got back in the bed. Like, I'm not sitting up in there with you guys on that.
And that's how my mother rolled, you know? So fast forward through my life. I ended up going to Catholic school until I couldn't take it anymore. And then I got to high school, and I took an entrance exam, and I ended up going to an all-girls Catholic school
[00:20:02]
called Notre Dame Academy in West L.A. And that was an adventure because everybody that was in there that was cute and blonde, they had nice convertible Mustangs and convertible VWs and all this, and there were only 12 blacks in my class, and we were taking the bus to school every day. And I said, okay, something's wrong with this picture. How come we all on the bus? It was that separation. I always separated myself.
Had nothing to do with color, really. It really didn't. It really didn't. It was that less-thanism. I think we all come into the rooms feeling like we're not enough, not a part of. Don't fit in with our own families. Don't fit in with our friends. That crew clique, that clique looked like they're having more fun. Like your bus looked like it was nice and orderly. We were the hood bus. We were the Section 8 bus.
We had to, we was like, yeah, throw them up. We throwing, playing Aretha Franklin. You guys came out of the bus all nice and orderly. Stumbling out yesterday, falling on each other. Raggedy bus. I like the raggedy bus, too, though. So we sit up here and we go our own lives. If you're anything like me, I went my own life. You know, my mother's philosophy was get a job. You graduate from high school, get a job.
Mama, you know. I see that season pretty here. Get a job. Get your own apartment. Go to work. Get you a check. Get you a bank account. Learn how to balance your checkbook. They don't even have that anymore. Balance your checkbook. You know what I'm saying? And that's what I did. Now, the first time I'm going to go to the first time I remember, somebody asked a question. I was listening to a speaker.
Does anybody remember when they first got drunk or had a blackout? Anybody remembers when you first, yeah? Anybody remembers when they had their first Mountain Dew? Anybody? There's one. And she had it out the door. See, there you go. It's amazing, isn't it? So I was at a party. It was a 16-year-old party, a night party. You know, especially when we're going to have a night party. Uh-oh, we're getting grown up.
All the parents in the kitchen with the door closed. It's all good. And it was my best friend's party. She was turning 16, and there were some boys in the neighborhood that were a little older, and they were the boys that, you know, had the Levi's with the cuffs in them. I don't know if you're old enough to remember that, those cool dudes with the crease in them. You could stand the Levi's in the corner.
Am I the only one? Thank you. I'm going to talk to the older people. Forget all you. I'm going to talk. Remember the guy? The guy that looked like Fonzie? You know what I'm saying? I like that dude. I like that dude. Yeah, yeah. You see me? Yeah. And so we're waiting for this party. You know how girls are. We're planning. We're putting our outfits together. I'm going to spend the night over there, so I'm free.
You know, and I'm going to say, Mom, I'm going to spend the night with Dion. And she's like, okay, cool. And I like this boy, and he had his little crew of guys. No gangs, just a bunch of guys. He was cute. He had hair like one of the Jackson 5. He was out to here. Oh, my God, he had that cool afro, and he was just a cool dude. You know what I'm saying? And I liked him, and he didn't even know I liked him.
And I'm a 16-year-old girl. He's about 17 or 18 years old, and I'm waiting. He's coming to the party, and we're talking about, you know, we're going into our magic, magnifying mind, and we start talking about, yeah, I can't wait, and I know I'm going to be up against the wall. See, y'all talk about twerking. Let's off-topic. Y'all twerk now. We used to call grinding. That's what I'm talking about. Where that boy had you up against the wall, and that hair that you took so long to curl was smashed.
We couldn't even see you because he was just all over you. That's what I'm talking about, that slow drag, that all of the smoky. Okay, let me bring it back to now. I'm sorry. I went somewhere. I went somewhere. Stay with me. So I'm waiting. You know what I'm saying? I know that's where I'm planning all of this. The boy shows up with his friends, and you guys remember the big, giant crystal punch bowl that your mama had?
Remember that punch bowl? And your mama would take that sweet, diabetic number 55 Hawaiian punch and pour it in there with that water and cut up some oranges and stuff, and then she brings it into, and it sits it on the party table, right? Right? And we're all sitting there looking at it like, who's going to drink that, you know? And then there'd be that boy, and he was that boy that came with that brown paper bag in his back pocket.
It could have been some Ripple, some Annie Greensprings,
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some Tyrolia, some Akadama because my mama was an Akadama mama. Remember that commercial? Yeah, and all of that stuff. And he makes this big production. The parents have been gone, and he takes it out of his back pocket, and he pours it into the punch bowl and then kind of stirs it with his own cup and gets his first cup, and then all of a sudden, we're on it. Wow. Like a bunch of ants. Bam. We're on top of that punch bowl.
And the punch, you know, it went down sweet, but it kind of, like, tingly, and it was warm, and it kind of made me feel, you know, okay, yeah. You know he poured that in there for me, though. In my magic, magnifying mind, he poured it for me. So now I'm loosened up a little bit, and everything's cool, and as I'm waiting for him to ask me to dance, I look over at the prettier girl with the longer hair and the prettier figure.
I was skinny with big feet, and I just, I didn't, you know, I didn't feel like I was a part of it. I stayed flat-chested, as they used to call it back in the day, you know, forever. We'd have to go to Sears, and she's like a triple A. Who has a triple A bra? You know what I'm saying? Because I came home and told my mom I want a bra, and they took me to this little elastic piece of something, and it had straps on it that you could adjust, like you're going to adjust a triple A, right?
It's like if you put it on backwards, you wouldn't even know. It's like there ain't nothing in it. But the cool thing about Catholic school, we wore those white shirts, so at least you could see the bra through the shirt, and I was grown, you know. It's a girl thing. I love girl conferences because you guys get me. Guys would be like, what's wrong with that? You know, guys don't get it. So fast forward, I'm waiting for this guy, and eventually, of course, he never did pay me attention.
He didn't even know my name. He didn't even know I existed, and I became so distraught. I remember being sad, and I remember going back and forth to the punch bowl over and over and over and over so I could dance by myself or with my friends. Well, what eventually happened is that was my first memorable blackout, and because there were parents in the house, they didn't want the parents to see me. Obviously, I showed some kind of drunkenness.
At 16, I probably was doing back flips or something. I don't know what I was doing, but whatever it was, they quickly hustled me into the laundry room that had the doors on it, and they put me in the laundry room and closed the door, and the next morning, I woke up, and I smelled Tide and Bounce and Gain and everything else. I came out of there smelling like, you know, detergent, and I came out of there, and I had to find out that day, and the next day, the girls that were left over there, they spent the night.
They didn't know how fun it was, and I'm sitting there going, yeah, and then what happened? I had to get it all secondhand because I missed the whole party. Now, I don't know if that's how I went and how I crossed the yellow brick road, the invisible line, that too, the invisible line, but I just know that that did not, that wasn't enough to stop me. I'm pretty sure I had a headache with all the sugar and all that.
I'm pretty sure I had, I don't know, but I just know that the feeling that pushed me to feel better was humility. I mean, being humble, humiliation, and feeling not enough, and the feelings of feeling less than and the feelings of still feeling ugly again and the feelings of not being a part of somebody or something that could hold on to me. The feeling is what promoted me to get that drink because that drink worked.
I don't understand if you don't understand, but for me, the drink worked because it was a power that got me up out of those feelings. The drink worked very well because it gave me longer hair and bigger breasts and bigger legs, and I got taller in my magic, magnifying mind, and the drink made me feel like these things. It made me feel different and seemingly be different so I could be comfortable in my own skin.
No one ever told me what to do with rejection. No one ever told me what to do with trauma. No one ever told me what to do with those teenage feelings when they come up. No one ever told me what to do with fear when I'm getting ready to fail a test or I got an F on a test. No one ever taught me those things, so I just did them the best that I could, and I handled them the best that I could, and my counsel were my peers.
And so when you're 16 and your peers are 16, that's a good mix for a disaster. Fast forward, my life went on like this. So I went on to school, graduated, and I got a really good job at the phone company, but before I started working at the phone company, I started working in the industry that my mother worked in, and I was working at MGM Studios. And I met a boy. He was much older than me. He was about 7, 8 years older than me, so he's about 25, 26 or so.
He also worked in that industry, and my mother hated him. I don't know about you, but when your mother hates a boy that you're dating, that's the one you go for. Right? Right? Right? Right? It's like she don't know what she's talking about. My mother had been married five times. I knew she didn't know what she was talking about. Right?
[00:30:09]
So I met this guy and he convinced me that I was the bomb and he told me everything I needed to hear. I was awesome, I was this, I was sexy, I was all of that. And he started telling me these things to make me feel better. But here's the twist. All it did was gave him power. Because that which you feed when you're separated from this god of your understanding, you run to it faster. So I started taking mom's car, staying out all night and not obeying her rules even though I'm 18. She said, I don't care if you're 28 or 58, you're still going to do what I say in this house.
So what do we do? I'm leaving. My mother said, no, you're not leaving. You're not taking that car. You're going to take just a few things. So I left. But this guy convinced me that I had a low self-esteem. Okay, for people listening on the tape, I'm going to say something. He said, the way that you can build your self-esteem is you need to get out there and see how many people desire you. So that led to my prostitution stint on Sunset and Crescent Heights in Los Angeles, California. Now this is before the heavy drinking, but he said that if I just go on and do this and I see how many men that I can pick up, that will make me feel better about myself because I can make good money.
Oh, I don't know, is that called a pimp? I don't know, I'm just saying. 18. Didn't know. And he made me do some demoralizing things around the house and some things that I didn't even know that I felt like I shouldn't do it, but I didn't want to displease him and I lowered myself to the lowest level of esteem. It was like, in fact, there was no self-esteem, there was no self-esteem at all and I felt nothing. And this is before the other party favors came in, along with the alcoholism, because see, I've become a chemist by now, so I've got to put a little of this on it and take a little of this with it and drink a little more of that and don't drink brown liquor, rum makes you dumb.
And then they told me, don't drink gin, gin makes you sin. Well, I was dumb and sinful, you don't understand, I was doing everything. And the way that I was loosened from that man's grip is a man in a costume, and that's exactly what it was, he had a postman's costume on and he picked me up and I went to jail because he was really an undercover cop. I spent five days in my sobriety, I've only been arrested one time, that's before I got sober. It was a misdemeanor, it's a California Penal Code 647B, for all you, that is called prostitution. I'm being nice on tape, you caught me, thank you.
But I never went back to jail by God's grace. So fast forward through my drinking career, and I'm going to get into some recovery. My drinking career, after I got out, of course the guy didn't come and get me, so now I'm homeless, I'm homeless and I end up living on Venice Beach, I'm that girl on roller skates that would skate by you with a bathing suit on, that's what I did. And my disease got worse. We started drinking anything and everything that we could liquefy we drank, literally. And I was hanging out with the beach bums and that's what I was doing, roller skating on Venice Beach in the 80s. Fast forward, 28 years old, I'm done.
So my career didn't last that long. From the beginning of the 16, it got bad when I hit 21, because it was the club time, and during the clubs back then, here was Prince and Madonna, what? I used to tell people I'm an alcoholic because of Prince. Who didn't put on their lingerie, who didn't put on their stuff, you know, go naked like a virgin, but wasn't one, and you went to the club, baby? Come on, girls, you know you went to that club and you partied.
The party didn't start, my head told me, until I came in. The party didn't start until I came in, because I had my favorite bartender. Anybody have a favorite bartender at your spot? There you go, you good drunks, I love you. And you got me. He said, hey, I got something new for you. So he'd make me a drink called a zombie. And I became just that. Oh, he'd give me these double Long Island iced teas. Oh, my goodness.
And the lights got brighter, and I could dance better, and everything went cool, and it got worse and worse to the point where the same dress I left in on Thursday, I come back on Sunday, and it's inside out and backwards, and my stockings are in my purse, I've got one shoe on, I don't know what it is, but it's that one shoe. Somewhere on this earth, there's one shoe for every pair I ever had. And I would come home, and I didn't have any children, and I fell out with my mom, and I didn't have a lot of friends, I didn't do what I did, and I was in my 20s, so at 28 years old, I was done.
Let me tell you what my last run looks like. I had a friend in the industry, and he had a lot of money, and by the time I got done, my bottom was like this. It was no longer hotels and nice apartments and stuff. It was motels, raggedy, rat-infested, chicken-bone wings in the corner, all of that, motels. And my friend and I would get me everything I wanted, and all the drinks, all the different stuff, and I've got to have my Newports. Are you kidding me? My pack of cigarettes and all the other stuff that goes along with everything that I did. And for some reason, have you ever drank so much that you're sober?
[00:35:04]
You ever drink, just keep drinking because it ain't working no more, and you drink so much that you just, I'm just drinking. I'm no longer drunk, I don't feel the buzz, I feel horrible, I'm getting a headache, and I'm still drinking. But this particular time, I started out doing what we do. It was a pause. And I didn't feel anything, because you don't want me in there for the feeling now. So I said, let me back up, let me smoke a cigarette, let me relax, maybe I'm rushing this thing, and I went back and I did it again, and nothing.
And for a nanosecond, I heard, literally heard, go home. I said, what? It said go home. There was some thing that said go home. Now it wasn't me, because I don't leave until the party's over. I told you you've got to put me out. There was something that said go home. I didn't feel anything. I looked over at my friend, and he's in the midst of doing his thing, and his party on, and I'm saying, you know what, give me a cab, send me home. And he sent me home. And I cried, and I cried.
Now I cried many times, and I'd sworn off many times, and I'd been able to take a couple two, three day vacations, and not drinking for a minute. I did a lot of stuff, but something was different about this time. Some dash thing was different. So I go home. My heart's skipping beats. It's racing. I call my mom. Something's wrong. I feel like that impending doom that they talk about in the big book, I felt it. It was all over me. It was all over me. Something was wrong with me, and my mother took me to the hospital, and they kept me for 24 hours, and they did all the blood work and all of that, and the man comes down with the clipboard, and he comes down with the white jacket, and he says, you know what, we did all your blood work, and are you tired of partying?
He said, are you done? Because it doesn't look so good. I hadn't drunk any water. I hadn't eaten. I was down to 80 pounds soaking wet. I'm already tiny, so I really look like we are the world. I just needed Sally Struthers standing there with me saying, help this child. And when my mother's standing by my bedside at the hospital, I say, yes, I am, and he pulled out of his coat a directory for Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was all up in northern and southern California to Arizona, and he said, these people can probably help you. That is what I actually remember.
So I was checked out. I went home. I was too scared to go to my apartment, and my mom said, you want to come on home? I said, yes, so I came home, and I stayed at her house because I didn't know. See, I'm the girl that drinks ashes in the bottom of the beer cans and doesn't, yeah. If it has a little slosh to it, I'm throwing it back. So I didn't trust my trash. Do you understand? I didn't even trust my trash can. I didn't know where I hid. I didn't know where I hid anything or anything. So I went, and I went and stayed with my mom for a while, and she got that directory because my mother is one of them mothers that like to run stuff.
Well, she was just strong like that, and she got a pen, and she started circling places we were familiar with. Oh, I didn't even know there was one there, and she was my road dog for my first 90 days. My mother rolled with me, and she's not one of us, but she was so excited. You guys made my mom excited. She said, because I like the stories. Whatever happened to that girl that lost her kids? You mean to tell me that boy said he jumped off a freeway overpass? How he walking? My mother was amazing. She was a complete fool. We would sit there and laugh and take everybody's inventory in the whole meeting. I'm new. We'd sit there, oh, what's wrong with her? Oh, she need to get that fixed.
That's the kind of mother I had, so you know. But the thing about when I came to my first meeting, and some people are like, you know, I came in one time and stayed a day at a time. Just one time. It wasn't me. It was God. But I came in one time, and I stayed because, see, there's something about me. I'm gregarious. I love people. People are amazing and amusing and fun, and that's why when you meet me, I hope you feel the feeling like this is that long-lost cousin that you grew up with.
I hope you feel like I'm that auntie next door that would make you a plate and say, baby, take this to your mama. I hope I give that so that you can feel like I'm just one among many. I'm just like you. I don't want you to put me on a pedestal because Alanis Morissette said this. Please don't put me on a pedestal because I'm afraid of heights. Don't do that to me. Just make it be that. Just make it be that. I'm that girl, that one smiling face, that baby, that newcomer baby that rocked and snotted all over you. I'm going to send a cleaning bill to you, dude, that snotted and rocked all over my, yeah. I want this hug to feel something special, that thing that you've been looking for all your life. Well, you know what? You know what? We've been going everywhere. If you're anything like me, I've gone everywhere for this feeling of love. I wanted to feel loved. I wanted to feel missed. If I'm out there, hey, where you been? Hey, where you going? I ain't seen you in a long time.
[00:40:11]
I came into the rooms, and I felt that immediately. I'm not scared of the rooms when I came in. In fact, when I walked in, it was like this. I didn't know what I was in for. I didn't know if I was an alcoholic. See, in fact, I wasn't an alcoholic when I came in here. It was that other party favorite that was messing me up. Because, you know, back in the 80s in South Central, it was on. No offense to AA, but it was popping. Everybody was looking like Walking Dead. It was on. That was my problem, I thought. Or maybe it was because my mother was so mean, and she was the type of person who would take her shoe off and throw it. That's where I got that from.
She'd throw her shoe at you, or she would cuss at you, and she'd have her Winston hanging out her mouth with the ash this long. Then out there, you wouldn't listen to Richard Pryor. That's where I thought it was. My mother was in a household where we listened to Richard Pryor and stuff like that. That's what it was. That's why I cussed so much. I'm doing good right now. I'm doing good, Sharon. But I walked into the rooms, and you guys were standing there, and you were looking like Abby probably looked to Bill. Fresh-faced and glowing. The men had on suits. The women had on whatever they had on, and they had the cute jeans and the boots, and everybody was looking good. I was like, ooh, uh-uh, they look good. I never doubted that they were sober, because they obviously didn't look like the people I was hanging out with. I hear people say, well, I didn't know if you guys were sober. I knew something was different. You didn't look like me.
Then I looked at the 12 steps and the 12 traditions on the wall. I'm sitting up there, and I'm looking at them. I'm going, okay, the only thing that stood out to me more than anything is step 3 and step 11, because they said that G word. I was like, ooh, they don't mention God. There was something that's in me that's always been in me. I think I come from that book of there's a fundamental idea every man, woman, child has that's God. I always had no problem with the G word. I just didn't mess with him, because I thought he was going to strike me down. I didn't have a problem with that.
When I came in, I was excited to have somewhere to dress. It's simple. It's elementary. It's shallow, but I could dress. I had to put on two pair of leggings, though, because my pockets was meeting in the back. I could dress. I could put my makeup on. A meeting was ceremonial to me. I would never come to a meeting raggedy. Then you told me there was a dance, and you invited me in, and you gave me your phone numbers, and you hugged me, and you said, call us. I'm detoxing, so I'm calling y'all at 3 or 4 in the morning. I'm like, hey, what you doing? They say, we sleep. Oh, y'all sleep? I was that kind of silly. Y'all say, hey, call. I just wanted to see.
But the reception and the love that I got from all you guys, the men, the women, everybody, and they loved all of me, and they took me out for coffee, and they took me out after the meeting. Just all the things that we do to make you feel comfortable. So for you who are new, returning, retread, ain't never been here before, don't know what the speaker's talking about because she's crazy. I don't know, but I'm here to tell you, welcome home, baby.
This is the place you can do the ugly cry. You can laugh until you pee on yourself because we're laughing with you. I mean, this is the place we can sit up and, girl, you know what? We do that. But one thing we won't want to do is see you loaded. Get the girl that you don't talk to in your home group no more. Let something hit. I bet you if you call her, she'd be like, what can I do? And if she don't pray for her because there's something wrong with her, too, she probably didn't know what she needed to do. But it's okay. Let me tell you about my adventures in getting sober. So I started going to these meetings, and I started doing the things that they told me to. I grabbed a sponsor immediately. That sponsor took me through my inventory, did the work. Yes, she took my inventory, too, but she took me through the inventory, and I was so comfortable telling her those things that I thought I'd never tell anybody. It just flowed out.
But then I met him. It's always, you know what? Something's wrong with me. It's always him. He had 60 days. I had 30 days, and I had to back up. And he was about 6'4", and he had a size 14 foot. I was in love. Oh, we girls, can we talk? Let's talk about what's real. We go together. And see, I'm that girl that's a perpetual abortionist. See, because I've slept with so many men in my past, and see, I have no shame in this.
with so many men in my past and see I have no shame in this so preferably you be free to but I've slept with so many in my past my antidote when my birth control was to go to the clinic ah because I won't remember who it was so
[00:45:04]
for those of you who have been blessed have been married for decades bless you but I'm not that girl I don't commit very well that's why I was imperative that I get into this work because everything was about selfishness and self-centeredness page 62 there's 11 forms of self displayed in that first paragraph first and second paragraph and I was all of them I still am today but the good news is I don't stay in self so long today today I feel uncomfortable in my soul see they told me I suffer from a soul sickness and the soul sickness goes down real deep you know that's why they call it soul food what do you do when you eat soul food you ready go to sleep and this sickness is just like that it's so sick it puts me to sleep I'm no longer in the spiritual realm the spiritual awareness of the universe because I am ignorant to what is real I ignore what is real I can't comprehend what is real so I have to get a guide let me tell you what sponsorship looks like to me so there's a lot of cords and stuff that this gentleman has over here as you know but there's not enough walls plugs in the wall to plug all these cords in so what do you have to do he had to get what in fact he got a couple of them power strip and in the power strip you plug all your plugs and then you take that main one plug and you plug it on and you keep going and doing what you have to do it's called a power strip it plugs you into the power when you can't can't quite reach and that's what I call a sponsor power strip see I'm 32 years in and I refuse to be not sponsored because sometimes I get a disconnect in fact you ever get a shortening brand-new earphones you just bought before you got the wireless ones and it just ain't quite working right and you get a short in it well sometimes I suffer from spiritual shorts where I can't see me so I have to call the power strip say hey you plugged in and isn't it amazing that every time I call my sponsor she says what is it honey I even use my sponsor he's like that there are many power strips because if you've been sponsoring as many and as long as I have what happens is you start putting these spiritual deposits into your spiritual bank account and they will remind you what they what you told him well you remember when you told me I said what do you think I should do about this well you told me on page so nobody asked you all that so sometimes I have to write a check to withdraw from my sponsees it's not just about them getting sober or them getting some spiritual awakenings it's also about them helping me as well because they helped me remember who I was got into this program started doing the steps I married him and the reason why I segue to the abortions because this time I decided with some faith and some hope to go on forward with this child that I was going to have the first one and I'm the kind of girl I have the baby first and get the man second did it twice in recovery got the baby first and had the man because I figured he was taking too long so maybe if I could get him DNA wise and it may be even yeah oh that's how I thought sober but I didn't realize that until I passed that point what do I do I live forward I learned backwards the first husband ended up going to the army I ended up moving to Mannheim Germany after I did my first inventory so me the three of us was going to treasure this road a happy destiny so I like that part happy destiny but I didn't hear the word trudge I thought we were gonna skip through some flowers and everything was gone sparkles and rainbows and unicorns it didn't turn out that way it was him the hell damn nation and him and he became he started putting his hands on me when I was in Mannheim Germany I'm away from all my family and all my friends and I then became a mom five years in so one day I decided to call the army and I said hey y'all ship me back home I'm ready to go I left him a fork and a cheerio on the floor when he was out on field maneuvers when he came back there wasn't a piece of furniture I was gone me and the baby went back to Los Angeles one more time now I'm back with my mama again I'm homeless and for the first time in my life I had to humbly take welfare I'd never done that but one thing I did do is you guys have taught me something real interesting you guys taught me when all those fellows go to a meeting and when I went back to those meetings I hadn't been to in about two and a half three years you guys were still there a little gray a little heavier a little different but you were still there and you were still talking the same stuff so I started taking people through the book because there was this guy named Frank P and I said Frank can you lead our big book he said you've been through the book right I said yeah he said you can do it I said by myself but when I came back I got another sponsor and her name
[00:50:05]
was Betty T she died 2016 but I was with her for over 26 years I followed her to the ends of the planet I followed her everywhere she had so many sponsors I couldn't understand I said why do you have that that's incredible that you have that many sponsors all over the world she said baby because that's cuz that's cuz that's how sick I am I was like damn I wouldn't got me about 250 Betty taught me some things that I'm learning today that I even hear her say today and what she used to tell me things like this let me give you some some pictures and I'm not gonna quote the book but I'm gonna tell you some things that I went through it the second husband I had was a wonderful man but he couldn't quite take care of the family the way that I thought he should see if you're a woman like me and you're a woman of resource and and some and God given power you you know how to make the rent you know how to get it get out there and get a job when it's time to what he wanted to be an entrepreneur and he said I'm gonna do this on my own and and he ended up not making the money and I got tired and I got mad so fast forward I'm thinking something going on it's something about that gut level instinct that we women have oh my god it's horrible something ain't right something something something ain't right yeah so I started listening to his voicemails lady let me tell you about this when you put on your inspector gadget suit uh-huh yeah now it's social media you'd be stalking and make up a fake profile y'all know you somebody in here did that yes and if you anything like me the one woman that likes all his likes I'm gonna go to her page to see who she is you know that was before social media so I was listening to his voicemail and and and I was I broke into his voicemail I started listening to his voicemail say I like to give you practical stuff and I'm listening to his voicemail hey boo how you doing when you coming back to Texas hey honey how you doing it's me Marcia how you doing it and it kept going so after about the third time I listened to it and I'm so sick I had to listen to it over and over again I call my sponsor in total tears fetal position can't breathe and I told her I confess because I was too embarrassed to tell her I told her what I was doing she says okay baby it's how she used to talk when she was being gentle she said well how many times do you listen to it a day now I lied I said about two or three it was about 50 lemon I don't know she said well baby she said what do I do I said what do I do I can't tell him I'm embarrassed and I'm broken to it she said well what you can do do it twice as much and twice as long I said but why are you telling me this and in the drama the girl to garble comes I'm dying here you know she says you know what she says because we want you to hurry up and hit a bottom so you can start recovering from their defects oh my god she didn't give me no book to read nothing to write on pray five times to the West something so what I've come to find out in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous I can't teach you how to be willing I can't teach you how to surrender and I damn sure can't teach you how to be desperate we don't do that well I don't because I'm powerless and I have an ego that's magnanimous and believes I can rescue and save everybody and I cannot you got to surrender yourself to these rooms and what's so beautiful I found out when I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous I came in on a step one and a step three twelve and twelve talks about that hmm I decided to turn my will in life over to care of the rooms of something something bigger than me I don't know what it was but one day I looked up and I hadn't thought about a drink in a long time now I thought about stabbing somebody a man especially but even today I've learned restraint of pen and tongue today I've learned how to sit back and pause today I learned how Betty T used to see just sit there smile and do your frog wave she said never let him see you sweat and you sit there with style grace and dignity and she would sit you down and she said oh no baby we don't do that another instance my oldest son suffered from depression and this is the things that I've learned from doing the program and my son oldest son suffered from depression and I looked into his eyes and I don't know if you have family members that suffer from depression but he suffered from depression when you look in their eyes and the light is gone that is the scariest thing ever and I looked at him I said son something's wrong and he's a veteran I said you got to go get some help and he went to the VA but what was so painful at 20
[00:55:00]
something years sober what was so painful was to go visit him at the VA on the fourth floor in DeKalb County Georgia and to see my son with his hair matted to his head in a paper suit so he wouldn't kill himself with no shoelaces I cried couldn't do nothing to see your child suffer I wonder how many tears God has had yeah I could go into the steps but I'm talking about practical application of these steps because see what happens here for me doing the steps over and over and over and over in a routine sometimes I can write myself to death literally why am I not applying what I'm learning and sometimes I have to do that spiritual experience that type of that spiritual ass-whooping that gets me down to my agnostic knees because I am NOT having faith in the God of my understanding my sponsor say you better hit your agnostic knees and pray for God to deliver you from the sins of self oh yeah see what happens is we come in here and I was walking because I meditate and I'm kind of all over the place because I'm gonna keep you forever but I meditate and I was walking when I meditate you know because of COVID I live alone and I had to do something so of course I created God is everything or he is nothing meeting with club sober because I didn't want to be by myself that's why I have that meeting y'all taught me don't be in the company of yourself because them voices start talking say I named my other voice Nikki Nikki be talking I'll be having tell Nikki you need to go sit down girlfriend so if you got an alternative voice and it's not the voice of God it sounds like you you might want to name her and when she gets a talking tell her okay thank you for sharing go sit down because you trying to kill me little things little things I have a toolbox is as big as this room I can reach in at any given time and give something to somebody else and I'm remembered back to what I've been told what I've been telling someone and I'm remembered oh yeah you haven't done that in a while so as I'm walking because I'm not a great meditator I don't float on clouds I don't do so good I might go three four days when I meditate I'll be like no wonder I'm anxious no wonder I'm nervous no wonder I'm out of order I'm out of balance I it's a check it's a check so I'm walking I said all of a sudden God always talks to me in these and I say talk talks to me because when you when you come in here with the the road map and it goes from a design for living to an automatic way of life see a design is a blueprint but then all of a sudden my default changes and no longer I'm ready to jump down your throat I have to pause and now I'm better at it I'm not always good but I'm better at it pausing and looking at me so as I'm walking in my neighborhood is a beautiful neighborhood in Georgia and something told me this I came into the rooms powerless not to be powerful but to be power-filled once again I came into the room powerless not to be powerful but to be power-filled and that stuck with me see because what you see up here is not me you see the power say I'm no longer ashamed I'm no longer embarrassed to sit down and you said can you pray with me come on let's do this now I'm no longer ashamed I'm no longer embarrassed to tell you about my sex conduct history in and out of the rooms alcoholics anonymous because if you ain't experienced it hold on you can always use me as an example I tell people all the time don't be like me be better than me that was my sponsor's favorite phrase I get to the second husband 17 years in I purchased a house now I have two children him and a house but then he comes another he let's talk about what's real and he was fine he was from New York he had that swag and he was a couple years younger than me so you know oh yeah he was a year sober I scared of y'all I'm gonna tell you don't ask me I'll tell you you want to know if this is live or memorex this here right here I'll tell you I ain't scared of you right Boyfriend come in that door, husband come in that door, and I'm already sitting in the room, and we're sitting there looking at each other, and it looks like everybody's watching a Venus and Serena tape, because they're going…
[01:00:04]
Oh yeah, you might get your name on the front of the grapevine eventually. Don't be overwhelmed, don't be shocked. Somebody will also push you out of the headlines eventually. And I was so in my defect, I couldn't stop. Once again, I was so in my defect, I couldn't stop. The husband didn't have any clue, but everybody knew, but him. I had a second child with that man. I broke that man's heart in front of the entire fellowship. I made him look ridiculous. Not only that, the boyfriend, I put the husband out. Let me tell you about defects.
I put the husband out, and moved the boyfriend in. The husband's doing drive-bys, seeing somebody else's car in his driveway. My sponsor said, you can do anything you want to in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, as long as you don't kill nobody, kill yourself, put enough sugar in his gas tank, put bleach on his clothes, or cut him or cut yourself. She said, but you can do all that as long as you're willing to pay the spiritual price that comes with that. I'm not going to tell you what not to do. Go on and do your thing, baby. I'll sit here, and I'll be here when you get through.
How did that work out? It didn't work out, because I left the husband. The boyfriend came down to Atlanta, and he said, ooh, Atlanta would be a good place to go, so I followed him to Atlanta. I packed two animals, a dog and a cat, two kids, two cars, and me and him. And we was going, Charles just wrote Happy Destiny again. That lasted about a year. So now I'm in L.A. I mean, I'm back in Atlanta. I didn't go back to L.A. because I talked to one of my elder people, and he said, are you willing to go, whether this relationship works or not?
Because I did run it past somebody. My sponsor knew everything. I was still doing the work. I was still working with others. I was still working with sponsors. They all knew what was going on. I apologized. I said, if you want to change sponsors, I understand. And they all said, no, we're not moving. They stayed with me through my insanity. They loved me that much. What ended up happening is I stayed in Atlanta. I'm still there now. I have a house. I live alone. My children are grown up because I launched them into the universe. God, they're just on loan to me.
I did the best I can with what you told me, and I'll continue to live these principles with my children a day at a time if you just tell me what it is you need for me to do. And I talked to my sponsor about how to raise children. I talked to my sponsor how to be a better employee and to do the work actually where I'm supposed to be working. I talked to my sponsor recently about a retirement plan, and I made a prayer, and I said, God, if you would let me continue to live this lifestyle that I'm living to take care of your people, God, as you would have me, if it be thy will, God, please help me to continue to be a servant for you.
Thy will, not mine, be done. Because I don't like specific prayers because I'm always in the self when I do it. I'm scared to pray those kind of prayers. Let me tell you what happened to that husband. One day, I had the bright idea to go to law school, 50 years old, graduated with a bachelor's degree, 50 years old. I'm old as Methuselah. I'm old as Methuselah. I'm old as Methuselah. I'm old as Methuselah. I'm old as Methuselah. I'm old as Methuselah.
I had the bright idea to go to law school, 50 years old, graduated with a bachelor's degree, 50 years old. I'm old as Methuselah, but I'm going to school. I'm up here helping the teacher teach because I'm so damn old. They're like, damn, we got two teachers. I didn't go to college. I went to college, and I did it for my children to show them mom is disciplined enough and you can do good, too. My husband has a hearing disability. He wears hearing aids. Didn't know he'd been reading lips all through the first and second grade.
Now he has a learning disability when he's growing up. Mama had to come out of pockets. But the cool part about it is there's this guy that told me, you know what, don't sue your husband for child support because you're resentful and you're doing it out of anger. God has given you the ability to have insurance and all the money to take care of these children. He gave somebody the ability to do it, so why are you so mad at him?
God has already blessed you to give those children the right rearing. They have their own rooms. They have a house. They have everything that you would ever want them to have with or without the third tradition, fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. Now I won't turn it down. Don't get me wrong. I ain't that good. I got a boyfriend today. He sends me cash. I don't be sending it back.
Sheesh. I be like, thank you. But I thank him first because I don't thank the gift. I thank the giver of the gift. Come on. Don't forget where it came from. So I had a bright idea. I wanted to go to law school. And I thought I'd be able to go part-time or whatever. And they said L1, first year of law school, is the hardest. I took the LSAT twice. It was confusing. I was having hot flashes at 50 years old. Don't take the LSAT with hot flashes.
It's not a good look. I can't focus. I can't concentrate. So I scrapped that plan.
[01:05:03]
But at that time I asked the father, I said, would you please take your son? And then you could send him back after he graduated from middle school, the youngest one. Dad said, OK, I'll take him. He wasn't paying child support. It was a good deal. Dad still has him. He's 22. And he came back to me after that first year and he said, can I keep him? That's my baby. And I could hear my sponsor's voice say, let him have him, because you don't know how to be a man.
And eventually, that father and I had an assignment that I'd been avoiding for years, and that was to make amends. You know, amends is like kale. We had a kale salad yesterday. You can write this down. Look, look, look. It damn sure don't taste good, but it's good for you. And I had to make amends to that man, specifically on what it was. And of course, sometimes people are pushed into working the program, and he had never made amends to me.
And of course, that started a whole conversation. He made amends to me, too. It's OK. I don't care how you give it to me. Just give it to me. It's all good. Whatever it took. We make amends today. We co-parent that child. He admits, I don't know what to do. This is what we do. We're going to pray. And that's how we do today. But when I did the amends, I was so free to love him like a cousin, a brother, or a best friend.
I had to go back and fix what I had messed up. That same husband was messing with one of my sponsee sisters. When we're on our way out on the divorce, let me tell you another amends I make. I've got all kinds of stories. I'm going to try to wrap it up. This sponsee sister was in the room, and my sponsee and I used to have big book studies on the floor, girls everywhere. And this girl had been in the room, and she had more time than I.
Come to find out, while I'm messing around with the newcomer dude, she's messing around with my husband. Now, you know that don't work. I don't want him, but I don't want you to have him. Oh yeah, I'm greedy, gluttonous, all the seven deadlies. I'm deadly. That's why they're called deadlies. I was hot. So we're sitting in a meeting. Check this out. This is how you practice these principles in all your affairs, even when you don't want to.
I had a sponse that I respected everything she said. We're sitting in a meeting. I said, okay, I need a meeting tonight. I'm going to come up there to our home group. And I sat next to her, and she waved me over to her, and I sat next to her. And I was like, I can't take this. He's seeing my sponsee sister? Are you kidding me? But I got a whole boyfriend living in the house. But anyway. And she sat there, and she looked straight ahead, and she patted my leg.
She said, it's going to be okay, baby. And then I look up, and in the door walks the sponsee sister. Now, I'm not a bad chick. I don't fight. I mean, I talk good. I'm an empty wagon that makes a lot of noise. I can do windmills real good. You know what I'm saying? I can't fight, though. I've never been a fighter. You know that one angry girl in the fellowship? Like, I'm not messing with her. You know, I'm not that girl. I'm no threat.
I just talk a gang of them. But it's so funny. I'm sitting there. I really wanted to fight her. And she comes in, and my sponsee goes like this. Baby! I wish we was in the room, because I'd take this wig and throw it. But baby, that right there? And I'm sitting there like, Betty, what are you doing? She says, you're going to be okay, baby. You're going to be okay, baby. So the sister comes and sits on this side of my sponsee, and I'm fuming.
You ever get so mad, you're like this? I'm shaking. Oh, no. I'm so mad I have to do something. So I get up, and I say to my sponsee, Betty, you want some coffee? She says, yeah, baby. She's bringing me back to equals. And then she goes, you already know. She goes like this, Leslie's going to get us coffee. Do you want some? I was hotter than fish grease, baby. You don't understand. My God. And I couldn't say anything, and she says, yes.
And I like three sugars. I said, I got some for you. And I had to go to the coffee pot. I'm coming back. I didn't get my own coffee. Totally forgot I needed coffee. Come back, and I hand it to them, and she sits down. You're going to be okay, baby. Thank you. She's standing there holding both our hands. And she steps back, joins our hands, and gets on the other side of me. I'm like livid. But I couldn't say anything, because I knew what she was doing.
Betty T. was a powerhouse.
[01:10:02]
She was a bad one. And I listened to everything she told me to do, even if it didn't make sense. Because I knew one thing, if I didn't know nothing else, it's going to make sense later. Do you know when you're riding in a car, on the side of your mirror, on the passenger side, it says, things are closer than they appear. And you know, throughout my whole life, things is God. And God has always been closer than he appeared.
I couldn't quite see him, and I couldn't quite feel him, but he was always right there if I just stayed the path. My sponsor used to say, keep your eye on the prize. And I said, well, what is the prize? She said, the prize is the most high. Keep your eye on that. And as soon as you take your eyes off of that, you'll start to sink into the ocean. She said, keep your eye on the prize. What does that look like?
That means teaching these women the design for living, and teaching them the right thought, word, action, and deed, and showing them how your life has gone down, and how God has lifted you back up, and telling them what is the principled thing to do, and what's the not principled thing to do, and how to pray and ask God's will be done, and how to pray when they're afraid, and to look at fear. And fear is always something outside of self.
Right now, it's 913. And whenever I get a girl that's panicking, and full of fear, and doesn't know what's going to happen, and she's going to court for that child support, or she's going to some serious meeting, she's calling me, and she's all afraid, because it's next Thursday, and I take her to this. I said, what time does your clock say? And she'll say, it's 13 minutes after the hour. I said, so where's 14 minutes after the hour?
And she'll go, well, it hasn't gotten here yet. I said, so it doesn't exist. And she says, okay, well, what about 12 minutes after the hour, baby? She says, well, it's gone, so it doesn't exist, right? No, it doesn't exist. 913. Oops, it just turned to 914. All we got is 914. And if I take my mind into the 914s, then all of my magic, magnifying future tripping will go and fall away. Because, see, the future is God's.
And when I start thinking too far ahead of myself, oh, you can plan all day. When I start thinking too far ahead of myself, then all of a sudden, I'm in God's lane. And if I stay in the past, which is the past, which is resentment, then I'm sitting in a place that I don't need to be. That's God's lane. He's already taken care of that. And sometimes I get so anxious, and I get so nervous, I have to look down.
I say, okay, it's 914, God. Is it all right right now? Ralph White always says this to me. He said, but is it all right right now? And the truth of the matter is, it really is. I have not worked in over two years, and a day at a time, I haven't paid one house note, and I have not been late. Figure that out. I have a day at a time been in that house by myself, and I have a day at a time been in that house by my auntie, who got her first inventory done.
And I felt that when we were going to the house yesterday, Dr. Bob's house, and I felt that when you said they used to get drunk. More people have laid on my couch and cried their heart out. You know, that ugly snot cry. That I don't nobody ever need to see me after this cry cry. You know, that kind of thing. Do you know how many women have been in the house, my threshold, my house is called Harmony House.
I name my stuff. And my Harmony House is like this. I met some girls. And I said, okay, well, we can zoom and do a fifth. They said, no, I want to come to your house. Beginning of pandemic. I said, well, get your ticket, baby. Whenever the plane starts, let's go. I have a little bitty room, a little bitty room. It's like the size of maybe a bathroom. It's a real tiny room. And we're sitting in my meditation room, and I've had more hearts heal, and more energy given, and more words spoken, and more tears, because I cry with them, and more of God.
And I just say, God, whatever it is you're doing for me, thank you. And the beautiful thing about this is I've become intuitive now. See, there's five senses, you guys. It's something that God naturally gave me. There's five senses. Touch, taste, smell, see, fear, or hear, or whatever those five are. But there's something about once you go through this process, and you hit nine, and you start feeling the rhythm of the spirit, and you start saying, oh, wait a minute, this feels good.
Because if you're an alcoholic like me, I like what feels good. And I start doing it some more, and I start doing it some more. And then all of a sudden, this other sense come up. It's the sixth one, ah. That's why when sponsees talk to me, they say, well, how did you know that? I say, baby, he told me. See, that something that I referred to early on in my story, that something is that God thing. I know what it is.
And with the sixth sense, on top of that, I've been living in this 3D world, all about me and what I can touch and what I can get and all that. But all of a sudden, I get that fourth dimension that he talks about. And I'm that kind of girl, I'm a word person. I need to say, what's a fourth dimension? It's something outside of me, something that's not explained. And that's why I'm here. And that's why I'm here.
And that's why I'm here. And that's why I'm here. And that's why I'm here.
[01:15:00]
And that's why I'm here. Yeah, we know how that feels. You want to run and tell somebody because it's so good, and you want to tell somebody, let me tell you what happened. I didn't have nothing. I didn't have no money. I didn't know where I was going. I came into the rooms, and I surrendered myself to a whole bunch of women and a whole bunch of God, and guess where I'm at today? Today I'm buying my first property, or I'm getting my first car.
I had a girl that is 40-something years old, got her first car and her driver's license, and has insurance. I said, you better drive then, baby. Never thought she, spending money on Uber. I'm giving you practical application. Oh, I could thump the book backward and forward, but let me tell you what happens around here. For me, I want to retire. I don't want to go back to corporate America. My sponsor and I, every aspect of my life, my life, my health, my emotions, jobs, kids, marriages, divorces, dating, it all falls under the same umbrella.
See God has been standing there with his umbrella of protection all the time. Picture God with this big old thing on, this big old cloak on, and you underneath it, and he's holding this big umbrella, and he's like, it's all right, baby, just stand right here. There's all kind of things swirling like a tornado or a hurricane all over, and you're holding on to God, and he says, I got you. But if you're anything like me, sober or not, you want to see, so you start to step out over here.
And then you run back, and you've been pummeled by chairs and everything and beat up and everything, and you run back, and you grab on to God, and he has the umbrella, and you say, God, you saw me. Why didn't you stop that from hitting me? God said, I didn't move. You moved. That's what I say to my sponsors when they leave, and they come back, and they find out my phone number's the same, and I'm a little bit older, and I'm a little bit heavier, and I'm a little bit grayer, and they say, will you take me back?
I said, baby, I didn't move. You did. I have to. I have to. I just did a fifth step again, because I held on to stuff. I can't do 10, 11, 12. I'm not that great. 10, 11, I'm not always that good. Had to do another fifth step. Had to discover some more defects. I'm glad I have defects. I invite defects. I thank God for showing them to me. I thank God and acting out with them when I'm finally done. So I can hit a bottom, and I can start recovering in that area.
And I'll never be done, because God has always got a vision for me that's on a higher level than where I'm at. And sometimes it's like that song, I Want to Take You Higher, and I'll be like, God, I don't want to go up there. He said, but I said, I got you. That mom that came into the room died on Mother's Day 2017. She didn't wake up. She was in a boarding care in Los Angeles. We got the call. They said, she won't wake up.
I said, well, go in there and wake up. They said, she won't wake up. I said, no, you need to wake my mother up. My mother passed away. I was at a conference the day of her funeral, Woodstock, Los Angeles. I'm dating Ralph White. Yeah, I said his name. I'm sorry. And he said, you got to go. I said, I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to go. He said, you got to go. But I was among friends. So as I came downstairs, they were ending up the Sunday morning meeting, and a lady saw me that I know, and she hugged me.
And as they formed a circle, we happened to be in the middle of the circle, and she hugged me like I hugged you, and she rocked with me, and I rocked with her, and everybody said the closing prayer, the Lord's Prayer, and we just rocked. She said, go do what you have to do, sis. I went to my mama's funeral. Betty T. died a year before that. They were both the exact same chronological age, and Betty T. died, and I got a call from Los Angeles.
She was in the hospital, and she drove her Mercedes to the hospital. And all my bride-y sisters were sitting there, and one of her biggest fears, that's why she would go from man to man to man, and she would admittedly say, I don't want to be by myself when I die. I said, well, why don't you just sit down and be still? You travel. Do some things for yourself. She says, but I want a man, and I don't want to sit here and die by myself.
Well, it's so amazing how God granted her wishes, but it wasn't a man that was standing there. It was over 30 women in her hospital room standing there, and I was on the phone. And when they put her on that morphine drip, my sister called me. I said, turn on the phone. Put the phone on her chest. And I prayed the longest, hardest prayer that I ever had. It wasn't asking her to live. It wasn't asking her to get better.
It wasn't asking God to heal her. It wasn't asking God to selfishly give me what I want some more, Betty T. I said, God, just empower each and every woman leaving from this hospital room to do what she taught us to do through you, God. And I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed until it was over.