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Source: Sandra M – From Cleveland, Ohio – Date Unknown.mp3 File: sandra-m-from-cleveland-ohio-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:43:05
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Thank you. Applause Does that really have to be? Yeah, it does. Laughter It's not for you, it's for them. Okay. Hi family, my name's Sandra, I'm an alcoholic. Hi Sandra. Oh boy, there's a lot of you here. This is nerve wracking. Thank you for joining me today and thank you for asking me to speak. It's always an honor and a privilege to stand at this podium and it's going to be a wonderful weekend, I'm very excited and I've already had a little bit of God's light shine on my, hi Orlando, shine on some personal darkness this weekend.
Michael and I were talking, my husband Michael and I were talking a couple weeks ago and talking about our childhoods and neither one of us, both of our families have been touched by alcoholism and neither one of us had ever had a slumber party or had ever had childhood visitors in our home, in our family home. Not because somebody told us that we weren't allowed to, just because at some point at about 8 years old we said to ourselves, you know, I know how to deal with the temperature and the clues in this house, I know when to get to my room, I know when to get out of the way and when to duck, but I'm not inviting another child over here.
And last night we had the honor and privilege of having 8 people, family, you know, 8 family over to our house eating together, we had our first slumber party, we're very, very excited and we're very grateful, you know, never again can either of us ever say that's not happened for me because of alcoholism, it's over, that has been removed root and branch, we've had a slumber party, we've had a party and we're the better for it.
Would those who care to please join me in the serenity prayer? God, to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference, amen. Thank you. I took my first drink when I was 15 years old and that drink was a long time coming. I suffer from a spiritual malady that exists within me whether I'm drinking or not, and by the time I was 15 years old, that spiritual malady had beaten me into a place and my family, the people closest to me, into a place where it was very, very difficult to live my life.
I was already stooped over and hunched over, hopeless, I was struggling with my personal relationships, I had a feeling of uselessness, I was unhappy, I was full of fear, and I could not control my emotional nature. It made my life very difficult as a child, it made my parents' life very difficult. My mother has said a couple of things to me that I think are observations about what I looked like as an alcoholic before I took my first drink.
One of the things she has said to me is, if you looked as crazy as you are, people would feel sorry for you, but you don't look as crazy as you are, and it's really making people angry. They feel duped, they feel like you've lied to them. You present with one thing, you look okay, you sound okay, they think everything's okay, and then six weeks into the relationship, you've burned down their house, slept with their husband, taken their car, and they don't know what to do with that information, even emotionally, you do emotional damage to people, and that's before I drink.
That's before the drink. She also said about me when I was quite young that she could set a clock by me. She said, you are a perfect angel for six weeks. At the end of every six weeks, you do something so emotionally destructive, it destroys everything that has been done for the six weeks before. This is both pre-drinking. By way of history, my father is from the United States. He was born and raised over on West 65th Street in Cleveland.
My father, when he was 18 years old, he entered the U.S. military and was stationed in Germany. He was there for about three years, and two, three weeks before he was to ship out, he met a young woman at a disco. They knew each other for a couple weeks and partied together. My mom is gorgeous and exotic and a bit of a partier, and she had a pretty interesting and independent lifestyle there in Germany.
They age out of school at like 14. She liked to ride around in the back of motorcycles with Italian guys and go to discos and stay out all night. My father said to her a week before he left the U.S. military,
[00:05:00]
if I go back to West 65th Street, we're never going to see each other again. We should decide whether or not we're going to be married. We were married within the week. My mother moved to this country. She was 17 years old. She did not speak the language. She had never slept outside of her own parents' bed. I mean, it was just a wild adventure, I think, in her mind. It was a really difficult time. I was born two years later, and my family was struggling with her assimilation.
I mean, she's a 17-year-old rebellious kid, and she moves to this country, and she's suddenly dependent upon people that she really doesn't like that much. It was hard. My birth didn't make things any easier. I wasn't a particularly healthy baby, and my mom and I really struggled to bond. It was a lot. It would have been a lot for anybody. My mom did a great job with what she had. I certainly couldn't have done it.
But she and I were alone in a little apartment together a lot while my father worked first at Republic Steel and then at General Motors. She and I struggled and continued to struggle. I never reacted well to my mother's difficulties. My mom had some struggles of her own, and I seemed to push the envelope. I did okay when I was younger. I think one of the things that occurred was I went to my first slumber party, and I saw that that person's home was very, very, very different than my home.
I came back, and I was like, wait a minute. Apparently I've been ripped off, and everything needs to change. I'm, like, 10 years old. I don't think that's uncommon if we grow up in a family or a home that's been touched by alcoholism. The first slumber party is sometimes a rude awakening. You're like, oh, hold the phone here. Everybody's acting so normally. And then I got angry. I had other struggles.
So I struggled at home. I struggled terribly at school. I spent a lot of time being unable to focus. I kind of rocked back and forth in my chair and thought a lot about what was going on at home when I should have been focusing on my studies. The teacher was writing things on the board, and I frankly couldn't pay attention. I was thinking, you know, why can't I get this right? Why do the other kids know things that I don't?
Why can't I fit in? What's going on with my mom? Why doesn't she like me? Why can't I make this work? Why can't I get this right? It was just endless, and I was failing every class, which caused me deep and tremendous shame and turmoil. So I'm struggling at home. I'm struggling at school. I recognize that developmentally there are some kids that are way out in front of me, the same age, and I'm a nerd.
I'm a total nerd and an outcast. The straw that kind of broke the camel's back, when I was in ninth grade, I was assaulted as a school function, and it was pretty serious. It was a pretty serious attack, and it was the 80s. It was badly mishandled. People didn't have the information that they have today about those sorts of things. I was sent to school next day in the condition I was in, which was in no condition to be out in public, certainly.
And I feel badly that that was mishandled. I don't really blame anything. I think it was more a matter of lack of information than anything else. I strongly believe I had a nervous breakdown at school that day. I just couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. The problems at home, the problems at school, the problems inside emotionally, it all just became too much at one time. And I remember the kids, all the children, as I walked into the school, everybody knew what had happened.
Everybody in the community knew that I had been attacked and what had happened, and now I'm showing up for school in this same condition. They all turned towards me, and in that moment I said, I just can't do this. I just can't do it anymore. And I just kind of, I looked out the window and there were some birds, and I wanted to be with the birds more than I wanted to be in here. And that's kind of what I did.
I don't remember the next two days. Two days later I wake up in my room at home, and I said to myself, never again. I'm never, ever, ever, ever going to be hurt like that again. I'm not going to be vulnerable. I'm not going to be taken advantage of. I'm done with what's going on in this house. I'm done with what's going on at school. I'm done. I'm not getting pushed around anymore. This isn't going to happen again to me.
And I got out of the bed, I poured a full glass of Tanqueray, and started my new life.
[00:10:01]
I have never taken a social drink in my lifetime. I went to school with kids in high school that would go to keggers because it was a social lubricant. My relationship with alcohol is very different than that. From the beginning, it's about power and protection and control, and I'm not going to be vulnerable, and I frankly don't want to have a relationship with you because I think it looks painful.
And I'm a blackout drinker. I almost immediately am a blackout drinker. My parents recognize within weeks that they've got a massive problem on their hands. I'm a resentful teenager who feels like I've gotten ripped off and hurt in life, and now I'm drunk. I go from being a pretty meek kid, a little bit antisocial, I read a lot, I spend a lot of time in my room, to being like a firestorm. I'm violent, I'm surly, you look at me wrong and I go after you.
My parents did not know what to do, God bless them. They were concerned that I would burn the house down while they were sleeping, and they had every right to be concerned. They had every right to be concerned about that. I came home from school one day and they had decided enough was enough. They took me to the Department of, I guess that's human resources, and attempted to put me up for adoption, that didn't work.
They tried to put me in foster care, that didn't work. Ultimately I ended up in an apartment by myself for the last year and a half of high school. Initially I thought it would be okay, that I'd have my freedom, I'd be able to be quiet and be alone, which is what I was always after. I saw human relationships as tedious and not really worth my time. They looked difficult and painful. And any way that I could kind of stay out of human interaction was always my best bet, which if you wanted a one-sentence version of my alcoholism, that's it, I'm trying to stay out of human relationships.
As long as I keep this bottle here, I can do that successfully. I thought it would be okay, but when I moved into the apartment by myself, it was, number one, very lonely. I was ashamed. The people at my school knew that my family had cut ties with me. I'm only a couple of months into my drinking and I'm already suffering some of the worst consequences that a human being is going to suffer as an alcoholic.
I've lost my family. Physically they're gone. I have been assaulted and I'm starting to deal with the loneliness and the crushing anxiety that is germane to being an alcoholic. Every night I'm afraid that the landlord is going to bust in. I'm afraid I can't pay the rent. I'm afraid I won't go to college. And my days start to take on my adult pattern of drinking, which is that I get up in the morning and I'm shaking and sick and I need to get to school.
So I drink two, three shots in the morning to keep myself from shaking, and I go off to school. About the middle of the day, I come home and I drink two or three more shots. I'm never really drunk. I'm just trying to keep the emotions from overwhelming me. I don't want to get caught up in the wave, and that's the way I manage it. After the school day ends, I come home and I have three more shots so that I can go waitress at Pizza Hut all night.
And when I come home at the end of the night after working all night at Pizza Hut, I have to have enough alcohol on hand that when I hit that mattress, it's over. I don't want to be awake with my thoughts. They are painful. It hurts. I'm afraid. I'm anxious. And I just need to go to sleep. I just need to be quiet. If I could just get a minute of quiet. And that was always my goal. All the relapses, all the times that I picked up, it was always if I could just get quiet for a minute, I think I'll be okay.
It's never the truth, but it's what I'm always chasing, that minute of peace. I did ultimately graduate from high school, and almost immediately I moved down to the southern part of San Diego, and the situation just gets worse. I start going to Mexico every night. I wake up every day, and I won't say morning because it was never morning, and I say, I'm not going to go down there tonight. I'm not going down there.
It's very dangerous where I used to go in Mexico. I'm not going down there tonight. I made it across the border last night, but I'm not going down tonight. And every night I wake up out of a blackout speeding across the border in a taxi cab on my way to Revolucion. The fact that I made it back across the border as many times as I did is an amazing testament to God's grace and mercy in my life. An amazing testament to God's grace and mercy in my life.
[00:15:03]
I say thank you for that every day. It got to the point where I couldn't stay out of Mexico. I had no control over it. So I decided to move back to Cleveland. I figured if I went into a blackout up here, I'd only make it to like Arkansas. And I was safer there. I come back to Cleveland. I'm almost immediately homeless. And it's a mess. At this point, I can't go for more than a few hours without alcohol.
I have a seizure. I'm homeless. I'm a fugitive. I had stolen $15.88 worth of groceries at one point. And they attempted to put me on probation. They thought I was a candidate for probation. I did not. I'm so insane. I don't bother to tell them that I'm homeless. I mean at that point, I probably could have gotten the help I needed. But I'm so psychotic and paranoid, I don't make the right choice. I make the insane choice.
Just lie to them. Tell them you live somewhere. I mean that's crazy. I probably could have gotten inside and gotten some help. I will do just about anything to get into a motel room. And that frequently gets me into a lot of trouble. And if I do get into a motel room, I wake up in the morning and my first thought is what am I going to have to do today to make it happen? I got to come up with a lot of money on a daily basis.
And I don't work. It's a lot. It's heavy. It's like running in front of a locomotive. When I can't get into a motel room, I sleep in cars. And sometimes people come out and they're cool about it. They're like just get out of my car. I got to get to work. And sometimes they just break your nose. At that point in my life, violence was becoming a massive problem. I'm vulnerable. I'm young. I'm always drunk.
And I always got my hand in the cookie jar. And I'm frequently getting caught. And I'm taking some real beatings. I've had plastic surgery to repair some damage done to my face. Somebody tries to cut my eye out with a steak knife. I had that kind of stuff going on in my life. And it was a lot to deal with when I first came in. And I earned every bit of it. I had myself out there. Ultimately, my judge saw fit.
And my judge is a very good man. And I don't think it was ever his intention that I saw the inside of a penitentiary. But he just got to the point that I take everybody, too. I stood in his courtroom. And he said, what do you want me to do? I don't know what to do. And I've taken every human being in my life to that point. That's what I do. I push them all the way to the edge. And I hold them there.
Because that's the way I'm in control. But you don't want to hear the judge say that. He imposed my original sentence of three to 10 years. Thank God. I was grateful the day they put the handcuffs on and said, you're going. I couldn't stop. I could not stop for anything. I knew that sooner or later I was going to kill somebody. I was always in a stolen car driving 100 miles an hour down the street.
And it was only a matter of time before I hit somebody's kid. And I had no control over it. No matter how badly I didn't want to hurt another human being, I knew it's a numbers game. It's a matter of time. I can't keep living like this. And I can't stop. I don't care if they keep me in there for the rest of my life. Just don't let me hurt another human being that way. I just don't want that to be on my mind and on my heart.
And I went down to the penitentiary. And that's where the miracles of AA started to occur for me in my life. This is a miraculous, powerful program. Miraculous things happen here. And they certainly happened for me. Initially, when I got down there, I met a lot of women who looked just like me. There are only so many solutions to the problem of alcoholism. And one of them is to keep a person locked up for the rest of their lives.
I selled and lived with women who will never get a second chance with this program. One of the women that lived across the hall from me, she and her husband liked to party. They liked to party together. And they had three children, one of which was a baby. And they did something that I did all the time. They put the baby up in the attic. And they went out and they partied. And they lost three days.
The baby didn't survive. They'll never see each other. They'll never see their other children. And they're never going home. Essentially, it's over. A woman that I sold with that was a much kinder human being than I will ever be, in a blackout, picked up a gun and shot the person she loved most in the world seven times. She's never going to see the person she loves again.
[00:20:01]
She's never going to go home. It was story after story after story after story after story of, I did this in a blackout. I'm never going home. I don't remember doing it. And I knew that there was no difference between me and them. I am no different than the killer behind bars. I don't know what I'm doing half the time. I'm that irresponsible and that selfish. So it was deeply depressing when I first got there to know that chances were I was going to spend the rest of my life in and out of the penitentiary.
It was a very high likelihood that that's the way the rest of my life was going to be. Right around the time when I was really depressed with all of that, I really didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I hadn't even heard of it, really. I was invited to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that was put on by Area 54 Corrections Committee. Two gentlemen from Area 54, tireless servants of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dave W.
and Neil H., they are both now deceased. But they were tireless servants of our fellowship. They visited all the institutions in Ohio to make sure that people like myself got a shot at a new way of life, that they got a message of hope and recovery. And those gentlemen brought that message to me. It is the greatest miracle of my life. It's a little like hitting the lottery without buying a ticket because I wasn't looking for you.
They walked up to me and handed me a new life. It's miraculous. It's amazing to me. On their time, they were doing service work. They could have been at home watching television. They could have been doing anything. I didn't understand why they were coming into a penitentiary to talk to me. I understand it now, but I didn't then. And we read from page, one of my very first meetings, we read from page 39.
I remember like it was yesterday. I was listening to everything they were saying. They were such a curiosity to me. These gentlemen, they talked about things that I was so ashamed of, I couldn't even like think about it without almost, you know, hurting myself. And they just talked freely about it. So I watched them the first few meetings and I was very curious. Neil finally approached me on like my third meeting and he said, hi, I'm Neil.
He said, I noticed you've been coming to the meetings. Are you an alcoholic? And I said, no, I'm not. And he said, okay, I go, but I love your meetings. And he said, well, let's sit down and talk. And we sat down and talk and he told me a little bit about his life which sounded an awful lot like my own. And then he took out a sheet of paper and he folded it in a half lengthwise and he said, let's look at what's going on in your life right now.
He kind of did a little who me. He wrote down on the left side, he said, let's go through everything that's going on. And we wrote down on the left side of the paper all the things that were going on in my life. I haven't seen my family in this long. I can't keep a job. I live outside. My boyfriend broke my nose. My boyfriend called Crime Stoppers on me because he had a date. I mean, you know, the list goes on and on.
And very carefully, and the important thing is he stayed with me through this exercise. He didn't hand me the exercise and say, go do this. I didn't have the capacity to. I can barely read at that point. I can't follow a task that lasts more than 30 seconds. He stayed right next to me. He said, now let's go through and see if any of these is directly or indirectly related to your alcohol use and abuse.
We went through the list together and every single one of those items was checked off. He turned to me then and said, are you an alcoholic? I said, I'm an alcoholic. He said, if you're an alcoholic, we have a solution. There are two massive miracles right there. Number one is the identification of a problem. I'm almost, I'm like 24 at that point. For 24 years, I've been banging my head up against the wall wondering what's wrong.
Why don't my relationships work? Why doesn't my mom and my dad want to be around me? Why, you know, the list goes on and on. Why can't I keep a job? I used to look in the windows of people in their living rooms. You know, I live outdoors like an animal. And I would look through people's windows and I would say, how are they doing that? They're making dinner. What are they doing? Why can't I get this right?
I could not understand it. It was baffling to me. He gives the problem a name. It's called alcoholism. So that's the first miracle. Now we have a name. Now we've identified a problem. Miracle number two, we have a solution. We can actually address this problem.
[00:25:01]
It's one of those miraculous interactions in AA. It's brief. It doesn't last long. You know, it's a 10 or 15 or 20 minute interaction. But I walk away a different person from that interaction than I was when I entered it. And that's the miraculous nature of this fellowship and what we do for one another. Nobody has the power to have that conversation with me. Nobody. People had tried. Judges, cops, lovers, parents, crying, begging.
I don't hear them. We're not speaking the same language. Put me in front of an alcoholic who knows the lights are on but nobody's home and we talk. I walked out of that room a different person than when I walked in. And I knew at that moment that that's what you do in these rooms. That that's the power that's available in these rooms. I was assigned an institutional sponsor whose job it was to come in and work the steps with me.
She was a lovely woman. She came to the institution one time. I had been writing on my four step and she and I were walking around the grounds. I saw an inmate that I didn't like and I told her as much. I said, that woman should never see the light of day. She said, oh, we're judging people. She said, Sandra, why are you here? And I go, I told you about that grocery store thing. She said, no, that's not what I'm talking about, Sandra.
Sandra, why are you here? You're 24 years. What's going on? Why are you here? I go, I accepted a plea bargain and no, Sandra, why are you here? I'm unlucky. No, I mean, the woman must have asked me eight times, Sandra, why are you here? And on about the eighth time, I finally heard what she was asking me. I said, I am an alcoholic and a thief and I'll do anything to get that stuff, anything at all, including killing another human being.
I have no control and I can't stop and it's the most important thing in my life and nothing gets between me and it. And she said, that's exactly right. That's exactly why you're here. You need to be protected from society and society needs very definitely to be protected from you. Now, let's start working. Up until that point, you know, until we moved that big rock out of the way, she kind of felt like work hadn't even started and we started working.
I worked on a lot of things. Obviously, I went through the rest of my steps. My night step experience, I've had wonderful night step, wonderful amends experience. Probably the most important one to me has to do with my father. My father was the one human being that stood by me no matter what I was doing. He was the guy that visited me in jail and was always there and I had hurt the man terribly. My father, the first time I saw him in the visiting room at jail, I walked in, I shuffled in in my little orange outfit and the only thing he said to me was, when you were a baby, I held you in my arms.
And I knew that I had taken all that from him. You know, that I was his little daughter and he wanted the world for me. And my disease had taken that from him. When it came time to make my amends, you know, my first time around, they weren't maybe not 100% proper. And during the amends, I mentioned my brother. I said, I wish I had been more like Jeff and could have brought you more happiness. My brother had been good at sports.
He always made friends. We're polar opposites. He has a great sense of humor, good at sports, popular kid, made a lot of friends. So I say to my father, I wish I had been more like Jeff. I would have brought you more happiness. And my father stopped me right there and he said, Sandra, it's easy to be successful in life. I've watched you fall down and get up, fall down and get up, fall down and get up.
There's nothing that matches the success of somebody who keeps getting up when everything in life keeps pushing them down. You know, again, it's one of those miraculous interactions of AA that's built into these programs that totally changes how I feel about myself and how I feel about the world in a short amount of time. I had walked into that room and I'm a person who falls down and stays down. Because of that amends, I walk out of the room and I'm a person who gets up no matter what.
It's 100% different. It's the flip side of the coin. I went on to work my 10th step regularly and I talked to Neil about my 11th step. And he said, you know, he explained to me the daily 11th step. And he said, and it's my understanding you're within six months of going home. Daily Request for Guidance, Why Don't You Spend Some Time with God in Meditation Considering
[00:30:06]
What Your Life Might Look Like Outside If You Got a Second Chance, If You Got to Live Your Life Without Pulling the Structure Back Down Upon Yourself Over and Over Again, What Would You Create for Yourself With God's Help, What Would You and God Create Together, What Kind of Life Would You Like to Have and initially I didn't like the proposition, it was a little hopeful for me, I was a little frightened by it and I told him as much and he was such a good man, he was such a patient man, he said Sandra that's the step and he walked away and I started to spend time, count time between 4 and 5 o'clock considering you know my daily needs and then you know what kind of life God and I might groom together if I managed to stay in this fellowship and I didn't want diamond rings in houses, I wanted dignity and safety which had been in short order in my life, I wanted to be able to leave the house in an outfit like the one I have on and come back to the house with no blood, grass, tears, vomit stains and if you're a real alcoholic, you know how difficult that can be, I never came home without a broken bone at the end, I wanted to be able to finish, I had started school after years and years of failing school, I failed every class I ever took, when I got into this fellowship and people helped me to settle down the mental obsession you know by working the steps and clearing my mind and using my mind in the way that it should be, I made the Dean's List every semester that I was in school, I was receiving scholarships and I was valedictorian of my class which was just a shock to me, I had always believed I was ugly, stupid and clumsy and this fellowship said that's not true, we don't believe the lie here, that's just not true, you're going to have to swap that thought out with something that works better and as I did that I started to, I was still behind bars but I was starting to enjoy some success and if I could just move it from there out to here I was going to be okay, I wanted to finish college, I wanted to be able to come home to a fellowship that I love and have some friends and a little apartment and I'm very grateful to report that all of those things came true for me, I had a little struggle on the way out and Beth who is here tonight was one of the people that was able to help me after a relapse that I had when I first came home, but God found usefulness for me, I have been, I have worked in administration, finance and law for the past 22 years, I have two degrees, I worked hard initially on my vocational and educational pursuits, I felt strongly that I could be sober and I could have a successful life, it would probably be best if I stayed out of relationships, obviously because I wasn't willing to surrender that part of myself to God initially, that's the area that grew last, I always grew fastest in the areas where I was willing to surrender and I was willing to surrender initially livelihood, my industry, I gave those to God right away, you can have my industry, I'll spend all day in school and all night at work if that's what it takes, whatever is required and I did very well in those areas initially, relationships as I said were a little bit more of a struggle and even in the rooms with other women it was a struggle and some people that are here that have known me for 20 years know that I struggled in that area, when I was 13 years sober I went to my sponsor Ann who passed this year and I was, we were on the phone actually and I reached a bottom and my bottoms in these rooms have always been worse than the bottoms I experienced out there, I was at an absolute bottom with respect to my feelings about other human beings, we were on the phone and I was sobbing which I rarely do, I rarely cry, I was sobbing uncontrollably and I said to her, I can't trust any of them, not one, there's not one human being on this planet that I trust and I was really at the jumping off point, I was really, I was going to stay sober, I wasn't sure if I was going to stay alive and very quietly she said to me, do you trust me and I did, I had one human being that I could trust but from there springs everything and that's a big part of being
[00:35:03]
in these rooms, we start with one person that we can trust with everything and from there we could build the world because of my relationship with Ann and because of the hours that she spent taking care of me and loving me when I didn't love myself, I'm married today and that's a tremendous miracle in my life, I'm a person who vowed early in life that if I can just stay out of human relationships I'll probably be okay and to be married, to have that close of a union spiritually with another human being for me is a tremendous victory, it's amazing, I can't believe I'm doing it, first year was tough, thanks Mike, it was a tough, Michael's a tough young man.
I have always struggled with being overwhelmed by the noise of life, I'm a person who has a little bit of a low frustration level and I can get a little antsy and anxious, when I was a young, young woman I swam long distance, I've always been a very good athlete, I still really enjoy my athletic pursuits, anyway I swam the longest race that they have which is the 500 freestyle and I swam it well and one of the reasons I swam it so well was I didn't like the sound of the crowd, so I'd be swimming along and where other people were taking a breath every three strokes, I wouldn't take a breath because I didn't want to hear the screaming and the cheering, it was so pleasant underneath the water where it's peaceful and quiet and I always wanted to be underneath the water, no matter what's going on in the surface, beneath the water there's peace, this fellowship is so good that it has that built right in, the 11th step is my peace, I can always drop my head beneath the water when the world gets too loud and if there is one thing that has absolutely made my life manageable, it is that 11th step, when it gets hard and it gets loud and it does, I work a lot, I have two jobs and I am in a political office and there are people who have opinions constantly and there's all kinds of stuff going on, the phone is always ringing, I've got all kinds of stuff going on but I can always drop my head a little in the water and ask for God to help me get quiet so I can get through those, there's nothing better, I'm sure everybody wishes they had that and it amazes me that more people that are not alcoholics don't show up here. Finally, God found a usefulness for me and he does use me and there's nothing greater than to be able to share God's light that I have received through you people and shine it on my personal darkness as I mentioned when we opened and then be a servant in the same way. One of my earliest opportunities to serve really wasn't with this, wasn't with an alcoholic but it's a very impactful one for me. It was Christmas time and I spent a lot of Christmases alone in my early sobriety, all of my Christmases alone actually in my early sobriety. So one year I decided, I'm just going to do some volunteer work over Christmas, it'll be easier. So there wasn't anything going on in AA that year so I went to the Visiting Nurses Association, they had me volunteer delivering poinsettias to people in nursing homes. They gave me 12 poinsettias and I was supposed to go to three nursing homes. I was supposed to sit with the person, it's Christmas time so you sit with the person, they don't have any family and you spend a Christmas witch and you give them their poinsettia and whatnot. I had already delivered 11 of my poinsettias, my people were all sleeping. I got totally ripped off. I'm like how much do people sleep in these places? This is ridiculous. I had my last poinsettia in my arms at the last nursing home and I finally said to the woman at the desk, I said all of my people were sleeping.
I go what am I supposed to do now? She goes, you know, why don't you take that last poinsettia and go to Mrs. Smith's room. I walked down to Mrs. Smith's room and as I approached the room it was dark and I heard something, it was like a tape, books on tape kind of thing. And I leaned in, I said Mrs. Smith, I'm here from the Visiting Nurses Association, I'm here to bring you a poinsettia for Christmas. And she said, oh honey, come on in and turn on the light. And I walked in and I turned on the light. She said, I'm blind, I can't see so go ahead and turn on the light, make yourself comfortable. I sat down, she said
[00:40:00]
turn off my books on tape. I turned off her books on tape. I said, you like books on tape? And she said, I was always an avid reader. And I said, oh so am I, I'm a very avid reader. We had a lovely visit. Over the course of the visit she told me her story. She told me her entire life story. She had been married to a gentleman and they had been really wealthy socialites, they never had children. Her husband, if you're from the Cleveland area, was the gentleman that put the W on peer W. They had been, they did a lot of socialite type things, they had a number of charitable organizations that they headed up. They had never had kids but they had a wonderful and fulfilling life. She loved her husband very much. She told me her whole story. When she was done, I said to her, you know you like to read so much, I'm sure you can't get everything you want on those books on tape. I'm sure there's a limited library of books that they actually have on tape. I go, so if you like, I love to read. I could go to the library, I could get the books you want, I could come here once every two weeks or so and read to you for an hour and that way you and I could spend some time together and you'll be able to hear books you wouldn't ordinarily get to hear on tape. She said that's a lovely idea. When can we set that up? I left the nursing home with plans to call her two days after Christmas to set up for me to be her reader.
I wanted to be her reader. Two days after Christmas, I called the nursing home and I said I'd like to speak to Mrs. Smith. The woman at the desk said, are you the young woman that was here on Christmas Eve? I said, I am. And they said, Mrs. Smith died two hours after you left. And I realized, you know, that God, when I make myself available to him and say I'm ready to serve, he has a position for me. One that suits me perfectly. Even my character flaws. Me hiding in books all those years and me not wanting to interact with other human beings and all of the stuff that I bring with me into that room when I turn the light on for somebody else in their darkness. God knew that that woman didn't have any children and she needed somebody to hear her story before she left. And he knew I'd been sitting in these rooms for years listening to people's stories and how much happiness it brought me. He knows exactly where I'm supposed to be, when I'm supposed to be there, and how it's supposed to look. And I hope that I get to do that for the rest of my life. Thank you so much for the light that you have brought into my life. The light you have shined on the darkness in my world. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful retreat.