From Childhood Fantasy to Sobriety: A 13‑Year AA Journey

I couldn't get in the wrong place.

Thank you, Ashley. I'm an alcoholic.

Thank you so much for your share, Nate. It was incredible.

I pretty much identified with everything you said, so I was really happy to get a meeting before the meeting.

I just want to thank Scott for asking me to come. It's really such an honor.

It's so good to see you smiling in your warm eyes.

It's just really so good to be in a physical meeting, I have to say.

I feel really emotional because it's been a while since I've been in a small meeting like this with the steps on the wall.

I just feel really grateful.

I just want to share very quickly. It's a funny story and I'll just take one minute.

Before I came tonight, my two-year-old son got locked into the bathroom.

He went in and he locked the door and we could not get it open.

My husband went and found a shovel and I was like, "Oh, no. Oh, no."

I called the fire department and I was texting Scott, "I don't know if I'm going to take it, but we'll see."

They got him out and then he got to sit in the fire truck.

My stomach is in knots, but I knew if I just came to the meeting and I showed up that I would feel better.

I always know that if doing service, it grounds.

I feel like I just did.

Instantly, I walked in. I've never met anybody here, but I just connected to the share.

That's just what I've learned to do in AA.

My sobriety date is February 8, 2009.

Scott asked me on my sobriety date not knowing if I would speak.

It just turned 13, so it's really a gift to be able to be here too.

I'll share a little bit about what it was like.

I'd say that my story is pretty garden variety.

I identify with the escape from reality that was shared.

I very much feel like I was addicted to fantasy first off.

From the youngest age I can remember, it just escaped imagination play.

I was an only child for quite some time until I was 13.

It was just me and myself in my own world.

I had this homesickness. I didn't understand it.

No matter where I was, it just felt like I wasn't home.

Even from age six, I was like, "Oh, I'm missing something.

Where is it?"

Like a longing.

I feel that I was also really locked into myself.

It was almost like whenever I was around friends, I wanted to participate.

I wanted to connect so badly, but I just couldn't.

I don't even know if I was shy. I just couldn't share myself.

I don't know. It was a very strange feeling that I even would wish upon a star.

I didn't pray then. I just remember asking, "Please remove this. It's awful."

When I found alcohol, I was pretty young.

I went looking for it. I found it under the counter of the bar.

I mixed it all into one water bottle like this and took it to my friend's house.

It was beautiful.

It was the blackout the first night. It was incredible.

I remember it was a spiritual experience for me.

That was what I was looking for with alcohol.

I thought after that feeling again and again and again,

a feeling of just safe for myself, for my thoughts.

Just like you said, I could connect finally.

I could finally show you who I really am.

That was my belief until I came into the rooms.

Nobody can really know who I am unless I am under the influence of something.

I can't actually show myself to you.

We can't have that experience,

which is why I think when I tried it on my own before I knew about AA,

I kept drinking.

I would try not to drink.

I kept drinking because I needed to have that experience,

that human connection.

I had a lot of scary episodes from the time I started drinking until the end.

I ended up in the hospital, almost died a few times under the gutter.

Just things that maybe your average 16-year-old doesn't go through.

I got arrested multiple times. I was on probation.

I was sent to alcohol classes at 17.

I was really, really good at just putting the show on.

I did whatever I needed to do so that I could get where I wanted to go.

I thought I just need to learn how to control my alcohol better.

I need to get smarter.

I just always get caught.

My other friends don't.

I got through that phase.

I got into the school of my dreams in San Francisco.

I got through that period of time.

I just share that because they might have been AAMAs actually.

I don't even remember because I was just not ready yet.

I feel like I meet people like that sometimes.

That's okay.

I couldn't hear the message at all.

Going through San Francisco at 18 as an alcoholic woman was very scary.

I feel like I'm really lucky I survived walking through the Tenderloin late at night by myself and blacking out, making up in straight places.

By the time I was 19, I knew there was something wrong because I got into a lot of trouble when I was really young.

Then suddenly people stopped looking.

I was really fueled by anger like, "I'm just going to show you guys. I'm going to show you. I'm going to prove myself. I'm going to be somebody."

People left me alone by the time I was 19.

I was like, "Oh, nobody's watching anymore. Oh, something's not right. What am I fighting, I guess?"

Because I was really fueled by this anger and this rage inside of me.

I did finish school.

I did get into the career of my dreams, but I knew very quickly that's when I started to control my alcohol.

Because I got into this job that meant a lot to me.

I was a blackout drinker, so I could go a week maybe without drinking.

Then it was just binge, binge, binge. Sorry, not blackout, binge drinker.

I binged for two, three days.

I definitely couldn't function or show up.

That's when I started trying to control my alcohol and just doing things like, "I won't drink around my coworkers."

I worked at an animation studio. I was an artist. It was like a dream job for me.

I was really controlling my drinking 24 years, 23 something.

I would hang out and then I would go home and I would start drinking later and stay up all night.

Just really strange behavior.

I knew that I couldn't just have one.

I started just doing crazy things like, "If I get engaged, I'll stop drinking."

Then I got engaged. I was like, "Okay, now I have to do a geographic to get away from this relationship."

My first job was in Texas of all places for animation.

I did a geographic to Los Angeles back home, back near California.

I was just in this mess. I was alone again.

My fiancé, our relationship wasn't very healthy, was back there.

I was living alone in an apartment. I felt like I might die because I couldn't not drink.

I was just totally sitting on my hands, just so uncomfortable in this new job that I found.

I didn't want people to see me drunk.

Like was mentioned, I was very desperate. I was really, really desperate.

If you don't mind giving me 10-minute warning, I don't want to state.

I started really having some isms.

I joined a speech class at work where I worked with the animation studio.

They were like, "Tell us your story if you can come to work and tell us a little bit about you."

I decided I was so desperate for connection, you guys, that I went to work.

My lunch break to this speech group was five people sitting around a round table.

I started telling them all about my bulimia, all about that I survived.

I went through therapy. I was desperate for connection.

I was looking for an AA meeting, I realized, without knowing that that was available to me or that it existed.

I'm just pouring my heart out and telling them everything I've been through and this longing inside of me.

I think that I'm better now because I'm reading the power of now.

I'm meditating. I'm doing all this stuff.

I started getting some notes from people, emails like, "Are you okay?"

"Someone left a flower on my desk."

I went to a friend that had six months sober.

I was just like, "I think that there's something wrong with you."

I think maybe I want to check out one of these meetings, too.

I knew that he had been drinking, but he wasn't telling me what he was doing.

I knew he was meeting people and he was playing music with some people he met at a meeting.

I was like, "Maybe I can go make friends there."

He was like, "Okay, well, I'm not going to meet. I'm not going to take you."

He was very smart. He said, "Go on your own. You're going to sit with the women."

I was just like, "Wow, you're really rude."

He was really, I think, empowering me to do it for myself.

I went to, I think it was Third and Gardner on Melrose.

It's called Third and Gardner on Melrose and Fairfax in Los Angeles.

It was Saturday morning. It was 400 people.

I just remember a man got up to celebrate his one-year anniversary.

He had a one-year-old with him.

I never got to meet my father.

He was an alcoholic and an addict.

It flashed before my eyes.

Just this feeling of like, "Okay, maybe if my father hadn't been an addict or an alcoholic,

we would have a relationship. What does that mean for me?"

I just started putting all these pieces together as these people were sharing.

Really vulnerable, as you know, in an AA meeting.

I thought, "Maybe I'm in the right place, actually.

Maybe this is something that can work for me."

Still with all this resistance, of course, because I didn't know what this program was about.

I remember going to fellowship and someone saying to me,

"I remember being that desperate. You have the gift of desperation."

I was really offended by that.

I went to fellowship, went to phone numbers, and I just remember that feeling of all angles.

Someone brought me a book. Someone gave me a meeting directory.

It was just like, "Wow, these are just other alcoholics just like me."

I thought everyone was so much more advanced than me and they knew everything.

Just because someone had six months, I thought that they were way healthier than me.

I didn't know. They were just drunks just like me, one day at a time,

doing what they had to do for their recovery as well.

That experience kept me coming back and I do remember in that first week thinking,

"If I don't hear something tonight, I don't think I'm going to come back."

It was inconvenient to get to one meeting, but I kept hearing something.

I'll tell you what really stood out to me was the spiritual solution.

I didn't have a connection with God.

I just kept thinking, "What are they talking about?

I think I want that and I think I deserve that."

This concept that I could find this spiritual experience that I knew I was looking for when I was drinking alcohol.

I knew that's what I was looking for when I was out trying to connect with people in the bar,

stumbling around and falling down.

I kept coming back and eventually got a sponsor.

I remember when I was so crazy in my first several weeks, but I was so nervous.

I was going to meet a sponsor and I got into a small car accident.

I was just so freaked out by everything and everything was so overwhelming and intense.

It was like my feelings were just going to kill me.

I started with a really cool sponsor who drove a motorcycle and had long red hair.

It was just very intimidating.

Then I heard somebody speak at a meeting that talked about meditation.

I started calling her and I started going to these groups at her house.

Then I asked her to sponsor me.

What we would do is we'd sit at their house and meditate in a circle and someone would guide it.

I left that first meeting and had a panic attack on the way home.

I never sat with myself fully without any substances and stillness.

It was just like building into an explosion.

I didn't have to pull over and call a friend.

I called that friend that brought me into the first meeting, that friend of mine.

I went over to his house and he just held my hand as I cried.

I didn't drink and I performed that night and called some more people. I woke up the next day.

I went back again the next week and went to another meeting.

That's what I kept doing.

I called another friend that I met in the rooms and did gratitude lists at night.

I remember that friend and the two people that I met in my first month ended up going out and dying,

which is really, really sad.

I always remember them because I just remember how they were just average people just drunk like me trying to do this thing.

It's so precious what we get here.

The fact that they could carry the message to me and help to keep me sober just blows me away.

I started doing the step work.

Like I said, the concept that I could choose my own higher power,

I thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard because I was really angry about the idea of God when I came in.

I was reading all these spiritual books and I thought that I was so much better when I would go to fellowship.

I actually was that person who would be like, "You guys should just be in the moment."

They were like, "Keep coming back."

I was crazy just because I'd read Ephraim Tolle and all this stuff.

I didn't actually feel any of it. It was just all up here.

I had to do a lot of work around that third step, 11th step.

Something that worked for me was just sit and feel love for a few minutes every day.

Just let yourself sit or look at some beautiful photos or quotes.

I love the set-aside prayer and just let myself cultivate that feeling of love, even if it's for two minutes.

As I started to get into step four, I did everything I thought was the easier, softer way.

I tried to take all the tricks.

Instead of doing a sex inventory, I saw a sex therapist.

Instead of doing my step work, I did the hardest way first because it was just so cool.

Eventually, I finished that inventory.

I was like, "Wow, why didn't I do this sooner?"

Then I finished my steps.

I could see what I was doing. It was just a resistance.

I get why it takes people so long to finish their inventory.

When I did that, when I did finish my inventory and got around to the immense process,

what really struck me was that I was so eager to do things right away.

I did actually make some mistakes because I jumped into things way before I was ready and ruined relationships.

Sober.

I remember one particular relationship.

My sponsor was saying, "More will be revealed around this."

Around the one where I fleed from the fiancé.

I wanted to make amends so badly because I really harmed that person.

They were like, "You don't have to do anything today. More will be revealed."

Eventually, several months later, it was done effortlessly where I got to go back to Texas.

There were people I got to stay with that were in recovery that someone gave my number.

I remember showing up to one of these people's houses and they had prayers all over their house.

I'm not from the Christian background, but it was so comforting just to be around a sober home with prayers.

Then to go off and do this immense process and then come back to this safe and sober place.

I was just like, "What is happening?"

Eventually, I have a stepdad and I didn't grow up knowing my father.

He did die of this disease, but I was driving home to see my family.

I just realized I was listening to NPR and they were talking about adoption.

I got home and I asked my stepdad, "Would you like to adopt?"

He stopped and he looked at me and he almost started crying.

He was like, "Really? You really would want me to adopt you?"

I was like, "Yes, I love you and I want to build our relationship."

I didn't realize in that moment after I took my sponsor, she was like,

"What a beautiful amends," but it was this natural thing that just came out of me.

I was like, "I want a relationship with you. I want to let you into my life."

I've had such a hard time letting this love in.

I realized I did this inventory and I've been blaming you for all this stuff that wasn't you.

It was just so beautiful because it wasn't forced and it wasn't scripted.

It was just very natural. It just came from the heart.

When we did go through that adoption process, it was like the lawyer that we used in the probation.

My whole family was there. My two half-sisters, they were crying.

I had no idea that I was going to create those ripples through my whole family.

My dad and I call him dad. He's my stepdad, but he did adopt me.

We have a beautiful relationship today because I realized what was my part in never knowing my father.

My part was that I wasn't letting the love in and I was being an asshole to every man in my life.

I wasn't letting him have a relationship with me.

I still continue to do that work, to open my heart up and see where the love is coming in.

I thought another thing that was interesting, synchronicity started popping out everywhere for me when I got sober.

I really thought that I was unlovable when I got sober. I was so young when I got sober.

I was like, "How am I going to find love? No one's going to want someone who's sober. It's just going to be so hard."

I moved to New York City when I was two years sober and got to get involved and to AA there.

I'll just quickly tell you, I was riding the train back and forth to work.

My husband, who was my coworker at the time, was on the train while we were headed to work.

He worked in Greenwich, coming to New York to Greenwich.

We were friends for six months until we realized we were both sober in AA.

We got to be friends for a whole year before we did this sober way where his sponsor was like, "You've got to tell her how you feel."

We were at pizza one night and he was like, "I have feelings for you."

I was like, "Really?" and gave him a hard time. I was just like, "I feel the same way."

It was the coolest opposite of anything you can imagine.

I was so crazy and so was he. I was five years sober. It's all over now.

The beautiful thing is that we got to walk through that with our sponsors.

I called my sponsor every step of the way because it was really tough being in a relationship and being in a space where someone actually made me feel safe.

I don't know. How much time do I have left?

It's really interesting. Emotional sobriety. When I got into a relationship that made me feel really safe, a lot of my rage came out.

I share about this because people think I'm so calm and I'm so grounded, but that was a very scary time for me.

He stuck through it with me. We got into a lot of arguments. It wasn't all me, of course, but we worked through it together.

We needed outside help, couples therapy, but I would throw things and I would flip out.

I never knew I had that kind of anger inside me, but when I used to drink, people used to tell me, "You are a very angry person."

I'm like, "Really?" I did because I was such a people pleaser. I just thought I was so sweet.

I remember my first sponsor was like, "You're not sweet."

I just thought I was so sweet and so nice, but I was just really very people teasing and manipulative and passive aggressive and all those things.

I really got to tap into the fact that I have an edge to me and I have anger.

I think today it's a beautiful thing because I can tap into it and I can navigate it and maybe even use it in a positive way.

That's what I'm trying to say in the right way because anger is something that's trying to teach us something.

It's a feeling, right? It's like just noticing feelings and leaning into them without shame and fear.

Another thing I discovered in sobriety is a lot about purpose.

I thought that I had this big purpose to be this famous artist and I worked on all these feature films.

Then I started to feel really miserable in my job, like sitting behind a desk all day, doing really superficial work.

Not to say it was, I don't know, it felt like there was a void for me.

I did my job, I remember, for a year in New York City and called my sponsor every day, "I hate this job. I don't want this job anymore."

I just kept coming back until, again, something else was revealed.

I took a yoga teacher training when I was working and I did all these outside things, these passions.

I started leading classes, but I didn't just stop. Just because I didn't feel good, I didn't just quit.

I just kept letting things show up for my program, for my life.

Eventually, I got fired, which was a gift because I did start saying no to working late, working 15, 16-hour days,

which all my coworkers were doing, and that wasn't the life I wanted to live.

I just started saying, "No, sorry, I'm going to go home."

I wanted other things. I wanted to become a mother. I wanted to have a family.

I just didn't really see myself in that career, that lifestyle, having the family that I wanted to have.

Eventually, I transitioned into a different... I started leading yoga.

My husband, fortunately, he supported me through that.

I'll share quickly. I started creating my own business,

and then I decided I wanted to go back to school and become a therapist, so I started studying.

We were trying to get pregnant, and it's a lot of information,

but I just want to share one of the synchronicity moments where I really feel like God is speaking to me in my recovery,

where we had three miscarriages and it was really hard.

I'd never walked through something that I didn't know I wanted so badly and just couldn't have it.

It was a humility I never really knew I'd experience because I thought it would come so easily.

My mom had me at 19, and she always said, "Don't get pregnant."

I was like, "Okay, I won't," and I did it for a while.

I thought when I was ready, it would just come first, and it didn't.

It took two years, and I remember my husband and I went for a walk up in Woodstock, New York,

a very beautiful monastery up there, and I said, "Can we just do a meditation together?"

I just said, "Let's just set this vision for this beautiful baby."

I don't know if we've even visualized it in our lives yet or created space for it.

It's like we're two sober people walking through the woods holding hands.

They're praying to have a family, and we found out we were pregnant a month later.

I can't believe that happened.

It was such a blessing.

I have to say, moving around a lot in sobriety has been a real blessing for me because I've gotten to be the new person in a lot of different places.

It's really scary.

I got to experience big, big meetings in New York City and then little hometown meetings in Greenwich, Connecticut, where we lived for two years.

I just love AA so much, and it's held me through so many scary moments.

Something that was coming to me as I was driving over, I was just praying, and I realized I hadn't prayed probably all week.

That's not true. Just really, really asked to be.

My favorite prayer is, "Lead me where you need me to be."

I just really aim to be teachable, to have that beginner mind every day.

I want to be surprised.

I don't want to feel like I'm right.

I want to have that sense of wonderment and awe in my life and be present in the moment and really look around and feel like I'm learning something new from you, from life.

I feel like when I get into my will, it doesn't feel that way.

I'm digging my nails in, and I'm holding on.

There's been a lot of interesting lessons along the way in the pandemic.

I have two kids now. One's going to be four, and one just turned two.

We bought a house recently.

I just want to share this because it's really kind of funny.

We bought a house in Westlake Village back in August, and my husband hated this big oak tree in the front yard.

I remember it was the biggest thing he hated about this house.

It was his biggest fear.

We'd only lived there for three weeks, and the oak tree fell on the house in the middle of the night.

We're very, very grateful because it didn't hurt anyone.

It could have been really bad. It was 500 years old.

It was really scary.

Long story short, I realized we had home insurance.

I didn't know who. I called my sponsor first.

I was like, "The oak tree fell on the house."

She's like, "You should probably call your insurance company, not me."

I just called my sponsor first when anything happened.

It turned out we had to move out.

We're still living out of our home, but we got to remodel the home, like $400,000 from insurance to remodel this home.

I said to my husband, "This was your biggest fear, and look what came out of it."

It's interesting to me how we could be so right about something, so sure, but then you just don't know what the bigger picture is.

It hasn't been easy having two small children and going through everything we've been going through.

I just try to make this program my priority.

I try to call my sponsor as much as possible, reach out, do surveys.

I did start working.

I started going back to work in a recovery-oriented role.

I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Sorry, I'm so tired, you guys.

I get to work with people and do meditation and yoga every day.

It's such a gift.

It's such a teacher for me because I realized getting to the room is the hardest part.

A lot of times, I meet people where I work and also outside of where I work.

I've had some friends struggling recently.

My sponsor told me the other day, "That's why we really do service in the room."

It's like when you get to the room, you meet a newcomer in the room.

It's like, "Okay, how can I be of service to you?"

Because I've struggled.

I was trying to save a friend recently. Thank you.

It was really hard to watch.

With her two small kids and her husband, there was some violence.

She's calling me at 6 o'clock in the morning and 11 o'clock at night.

All I could do was present her with the meetings, share women's phone numbers.

Then I had to step back and I had to say, "I'm sorry. I can't see you at a meeting, but I can't do much more than that.

I can't listen to you talk for an hour.

I'm not going to be useful until we get to a meeting or you guys get to a marriage counselor."

I really feel passionate about recovery.

I never thought I would be this person who wanted to give back in the way that I do.

I don't know what else to say.

I might have to end a little bit early, but I feel really grateful to have received 13 years.

I guess maybe I'll share one more thing to close that I didn't expect to share.

My grandfather, he was somebody that was in the program when I got sober.

He really loved this program.

He gave me one of his coins.

He took me to a meeting with him in Arizona.

He was a big teacher for me because he unfortunately let resentments really get to him.

I remember he had a sponsee that went out.

It just tore him apart.

He stopped doing meetings.

I just remember watching him and how miserable he was because he got away from the program

versus I remember the light in his eyes.

There's nothing I could do.

I had to work a good, strong out in the program around that relationship with my grandfather.

I just remember I would call him up and I would just love him and love him and then back away and not take it on.

That was a big lesson for me in my recovery.

I did a lot of step work around that and that relationship.

I could have very easily blocked him out, but I didn't.

I remember the last time I saw him, we were having a little gathering.

I was so sweet to him. I gave him a big hug.

I took lots of photos of him with my daughter.

I remember bringing him a plate of fruit.

The following week, he took his life.

I know he struggled and he suffered from this disease.

That was just two years ago.

The peace that I had around when he died, it kind of shocked me.

Not that it wasn't horribly painful, but it was just like something was lifted.

No human power can relieve us of our suffering.

There's just been a lot of things for me that have been lifted in my life that I've found peace around.

I feel like I have a relationship with my grandfather still.

I went surfing after his death and I remember asking for a wave from him because I was really scared to surf.

The waves weren't coming, so then I asked his wife.

She also passed away from cancer the year before.

I was like, "He's really lazy. Why don't you send me a wave?"

I was just having so much fun with myself and my conversation that I got up on the wave.

I was like, "I'm writing this for you."

There's just been a lot of beautiful waves that I've related to higher power and to struggles in my life that I feel like I never would have had these tools if I wasn't sober.

I just know that there's more to come.

When I suffer and I struggle, I just say yes and I show up going.

You guys, it's so wonderful to be here with you.