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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 900 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kim-carrying-the-message-nasac-johannesburg-2004.mp3 Duration: 00:20:06
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Hi, my name is Kim. I'm an addict. Thank you both for sharing and before I start I wanted to just, I really wanted to just thank all of you, all the members of the three areas that we've visited this last couple weeks and tell you that your generosity and your hospitality and your enthusiasm has been incredibly inspiring and you've made me feel very, very welcome and I really appreciate that. And I'm grateful to be here sharing with you all. I was thinking about the topic, carrying the message, and I was thinking about the message that I heard when I got clean.
And I suppose that there were probably a lot of different ways that the message was being carried to me, but what I heard and what I was sort of drawn to was kind of what David referred to last night as like sort of old school N.A., you know? When I got clean, I just remember people telling me to sit down, shut up, and listen, to go to 90 meetings in 90 days, to men stick with the men and women stick with the women and there were all these rules, you know? And that was fine with me.
I was 21 years old when I came to N.A. and I had, I came in and I'll never forget, you know, it was, I'm coming up on an anniversary on November 4th, so it was kind of cold in my area and I came in with this big old like bag lady jacket on and I had a shaved head and I just sort of looked at the ground the whole time. And so when people said set up chairs, don't talk to them, hang out with us, go to these meetings, call these people, I was like, okay, whatever you want me to do, because I was, I was a very desperate addict when I came here and I didn't want to go back and I didn't know where else to go.
And I was like the kind of person, and what I learned, you know, how the message was carried to me was I kind of felt in the beginning, if it was painful, it was probably good, because everything seemed painful in the beginning, you know? And so it was like, I mean, just interacting with the world without drugs was excruciating and I constantly, when I was new, would challenge myself, you know, force myself to share and force myself.
My sponsor, my sponsor was a very structured woman and she taught me so much, my first sponsor, and she used to have me call five women with over 10 years clean every day, my first 90 days clean. I mean, I have the luxury of having that many resources in my community, but, you know, I didn't know these women and I would call them and be like, hi, I'm Kim, you know, and totally socially inept and, you know, I did all this stuff and I heard the message.
I heard the message that if you follow these suggestions, this is the message I heard, if you follow these suggestions, you know, you can stay clean and your life will change and your life will get better. And because of the kind of person I was, I was, I had a hard time setting boundaries and I had a hard time saying no and I had a hard time, you know, knowing how to navigate, you know, life, so it was very comfortable for me to have, you know, these set of rules that I could sort of cling to.
And my life improved, you know, I learned how to pay bills and I learned how to show up and I stayed clean and I, you know, held down a job and I sort of just held on through all the feelings, you know, because I kind of think those first couple years, I don't know about you guys, but for me, I just sort of spun, you know, and it was all I could do to sort of, you know, not go off the edge. But what happens with us, you know, by the time I had like two or three years clean, Anthony was messing with me, he was saying that me and my friends were like an army of rigidity.
[00:05:01]
And I used to sit in meetings, you know, and tell everybody what to do and if I didn't like the way the steps were written, I would just read them differently and, you know, if I didn't like what you were doing, I would just share, you know, how you're, you know, why are you so stupid and asking like that, if you just would do this, then your life would change and, you know, I mean, it was a nightmare.
And then my friends and I would all sit around and be like, why isn't anyone asking us to sponsor them? And what happened is that, you know, I thought that there was this real concrete right and wrong way to do this thing. And it was safe, it gave me a sense of security to believe that, you know, that, you know, as long as I did it the right way, which is the way that I'm working it, which is the way I'm staying clean, then everything's going to be okay.
And what started to happen for me is that it just didn't make sense. It started to, that way of moving through my life and moving through recovery, it stopped making sense. And I started to do, I started to find things about myself that I couldn't will to be different, you know, like I wasn't one of those addicts where, like I had a bunch of outward, you know, we get clean, we take away the drugs and a lot of us have, you know, gambling, shopping, sex, whatever, you know, we have all these other manifestations of our disease.
And I didn't have those outside manifestations, but I was insane in my head. I was full of resentment, full of self-righteousness, you know, full of feeling like a victim. I mean, I was either, you know, like godlike or I was, you know, like an ant, you know, I was, the humility just did not come into the picture. And I started, you know, I kind of hit a wall with all that. And, you know, I had been doing all the things that I thought that, you know, if I just kept doing what I was doing, then that would stop and it didn't stop, you know, I was still, you know, plagued and I still did things, you know, I still, I was still human, you know, and I was still an addict and I still suffer from the disease and I still made mistakes on a regular basis.
And, you know, and I sponsored some women in those early years and it, you know, and when I think about carrying the message, how I tried to carry the message to these women and I, I mean, I felt like it was this world of responsibility, you know, I'd get a sponsee and it would be like, okay, you know, I got to make sure that she does all this stuff right. And, I mean, it's kind of like who I am and where I come from, you know, I, but I carried all this stuff with me, but God, it was, it wasn't, you know, I don't think that's the way it's supposed to be, you know, because what I've learned is that addicts do what they want to do.
You know what I mean? I mean, I have a responsibility to provide people with information and so that they have a choice, but I can't change anybody. People do what they want to do and I do what I want to do, you know, and, you know, I, if I, you know, if I could will myself to be different than I would, you know, sometimes if I could like, you know, strong arm, one of my behaviors to go away, I would.
But I can't, you know, this recovery is a process. And I have a friend who talks about these, these clicks that happen on the inside of us, you know, like where we'll be going along practicing principles or coming to meetings or trying to like create a little room in our life where some change can happen. And, you know, if we keep doing it long enough, things change, things inside of me have changed. I'm not that person who I was at three years clean anymore. I don't, I don't want to be that person, you know, and part of what it is too is that I've had more life experience.
My understanding of the message and of what we can learn in Narcotics Anonymous has changed. You know, I feel like when I was new, I was, I was so naive. I didn't know what things meant. You know, I would hear what people said and I would understand it intellectually, but I didn't really know what things meant. And I, even in my steps, you know, I would practice these steps and I, but I didn't really know, I mean, who can really describe what surrender is, you know? I mean, we know what it feels like, you know, but, um, so what has happened is that as my, as I've grown in my life and in my recovery, my experiences have taught me a lot about what things mean.
[00:10:04]
And they've given me, um, a depth, you know, not, not me a depth, but a depth of understanding about, you know, what, what it is that I'm really trying to do here. Um, I, I, when I, I guess it's been about a year and a half ago, I changed sponsors from that first sponsor that I had. And, um, and I sort of made a conscious effort to like separate myself from this group of friends that I had gotten clean with and that I, I sort of insulated myself with.
And this was a huge risk for me because it wasn't working for me anymore. The sponsor relationship wasn't working for me anymore. Um, I would go to her and she would tell me the right or wrong thing and it didn't make sense anymore, you know? And, um, and it took me a year to finally make the choice to change sponsors. And I thought I was going to get loaded. I, cause I had the same home group for six and a half years, the same sponsor, the same best friends. And I thought that my recovery relied on keeping those things the same. Um, and, but I knew that if I kept it, I was going to, I was going to get loaded, you know, it wasn't working for me anymore.
So I made the change and I took a risk. And I, you know, this last year and a half has been monumental for me on so many levels. You know, um, I, first I took that risk and, um, got a new sponsor. Um, I, I got married, um, in April. It'll be two years this April. And again, I, one of the things, like some people really agonize over things before they do them. I'm the kind of person that just like jumps off the cliff and then go, what did I do? What did I do? And not that I wouldn't have married my husband. I adore, I adore my husband. I love him so much.
And, um, but I had no idea what being married was, what it, what it would mean. You know, I, I, I just, I loved this man and knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. So we got married and, um, I think it was about five months later. Um, he was having chest pains and he went, went to the emergency room and ended up, he needed to have a double bypass surgery. So, um, you know, we're in the hospital and it's, we're waiting there, you know, the surgery is going to be the next morning.
And he's terrified and I'm sort of like, don't know what it means. You know, I don't know what double by, I don't know. They cracked the chest and I, you know, I have no idea. And so he goes in the next morning for surgery and I have all his sponsor and like five people in the, in the surgery waiting room. We're all sitting together for the four hours and they call me and they say, he's off the heart lung machine and his heart's beating on his own again. And that's, that's what I got it. That's what I got with that meant, you know, that whole, you know, oh my God, he was dead on the table for four hours.
Um, and I walked into the, to the CCU and he was laying there with all those tubes and, um, and my friend Wendy had told me to do positive visualizations with him. So I walk up to the bed and I say, Jeff, imagine you're in a beautiful place, right? This is right when he's coming and he's like, looks over at me and I go, I'm just trying to help. And he goes, don't help. Just be. So I spent the next week at the hospital with his sponsor, um, trying to, to, you know, do what I had to do, swab his mouth and, you know, um, read magazines and, um, and what ended up happening is that I left one morning, his sponsor had taken the morning shift and I left, um, to go to yoga because I'm addicted to yoga.
And I, um, you have to stand in front of a mirror in the yoga that I practice. And I was looking at myself in the mirror and it was probably like the second day after he had had the surgery. And all of a sudden I knew that everything was going to be okay, no matter what, that even if he died, I was going to be okay. And that this higher power that I had been pretending to believe
[00:15:05]
in for seven years was real, and that it was a part of me, that there is something in me that is stronger and calmer and more divine than anything that I know about myself, and I had one of those clicks, and all of a sudden I realized that I had been acting as if I had faith for seven years, and I really believed, you know, because I'm one of those people where I don't know how to have self-love. I feel like I have to do five times as much as someone normally would do in order to be valid, and discovering that about myself, that I'm connected to something way, way bigger, way more beyond what I can comprehend, was a very, very powerful shift for me in my recovery, and it came out of this really, what some people, I mean, what was a traumatic thing, this violent surgery that this man I love was going through, through all that, somehow I discovered my own faith, and if I had run from that, if I had numbed myself from that, if I, you know, had done anything else, I may have not had that experience, and as a result of that, I feel like I'm able to be different in my life. I'm able to take risks like I wasn't able to take risks before, and I'm able now to carry a message to, you know, the women I sponsor, it's not about forcing people to act right anymore. It's about, I believe that, you know, carrying this message, especially through sponsorship, is about being someone that people can rely on, that people can trust, and I love these women that I sponsor. I believe in them. Even when they scare me with their insanity. I'm not so insecure anymore, and I don't take, I don't think, I'm not in this illusion anymore that, like, I'm somehow in charge, to where I feel like I've got to manage it all, you know? I can love more freely than I ever have, because I know that, you know, this is a process. We do what we want to do, and everyone's got their path, and it's different for a lot of us. The path, our paths aren't the same, and my job isn't to, like, you know, get people to, like, just do it right, and, you know, and I have a lot more sponsees, and I tell my sponsees, you know, what I see them doing, and I, you know, guide them to the steps, and, but, you know, I allow myself and everyone else to live, in my own mind. And what a relief, you know, what a relief, because it's quite miserable to live in self-righteousness. And, you know, there's so many things. I mean, my life, my life is so amazing, and my life keeps getting better and better, and I believe in this program. I know that every time my disease gets me, every time I start to feel like, oh, no, you know, I don't know how, I don't know how I'm going to get out of this one again, because I go a little crazy sometimes, you know, and I feel alone, and I feel desperate when my disease gets me. And every time I get to one of those places again, and I turn to the tools that we have here, things change, you know, and I learn more about myself, and I can share this with others. So, I think that's it, you know, I'm just really grateful to be here, and again, I want to thank you all for being so warm and making me feel so much at home, and thank you for letting me share.