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Source: Holly D – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-05-22.m4a File: holly-d-box-of-chocolates-2025-05-22.mp3 Duration: 00:46:41
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Aw. Wow. Thank you so much, Ramona. Wow. That was… I am just honored, honored, honored to be here tonight. Talk about a lot of memories, this meeting. So I'm Holly. I'm an alcoholic. Get that out of the way. My sobriety date is September 28, 1996. I do have a home group. My home group is the WestConnect group in Jacksonville, Florida. We meet Monday nights at 7 p.m. Eastern time. We are hybrid, so you can always come to my home group from your living room. Hit me up. Be happy to give you those codes. And I do have a sponsor.
My sponsor is the amazing Miss Polly P. And of course, she has a sponsor, and she has a sponsor, and I sponsor women, and they sponsor women. So that does put me smack dab in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are so many faces on my screen, and I think there's probably two pages of faces. If you're on the second screen, I'm sorry, but oh my God, just on my front screen, just people that I love so much, people that I have been places with, done things, broken bread with, hung out with, slept in the same bed with as friends.
Tally. I saw that one coming. Yeah, I mean, I've been on a cruise ship with this meeting. I've been at the beach with Dolly. I mean, I just have experiences with these people. George, oh my God, we've done so many things on Zoom together. I mean, it's just unbelievable. So thank you so much for shining through little squares on my screens tonight. Lewis, who's always smiling and always brings just a gentle aura of peace just through a small box. I don't know how that happens. So thank you for being here. My sponsor, Dee, who jumped on at the last minute. I love you. Thank you for being here. I asked Ramona this morning, I said, it's been a while since I've been on the meeting. What's the format? What do I do?
And she said, basically, just do whatever. I thought, oh God, I was with Polly today. I picked her up. We went to a meeting together. That's what I do with my sponsor. And I picked her up and we went to a noon meeting. I was telling her that I was on Zoom this evening. She was on, by the way, said she had a Zoom at three o'clock today to speak on. And I told her, yeah, I love meetings when you have, you know, you don't have to just tell your story, the same old story. I said, but then they say, say anything you want. And then I have nothing.
Yeah. Then I got nothing. So what I want you to know is I prayed, I hit my knees, I talked to God about it. And then I picked up my big book. I said, I'm just going to open up the book and kind of see. And I really would like to talk about something to do with how amazing my life is, just how amazing. And I opened up my book and this is what I got. So I'm going to share this and then I'm just going to, who knows? I have no idea what's coming out. This is blame God, blame God. So this is on page 62 in the big book. And this is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our director. He is the principal. We are his agents. He is the father and we are his children. Most good ideas are simple. And this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new employer being all powerful. He provided what we needed if we kept close to him and performed his works well.
Established on such a footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoy peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of his presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn. What? You know, that's just a little paragraph in the whole step three idea in the big book. And, you know, the first time I read through that, I'm like, whoo, there's a God sales pitch if I ever heard one, you know, and I just kind of read through it and in my selfish self-centered little state of mind and thought, you know, how am I going to work this program? How is this program going to benefit me? What is doing all this really completely painful stuff? You know, like I have to admit I'm an alcoholic. Well, that's hard enough.
And not just a simple admission. No, you want a concession. You know, you want me to fully concede to my innermost self that I'm an alcoholic, which I did, by the way, on September 28, 1996, on my knees. And I mean, figuratively and literally on the steps of a church after picking up a drink after 13 and a half years of sobriety. See, I've been in this program since I was 23
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years old. I'm 67 now. That's a long time. But I'm on my knees because I was doing everything I thought this program had to offer. I did everything I was told. I'm a good little student. I'm a good little girl. I wanted to get a life. I wanted to be loved. That's what I wanted. I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, a broken little girl that thought what was wrong in the world was that nobody loved me. Nobody loved me right. You know, mama didn't love me right. Daddy number one.
Daddy number two. Daddy number three. Daddy number four. Ex-husband. Swithness. You know, nobody loved me right. You know, they wrote a country western song about me looking for love in all the wrong places. You know, I just wanted to be loved. And I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous originally on February 3, 1981. And I decided what I needed to do is learn to be a good girl because I wasn't one when I got here. You know, I really wasn't anything when I got to your rooms.
And I listened and I did what you told me and I was a nice girl. I was a good girl. And life gets better, doesn't it? You know, if you suit up and you show up and you go to meetings and you go to Denny's after the meeting and drink coffee and you get a sponsor and you call her every now and then and you, you know, you do these steps and you talk about what a horrible, crazy, lying, cheating, thieving, whoring person you were. And you tell them, you know, and then you ask God to remove it and then you stop lying and cheating and whoring. You know, then everything is going to get better, right? And it did. I got a button-up sweater husband. I had four children.
One was his. Three were mine. I mean, we had one together. Anyway, that's confusing. So I have four children. I have a button-up sweater husband. I'm teaching Sunday school because I became a Catholic, you know, so I'm going to teach CCD. Why not? And I'm managing a company because, oh yeah, I got a college degree or finished my college degree here. You know, and life was amazing, right? I was grateful. I have this fabulous life. AA works.
And I would stand at the podium and I would tell you that I have a fabulous button-up sweater husband, not an alcoholic, just a real nice guy. You know, a button-up sweater guy. That's a cardigan for the gentleman from across the pond. You know, and I thought I had arrived. I thought that was what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was designed to do. It was designed to fix the third dimension. You know, when I understood or I thought I understood the term we straighten out spiritually and the mental and physical follow, and I thought, okay, I'm going to believe in God.
I'm going to be a good girl. I'm not going to say the F word anymore. You know, I'm going to be a good girl. I'm going to behave and show up and be responsible. Ooh, that's a hard word to say. And I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to get, you know, the benefits. You know, I'm the gold star girl. You remember the gold star? Remember kindergarten? I don't know if y'all had that, but for me in kindergarten, they had a big chart on the wall and it had all the little kindergartners names on it. And then it had all these columns of things you're supposed to achieve, like tiger shoe, don't bite the kid sitting next to you, you know, whatever, those kinds of little things. And if you did those things properly, they glued a little gold star on there. And I was a gold star girl. I'm all about that. So I wanted to get a gold star on Alcoholics Anonymous. I did.
And I thought the keys to the kingdom lied in third dimension. And I ended up picking up a drink and I picked up a drink, not because I wanted a drink of alcohol, not because I thought, oh, what the heck, who cares? Not because I thought I'm different or I'm fixed or I'm better. I was thirsty. I was cleaning a house. I opened a refrigerator and there was a liquid in the refrigerator and I drank some. I drank a very little bit. I put it in a cup and drank it and it was not alcohol to me. And yet it was. It was six months before I realized I drank alcohol. This is a cunning, baffling and powerful disease. And that knocked me to my knees because for the first time in my life, I realized that good girls drink too.
That if you behave, if you're a wife and a mother and a sister and a daughter and an employee and oh, blah, blah, blah, all of those third dimension things. And if you are focused on doing a real good job and all those things, those girls drink too. And they drink not wanting to. And then I began to understand the disease of Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank all my life. I needed a drink at four. I took my first drink at five. I was a weekend drinker from the age of five till about 11 or 12, where I became a daily drinker. At 13, I was hitchhiking around the United States. At 14, I was put in a mental institution, well dropped off for a three-day evaluation and left there for a year and a day. And when I was 15 years old, on the day they let me out of said mental institution, the director told my mom and daddy, number three, that I was terminally insane and that I was going to die and that they needed to make funeral arrangements.
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And then they handed me my bag and let me out. And for eight more years, I hitchhiked around the United States. So understand, I ran with dangerous people doing dangerous things. I lived in incomprehensible demoralization. And I got to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting only because I had a bad date on February 2nd, 1981. Drinking in a bar in New Orleans, guy asked me to go get a condiment. You know what condiments are, by the way. Certainly in the 70s, condiments either had 714 stamped on them or they came in white powder form. They kind of go along with your alcohol if you're like me. I'm a real alcoholic. Condiments just let me drink more, travel further. This guy asked me to leave the club to go get a condiment and I left and I ended up out on a dock and he was beating me and various other things. Back in those days, that was just a bad date.
And I asked that man to kill me that night because I'd had it. And it freaked him out. He ran off and he left me, which is good, by the way. And but I passed out and I came to and found my clothes and put myself together and hitchhiked back to my little bitty apartment in New Orleans, Louisiana. And I called Mama, who was on husband number four. She was a martini drinker. And I told her I'd been mugged. I mean, what are you going to say? And then I said I needed to spend quality time with her because she had a nice house and a pool and I was beat up bad. And I needed some downtime. And I flew to New Orleans. I mean, I flew from New Orleans to Houston, Texas that same day. She sent me a plane ticket right away.
And I flew to Houston, Texas on that morning. And when I got off the plane in Houston, Texas, on February 3rd, 1981, my mom announced she was three days sober and Alcoholics Anonymous and asked me to go to a meeting with her to support her. That's how I got here. Nothing magnanimous about that. Certainly no surrender in that at all. I went to that Alcoholics Anonymous mom meeting because clearly my mother was an alcoholic. She drank martinis, cried and slept. She'd been doing it my whole life. We all knew she was an alcoholic.
And I walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a terminally insane sociopath. Because if you lie to psychiatrists and cross your arms and tell them you don't care long enough, they believe you really don't care. And they think you're a sociopath. They had no idea I was dying inside, that I didn't know why I did what I did. I didn't understand why I kept waking up in other states. So you get misdiagnosed. It's real important that I say that because mental health issues are real. So I want you to know that I understand that.
I walk into that meeting and I hear about a disease called alcoholism. I hear about putting alcohol into our body and a crazy woman taking over and taking you places you don't want to go, doing things you don't want to do with people you don't want to be with. And during that meeting, I wanted to be an alcoholic more than anything in the world. Because I did hope, oh, Lexie wants me to be an alcoholic too. And at the end of that meeting, you saved my life. You did. You held up a little silver doubloon and you called it a desire chip. And you said, if you have a desire to give up your way of life and try ours, come and get one. Wow.
Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. I ran to the front of the room. I got that chip and I was in. I was in. She's excited. I'm going to let her out. Hold on one second. What? So I'm fired up and I dive into Alcoholics Anonymous and then I begin to listen and people stand at the podium and they say things like, I got my husband back or he left. Either one could have been good news. You know, I got my kids back. I got a job. I got my degree.
They started talking about the third dimension things they acquired at Alcoholics Anonymous and how fabulous this program is, how it works. If you work it, if you suit up and you show up, you too will have a job that pays your rent. You too might get a boyfriend that, you know, is halfway decent. A button up sweater boyfriend. I thought I hit the jackpot. You too will reconcile with your children. You too may reconcile with your families. You too may have warrants for your arrest that simply disappear. Isn't God wonderful?
And these are the things I heard from the podium and this is what I believe was the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought, well, sign me up. I want those kind of miracles. I'll do what you tell me to do and that's what I did. A simple admission. I'm an alcoholic. I'm not a sociopath. A simple admission and then working a program in order to get my own agenda. In order to get what I felt certainly was God's will.
Because God's will. Because God's will is certainly for us to be says, happy, joyous, and free, page 133.
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God wants Holly to be happy, joyous, and free. It doesn't say that exactly, but that's how I read it. And I thought that's what it meant. It's God's will for the third dimension to be perfect. I think that the part that's so, for me, that was so confusing was that I did what I was told, and I did get those things. I was told to be a nice, when you are all the things on your list of what you want in a partner, that person will show up.
And they did. I was a nice girl. I stopped cussing. I worked for a living. I gave my employer 110%, not 100%. I went to meetings early, stayed late. I went to work early, stayed late. You know, I did everything that I was taught to do. And when you do that, you get successful, and you get, you meet a nice person, and they think you're a nice person. Bless his little heart. That isn't it. It isn't. It isn't it.
I missed it. I missed the whole thing because I had my own ideas of what success in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was supposed to look like. For Holly, there is no God's will in that. I missed it, which is why I read what I read for you at the beginning of this meeting because I get it today. I put alcohol into my body without my permission, and it scared me to death. I mean, it scared me to death.
And I drank again. I drank for a very short period of time. I drank controlled drinking. I had no drunks. I drank two drinks at a time. It was terrifying and horrifying, and I hated it, and it scared me. And I ran back to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I sat on the steps of a church, and I did step one like I'd never done before. I realized I had a disease that was smarter than me, has a bigger IQ than me.
And then no matter what my behavior, no matter how many gold stars I put on the board, I could still pick up a drink. Isn't that terrifying? Scared me to death, and I conceded. And I began reading the book, and I began looking at what the fourth dimension really is. What are they talking about in the fourth dimension? And I think it's Mildred that said one time, and I thought it was absolutely amazing.
You know, we're not here to learn how to live in the fourth dimension. We're going to be in the, you know, we don't live in the fourth dimension until we're dead. But what we're here to do is learn how to have one foot in the fourth and one foot in the third and cohabitate. What? And that made sense to me, but I need to understand this fourth dimension. What is this all about? And I'm a Chuck C fan, so, you know, I have a new pair of glasses on my nightstand, and I was going to grab it and read it, and I forgot, so I can't.
But there's a fish story. Oh, my God, this fish story. I'm going to just try to not completely ruin it. I'm sorry, Chuck, don't roll over in your grave. But there's two little fish, and they're swimming around. Hey, boys, let's go. Water's great. You know, they're swimming around, having a good old time. And this big, beautiful fish comes swimming by, and he goes, oh, boys, ain't the water great today?
And he kept going. And one little fish said to the other one, what? What's water? And the other one said, I don't know. And he goes, me either. Let's go find it. And they went swimming all over the place, looking for water in which they lived, in which they breathed. And I read that, and I thought, oh, my God, I'm looking for God everywhere. Where is God? Where is God? You hear people say, like, I took my will back.
Really? Can't live outside of God. And if I could, I wouldn't be here. I lived every single day in my will, every single day in my will. And where did I land? Alcoholics Anonymous, where I am given a life beyond my wildest dreams. What? And I realized that that's what I want. I want to find that. I want to find that. And I read, and I read, and I did the steps again. And I worked with a sponsor, and I worked with other women.
And I go to a lot of conferences, a lot. And I listen. I listen. And I find the people that have absolutely no idea what they're doing, but they know who God is. Those are the people I want to listen to. I don't want to hear from the podium that you own a ranch, or you're a millionaire, or I don't know. I mean, that's lovely. Are you single? I'm kidding. But, you know, it's, you know, did you? What can you walk through?
I don't know how to explain this, but I want to tell you some things that have transpired in my life in the last few years so that maybe I can give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
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And what I'm talking about is how incredibly spiritually grateful I am. Just incredibly spiritually grateful. In 2016, my baby girl, my 38-year-old successful, gorgeous, fabulous daughter's having some drinks at the Omni. Little alcohol problem. Decides she's going to snort a little social heroin. Killed her instantly. And not only did she die instantly, but the drug dealer saw an opportunity, apparently, because she had a big diamond on her finger.
She was engaged. And she had a wallet full of credit cards with zero balances because her and her fiance paid them all off. They're getting ready to apply for a mortgage and buy the home they were living in. And so they took her body and they stashed it in a seedy motel for four days. And so for us, she went out for a few drinks and disappeared. She was just gone. And I know Tali kind of knows all about that.
And some people that are close to me were like, I've heard all about that. And some people were here when it happened. And it was awful. She was gone for four days. And then on the news, she disappeared on a Monday night. And on Friday morning, on the news, a body is found dumped in the woods behind a seedy motel across town. And it was my daughter. So it was a horrendous week. And I want you to know that I've learned more lessons through that experience.
I thank my daughter every day for the fact that, number one, she exited really quickly. So I know she didn't suffer. They told me she snorted it. She was dead. There was no heroin in her heroin. So she died very, very quickly. So I know she didn't suffer. That's good news. My daughter is free from the disease of alcoholism and addiction of which she could not break free. And she is free. I prayed for her to be free.
My prayers were answered. I understood that in times of trauma, my instinct is to separate myself. Who knew? My instinct is to separate myself when I need people the most. And I saw it clearly when my daughter died. I had stepped 10 lessons like I never had before. And I began to understand this God action. I began to understand why it says be in the middle. Why it says work with others all the time.
I need to have habits in place that can carry me through when life's in session, as Polly says. And it did. It carried me through. It absolutely carried me through. Three years later, my middle grandson passes away. Three weeks after his 18th birthday from a quick onset of cancer, took that kid really quick and he was a real good boy, like real good boy. That was in 2019. In 2020, my baby sister, my only sibling, loses her battle with stage four breast cancer and passes away, December of 2020.
My parents get exposed to COVID at church because they insisted on going. I understand, church. So we had to put off the funeral for a month while they, you know, got over the whole, you know, we had to like quarantine long periods of time back then. You know, stuff happens. My cousin shows up a couple of years ago and he's sick and he shows up at my doorstep, having been in China for 10 years. And he's disassociated from his entire family and children.
And I get them all here and everybody sees them. And he's here three weeks and he dies. Life's in session. Now, why do I share those things with you? Because I need you to know that my life is not all unicorns and butterflies, except that it feels like it is. And it's really easy when I'm talking to people. And it's really easy when I skip through my days because that's me. I, you know, I'm an annoying, I'm annoyingly optimistic.
I mean, people that are around me are like, are you like this all the time? Like, sorry, you know, yes, I am. Hi, Dolly. Life's amazing. No matter what. That's my point. No matter what. It's amazing. When I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in February of 1981, they used to do an AA. They used to tell you to take out a piece of paper and write down on the piece of paper what it is you would like to get coming to Alcoholics Anonymous.
What is it you want to achieve? What do you want by coming here? And I'm sure I had a few things on my list, but I remember one. I remember the number one thing that I had on my list. And that number one thing was a key. I wanted a key. Because when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had a key to nothing. Aren't keys a funny thing? We all have them. I bet there's no one on this screen that does not have a key.
Ladies, you have a key ring with a bunch of keys, probably keys on your key ring that you don't even know what they're for. And they're in the bottom of your purse. Men, they're in your pocket. Or you have those little clippy things that you hang to the rings.
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Or right now, they're sitting in a dish on your dresser or on the little table inside your front door. But we all have them. We have these key rings and these key chains full of keys. When I got here, I had none. I had entrance to nothing, ownership of nothing. Nobody trusted me. Keys are an amazing thing. They represent so many things that we take for granted. They represent responsibility, don't they?
They certainly represent trust. They represent ownership or possession. They represent communication. I have a mailbox key. I have a key to Polly's house. I have a key to my mother's house. I have a key to my son's house. I'm responsible. I'm relied on. That's what I wanted. I wanted a key. I wanted to be that girl. You know, I wanted to be that girl. I wanted to have a key. And I have that. I have a key ring full of keys.
And they're in the bottom of my purse right now. My purse is sitting on the counter in the kitchen where it always sits. But I want you to know that I don't care about those keys at all. Had it all wrong, didn't I? Because what I was given here in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that has taken me so long to realize the importance of is the keys to the kingdom. And the scariest thing about the keys to the kingdom, reaching for those keys, accepting those keys, putting your hands around those keys, is that what I understand the trade-off for those keys is it's me.
The trade-off is me. I have to be willing to trade in myself, my ideas, my opinions, my wants. My desires. My life. Oh, yeah. Made a decision to turn her will and her life over to the care of God as she understood him. It did say that, didn't it? I didn't grasp what it meant. Seemed immense. It seemed too much. It seemed, I don't know, hypothetical or maybe like somebody was just making a metaphor.
They didn't really mean that. But I'm here to tell you that they meant it. I want to tell you what my life looks like today and why I am so filled with gratitude right now. You know, my sponsor, she's insane. Oh, my God. If you know Polly, you know, she's absolutely amazing. She's absolutely a blessing. And I'm her feet on the ground. Her son doesn't live here. Her son lives in Tallahassee, her youngest, who kind of oversees her.
You guys know James and Jane. And so I get the pleasure of taking Polly to all her doctor's appointments. I get the pleasure of taking her to anything that she needs to get taken to, to do with anything with her care, with her medical or anything. I don't know if everyone knows this, but I think it's pretty much public knowledge now. I know it's okay to say that Polly has retired from speaking. She doesn't want to speak anymore.
She's done with that. She's doing some Zoom. That's okay. But she's not traveling to conferences and doing the big behind the podium speaking anymore. She just doesn't want to. She wants to go to conferences and participate and have fun and be in the audience. She doesn't want the pressure of being behind the podium anymore. So I get the pleasure of taking her to conferences and going with her and doing that kind of thing.
I get the pleasure of checking on her every day. I get the pleasure of making sure that she's okay. What an honor and a privilege that is for me. And I have other sober sisters here, but all of my other sober sisters that live here are all married and have jobs. I'm the only one that, it isn't that I don't have a job, but I'm self-employed. So I have a little bit more freedom. I'm not married. I haven't been married for a long time.
Got an old fella. So I have lots of time. And so what a gift. What a gift. And right down the street from Polly lives Mama. And Daddy number four, yeah, they're still together. She got sober. Imagine that. They've been married 48 years. Well, my stepdad's heart's failing and he's in congenital heart failure. And I've had to rush him to the emergency room a couple of times in the last month. He's not allowed to drive right now.
And I've got him on oxygen. And my mom had pneumonia in the midst of all that. And I had to run her to the doctor and get chest x-rays. And oh my God. And she walks with the walker and she's super slow. But thinks she can drive, which is not happening. So I get to go every single day over to my parents' house. And I get to cart them back home. Every Single Day, Over to My Parents' House, and I get to cart them to different doctor's appointments and I get to, I am now managing my step-dad's care and my mother's care
[00:30:02]
with all of their doctors and especially with the cardiologist, the hematologist, the urologist, and the nephrologist for my step-dad, wow, I should get a medical degree when this is all over, and I get to, I get to do all that and I want to, I want to tell you how weird this is, so people call me and they go, how are you, you know, like with that voice, you know how people do, so, how are you, like, what do you mean, I'm great, are you sure, you know, you're taking care of your mom, and they understand that, you know, my mother is, I've told, you guys have heard me talk about my mom, right, my mom is, she got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, she kind of drifted away from Alcoholics Anonymous around the seven-year mark, and she's a churchy girl, and I mean to tell you, my mother is a renowned Bible teacher in Northeast Florida, she is a right-wing, super, super fundamental traditional Christian who believes that her mission in life is to get me to heaven, oh, and the jury is still out as far as she's concerned, you know, so she's working real hard to reform me, which I'm not really sure what needs to be reformed, but, you know, she has one of those belief systems, you know, when I became Catholic, she didn't come, you know, like, us Catholics somehow aren't Christians, only they were, like, the first, anyway, we won't get into that conversation, so that's mama, so it's interesting, and they're very political, and they happen to be political, you know, I'm not, I'm just not that girl, I don't, I'm, you know, I just love everybody, so they are interesting people to take care of every day, and exciting, and fun, and it's wonderful, so I get up every day, and I take care of either my mom's doctor appointment, or my stepdad's doctor appointment, or I manage his medicine, or I check his oxygen, or I make sure he has to text me twice a day with his blood pressure, my mom's in kidney failure, so I explained to her that she needs to be on a salt-free diet, and she said, no, only he has to be on a salt-free diet, I get salt, I had to explain to her that, no, you don't get salt, it's been fun, and then I leave one, and then I go to one mile away to Polly's, thank God, it's like the oasis in my day, and then I have my son's dog here, which I kind of keep, I have joint custody, and keep her, and he almost died three times last year with blood clots in his groin, don't ask me why a 30-year-old has that, they don't know why either, so he's had health issues, and my oldest son's pregnant, well, his wife is, yes, to be a nanny, again, in July, yeah, in July, my oldest grandson turns 30, that's my baby girl that passed away, that's her son, he turns 30 in July, and now I will have a new grandson, 30 years apart, I have a lot to do for a lot of people, I meet with my sponsees, I grab coffee and talk to them on the phone in between Polly's and mama's, and doctor's appointments, and the more that I have to do for them, the more that I have to shake my head and listen to my mama, say what to my dad, and then he says something, and then she says something, and he says what, neither one of them can hear, so we're repeating everything two or three times, as I go through all of that, and I get through my day, and I come home at the end of the day, I realize that every single day, I have hours and hours that I'm not thinking about me at all, and I feel amazing, and there it is, isn't it, there it is, I wanted to hold on to myself so tightly, I wanted to hold on to my, what happens if I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I'll become the hole in the donut, what about me, and I'm here to tell you that I spend my days often doing things that I don't initially want to go do, I don't, I don't wake up every morning and say, oh boy, the whole day's gonna be spent sitting in doctor's offices, yay me, but at the end of the day, I just simply say yay, it's unbelievable, I knew, I knew that not thinking about me was good, because whenever I'm on with a sponsee, or I meet him, and I'm really intensely listening, like Don M says, make that person your total focus, right, like when you're sitting with somebody, look them in the eye and listen intently, and I do that, and I escape me always in those moments, and I always thought that was great, you know, when you meet a sponsee, that's not a chore, come on, I love my sponsee, I love the women in my life, I don't even really like the term
[00:35:05]
sponsee, they're just the women in my life that I love, I love taking their hands and walking them through things, like Dee, who's on here, who has a big move coming up, moves are scary, I get to hold her hand and walk through it with her, aren't I lucky? I have a program because I'm selfish and self-centered at the core, I have a program because my initial reaction to life is to separate myself from mankind, and yet I am tasked to fit myself, to be of maximum service to God and the people about me, so how can I be tasked to do that when my natural tendency is to separate from, and I will separate from you by not answering the phone, or by simply judging you, and finding you greater than or less than, but certainly not equal to, and the more trauma I'm in, the more afraid I become, the easier it is for me to see why you don't need to be in my life, that's me, that's who I am, I have to get up every single day and I have to look at my calendar and do what's on it, I have to start each day and I text, I start each day, I hit my knees, I say my third step in seven-step prayer, and then I begin in the 11th step with getting out of my head, I look at my day, how can I be of service, and then I begin with good morning texts to the women that I sponsor, and then I check on women that I know or love, that I know have things going on, and I do that so that I can think about them, get out of my head as quickly as possible, because my head is a bad neighborhood, I don't need to live here, I was thinking the other day about a Mother's Day one year, and I don't even know what year it was, but I was sober, maybe 10 years ago, or my kids, my boys were old enough to, you know, make decisions on their own, and they weren't little kids, and nobody sent me a card, nobody called, nobody did anything, and I remember getting up that morning and waiting to get a text or something from my two boys, and maybe my grandson, maybe not, you never know with him, and nobody texted me, nothing, this is before wives, by the way, wives are wonderful, text all the time now, but I remember sitting there thinking, wow, I love my boys, I was a band mom, I was a baseball mom, I'm their number one cheerleader, I do everything that I can possibly do for my children whenever they need it, I am that mom, I'm not a helicopter mom, but I'm just, I've always been there and always been available, I'm a good mom, good mom, and I love my boys, and they know I love them, what the heck, it's Mother's Day, and nobody called me, it's like noon, I got nothing, and I saw it, you know, every now and then, you see it, you see your own thinking, like instead of, yeah, I could see it, I just, I watched it, just for a moment, it was a lucky moment, trust me, I realized I used to do that with everything, everything, how well are you loving me today, how well are you loving me, does mama love me, is my mom a good mom, takes me about 30 seconds to come to the answer, that one, is my, how about my stepdad, is he a good stepdad, do I have a really, does he love me, does he love me as much as I love him, husbands, oh my God, get in a relationship with somebody and sit down and say, think to yourself, what have they done for me lately, 30 seconds, and we're mad, we're mad, we're hurt, our feelings are hurt, nobody loves me, nobody appreciates me, everybody takes me for granted, nobody's giving me what I deserve, nobody's acknowledging me after I've done so much, palm print on my forehead, I was thinking about that the other day, Mother's Day, I got a text from my daughter-in-law, Jonathan says happy Mother's Day, Michael says happy Mother's Day, girls are good at this stuff, I just want you to know, girls are good, and I realized how much I love my sons, and the joy does not come in my sons loving me, the joy comes in me loving them, the joy does not come in my sponsees loving me,
[00:40:05]
the joy comes in me loving them, the joy does not come from my mother loving me, the joy comes from how much I love her, and I'm going to end with this, there has been, and it's going to seem stupid and hokey, but I saw this the other day, and I realized that the lesson has been in front of me all along, and if you're not an animal lover, this lesson is not going to make much sense, but if you have a cat or a dog, or I don't know, maybe you love ferrets or something, but you know, if you have a particular animal that you love, I have dogs, I've had dogs forever, I have my Remi, she's a little beagle foxhound, I asked God, I told him I was ready for a relationship in December of 2021, I told God I was ready, I was ready for a relationship, and in January of 22, I rescued a beagle, one day I woke up in the morning, and she was laying in the bed under the covers, the covers were like to her little shoulders, and her little head was on the pillow next to mine, and I opened my eyes, and I saw her laying next to me, and I thought, that's not exactly what I had in mind God, but it's beautiful, but I have this dog, okay, so I have Remi, and I get Remi when she's 11 weeks old, and Remi doesn't talk, I mean, I make conversation for her, and clearly I put words in her mouth all the time, and I assume that she says things constantly, but the fact of the matter is, she doesn't talk, she's a dog, she's quiet, except when she's ripping down the blinds, barking at people going down the street, when she was little, she pottied all over the house during the potty training, and I put her in a crate, she'd whine and cry and keep me up, I take her to the vet, she's expensive, puppies are expensive, I took her yesterday, I needed her some parka, and she was itching, so she needed an itch shot, it was $320, she runs around, she ignores me, she cuddles up with me every now and then when she thinks maybe she needs to be scratched, not particularly when I need, in other words, Remi doesn't think about me at all, you know, she's a descendant of a wolf, she's a dog, I love her with all my heart, she brings me joy, she brings me comfort, she listens to me when I'm sad or I'm lonely, I give her a spoon of ice cream on a Saturday night when I'm feeling sorry for myself because I haven't had a date, oh, I don't know, I've lost track, seven or eight years, yeah, that's worth a little yogurt, so she gets a spoon too, Remi loves me with all her heart, does she? She's a dog, it is my loving her that brings me joy, the lesson's been here all my life, my first love was a little poodle named Gia, I took her everywhere with me as a kid, I did, I've known this is not a lesson I didn't know, I just missed it, didn't I? I don't need my dog to love me, I fantasize in my mind that she does, I make a whole scenario up of things that she says to me, but it's all made up, but it's all made up, she's never had to say a thing to me, she's never had to do anything to prove her love to me, she's merely had to exist, hasn't she?
And I love her, and I take care of her, and I feed her, and I even cook for her, and if you know me, you know I don't cook, but I cook for my dog, love wins, it always wins, and it is not in the receiving, but the giving, I am so incredibly grateful to be here tonight, guys, it is just a joy to see your faces, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for joining us tonight, where you never know what you're going to get, thank you so much for joining us tonight, where you never know what you're going to get, you'll just have to keep coming back, we surely hope to see you here next Thursday, our special guest is Vera F. from Williamsboro, Massachusetts, that's hard to say, she is a, I think she just resigned from her non-trustee director at resigned from her non-trustee director at GSO. Anyway, she'll be here next week.
If you like this meeting, please do as Bill Wilson always said, pass it on. You can help others
[00:45:03]
right from your phone or computer and tell them about the special meeting. Everyone is invited to hang out with us afterwards in the meeting after the meeting, the porch. Holly, do you have any closing comments and would you please close us out with a prayer or reading of your choice? All right. No, I don't have any closing comments except thank you for being here and thank you for having your videos on. And the prayer I would like to read since I am going to read it because I don't know if I heard is just because whenever I come on here, for whatever reason, I think about Mike McKillop and he sent me these prayers a long time ago. And this is the humility prayer and I absolutely love it. So please indulge me. Lord, I am far too much influenced by what people think of me, which means that I'm always pretending to be either richer or smarter or nicer than I really am. Please prevent me from trying to attract attention. Don't let me gloat over praise on the one hand or be discouraged by criticism on the other. Nor let me waste time weaving imaginary situations in which the most heroic, charming, witty person present is myself.
Show me how to be humble of heart like you. Amen. All right, everyone can unmute and thank Holly. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you.