30 Years Sober: From Early Trauma to Recovery

Whoops. Hi everyone. My name is Georgia. I'm an alcoholic. I'm grateful to be here and

to be sober and to be sitting down to talk. Usually you have to be at a podium, which

makes it feel like we're looking down at people. Thank you for inviting me, Karen. That's really

good to be back. I've been to this meeting a few times and see some friendly faces and

thank you, Monique, for your talk. Really great. I've been sober since February 1st,

1993. I just turned 30 years sober, which is crazy. I got sober when I was 24. I was

absolutely certain my life was over. It was just the opposite. My life was just beginning.

I was raised by a single mom. My dad died of cancer when I was six. It's funny, not

funny. My dad died. He was 54 years old. When I was in my teens and in my 20s, people would

say, "Oh, I'm so sorry that your dad died." I'm like, "He lived a really long life." I

just turned 54 this year and I'm like, "What?" Anyway, my mom didn't know how to drive when

my dad died. She had to work three jobs to keep the roof over our head. I've never been

grounded. I've never had any rules. She was not prepared to raise me by herself financially,

emotionally, in any way. She was mostly depressed and angry and worked three jobs, came home,

sat in front of the TV, didn't want to be bothered with me. I got a lot of, "Not now.

Leave me alone." I was a lonely kid. I had really big emotions. I feel like I was born

singing the blues. My emotions were so out of proportion to, it seemed, the people around

me. While the kids my age were wanting to play with Barbies and play games and stuff,

I was dealing with heavy stuff. I wanted to hang out with the adults. I related more to

older people. I started hanging out with the older kids in the neighborhood. They were

smoking and they were drinking. I was smoking and I was drinking. I'm so jealous of those

people who remember their first drink. "I took a drink. It went boom. I went off." That's

not my story. I started sipping out of the adults' drinks and then eventually just was

drinking more and more. I just kind of tapered on. Because I was so depressed and felt so

out of place and didn't know what to do with myself and because I didn't have any rules,

I think my alcoholism was able to bloom a lot earlier. Not having rules made it a lot

easier. A lot of my friends had curfews and had to be home at a certain time. While my

mom was just like, "If you're going to smoke, if you're going to drink, I'd rather you do

it here." I just turned my room into a party room and started filling it with teenage kids.

I was stealing my mom's car and cruising it around the neighborhood with your kids. I

was the kid in the neighborhood you don't want your kid hanging out with. I was arrested

for drinking in public by the time I was 11. By the time I was 12, I had my first suicide

attempt. At 13, I ended up pregnant and I terminated that pregnancy at the urging of

my mom and my boyfriend. Then I drank over that. I had so much guilt and remorse about

that. It wasn't until I got sober and I heard that we won't regret the past nor wish to

shut the door on it that I got any peace from that. It seems that God gives us just what

we need just when we need it and not a second before. For me, even with 30 years of sobriety,

things stay in a place of regret until I can either use that experience to help someone

else or use that experience to change something I'm going through. Back then, I was just collecting

regret. I had another suicide attempt at 13. I dropped out of school every year, either

went to summer school or continuation to make it to the next grade because this is where

your character defects work for you, is that there was no way I wasn't going to graduate

with my class. There was just no way that was going to happen. I got all the credits

you get in three years. I got one year so I could graduate with my class. My best friend

Diana graduated a semester early, moved to San Diego, was living a big life, and I just

continued to stay in and around our hometown circling the drain. My drinking, what makes

me an alcoholic, is not the things that happen to me. It's when I drink, no matter how much

I promise you, no matter how much I promise me even, every time I drink, I'm going to

get drunk. I remember going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous over the years for my

friends who really needed it because I'm a good friend. I would pop in from time to time

and I would hear people say things like, "It's the first drink that gets you drunk." I'd

be like, "What a bunch of lightweights." I didn't understand that until much later that

the only choice I have is that first drink. Once I take that first drink, I no longer

have a choice. I didn't know that for a long time. What happened was I went through all

sorts of different phases with drugs. It would get out of control. I could stop because there

was always alcohol. I had one more suicide attempt in my 20s.

Then what happened was my roommate had a brother who had a little problem with crack cocaine.

Spoiler alert, there are no little problems with crack cocaine. He moved in with us and

he and I hooked up. I couldn't be with somebody who had a different buzz. That was always

going to be something I wasn't going to do but I couldn't break up with him and he was

acting weird. I just said, "Give me some." I started doing that with him and within six

months I lost everything. I got evicted from where I live, fired from my job, and he sold

my car for a piece of crack cocaine which went for about $20 at the time.

At that point in my life, I had had great jobs, lost them, great relationships, lost

them, lots of friends, lost them because my drinking always gets in the way of any kind

of success in my life. I am a great starter. I'm a multiple restarter. I start a lot of

things. I just don't finish anything. So what happened is when I hit bottom, my mom had

claimed bankruptcy and moved away when I was 17. She moved up north to live with my grandma.

My mom and grandma were my only family. Now they're out of town. I've now hit bottom and

there's no place for me to go. It was my best friend's parents, Diana's parents who took

me in. They were the kind of family that I used to watch on TV that would sit down to

eat dinner at a regular time. They go on family trips. They seem to love each other. I watched

a lot of TV and a lot of movies. That's how I learned to live. I just always aspired to

find someone to love me. That's all I ever wanted. If somebody loves me, I'll be okay.

You know, in all of the movies, that's what happens. Once you find love, everything else

falls into place. I didn't think I needed a plan and it wasn't until I had double digit

sobriety that I learned that a man is not a plan, but for a long time it was my only

plan. And so when I had no place to go, Diana's parents took me in and I lived in their basement

for the remainder of my drinking. And so I'm like, okay, I've got a problem with drugs.

I'm just not going to do those anymore. It's just easy. I just make it happen. But what

happened was when I drink, I changed my mind. And when I drink, I break promises to you,

to me. And so I'm drinking and now I'm doing things that I said I wasn't going to do right

before I picked up that drink. And so even now, my life is messy again. I'm living in

a way that that last year or so, my drinking was some of the darkest and depraved drinking

that I can remember. And I remembered going to those meetings of AA and I just, the God

thing didn't really work for me. Didn't really believe in God, wasn't raised with religion.

If there is a God, don't care for his work so far, not really want to sign up for that

thing. And that, you know, the first drink gets you drunk. And then I always found reasons

that wouldn't work for me first. I thought when I went with my friends, I thought I wasn't

as bad as you guys. Now that I had the crack experience, I'm like, now I'm too bad for

you guys. Always some reason I don't fit in. So I thought, I'll just white knuckle it.

I can quit. No problem. And I tried, but I just couldn't. And when I wasn't drinking,

I was the most miserable I'd ever been. And I thought if I'm going to be miserable, I'd

rather be drunk and miserable than sober and miserable. And that seemed to be my fate.

You know, my fate was to live a miserable, lonely life. And so I poured myself a drink

and I didn't feel guilty for the first time about that drink. And I was just about to

take a sip and the phone rang and it was a guy by the name of Jeff Monahan. He was a

sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he had been a member of the Pacific group

and then moved to San Diego and was working with my normie best friend, whose parents

I was living with. And so she learned that he was sober and started confiding in him

about her loser friend living with her parents. And so he offered to call me and he called

and he said, "I understand you have a problem with alcohol. And for whatever reason, I told

this stranger, "Yes, I do." And he said, "I want to give you the number of a woman to

call an AA." And he gave me the number of Pat Y. And I called Pat and she said, "My husband

Vince and I are going to a meeting. Why don't you come with us?" And so I drove to this

stranger's house, got in this stranger's car and they took me to a room full of strangers.

And I've been sober ever since. And when I try to articulate what God's grace is, I go

to that moment because there were so many times I qualified for this program from the

time I was 11, 13 sliding through the quad at school on my face and all the things that

happened over the years, all the times I qualified. So anyway, everything lined up in that moment

and Pat and Vince took me to the big Wednesday night meeting, which was different than any

other meeting I've been to. It seemed like people were happy and sober at the same time.

I thought it was an or conversation. I thought you were happy or sober. I did not know that

you could be both. And I felt hope for the first time. And Pat said the magic words,

"I'll be your sponsor until you find one." And started me on a really simple course of

action. But I was 24 and a half. And I'm like, "I've already wasted too much time. I've got

to get on the fast track. I've got to get a great job, quit smoking. Got to get a good

exercise regime, go on a diet. I've got to go to school. And now that I'm well, I'm for

a relationship." And when Pat got done laughing, she suggested that I just work on getting

a first year foundation. And this is one of the great things about being a member of a

home group is that everybody's saying the same thing. Everybody's doing the same thing.

And in my home group, everybody in their first year, getting a first year foundation because

that's what you build the rest of your sobriety upon. And I was told, "Don't rush into your

life. Don't rush into doing all this stuff. Take a year, get your first year foundation."

And so all that time and energy I want to put into going into school, put that into getting

my steps done, get a little job to go to in between meetings, no major changes, don't

quit smoking, and for God's sake, no relationship. And I was like, "What?" I've been in relationships

often more than one at a time since I was 10. But I made a decision that I would try

everything that I was asked to do. So when it didn't work, I could justify how tragic

my life is. So I started calling Pat and she started me on a really simple course of action,

going to regular meetings on regular days, and then getting commitments at those meetings.

And I'd never had structure in my life. I always thought structure was the man trying

to keep you down, people over 30 who don't understand freedom. And the thing was is I've

never had any structure in my life. I've never gone to school on a regular basis, never gone

to work on a regular basis, never been faithful in a relationship. I'd never had structure

in my life. So by having just a little bit of structure, little job to go to in between

meetings, regular meetings on regular days, calling Pat every day, just that structure

was like I could breathe. And the more structure I had, the more creative I was, the more structure

I had, the more time seemed to bend. It was like, the more I did, the more I could do.

And it doesn't, it was like, this isn't working on paper, but somehow it's working. And so

I began to thrive on that and, and really started just being like super newcomer and

trying to get through my steps and all that. And I did, I made it to my first year and

I stayed out of a relationship for a year and about an hour and a half. I take direction

really literally. And so I consummated a relationship with my new fella when I was a year and about

an hour and a half. It was at 1 30 AM. And we got engaged two weeks later and we got

married six months later and I was married to him my first five years of sobriety. And

those were great years because we always put AA first. We always stay close to our sponsors.

And so when it didn't work out, we didn't have to fight over our home group or be ugly.

I mean, I learned all that in AA. And when we split up, I got involved with someone else

right away. Although at that point in my life, I had begun to kind of be a service junkie

because that emptiness that I always thought if somebody loved me, I'd be okay. You know,

love me, love me, love me. I was learning that the only way to fill that emptiness is

by being of service. It's my loving you that fills me up. It's when I'm lonely, I've got

to pick up the phone. It's the actions I take that fill me up. Getting is good and getting

feels good, but getting's never filled that. And so I was beginning to learn that. So I

was like of maximum service all the time, taking people to doctor's appointments and

taking meetings to sick people. And you know, like I was just like 24/7 work all day, meetings

every night, doing stuff for people, taking class. My life was just going so fast and

got involved with this guy. Then I had to have back surgery and I had had minor back

surgery early in sobriety, but I had to have a spinal fusion and there were complications

and I ended up being bedridden for a year. And so all this action that I'd been finding

my usefulness and my joy in, all of a sudden I'm like this and I have to have babysitters

every night. I can't take care of myself and I have people babysitting me that I honestly

wouldn't have had a cup of coffee with. I remember they told me they were sending over

this girl to watch me on Friday night and I'm like, you mean the girl who used to be

a nun? No. Like what do we have in common? And I remember just like thinking, no, no,

no, I don't want to, I don't want these people coming over. And you know, Keith Carpenter

used to talk about the seemingly good and the seemingly bad. And now I look back at

my life and I look at all these seemingly bad times and they're some of the best times

of my life. You know, the times I felt most connected with other people that I felt most

alive. And so I, I built these relationships with these people who are taking care of me

and, but the guy that I was seeing came to me many months into this process. I was so

sick and I had to go to the hospital three times a week and it was my home group that

took care of me. And anyway, he came to me and he said he considered a relationship and

a commitment with me when I was well and he dumped me. And by that time I had gotten Marilyn

Slater as my sponsor. She's been my sponsor for the last 28 years. And I called her, I'd

been calling her like, I have to have back surgery. There's complications. I can't work.

I can't drive. I've got to give up my job. You know, all that stuff. And now I call her,

I'm like, and now I got dumped. And at the time she was learning to play guitar. So oftentimes

she'd be playing in the background and she said, and she sang a, she played a country

chord progression and she sang my blues and it made me laugh. And that's been one of the

greatest gifts of my sobriety is finding humor and everything. And having a sponsor who finds

so much humor in my darkest moments has been a gift. But she does, she makes me laugh.

And and that's been a great gift, you know, and Marilyn's my fourth sponsor. And I found,

I found a formula that works to let me know if I'm with the right person and that is I

must be able to answer yes to two questions. One is, do I want what they have? And two,

do I trust their judgment? And if I can answer yes, then I know I'm with the right person.

Now the disclaimer to that is when you're new, you don't know all of that. So whoever,

like I've never had a bad sponsor. I've never had anybody who's given me bad direction. I've

had just what I need, just when I need it. But anyway, I I was so full of uselessness

and self pity at that time. And now I just got dumped and and you know, we can pray for

character defects to be removed. But what normally happens is an assignment appears

and in my case that appeared in the shape of a man, a man named Mike Finch, he was a

member of my home group. He was 34 years old, and he'd been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's

disease. And I watched him go from walking and talking to being paralyzed from the neck

down. But the thing that never changed about him was his love for Alcoholics Anonymous.

He loved AA and he sponsored a ton of guys and he used to pack them in his handicap van

and they'd go to conferences and ball games and meetings all over the place. And I used

to call him the make a wish boy, which is a little distasteful. But he had a really

good sexy hammer. And his wife had also left him when he was sick. And so he and I became

friends. And then we became more than friends. And I was able to take care of him the last

six months of his life, which was something I did not know I was capable of. But just

like I said, God gives us just what we need just when we need it. You know, if when I

got sober, if somebody had said, these are all the things you're going to go through

sober, I would have said, Okay, thank you very much. I'd like another drink, please,

you know. But I think it's like when you're looking at the steps and you're on step one,

and you're looking at nine, and you're going, there's no way I'm making an amends to that

jerk. But by the time you do one perhaps you for two and two for three, and so so by the

time you get to nine, you're ready. And likewise, that's been my experience is things that I

think I could not live through or stay sober through I do. Thanks to this beautiful net

that is given me with God sponsorship, the steps and all the tools I've been given here.

You know, I get to love a man I know who is going to die. And it's it doesn't break me.

You know, I used to try to mask all the bad feelings, you know, I don't feel sad, I don't

feel mad, you know, I don't want any of those feelings, but I want all the good ones. But

what I know now is that all of my feelings feelings are a gift. And that because of that

beautiful net again, you know, I get to experience everything and I need not be afraid because

I don't do anything alone. And so I got to get to love this man. And, and it by falling

in love with him, I found something redeemable in me, because I did not know I was capable

of loving someone that way. Like I said, I always measured love and what I was getting

and this was quite an unusual situation. And so with a few of the guys he sponsored and

his family, we took care of Mike those last six months. And I was able to be there holding

his hand when he died. And it doesn't always happen that way. But I think it happens the

way it's supposed to. And that's how that happened. About a month before Mike died,

my grandma died. And my grandma was the meanest human being I'd ever met in my life. I mean,

bar none. She was she looked mean. And every picture where she's standing by me, she looks

like this. Photo albums. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that woman hated me. And she had no

problem telling me what a piece of crap I was. And she drank, I would call her an alcoholic.

She used to say, you know, your grandma's not an alcoholic. I'm just a drunk. And I

learned later that those two words are the same thing. But anyway, something happened

early in sobriety. I'm going to try and think I have time to tell it. So when I was about

two weeks sober, a family friend came forward and told me all these secrets that my mom

and grandma had kept for me. As I said, my mom and grandma were my only family. I love

them, hated them, was embarrassed of them, blame them for my life was really happy when

my mom claimed bankruptcy and moved with my grandma because now the cuckoo town was all

contained and I didn't have to really look at it too closely. And but I had always suspected

that there were secrets in our family. And I'd been through all of their personal belongings

and never been able to uncover what those secrets were and kind of gave up that idea

until I was about two weeks sober. And a family friend came forward and said, I'm so stuck.

And I was like, Oh, I knew it, which is my favorite thing to say. And so I wrote down

everything he told me because when you hurt me, I like to be super specific when I throw

it in your face, which was my plan. I was going to throw it in my mom's face. But instead

I took it to Pat, who was my sponsor at that time. And I said, look at what, and she said,

it's so good. You have that written down. You're going to need that later. And she told

me to work on being a good daughter and granddaughter for the time being, and that we'd worry about

that later. And I was like, what, like, did you not hear me? But I don't know how to be

a good daughter and granddaughter. And so we came up with a formula and that's that

I call once a week, I'd write once a week and I visit as often as I could. And if I

were doing these things, I would know at the end of the day that I'd been a good daughter

and granddaughter. And this exercise was not for them. It was for me. It was so maybe just

maybe I could stay sober because where they were concerned, I felt like I said, such fierce

love and loyalty and responsibility and guilt and hate and all those feelings all at once.

And so I started taking these actions that I did not believe in. I just did it cause

I want to, you know, I didn't want to get in trouble. So I sent the card once a week.

I made the call once a week, super awkward at first, but eventually it got easier. And

then over months of doing this, I started imagining how they must be savoring these

cards and maybe even keeping them in a beautiful decorative box or perhaps tied with a lovely

ribbon and maybe even rereading them from time to time. And I made my weekly call to

my mom and grandma and my mom said, well, we've been getting your cards, but grandma's

been having to wipe them out to reuse them. And we're wondering if you could start writing

them in pencil. And so I did, I wrote those cards in pencil for over a decade. And the

most important thing about that is I now had a sponsor who told me I never have to go through

anything alone and I could take all my problems to her. I was having an experience of my own

higher power as a result of going through the steps with a sponsor. I had more friends

than I dreamed a girl like me could ever have. And I was learning that I had more tools than

I ever knew existed. And it may not be fair, but he with the most tools has the most responsibility.

And so I wrote those damn cards in pencil for a long time. And the exercise here was

to be a good daughter and granddaughter, not if they reciprocate, not if they respond in

a way I find tasteful, not if I think they deserve it. My actions define who I am and

I get to be whoever I want to be. And my, who I am is defined by my actions, not my

intentions. And so I was bound and determined I'm going to be a good daughter and granddaughter.

And so a real phone call went like this to my, this is like, I don't know, I'm a couple

you're sober. My mom goes, well, I called, they never call me. Never. They did not believe

they should ever have to call me. I call and my mom goes, well, we wanted to wish you a

happy birthday, but you didn't call. And so I learned on my birthday, I could do what

I normally did, which was paste by the phone and say, I know they're not going to call.

I know they're not going to call. And then at the end of the day, my favorite thing,

I knew it, or I had new tools. Now I could call them. It's my birthday call and first

thing good morning. Just wanted to say, I love you. Today's my birthday. And I was just

thinking about you guys and then enjoy the rest of my day. Like these were crazy ideas.

And I think, you know, we talk about, once you're physically sober, we talk about emotional

sobriety. And I think for me, the definition of emotional sobriety is that I used to, my

happiness was solely reliant on your actions for the first half of my life. And for the

last, you know, in sobriety, my happiness is reliant on my actions. And, and so I just,

I just continue to take these actions. And I think just as our disease ripples out into

the lives of the people we love, so does our recovery. And my grandma, this horrible, mean

drunk woman suddenly started saying things like, well, you know, your grandma loves you.

And I'd be like, well, no, I didn't. That was my inside voice. But she changed. She

never stopped drinking, never went to a meeting, never read a big book, never did steps, but

she was profoundly changed by this program. And because you guys gave it to me and I took

it to them, I learned to take my mommy stuff to my sponsor and to my girlfriends. And I

learned to be of service and just bring love and goodness as much as I could, you know,

I was like three years sober. And I sent my weekly card. And my mom said, well, we got

your card, but it was in pen. And that day, I wasn't feeling as spiritual. And, but I

knew well enough to go, oh, look at the time I've got to run. And I hung up the phone and

I called Marilyn. And I said, that's it. I call, I write, I visit, I'm done. And Marilyn

said, and so I did. I sent those cards and I made those calls. No matter what the flash

forward, Mike, my grandma passed away about a month before Mike. And by the time my grandma

died, we were good. There was no bad feelings. And then Mike passed away a month later. And

I was living in San Diego because I'd moved down there to help take care of Mike. And

I moved back to LA, I was still having physical problems. And we're not supposed to say our

case is different. But if you have chronic pain, our case is different. And for what

I learned for me is, is it means I have to do twice as much to feel half as good. So

for a long time, I tried to do half as much because I was in pain and poor me, but then

I went insane. And in sobriety, I hit a suicidal depression. And so I learned that I am not

like my fellows out in the world, but I'm not like my fellows in AA. And that's where

the power comes in knowing that that even though I have friends who can do a meeting

or two sponsor, maybe not service commitments, maybe not, and they're happy, joyous and damn

free. And I think, you know, I'll do that too. And I don't end up happy, joyous and

free. I need to do a lot. And that's just what I know about myself. But anyway, I moved

back to LA, I was really struggling to get back into some kind of structure in my home

group and all of that my mom asked to see me and I drove up to where she lived. And

she told me all those secrets I'd written in that book when I was new, and I had not

found it necessary to throw them in her face all those years. And she the secrets that

I that were in that book were that my mom and dad were never married, even though my

mom said they were married and more wedding ring that my mom had embezzled the money that

my dad left me when he died that my dad was a womanizer and alcoholic, it was stuff like

that those were the and I did not tell her those and she sat down with me and she said

now that your grandma's gone, there's some things I think you should know your grandma

was a really private person. And but I want to tell you and I'm sure she was terrified

because she hadn't spoken these secrets and over 30 years and she said at when your grandma

was eight years old, her family couldn't take care of her and her sister. So they sent your

grandma to live with another family and in that house. She never went to another day

of school. She was physically abused, sexually abused, she cooked and cleaned and the way

she got out of that was she got pregnant by a man she didn't love when she was 18. And

she had my mom by the time my mom was born, she left that man and then my grandma began

her crazy life of drinking and all the stuff she started doing and started leaving my mom

to live with other families and in boarding schools and then forgetting her over the summers

and my mom was left with the nuns when all the other kids got picked up and she'd be

in clothes and shoes that didn't fit her and all alone and when she was given an option

to go live with my grandma in her teens, she jumped at it and it turned out that my grandma

had turned her a life of racketeering and prostitution and had been running a place

out in the Mojave Desert. She was the madam there and she turned my mom out to work that

business. So my mom was 15, never went to another day of school, was physically abused

and sexually abused. She had two babies as a teenager. I had no idea and she had to put

them both up for adoption and she had a picture of one that she had touched like a million

times and I mean I'm like I can't even imagine this is my mom's life. All I saw of my mom

was that she was depressed and angry, never had any friends, never dated again. I just

imagined she had this tiny little life but she had had this horrific life and she told

me about these babies that she put up for adoption and how painful it was. She tried

to keep the first one and she almost smashed him when she got punched by one of the pimps

and then one of the men tried to touch him inappropriately and so she sent that baby

to live with another family which is what had been done in our family for decades or

generations and the second baby she put directly up for adoption and in her telling me this

I realized that I always thought that she insisted that I terminate that pregnancy when

I was 13 because she wanted to punish me and she wanted to hurt me and it wasn't that it

was the complete opposite. Right or wrong our perception is our reality and her perception

of the world was a hard scary place and her experience was really painful and I can look

back in hindsight and I can see how everything she did was to ensure that I had a better

life than she had and that my grandma did and I absolutely have. She also told me that

my mom and dad were not married that she was my dad's mistress and there was a great deal

of shame in that and that his survivor benefit went to his wife and and to me and so she

used that money to help pay bills and so and it made sense why we weren't at my dad's funeral

because I always thought that that was weird like we're with him he died and then there

was nothing there was no end so all of a sudden all these things started making sense but

the biggest thing that I realized is that I'd spent my whole life being mad at my mom

for not giving me love and direction and these things that I I thought would have made me

a better person but she never had them to give. I had been mad at her for giving me

something she never possessed. I thought that she had it and withheld it from me because

she deemed me unworthy but it wasn't that at all in fact one time she said to me I envy

you I said you do and she said never figure out was somebody liked me or didn't like me

and I try and do that thing that I think that they liked but maybe that wasn't the thing

that they liked and she said and it just got really it got so hard I just stopped trying

and that's what she did and she just sat in front of a tv and that was the rest of her

life and um but the revealing of these secrets set us both free and that the last um couple

of years I had with her were the best and because she told me all these secrets and

I didn't I didn't do what I would have done had I heard it at two weeks over which is

tell her what I think about her because that's what I thought integrity was back then but

I got to say things like to her that um I'm so sorry that that happened to you and and

you know comfort her and I began to have a mad crush on her and I was so grateful that

I've been given that direction to send the cards and make the calls and be a good daughter

because my mom turned out to be like a superhero what she was able to do with me you know I

had the life of a princess compared to the life that she and my grandma had and so then

I was like super crushy on her and thought she was the coolest thing ever especially

because I you know I'm hearing all the stories in the rooms and I'm like oh you can't beat

this you know my mom's story was whoo but anyway she ended up getting cancer and um

lung cancer and then it went to her bones and her brain and I was able to take care

of her the last few months of her life and you know it wouldn't have happened had that

consistency not been built with the calls and the cards and just tending to my side

of the street what you do on your side of the street none of my business my job is only

to tend to my side of the street so I have to wrap up two minutes so um a lot has happened

over the years I've been married divorced married divorced um makes it sound like a

lot um too tough I smoke not smoke smoke not smoke smoke not smoke that goes on for hours

but um I don't I don't smoke now uh I've had health problems and good health and wonderful

times and hard times but the thing that remains consistent is I haven't picked up a drink

and I've stayed connected and next to getting sober the best thing that's happened to me

is um my work at the Midnight Mission I started volunteering there in Skid Row when I first

got sober and now I've been an employee there for the last 13 years and I get to take all

the love and hope I get in these rooms to Skid Row every day and so this pile of crap

that I came here with is now gold I get to use everything I have every day you know I

use it up and I feel like finally um I have a life with meaning and purpose and that's

thanks to AA thank you.