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Source: Mildred F – From Toronto, Canada – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mildred-f-from-toronto-canada-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:05:43
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My name is still Mildred Frank and I'm still an alcoholic, hi, better get a Kleenex in case I start crying. Thank you so much Aaron, it's been wonderful, you've been one of the nicest, loveliest hosts I've ever had, and if I didn't have everything that I needed it sure was not your fault, but I did have everything I needed, so thank you. I'm kind of almost embarrassed to be up here, you've had too much of me, and you know a great deal about who I am from the things I talked about yesterday, so I thought this morning this is kind of an afterthought.
However, you know we listen to the music of AA, and the music of AA comes through each one of us, and I am so happy and honored to be with Candice and Carla and Katie. Listening to your music has made my soul very happy, and I guess that's really what I'm here about, to tell you who I was, what I was like, what happened and what I'm like now, which is the music of AA. It's God's grace that makes this possible.
It's not about fine stuff and personalities and all that, it's about I think getting to the place where we understand what the deal is. I always thought, you know for a while, I thought my life went down the dumper because I drank alcohol. I don't believe that now. Alcohol gave me relief, it gave me release, and it allowed me not to have to take my life so I could get through what it was I had to get through, so I could get to the place where I could say, I don't know how to do this, because I know one who does know how to do it, and if I stop trying to impose my will, things change.
Bill in step 10 in the 12 and 12 talks about how we come here. He says we love but a few, we're indifferent to the many, and the rest we kind of hate. I think that's kind of the way he says it, and that kind of really describes me to an extent, except I didn't love a few, I hated you all, and I wasn't indifferent. I wasn't indifferent. I didn't want to be here. That's where life had taken me. So I'll tell you a little bit about childhood.
I was thinking this morning as I was thinking, what can I talk, like how will I couch what I want to say? And of course the book tells me, I share my experience, strength, and hope. And my experience began on a farm in Saskatchewan with me being the youngest of 10, a lot younger than the others were. I hated Saskatchewan. I hated the farm. I hated my family. I hated the Roman Catholic Church, and I hated being German.
Other than that, life was great. I just remember crying. That's my first recollection, as I said yesterday. And you know, sometimes people say, well, you know, we leave our past behind, we leave our childhood behind. I'm not sure that I agree with that, because right now in my personal life, I'm feeling a little raw. And I'm not going to talk about that, because it's not something I should be talking about personally, or publicly, I should say.
But I'm right at that point again, where God is at work in my life, and things aren't quite resolved yet, and I don't know how they're going to get resolved. And that's always a place in me of rawness, because you have to be open, you have to do the things that you need to do, and so on. And again, I realize that in some ways, I am the product of my childhood. I am the product of what happened there.
That it left, it was the way I learned to think about life, it was the way I learned to make decisions about life, and all of that. And that is basically what has landed me in the position where I am today.
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So I can't say I'm going to leave that behind. So, on the other hand, it isn't something that I can blame. And that brings us, of course, to what am I doing here? What am I doing on the planet? I often say to sponsees, I think if you want to know what you're doing on the planet, go sit in a cemetery. Now that may sound like a weird thing to say. But the fact is, we've got stuff to do here, but what are we doing?
Is it all about the third dimension? Is it all about getting stuff done on this human plane? Or is it what we learn? What is the curriculum, really? What am I here to learn? What am I here to accomplish? You know, I think of people like Steve Job. They had it all, didn't they? Had accomplished a great deal. And then there's the young man who died last week, who was found with a syringe in his arm. And he had his purpose, too.
And a thousand people showed up the night before we buried him to say goodbye. I mean, what is life about? Like, I think about that a lot because it helps me to make the decisions I need to make and to live the way I want. Because I ask myself often, are you the kind of woman you really want to be? Are you doing the kind of things that you really want to do? Are you an honorable person? Are you the kind of person that you would hope that you could grow into?
And there are various answers to that. So what did I learn in childhood? I learned that life is unpleasant. It sucks, actually. I learned that nobody cares about me. I learned I'm unimportant. I learned that I'm always left out. People, when they're having fun, they don't want me. Having fun, they don't want me. And I could go into chapter and verse and explain about that. You know, and if you think I'm talking out of line, read what Bill says in Step 8 in the 12 and 12.
Where he says, we've had experiences buried below the level of consciousness. At the time of these occurrences, they have given our emotions violent twists that have since discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worse. And I think to me, like my brothers and sisters, they had a completely different experience of the world than I did. They were adults, and they understood about my retarded sister.
I didn't understand about that. All I knew was she was crying, and I cried. And I wanted her to be fixed, and I wanted the crying to stop because I wanted to stop crying. And so I tried getting the world to fix my life. That's one of the things I still do sometimes if I'm not careful. I want somebody out there to be different so that I can feel different. And it never works, never has. It's a temporary fix, and it doesn't last.
But I still do it. And if you say to me, you know, leave your past behind, I think you're leaving a valuable thing. I don't think we have to dwell on it. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, but it is the basis of what I have to do today. I'm always amazed, you know, when people are surprised that at 41 years you're not fixed. You know, it's one thing to be sober, but let me not use the gift of sobriety to stay stuck.
I've got the gift of sobriety so that I can move on into the depths of what my soul is calling me to do, see, and what this deal is really about. So when my brothers and sisters didn't fix the situation, those are the ideas. How's a kid supposed to think? Bill says, you know, these are emotional twists that we have. And then I took a drink at five. I was a sitting duck. There's alcoholism in our family, and I won't go into all of that, except I had a brother who was sick with this disease.
But at that time, when I was born, they didn't recognize alcoholism. He was the black sheep of the family,
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so they said, excuse me, it's not politically correct to say that, I know. He was the person with no willpower. If he only pulled up his socks, that's what I heard about that business. When I took the drink, my father had his friends in, and I poured the drink. It was very cute, little Mildred pouring the drinks. I poured some into myself, not knowing it was like anything else. And I went to a place I didn't know existed.
Suddenly all the pain was gone. All my frustration was gone, and I was in a place that I wanted to be, that I chased for the next 35 years, and that I couldn't stop, because when I drank, I didn't care about what the consequences were going to be. I was willing to pay the price. I was willing to wind up in the difficulties that I experienced, and so on and so on, because it was worth that to me to get the sense of relief and ease.
And of course, there's always, as Dr. Silkworth says, you can't distinguish the true from the false. It's going to be different this time. All I want is that relief, and then, you know, whatever. And I never fit. This morning, I took a little inventory of my life, and I thought, I never fit. And you know, when you said this morning, we're going to start a meeting, I almost cried, because I thought, I do fit.
I do fit at the meeting. I do fit with you. And that's a gift. I didn't always feel that way in AA. I always knew that I fit here, but I didn't feel comfortable as part of, because that sense of isolation in me, that sense of being different, that sense of separation, that thing Chuck Chamberlain used to pound home to me. He'd say, you have a feeling. He didn't say we have conscious separation. That's impossible.
If God is everything, how could that be? It's not the truth, and that's why it's so damning, and that's why it's so painful. It's a feeling of conscious separation. And I have carried that, and that's one of the reasons I meditate, because that feeling of conscious separation, it feels to me every time I sit in the silence, it's healed just a little more, and I'm brought more to that intersection where God and my soul meet, and that's where I then find myself, and I never knew who I was.
So, I'm smart, and that's where I fit. You've got something that we have to do with the intellect. I'm your girl. Sports, I'm a klutz, and I always wanted to be picked. I always wanted to be picked. I remember as a little girl running across the playground. This stuff goes so deep that sometimes, you know, the tears just come. I remember going across the playground saying to these little girls, why don't you like me?
Why won't you play with me? I'm a nice little girl, and they'd laugh and run away. You see, you learn something about energy, what goes on in here you can't get away from, and so I'd run across the playground, and they'd run away, and then came the biggie. I've got money. I'll buy you things. Yeah, I've bought a lot of things. I've given my soul away. I've given myself away. So that you would love me, and that you would like me, and that I could feel part of you.
Oh, my God, why am I bawling? There's been a very personal feeling here this weekend, hasn't there? So that, I guess that's why. And so, I'm smart, as I said, I went to a little country school. I finished my 8th grades in 6 years. I finished high school when I was 14, and I wanted to be a lawyer. And that's what I thought. And I had to. I had it in my head that people on a farm weren't smart.
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You know, my dad and mom were Americans. My mom was born in Illinois and my dad was born in Minnesota. And they came to Saskatchewan to be pioneers. You know, I wish now that I could talk to them and ask them when they were still alive. I was so disenchanted and I was so feeling of isolated, I didn't care. I was so ugly and so full of myself. I'd like to know where that courage came from, that they moved from a place where they had businesses and opportunities and said, we want to be pioneer.
We're going out to Saskatchewan and we're going to get free land. And my father, by the time I came along, was a wealthy man and I didn't appreciate that. I wanted a father who wore a business suit and if he wore a shirt and tie, it didn't matter what else, he'd be somebody. That's the way I thought. And so, he said, you know, you can go to university, but he said, you're too young. And in those days, you know, I don't think they would have been too happy to see a 14-year-old on the campus.
And so, I just, I kind of hung around for three years and I became a very, and my alcoholism was progressing. You know, I didn't go from five and then start drinking somewhere. I drank all the way through as much as I could. And you know who kept after me was Dora. She'd say, Mildred, you're going to become just like our brother if you don't watch out. Because I let her know that I was stealing booze and all that kind of stuff because she was my buddy.
And so, at seven, I had gone to a Catholic finishing school with nuns and they were great teachers. I don't have any of those horror stories that people sometimes say. They were fabulous teachers and I got a great education. And when I was 17, one of the girls that I had graduated with said she was going to become a nun and everybody made a great fuss over her. You know what's next? I'm going, I announced that I was going to be a nun and everybody laughed.
The nun said, you can't, you don't belong here. I went to another community. They said, you don't belong here. Our pastor laughed at me. He said, you don't belong in a convent. He said, get to Saskatoon and go to, do what you want to do. Now, why didn't I? I was afraid of life. If you are who I am at that point, you've got a big facade. Yeah, for sure, you've got a big facade and a so-called big personality, but you're scared to death inside.
And I had learned something that when I have a problem, you don't help me. And if I get a problem, I'm in trouble, so I better stay where it's safe. I've got a second thing. I had asked God, I didn't have the experience where God was a mean creature. God was love and God was power. That's what I heard. Whether I heard it in my soul or whether the priest said it, that's what I heard. I asked God to fix Dora.
He didn't at the time. And I used to see the sunsets. And Saskatchewan has some of the most magnificent sunsets. And I'd see the Aurora Borealis dancing across the sky at night. And since there were no big cities around, I'd look up at the starry skies at night and I'd think, how can you do that? How, if, who are you that you can make all that wonderful stuff and you can't fix my sister? So, my other reason for going to a convent was that if I do this hard thing, I didn't want to go.
But I thought, if I take, if I go and do this life, then God's going to fix. You know, it's just amazing to me how this thing always works out. I think it was a great thing for me to be there. It may not have been so great for them. But, you know, in 15 years, I got a great education. I can't ever say I wasn't treated well. I mean, they taught me the kind of things I didn't believe. Mother Superior used to say, we'll break you.
You know, I think we understand. We've grown as a species. We've grown in the way we do transportation and communication and health and all that. We've also changed spiritually.
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See, we've gone from thinking different. They weren't bad people. They were of their time in this kind of semi-cloistered community. And Mother Superior said to me at one point, she said, you know, you've got, you know, you're a bad girl, in other words. And she said, we'll break you and then we'll put you together. We'll fix you. That wasn't unreal. That wasn't out of line as far as monastic life was in those days.
Anyway, I better get on with it. Nobody in those 15 years ever stopped me. Nobody ever asked me about the alcohol. They, Mother Superior knew, but nobody ever questioned me about it. They just put me in psych wards. And that's why I have this great history of 32 incarcerations and being tied to the bed, not for fun and frolic, by the way. And the straight jackets and the cold water baths and all of that.
And then Mother Superior, she was really enlightened. She said, you aren't happy here. So we got my dispensation and I left. And, you know, I'm now 33. And I've been in a convent 15 years. And I have to face the third dimension. I have to drink. I drank in the convent, you know, and that's another whole talk I could give. I used to go to sleep in the confessional because nobody thought of looking for me there.
Anyway, I found the men, I found the bars, and I went to a life of degradation. That shocks me when I think about it, you know, the way I lived and the way I carried on. And finally, I signed myself into an insane asylum and from there went to Saskatoon, met Dr. Hoffer, he got me, made sure I went to AA. I go to AA and, again, I don't know what's going on in life. My dad said, my brother got sober, AA is good, you get transformed there.
Good enough for me. My dad was happy with that. And if he was happy with that, I'm going to get some of that. I go to AA, I wait three weeks, nobody transforms me. I feel crappy like I always do. Without, now, I haven't had a drink, I haven't had a pill in three weeks, and I'm raw. And so, I sit in AA stoned for five and a half years. You know, when I think of my life, I think, how did you ever make it to 81, jeez.
And I, at five and a half, I left and I thought I'd be okay. I remember thinking, I don't need AA. And, yeah, I did need AA, because by this time, I'd married my psychiatrist. He, too, was an alcoholic. I started to drink, he started to drink, and we lost everything. I had DTs, convulsions, I've had six convulsions, and I couldn't stop. And I could go on to the horrors. We lost the houses, we lost the cars, we lost everything.
And I wound up on a park bench, and what I had was my stuff in a little plastic bag and a little suitcase. And I lived on a park bench for three weeks, and that's where the police picked me up and took me to the psych ward, and I woke up in the psych ward, and there were two men at the foot of my bed, and they really were there. And Sunday morning, the nurse took me. I was 40 years old. I didn't have a clue, didn't have a clue.
And I just hallucinated for a day and a half, and Sunday morning, she took me and walked me to the washroom. And I saw myself. I had a big eye, a big mark on my face, and teeth knocked out. I weighed 85 pounds. My hair was straggly, and I said to her, I've become a woman of the streets. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. Knowing the family that I had come from, they were a family of integrity and decency.
And now my brother was sober and AA, and here I am. And I finally faced it. You're homeless, you're friendless, you're penniless, you haven't got a clue. You've tried education. You've tried religion. You've tried everything you know, and look where you are. And I thought, what could I do? Like, is there a way that I could get around something? And I couldn't think of a way, not a thing. I just said, I, that does it, I'm out of here.
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I can't do this anymore. One of the most powerful prayers I have ever said, and I meant it. Asked the nurse to get my clothes, and she went to get my clothes. And I relive this quite often, because it's the most powerful thing I know. William James, in one of his writings, said, you know, he talked about the religious ideas, the dogmas, the things people believe, et cetera. He said, he talked about the power of our experience.
Do I believe that there is something bigger than I am? Absolutely. Do I know what it is? No. Am I interested? Not really, because I know what it does. That's all I need to know. I know it runs the universe. It's bigger than I am. It's bigger than you. It's bigger than all of us. And that morning when I stood there, in that state, nobody was more surprised than I was that one minute I stood there with the idea, I'm going to go and take my life, and the next minute I stood there saying, I don't have to drink anymore.
It was that sudden. I thought, I don't have to drink anymore. I was just shocked. And I remember saying out loud, I heard myself say, I don't know how to live sober. You'll have to send me somebody. And there was a rap on the door, and that really happened, too, and that man stood there. And through him, I got to Donwood the next day, and they took me in, and I was there for 28 days. And then off I went to Skid Row.
See, I think sometimes we mistake what spiritual experiences are about. There's spiritual awakening, which happens over a period of time. And there are things that are experiences. I'm here, and bing, I'm there. That's an experience, see. And that was an experience. And that doesn't change your life. I was still penniless. I was still homeless. Everything that I was before I took, before that happened, was still there.
And that's what the rest of the life, and that's what, to me, Alcoholics Anonymous is about. When that compulsion and obsession gets taken, then the world opens up before you. Then you can start to see what's really going on. You can start to see, what is it about? What am I doing here? What am I supposed to be doing here? As I said, am I the kind of woman that I want to be? Am I doing the kind of things?
Do I feel comfortable here? Could I be proud of the way I live, and all of that kind of thing? So I lived on Skid Row for a year. After six months, my only, in that six months, I think about Kurt Vonnegut. He talks about the lonely man on the street, and talks about him with his hat pulled over his head, thinking, if I were to die tonight, nobody would know. You know, I tell you about my mother, about going back about six years, I guess.
I had gone home one day, and I'm the ex-nun. Like, you know, and this family that I didn't like a lot, they were nothing but gracious to me. All they ever said, how can we help you, is, and I had disgraced them. I'm leaving out the details of some of the degradation that they lived through because their little sister was misbehaving the way I was, in a very public way. And I had gone home, and the day I was supposed to be flying back to Toronto, which is about 2,500 miles away, they opened my suitcase because I was in a blackout, and they found 18 empty vodka bottles.
And when I came out of the blackout, my mother was sitting there crying. I didn't like my mother. That's another whole story. She was a great woman. I didn't like her. We had something between us. like her. We had something between us, don't ask me what. And, you know, I think we meet
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people in life that we have stuff with, and can't always describe. She didn't ever do anything to me, but I don't think we liked each other, and there was an energy. Anyway, she said to me, Mildred, you're going back to Toronto, and she said, we don't have, we don't have an address and phone number. What I didn't say was, neither do I, but I didn't say that to her. And she said, you could die in the ditch, and we'd never know what happened to you. And I, snappy as I was, said, I guess that's my problem, isn't it? Now, my mother at that point could have signed a document with the doctor's signature and put me in the insane asylum in Saskatchewan. She chose not to do that. Where she got the strength, you know, must be from God, because she said to me, Mildred, she said, if that's the attitude you take, that's the one we'll live with, but so will you. And that was the end of that conversation, and that was the biggest gift my mother ever gave me. She didn't weep. She didn't beg. She didn't, you know, say, oh, well, poor, you know. She, I still to this day resonate with the strength of that statement. Somewhere she understood how this universe works. And she never heard from me for ten months, and I'm sure there were many nights she cried herself to sleep. And anyway, six months into this life on Skid Row, and there were, a lot of the time, I was hungry and I was cold. And I went one day to the institution to see Dr. Maharaj, and a man said to me, do you want to come to a meeting with me?
Since I hadn't had many invitations, I said yes. I didn't know where we were going. We were going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I remember walking in, and as I said yesterday, I don't remember what I heard, but I remember what I felt. I remember what I saw. I saw faces and beings that seemed to be at peace. Beings that were living a different quality of life than I was. And I remember thinking, maybe if I keep coming back, because they said they wanted me to come back, and I thought that was quite unique. And I thought, I wonder if maybe someday, if I come back, if I do that, if I'd ever be in one of those little groups of two or three or four, and we'd be planning to have a lunch together.
So I kept going to a, got a sponsor, because she had blonde hair, gold earrings, and a white suit. Splendid requirements for a sponsor. Do you know she was just right? All I remember, she taught me was this. She said, Mildred, she said you can stay sober despite what he does, him being my husband, who I wasn't living with anymore. And our book says it. Our sobriety is not dependent on what other people do. It's dependent on our relationship with God.
And so, that's when Jim came into my life a little later. But in between, there were two men in the group, and they said to me, you're too sick, Mildred, because my sponsor got drunk. And they said, you're too sick to stay here if you don't do the steps. Just that simple. You know, nowadays, we've got so much going. We've got step studies and this analysis, and we talk and talk and talk. And they said, the steps will work if you do them. It's like penicillin. You don't have to like it. You don't have to understand it.
You just have to take it. You take the steps. You do them. I said, I don't know how. Probably the first humble thing I'd ever said. And they said, we'll show you. You come early. And people started to hold me accountable. And if you have a sponsor that holds you accountable, kiss the ground, because that person is helping. They held me responsible. They said, you come an hour and a half before the meeting. We'll read the book, and we'll tell you what to
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do. And I did, and they did, and I got through the steps. And the first thing that I realized was, in the night before I did my fifth, was this. As I read over my fourth, the light bulb went on. The world isn't your problem. You are. You're the one that has to change. And something rolled off my back. I don't always practice it, and I forget it sometimes, but I know today, you do not have the authority to spoil my life. What is inside comes out. And changing the outer doesn't necessarily change the inner.
Now, I know in AA, we say, you know, act as if, do it whether you believe. And I understand that. But somehow or other, what we do on the outside, hopefully, is going to make a change in here, so that we start to think different. Because if you don't start to think different, you know, I'll trust Chuck Chamberlain. He used to say, Mildred, stop judging. He'd say, if they see better, they'll do better. And he'd say the same to me. When you see better, you'll do better. And he's absolutely right. And so, I got through the steps, and then it was that I met Jim, and I just knew that this was a man of integrity and a man of strength. I might be crazy, but there's a strength about me. He used to say to me, you are the stubbornest, most self-centered creature I have ever met. And I'd say, I don't think you understand me right. He understood me perfectly. And he took me through the steps again and taught me some things. You know, I started drinking when I was five, and I think my growth was arrested. I didn't know how to do relationship. I didn't know how to do much except the intellectual stuff. I'm good at that. But as far as getting along with people and how to relate to the world and how things really work, I didn't have a clue. And he taught me a great deal about that. I paid off the debts because he insisted.
He said, they want your money. They want their money, not yours, because you stole it from them. And it took me seven years. I got a teaching job again, and we get paid very well in Canada. So seven years I got the debts paid off, and then a god shot. A friend said to me, you should buy a house. I said, I haven't had any money saved. My sponsor made me pay the debts. And she said, you come to our house on Saturday night, and my boyfriend and I will show you. And within ten days I had bought my first house. And I didn't have to sleep with anybody either to do it. And that was to be the first of many houses that I bought.
And the income tax rules were good at that time. The investment climate was great. And I made a lot of money. And I say that because this is that period from being sober to being 21 years sober and being suicidal again. Because if you looked at me on the outside, I was a good member of AA. I was doing the deal. I had a home group. I was at my meetings. I was speaking. I was active in the group, making coffee, setting up the chairs, sponsoring people. They used to call my old rusty car the sponsor mobile, because I'd pick them all up and they'd pile out of the car. They all got drunk. I stayed, which is also another story. But that's what that period was like. Men, women, no, not women. Men, I was going to, what's that old saying? Wine, women, and song or something. It was men, sex, money, stuff, promotions. That's what that period was about. And I learned to live. I learned to do stuff. And as I said, prayer, I was sporadic, perfunctory. Life was going good.
I mean, I could give lip service with the best of them. And at 21, when I retired and
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went into that place, actually, somebody from California had gone through the steps with me when I was 18 years sober. Because when I came in, finally, in 1973, people didn't do the steps every year. You did the steps, and you were then expected to live on 10, 11, and 12. And you were expected to get going and carrying the message, because we didn't have treatment centers. And so we were busy. You got up at 3. Cease and Prince Albert, he used to, he'd call me and he'd say, get up. Be on the porch in 10 minutes. We're going on a 12-step call. Be 3 o'clock in the morning. That's what you were expected to do. And it wasn't a bad way because you got active and you learned how to deal with people. I didn't know how to deal with people. But anyway, then when this person took me through the steps when I was 18, my life changed again. And I started to unravel. And I started to realize I got this life that I dreamed about as a little child. I've got the money. I've got this. I've got that. And I can do all that. And I'm not okay. And I don't know what to do. I'm a good member. I went to some of the older members and they'd say, go to more meetings. You know, I'm going to say something. I love meetings. But I do know this, that we can do the sponsorship, the reading, the steps and whatever. And there is some work that's private and personal that has to be done in the depths of our soul. Because ultimately this is the deal of growth in God consciousness. And so that Sunday when I thought, well, you know, maybe this is just, you know, I don't know what to do. I've done the best I can.
And maybe I should just get off. And, you know, I picked up the book and there it was. Can you make your life, take it out of the dumper? Nope. Can you make your life the way you want it to be? No, I can't. So that then gave me, I had that resurgence of love and light and energy and the courage to go on. And that's when Father O'Brien called me and I started then giving retreats. You know, Tom Ivester said something and I think it applies to all of us. Tom said to me once, he said, I had a plan for my life. I had a plan about how things would go. And he said, all the plans I had didn't materialize. But he said what I would attest to is that there has been a power of love that has guided me and all the great important things that have happened to me have come without my manipulation and so on. And that's the way my life has been. You know, people have come into my life and I'm not going to catalog all of that. But over these 20 years, that is the way it has been. Somebody came into my life who showed me how, because through his life, he heard the way I was talking. And he said, I've had some of those old ideas that I've carried from childhood. He said, they're the bondage of self. They are the lies of the false self. And we have to get, do something about those.
You see, if I say nobody loves me, what am I saying about God then? If I say nobody cares about me, life sucks. I am really, I am putting out an energy. I am living with an energy that isn't the truth. And so I went to the States and I found somebody there that worked with me and I learned what to do with those things. And it changed the way I saw the world. Like sometimes, this has been my experience. I want to change.
Experience. I want to change. I want things to be different, but I don't know how. And sometimes I can't see how what I'm doing in AA is enough. And I think Bill opened the
[00:45:06]
door when he said, of course it's enough here, but sometimes I don't see that. And sometimes it's like a cloud over my eyes, and I think I've got to try something else. And I have, on occasion, found some really good help, but it's always, I see, I come back then, and I see it was here in AA all the time. I just couldn't see it. And so if I've got to go there, and you don't belong to AA, and you show me something that's helpful, hey, I'm grateful for that. And it always comes back, because my heart is in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm not somebody who is where I am because the psychiatrists and the psychologists and the church. I'm here because the grace of God has changed me to the degree that I have been changed through what I have found in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I will live and die on that one, because that is the truth. And so, the work of change goes on. You know, I realize that so much, and that's why I'm kind of glad I'm raw, because I get to see who I really am, not the person who stands here and speaks, and the person who does this and that, but I get to see what's really going on inside. And I get a little closer to that intersection where God and my soul meet, and then I find out who I truly am. And that is, I think, our God-given privilege, that we come here and that we've learned to love ourselves.
You see, I need to love you, but I can't love you if I don't love myself. And if I don't get to that place where I believe that the spirit is my life, that's who I truly am, and that's why I want to talk about Dora's death. And, you know, like, I live off that idea. Deep within, every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God, or spirit, or life force, whatever word. The words, I don't think, are important. It's the reality that we live with. And I like what Eckhart Tolle said. He said, our essence is whole and complete right now. I don't know, I'm sure that Chuck said it, I'm sure lots of you have said it, and maybe I just couldn't hear it.
Who cares who said it? We are each other. We share ideas, and then I share something, and it's yours, and you share it, and then it's mine, and you are me, and I am you, and then the world takes on a totally different perspective. And he said, you know, there is nothing that anybody has done to you that has sullied your inner, that whole essence within you, because that's the life force. You know, everything depends on that. And he says, and there is nothing that you have ever done that has sullied that. You know what happens to me, like in this thing that I'm involved in now, part of me wants to say, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I shouldn't have done that if I had done what I would do today. But that isn't when it happened. Life is so perfect because you get to be, as Candice said, reborn. I get to do it different. How could I do it? Would I do the same things today that I did then? Would I make the same choices? Chances are, no, because I am now in the process of picking up the pieces of my soul so that I can be whole and complete and live on this planet the way I'm supposed to. You know, I'm so grateful. I used to say to people, I'm an oddball. That's the way I live. That's the way I die. And I have to say to you, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a good and wonderful person on the journey.
And as you said, we are there. We have arrived. Sure, in my fourth dimension. In my third dimension,
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I still have some work to do. And so I think I'll close with this story. It's something that happened. And again, it attests to what happens here in Alcoholics Anonymous. But like Candice said, I have to be here. I have to be part of so that I can experience. Sometimes, you know, I sit at a meeting and I think what happened here, you know, whatever. It's like meditating. I don't always know why I sit in that chair to be present to God in the meditation. But by God, as my life goes on, I do know that I am being changed through the process. See, a woman called me one day and she said, my mother just died. And she said, I was with her. And she explained how she sang to her mother and stroked her mother and all of this. And she said, I'm so grateful to you. And she and you know, I remember sitting there thinking, why is she grateful to me? We've never talked about death.
Well, six months later, my phone rang. And it was my brother-in-law. See, my dad and mom loved Dora. Just my whole family did. And my father never wanted her to go to an institution. So he left a lot of money so that one of the family members could provide for her when both mother and dad died. And so when my dad died first and then my mother. And so it wasn't practical for me to take Dora because she was comfortable in humble Saskatchewan. So one of my sisters, who is as much like my mother as you could be, took her and had a husband who was an angel without wings but had them. And they took her in. They had five little kids. And Dora would have been, I guess, 50, 55 by that time. And they took her in and she became their sixth child, so to speak. And they nurtured her and cared for her and she had a home. And about three years before she died, I was home one day.
And she called me as I was getting in the car. She came and she called and said, come here, I want to talk to you. And she said, do you still cry yourself to sleep at night? And I said, no. She said, I don't either. She said, I am really so happy. And I remember hugging her. And I remember the feeling I had that there was a transmission of something between the two of us that was unbelievable. My family wasn't a huggy family. But what happened, I think, was, you know, one time one of my nieces said that her children said, don't let Auntie Dora rock us. And she said, why? And they said, because she holds us so tight that we can't breathe. And I think all she wanted was a little human love, you know, because she wasn't married. She didn't have children of her own.
And so that's what I felt that day. And it was very beautiful. When I got back to Toronto, I told Father O'Brien what had happened. And he said, you know, Mildred, you really are so thick. I said, what do you mean? He said, you don't get it, do you? God has answered your prayers. He said, Dora found peace on the planet. He said, you think that you have to have a big intellect and you read books and that's going to do it. She found her way learning to accept who she was, accepting the love that she received, etc. And so back to my friend calling me. So my brother-in-law called me and he said, Dora's dying. And he said, if you want to be with her, he said, you'll have to come right away. And two of my sponsees were at my house that night. And they packed my suitcase and they got me a ticket. And they poured me onto the plane and I was scared.
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I was scared because I had never been at a deathbed before. And guess what? I remembered what my friend had told me. She said, I stroked my mother, I sang to her and all of that. And I remember my brother picked me up and I went to the threshold of the hospital room. And I just remember it was like a lightning thing went through me as I got to the threshold. And I knew that I knew exactly what to do. Where did it come from? Of course, from my friend in Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I went in and Dora was unconscious. And I got to spend the last 18 hours with her. And I stroked her. And I sang to her. I sang to her, you are my sunshine. And every time I go to Columbus to give a retreat, that's the last thing they do. They sing to me, you are my sunshine.
And I bawled like a baby. And I was with her. Some of the family members were there part of the time, but I stayed the whole night. And I did a life review with her. And I talked to her about, you know, what life had been like and how we had cried together. And that we could forgive everybody and that she could go a free soul. And so the morning came and the family had decided that we would take the life support. And so the family was gathered around. Not all, but some of us were gathered around. And there was a sister-in-law that I didn't like. And she was there. And, you know, some months before I had been home and my sister was giving a dinner party, and I said, who did you invite? And she included her. And I said, do we have to have her? And my sister said, yes. She said, why wouldn't you want her? And I said, because she's so pretentious. I said, she's always talking about how rich they are and how many powerful friends they have, et cetera, et cetera. And my sister, who is just as sweet and calm as can be without a beat, said, she only acts that way when you're around. And she was at the bedside. And Dora, Dora's jaw was kind of, and, you know, we were getting to the last, the end. And Agnes said to her, Dora, you can, you can move your jaw up. It'll be easier to breathe. And Dora responded. And she did that again about two minutes before Dora took her last breath. And Dora responded again. I tell you that because when I went back to Toronto, I told Father O'Brien this, and he said, you are still thick. He said, don't you understand? If Dora heard and responded five minutes before she died, do you not think she heard you, that you were together in that night when you were doing the things, the life review and the prayers, et cetera. And I felt very comforted. And then came the death. And I do believe that there is something. Because one minute, though she was unconscious, I didn't see anything leave, but something left. Because one minute she was there, and the next minute, I still remember, it happened like in ten seconds, the face became waxen, and I still remember seeing the body stretch out. And you know, I think of what Ram Dass says about dying. He said, it's like taking off a tight shoe. And she left the tight shoe behind. But I have so much, so many lessons through her. We suffered together, but we also had some powerful spiritual lessons together. So, I'm going to stop bawling at these moments.
One of these moments. You know, I've got another gift this last five years. You know, like I said, when I was a teenager, you know, I put on this big front, this big personality, this
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whatever you want to call it, crappy whatever. I could use another name, but I'll be polite. And about five or six years ago, I mean, I was changing. After the walls came down, I was changing. But the last five or six years have been magical because I've learned about the power of the heart. Even scientifically, they say it's the heart that makes the change. It's the love within us that makes the difference. The intellect is a cold business. It doesn't have that power. It's the heart that has the electrical stuff. And that's why as you change your energy, you put out a different energy and you draw different experiences to you.
And I began to realize something. I am empathetic in my head, not in my heart. And I started to ask for the opening of my heart that I would start to feel for people in a different way, to be present to people in a different way. You know, I've had some hard experiences. I've had a few sponsees who said to me, you know, you have been so good to me. You have been, you know, you've taken me through the steps and all that, but I need a new sponsor.
They needed more heart. And my heart wasn't there. I couldn't do that. And it hurt. But as I said, that's what you should do. And out of that, you know, I realized something. Seven of my brothers and sisters are gone, but I've got 35 nieces and nephews. We were a prolific Catholic family. And you know, it's just amazing to me as I have started to reach out to them in a different way, like they love their Aunt Mildred, always have.
But I reach out to them in a different way, and they reach back to me in a different way. And the other night, I was talking to one of my nephews. Never would he have said this to me before. He said, you know, Aunt Mildred, we really love you. And he said, I want you to know, there isn't anything that we wouldn't do for you. And that's, I think, them reaching back. And, you know, people say to me, now, don't be offended. Don't be offended. But you have changed. Offended? Hell, I'm grateful.
So, well, this talk has been very different from what I thought it was going to be. But I'll close with this. You know, I love this story. It's from a book called Tales of the Magic Mountain. And in it, I love these weird little stories. But it kind of says how I feel about this, how I feel about all of you, and the energy that has been here. And again, the energy, the work that you've put in, Chris, and the work that you've put in, Dolly, and your kindness to me, Aaron, and all of that.
And this, I'll close with. This monk, young monk, went to an older monk, and he said, he said, I want to become more godlike. And the older monk said to him, here, drink this. And he gave him a glass of red wine. We're talking metaphor now. He gave him a glass of red wine, and as he drank the wine, a crystal globe formed over the monk, and over everything that he could see. And instead of shabby clothes, and instead of imperfections, what he saw was beautiful light, love that he could experience. And he said to himself, I wonder if that monk knows how beautiful he is. I think I'll tell him. And he realized, as he opened his mouth, that the wine had burnt out his tongue. And he thought, I can't tell him.
Of course, the tongue is the metaphor for the third dimension, eh? But he said, I'm sure that if I remember this, someday maybe I'll be able to tell him how beautiful he
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is. And as he had that intention, what he noticed was that when he had the intention to tell people how beautiful they were, the crystal globe formed again. And I tell you, the crystal globe is over you this morning. And I see you as beautiful. God bless every single one of you. Thank you.