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Source: Marilyn S – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-06-26.m4a File: marilyn-s-box-of-chocolates-2025-06-26.mp3 Duration: 00:55:54
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I love the start of this meeting. I don't think I've ever seen fireworks before to start a meeting, and I like it. I wish we would have it at every meeting, and at our Wednesday night meeting, real fireworks. That would be super. So, it is really fun to be with you guys. I know some of you, and would like to know all of you. I'm here, of course, though, because I drank way too much, way too long, and it just finally turned on me.
We're in a program now that tells us that we have to wake up, and I didn't even know that I was asleep before I got to the program. I was strangely asleep for many, many, many years, and when I awakened, when I started to wake up, I was in a garage, and I'd been there for quite a while. I was in that garage because I had lost my career some time before. I'd always wanted to be a scientist, and I actually did become a scientist.
I was in a lab, and I had a set of chemicals, a set of reagents, and all the equipment I needed. I had a director. I'd met and married a scientist, and you would think that I would be happy, and I just wasn't happy at all. I didn't know why that was true. A little bit later, I heard something when I started getting sober that gave me a clue about that situation, and it was from my little son, David.
It was Christmastime, and there was a Christmas tree, and our two little girls had gotten lots of presents, and David had gotten a lot of presents, and the little girls opened their presents, and they were so happy. There were some games and toys and dolls, and they were having a grand old time, and David, he was about three years old when I was newly sober, and he opened his presents and burst into tears, and my mother was there, a grandma, and she said, David, why are you so sad? And he said, Because I didn't get just what I always wanted, and she said, David, what is that? And he said, I don't know. I just know I didn't get it.
Oh my gosh, I heard that, and I thought, that's the story of my life. That kept happening to me over and over again, and I would have this idea that if only I had a husband, if only I had a husband who was a scientist, if only I was a scientist. All of those if only's, and I got them one by one, and as I got them, it was that moment where, no, that's not quite right, because I still continued to be miserable.
I had no idea why I was miserable until I went through steps four through nine. That gave a big clue about why I was miserable, but until then, I was strangely asleep in my misery, and so here I was in this lab. This is not what I wanted after all. My experiments were not going well, so I blamed other people, of course. They didn't understand me, and then what happened was that I did discover something that made me finally happy.
Now, this is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, so it must be obvious to you what that was, and it came to me in the form of lab alcohol. We used it as one of our chemicals, one of our reagents, 90% ethanol, which was a very good drink, 180 proof is what it was. So, we had a grand old time, and then we'd go out to bars at night, so these were the good years. As people often say, fun, fun with problems, problems. This was the era of fun, and I used to go down to La Jolla with a friend, a lab mate, whose father was a brilliant scientist, a well-known scientist there, so he would have lavish parties, and they would always involve swimming, and there was a big house and a swimming pool.
And one night, I was up on the third deck, and I was going to just dive into the swimming pool. Well, the swimming pool was about 50 feet from that deck, but I just felt immortal, and I felt like I had wings, so I was climbing up on the banister.
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But luckily, my friends pulled me down. And another time, I was down in Malibu, and I saw lights across the sea and decided, I'm going to swim to Catalina Island. And again, my lab mates, who didn't drink as much as I did, formed a human chain and drew me back in. So, I was always being rescued from drowning by well-meaning friends who didn't drink as much as I did. But as I said, these were great, fun years. And then it all came to a crashing halt, because you see, as long as I drank there in the lab, my experiments were fun.
It was what I'd always wanted at long last. I didn't realize that that was given to me by alcohol, this feeling that all is well. If I had the right amount to drink, I just knew I was going to win the Nobel Prize. Now, the reality was that I had stopped working entirely when I drank, because I didn't need to work. It was just that I had that wonderful, satisfied feeling that one would get from a job well done just out of a bottle, out of drinking.
So, it all ended when the director checked into what I had been doing, and it had turned out to be very little. And that seemed to be the end of my career in science. And I went home and gave birth to three little children. But after the first one or two, my husband was terrified and began to bring grandmas into the house to take care of things. And so, I had adult supervision in these years of fun with problems. And then finally, it just degenerated to only problems where I was pretty much driven to the garage.
My mother-in-law gave me encouragement. She knew about Alcoholics Anonymous and wanted me to go there. Unless you get control of your life, we're going to lock you up and you'll never see the children again, was her encouragement. And my goodness, it scared me to death. So, as I said, I sat out in the garage, and I was so lonely. This was a time of terrible, terrible isolation. These years of how did it all go so terribly wrong?
And that's when I watched the ants coming in, in these long trails. And I looked at these little guys, and I just thought, oh my gosh, they have friends, they have jobs, they have a sense of purpose. And I've missed it all. How did this happen? Well, I should have taken a clue from the ants. They were telling me something, and I couldn't translate the message. That's because I was asleep. I was asleep to everything but my own wants and desires, which never made me happy once they were satisfied.
I was terribly, terribly lonely, but had pushed everybody out of my life. And yet I was getting this message in my sleep, and I didn't understand it. I do understand it now. And what the message was from the ants was that we are in a colony. Ants are social insects, like bees and termites. And the worker bees all live in the hive. And as long as they have the community, they thrive, they do well, they have jobs, and they know what their jobs are.
And as long as they do them and remain a part of the colony or the hive, they do well. But if a worker bee goes off on his or her own, or if an ant strays away, they don't survive. Just like us, I need a community. I am a social animal, and it has to be a spiritual community. And the one that works best is Alcoholics Anonymous, apparently. And as long as I'm in the community and have a job in the community and do my job, I get along just fine. But if I stray from the colony, from the community, and go out on my own for a long period of time, I don't think I would do well just because of the examples.
They say everybody is an example. Some are good examples. Some are scary examples, the ones that stray too far from the community.
[00:10:01]
Well, I didn't understand that lesson. As I said, I was strangely asleep. There's a writer, Anthony DeMello, and I like him a whole bunch. I read books by Anthony DeMello. I've got some on my desk right now. Here's one. Anthony DeMello, he was not an alcoholic, but a deeply spiritual man, and he used to do a lot of retreats. And the words that I hear are highly consistent with our principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he talks about waking up, having a spiritual awakening, and he tells a story about a mother going in to talk to her son in the morning. Son, it's time to get up. Wake up. And the son doesn't want to wake up. Oh, I'm so tired, he says. Go away. So she comes back about five minutes later. You really have to get up now. It's time to be up. And he said, please let me sleep a little while longer. So sleepy. So she goes away. And then the third time she comes in and she says, this is it. You've got to get out of bed. Why do I have to get up, he says. And she says, because it's time for school and you're the headmaster.
So I didn't start waking up until I was 32 years old, kind of like the headmaster. And what is that start of waking up? Well, it was a surrender out of the hopelessness and helplessness of my life, just giving up my family to adult supervision because I could no longer function in that way. I drank all the time, drank every day. Had no friends, desperately lonely except for the aunts. Hopelessness, helplessness, desperation. I'll get something. This is a gift from my sponsor.
And I keep it on my desk just as a good reminder. God's will, not my will, surrender every day. And it meant massive surrender. I fought the good fight and I lost it. And yet I didn't even know I had lost the war. I just experienced desperation and loneliness. And I called central office just to get somebody to talk to me. And they guessed that I had a problem with alcohol, even though I didn't quite admit it.
But they guessed and they sent somebody to get me just to talk to me. And that was Lorena. And she said she would take me to a meeting. And I said, I don't want to go. And she said, you might enjoy it. Come, just come with me. I need somebody to go with me and just come along. So I rose to a high point of nobility and said, all right, I'll go with you. And so we went off to a dark, quiet meeting and I heard a woman talk, the wonderful Marion W. And she told my story.
And she talked about fear. She talked about unhealthy dependencies on people, her own helplessness and hopelessness. She talked about what had happened after eight years in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And she wasn't helpless and hopeless anymore. She had a lot of hope. She had a higher power. She had friends. She had what looked like a good life. And yet, I heard enough in her story to think that she once felt like I did.
The founder and leader of my home group, the Pacific Group, Clancy, had a saying. Let's see if I could find it on my phone. I probably can't because I can never repeat it correctly. Clancy. Search. Oh, here it is. So Clancy once said in a talk that was recorded and it got written down and is on a plaque somewhere. We start believing that someone knows how we feel and we let them overrule our judgments so that we will take action.
And the beginning is when. And the beginning is when one alcoholic starts talking to another alcoholic to
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help them reduce their feelings of difference at least enough so that they will begin to take actions they do not yet believe in, and that moment is when sobriety begins. That was when I started to wake up, when I heard Marion tell my story. I identified, I didn't compare, I identified, and I asked her to be my sponsor after the meeting. Now, it was not a surprise to me because I was just in such a state of craziness, but it was, I was surrendered, but now I appreciate what she said. She said it would be a privilege. Now, that is remarkable. It's the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous where we have this thing we call sponsorship, and I don't know any other club that quite has anything like that where a complete stranger comes in and says to someone, can you take control of my life? Can you be my best buddy and I might call you at three o'clock in the morning? Can you talk me out of my fear? Can you show me how to live? Can you maybe lend me some money now and then? In most clubs, Rotary Club, 4-H, Country Club, they would just say, security, and probably not it would be a privilege, but that's what Marion said, and that's what we have here, that somehow our hearts go out to somebody new, somebody desperate, somebody suffering, and we say, sure, it would be a privilege, and it is. That was what Bill Wilson discovered oh so long ago. We're celebrating Founders Day right now around this time of year, June 10th, when he was able successfully to carry the message to Dr. Bob, and Dr.
Bob had his last drink. We celebrate that as our birthday, and it's all about one alcoholic talking to another just to reduce that difference so that that person will take actions that they would not normally take, and sobriety results, and that's what she said, and so she led me into the Pacific Group. That was her home group, and that's where I got my foundation. So I said, I just really didn't know why I'd been so miserable, and I thought it was all something external, people, places, things, things didn't work right, people didn't treat me right, I didn't get just what I always wanted, didn't know what it was, I knew I wasn't getting it, until these steps, which have a remarkable way of getting us to focus on all of these things that make life ever so difficult.
I hated my mother-in-law because she had sized me up. I knew that I was a danger to the children, and just generally being useless in the world, and I saw myself in her eyes, and instead of self-loathing, I loathed her. She was the reason I felt so bad. I didn't like the director of that lab because he wanted me to show some results for all the support he had given for a couple of years. Oh, I had so many, many resentments, and was afraid of everything, so I began to discover all of these things that made me feel so bad, and I've often thought that if our program ended with the fourth step, where we discover so much about ourselves, we'd probably jump off cliffs like lemmings one day, just running out and plunging over the side, but luckily we have all these other steps that help us unsort all of that, resolve the grief, resolve the resentment, do something about this, and become outward-turning. I think a lot of that gets done in Steps 6 and 7, where we have that marvelous My Creator prayer, where we give it all over to whatever we can believe in, or not believe in, but just trusting that somebody or something might be listening. We can say, take all of me, good and bad, and we say that because, certainly for me, I didn't even know what was good and what was bad. 12 and 12 talks about seven deadly sins, and I thought all of them were pretty good. I mean, dishonesty was useful. It
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would get me out of scrapes. I could tell a lie. I could make you think I was somebody I wasn't, somebody better, but it turns out that that's a defect. It's better to be honest. I didn't know things like that, and that's what happens on this program when we're so focused inward. Halfway through the Steps, there's 6 and 7, where we begin to realize we have these so-called defects, things that are wrong with us, that in the end keep us from real freedom, keep us in bondage. Envy, so corrosive. I would look at somebody else's lot in life, and I would hate them because they had so much happiness and joy, so I would not wish them well. Corrosive, and fear. I was plagued with fear, and it paralyzed me. It kept me from doing things, and so much is focused inward, though, and in Step 7, somehow, we begin to look outward to other people and ultimately to a higher power. When we say, take all of me, good and bad, and take away every single defect that gets in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows, and then give me some strength. I need some power. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do what? To do your bidding, and this prayer, I believe, was taken seriously. The way I made the prayer, though, was not like that, although I love the My Creative Prayer now, and I say that prayer often because I think it's the key to turning outward. My prayer initially was just, if you're there, if you're really there, I'd like to get to know you, and I'd like experience of you, and if you're there, I'm willing to go on any path you pick for me, and I think that it was done, but it required my action, too, my cooperation. As a result of that, turning outward and making living amends to these people in my life, which had to last a lifetime for me. So many were to family, to my husband, long-suffering husband that saw the fall catastrophe, to the three children, Becky, David, Susie, to grow up with them, to the director of that lab, to my mother, to my mother-in-law. All of these people needed amends, and so much of that was just having to act better and trying to make up to them for just being a bad person, trying to be a better person, better mom to my children, better wife to my husband, better daughter to my mother.
And luckily, we've all lived a long time. I think my higher power knows how slow I am in spiritual growth, and so we've all been granted long lives. My mother and mother-in-law lived to be 100, practically 100 years old, and my husband was older than I and just passed away a few years ago after a long, long life. So, he had come to believe, and in these later years, he was very sick, and before he, what is the word, transitioned to the other side, he said to me, perfect marriage. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's so sweet. He's finally forgiven me. And then he said, no, not quite perfect. And I thought, yeah, he knew I was a bitch. And then he said, because it only lasted for 60 years, and that made me really, really happy. So, I hold that in my heart. There were, as I said, other people I had to make amends. There were minor amends, like stealing from local stores. I liked to do that. That was fun.
And I was never caught. I wore big pockets, which I didn't take big things, fairly cheap things. They probably knew. They didn't care. But I had to try to undo some of that. But the other stuff that director, I had to go talk to him. See, I was so sorry, so sorry. And at first,
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he just acted embarrassed. And I thought, well, that didn't go well. But several years later, he called me and offered me a job to come back to the lab. So, I went back and worked there in the lab. And I'm not very good in the lab, even sober. I was completely sober, but I still broke a lot of glassware and spilled acid. I have a lab coat in my closet. And every now and then, I get it out just for old time's sake. And it's full of big holes from acid burns. It spilled sulfuric acid all over the place, and it would eat holes in my clothes. So, I got out of wet science, laboratory science, and went into bioinformatics, where I can use computers and handle scientific information without ever having to spill acid on other people or break their experiments to pieces. And ended up in these last years teaching science. And that's been fun.
I was an atheist when I came to the program. And a lot of that was due to my love for science. I worshiped science. And our literature talks about that. Bill mentions that that can be a higher power. And it was for me. It explains ever so much. I thought it explained everything. Where did the universe come from? Well, it wasn't there. But then there was a big bang, and it was there. And it kept expanding, and it expanded into what we have now with galaxies all over, billions of stars, billions of galaxies. Well, that's an explanation.
And then what about living systems and how complex they are? The flowers that unfold in great beauty. The many forms of animals, insects, fish, people. And the complexity of the immune system, how there's something in our bodies that fights anything that's foreign. It recognizes this is something that's coming in that could kill me if it multiplies. I'm going to kill it. And we don't even know that it's happening. It's all done.
All of this stuff seems miraculous to me. And I thought if I could understand it in science, that that was an explanation. Now I see it as evidence of higher power. The great complexity, the beauty of it. And now, instead of having science on the one hand and reason on the other, I see science as evidence to me of the power of what we're dealing with. When we talk about our second tradition, a loving God, as he expresses himself in our group conscience, our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. We're not governed by people. We're governed by a higher power. And that's pretty remarkable. That's not true of General Motors or Microsoft. It's governed by a CEO and a board of directors. But we're governed by a higher power that expresses itself in our groups. There's something that permeates our fellowship that is healing. And we're healed by this as long as we stay in the community, just like the social insects. We have to stay here. But if we're a part of this, then we do recover. So I came into this relationship with a higher power, probably because of that prayer, like the Seventh Step prayer. Because I took the steps, but nevertheless, just having this great appreciation for what we live in, this universe. And as I teach science and study science, it just gives me a greater appreciation all the time for what I know as my higher power.
I do believe, well, I appreciate that the early people in the fellowship, Bill Wilson, Hank Parkhurst, Jim Burwell, they all had different ideas about God. Bill was kind of religious. Dr. Bob was very religious and wanted to bring in religion into the fellowship. Hank Parkhurst, the publisher of our big book, Hank Parkhurst, the publisher of our Big Book, sober alcoholic at the time, although he relapsed,
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saying, you know, we've got to tone this down. There was a fellow, Dr. Howard in New Jersey, that read the manuscript and said, this will never do. You have too many, you must. You've got to change it to suggestions. And this idea of God, you've got to change it to God if you understand God. And that was a great thing. I was very happy to find that. And I believe that there are as many impressions of a higher power as there are people in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't have a theology. We don't have a description of God. It's just God as we understand God. I thought that I was going to be so clever. Before I came into contact with a God of my very own, there was a fellow in our group, John. John, I'll use his last name, Lucky, because he passed away a long time ago. And he was a deeply spiritual man. I think he was 30 or 40 years sober when I was new. And I had been doing something, and I thought, you know, I'm not going to tell everybody, but I'll tell John. And I said to him, you know, I don't believe in God, but when other people are praying, this is what I do. I hold hands with them, and I just say to myself, thank you, whatever is in the universe that made it possible for Marion to be at that meeting when I got sober so that she could be my sponsor. And thank you for Marion.
And I said that to John, and I said, everybody else thinks I'm praying, but that's what I'm saying. They don't know, so it's just my little secret. And he said, ah, yes, so you're just praying to whatever you can understand and pray to. And I said, yes, yes, that's it. And he said, Marilyn, I hate to break this to you, but that's what we're all doing. Who would have thought? But just talking to whatever I could talk to gradually deepens that relationship.
And there's a saying. My friend Diana is a Buddhist, and we're so much alike, but I kind of went toward Western thought. She went toward Eastern thought, and she's a Buddhist. And there's a saying, if you find the Buddha on the road, kill him. And I said, Diana, how could you say that? Because Buddhism is a very peaceful kind of religion. What does that mean? And she said, well, I mean, it's not literal, but anytime you think you know who God is, it's way too small. So just kill that idea.
It's usually killed for us. And then you find another relationship with something higher, more complex, more loving, more energetic. And then that one comes to an end. Whenever I just get this rounded idea of what the higher power is, there's a rude awakening. It came to me big time. When I was 40 years sober, life was pretty good. I had gotten to know Bill as a person rather than a scientist. It was just plain Bill. We had a very sweet relationship.
Had a cat, and the children had grown up, and they were doing well, and that made Bill happy. Made me happy, too. Our two daughters produced grandchildren, and our son became a scientist like his dad, and he was doing well. He was an elite athlete, and I used to do a lot of rock climbing with him, climbing mountains, and he was strong, very safe climbing partner. Life was extremely good, so lovely after 40 years of sobriety. And so I had this idea of the higher power that if we take these steps and work this program, apply the steps, and get deeply involved with other people, then life gets ever sweeter, and it just keeps happening. And that's the higher power's work, and the more reliant on the higher power, the more trust I have and the sweeter it gets. So when I was 40 years sober, I went to Stateline, the great Stateline retreat, they call it, and that's in Las Vegas around
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Christmastime, and it's for intense days of talk after talk after talk on the program, and it's for fanatics, but I like it. I'm pretty much of a fanatic, a lunatic fanatic, but I enjoy that kind of thing. I'm exhausted afterwards, but that's the way Bob D likes to do it. Don't have time to stop and think about yourself. Just do AA from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, day after day after day. Ah, so I was there. I talked on the first night, and so I talked about my good life and higher power, and it was all wonderful, wonderful. And after my talk, I got down and there were a lot of phone calls, and I did not know what that was all about. So I called my daughter, Becky, and she said, we're all trying to find David. He didn't go home from work, and his wife was worried, and so I called her, and she said, no, David hadn't come home. That was Aaron, didn't come home from work, and he always comes home from work or calls, and I can't reach him on the phone, and so we all called one another, Bill, my husband, had not heard from him. I just got David's answer machine. Well, Aaron finally called the police to help, and they don't want to help at first because they say, you know, he's out with friends. He'll be back, and she was so insistent that by 11 o'clock at night, they had gone to his office, and I was on the phone with Aaron at that time, and I said, what's happening? What's happening? And she said, the police have gone into his office, and oh, they're coming out now, she said, and I heard a policeman say, I'm sorry, he's passed away, and she screamed, no, and dropped the phone, and his colleague who had gone along with her picked it up, and it turned out that he had hanged himself in his office. Now, we had no idea why that happened. He didn't leave a note.
He seemed to be happy, and my world came to an end, my idea of higher power. I found the Buddha on the road, and Buddha died. I mean, whatever the universe is all about didn't make any sense to me at that point, and later when we talked about that, we remembered little David under the Christmas tree. I never did get just what I always wanted. Could it be that he had my emotions but did not have the comfort of alcohol? He was like his dad in that he didn't have this reaction to alcohol, and so he got no preservation. I lived a long time with unhappiness because I could drink.
Maybe it just became way too much for him, and he seemed to have to be strong for the people around him. He had gotten probably everything he had always wanted, and I said he had a wonderful career, beautiful young wife. He was an elite athlete. They had a sweet house in Costa Mesa. He probably got everything that he always wanted, like I got at one point, and then realized, no, that's not it either, and now what is to hope for? You lose hope when you finally get everything you could imagine that you could ever want. Maybe that's it. We'll never know.
Who knows? But luckily I had a strong sponsor. Clancy had become my sponsor by that time, and he'd been my sponsor for quite a few years, and so I called him, and he was there at Stateline, and he just said, you have 40 years of sobriety, and you have a strong program, so it's important for you to go home and comfort your husband, comfort your family, and be that strong one in the family. You'll have some years of grief, but this is your role. I believe in strong sponsorship. It has saved me many times, and it enriches my life, but a direction from my sponsor is a hypnotic suggestion for me.
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I do it just through year after year under the influence of Pacific Group and groups that believe in strong sponsorship, and it has served me well. He said, drive home, so it was about a four or five-hour drive for me to drive home from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and so I got into the car, and it was close to midnight, and started driving to Los Angeles, and I had a CD in the car to listen to, and of course it was the great Sandy Beach. He had been at our group just recently before that happened, and he talked about his two daughters who died the year before. One died as a result of our disease, and the other was murdered in her yard, and I knew that he was okay, and so he told me what I needed to hear, higher power taking care of me, and I heard him say, when something like this happens, and I hope it doesn't happen to you, but if it does, you go out to your higher power, and you say, I am with you. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me, and you make that bond even tighter, and then when you begin to react deeply, guess who comes back with you, and so I practiced that as I drove through the dark, and it's true. Guess who came back with me, and was with me all along, all along. Glancy had said the group will be there, and will be my strength, and sure enough, my sponsees took care of me in those early days.
Georgia, whom some of you had just heard in Naples, I guess it was, or Appalachia, would come and take me to meetings. She was a great comfort. This is when having sponsees is so valuable. She would not tell me what to do, but she would listen every now and then. How's it going? That's about all she would ask, and she would let me talk, and talk, and grieve, and we'd go to meetings together. My daughter Susie and I talked, and we grieved. Sadly, my husband couldn't grieve, and his grief was manifest in physical illness, and he was never well after we lost our son, and eventually died of many complications. So, in that kind of thing, I believe that when there is a great loss, grief is fine now, or later, or never, and then it's manifest in other ways. Tears are very healing. So, after a few years, we began to emerge from the grief cocoon. Along the way, Julie St. J., a member of our group, had lost her son ten years before, and she called me early on, and she said, it's important for you to accept this, and you will find if you can accept it, there will be many blessings. And I thought, how could there ever be blessings? How could I ever believe again? How could life ever be right again? And yet, she was right. I prayed at first to a higher power that I doubted was there.
I'd lost my faith, but I still called out to the darkness, and little by little, we began to come back. I began to experience that life is very complex, and there's a beginning, and there's an end to every life, and a short life is not necessarily worse than a long life. It is what it is, and I believe in an afterlife. And I began to imagine that David is in God's good hands, and that was okay. And so, a new experience of God has formed, and it will probably be shattered again, if I live long enough, because it can't be right. Whatever made the universe is going Because it can't be right. Whatever made the universe has got to be more complex than our tiny brains can understand. But for me, it's sufficient right now. And I just thought that
[00:45:07]
grief will never come to an end. But after two or three years, the sun began to shine. And there were blessings. And one of those blessings was that I listen. I listen more carefully. What did we miss when David was alive? What could he have told us? Did he tell us something that we missed? I try to listen more carefully to my sponsees, to my sponsor, to my family, to my friends. Also, a kind of resilience to living through the unthinkable makes me know that we stay sober no matter what. We get strength from others no matter what. We are carried through. When we can't walk, we're carried. And I was carried. So as I said, life began to open up again in funny kinds of ways. I was elected president of a place where I was teaching. It's a two-year commitment. And that was a good thing because that was an amazing distraction. I had to show up and pretend I knew what I was doing. And it got me through that time.
And then as time went on, as I said, I have a kind of resilience. Of course, there were losses. Five years ago, my sweet husband, my sweet husband Bill passed away. As I said, he had many illnesses and he was on hospice care for the last many months, right in the living room in a hospital bed. And as he crossed over to the other side, he said, I'll wait for you. I'll be there when you come. And I thought, I'll be coming soon. I mean, I'm old. My life is over.
What could be interesting now? And then a year later, our Clancy, August 24th, my cat is visiting here. Clancy passed away. And at the same time, the matriarch of our group, he was the patriarch and the matriarch, Millie. Millie G also died and left a whole bunch of sponsees without sponsors. Clancy was my sponsor and I was an orphan. There were many orphans. So, I began to sponsor a lot of other people from this surplus of orphans. And a couple of them are very active. So, I've gotten drawn into some active groups just by sponsoring them. Bob D., as we were talking about before the meeting, is always doing something fascinating and interesting.
And so, I've been drawn into the derelicts and I enjoy that very much. It's not my home group. It's different. It has a very different flavor, but it's wonderful and it's very effective. I always knew that kind of thing intellectually, that there's all kinds of good ways of doing AA. I appreciated it in my mind, but now I experience it because I'm drawn into other groups through sponsorship. And I see, I experience that this is very different, but it's good. People are staying sober and their lives are full of meaning and joy.
Another one is Debbie D. up in Concord, whom I've always loved, but I became her sponsor. She should be my sponsor. She's way more active than I am, but I asked my own sponsor about that. He said, well, she's an adult. If she doesn't get what she needs, trust she'll find somebody else. You don't have to make those decisions. So, that's been a very sweet relationship. And I'm not sure who's sponsoring whom, but I've gone on some trips with her.
And we went to Japan and we went to Egypt and I got to ride a camel and I got to go in a pyramid and that was fun. I went in with another couple who was on the trip with us and they seemed worried. And I finally got it out of them why they were so worried. And they said, because you're so old, we think you might die and have a heart attack. And how can we get you out? I mean, there were narrow passages. So, I thought about that. Yeah, I see the problem.
Then I said, but think about it. We're in a pyramid and it's basically a tomb. So, it's perfect. I mean, just leave me here. And then they were happy too. We all got out. So, Debbie's group is, again, very strong emphasis on general service, three legacies, and how valuable that is. So, I have learned a lot more by being a part of that community.
[00:50:04]
And as I said, just having a deeper understanding of many ways of doing this, and they're all good. All good. And then we have a Japanese outreach because of the pandemic. The wonderful Yuko in our group is so fluent in both English and Japanese that we have bilingual meetings. And people began to pour in from Tokyo. And they've gotten enthusiastic and formed the Tokyo Pacific Group. And it's having its third annual conference right after, the weekend after AA International. And I will go to that. I've gone, this will be the third time I've gone there to visit Tokyo Pacific Group. And so, I will do that the week after Vancouver.
So, I see how wonderful that is. Another group in a just enthusiastic and beautiful, but in an entirely different language and culture. Now, another thing that happened was that after Clancy passed away, I couldn't imagine having another sponsor. Michael was talking about that kind of thing that before Clancy passed away, all of the other old timers in the group had passed away. And I thought, who could it be? I've been sober just about as long as everybody else. And I thought, well, I'll have friends and we'll sponsor each other and that will work. But lo and behold, I was at a retreat given by one of my favorite people, Father Tom W.
in Oakland. He's a Jesuit Catholic priest with long sobriety. And he does these recovery retreats, 12-step friendly retreats, they're called. And I'm kind of a groupie and I've learned a lot from him. Also, his sponsor, Father Terry R. in Los Angeles was a good friend. So, that was, I felt very close to both of them. But what happened in this retreat, two weeks after Clancy died, was Father Tom said, you know, I'll sponsor anyone. They often don't call me much, but I'll sponsor them. And I thought, my goodness, this would be perfect. I never thought of him in that way.
But I sent him a resume, told him how long I'd been sober and why he should consider me. Would you be my sponsor, I asked. And he had to say yes, because he said he'd sponsor just about anybody. And that was about five years ago. And that has been a very sweet relationship. I have learned so much from him. And I've been brought into his community and have wonderful friendships in that community. And that's a very kind of quiet, low energy, but very strong kind of program. Deeply spiritual and very, very funny. Everybody has a good sense of humor. Recovery through laughter, it's kind of. And as I say, I am now introduced and welcomed into about five groups intimately, which gives me this appreciation for what Alcoholics Anonymous gives us in many, many different ways. Each group should be autonomous, unless it affects other group or AA as a whole. And we live that to the fullest extent. So, we all find a group that's just right for us. And there are many, many, many, many ways to stay sober. If I were back in Ohio, I would say, many ways to skin a cat. And that's very cruel, but that's what we used to say. And it all works. I think it's just about time to wind up this talk.
So, I will, with just what Browning said, grow old along with me, the best is yet to be. And I think that's true. If we stay deeply involved in our community, just like the social insects. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Well, you never know what you're going to get. Coming back, we surely hope to see you here next Thursday. Our special guest is Rima B. from Sonoma, California. That's exciting. If you like this meeting, please do as Bill Wilson always said, pass it on. You can help others right from your computer or phone and tell them about this special meeting. Everyone is invited to hang out with us afterwards in the meeting after the meeting, the porch. Marilyn, do you have any closing comments?
[00:55:03]
And will you please close us out with a prayer or reading of your choice? My closing comments are, thank you. Thank you for your presence. And I thank Ramona in absentia for the invitation. And let us do the we version of the serenity prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. All right. Everyone can unmute and thank Marilyn. Thank you, Marilyn.