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Source: Paula P – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2026-05-07.m4a File: paula-p-box-of-chocolates-2026-05-07.mp3 Duration: 00:52:49
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I'm going to go downhill from now, you know, it's the best it's going to get, you just heard it. Hey everybody, Paula Parton, alcoholic, I'm trying to do all these things at the same time. My sobriety date is October 29, 1979. I took my first drink when I was 14 years old and I took what I didn't know would be my last drink three years later when I was 17 years old, when you made me a place at your banquet. The light that you shone, man, who could turn away? I couldn't turn away, man, and I'll always be grateful. I'll never, never be done paying back my debt to Alcoholics Anonymous and I just want to give out a shout to this meeting, to these people who are running this meeting. They've been here since ground freaking zero. They are the OG Zoom AA right here on this meeting. As I'm sure if you don't know, I'm going to say it, but the first week of we went to lockdown, March of 2020, my friend Mike McCullough from St. Louis sent me within days of lockdown. He said, I found this format called Zoom. I think we can put an AA conference on this format. He says, will you speak for me? Yes. Will you give me the other speaker?
Sure. Who do you want? Everybody's wide open now. Then just like a week later, we had our first ever Corona conference. That was the first time AA and Zoom ever came together. Thank God, modem to modem. Thank God for people being able to set aside everything they think they know. Because man, before Mike died of COVID, he saved us all. Polly, my sponsor, the fabulous Ms. Polly P., she gives me credit for this, but it's not me. It was Mike. She says, but he couldn't have done it without you because I'm bossy and organized. True. That is true. How I look at it is God only removes the defects when God's done using them. God needed that bossiness and that organization ability to bring it all in. These people here have been with us since day one.
Keeping it going is so beautiful. I'm sure Vivian's this way too. Before we ever had COVID or Zoom or lockdown or anything, I would have said, yeah, I'm a member. I'm plugged into the Worldwide Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh no, not like we are now. A whole new experience, a whole new world, man. I'm going to start this, I think, by talking a hot minute about my life now, because things are always changing and they should change.
Many of you who've heard me talk over the last however many years, I've been talking just being my friend, have heard me bemoan my older son's drinking and his outside issue use. I was already living the pain of if the worst happened, and you all have heard that. Almost two years ago now, he called me here. He used to live in this little town, Champaign, where I live in. He says, mom, my anxiety is off the chart, because he has a pretty marked mental health disorder as well. He said it's off the chart. Of course, when he's doing his medicines, not been refilled forever. He says, can you come get me to the clinic? I said, sure. We went to the clinic and he was a 31-year-old, otherwise healthy male.
They took his blood pressure. It was 188 over 115. They said, young man, you are not going home. You're going to the emergency room. Took him to the emergency room. He got put in a gurney in the hallway because it was so full. He told me later he hadn't had a drink seven hours ago from that had been his last drink. He wasn't drunk. He didn't smell like alcohol. Nothing had no alcohol in his system, but his anxiety is off the chart. He said it's dangerous. There was going to be a stroke or a heart attack. It was going to be counted in hours, not days. For some reason, the doctor in the ER asked him, how much do you drink? For some reason, he told her the truth, which was 12, 14 shots of vodka every night until he blacks out. She said, oh, this isn't your anxiety. You are in alcohol withdrawal. A 31-year-old man who just in seven hours from his last drink was already in withdrawal. He got put in the intensive care unit in a padded bed with five nurses on him.
And then the hallucinations began. And I had the honor and crazy luck to get to sit with my boy through those four nights of that.
[00:05:06]
And I'm going to tell you, though, if you're living like that, and if you got somebody, you know, that's drinking or other outside issues like that, and I want to tell you the reason, the only reason my son was able to call me at all is because for the past 10 years, I have talked about nothing basically but Netflix with him. I have not said, oh, how he's hurting me or he should do this or nothing, just light and tight. Because I vowed that if the bridge was going to be burned between he and I, it would not be me who lit the match. I was going to keep it light and tight. And it worked because the moment that he was willing and desperate, he picked up the phone and called his mom. And so we'd heard from the last time he tried to get sober about a homeless shelter, a huge homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky, which is about four hours from me, that takes guys off the street and gets them clean.
So my husband and I dropped him off there when he got out of ICU. And a week later, we went back to visit him. And for a long time in the beginning of that program, I mean, it's a hard shelter. I mean, there's, I mean, guys right off the street, 400 homeless guys in here. And the only way you can like visit people in there is to go to the open meeting that they get to go to, and then that's it. But so we show up to the meeting and he comes in the room and he comes up to me and says, mom, did you know this is a homeless shelter? I'm like, honey, you're homeless. And he goes, they want me to stay for the nine month program here. There are some hard guys in here. I am not staying for that. He said, I'm going to do the 45 day program.
And you know, if you're a mom or a dad, you know, my gut was gone. Oh, no. But I said, that might work for you. And so we sat down for the meeting. And my, you know, little boy has been raised in this university town, you know, with two, you know, educated way beyond our intelligence parents. And, you know, that's been his life in this little university town. And, and we sat down to hear the meeting. And the guy speaking that night was a guy who'd come through that shelter clean for two years at that point. A gang, former gang member, prison, violence, homeless, came to the program, was clean at that point, clean and sober for two years.
So this guy who has nothing in common with my son, except for the effect alcohol has on him. Gets done talking. My son turns to me and says, Mom, I'm going to stay for the nine month program. Can you bring me winter clothes? Because the language of the heart is spoken here. And sometimes there are no words to that language. I'm going to, I'm going to read this little quick bit. It's like three lines. And we all know the history. Steven and Annette particularly know it as they just walked through New York for 11 days, jumping in the history. I love it.
But so to set the scene, it's in Bill's story in the beginning of the big book. We all know the history. He'd been trying to get sober, not doing so well, trying, not doing so well. Dr. Silkworth had also been trying, hanging in there with him. And Bill got a call when he was back drinking again from his old friend, Ebi. And Ebi told Bill the weirdest thing. Ebi told Bill that Ebi was sober, which is odd because Ebi drank like Bill drank. And they had a lot of stories to share. And Ebi said, can I come by? And Bill said, sure. And Bill even wrote his story later after he got sober and reflected on this. He said, I mean, yeah, it was weird. He was sober, but I'm still going to sit there and drink and relive the old days. Come on over. So that's the scene. Bill's sitting in his house. Ebi walks in. And here's later what Bill wrote. The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened? Now, if Bill could go back and take that small s in the word something and make it a capital S, he would be able to answer his own question about what had just happened to his friend Ebi. Something happened. And something happened for my son listening to that guy that's seemingly nothing like him, but everything that's important is like him. Something happened. I swore I would not drink. I hated alcohol. I grew up in my mom's drunk home. It's all love to her, man. You got somebody you're mad at and they're an alcoholic.
Hey, they had a liquid power greater than they are, as did each of us. So please remember that. But I grew up in my mama's drinking house and stuff happened that shouldn't happen to little girls. She let men in the home that she shouldn't have let around little girls. And that's just
[00:10:02]
sometimes what it looks like after the dash of drinking. That's all, man. And I hated alcohol. I swore I'd never drink. I was the youngest of five kids and she raised us drunk. I mean, how the hell? I was a single parent for a little while with two kids, sober. And it took everything I had to fail often at it. But still, you know, she did it with five kids drunk. Yeah. But I remember some of those dark times. I remember walking around the neighborhood when I was a little kid with a weird kid, you know, matted hair and I stunk. And, you know, man, that's all. Just what alcoholism looks like. That's all, man. Must have been dinner time one time I was wandering the neighborhood because I could see into the neighbor's picture window, man. And it's like I'm standing there right now. I'm almost 64 years old. And so I'm not good at math. But that was a long time ago. I was five or six and I could see into the other side of their picture window, man, what I saw. I'd never seen it. I just never seen it. And they were sitting at the other side of that picture window and they were sitting together. And they were laughing and they were looking at each other and talking and they had plates and plates of food. And I mean, I was hungry every day, you know, growing up like that. But I remember that little kid me on the far side of that great green grass, looking at that, knowing, knowing to the depths of my soul, to the tips of my toes, that that beauty never for the likes of me, dirty throw away me.
The very next time I saw that was in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I wasn't even sober, but I saw something. The day before I took my first drink at 14 years old, man, there were three things I hated. I hated God because I begged God to make it stop. And to me, my little girl, my God had thrown me away. God had abandoned me. And I hated myself and I hated alcohol. And if I could have been strapped up to a lie detector test and the question put to me, will you drink? I'd have said no with passion and pass the test. But the next day when I was some friends, they handed me three bottles of wine. Man, if you're here tonight, you know what happened next. All of a sudden I was rocketed into a fourth dimension. All of a sudden I find a higher power. I could turn my will in life over to. And the problem is this man, like alcohol promises us everything that only Alcoholics Anonymous delivers on. It is the great master. It is the great thief, the master manipulator. And to get that feeling back right then, right then I decided I will do anything and did for that new master. And my mom had gotten sober almost to the day I took my first drink, man. So my brothers and sisters had gotten away with murder. All of a sudden there's like rules and forks and manners and what is happening. And my house full of AA people. I mean, you try stumbling in and saying again, your car broke down. That'll only fly so many times. Oh my God.
Man, you know, though, you know, the shame of a mama, you know, the shame of a daddy who brought their babies to their drink. And my mom had that. And I'm the last one home and she wanted to make good on me, man. But I had found that liquid demon and I was worse. I was tracking worse than she had ever been. I was way worse than my siblings and all four of my older siblings had ever been. I did terrible things to her terrible thing. I tried to kill her with a homemade flamethrower in her first year of sobriety. And you guys complain like if your boss is mean to you.
I mean, imagine, imagine. I was, you know, hitting her. I was running away from home. And I mean, I was so furious, you know, because of the men and the she let them in all that, you know, all that. And she turned custody of me over to the state of Nebraska. I mean, God. And so I'd be in court all the time. And I'd always think she should be here. I mean, it's her fault, you know, if only she hadn't, if only they hadn't, if only all that, you know, I'd be OK. I wouldn't be in this trouble if I'm an alcoholic. It's their fault. And but I mean, sometimes I look back in court at her face, you know, man, God. And I know how she feels. And watching my older son go through all that, man, I really finally know what I did to my mother.
But I was off. But I was off, man.
[00:15:01]
And I was court mandated to go to AA meetings since 1976 when I was 14 years old in the middle of, trust me, nowhere, Nebraska. And so 14-year-olds were not sitting in meetings in the middle of Nebraska, it was odd. And I remember my first meeting, again, like I'm standing there right now, man. I was ready because they loved my mom and she'd really found peace in AA and she was two years sober by the time, no, no, no, she was new sober, she was in her first year when I went to my first meeting, court mandated by my probation officer and I'll never forget it.
I was walking down ready for those people to come at me because they loved my mom and they knew. She told them, I'm sure, everything I'd been doing, so I was all braced up, all 14 years old of me in my fake leather. And I remember it like I walked down to the basement of that old church the meeting was in and I'm standing in the room and I see like the Grand Pumbaa of AA in Grand Island, Nebraska, like that's a title or something that people want, but I knew he particularly was going to come for me because he and my mom were really close and I'll never forget it.
He was across the room and he was bent over talking to somebody and he turned his head and he saw me and he smiled and he stood up and he put out his hand and he crossed that entire room to greet me like I was a person or something. And for three years I had to go to meetings and I don't remember a word that was said until I finally said my first sacred maybe and got sober at 17 years old. And so like I don't remember a word that was said when I had to say it at 17 years old, maybe, maybe, even for me, man.
But I did remember how they had made me feel there was something. He left a bookmark for me. Just like that guy at that center for my son left a bookmark. That's the best we can do sometimes. We left a great chapter of him, but he wants to pick it up again to come back to. The road is easy, the bridge is built, we are happy to see you. I think sometimes the most important job of any AA meeting is the greeter.
I mean, imagine, man, walking into that beauty. And so, I mean, I had federal charges over me. I was a juvenile delinquent, you know, you guys all know. So they were going to pull back a federal charge to stick it on me, wait till I turned 18 because I was aging out of the juvenile justice system and I got busted for another thing. It was a small town. There was one judge. Imagine, one judge. I mean, you can only say I won't do it again so many times to the same judge, which is like a miscarriage of justice or something.
But I'm telling you, man, when I go against the same judge again, when I get caught for something else, he would say to me, I thought you said you weren't going to be here again. I thought you said you weren't going to drink again. And I shrugged my shoulders because when you're so cool and 15, that really plays well. But let me tell you, if I would have been constitutionally capable of being honest, I'd have said the truth.
When he said, I thought you said you weren't going to drink again, if I could have been honest, I'd have said, me too, me too. When I said I wasn't going to drink again, I meant it. And the first time I said it and couldn't stop, I was 15 years old and alcoholism had me by the throat. I got sent out to another facility and that's where I got sober in Sioux City, Iowa, another corn location, soybeans and cows.
Thank God though, man, I'm still connected to those people in Sioux City who got me sober. I spent my first four years sober and I'm so grateful. Such a foundation of recovery. It was a huge mecca of young people. There was a young person's treatment center there, a young person's halfway house. It was amazing. For some reason, they took me in. Thank God they took me in. But man, I still had an organ of hate for my mom and the men.
I had this terminal uniqueness. People would say to me in meetings, just let it go. I'd say, if you just said just, then we'll be just heading outside. Or they'd say, you need to let it go. I'd say, you must not have heard my story. Let me repeat myself. And always, if what had happened to me had happened to you, you'd hate too. You'd hate too. There's something different about my case, always. The only way I made it, I came to you with brain damage.
[00:20:02]
I came to you more feral than human, a savage girl from a savage place, and you took me in. And I was the worst newcomer ever. I would come in late on purpose because more people look at you that way. I'd wear clothes that didn't belong on a stripper pole. And I mean, I would gossip about everybody and then go upstairs and pretend I hadn't just done that. And I couldn't read the big book because it's for you older people.
And I couldn't get a sponsor because I mean, I could not find anybody smarter than me. That was an actual thought that I had. It's craziness. The old timers let me chair a meeting. What are they thinking? So I chaired it on the science fiction book I had just read. And they'd come up to me afterwards, and they patted me on the shoulder. They said, keep coming back. And I swear to you, I thought they said keep coming back because I had just chaired one hell of a meeting.
I had changed the annals of alcoholism. I mean, this is crazy. But I mean, I was full of hate, full of uniqueness, full of crazy. And I was one of those weirdos in the back of the room. God, that was me, man, the outliers. I was sitting in the back of the room, my arms crossed. And you think we're not listening. The opposite is true. We are hyper-focused, as a matter of fact, on what you say. Most particularly, we are hyper-focused on how you act the minute that meeting's over and the other 23 hours of the day, because we're looking for a way.
This won't work either. See? There's a creepy guy in this institution too. This won't work either. Though we look like we're not paying attention, like I said, we're hyper-focused, and that was me for sure, man. I could hear you say, when you said deep inside every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. And I'd hear you say that, and I'd think, oh, not for me. I beg God to help. But you had been so honorable.
All that time in meetings, there had not been one creepy guy making me feel some kind of creepy way, saying some kind of creepy thing, lying, having motive, I had none of that. So only because you were honorable, when you said these words about God, I could at least believe that you believed. And that was enough. That was enough. And I want to tell you this, man, if you're here, and you think what happened to you was too much.
If you think what you did was too much. If you are here tonight, and you are sure that there is something wrong with you that's not wrong with the outside of the rest of us, I think you can already see that I understand. So I'm just asking you to take it as a present. What if it's all a present for us? I think that it might be. I had no social skills. I mean, I mean, growing up hungry and on my own and stuff.
I mean, I could find a way to get free food, I could find a way to get free booze, I could do all those things. But I, I'd never heard of antifreeze, for instance, or income tax. It was shocking when someone told me about that. I mean, I'd never had a checking account. Here was a big thing. You had told me, go to work on time. Like that, wait, I mean, this whole new thing, it was just like almost too much and that you took me in, man.
And I mean, it took a while for the crazy, you know, for the brain to begin to heal. I mean, physically, medically for the brain to, I ran out of gas 11 times in my first year of sobriety, if that gives you a vision. Oh, you know, that like strong suggestion, you don't date in your first year. I did that because no one wanted to date me. Now, come on now. I'd have dated a toothless guy. I mean, I'd have gone for anything.
No one wanted to date me. Because you know, the toothless thing, there's always dental insurance and then they're grateful, which I'm pretty sure is a double winner. I think that we coined that way before Ellen and I ever got in there and stole that from us. But I think you can see the vision. I think we're clear on that and we can move it on now. Ah, but those three in the mornings when you're sober without a real sobriety.
Those are rough. Those are lonely. Those are almost as hard as the ones drunk, man. Maybe harder. Oh, the loneliness and the rage and the self pity. Self pity is as dangerous as resentments, man, because it feels so good.
[00:25:06]
I had a job in a nursing home. I was about three years sober and no social skills. I hated women and I really hated men, so I was a little lonely. So I got on my shift that night at this nursing home and I had the worst resident, honestly. She was awful. Her name was Edith and she had been dumped there by her kids. She'd had a stroke, so half of her body didn't work, but the half of the mouth that could, could cut you down, man.
And I had her on shift that night. I'm like 19 years old, two, three years sober, no, three years sober. And so here's what I called working a program. I'm going to be nice to Edith. That was as far as that went. And so I have to give her a bath and she's 82 pounds and she's 80 years old and she's just a lonely and bitter old woman and I was a lonely and bitter young woman. So I get her into the special place to give her the bath and how you get a paralyzed person in is first you disrobe them and I transferred her to a special chair, secured her, and then I pump her up in the air and then pull her over and then put her down in a special bathtub.
So she's now in the air naked. And I say to myself, what would a bitter and lonely old woman want to talk about? She would want to talk about her history. So I said, Edith, did you used to be pretty? She said to me, did you? And that bitter and lonely old woman, because I can recognize a master when I'm in the presence of one, and that bitter and lonely old woman became my best friend. And I tell this story because we think we know what love is, the kind we have to have, what it looks like, who it looks like, what they must have, bull.
God invented love. God holds the copyright on love. You think that wasn't some magic math going on right there? Two bitter and lonely women became best friends, man. I'd get to on my shift, I'd ask to have her, I'd do her fingernails. She hated the man of the week who broke my heart, and I loved her. I'm so grateful. If you're in that space, man, you can't find love. Well, you're not in charge of it.
You didn't invent it. You don't have a copyright. Get a dog from the dog pound there. There you go. Do that, man. My father appeared back in my life and offered to pay for me to go to college, which was a challenge. I've had two senior years of high school. My second senior year of high school was my first year of sobriety. That was a party. In the Midwest, you take the ACT primarily as a college entrance exam, and if you ace it, if you get it all right, you have a 36.
I got a four. I graduated 382nd out of a class of 384, and so here's how crazy I was. They give you the class list with the rankings, which is like HIPAA or something. They shouldn't be doing that. So I'm like, I'm not on the first page. So I'm turning the page, turning the page. I'm on the last page, 382. I look at the names of 383 and 384, and I thought to myself, God, they must be dumb. What is happening?
So I find a college back in Nebraska who takes people like me. Thank God for those institutions, and miracles happened. I was four years sober when I started undergrad. I was eight years sober when I graduated. I triple majored, graduated with honors, fell in love with academia, and that is the least of the miracles in that little tiny town back in Nebraska. The most important thing that happened is that I fell in love with the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the nick of time, and I got a sponsor who fulfilled a sponsor's duties, which was to take me through the steps and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
All you had told me there was a shot at freedom, even for me, and it was to be found in the fourth column of the fourth step, and so I began the real work of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to say this part, though. I want to say how I made it, man, just so crazy, just so angry all the time, so self-centered, always up in somebody's conflict. Also self-centered, always up in somebody's conflict all the time.
How I made it sober is because of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:30:03]
So I'm asking you, man, if you're one of those people who dis in the fellowship, please stop. Our own literature even says that the fellowship is a sufficient substitute for alcohol. Now, the fellowship, though, is not a sufficient substitute for alcoholism. That was to be found in the work, that almost five years of sobriety, I was finally opening and beginning to do the work and feel the release and peace from.
The fourth step is a magic thing, I am telling you, and a good explanation, I think, an easy explanation of the fourth step is that, think of it, we're in a court of law. And I'm sitting on the elite attorney on the prosecution side, and I'm writing those first three columns, having the time of my life, I've been waiting all my life to write that stuff, as a matter of fact, to prosecute those people, institutions, and principles.
I'm making my case, man. I get done with the third column, the prosecution rests, and at that point, I stand up, walk over to the defense table, sit down, and begin the fourth column work, the defense of the very same people, institutions, and principles who I had just gotten done prosecuting. I will pay any price in humility for freedom. Something that kept showing up in my first column of my fourth step, many fourth steps in, are the bystanders, I would, long after I got freedom for the men and my mom, all that, free and clear, free and clear, still, free and clear, but I kept writing down the bystanders, why didn't anyone help us?
And it kept showing up, I didn't even have a feeling about it, I just wanted a check mark on it, you know? Finally I realized this, I don't know why, I don't know why no one stepped up and helped us, I don't know why any of that, what I do know is that I will never be a bystander. And so to this day, I am telling you, there is no child anywhere in my sight line who will grow up and ask, why didn't anyone help us?
Now I'm not suggesting you do this, it was my shot at freedom, and it's the decision that I made. I have faced down some terrifying and angry men, and it's not like I'm standing there like a badass, I'm not, I'm terrified too, but it's the decision that I made, and that is my path to freedom. Amazing thing that happened when I was in that little college town was there was this old timer named Pat, and he's had 32 years of sobriety, and I had like 5 years of sobriety, 4 or 5 years, so he was like Moses basically, and he worked out of a second edition big book, and he was an amazing man, and he and his wife Bess and Al-Anon would drive me and my little sober friend around to tiny, tiny little Nebraska meetings, and the only people in those meetings were old ranchers, and old farmers, and old railroad men, so you don't go in there and talk about your inner child, no, not gonna pass, and I learned my P's and Q's how you be in a meeting by those old guys, man, there was this one named Bill Hill, that's how he talked, my name Bill Hill, and it was always round robin, and if I made the huge mistake to sit on the side of Bill that I shared, and then he shared, he would just say something awful about what I had just said, so I'm not a dummy, so I would go see where he's sitting, and I'd always sit on the other side of him, and no matter what he said, I'd say I loved what Bill shared.
Thank God for patient and kind people, but I'm telling you, the thing about Pat, why he was so amazing is the love he had, and the love of AA, but he had two things going on with him, one is he would tell you about a resentment he'd gotten of the little local clubhouse manager, and 32 years later, he wouldn't go back to the meeting, so he had a resentment. The other thing about Pat is he had been a soldier, 17 years old, 17, 18-year-old soldier on the Western Front during World War II, if you're familiar with that conflict, and I am a historian.
I have my master's degree in the absolutely unemployable medieval British history, yes, and you pay money for that, and the other specialization is World War II, and I was a historian in undergrad as well, so Pat would tell me horror stories of things he had seen. I mean, they're emblazoned in my brain, but he'd end every story with this, he'd say, but Paula, there's one thing I will never tell. I'm like, what the heck, Mort?
[00:35:01]
What else did you see? What? What else did you see that you won't tell? The things you already told me were awful, and I always wondered what that was, and me and my little college friend moved to the East Coast after we graduated, and we got a call a year later that Pat, with 32 years of sobriety, had started drinking. He was dead in a year, and I got that call, and I put down the phone, and I turned to my friend who loved him too.
I said, Pat is drinking. She says, you know what it was. It was that resentment. I said, you know what it was? It was that secret, and like I said, I had my master's degree in history now, and I can tell you that when I was getting my master's degree, there was research released to us that I wish I had not read. There are firsthand accounts that I had to go through that I wish I did not know. Always, I was looking for the thing that Pat saw and did not say, and now I know.
I bet every dollar that I have, and I would win the bet, that the thing that Pat would not say is not something that he saw. It was something that he did, and the shame, and the hate, and the secret took 32 years to kill such a man. If you think you can hold on to that one dark thing, if you think you could just hint that there's something else and not fully disclose, I am here to tell you, you don't stand a chance.
Here's the entire truth on why we tell our full dark past. Why do we do that? Yes, we get freedom, but that's not the point. The point of fully disclosing all of our secrets is this, your secret will save a life. That's the point. Now, I have a really severe math learning disability. It's a long name. I can't remember the whole name, but what it looks like in real time is I can't divide. I can't function past a third grade level of math.
My brain doesn't wire me. My brain doesn't wire like that. How it looks like in real time is when I'm at an airport, I'm at a lot of airports, and my boarding group gets called, and I look down and see my seat number. I did it six steps this last time, but I can go between five and six steps before I have to look back down because I can't remember what my seat number is. So, it'd be five, six steps, and I have to look back down.
Okay. All right. Nevertheless, I can recognize the beauty and perfection and musicality of math. And in this program, in this work that we do, there is some magic algebra happening in the universe, in the master mathematician of the universe. How else, how else could page 124 in a big book come true? Cling, it says. Cling to the thought that in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession we have.
Your dark past, my dark past. Think of all the people Pat could have helped, man. 32 years. Do not waste your pain. Do not waste the grace that was given you. Take it. Work it through the formula of the 12 steps. It will be lifted to the magic mathematician who will change it into life-saving measures. That's what we do here. If you think we are here to be happy, joyous, and free, sorry, you're in the wrong program.
We are here. The goal here is to be of service. That's the goal. We cannot transmit something we do not have. That's why all these speakers talk about steps. Sorry, sponsors, always talking about steps. This is why people are pushing the literature so hard, because we've got to have something to transmit. What of this? What if you are the one meant to save someone's life who has not even been born yet?
What if you are meant to save the life of someone who has not even taken their first drink yet? Do the work, man. Join us at the front line. It's fun up here. It's exciting up here. Um, so I just have 10 minutes left. I don't know if I have 10 minutes more in me. You can hear my throat's kind of messy. I don't have COVID, though. Um, so, so I want to talk for a hot minute about walking through my son's drinking as
[00:40:05]
a sober person, an alcoholic son. You have that in your life. Um, messily, darkly, failingly, trudgingly. What I realized by a really intense inventory straight out of the big book I did, at 40 years of sobriety, I have 46 years now, at 40 years of sobriety, I've done many times through the steps. That's what we're supposed to do. I've done many first steps. That's what we're supposed to do. So at 40 years of sobriety for the first time, uh, it hadn't even occurred to me.
My friend, Marty from Vancouver, um, said, put your third step in columns straight out of the big book. It was magical. Um, what I realized, um, what, what am I unwilling to turn over to God? What is difficult to turn over to God? That my sons will die of alcoholism. And then I had to answer, why won't I turn it over? What is this? And I realized for the first time that what I was doing by bemoaning their drinking, by crying because they might die by being, you know, fretful and worried and all that is that I thought I was pre paying on the pain.
That if the worst happened, I will have least paid part of the price. And what would God have me be? I had to go into meditation to get an answer to that. And the answer came, what would God have me be alive? That's what. So when my boys come over, when they were drinking for those 10 minutes, I cook tape two days for Christmas. They come over for 10 minutes and they don't lie about having to leave.
Stop wasting the 10 minutes, man. That might be the last 10 minutes I ever have them live, live. And that's when I could let it all go, man. I started talking about nothing but Netflix with them and one of them got sober. One time, maybe four years ago, I was with my friend Holly, who's speaking here next month. We were in Rome. We'd been there a lot. And so our friends who hadn't been in Rome before were, you know, doing the tourist stuff.
And so Holly and I were just walking down some beautiful street going into churches and it's Rome. So like every other building. And I'm going to tell you that there in all my sobriety, living as a mother with my drinking sons, there are days that I knew that if the worst happened and I lost my sons to alcoholism. If you've heard my story, you know, I spent a minute in the fourth dimension that and I knew that at least I would see them again.
And there are days when I was spiritually connected and I knew if the worst happened and I lost my sons to alcoholism, at least they would be at peace. And there are days I was spiritually connected. I knew if the worst thing happened that at least they wouldn't have to look at me and be embarrassed anymore. And all the other days, I begged God to save my sons. So this day in Rome, I was walking to a church.
Rome has a large, large, large population of people affected by homelessness. And I'm so embarrassed to tell you this part. I'm pretty sure I can't look at you and say it at the same time. But there was a young man outside begging. He's really dirty on the ground. And I went inside and I did my begging thing, lighted my candles thing, and I left and I walked right past that young man. And I didn't go but two steps before I thought, what are you doing?
And I turned around and got to his level like we do shoulder to shoulder, our own experience strength and help, eyeball to eyeball. And I gave him a moment of humanity and some money, some touch on his arm. When I got up to walk away from him, I knew, I knew that I could not beg God to save the lives of my sons and walk right past another mother's son. That somewhere in the entire world, his mother was pleading too.
And then at that time, it did not look I would have the luck or the honor to save my own children's lives, but I could sure show up for hers. When I moved to the East Coast after undergrad, though I'd done many inventories straight out of the big book, that organ of hate was still there. It had lessened a little bit, but enough of an outside thing and the doom of the dark would come or the rage of the fight or fight harder.
Arc Would Come or The Rage of the Fighter, Fight Harder Would Come and I Knew It's Source Man of Those Men and My Mom, I Wanted It Gone but It Wasn't Gone, God's In Charge of Time,
[00:45:00]
God Invented Time, I Just Do the Work, We Do the Work Man and Wait for the Light to Shine, That's All. But You Never Know, That's The Whole Motto I Think of My Recovery Anyway, Man You Never Know. I've Had As Many Deep and Effective Spiritual Experiences Outside of AA as I Have Inside of AA. I Have a Big Life Outside of AA, I'm in a Spiritual Community, I'm in a Music Community, I'm in a PTA Community and I Love Them All and I Love AA Too.
But You Never Know. And At 13 Years Sober I Was Married, My First Husband, Boy Meets Girl on AA Campus, I Have a Second Husband Now, People Call Him St. Richard which is Rude, But So 13 Years Sober I'm Going In to Deliver Our First Son and It Wasn't Going Well, I've Been in Labor 36 Hours and the Baby Was Stuck in the Birth Canal and They Didn't Know It but the Cord Was Wrapped Around His Neck, I Was on No Medication, 13 Years Sober and the Room Emptied of the Normal Doctor and Normal Nurses and Normal Equipment and Filled with the Specialist.
And At That Moment I Looked to This Side of My Bed and Walking Up to My Bed was My Grandmother Who Had Died 10 Years Before and My Friend Craig Who Had Died of AIDS Just a Few Months Before and I Don't Have a Word of How They Felt, It Was So Beautiful. And Because I Have Lost So Much Blood I Thought They Were There for Me but They Were Not There for Me. And As I'm Looking at Them a New Nurse Came On and She Said Paula I'm Going to Get You Through This and I Turned to Look at Her and When I Looked Back My Grandmother and Craig Were Gone and She Did Get Me Through and I Delivered My Son.
And the room went silent for a long time while they worked on him and after a while they did get him breathing but it was weak and he was going to have to be in the hospital for a while but for just a minute before they took him away and the special equipment they let me hold my son and I looked down on him and I saw that he was perfect and beautiful and then out of nowhere my very next thought were of the men who had hurt me when I was a little girl and I realized for the first time that they had been perfect and beautiful too and someone else had turned them to monsters and who better than me to have compassion for what must have happened to them to turn them in such a way and it was in compassion where I was set free.
That little boy who the doctors brought back to life, that little baby boy who was born into the arms of my grandmother in the fourth dimension, in June of this year we'll celebrate two years of sobriety, saved again. I'm going to end with this. I used to have a job in the schools where I found little kids who needed a safe grown up in their life and how I found so many kids is I used my own dark past, I'd walk down the hallways of the elementary school and inhale because I was a stinky throwaway kid, I smelled like cat urine and that's how I'd find those kids and I would approach them the same way every time, I'd say oh I'm so glad I found you because haven't we all been lost on a dark night with no trace of God or help and aching for someone to say I'm so glad I found you and then I'd touch their little cheeks, I don't know why but that's when I have them and they're mine and they're safe and I got my eyeballs on them until they graduate high school.
So I want to say man I know the day is coming when my grandmother will return for me and on that beautiful day I imagine she will take me by the hand and lead me to meet the God of our ancestors and in that moment there is only one thing that I hope for, that the God of my understanding who I know now never abandoned me, who all through my childhood was with me every night crying too, telling me hold on daughter I am sending alcoholics anonymous and in that moment when I'm with my grandmother in front of that God who's always been with me, I hope that the God of my understanding will lean forward, touch me on my cheek and say well done daughter, you were so brave, thank you.
[00:50:03]
Oh wow, thank you so much Paula, it's really hard to be you know coughing and snotting and everything else and reading but here we go, I'm going to try this, thank you so much for joining us tonight, well you never know what you're going to get, you just have to keep coming back, we surely hope to see you here next Thursday, our special guest is Bill C from Atlantic, Alabama, that's hard to say, if you like this meeting please do as Bill Wilson always said, pass it on, you can help others right from your phone and computer and tell them about this special meeting, everyone is invited to hang out with us afterwards at the meeting, after the meeting on the porch, Paula do you have any closing comments, I love you and would you lead us out with a prayer reading of your choice?
Yeah, this prayer is going to be the closing comment, so I'm going to read page 99 of the 12 by 12, as you all know it's a St. Francis prayer, my most beautiful newest story of this prayer is I got to take my lovely sponsor Polly to Italy which two years ago which is the dream of her life and she had to care for Dave as you all know and it was hard and I swore to her I'd get her to Italy when the time came and so two years ago I got to do that and she took part of Dave's ashes with her and we were thinking and thinking where should we put his ashes because he was a brilliant man and we thought the Vatican because he loved history and art or like Galileo's house because two brilliant men and then the only answer that it could be and I booked us two train tickets to Assisi where Polly left part of Dave's ashes at the Basilica of St. Francis, so I'm going to read the St. Francis prayer again page 99 of the 12 by 12.
Wow, thank you Paula. Thank you Paula that was beautiful. Thanks Paula. Thanks so much Paula fantastic.