From Abandonment to Sobriety: Susanne's Journey

All right, now I'd like to introduce our main speaker, Susanne B.

Hi, I'm Susanne. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Alex, for having me.

Thank you for greeting me so beautifully. Where's my greeter person? Brought me from the

thank you so much. That person, my speaker greeter. And for all the people who came up to me

and said something nice and told me I still look young, very nice to hear.

So first, I want to thank Frank and Eddie. That was great. You talked about, there you are,

you talked about some of the causes and conditions, right? In AA, we start to figure

out what some of the causes and conditions were, and you guys both talked about those in really

beautiful ways. It's so interesting, Frank. I know so many people who have come to this country and

left babies behind, and I have always wondered, like, what is that like? And I just got a really

good idea of what that's like. So that was very moving. Anyway, so I'm going to tell you in a

general way what I used to be like, what happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous, and what I'm like

now. And I promise, no matter what, I will sit down on time. And you won't have to red

light me. I'll get down. I'll behave. So a lot of what the first two speakers talked about

is at the heart of my alcoholism too, like a fundamental belief that people don't love me

or that I'm not enough, and then like outlandish, crazy circumstances that make it really hard for

me to like myself at all, you know, right? And so I'm the fourth kid in a family with a mom who

didn't want any kids. Like she wanted no kids. And my dad kept sabotaging her birth control. So she got

pregnant nine times. And every, I mean, he was good. So every other baby was a stillbirth because

my mom had a really strange structural abnormality, which back in the day, they didn't really

understand. And now they know a lot better. But anyway, so I'm the last of the lot. And if she had

any patience for the first couple, it was gone by the time Susanne arrived. And, you know, the

phrase I remember hearing the most as a kid is, go away, Sue. Like, I remember those words vividly.

Go away, Sue. Go away, Sue. And it's like, is that the reason I'm an alcoholic? No, because I

am surrounded in AA by people with beautiful childhoods. So I know that it's not why I'm

an alcoholic. But with my peculiar mental twist, that translated to, they don't love me. She doesn't,

you know, she wishes I wasn't here. Gosh, maybe I'm faulty. I'm wrong. There's something about

me that is a reason for that. And in Alcoholics Anonymous, I learned that I'm driven by absolute

self-obsession, which means that I think about myself in good terms. I think about myself in

bad terms. But God, I think about myself, you know. And those were the early days of that starting

in me. It's like, that was about me, you know. And so when I would go to visit my father,

my parents were divorced. And when I would go to stay at my father's house, there was ample

access to alcohol at my dad's house. Everybody drank. Alcohol was freely available. And very

young, I started to lean on that. I started to lean on taking a few drinks, you know. And

there were some other substances in that house, and those were just as freely,

freely available. And in the early years, I was a garbage can. I was the girl who would take it

and then say, what did I just take? Just so I'm not surprised, you know, in 15 minutes when that

hits. And, you know, so I can't bring myself to regret a moment of that. That's probably really

wrong, right? That's sad for me to say to you. Like, I don't regret a moment of that. But if I

hadn't had that, I would have become absolutely insane. My dad was a pilot, and so he was gone

a great deal. And again, I'm the youngest, and I was the youngest, and I was the youngest.

I was a girl. And so starting very young, six, seven, eight years old, I was left to fend for

myself in San Francisco. And my dad had a lot of druggie friends, and they were kind of had an

open-door policy. And so my early years were filled with trying to figure out which one's a

pedophile and how do I get away? You know, seriously, that was like, that was it, man.

In my house, it was like, I am unprotected as unprotected can be. And it was safer outside

the doors than it was inside the doors a lot of nights. And I slept in the park. I went back to

San Francisco with my husband a few years ago, and I showed him, right? He's heard me tell this

story. And I showed him the tree where I used to sleep, you know? And so thank God I could get

loaded. Thank God I got drunk. Like, what else was I, what else did I have going for me? And

scenario, you know, like, I could check out, and thank God I could check out. And if that had stayed

the case, like, if that was the way alcohol was for me at the end, I would never be your speaker

tonight. I would never have stopped. Why would I ever have stopped? Like, it wasn't my problem,

it was my solution. And it worked really well, right up until it freaking didn't. And it's like,

I would never have quit drinking. Who would, you know? And so anyway, so I'm going along,

and I'm a teenager, and the teenage years are hard under the best of circumstances. And, you know,

I'm, at this point, I'm living in Marin County, which is just north of San Francisco. It's like,

at that time, in the 80s, it was like the richest county in America. It was, you know, and I was not

rich. And I had homemade clothes, because I'd been living in the Ozark Mountains with my mom,

and I'd had questionable personal hygiene. And I had absolutely no idea how to put on makeup. And

I went into a school where all the girls, literally, a lot of the girls had already

had plastic surgery. Like, they looked fabulous. And they had money to dress. And as we got older,

they had fancy cars. And I just stood out, you know? And I had one thing going for me,

which is that I'd been a gymnast, and I was pretty good at gymnastics. And so in Marin County,

to make the cheerleading squad, all you have to have is having had a nose job. And,

you know, be dating a football player. Like, you're on. You're good. You're a cheerleader.

And so I show up to tryouts, and I'm the only one who can do absolutely any gymnastics. Nobody can

do any kind of, like, backflip, forward flip. Nobody can do back handsprings. Nobody can do

anything, right? So they put me on the squad, right? Why wouldn't they? I'm new to the school.

I can do gymnastics. I'm on the squad. But remember, I'm backwards, abused, dirty girl,

right? I'm not, like, a regular teenage girl. And so very quickly, they realize I have no clue how

to do this cheerleader thing. And so it's the big homecoming game, right?

This is my opportunity. I'm going to shine. They put me on the top of the pyramid. I'm going to

double vault off, right? It's going to be great. And so I did that. I double vault off, and I

landed it. And then I posed with my arms up, and they took a picture, which made it into the

district newsletter. So all the schools in the district got the picture, you know, in their

newspapers. And I hadn't shaved under my arms. And so I am a cheerleader standing in front of a

whole group of cheerleaders with little rats under my armpits. And it's,

it's over. There is no coming back socially in Marin County from hairy armpit girl. Done.

Like, you're finished. And so I crawled into a bottle, and I drank the way I wanted to drink.

And that's how I finished my illustrious high school career, was as the drunken,

drunken blonde girl, you know, the drunken backward blonde girl. And I went to the school

counselor, and I said, you know, there's a problem with my drinking. I mean, I could even see. Like,

I'd be at parties and things. You know, I'd ancillarily get invited because I dated,

I had a boyfriend who was a track

guy. And I don't know why he was my boyfriend, now that I think about that. I really have to

think about that. Anyway, he liked me for some strange reason. And so we, so he would bring me

to things. And I'm, and I would watch the other 17-year-olds drinking, and my drinking was

different. Like, even then, I could really see it. So I went to the school counselor, and I said,

I think I have a drinking problem, problem with some outside issues, and I need some help. And

she said, we have a group here at the school. We meet once a week, and we talk about our drinking,

and, you know, we support each other. And I was like, okay. So I went to the group. And

after 30 days of going to the group, I wasn't drinking anymore. I had stopped drinking. And

what I know now in Alcoholics Anonymous is I took the first step, right? I admitted I was powerless

over alcohol, and that my life was unmanageable. I had nobody said the steps, nobody, they weren't

on the wall. It was not an AA meeting. But that's what it was, is I admitted I was powerless. And

if that was enough, I would be great. But it turns out that when you are reliant upon alcohol

spiritually and physically, and you take it away, you just have this gaping hole. And I just had

this gaping hole. And I just had this gaping hole. And I just had this gaping hole. And I just had this

gaping hole now to contend with, which meant that everything people said to me, like, cut me

like a knife. Like, people would say things offhand, and it would hurt so badly. I was so sensitive. And

I couldn't figure out how to do the basics. Like, how do you do homework without drinking? And

how do you go out with your boyfriend? How do you have sex without drinking? How do you do this? And

I had no skill set. And so after a month, I just flipped out. And if I do something, I do it full

bore. I flipped out epic. I flipped out, come and take me away to the mental hospital, psychotic

break, flip out. I'm pretty proud of that. I do it pretty well. You know, I guess you're good at

kissing, Frank. I'm good at psychotic breakdowns. Everybody's good at something. So I went away to

the mental hospital, and I live most of the next four years institutionalized. I get out for a

while, and I end up back in. And that's me on the natch. That's what happens to me when I stop

drinking, is I flip out. And so why would I do that? And so I did that for years, stayed clean

and dry. And I mean, I really did avail myself of that. And I did that for years. And I did that for

the mental hospital. Like, my minister says that mental breakdowns are highly underrated spiritual

experiences. And he's right. Like, that's a spiritual, that's a radical repositioning of

your makeup. Like, when you have a major breakdown, like, you're getting built again in a really new

way. And so I did avail myself of the help there. I got a lot of therapy for all the child abuse. I

got a lot of help for, you know, myself loathing and some of my patterns of coping. And like,

I made really cool vases. We had, like,

lottery class. And I made really great vases. And I dated a little bit. That was great. The dating in

the mental hospital is awesome. It's like, you can break up with me, but neither of us are going

anywhere. So we should just settle in. You know, like, I'll be, you can date her, but I'm there,

too. I'm still here, you know. And so it's intense, you know, it's great intensity. And

so I had a good time in the mental hospital. But after several years of that, like, is this all

there is? Like, this is me without alcohol. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to

and I was clear that I had major problems. I was clear that I was depressed. I had some obsessive

compulsive disorder, although that ended up being, like, actually helpful, because later we found out

I have a super bad immune system. And so all that handwashing actually turned out to be an advantage.

But so I had, like, all these issues. I had all these diagnoses. I had all these problems. And so

I was clear that I had problems. I mean, you could not argue. If you go psychotic and have,

I went catatonic and had to be taken off in an ambulance. You cannot deny that you have problems

when that happens to you. But I did not think alcohol was my problem. I really didn't. And so

after a certain number of years of that crap, I left the hospital and I started drinking. And I

met a guy who was a musician in L.A. And there was a program, a college program down here that I kind

of liked. And so that's how I ended up in L.A. It was just that random of a decision. Guys here,

schools here that'll work, I'll go to L.A. So I moved down here and I lasted just over a year

drinking the way I wanted to. I could drink as much as I wanted. My boyfriend was a musician and

he had access to anything I could want. The money was never going to go away. And so I was like,

a problem. And getting my hands on something that I want. I still wasn't 21. Getting my hands on what

I want. I was just about to turn 21. I turned 21 with it. Getting my hands on whatever I wanted,

not a problem. Could have anything that I wanted. And so I did. And it just, I lasted 18 months.

And one of the people, one of the artists in the band he was in was sober. And so when we were on

the road, she would go off to meetings. She'd go off to a meeting, off to a meeting. And so I was

like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm going to an AA meeting. And she had stayed sober

seven years, which was unfathomable to me. And so the day that I hit my,

the day that I realized like, I can't go on like this one more minute. And it wasn't even the worst

thing that had ever happened. It just was pathetic. I was pathetic. I had a girlfriend. She was deaf.

I'm fluent in American sign language. And I was over at her apartment, her boyfriend,

she had just broken up and she was heartbroken. My girlfriend who I'm very good friends with is

heartbroken. I'm sitting in her apartment and I cannot stay because I got to drink now. I can't

stay and listen. She's crying. And in the middle of her crying, this girl who's been there for me

through so much, I stand up and excuse myself and go home and start drinking because I can't not

drink another minute. And that was it. That's what drove me to AA. It was pathetic. And I went to a

meeting a couple of days later and it was the Friday night Beverly Glen speaker meeting. People

call it Dickens. And I walked into that meeting. It was April of 1991. And I was young and as

alcoholic as could be. And I walked into the meeting and I started this deal. And I wish I

could tell you I did a good job with it. I wish I could say to you that I threw myself full force

into the program and worked it the way it's suggested, but that is not me.

I'm sure there's other speakers who can tell you that. And it's true for them, but it was not true

for me. I half measured this thing as much as I could. I'm so fortunate I did not get drunk. And

so I would go to meetings when I felt like it. I did not go to regular meetings at regular meeting

times. I had a sponsor, but I'd call her after I did whatever I was going to do. And she kept

calling that a history lesson. And I worked the steps, but I was on the slow track. We could get

to a step maybe once every six months. And by nine months, I'm stark raving mad again. I'm at the

house. I'm at the house parking lot getting to a

fight with a guy who's driving a truck because he honked and called me a bitch. And now I'm on

the hood of his truck, ripping his windshield wiper blades off and trying to stab him through

his window. And he's putting the truck in reverse to get away from the 95-pound blonde crazy girl.

And I'm seeing that look in his face. I've seen that look before. Actually, sadly, I've seen it

since, but not for a long time. But that look, which is like, I'm in real danger. She's insane.

And so seeing that look was like, ugh. So I went home and I called my sponsor and I got banned

from Ralph's for fighting again.

And so I called my sponsor and I'm like, I can't go to Ralph's. I'm banned for fighting. And I'm

having all sorts of problems in my relationships. And I'm not getting to meetings enough. And nobody

in AA likes me anyway. And they're clicky. And everybody likes Mary. She's adorable. And nobody

likes me. And I just, all that craziness. And if my sponsor had said to me, you know, honey,

there are 3,000 meetings a week in AA. That meeting sounds clicky. You should go to a different one.

Or if she'd said, maybe you should just take a nice bubble bath. I would not be here today,

right? If that had been, if I,

God help me, if I had chosen a sponsor who didn't have a sponsor, who wasn't working the steps and

didn't know this program, I would not be standing here today. But I didn't. I had chosen a woman who

had a sponsor, was actively in the steps and was active in Alcoholics Anonymous. And she said to me,

like, you're making this all about you. And you know what? You don't work the program. You do some

random Suzanne thing. And all these people who are doing well, guess what? We're doing it

differently. We're doing it the way AA laid out. We're in regular meetings. We have commitments.

We're working the steps, right? We're praying every day.

You know, we're trying to see what we can bring rather than what we can get. You know,

this is what we're doing in Alcoholics Anonymous. And why don't you freaking join us? Come and try

it, you know? And for whatever reason, that was God's moment with me. You know, and I've seen in

all the years I've been here, I've seen people get these moments. And I've seen people grab those

moments and stay here. And then I've seen people get those moments and say to themselves, I'll get

another moment. Wrong. When it's that moment, that moment of clarity of really getting it,

I see that come around once for each of us. That real moment, I see that once for everybody.

And if you toss it aside, you may get sober, you may not. But I can tell you it's going to be

hard. You know, and I had that moment, and I heard her, and I changed what I was doing. And I did it

on a dime. And I didn't want to do what she said, and I did it anyway. And the first thing she said

is I had to go get a commitment. And I went to the Wednesday night third tradition group, and Harvey

G. was the secretary. And I walked up to him. And if any of you ever knew Harvey G., he's a little

intimidating. And I walked up to him, and I said, my sponsor says I need a commitment. And he said,

we need a greeter. So you're the new greeter. Now, this is not a big deal to all of you. But it was

a 200-person meeting, and I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I can't touch people.

And I'm the greeter. Like, no, literally. I'm not saying to you like, oh, I'm a little scared.

People are freaking filthy, and I'm going to die. If I touch you, I'm going to die. And so he put me

at the door, and I had to shake 200 people's hands every Wednesday night. And it was the worst thing

ever. And I was desperate. I was desperate to have what my sponsor said I could get here if I did what

she said. And so I did it. I stood at that door. And I mean, I'm not crazy. I wore a glove. I'm not

going to touch people. So I had a glove on my hand. But still, things can get through a glove.

So I shook people's hands. And what I thought would happen is I'll be the greeter, and you'll

like me. You'll start to get to know me, and you'll like me. And that's totally what I thought

was going to happen. I thought, that's the secret. That's why my sponsor has me greedy.

She has me doing commitments so that people will start to like me, right? Because I'm so sad and

you know, what I do when I'm lonely is I isolate, right? I treat loneliness with isolation. It's a

great plan. And so that's what I thought the greeting was going to do. But it turned out what

the greeting did is I started to care about you. Like I started to care about the people coming

through the line. I started to care about the people at the meeting. I started to like deal

myself into this thing. And it was little by little. So much easier. If there's anybody in

their first year in this room, so much easier if you just dive right in. But I didn't do that. I

like took my time and like eased into the water. So now I have a commitment.

Now I'm doing steps. And now I'm at regular meetings on regular meeting nights. And now

she says, you got to go to the women's meeting. We want you to go to the women's meeting and become

part of the women. And I was like, what an order. I cannot go through with it. Like I do not do women.

Like I cannot handle women at all. And so I went to the women's meeting. And I don't know if you've

ever noticed, but women stand in like little groups. It's just in general. Like they don't

go to the bathroom without reinforcements. Like you have to go as a set. And they stand in groups

together. Like I hardly ever see a woman by herself. So I went and I'd always been by myself.

Women's meeting, there's groups all around the room talking to each other. And I saw one that

had somebody I kind of knew. And so I walked up to the group, right, thinking I would join the

conversation. And nobody moved. Nobody like opened the circles to let me step in. Everybody just kept

standing there. And I stood pathetically behind this group of women for like three minutes until

the bell rang. And I shuffled over to my seat and sat down. I called my sponsor. I'm like,

they're clicky. They don't like me. Nobody let me stand in their circle. I don't know who to talk

to. And she said, why don't you get the phone list and see whose birthday it is. And next,

Saturday when you go, give out a birthday card to whoever has a birthday. I'm like, I don't even

know these women. She's like, I don't care. Just happy birthday, Susanne. Hand it to them. So the

next Saturday, I go through the list. I write my little happy birthday. I walk over, happy birthday,

you know, and I hand out my little cards, you know. And I walk up to a group of women and nobody

moves. And I stand pathetically there for two minutes. And nobody really talks to me. And I go

back and I sit down. I call her and I'm like, it's the exact same thing. Nobody's talking to me. She's

like, it's going to take a minute. Why don't you try calling women between meetings? So now I take

this really annoying thing of telling me what's going on in their life. And I can't really pay

attention. Right? Like, you're talking to me. And I know that what you're saying is important to you,

but it's irrelevant to me. And I don't really care. And so then I realized, shoot, I'm gonna

have to write this down. So I got like a day planner that had days of the week. And I would

call them and I'd write in the day planner, Bonnie, husband, Paul having surgery. And if they told me

like something that happened in the future, because I was organized. I was a college student. I was

very organized. So I wrote like Wednesday, surgery, Paul, right? So then I would go to the

Wednesday, I will call Bonnie. And I'd be like, Bonnie, how did Paul's surgery go? And she had no

idea. She was like, thank you. You remember, that's so nice. You called me. And it was like

it worked. It was the best con in the world. She had no idea that I didn't care at all about Paul's

surgery. Right? I looked like I cared. And, um, and at the end of like, a month of that calling

women between meetings, giving them birthday cards, I walked up the little group of women

and somebody stepped to the side and I stepped into the group. Now I still couldn't talk. Nobody

wanted to hear anything I had to say. But they let me stand there. And that was progress, you know,

and when I took my cake, I got like 49 birthday cards. And I still have them at home tied with

a rubber band in a box. Because that was like the mark that I had started to make it here in

Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I am not I'm still not the most well liked woman like,

I just get myself into these messes. I don't even know how I do it. The best tool I have on my

toolkit is my husband says, Oh, that's the thing you're going to do that's going to make them be

mad at you. He tells me right before I do it. So I stop now. Like my son is an athlete to our two

youngster athletes, and he's very fast. And he had just joined this baseball team. And I noticed that

when he was running from home to first base, he wasn't running very fast because nobody was chasing

him right in football really fast. Baseball, not that fast, because nobody's chasing him, right? He

kept getting thrown out of first thrown out of first. There's another kid on the team who won

like the whole county, like speed thing.

In baseball for that age group, like one the entire county, like we're talking about thousands

of kids competed in this kid one, he was on my kids team. So I went over to that kid. I'm like,

will you race my son, just race him to show him how fast he has to be to get to first just race

him to first. And, you know, you'll be so far ahead of him, he'll have to run harder to catch

up. And then it'll be like, okay, now I know what to do. Well, can you guess what happened?

My son smoked him. My son beat him to first, it was not even close, right? And I had never even

considered that that could happen. Didn't even occur to me. So now, of course, the parents of

think I tried to humiliate their kid by having my kid beat him in a foot race, right? So the whole

team hates me now. That's how I get myself into trouble. That was years ago. But that's a perfect

example. So that AA meeting, those women letting me stand there, that was progress. That was

progress, you know, and over time, I started to care about those people I was calling. And later

when I got pregnant, they threw me a baby shower, and they all came. And one of the women who I

never thought liked me at all made me a handmade baby blanket. And like, Alcoholics Anonymous was

good to me. AA was good to me. And I kept showing up and I kept doing the deal. And I got really

sick. I had that the I have a disease that made me like really sick and disabled for like six years

and didn't know if I was going to survive. And I dragged mass to meetings. And when I sponsor girls,

and they tell me that they can't go to the meeting because they don't feel well. And when I hit them,

let me tell you what don't feel well looks like. It's being sick like that for six years and going

to three meetings a week anyway, which I did. And I sometimes had to lay down in the back of the

room because I was too sick to sit in my chair, but I was in the meeting and I stayed sober through

a really hard time. And then I went through a divorce. And that was brutal. I had been wanting

to have a baby forever. And the doctors told me that I would not survive a pregnancy. And so

we started the adoption process. And so I did all the paperwork and went to all the classes and had

the inspection and did the whole thing and got signed off on you're on the list, LA County

adoption. And I said, Great, when do I get a baby? And they said, Well, there's 12 babies a year

surrendered free and clear.

Los Angeles County, and the rest are like foster adopts and stuff. And I thought and I can't do

that. I'd run to Canada, I take the baby to Canada, if mom and dad wanted him back, I better

not do that. So I was like, I better just take the ones that are free and clear. And then I said,

you know, where are we on the list? And they're like, you're number 212. I did the math 12 babies

a year turned to 12. I'm not getting a baby, right. And I just despaired. And it was horrible. And

I trudged and trudged. And I was of service. And I trudged and trudged. And a year and a half later,

I went into remission from this disease. Totally unexpected.

And I went to the doctor. And I was like, Can I get pregnant? She's like, Yeah, but do it right

now. And so we went home, my husband was good for me, took care of it, I got pregnant right away.

And my home, my home group, one of the members of my home group nicknamed him, I probably shouldn't

say that you're recording. Anyway, they nicknamed him sure shot, which he was very proud of,

as if he had something to do with it. Right. But anyway, so I got pregnant right away. And then

that baby died at four, I was four months pregnant, the baby died. And I had to wait,

it was like a precancerous pregnancy. It's called a molar pregnancy. And he had to wait like another

year to make sure you don't develop cancer before you can get pregnant again. And the whole time,

if I'd gone out of remission, it was off. And so like, my whole life hung in the balance. And all

I could do is go to meetings, and be of service, and do what was in front of me and leave it in

God's hands. Right. And I didn't, I assumed this was gone, this dream was gone. And a year and a

half after I had that miscarriage, I got pregnant, and I had a son, and he's 18. His name is Ian.

He's wonderful. And three years after that, I gave birth to his brother. And he's my 15 year old,

he's the only one we have left at home. I inherited three later through marriage. So I

ended up with a total of five, but I only got to give birth to two. And you know, it's like when I

had that baby, it became so clear to me. And what I've learned in AA is I cannot see God's will in

the moment. And I certainly can't see how it's going to be good for me. Right. And the moment

is just like, I want this job, I don't get this job. Dang it. Right. Like that, if I guess it's

God's will, I don't get the job. Wow, God's will sucks. Like there's that feeling in the moment.

Right. But when I got that, had that baby, I realized,

that baby I was fighting so hard to get through the county, that adopted baby was somebody else's

baby. Like God had given claim to that baby to somebody else. Right. God knew I was going to

have my own baby. I didn't need to take that baby. Somebody else needed that baby. But in the moment,

it just felt like God was saying no to me. Like you can't have it. And what I realized is later,

when I look back, everything in my life, every piece of it fit what God wanted for me and what

would be good for me. It doesn't feel like it. When I was being abused as a kid, when I was

being chased around the house by sexual predators, this is not a good thing. This is a terrible thing.

Right. But when I look back, the one thing in my whole life I'm exceptional at is I'm an exceptional

parent. Like I do it really well. Like people lean on me for help. I'm really good at this thing.

And one of the reasons I'm really good at this thing is because I went through that.

Like I learned fortitude and resourcefulness. I learned patience and I learned how to tolerate

agony. That gave me this toolkit that's been incredible for the one thing in my life,

the only thing I've done right in my whole life. I've got 28 years of sobriety. I'm still going to

say the only thing I've done right in this whole life is parenting. You know, I've screwed up at

work sometimes. I've definitely screwed up relationships. I'm on my second marriage.

It's going pretty well. I feel like it's going well. I think I'm going to be okay. But you know

what I mean? Like the only thing I did right is those kids and everything prepared me. And so,

you know, when I had that baby, it was like, okay, this is what I was supposed to do. It's

why I didn't get one of those kids. And so now, when right now in my life, things are going

sideways, I'm able to hold on now to go.

Okay, I'm not going to see it now. But in three years, under five years, I'm going to look back

and I'm going to see why this needed to happen. Why this is a good thing that doesn't feel like

a good thing. So I got my biggest lesson of that recently. And this kind of defines what my

recovery for the last like the 20s of my sobriety have been about. So for me, so much like Frank,

I was filled with self-loathing. And I did inventory after inventory after inventory. And

I never felt like I was supposed to be like,

I'm just a mistake. That's really what I felt like. And so all that inventory and all that

drinking was behind, I'm a piece of crap, and I don't deserve to be here. And I, I started working

on it spiritually, I started putting it in my morning 11 step, you know, it says, upon awakening,

we consider our plans for the day. And before we begin, we guess, ask God to direct our thinking.

So I'd open my eyes, and I'd say, God, please direct my thinking. It says, have it be divorced

from self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives, right? Well, one of my biggest self-seeking

motives was to prove all of this. And I said, God, please direct my thinking. And I said, God,

what a big piece of crap I was. Let me prove it. Let me make my relationship partners, friends,

co-workers, my husband, reflect for me that I'm a piece of crap. And guess what? The universe

responded just fine. That was my self-seeking motive. And all day long, I would be faced with

ways that I was a piece of crap. And so I started asking in that moment, like, help me to see me as

you see me. And I started to like myself like a little bit. And I mean, as I was, not being a

cookie cutter version of myself. That worked in AA for 20 years. I was a cookie cutter version of myself.

I did monkey see, monkey do. You told me to do it. I did it. And that's a good thing. I still do that.

But I wasn't really me. I was just trying to like, keep up, right? Keep up. Maybe they'll like me if

I just do what everybody else does. And I'm not really myself. And in the last eight years, I

started to figure out how to be me, right? By watching you and realizing that each one of you

is an unrepeatable miracle. Everybody in my home group I look at, they're all different. They're

all crazy in their own way. They're all great in their own way. Even the ones that drive me nuts,

right? Everybody's great. So if that's true,

about them, that has to be true about me. And I started to actually not hate myself little by

little. And then my son, my son who's 18, started having this huge crucifixion experience. So my

poor 18 year old son, at 14 years old, he started just getting persecuted. I mean, if you could draw

a plan for what it would look like to have a kid get the crap kicked out of him every day,

it would be my son. The whole universe conspired. It was so awful to watch. So he's a pitcher and

he throws really hard in freshman year, right? He's throwing like 89 miles an hour as a freshman.

This should be great, right? He should get a college offer. You know, it should be great. The

high school he's in doesn't pitch him. They don't like his stuff. So they don't pitch him. So he

sits on the bench for a year and gets like a handful of innings. So then between freshman and

sophomore year, we meet with the coach and we're like, what do you think? He's like, this is his

year. We're going to throw him. Great guy, by the way. Great coach. But we're going to throw him

whatever sophomore year comes, he gets like 12 innings. He doesn't get to throw all of you,

right? So now other people are getting signed. Other people have college deals and my son has

nothing. And then the persecution socially, the persecution by girls. Academically, he gets rung

up for cheating when he used the internet to give him an answer to a thing that wasn't graded because

she didn't provide them with the information either before or after. It was a non-graded

assignment and they rung him up for cheating for looking up the answer, right? So he's just

getting hosed right and left. And so junior year, I pull him out. I'm like, forget this. Let's just,

and he works on his pitching privately, right? And finally, the summer before senior,

he's going to tournaments, he's pitching and no scouts are there, right? They keep saying,

we're going to pitch you in the championship game and then the team loses and doesn't go to the

championship. So nobody gets to see him, right? So he's almost a senior. He has had not a single

college see him. And at this point, he's throwing 94 miles an hour, right? This is major league

caliber. He throws harder than people I watch on TV and nobody is seeing him pitch. And he's got

great off speeds too. So anyway, so in October, he goes to a tournament. Somebody sees, then a

major league draft, my kid, right? This kid who had been told, you're horrible, you're horrible,

you're horrible, you're horrible forever, ended up in the draft. Now he didn't draft because he got

college offers that were way too good to pass up and he went away to college. So he's not playing

baseball. He's playing baseball at college, but who knows if he'll ever go on the draft. But one

more time I saw, like he stayed true to himself. How do you keep throwing a baseball when everybody

tells you you're no good at it? How do you keep throwing a baseball? You know how much he trained?

He trained hours a day and never got to throw in games. He never, that's,

the fun part. The training is the bad part, but he did what was in front of him. And as a result

of it, it worked out. And that's what AA is for me. AA is doing these things that I don't think

have anything to do with my problem. And it just works out. I remember calling my sponsor and

telling her I was so lonely. I didn't have any girlfriends. I was sober several years. I was

doing the deal, but I didn't have like a close girlfriend and I was lonely. And she told me to

go get a commitment washing cups. Back then we used to wash cups. And I was like, I looked at

like, you're not even listening to me. Why would I wash cups? I'm lonely, you know? And of course

it was what she, you know, she saw. I went and I washed cups and cup washing seemed to be an entirely

female thing. So I would be standing there with other women and we'd all be washing cups. And I

got to know women and I got to start to be like close to a couple and I got friends. That's how

I got friends. And so AA has done that for me, told me to do these things that I think have

absolutely no chance of solving my problem. And then it does. It just works its way out. And so,

um, I graduated from Cal State Northridge by the skin of my teeth. I barely made it through. I mean,

I was a, I was a straight A student, but I was so sick. I could barely make it through classes. It

took me seven years to get a four year degree. And you know, I wasn't so on track, you know,

intellectually that it was going well. And, and so, um, anyway, so I graduated with a degree

years and years ago and I started raising my kids to expect that they would do better than I did.

And I started supporting them and doing better than I, I did, you know, and, and God helped me.

God put people in our life that could help them in ways that I couldn't. And, um, and somehow,

uh, through all of that, my son was just admitted to Harvard. And so my son, uh, is going to Harvard

right now. The pitcher kid is going to Harvard and I sit and I look at that and I think that is

Alcoholics Anonymous. Like that's not possible without Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, you guys

made me good. I would never have been well without this. I would never have been well without you.

So I actually, um, had a series of small,

small strokes last year from that health condition. And most of the time I'm okay.

This is only my third talk back. I didn't speak for 18 months because I couldn't count on my brain.

Most of the time I'm okay, but today it's really hard. Sometimes it's just inflamed and I don't

think as well. And this is one of those days. So I want to thank you very much for having me.

I'm going to sit down a little bit early. Thank you so much.