Full Transcript

I love that. At least she did call ahead of time. I mean, there have been other times. And besides, my name is Ellen Cassidy and I’m an enthusiastic, boundlessly grateful Al-Anon. My people, my people, my people. Helga, on the other hand, I think for, it feels like for two years, I’ve gotten a card or a letter or an email from her every month. I feel so welcomed. I felt, I felt so wanted at this deal. I’ve never had a St. Patrick’s Day card sent to me before, but Helga did. She is just like over the top. So Margie, you could just slide the whole time. It was great. You’ve been great. It’s not my first time with you and I love it every time I get to come back to see you. I have dear friends in the room and I’m just so grateful to be with you. This is my second time at a, like Chris was saying last night, this is my second time in front of a crowd again. The first time was really massively overwhelming, I have to tell you. It’s a lot easier this time, but part of it is because I feel so at home with you. So thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. I introduced myself as an Al-Anon, which I’ll always want to explain because explaining is how I got to Al-Anon and I’m really good at it.

I really am. Although I’ve made a list, someone already, I made a list of all the different words we say instead of control. Somebody told me the other day, making a list is trying to control. It’s what I do and explaining is one of the things I do to try to control. I try to control the outcome. I think if I say the right thing at the right time with the right words and the right inflection, then you’ll get it. Then you’ll see and you’ll want to do it my way, yes, which as we all know is the best way. So somebody said, do you want to be right or you want to be happy? Yes, that’s exactly what I want. And then somebody said, well, do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Probably can’t do both. But the last one I heard was, do you want to be right or do you want to be free? And I want that freedom. That’s what I’ve wanted since the moment I walked in here.

I wanted that freedom that’s offered me in step three, the freedom to be who it is God would have me be. Apparently it’s somebody who’s good at explaining. I didn’t have very many opinions when I came to Al-Anon. I either had yours or the opposite of yours depending on what I wanted you to do. Today I have some pretty strong opinions. One of them is somebody being called Al-Anon. If you want to watch the hair on my neck stand up, just let me be in the room when some new drunk walks in and his wife comes in behind him and she’s got the twitch. We tend to get here with the twitch and they say, oh look, there’s Bob the New Drunk and there’s Betty, his little Al-Anon wife, twitching in behind him. And the only reason they’re calling her Al-Anon is because she’s twitching in behind him. She is not an Al-Anon. She’s an alligator. They’re very snappy little people that live out in the world and really could use, really could use a program of some kind or other. Al-Anon is really only a program for people who are willing to work at it. It works if you work it. Al-Anon is, somebody said in a meeting the other day, she said it’s not, this is not about self-improvement.

This is a program of self-discovery and that’s who I found when I came here. There’s a word going around and if it’s one of your favorite words, I do apologize. I don’t mean to offend you. Although one of the things I discovered in the time of Zoom is how much I love to be appalled. I found so many things appalling. This word qualifier. People say this is, I had to have a qualifier. Let me tell you who my qualifiers are and this is how I got here. You’re looking at my qualifier. You’re looking at her. I have to report honestly that the alcoholics all left me. Eventually they all left me and I was crazier at home without them than I was when they were home. So they were not the problem. One more time, I was my problem. We have a Loretta, just so lovely, read those traditions a while ago. Normally when someone starts reading the traditions, I think, I love them. It’s so long. She did a great job. There’s a

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tradition in there that says the only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of alcoholism in a relative or friend. Number one, it doesn’t tell you you need to know who they are. All it says to you is somebody’s drinking bugs you. It’s my problem. The problem is my problem with them. The addiction to substance alcohol can skip a generation. The incessant need to control never skips a generation. It gets passed down ever so lovingly, every so lovingly and you wake up with it.

If you come to Al-Anon, now I want to ask a question. Is there anybody here who came into Al-Anon during COVID? I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome, welcome. You are one brave girl. Welcome. Tell me your name. Hi Mary, you’re home. Where was I? I’m in love with Mary. I’ve already gone around the corner. Anyway, that incessant need to control doesn’t skip a generation. If you come to Al-Anon, come for six times before you decide whether or not we’re for you. If any of what we say makes sense to you, welcome. You don’t have to have anybody to point at. You’re exactly where you belong and I’m glad you’re back, Celia. I’m in Al-Anon. I’m in Al-Anon because I have a 12-step recovery program that I practice like my life depends on it. I’m convinced today of the fatal nature of my disease and today it’s not limited to 12 steps. It’s 12 traditions and 12 concepts. The time of COVID set up these incredible things and one of them was a workshop with some people who across the country that we never would have met if somebody hadn’t said, hey would you do la-la-la and I went sure I’ll do la-la-la and the next thing you know we’re doing la-la-la and then we’re doing la-la-la and then we’re still going. It’s been almost two years now. Oh, it has been two years. We’re still going. We studied traditions. We studied concepts. We studied steps from the direction of people who’ve been in the program a while. What questions would you ask somebody who’s been in the program while working the steps for the second or the fourth or the 20th time? What would that be like? I have a committed meeting that I go to every week like a doctor’s appointment. If you want to find me, you come Monday night at 615 to the Addis and Al-Anon family group meeting and that’s where I’ll be and whether I’m on Zoom or in the room because they’re both happening at the same time, I get the same treatment when I show up at my, whether they’re my little triangles or sitting in my chair in my room, I walk in the door and they go, oh, there she is. Hi, Ellen. So glad to see you. It’s a place where I’m wanted. It’s a place where I’m useful. It’s a place that brings me great peace. I’m an Al-Anon because I have a sponsor who knows everything there is to know about me. Somebody, some darling young girl said earlier today she has a sponsor and she knows she, her sponsor knows she has a sponsor because I often think that we need a little checklist in Al-Anon that says, number one, do you have a sponsor? Number two, does she know she’s your sponsor? Because we do this whole thing about, oh, I don’t want to bug her. Come on. If she volunteered, if she agreed to be your sponsor, she agreed to be bugged and you can let her be in charge of your boundaries. That’s how you learn about boundaries because your sponsor will demonstrate that for you. My sponsor, my sweet friends, at this very moment at one o’clock in Warwick, Oklahoma, which is several hundred miles south of us, is celebrating 60 years in Al-Anon today.

She is so dear. Her name is Nell, so you can hold her in your heart. I texted her this morning and said a very pithy thing to her that I’m sure would make her cry and love me all better. And she texted me back and she said very sweet things and she said, hey, look, there’s somebody in St. Louis who needs to hear you today and get a blessing from you, so don’t screw up. I feel so special. I really do.

I am in Al-Anon and I am so grateful there is such a thing as Al-Anon to be. So grateful. You know, I think it’s, I know it’s hard to get into AA because I’ve tried to shove a couple of them through the door. Actually, I could get them in the door, but I couldn’t make them stick. You just can’t do it. I think it’s harder to come to Al-Anon. I think it’s damn near impossible to come and ask for help when there’s nothing the matter with you. I don’t know about you,

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but I had to come for a while before I recognized he was not the problem. They were not my problem. It was me. It was me. It was me. And I tell you, my first meeting was November 3rd of 1981. So I just, a little over 40 years, it’s more than half my life I have lived in Al-Anon. And it’s this 40 years of my life is about 38 years I would not have had were I not in Al-Anon. And I am ever so grateful for that. When I was 18, mama diagnosed me. Mama diagnosed me as boy crazy. And the place she sent me to be safe was Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, Texas in 1963 on the Texas Tech campus was seven boys to every girl.

Throw me in the briar patch. Just throw me in there. Oh, I went looking for him. She sent me for an education, but I went looking for him. Of course, I was always looking for him because you couldn’t be him-less. You had to have him. But mine can’t be that good. Look at him. I mean, come on. So I’m always looking for more, better, different. More, better, different. Took me six months and I found him.

I remember the moment I laid eyes on him and I remember thinking, this is it. Now, come to find out that he was married to somebody else and had two kids and was 60 pounds overweight, but none of that seemed insurmountable to me. I never liked the easy ones who go, oh, you’re so cute. No, get away from me. I want the ones you have to fight for, the ones you have to earn, the ones you have to make love you. I get a rush every time I talk about that. I don’t know what I do. I don’t have that kind of energy today. But anyway, it took me a year later. We had shed the wife, the two kids, and the 60 pounds because I’m a total re-doer when I get those little fixer-uppers. And I had my prize. Lucky, lucky me. What a prize.

We were married. I have to report to you, he was not drinking when I started dating him. I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it. I can’t cure it. I can only contribute. It’s a minor part. The fact of the matter is, six months later, he was a raging drunk. Six months later, he hit me for the first time. And I did not grow up in a family where adults hit each other. So the reaction I had to that wasn’t anything anybody taught me.

Thought it up all by myself in my fabulous little solution center right here between my ears. The very best thing I could think to do was double dog dare him to do it again. See I thought that was a power move. Come to Al-Anon and find out, nope, insanity again. It didn’t take any more insanity on his part to hit me the second time than it did the first time. And that’s the way we lived. That’s the way we lived.

I can’t tell you when this happened, but as a result of Al-Anon and working steps and working steps and talking about this, I can finally tell you what happened. Every time he hit me and I believed what he said, which was if I hadn’t done what I did he wouldn’t have to do what he did. Every time he hit me and I believed what he said, which was I deserved that. Every time he hit me and I got up the next morning and I looked at a black eye or a split lip or a bloody nose and I said to myself, it’s not that bad.

It’s not that bad. Every time I did that, a piece of me left and another piece and another piece and another piece until nine years later there was nobody left who could stand up and say you can’t treat me like that. You can’t treat me like that. The first sign that something was going to happen, I had very few conscious moments of those years. Those were just blacked out years. I do know I have two children as a result of those years. My son was three. He never hit the kids, but one day he and my son were passing each other and my son shrunk away from him. I thought, oh no, it’s not just me. It’s not just me. It’s my kids. Then this other guy came along.

My solution showed up. This one said, you know what, you don’t have to live like that and I love you. Other people had said you don’t have to live like that, but they had not added the magic word. Now when I came to Al-Anon, I only had one feeling and that was hurt. Everything hurt. I had a sponsor because this woman terrified me and she said don’t you have a sponsor, which I’m proud of. And she said, don’t you have a sponsor?

Which is I’m pretty sure not the way she said it, but that was the way I heard it.

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And I said, oh, I thought you were my sponsor. She’d been in six months longer than me. I found out later she stayed two steps ahead of me as I worked the steps. She was working two steps ahead of me. Didn’t matter. Worked just as well. Worked just as well. I’m still here. She’s not here anymore. She would say to me things like, well, I’d tell her what was going on, and she’d say, how do you feel? And I’d say, well, it just hurts.

So she made me go get one of those, they used to have these big magnetic signs. I have a little one now, but it’s a big magnetic sign with caricatures on it. You know, there’d be a face that goes, and then underneath it goes, surprised. So you’re supposed to be able to look in the mirror and look at your face and see which one looks the most like your face and get a new feeling. One day I had a new feeling, and I knew she’d be pleased.

And I’m telling you, people pleasing saved my life, until it made my world smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. But in the beginning, people pleasing saved my life. I wanted to be with you. I wanted so badly to stay with you that I would do anything, you said, just to get to stay with you. And one day I had a new feeling. I knew she’d be pleased. I could hardly wait to tell her. So I called her up and I said, I have a new feeling.

She said, great, what is it? And I said, fear. And she went, oh, that’s fabulous. What are you afraid of? And I’m like, is that necessary? Do you have to, like, nail it down to one thing? Because the fact is, once I let fear out, I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of everything. But I come from a string of Al-Anon that believes you should chase fears to its root cause, that it’s rarely about the thing you think it is.

There’s something under that and maybe something under that. And my sponsors have said to me things like, I’ll stay on the phone while you talk it out. Nobody ever gave me an answer. When they gave me an answer, they gave me a safe place. They gave me ears to hear me and a safe place. They gave me patience and time. And so I started talking about what was going on. This was the early 80s. Treatment centers were coming into their own.

We were getting treatment center jargon in the meetings. You could watch the old-timers’ eyes roll back in their head when somebody started talking about, I’m just dealing with my inner child. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. That’s not in any book. Not in any book. Not in Al-Anon. No. But I said, I know what it is. I have fear of abandonment. I’m afraid he’s going to leave me. And she said, really?

Why are you afraid of that? I said, well, because he said he’s leaving. Friday. He said he’s leaving. Friday. She said, honey, let me tell you something. The only way to tell whether or not an alcoholic is leaving you is if they’re gone. Turn off the sound and look at the picture. Watch his feet, not his mouth. They will tell you a truer story than the mouth will. Don’t try to read his lips. He means well.

He just can’t follow through. That’s all. So we worked our way down through that. The way it went was, I’m afraid he’s going to leave me. What was under that was, I’m afraid if he leaves me, he’s going to leave me alone. Alone with two kids. That’s pretty alone. I had worked my whole life to never be alone. Never be alone. I haven’t worked so hard at it the last couple of decades. But the truth is, I’m 76 years old, and I’ve lived alone three years in my life.

I loved them. I loved those years. I think I have another one or two coming back sometime soon. What was under live alone was, if you leave me alone, then I’m going to have to deal with this sense of myself I’ve had in the back of my head all these years, this terrible thing that comes up from time to time, and I’m afraid to let it come all the way up. But I know what it sounds like. It sounds like you’re not enough.

You’re not enough. You’re not enough. You’re not young enough, pretty enough, old enough, thin enough, rich enough, whatever it is. You are not enough. And there’s something desperately the matter with you, because you are not enough. And what was under you are not enough was a little kid fear of, if I’m not enough, I’m not even going to be able to take care of myself, and I’ll die. I mean, that was really what was underneath all of that for me.

And when somebody said, I love you to me, what I heard was, I won’t leave you. I’ll stay with you. So when number two came along and said, and I love you, I’m like, don’t need you, got this one. That was the way I dated, pretty much. We dated a year. That has historically, at that point, was my maximum amount of time before nailing him. And we got married. I had another prize. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

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I knew what I’d done wrong the first time. I had a little checklist in my head. I knew what to do. I’m not making that mistake again. I made a whole bunch of other mistakes. But anyway, this guy was, on paper, he looked perfect. He was the right age. He was a little younger than me, but I act silly most of the time, so who’d notice? He had a great job. As long as I worked full time, he had a great job.

He had a lovely family. Luckily, they lived far enough away that I did not have to deal with their intervention very often. He was perfect. He had one tiny little flaw. He didn’t come home nights. But, you know, I keep thinking a couple of home-cooked meals and a little, you know, and I got them. That’s the way I marked my territory back in the day. Right there. Mine. Well, what I did know is I was dealing with a subset of alcohol like I’d never dealt with before.

I was dealing with the bar drinking variety, the kind who are as addicted to the place and the people in it as they are to the substance alcohol. And the night came, he didn’t come home. It was dinner time and he wasn’t home. And this was long before cell phones. But it was right on time for martyrdom, which was one of my big tools back then. I lay on the floor of the bathroom and I cried because I was pretty sure he’d seen the two pounds I gained and that’s why he didn’t love me anymore and that’s why he wouldn’t come home.

And then I started thinking about what could have happened to him. You know, those kind of thoughts come without even bidding. They just show up in your head. These are not happy thoughts all day, my friends. These are not happy thoughts. These are not cheerful thoughts. People are not laughing and having a good time. There’s usually a lot of pain and it’s mine. And my head started making up one of those stories.

And then I decided what I really needed to do was go sit on the sofa and wait. If you’re in training for Al-Anon, you must pass Waiting 101. And the way you know you’re in Waiting 101 is if when you’re waiting you can’t do anything else. You can’t talk on the phone. You can’t read a book. You can’t wash the clothes. You can’t cook a meal. My kids would get up and they’d go, Mom. And I’d go, Shh, I’m waiting.

And that’s because when I’m waiting, I’m listening and I’m listening for the sound of those tires. I have the same reaction to the sound of those tires as I’ve heard an alcoholic say a drink did for them. I’d hear those tires and I’d go, Ah, all going to be okay now. He’s home. Oh, yes. I’m going to have to kill him when he walks in the door, but at least he would die at home. And at that point I really thought it was preferable to be a widow than a divorcee again.

Well, when I was new in Al-Anon, I followed the protocol for my little group, which was two Al-Anon meetings and one Open AA meeting every week. I had to be pretty creative to get to an Open AA meeting during the day when my husband wouldn’t know where I was going, but I did it. And I am ever so grateful, eternally grateful, that there is such a thing as Open AA meetings. And I was encouraged to go to them because I learned so much about the disease of alcoholism listening to the people who have it.

And after a while, well, one of the things I noticed right off the bat was nine times out of ten they go home. It might be that day or the next week or three years later, but pretty much they all go home, pretty much. I was sitting in an Open AA meeting with my sponsor one night and this guy was just going on and on and on. She leaned over and she said, you know why he feels guilty? I said, no. She said, because he is.

She said, what you have carried around is a sense of guilt. It’s a very different thing. You were not guilty for World War II. You weren’t. Anyway, but I didn’t know that at the time, and so my head made up the horrible stories. And the truth is he was just three hours late and drunk when he came home, and I met him at the door like a three-year-old who has been crying all afternoon, and you said stop it.

You know, I was at that. You know that place, remember, when your eyes are all swollen and the snot is going. You remember that? Oh, so attractive. No wonder they drink. Anyway, I asked him the second stupidest question you can ask. The stupidest, of course, is have you been drinking? Second stupidest is where have you been? Because, see, in my head I had made up this story that somehow he was driving his car out in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t know why. He just was, and then all of a sudden the car just blew up. It just blew up, and it was a terrible thing, and it blew his body into a ditch by the side of the road, and there’s other cars going by, but they can’t see his body because it’s down in the ditch, and he’s bleeding, and he’s dying, and he’s not quite dead yet.

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With his dying breath he’s calling me. Helen, Helen, I love you. Now wild animals are coming and tearing off body parts and stewing them in the forest. One time I was doing this at a hotel, and it was a long room, and way back they left the doors open at the back, and I see this guy walking by, and I told that story. He backed up. Luckily this was before cell phones, because I could just see him going 911.

There’s a crazy woman, but you understand. Those are the stories my head makes. It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. It’s a curse. So when I said, where have you been, the only acceptable answer was going to be in a ditch bleeding. Everything else was going to hurt my feelings, and he went, yes, he knew where I was. Well, the truth is he only went three places. He was at home, at work, or in the trap room drinking, but I had the ability to hold opposing thoughts in my head, and they never touch.

The one my life hung on is he loves me more than anything in the world. Literally, my life hangs on that. Then the other one is he’s in the trap room drinking. Now if this one is true, this one is not true, and in my deceasiness I would rather wish him dead than know the truth. I didn’t have the tools to know the truth, number one. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of information, but that was the truth, and he said, well, you certainly worked yourself up into a state.

Then he would throw the kicker in there, you know. I don’t know why I stay married to you. I’m like, that’s a big one, Elizabeth. You know what I said? I’m sorry. Now what’s the matter with this? He’s three hours late and drunk, and I’m standing at the door apologizing. I have an addiction to mind-altering men. I used to say that all the time, but I know today it is not limited to men. Anybody can play with my brain.

You don’t even have to be present to win. I can blame it on you and you never know what happened, you know. Never know what happened. Anyway, of course I didn’t leave. Of course I stayed. What happened shortly thereafter, not too long, a couple of years, who knows. Nowadays people say, well, I guess that was just a couple of years ago. No, it was a decade probably. I have a sponsor. Every time somebody does that, she goes, add two years.

Not good at that anymore. Anyway, I ended up in Al-Anon. It’s a lovely story. We obviously don’t have time, but it was a lovely story. I ended up in Al-Anon and started hanging out with my people. I’d been in Al-Anon a little over two years when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 38 years old. There’s no history of breast cancer in my family. I’m it. I’m it. There are studies then that said that cancer could be a stress-related disease.

The people who use the insurance first in alcoholic homes are the non-alcoholics. Alcoholics have blessed moments of blackout. Not us. We’re awake, and some of us are taking notes. Alcoholism is a deadly disease. It kills sweet romance. It kills relationships. It kills the people who have it. And it kills the people who love them. Alcoholism is a deadly disease. It leaves mourners in its wake. There is a line in our Transforming Our Losses book, right at the end of the preface I think is where it is, and it says something like what I’m going to tell you, but if they had heard me say this, they would have made it say exactly that.

But it says something like, If we face our losses openly and honestly, we will find in ourselves a resilience we didn’t know we had. Not in spite of, but because of. Because of. We have such losses. The loss of the dream. The dream of what you thought it would be, but also the dream of what you thought it was. And Al-Anon gave me the tools to deal with the loss of a body part. It also gave me this precious friend in my room, Al-Anon room.

And this was back in the day when they’d do the biopsy and you could spend the night in the hospital before they did the surgery. And you could spend the night in the hospital before they did the surgery actually the next day. So I was spending the night in the hospital and she came in the next morning and she says,

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you know what a mastectomy looks like? And I said, no. And she goes, look. Huh, not what I thought at all. Not what I thought at all. One more time. The statistics, what they told me then was that I had a 60-40 chance of living another five years. That was obviously a lot of years ago. I don’t mean to be disrespectful in the least bit. We have fabulous literature in Al-Anon. How Al-Anon works for families and friends of alcoholics is one of the best things we’ve ever done.

Ever done. And I can’t live without my courage to change. My sponsor when I came in was Marcy White. Marcy White came into program in 1956 or 54 when there was no Al-Anon to come into. She came into the rooms of AA with her husband as he worked to get sober. She loved the way it felt in those rooms and she wanted what they had. Alcoholic women saved her and saved me. They said, honey, if you want to work the steps, we’ll take you through them.

And they took her through the steps, through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous because that’s what they had. That’s what they had. I’ve been brought up on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I recognize it is not conference approved literature and I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t had that book. If I hadn’t had the teachers I had in that book. I’ve hung my life on a couple, up to that point I’d hung my life on a couple of lines out of the Big Book.

One of them was, but nothing happens by mistake in God’s world. I know that’s back in Dr. Paul’s story and not in the first 164 pages. But that’s the higher power I want. That’s the God I want. When something happens and you know this has got to be a mistake, this has got to be horrible, this is tragic, how could this be happening? Mr. Rogers used to say, when there’s a tragedy, watch for the helpers.

That’s what Al-Anon taught me. Be a helper. Don’t be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Watch for the helpers. They’re there. There was a sign in my Al-Anon group when I came in that said, accept a miracle. It didn’t say expect it. It said accept it. It happens every day. Don’t forget, don’t leave before the miracle. The one today or the one tomorrow either. Because if we’re looking for them, we’re going to find them.

We’re going to find them. They happen every day. And that was the God I read in Dr. Paul’s story. And the other one is the last column of the four-step inventory that basically says something like, what was your part? I actually think the word mistake is in there. But if I had read mistake, I never would have done it. So I just didn’t read that apparently when I read the book. It wasn’t on the page. I just read part.

But the thing about that was it was the first time in my life I recognized I have a part in everything that happens in my life. They aren’t some places where I’m helpless victim, and other places I have a part. I have a part. Even in whatever that was that happened to me when I was a little girl, it shouldn’t happen to little girls who didn’t have the words to tell anybody what it was that happened.

She just knew it was wrong, and she knew it was probably her fault. She couldn’t tell anybody that until she got to Al-Anon. And then she could. I want to be free of that. That’s my job. I’ve got steps I can work and be free of that. That’s what I got to do. This is a place of freedom. So I got in a step study. The only thing I know that works are the 12 steps. That’s all I know. So I got in a step study with these wonderful women who said, come on, we believe in the steps.

You take our steps, you work your steps, and we’ll do it together. And at the end of that step study, I recognized that when I live in active alcoholism, I break out in malignancies. I did not have the tools to live in active alcoholism. That thing we say in the opening, I think it says something like, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. I always want to say, if it wasn’t too much for you, what are you doing here?

And could you just tell us what you did, and we’ll all go home. They don’t want to make any guarantees, but no, no, no. It’s too much for all of us. It’s too much for some of them, too. Anyway, for the umpteenth time I said it, for the first time I meant it, if you don’t stop drinking, you can’t stay here. My life was on the line, and apparently I don’t make any moves until my life is on the line. He did eventually move out, but he told me it wasn’t because I asked him to, it was because my crazy daughter that anybody who lived with her would have to drink, too.

She’d make me want to drink. She made me want to leave home, but she didn’t make me want to drink. She was a teenager, and the spring that I was doing chemo, she turned from beige and navy blue to hot pink and neon orange.

[00:35:02]

She was in the eighth grade. In retrospect, we know now that was when drugs and alcohol got into the scene for her. I could not see it. I could not focus. I was very busy trying to save my own life at the moment. I knew she was crazy, really. She just did the craziest things. As she got older, teenager, she had these friends who’d come over to the house, and they’d sit on the floor and play music and do their heads like this.

They wore white makeup, and they were just spooky-looking people. She did crazy things. She just did crazy things. She ended up getting kicked out of her high school, and she had to go to the school where I worked. These were people who’d known her since she was five years old. She hadn’t been there two weeks before one of the teachers called and said, there’s something the matter with your daughter.

I’m like, duh. He said, we’re going to send her for an evaluation. Really? Guy from the treatment center calls three days later and says, Ms. Davis, hate to tell you this, but we do believe your daughter’s alcoholic. I said, yes. He said, huh, we don’t have a lot of moms who react like that. I said, yes, it’s alcoholism. Yes, yes, yes. I thought it was Al-anon-ism. That’s crazy. There’s no sign she’ll ever get help for that.

Alcoholism, yes, yes, yes. She’s 17. I can make her do stuff. You know, we talk in Al-anon about we don’t want to enable our children. My friends, the only person I ever enable is me. I do and do and do for somebody else because I’m afraid of how I’ll feel if something bad happens to them. It is not about them. It is never about them. I’m so sorry to bring you that news. It is never about them. It is always about me.

Then there’s a thing I’ve discovered in Al-anon that moms, at least Al-anon moms, seem to have to do everything they can think of for their child before they can let go. That’s okay. We’ve got to do everything we’ve got to do. We’ve got to do it all. And I could make her go to a treatment center and get the 12 steps, jam down her throat. But at least I would know I’d done my part. Anyway, she ended up getting sober, stayed sober about a year and a half.

About eight or nine months into that, she started hanging out in slippery places with slippery people and I knew she’d drink again. And I had drawn another line. I’d said for the umpteenth time, if you don’t go by the rules of the house, you can’t stay there. But this time I meant it because it felt like if she drinks, I’ll die. And I planned her last day, what the deadline was. I don’t want to kick my daughter out.

I love my daughter. I wanted her happy, healthy, home and whole and she couldn’t do any of that. And the day I planned for her deadline was the day I was leaving to go to Crested Butte, to the Crested Butte Mountain Conference in Crested Butte, Colorado with 600 of my closest friends because I knew I was going to need support. And that morning while I’m packing the car, she threw herself across my bed and she said, Mom, you’re going to be a grandma.

She told me later, she thought that was a cute way to tell me. I thought she was making me the responsible party again. I did and that was not a pretty reaction. That was an ugly reaction that I had. It took me a while before I picked up the phone, called my sponsor, turned myself in, told her what I did. She said, Do you want her to stay? I said, No, and I feel terrible about that. My daughter is 18.

I don’t want her to live here with me anymore. She said, Honey, if you don’t want her to. She said, There are only so many bad feelings in each relationship. Those are her bad feelings. Let her have them. There’s a page in the ODAT that talks about that. Do I have to take on their bad feelings just because they feel crummy? It’s either January 7th or July 1st. It’s either 1-7 or 7-1. One of my favorite pages in the ODAT.

Anyway, she said, If you don’t want her to stay, I’ll stay on the phone while you tell her. And I felt relief. I won’t tell you that I felt good, but I felt relief. You know, the pain is never in the letting go. The pain is never in the release. The pain is always in holding on when it’s time to let go. It was time to let go of that child. It was time to let go. And I trucked up to Crested Butte and threw myself across the bed and cried and cried and cried and cried for almost a week because I really didn’t want to kick her out.

We went through a difficult fall. She’s telling people what a horrible child I was. I mean, a horrible mom I was because she was pregnant and I wouldn’t let her live with me. And I went through telling, well, my friend Buddy Ross was a taper back then,

[00:40:00]

and I love the tapers of the world, I really do. There have been plenty of times in my years and now and then when I’ve gone to a conference and the only person I know there is the taper. And they have been the best to me. They have been the best to me. And I particularly like it when I have them trapped behind the table and they can’t get out. And I can explain one more thing to them. I had Buddy trapped behind the table one day and I said, Buddy, she’s pregnant at me now.

Because that’s the way it felt. It was still all about me. They’re pregnant at me now. And he said, oh, honey, you know what? Our son’s girlfriend had a baby out of wedlock and that child has been the light of our lives. I love babies. I have always loved babies. I cannot get enough babies. I cannot get enough. And here God was offering me a baby and I’m doing the thing that will kill you. I’m doing the yeah, but.

Yeah, but. Not like this, God. Not today, God. Not my child, God. Not now, God. This isn’t right. I’m telling God how to run the world. It’s like looking at the sunset and going, God, that’s a gorgeous sunset. If it just had a little more purple over here. My journey in Al-Anon has been the journey from yeah, but to thank you. Yeah, but to thank you. I used to say that acceptance was thank you, God, for everything exactly as it is.

I wouldn’t change a thing. Now I have trouble sometimes with the I wouldn’t change a thing. Sometimes there are things I just need to change. Normally they’re just about me. Anyway, Al-Anon has been my journey from yeah, but to thank you. Thank you, God, for everything. And I decided to say thank you for the baby. Thank you for this baby. A couple of months later she called. She said, hey, I know you’re knitting a blue blanket.

Knit faster. Had a sonogram today. Twin boys. Oh, yeah. You know alcoholics. If one’s good, we’ll have another. That second baby has made all the difference in my life, that second baby. Anyway, she ended up having him. I said I’d have more peace of mind knowing where you were than where you weren’t with those two babies when she didn’t even like dolls. She turned 19 the day before they were born. So they came and stayed with me.

They were five weeks old. My daughter said, I can’t keep them. You can have them if you want them. She was going back out. She knew she was going out. What the heck was she going to do with those two babies? One of them had a heart condition and blah, blah, blah. So she said you can keep them if you want them. Went through a really tough few months there where one day I was keeping them. The next day I was giving them up.

I mean, if you’ve never been loved by an Al-Anon, you don’t know what you’re missing. We love at a cellular level. We love the ground you walk on sometimes. I had fallen in love with heartbeats in the hospital. Love those babies. Anyway, we went through some difficult months. I was telling my sponsor, I said people don’t want to be, my friends are back in a way because they say I’m messing with them.

One day I’m going to keep them. Next day I’m going to give them up. Keep them, give them up. And she said, honey, and she’d been telling me for years that God wanted for me what I wanted for me in my heart of hearts. But I’m so afraid to make the decision. What if I pick this one thing now and then next week something better comes and I can’t have this thing because I picked the stupid thing last week.

So I just don’t make decisions. I let you make them. Then I make it your fault when it doesn’t turn out so good. And she said, she told me what she told me all along. She said, take everybody else out of the picture. Now what do you want? What do you want? She said it is, you may not get that, but it is imperative that you know what that is. I have found in Al-Anon a win-win God. I don’t have a God who makes me sacrifice so you get what you need.

I have a win-win God. If it’s good, I don’t know what the heck you need. God knows I’ve tried to figure that out. I don’t know what’s best for you. I hardly know what’s best for me. But what I know is if I keep the focus on me and if I do what I believe is best for me, I don’t know good or bad. I just know best. If I do what I believe is best for me, it’s going to be best for you, whether you like it or know it or approve of it.

It’s going to be what’s best for you. And the very last thing, I won’t resent the hell out of you because I didn’t do what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to be more than anything was a grandma. And I went to adoption agencies and I said, I’m looking for a family that wants two babies and a grandmother. Can’t get it if you don’t ask. Found a family. They let me pick the surrender date, and the surrender date was the day I was going to Crested Butte to be with 600 of my closest friends.

It was the hardest day of my life. To be with 600 of my closest friends is the hardest day of my life up to that moment. They were five months old, they knew me, they recognized my voice, and I knew them.

[00:45:02]

I knew them. And so on our way to Crested Butte, I went to Lutheran Services. There’s a lot of Lutherans around today. And I turned the babies over to their new family. And they skipped a month because they were overwhelmed with twins, but the next month they started. And every month after that, until high school, I had a meal with them. Every month I had a meal with them. And I was, I’m grandma, I’m grandma.

They got a baby girl, they got a baby girl a year after they had him, it got the twins, and they called me and said, guess what, we’ve got another baby, and she doesn’t have a grandma. So I got a granddaughter in the balance of that thing. When they got it working our lives, when they hit high school, though, it started getting a little squeaky in there. My daughter and I had both, well, see what happened with my daughter was in 1990, she came back into AA.

She spent two years out and she came back into AA. I had nothing to do with it and you had everything to do with it because you didn’t treat her like she was, couldn’t be alcoholic because she’d done drugs. The fact is my daughter was an alcoholic. Drugs were easier to get, but alcohol was her preference. And she had about, I can’t tell you now, I don’t know, 16, 17 years of an amazing sobriety, amazing sobriety.

And I can’t tell you where she slipped, I only know where she fell. She was 39 and diagnosed with breast cancer. Hello. My children are adopted, so that’s pretty weird. The only reason she found out she had the cancer was she had a sponsee. The doctor wanted to go get a scan and the sponsee was afraid. And my daughter, Melissa, said, I’ll just go with you, the sponsor. I’ll just go with you and I’ll get one done too.

Sponsee was fine. She was the one they found it in. And it was a tiny little thing. It was no big deal. She’s an alcoholic. She said, take them both and then I want those 48 G’s that you see coming around the corner. And I’m so glad she did that. They made her so happy. I bought her a shirt one time that said, yeah, these are fake, but my real ones tried to kill me. She did the restoration surgery and she had a very low tolerance for pain, a very high tolerance for drugs, and she wouldn’t let anybody else dose her the pain pills.

She did them herself. And sure enough, she ended up addicted to prescription drugs and it just went to hell in a handbasket after that. She tried about seven years. Seven years she tried to get sober again. And I think the longest sobriety she had was I think we found a nine-month chip in her car. I think she managed to be sober nine months. The one thing I’d never done was put her in inpatient treatment, but this mom felt like she had to do that, so my husband and I put her in inpatient treatment.

They told me there that people who have long-term sobriety and lose it have a very small chance of ever having long-term sobriety again. The cancer came back. She would not. It’s a long thing. She ended up no drugs, just drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking. She had married back there when she was early sober. She had married and gotten two college degrees, brilliant girl, and had two more little boys.

These little boys are 22 and 24 now. Anyway, they moved in with my husband and me. I wish I could tell you about him. I wish I could spend the whole hour telling you about him, the prince. He was an experiment. I just wanted to see if I could date somebody and be me, not try to figure out what I thought they wanted. Could I just be me? We dated for like five years. What? Yes, five years. Whole first year there was no physical thing going on, except that after a date he’d walk me up to the door and he’d pop me on the arm and he’d go, See you.

Call my sponsor. Something’s desperately the matter with one of us. She said these crazy things like, have a good time. Have a good time. When it’s not fun anymore, we’ll talk about it. I’m so afraid you should get out now before it gets bad. You can handle it, Ellen. Have a good time. Anyway, she had these two little boys. She divorced, blah, blah, blah. Gets heavy into AA when she comes back to Texas.

Anyway, so this is June of five years. I married the prince.

[00:50:02]

He was not in a program, and my sponsor said when I started dating him, is he going in counseling or something, or 12-step program? He goes, if they’re going to date you, they’re going to need some help. Thank you. We were married two years when he walked up to the podium and said he was an alcoholic and never took a drink again. I didn’t cause that either. I did not. He says he dated his way into Alcoholics Anonymous.

Fine. Fine. Because if he hung out with me, he had to hang out with you. That’s just what he did. He was such a good guy. My daughter, when we’d been married some years, a few years, she gave him a card on Father’s Day, and she said, where were you when I was growing up? It was just so lovely. Could never have planned that. But anyway, in June of 2013, things were horrible out at her house. The police had been called.

The current husband was getting ready to evict her and the boys, who were 13 and 15 at the time, and my husband said, I think we’d better go get the boys. So we went out and got the boys, kept them for the summer. She couldn’t be sober. They sent me pictures of empty bottles on her bedside table. Now will you come get us, Mimi? Yes, I’ll come get you now. And then in October of 2013, the younger twin, the one who made all the difference in the world, Cameron, Cameron killed himself driving drunk in a one-vehicle accident.

One-vehicle accident. His parents are devastated to this day, but they would not hear us, could not hear us tell them about the disease of alcoholism. And the first question his brother asked was, was he drinking? Yeah, he was drinking. My daughter went over the edge when that happened. She went over the edge. She attempted suicide again the week after he died and couldn’t do it. There weren’t enough pills in the world she could take to do it.

She just couldn’t do it. In January, no, in September of 2016, the other twin got sentenced to prison for the second time. He didn’t drink until he was at graduation night. And he said, I can handle this, I can handle this. By the time he was 18, so by the time he was 21, he was a convicted felon and in prison. It was all alcohol-related. So now we’re in 2016. He’s going back to prison again because of the drunk driving conviction that he had and they sent him to a judicial treatment center hoping he might catch alcoholism in there.

In 2016, my husband and I had been married nearly 25 years and he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and he was given four to six months to live. He’d been sober 20-something years, 22 years, 20-something years at that point. Thank God. When he ended up in hospice, one of the hospice nurses was an AA and she treated him like he was a king in there. She was so honored to be at the bedside of somebody with sobriety who had died sober.

In January of 2017, the cancer was back. We didn’t see a lot of Melissa. She didn’t want to come around. She didn’t want the boys to see her and I totally get that. We talked a couple of times but very little contact with her. But what I understand when I’ve been able to piece together is she apparently got a phone call one day that said the cancer was back and everywhere. It was everywhere. It was just a matter of months for her.

She was 47 and she tried the drugs but she couldn’t do it with the drugs so she took her own life on January 17th of 2017. Three and a half weeks later, my husband died. The prince died. I know, I know. I called the guy at the funeral home and I said, Hi, we’re going to have to talk again. He said, We’ve got to quit meeting like this. People are talking about us. I know, I know, I know. AA and Al-Anon teach us how to live but they teach us how to die.

It’s part of living is dying. Watching my husband, watching his sponsor, watching the men who just hung around him those last four months, it was amazing. Melissa was going to AA meetings. She was doing everything she could do except surrender, except that. She died terrified and alone. My husband died. He was in three 12-step programs by the time he died.

[00:55:02]

My little fixer-uppers sometimes need a little extra help. When he died, there were people from two 12-step programs in the room with him. I put him in a hospice where he could have 24-hour-a-day visiting because I knew he’d have 24-hour-a-day visitors, and he did. People going up there to see him in the middle of the night just to sit with him. Just to sit with him. I know I don’t have much time, do I?

No, I’m five. Holy criminy, we’ve got to get done here, my friends. I just want to tell you so much. Let me just tell you, I’ll tell you two things. The year after they died, I have never been as inundated with gratitude as I have been. How in the world did I end up being her mother? All the souls that have ever been on this planet, all the souls that will ever be here, I’m the only one she ever called mom.

Every time she said mom, my little heart tingled. I don’t know how I got to do that. How did I get married to Dick Cassidy and stay married to him for 25 years? We were together 30 friggin’ years. How does that happen? How does that happen? I am so grateful. I am so grateful. Now, my boys have stayed with me. That year after they died, I’d go to conferences and things, and these women would come up to me and they’d say, can we talk about Melissa?

Can we tell you what she did for us? You know that I wouldn’t be sober today if she hadn’t done what she did. And every one of those people who shared a story with me, I knew a little light of my daughter’s still lives in that person. There are little lights of her everywhere. These people who came up to me and said, did you ever sit next to your husband in a meeting? You know how hard it was to keep a straight face?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I do. He treated everybody like you were the most important person in the room if he was sitting with you. There’s lights of him everywhere. The next year, 2018 comes around, and all of a sudden I got like six new sponsees who popped up. Most all of them are alcoholic women who’ve come from I don’t know where. Some of them from other parts of the country. Most of them are people I’d known for a while, but they decided they really, really, really, really, really, really need to go to Al-Anon.

And I thought, what the hell am I going to do with all these women? So I started a step study. I got so many of them. I do one in the afternoon and one at night. And we started doing a step study. And I’m thinking I’m doing it for them until we get to the first step. No. You’re the one whose life has totally changed. You don’t know who you are or where you are anymore. I’ve got to do the steps. Five weeks to the day after my husband died, our great-grandson, Mason Taylor Rodriguez, was born.

And God gave me another baby. I call him my little rainbow boy. He’s my promise that nothing will ever be that bad again. And I have a sponsor who I’d walked with her when her husband died, and she kept saying to me, you have no idea the depth of joy you’re going to be able to feel if you walk through the grief, if you face this loss openly and honestly. And I want to thank you. I want to thank you for your patience with me today, and thank you for holding the light for me, holding the light for all of us, for Mary, who just got here.

Thank you for holding the light. Thank you for being my friends. Thank you for being my heroes. Thank you for being here. Thank you.