Ida's Journey: Gratitude, Sponsorship & Service in Recovery

(indistinct)

- Yes, vanity.

My name is Ida, I am an alcoholic.

And first I thank God for being here sober with you tonight.

I thank you, Karen, for asking me to come out and speak.

And I'm grateful to have had, to have a story, you know,

to share experience, strength, and hope.

It could have been so easily misery, depression,

and despair, and probably death

because of my alcoholism.

Thank you, Sean, for sharing.

Wow, that's kind of hard to follow.

And in 10 minutes too, man, it brought the whole thing.

But one of the things I was really glad to hear

was that you haven't gone back to jail since you got so.

You know, and that's amazing

when your history is full of it, you know?

And to have that relationship,

to be building that relationships back in your life again,

that is so much hope in that, you know?

So much.

And it took a lot of courage to do all those things.

So thank you.

That was experience, strength, and hope.

And so my Jester basics,

my sponsor was up here a minute ago, but I'll see her now.

And I was glad to see her.

And we're getting together and having lunch tomorrow.

And we hadn't kind of been together in a while

because, you know, all the different schedules.

And so I'm looking forward to it.

And we will be meeting in the valley.

And so I do sponsor women.

I have a new sponsor now.

And well, honestly, I didn't want to sponsor her.

I was like, "God, this person is a mess."

(all laughing)

And then I got humble real fast.

You were a mess too, right?

You were homeless too, right?

You did all these things too, right?

And so let's see what God can do.

'Cause you're not the one that's gonna really,

you're just gonna point out some things to the person

and maybe read the book with her,

but it will actually be God working through her

and her life that will help her make the connections

to make a better life.

So I humble myself and with gratitude, I say, "Yes."

And three weeks later, I'm saying,

"God, I'm so grateful you put her in my life

because she's willing," you know?

And I don't know when I'm gonna stop prejudging, you know?

But that's what I do.

And I'm just being honest here, and I'm grateful.

And our last thing was she got shingles

and I let her have the first couple of days

to not keep her from coming there.

But about a week later, I told her, "You have to.

Shingles doesn't stop you from being a greeter on Zoom."

You put a scarf around your neck to hide, you know?

And we just, we move on in life.

And she didn't wanna hear that, but she did.

And I'm really grateful for that because if she's like me,

the more I do follow suggestions,

the more I learn that it's okay.

And the more I see the point of it,

and the more I see the growth, you know?

But anyway, like I said, I am grateful for this person

and a new opportunity to go through the book with someone.

And so I have a group of women that I'm sponsoring.

And I sponsor less right now.

My sponsor died about six months ago.

And I have not been able to surrender

or try to get another one.

And I'm just thinking, well, we were together 27 years,

and it's sort of hard, you know?

It really is.

But I kind of, on the peripheral, I say, when it's right,

I know somebody will be there, you know?

And I'm gonna ask, and I'm gonna develop

another relationship with a person.

I believe in unity, service, and recovery.

You know, I do constantly make amends.

I start my mornings with prayer, meditation,

and I love service.

I am the Zoom setup person for our Inglewood,

Monday night Inglewood meeting.

And so we have different equipment,

but I set up the equipment.

And I'm blessed to have had it

because I had taught school for many, many years.

And I already had the projector

and the laptop and everything.

So we are, I will be glad to give Karen

a link to the meeting 'cause we are hybrid.

If you wanna come, fine.

And I'm also extending to you an invitation.

Our 81st anniversary will be in June, I think June 19th.

So it's one of the oldest meetings in the city of LA.

And I have a little historical document.

And at that time, I mean, it was like three mimeograph pages

of meetings in LA in 1940, right?

And I'm just, wow, you know,

we could see how we grew from this.

Three pages mimeograph for the entire city of LA.

And from that, we have grown to hundreds of meetings

all over the city, you know.

When God works something, God really works it, you know.

My sobriety started at Claire Detox Center in 1990.

And I walked in and I was a very,

I had been around some,

my drinking had gotten extremely desperate, you know.

And I walked in, I had two black eyes

and a battered and bruised body

and a big ol', my lips were swollen out to here

with a hole in it because somebody had hit me in the face

with a plank and had a nail

and it poked a hole right into my lip.

And I just thought I needed a place to go sit

and chill and get my lips back.

(all laughing)

Because I couldn't, you know, I couldn't run no games.

You know, I felt like my livelihood depended on my looks

'cause I had a sugar daddy at the time

that was paying the rent and he might get tired of me,

you know.

And, but that was really an up,

my life was actually getting better 'cause I met him

'cause I was sitting on a bus stop near his business

at Pico and Western Avenue.

And I had been homeless drunk for about three years,

three and a half years.

Sometimes, one time I did, I try to remember exactly

how did I survive without an address for three years,

you know, at a bus stop.

You know, whose couches did I sleep on?

What abandoned buildings did I sleep in?

You know, or in that time that I was down on Skid Row.

And it's a big blur now,

but I do remember taking the time to write it all down

so I know where I've been, you know.

So I know what God brought me through, right.

And it didn't even start that way.

And so by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous,

I was hanging out with some really rough trade

and my life wasn't supposed to have been that way.

I started drinking in college and it was fun, you know,

and I loved it.

I loved it because it took away the extreme shyness

that I went to college with.

You know, I was so shy.

My best friend in high school was the school librarian

because I was afraid to go out on the yard

and be with other kids, you know.

And I just, I never quite felt like I belong.

So in Claire Detox Center, when people came

and they shared their stories,

they also talked about feeling on the outside of things

and feeling like they didn't belong.

And I began to realize that maybe it's not just

circumstantial why you don't feel like this.

Maybe there are, you know,

and eventually I learned that it's the spirituality

that I have that causes this feeling of not belonging.

But I didn't.

It was enough that people like Sean and other people

got up and told their honest truth, you know.

And I come from Nashville, Tennessee,

and that explains a Southern accent.

I'm also Black in Korea,

and that explains a Southern Black accent.

And it was enough that I knew

that other people felt the same way, you know,

but I began to realize that maybe there's something else

at work here that's keeping me

from feeling comfortable in there.

And the stories and the sharing,

that was the first attraction I had.

I didn't want to be a part of you guys,

and I certainly never wanted to be upfront telling my story,

but I heard you telling yours.

And it was the first time in my life

that I ever heard people speak in such an honest, direct way.

And it was the first time that I could actually laugh

at some of the conditions of our drinking, you know,

and that really spoke to me.

I didn't feel like I belonged,

and I felt like I was justified in my feelings, you know,

and I'm a Korean War baby.

I was conceived during the Korean War,

and my father was a married man

that had an affair with my mother, and I was born there.

And my father tried to stay in the thing,

but he eventually got stationed back to the US.

And my mother was raising me in this village

that refused to accept mixed children.

They called me a kandumi,

which is word meaning for "darkie,"

and they just didn't know Korea had been the hermit kingdom,

had not really been exposed to the world.

And they didn't know what to make of mixed children.

You know, when you have a culture based on ancestor worship,

you want to know who your ancestors are, right?

And foreigners just didn't fit that bill.

So I was on the outside,

and I remember kids not playing with me

and parents snatching up their kids.

So I, you know, I grew up kind of -- I got used to being alone, really,

and I still have that tendency today.

I feel very comfortable by myself.

It's other people.

It's you guys that make me feel uncomfortable, right?

Anyway, when I was 8 years old, a big change happened.

It seemed so unexpectedly.

I was picked up, put in an orphanage,

and a couple of weeks later, I'm on a plane,

and I'm sent to my black father in the US.

You know, he had been working for years to arrange for adoption,

and I grew up, and I came to the segregated South,

and I had to learn my English there,

and that's where the Southern Black accent came from.

So I lived in one society that called me kungunni,

but when I come to the South,

they're telling me I don't belong either.

You know, you got to go to the right bathroom color,

drink from the right water fountain.

You know, avoid the ones that say whites only.

And then when I'm at school,

they're calling me a Jap or a chicken too, right?

'Cause it's all black kids. It's segregated.

So I never quite felt comfortable with who I was,

and I got all these reinforcing lessons from society.

But what I did have was a pretty decent home.

My parents were churchgoing, hardworking people,

and they tried to instill the values,

and they told me I was going to college,

and make sure you do your homework,

and it was just like a chant in my head.

I didn't think you had a choice, really.

I thought everybody went to college, and I did.

But I wasn't exposed to alcohol,

and there wasn't too many drinkers in our family.

And but in college, I couldn't wait to dry drink.

I couldn't wait to smoke a weed.

I couldn't wait to have sex.

I couldn't wait to go to a party.

'Cause I had been denied that.

I could only go to church or school activities

while I was growing up.

And I proceeded to do all of those things

my first year in college, and I felt like,

wow, I've arrived.

I am living life now, right?

I'm a part of it.

And I loved the way alcohol made me feel.

Oh my God, it was just miraculous.

I didn't know something existed

that would take away this feel, the tongue-tiedness,

that would take away the extreme shyness,

that would make me feel like I could get up and dance,

you know?

And but from the beginning,

so one thing about exposure to alcoholics anonymous,

I began to learn about my disease.

And I began to learn that's the reason I drank too much

from the very beginning.

It just didn't take a whole lot at first.

But I always drank too much.

You know, my first couple of year, you know,

I got started being taken home drunk really early,

like my first year of college, right?

I didn't know I had enough.

Other people seem to have drank

and they knew when they had enough and just stopped, right?

Oh, I've been here a little tipsy.

And then they leave the rest of the glass on the table,

still amazed to this day that people can do that.

You know, when I go out with my friends that drink,

I'm like, I watched them.

I'm like, no, they didn't finish.

They didn't order a second drink.

That's from the very beginning, whatever they had

that told them they had too much, it was missing.

I only knew I had too much and it was already too late.

I'm already falling down drunk.

I'm already throwing up.

I'm already waking up next to someone

and I sure how they got there, right?

So when they told me about the allergy of the body,

I could understand, I said, oh, my body is different

from my fellows, it's different.

So being in detox and hearing, going to AA meetings,

I began to understand some of my disease, right?

And then they talked about the solution,

which was to get in touch with the God

of your understanding.

Now, what had happened was, well, my sugar daddy set me up

in this apartment up on Hollywood and Franklin,

La Brea around La Brea and Franklin,

thought I had a chance to get it together again, you know?

I did finally graduate from college.

It took about eight years 'cause I was really having fun,

you know, and it was the '70s, you know?

I honestly got drugs reprieve

'cause everybody was just shaking and stuff, you know?

And I was, but I remember stopping all of that

and just staying with alcohol

because I did wanna go to graduate school

and at one time I had even wanted to be a doctor.

At one time I had even had a summer scholarship

to go to Harvard University

and I really thought I was gonna be on my way

and I did not want a police record,

but alcohol was legal, you know?

And so I continued to drink,

but I did stop doing a lot of things.

What happened is in my senior year, my Aunt Ida died.

I came home and I didn't make graduation.

And then the next year, before I could graduate

and before my father, who had invested a lot in me,

could see me, he died.

And then the following year and then about two years later,

my stepmother died.

So for all these, for those years,

I was just surrounded by death, illness, hospitalizations,

convalescent homes and funerals and burials.

I just started drinking, stopped being binge party drinking.

It became a daily drink.

I didn't know,

I didn't wanna deal with the grief that I felt.

I didn't wanna deal with the sense of loss and abandonment.

And I started,

that's when I began to really need alcohol

and I began to drink every day.

And I continued, I got a good job.

I was promoted, I became project director.

I went through a quick marriage and none of it seemed to work

and I ended up eventually moving to Los Angeles.

In LA, I ran into cocaine

and I added that to my alcoholism.

And I was always trying to get that right.

If I feel too drunk, let me do a little bit of this.

And if I do too much of that,

my skin started feeling like it was crawling

and I had to drink.

And something inside of me had also died.

I started feeling this hopelessness

that you guys talk about.

Again, that grief was still there within me.

And within 92 years, I was homeless.

My aunt had kicked me out of the apartment she was giving me

letting me rent from her.

I had run out of friends who let me stay on their couch.

And it just seemed easier just to sit at the bus stop

with the winos.

They didn't bother to ask you why you drink so much.

I don't know how many of us got that question

from my family and friends.

Why you drink so much?

Why don't you stop?

And it just seemed easier to sit there

and just finally stop trying to control

and enjoy my drinking.

You know, that's the thing.

To be stuck with a habit

and all the joy has gone out of it too.

You can never get back the fun that you used to have

when you were drinking, right?

And so I just sat there in despair.

I thought I had dug a hole too deep.

And before I ended up in rehab,

I felt that moment of desperation.

And I had been raised in church

and I just started crying and saying,

"God, please help me. Please help me."

And that was the night when I had plenty.

I had plenty of drink, plenty of drugs.

I could do it all by myself.

I didn't have to go sleep with nobody.

I didn't have to go pay no money.

I didn't have nothing to pay.

It was a whole year, right?

I should have been happy.

But I started crying

'cause I just saw my life as an endless series.

And I didn't feel nothing inside of me that said,

"Get up and try again to build a decent life."

You know, and it just didn't seem fair, you know?

All I wanted, I had been a project director.

I had my degree from a top university.

All I wanted was to be, I was ambitious.

I was wanting to work hard.

And I couldn't understand why couldn't I have a life

while I'm working hard, being successful,

go to happy hour with coworkers

and do some recreational drugs on weekends

and get back on the treadmill on Monday.

And that demoralization that my life

would just be an endless series of drugs.

And I started and I said, "God, please help me."

So when I got in AA, you guys told me the solution

was to find the God of your understanding,

turn to a higher power.

I was like, "Well, I asked God to help me."

And two weeks later, I got really beat up bad.

So really God just sent people to kick my ass.

And I didn't want to turn to this God.

I just saw this God as a reflection of the vengeful hell,

I'll send you to hell God, right?

But you did keep saying your understanding.

And somewhere down on me, I don't have to believe that God.

And I started getting some willingness

'cause later on, I started connecting the God.

I went into six month programs

from there called the Royal Ponds.

And I could have gone back to the apartment.

My sugar daddy was still paying rent,

but I didn't go back because I was scared

those guys will come back and beat me up some more.

And later it dawned on me, God knew exactly what I needed.

And this little scar here,

and this little scar here is a very small price to pay

'cause my roommate overdosed and died.

And that was my first lesson

in terms of giving me the willingness

to begin to seek the solution.

It was right there.

She died, she overdosed and she died.

And I look in the mirror and I could say,

"Well, that's not a..."

And over the years, we've heard about a lot of people dying,

suicide, accidents, whatever.

This is a very small price to pay.

God knew exactly what I needed.

He knew I needed this fear

'cause I would have gone back to that apartment

and then I would have done the same thing

I had been always doing.

It says that we have the inability to recall

with sufficient force all the shame, the humiliation,

the degradation of our last drunken episode.

I got in a car, ended up on a deserted road

in Pacific town, came to...

I must've been in a blackout, but I came too

and I was in a car with three men

that were pulling into a dark side road

in Pacific College State.

And warning bells went off.

I jumped out of the car and started running, right?

But a couple of weeks later,

I'm unable to recall with sufficient force

all the terror I felt that night.

I'm hiding in the bushes, scared they're gonna find me,

scared they're gonna rape me and do worse, right?

But I'm unable to recall.

So we repeat these things, going to jail over and over again,

jumping in the car.

In my case, I was just willing to go with anybody

that had party goods and offered me a party

and offered me a drink, you know?

I'm in the car again.

And this time the guy pulls a gun on me.

And I remember in that moment, I told him to kill me

because I didn't wanna live anymore.

I remember thinking, "If this is my life

and this is what it's come to,"

after having all the high ambitions I used to have,

I don't wanna live no more.

So I turned around and said, "Guys, he just killed me.

He killed me."

And I really meant it.

He called me a crazy bee.

And I jumped ahead and kicked me out of the car.

I was unable to recall with sufficient force

all the humiliation and danger that I had put myself in.

So I understand, and many of us,

we know the hell that we've been through.

We know we could have died at any moment.

We know we could have been anon.

So in recovery, I learned gratitude.

So I went there and things started.

I went into the six-month program at the Royal Ponds.

I gave up the apartment and I started learning more and more

about the disease of alcoholism, you know?

I did get a sponsor and I learned to be in unity

and go to meetings, but I had that program part

that made you go anyway.

I couldn't wait to finish it, you know?

But someone, it was Ty.

He's like a 50-year veteran of AA and he nominated

me to be secretary.

I relapsed at six months 'cause I was just supposed to go

get my looks back, you know?

And I hadn't planned on the sober lifestyle,

but something really scared me when I was out there

back again and I said, "Oh God, I can't go through this."

I had learned, I had lived for six months

where I haven't delighted people.

And that was one of the things that really got to me

for some reason, when somebody in AA called and said,

"What have you been doing?"

And I didn't want to tell them I had been drinking

or doing drugs, but I hated the fact I had to start lying.

So I went back to this meeting a couple of weeks later.

I didn't call, I didn't explain my absence,

and I stood up as a newcomer and I resigned

and I was happy to resign.

I said, "At least I don't have to be secretary

of that stupid meeting no more."

(laughing)

And Ty, for group conscience, to remove the six-month

requirement, it saved my life.

It was construction industry, I had that paycheck

every week, every Friday, I had money.

And it would talk to you, day to day, money in your pocket.

And I just held on to going to that meeting

with everything I had.

And I started accumulating time until one day I woke up

and I didn't have that craving anymore.

I was working with my sponsor, we got up to step three,

and then step four.

So by this time I had learned enough of honesty,

I learned to take a real good look at my alcoholism,

the two parts of step one,

losing the ability to control the drinking

and how your life becomes unmanageable because of it.

So you have to have both to be an alcoholic.

'Cause there are a lot of people who don't drink

and their life is still unmanageable.

And there are people who drink, but their life is manageable.

So to be a real alcoholic, you gotta have both.

And I learned that honesty here.

And I learned it by listening to you talk

and you shamelessly letting us know some of the things

that you did to help me with the shame that I felt.

I felt so dirty as a woman when I came in,

I had slept around all over the place,

I had charged money for sex, I had all kinds of things.

And I remember these women picking me up from rehab

and taking me to meetings

and they would take me for coffee and dinner.

I remember thinking if they knew some of the things

that I had done, why are they being so next to me?

If they knew what I've done,

they wouldn't wanna be with me, right?

They wouldn't wanna hang out with me.

And what I didn't know at that time,

they knew exactly what I had done.

They knew exactly what brought me to this meeting

and to this role.

And they were loving me anyway.

And so when they say things like,

we will love you until you learn to love yourself,

that's what that means.

It means taking that newcomer out

and showing them they're still worthy of love

and attention 'cause that had been missing

so long from my life.

Anyway, let me, oh wow.

I learned about service and taking that commitment.

So that small meeting became bigger meeting

and it really began to grow.

And I began to like being in that meeting.

And that service commitment kept me sober.

And so I added another part of it.

I'm in unity now, going to meetings, now that is service.

But I balked at the bottom part, recovery,

which is based on the 12 steps, but it's foundational.

It's the base of our triangle and I didn't wanna do it.

And the principle for step four is courage.

I am an emotional coward.

If I think it's gonna hurt my feelings,

I am going to avoid it as much as I can.

But that's just the truth of my life, right?

I've been my whole life, you know, I didn't wanna do it,

but I was miserable and sober.

And I finally heard it.

If you wanna be happy, joyous, and free,

you gotta take the step, finally heard it.

And I called my sponsor and begged her.

'Cause I said, well, it is miserable and drunk

or miserable and sober,

but they say I could be happy, joyous, and free.

I said, I don't have all of that, just let me be okay, God.

And I called her and I begged her.

And it was just as bad as I thought.

'Cause I had to uncover some really hurtful,

painful things in my life.

And one of them was the fact that my mother

had stopped writing to me about a year or two

after I got to the US.

And something had happened when we were separated

that it made me think that she didn't want me

or love me anymore.

And that was so painful.

And all the nights that I spent crying for her

and all the, I didn't wanna look at it,

but because of the steps,

I learned to begin to take responsibility

because of that devastating fourth column

was your part of it.

And a lot of things happened to us as children.

You're not responsible for that happening.

But what I learned was that I'm responsible

for my healing though, from those tragedies of my life.

And one part of me was like, okay, you don't really know

why you didn't go.

So you're gonna go back to Korea

and you're gonna look for your mother.

And that was something I was so scared to do.

I was so afraid that she wouldn't want me,

that she wouldn't love me, that she, you know,

but I did and God is, the intervention of God

along your life's path is so amazing.

I didn't know any Koreas I couldn't read, write or speak it.

But in my H and I meeting, there was a Korean pastor

on the board, I took the number and you guys had told me

to learn to make those phone calls.

And with my heart pounding, did I call that pastor?

'Cause you had taught me some measure of courage

to pick that phone up and call when I needed to.

It had saved my life because I got turned down

for immigration for US citizenship

by Department of Immigration

because they found the old record,

some fingerprints why they're arrested for prostitution

in New York City.

Like I didn't have anything on my record,

not even a parking ticket.

And that charge had been dismissed,

but she told me I didn't have sufficient moral character

to be a good citizen of the United States

'cause I had been lying to them.

Now I'm four years sober and I'm working hard

to clean up my life and that really hurt.

It also hit that rejection button.

I felt rejected by Korea.

I felt rejected by my mother.

And now here's the US telling me I'm rejected here too, right?

So where do I go?

Where do I belong?

And, but I had already, and I, in that period,

about two months in New York City,

I had already told my sponsor about it

'cause I was telling her about,

I was trying to get her ready

for the rest of my step by basically.

(laughing)

I dropped a little bit and see what she did.

She was committed.

So I was getting ready to do all of my step by with her,

but I had told her about what had happened in New York City.

And because of that, I was able to pick that phone up

and follow her instead of going to get drunk

like I had planned to do.

'Cause when there was an emotional pain

and the only thing I knew to do with that pain

was to drink it away or drug it away.

That was just the way,

that was the way I had always solved problems.

I hadn't learned, but you guys have helped me.

We pick up the phone and we talk about it

and we go through our steps

and we look at that devastating for a con.

What's your part of it?

What are you doing to heal yourself from this?

What are you doing to learn how not to be shy?

Are you speaking up?

You made me be a greeter.

You made me learn to talk in meetings

and all these things that helped me to grow and develop.

And so I did, and I was able to continue on.

I made a decision, I'm gonna finish all of my steps.

And then I'm going back to Korea

and I was able to get a job and stop work.

And I turned down a promotion with the construction company.

We were building the subway system

and I had starting to learn to live by my truth.

And instead of lying and taking the promotion,

'cause it was still about six months to go

before I would actually go, I learned to step up.

'Cause the devastating part of what she told me

is I felt like it may have been the truth

that I didn't have good moral character.

Well, step five is integrity.

That's when we start learning this.

That's when I started learning to look another human being

in the eyes and tell them what I did wrong, right?

My character defects.

I started learning worse, the integrity.

And then the rest of the steps starts building that.

I started being able to say I was wrong

and what can I do to make it right?

How can I make amends to you?

Will you forgive me?

I started learning to say I don't know.

Will you teach me how?

I started learning to say I need help.

Will you help me?

I started learning to say, let me help you.

Let me, you know, it was just like all these things

started building my character up.

And so I, anyway, I went back to Korea

and I wish I could tell you I found my mother, but I didn't.

But by this time I knew I needed service recovery and unity.

And so I found the English speaking AA meeting

and the first reasonable lady,

I asked her to be my sponsor.

I took a commitment.

You know, I did all the three things

that I have been taught to do now, you know,

and I spent time looking for my mother.

I was on TV, I had newspaper articles.

I even had a private police detective.

Help came from everywhere.

I was on national TV, nothing, not trace of my mother.

I knew the village I was living in.

I saw my childhood village.

I saw my childhood school, couldn't find my mother.

And after a whole year, I just cried on the mountain side.

And I said, God, you know, this, I want this more than

anything else in the world, you know, and I just let it go.

I found my, but I did find a school where it was called

the Sumlin Mixed Blood Children's Institute

and I couldn't go to that school.

You know, I found all these other memories that came back

and realized my mother did,

the best of her love was to let me go.

And then she probably did die.

I found letters where she came to the office begging them,

please let me see her.

And then she took half and five, just like what I found out

was that I don't have to have what I want in order to get

what I, you know, to be happy.

'Cause I found myself on that mountain side overlooking

my childhood village saying, God, please,

I thank you for the eight years I had with my mom.

'Cause sometimes it's all we get.

And I learned about acceptance for peace, you know,

I learned and I learned that I cannot change the past.

For those of us that have painful and traumatic experiences,

but in working the steps and seeking my truth

and my healing, I can have a different relationship

with my family.

And that God can give you a whole new set of experience

to counterbalance the tragedy.

Because I was sober and had learned how to begin to deal

with life, I was able to come back to a country

that refused to educate me and carry out some redemption

from my mother's sacrifice, you know.

So that meant a lot to me spiritually.

I also learned stop lying.

I told those people I had a prostitution charge

and shoplifting charges.

They let me work as a teacher anyway.

And I've been doing that as a career for 20 years.

I learned to be truthful and be honest

and learn how to use my truth to help other people

and just what we say, walk in my own brand of dignity.

So thank you, Alcoholics and Omens.