AA Speaker – Yvonne S. – Oslo, Norway – 2018
AA speaker Yvonne S. shares how surrendering to her sponsor and working the steps transformed her from suicidal at 18 months sober to finding God and building a life of service.
Yvonne S. from the United States came to AA at 21 after a treatment facility deal: get sober or lose custody of her daughter. She had no interest in the program, hated meetings, and planned to drink again once she got out. In this AA speaker tape, she walks through how a no-nonsense sponsor pushed her to surrender everything—including prayer—and how that surrender, step work, and a spiritual awakening changed everything.
Yvonne S. describes arriving at AA with complete resistance, working through the steps with a sponsor who demanded rigorous honesty and service work, and experiencing a profound spiritual awakening when prayer removed her obsession during a painful eye injury. She discusses how surrender—especially to prayer and step work—became the foundation of her long-term sobriety, and how making direct amends and staying close to God through daily inventory transformed her relationship with her daughter and her life in recovery.
Episode Summary
Yvonne S. walks into this AA speaker meeting as someone who’s been sober almost 25 years but never forgot what it felt like to be completely unmotivated about recovery. At 21, she was court-ordered into treatment—not to get sober, but to get custody of her daughter back. She had zero interest in AA, thought meetings were lame, and made no secret of her plan to drink again once she got out.
What changed everything was a mean young lady who appointed herself as her sponsor. Yvonne didn’t want her, didn’t trust her intelligence, and certainly didn’t want her direction. But at 18 months sober, living in poverty, shoplifting compulsively to fill a void, and harboring suicidal thoughts, Yvonne reached a breaking point. She couldn’t stay sober the way she was living, and she couldn’t imagine drinking again. She surrendered—completely—to her sponsor’s direction.
The sponsor got her to meetings every single night, even though Yvonne had a toddler. She demanded honesty, service work, and commitment. Most importantly, she asked Yvonne to pray, which Yvonne refused for years. Prayer felt humiliating, and Yvonne was too rational to believe it would work. The sponsor also got her to stop complaining about how hard life was—not to be cruel, but to interrupt the self-pity that was keeping her stuck. When Yvonne stopped telling people how miserable she was and started smiling instead, something shifted. Eventually, she became a genuinely joyful person.
The turning point came during a brutal physical crisis. While attending a conference in California, Yvonne scratched her cornea severely. Over months, the wound refused to heal and expanded, threatening permanent blindness and causing excruciating, non-stop pain. Doctors had no answer. Her sponsor refused to let her take painkillers. One night, after a doctor said she’d likely lose her eye, Yvonne decided to get heroin to manage the pain. She went to her meeting planning to use the next day.
A woman at the meeting, unsolicited, told Yvonne she needed to pray for removal of her obsession with her eye. Yvonne wanted to kill her. But after hours of rage, a second voice in her head challenged her: why not just do it? She got on her knees—not because she believed, but to stop the internal argument. She prayed something like: God, please remove this obsession. She fell asleep and woke six hours later with almost no pain. The doctor had no medical explanation. But Yvonne knew what happened: she surrendered to something that made zero sense, and it worked.
That experience gave her the spiritual foundation her whole recovery had been building toward. She felt God inside her—not just the concept of God existing, but God as part of her being. It was the return of the faith she’d lost at age 11.
From there, Yvonne worked through the rest of the steps with sponsors who could take her beyond the fifth step. She learned to make direct amends—sitting down face-to-face with the people she’d harmed, telling them what she’d done wrong, and inviting them to add anything she’d forgotten. She learned that the third step doesn’t require making perfect decisions; it requires staying close to God and doing His work. Steps 6 and 7 taught her to reduce the demand (her endless need for relief, money, control) to match the supply (what’s actually available), which only God could do. Steps 10, 11, and 12 became daily practices: nightly inventory, morning prayer, and carrying the message through service.
Today, Yvonne has built a life that looks nothing like the desperate woman in the projects. She has a career, a deep relationship with her daughter (who’s in her own program), service commitments at her home group, and a spiritual practice woven into everything she does. She practices random acts of kindness—complimenting strangers, staying alert to God’s presence—not as performative spirituality, but as a way of staying close to Him. She’s learned that life rarely goes the way she wants it to, but when she looks back five or ten years later, she sees God’s design. The job she didn’t get, the heartbreak, the blindness—all of it led somewhere beautiful she couldn’t have planned.
The most powerful part of her message: she stopped judging what’s good or bad. She surrendered that too. Now, when something feels impossible or wrong or painful, she trusts that if she stays close to God and does the work, it will turn into a gift.
Notable Quotes
I didn’t have to trust my sponsor. I just knew she couldn’t do a worse job with my life than I was doing.
The louder my head is, the more work I have to do. The more service I did, the more I did for others, the better off I felt.
God provided what we needed so long as we stayed close to him and performed his work well. It doesn’t matter which job I take—what matters is: am I close to him? Am I performing his work well?
I can no longer judge what is good or bad. I have no idea what is good or bad. Whatever is going through, when I look back five years later or ten years later, I’m always like: oh my God, it’s so wonderful that it happened that way.
If you have to eat dead crow, better to eat it while it’s warm. The longer I sit with something, the worse I feel. Better to rip the Band-Aid off right away and get it out of the way.
Sponsorship
Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
Spiritual Awakening
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Sponsorship
- Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
- Spiritual Awakening
- Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
welcome to sober Sunrise a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience strength and Hope from around the world we bring you several new speakers weekly so be sure to subscribe whether you join us in the morning or at night there’s nothing better than a sober Sunrise we hope that you enjoy today’s speaker that one hi my name is Ivon chy and I’m an alcoholic thank you um thank you thank you so much is that the right all right Goodell um it’s nice to be here apparently I’ve been told uh yuet engl foot I’m gonna try my best but um I’d like to um again thank the committee for um for having me out here it’s just been a really lovely weekend with you all um and uh let’s see what uh let’s see we’re okay actually thank you so much um uh sorry I’m actually adjusting to this right on my face it’s kind of an interesting thing right yeah um anyway I uh if you’re new to Alcoholic Anonymous here’s a great way to start I’d like to welcome you and um I’m gonna uh just just kind of loosen myself up for a minute and I know that most of you were here last night yeah um but for those of you who weren’t I uh I drank a lot an awful lot I drank away the most important thing to me in my life which was my daughter right and uh and uh and and that that act was the thing that beat me into a state of reasonableness here’s the funny thing about that though um I um you know for whoever wasn’t here I have to be careful with my arm gestures for H wasn’t here I was offered a deal to go into a facility and it was the only way I could get custody of my daughter back and uh and I went because I wanted custody of my daughter but I didn’t want to be sober and I uh I was only going to go for I was only going to go for a little bit um in fact I packed up my things when I was there for 90 days it was a one-year program I packed up my things when I was there for 90 days and uh it took me a little while to pack and by the time I got into the kitchen Child Protective Services was waiting for me and they told me that I was free to leave at any time but I was not going to be taking my daughter with me uh so I angrily stomped back up the stairs and if you would ask me if I uh you know we have this um this phrase and an alcoholic synonymous you know um if we’re willing to go to any lengths right and I’m really grateful that my first sponsor didn’t ask me if I was willing to go to any lengths um no I’m not I am I am not interested in anything Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer uh the truth is I had no idea what Alcoholics Anonymous had to offer what it looked like to me when I was new going to meetings was lame right like just people kind of meeting and talking about their feelings and then not drinking and then apparently people were happy with not drinking but I just it was not appealing to me at all and I could see you know because um I love to drink and drinking does it for me but whenever I drink you know almost anything that’s around me is going to be ingested right um I could see that maybe maybe I can’t do anything illegal but drinking you know and I was 21 years old and in the US that’s when you’re allowed to drink finally I mean who would get sober the year you’re allowed to drink so I’m not you know I’m just it’s just going to be for a short period of time so I had a really bad attitude about alcohol Anonymous and uh and and I didn’t like meetings at all um I didn’t mind so much the part before and the part after it was just the during that I really hated uh the meeting part and it just you know I just it it I never thought that it would look any different than that um nor did I really care because I’m not here for for very long right I’m just I don’t need you um is what I thought and and I already described yesterday but it just feels more comfortable to talk about it that that so I went through this treatment facility and I I couldn’t leave without giving up my daughter and I wasn’t willing to give up my daughter but I was going to get out and then it was all over in fact I I used to tell the ladies um when they made us go to a couple of meetings a month I would say there is no point in making me go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I’m never going to go when I leave here and they would say I could do whatever I want once I leave but while I’m there I’m going to have to go to meetings and I remember when I was in that detox I um I had such a bad attitude that they took a vote and told me that they decided that I was the it’s the the superlative the detox superlatives I was the most likely to relapse and um and and the thing is is that wasn’t an unkind thing to say it was just true I I could have told them yes because I don’t even want to be sober like I’m not I wasn’t ever trying I didn’t try ever to get sober when my mother made me go to meetings growing up I never tried I never got a sponsor I didn’t know anything about steps I was a year sober before I even under before I remember hearing the word hom group I don’t remember ever hearing anyone talk about that and I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t pay attention in meetings or because the meetings I went to people weren’t active members of a home group I’m not sure um but but you know there I was and and then as I said yesterday I was 11 months sober and the Lano club and there was a flyer and there was a man that was going to be speaking and his name was sandy beach and I had heard him before and I liked him I remembered that he was the only speaker I remember ever hearing there aren’t very many speaker meetings where I got sober so I asked permission to go to hear him speak that night and it was the first time I’ve ever asked to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I showed up that night and I’m sure Sandy gave a great talk because he’s my favorite speaker but I don’t remember him at all I just remember and and to be clear like I was 22 years old with 11 months of sobriety I am almost out of treatment I’m going to be out of treatment in 3 months and I have zero interest in things I have no intention of staying sober once I leave I’m gonna drink like a gentleman it’s going to be different now that I’m 21 and so I I walk into this room and there were about it was about 200 people and they were young people which was interesting to me um because I I didn’t know that young people got sober it it was uh you know I’m so grateful that there were people around me that told me that I needed to be part of alcoholic synonymous as a whole right that I had to be in I I couldn’t um I can’t only go to women’s meetings I can’t only I I don’t go to lawyers meetings but some people like those kinds of things um same thing with Young peop I need to be part of Alcoholic Anonymous as a whole but it was extremely um um appealing to see a whole lot of young people that were really active and on fire with Alcoholics Anonymous it was attractive to me right we have what’s a program of Attraction and it was attractive to me to to see these kids and you know the other thing too is because I was young and um and I knew um I didn’t need Alcoholics Anonymous I didn’t need to be sober I knew what would solve my problem and I said it last night one was money that the big one but the the other thing was a boyfriend right I mean obviously and um there were a lot of potential candidates at that meeting that I went to a lot of really cute young guys um in fact one I think came the next week and got screened at my treatment facility to take me out I still make fun of him for that today but um anyway I um it was attractive and and and so I found out where these kids went to meetings and and that’s kind of you know um you know um William and I were talking about it right before how crazy and my my best friend Kenna who sponsors my daughter Caitlyn talks about this um the same idea of like one day we’re Drinkers and then one day we’re sober and it’s crazy that we have that and I’ve seen people um I think a lot just in in the years that I’ve been sober 24 years and N months um I have seen people have that Grace that I was given right um and embrace it and get active and Alcoholic Anonymous and then kind of slip away and sometimes I remember seeing this um this woman christe Morales I’ll say her name now because she’s dead do you remember her Karina did you ever see her Irma yeah this young lady um she was a she wasn’t a young lady she was a lady she came from skid are you familiar with that um is there a better word for it here huh um yeah the rough streets right the roughest r streets she came from and it turns out actually she was raised in in an affluent family and and when I discovered that when I met her parents who were who were quite well off I the uh in congruity of that right because she didn’t look like somebody who had been raised like she had lost that right just living on the streets for so long that the the kind of middle class or affluent veneer was gone she was very Street and Against All Odds this woman got sober and my group loved her because women like her don’t get sober right and they loved her and I remember when she had one year and and in my home group we take and you celebrate you get a a birthday cake on your on your anniversary not we don’t do chips we do birthday cakes and when she came up to blow out her candles and and you go to the podium for just a few seconds and you you thank everybody for keeping you sober the room went wild just wild for this woman and then um a few months later she started to uh you know her job started to get in the way of Alcoholics Anonymous right the good life that AA got her got in the way of AA and she drank again and then I remember sitting with her we have a meeting um uh on Friday night in my group the women have a meeting and the men have a meeting and in the women’s meeting you raise your hand if if you’re having a problem that you might drink over and you say uh my name’s Ivon I’m an alcoholic and um you know my husband died and I I’m thinking about taking a drink right and then a couple of women will share a solution that they have to that problem and I remember this woman coming in Christy drunk and uh and she raised her hand and she said um she said I don’t know how you get sober and I sat there thinking about it and I thought I don’t know I know like once we’re sober I can share with you my experience the actions my sponsor told me to take and I guarantee that the actions will keep me sober because that’s my experience but what I don’t know is how you have that moment of Grace where one day you’re a drinker and then one day you’re sober and sometimes we see women like Christin and and Men we see our fellow alcoholics lose that Grace and never get that opportunity again you know and she died shortly afterwards in the most tragic terrible way matter of fact um but uh you know but I I had that Grace and I didn’t know it right I didn’t want it I wasn’t interested in it um but I had that Grace and and if you had asked me again if I was willing I would have said no I’m not I’m not I’m not interested in this um and yet I started to show up to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and then I would show up the next night and I would show up the next night and I would show up the next night and then I told you that this mean young lady appointed herself as my sponsor and um and I needed her I didn’t want her to sponsor me at all and she was it’s like God puts the right person you know it’s funny this is one of those things like I have this um this deep respect for sponsorship and when someone comes to me and says my sponsor is telling me to do x y and z um I don’t say what what did they tell you never um I I mean this would never happen but if they said my sponsor wants me to drink beer you know what I mean I’m not being ridiculous about it but sometimes um the way new people hear things can be interesting right and and I’m so grateful because some of the things my sponsor told me to do like um like I shared like she wanted me to go to a meeting every day and uh and and I tried to explain I couldn’t go to a meeting every day because I had a 2-year-old and I can tell you that um a 2-year-old does not belong in a meeting every day right so um my home group that I started to go to the closest meeting to me was 38 miles do you guys know that Miles I don’t know hila anyway the closest you know it’s 40 miles one way so long story short most nights I get home at 11:00 at night and that’s when the baby goes to bed right not a good life for a baby that’s not what you should do any reasonable sane adult would have said you can’t have have your meeting your baby in a meeting every night and yet my sponsor Maran who died six or seven eight years ago used to say that you get the right direction from the person like she would say sometimes I would have never given you that direction but it must have been the direction you were supposed to get because that’s the direction you got right and I think in looking back that somebody like me needed that structure that um even though like Bill writes in our Traditions sometimes the good is the enemy of the best right not a good life for a child but the alternative was worse right if I drank with her again the kind of life that we would have had would have been tragic terrible um you know most of us in this room know the kind of life I live with that little girl and so anything anything sober was infinitely better than that so my sponsor gave me you know weird Direction go to a meeting every night and and so I started to go to a meeting every night and and I told you I told you yesterday that um that uh so when we moved out of that treatment facility and I I have that sponsor now and I’m going to a meeting every night but I um I tell my sponsor as little as possible Right like anything I want to do she’s going to think is a bad idea I already know that so I just avoid certain topics my sponsor thought everything was her business and I didn’t agree with that right I also wouldn’t tell her that either because she scared me so I just kind of kept a secret see there were a lot of things like um you know uh I already shared yesterday that I um so we’re living in the projects we’re the living on welfare there is it’s hard it’s it’s very hard to get by and uh um and so I I know how to make money so I go to work for an escort service and then it isn’t just that either it’s it’s like not only am I now I’m making money and it’s not bad money actually but I can’t seem to hold on to it right nothing on the outside changes and then um now I’m shoplifting also right and it’s the weirdest thing like so I have cash and how to buy stuff but I’m in a store and I see something I want and I can slip it in my purse I’ll slip it in my purse or like I’m in the doctor’s offices stealing bandages when when they leave like just weird you know I don’t need it pin pin right I’ll steal pin from everywhere it’s just a it’s a um it’s a void right I’m trying to fill a void and I think that things are going to fill that void and I’m going to feel okay and it it’s it never works of course and I’ll talk about later um you know that that void being a step six and seven problem right I cannot I cannot ever get the supply to meet the demand ever it isn’t possible I need God to decrease the demand to meet the supply that’s how that always works but when I’m new I don’t know that I think that something outside of me is going to fix me so I’m looking for all kinds of things to fix me and uh and and my life became a disaster at 18 months of sobriety I want to drink and um not just I want to I didn’t want to drink I wanted to die I knew I was going to drink I knew it it was inevitable I never had the thought I want to drink I had the thought buy a gun right that’s you know um and uh and that’s when I finally surrendered to my sponsor and it was like I I said this yesterday I didn’t trust her I really I really didn’t trust my sponsor and I hate to be unkind but she wasn’t um that smart right the thing about that though is that alcoholic synonymous is not a program of intelligence right uh in fact Clancy has some thing he says about like the the more intelligent you are the harder it is to get sober right you know because I’m I want to be logical about this I remember being new and looking I’m I’m like turning around to look at the steps right looking at the steps and thinking like whatever come on like that’s so hokey what what is that going to do about my life like it made zero sense to me that I mean maybe a maybe a dumb person right somebody who who buys into church for example like someone like my mother who has Faith they can be um anesthetized by this step stuff right but smart people we don’t you know it just yeah so so I didn’t trust my sponsor and not just not just because I didn’t trust her as a human and and that was true also but I also didn’t trust that she was smart enough to direct my life and uh by the time I’m 18 months over and I want to check out of life it didn’t matter right I didn’t have to trust my sponsor I just knew she couldn’t do a worse job with my life than I was doing right that’s that’s the thing and I surrendered to her and it was almost like a game like I’m going to give everything to my sponsor like everything everything I’m gonna tell her everything about the way I think which I never shared with anybody because it was crazy right what happened in here was so insane I was scared to share it I’m so glad an Alcoholic Anonymous you I I wish I could think of some crazy thought right now that I had because if whatever it is I was thinking if I said it out loud in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous the reaction would be the laughter of identification right that’s it and I’m so afraid that I’m I’m worse in here that I’m afraid to tell anybody and now I don’t have any other answer so I’m willing to tell her everything and uh and the thing is is is is I surrendered to her Direction and I stopped treating Alcoholics Anonymous like an extracurricular activity I just I gave her everything and said you do what you want with it and I’ll follow it and the idea was not totally formulated but kind of the idea in the back of my mind was if this doesn’t get better there’s always lights out right cuz I don’t know so at 18 months of sobriety I knew I shouldn’t drink again that it would not be good I understood that um but I also couldn’t stay sober the way that I was either and so checking out seemed like the best option for that you know our book talks about the jumping off place right you can’t imagine life with alcohol or life without alcohol so there I am and I Surrender it to my sponsor and the thing is is that action of surrender is the thing that changed it I knew so much I was so smart and yet my life was a complete disaster and and when I got to a place where I realize I don’t know anything about how to be happy that’s what I really wanted was happy like I wanted I don’t think I ever believed that I would feel Joy but but I just I no I wanted to be comfortable my own skin is what I wanted and I just I never I always felt like I’m pretending and so you know I I turn myself over to my sponsor and and she starts to direct me and she gets me I mean she was already getting me really busy but now she’s really getting me busy and Alcoholic Anonymous because I’m I’m I’ll do anything that she asked me to do anything um and uh and I already told you the thing about that’s where she finally took the opportunity because um because I was so I’m always laughing at myself but because it’s so ridiculous in there we need a big flashlight um because everything was so hard right life hurts so much and when she told me to stop sharing it with people like it’s funny cuz sometimes I’ll tell it to people like I’ll tell someone you know someone who might get somewhere around the place that I was at and I’ll say no don’t tell people how you are anymore and they’re like aren’t we supposed to be rigorously honest and I’m like in your case no right and you know I I didn’t like I surrendered to the direction so I was willing to follow it I’m I’m not going to tell people how I am anymore so there’s no more self-pity gross um rants anymore and I’m going to smile and pretend I’m happy but I thought I was doing something for you like that my sponsor was being mean to me and being nice to you all by not allowing me to do that I didn’t know that what she was asking me to do was for me um and uh and like I said yesterday I don’t I started to pretend I was happy I started telling stop stopped telling people how I was and at some point um I became a joyful person I really did like I I felt filled with joy and um um and it it’s remained that way SS and it doesn’t mean I’ve gone through periods of time where uh where things have been rough my mother dying was brutal absolutely brutal and yet while I was in pain the whole time I knew I wouldn’t always always heard I knew time and God right time and God that everything would be okay um so I want to talk a little bit about um about my process with the steps and with um with how I found God if you heard me yesterday you know I was 11 I was raised Roman Catholic very devout believing in God and when I was 11 years old a lot of terrible things happened around me and to me and I lost that connection to God so when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous 10 years later at 21 years old I was a true agnostic I wasn’t sure I I was not atheist I couldn’t be 100% sure there was no God but I couldn’t feel God and I didn’t believe like I met lots of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who had faith in God and I believed you had that but I didn’t know any way that I could get it right and so so I just you know I just I didn’t know how that would ever be different and one thing that my sponsor asked me to do of course was to get on my knees and pray and my first reaction to that was like knees like come on like first of all it’s irrelevant what position my body is in God doesn’t care right if there is a God um and two to when I would try to pray I felt like a chump like all I could do I’m alone in my room and I care that I look stupid I’m on my knees talking to air feeling like an idiot and so I would stop because I felt stupid alone right and the thing is I I I recognize later in case I forget to come back to it of course doesn’t God doesn’t care what position position my body is in it’s for me the act of being on my knees is an act of humility for me that is what I’m looking for for the through the 12 steps is humility and so now I understand see it was the rational rationalization I was so rational I couldn’t understand anything and this whole idea of not being willing to pray is again a lack of humility because I learned even after I surrendered to myself sponsor I surrendered everything except prayer it was the one thing I wouldn’t surrender and the thing about it is is is that the act of prayer is also an act of humility just like the act of following direction that makes no sense it’s an act of humility and I I get great results from acts of humility and I know that because I have enough experience now where I can see that and yet and yet as Bill writes in the 12 and 12 and the 12 step I was seized with a stubbornness right and I I could not I could not do it so so I get to Alcoholic Anonymous with this aloof attitude or ambivalent feeling about God whether he exists or not and I also get here um not wanting what you have and not really thinking that I’m an alcoholic you know at the very end I got in trouble because of a combination of alcohol and right and uh and I remember I remember walking into um my treatment facility took us to a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one day and um and it was one of those ones where you raise your hand to share and uh and I had a lot to say always and I raised my hand to share and I remember I shared as Ivon and something other than alcoholic right and the woman interrupted me who was leading the meeting as she should have because I was in a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where only alcoh and in fact in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous only alcoholics participate that’s our tradition so she interrupted me and she asked me if I was an alcoholic and I said no I don’t even drink and it was true at that moment right um and the truth is when I looked at it later I could recognize that maybe maybe maybe I can’t ever do anything else because you know it’s a quick descent but I’m not going to give up drinking you know drinking like everybody drinks you I don’t have to give up drinking I just have to give up losing control right and so you know that woman that mean young lady who appointed herself as my sponsor made me write an inventory and at the time I did that inventory I didn’t even believe I was an alcoholic and I’m grateful for this and I remember hearing Johnny H from belflower share about this so I did my fourth step and my fifth step and it was in the process of my fifth step that I did steps one two and three because it was uh writing out the inventory that I saw long before I was introduced to anything else look here’s the truth of it when I was almost 18 years old and I went I left home to go to college and I’m going from Fairfax Virginia to New York University right I’m going to study acting at New York University and a semester later I’m not in school anymore and instead I’m a stripper right I have not even had a drug yet I gave up all of that to drink right because my drinking got in the way of my education or my education got in the way of my drinking right and and dancing gave me the money to drink the way I wanted to and nobody there cared how much I drank so I drank away my life long before anything else was introduced and it was in in in the inventory process that that I had to recognize that that I was a garden variety alcoholic so I knew I was an alcoholic and uh I’ll tell you something else after that fif step because I was always a legend in my own mind right I knew when I got to alcoholic annonymous you guys came here drinking a little red wine right you weren’t like bad like I was right now I got sober at 21 right how bad was I I didn’t last very long but but again I was a legend in my own mind so um so when I got to alcoholics and when my sponsor when I recognized finally that okay yes I’m alcoholic I’m alcoholic because when I pick up a drink I can’t control how much I drink or when I’m going to stop all right I’m alcoholic but I’m not only an alcoholic I’m an alcoholic and of something else because you guys got here on red wine you know I’m I’m better right I’m Different um and she didn’t ask me to stop I was the only one in my meetings identifying that way of course I was right she didn’t tell me to stop doing that she gave me a tape we had tapes back then she gave me a tape of Johnny from belflower she told me to go home and play it and I played it and what I heard him say was that as long as he was an alcoholic and something else that he was different from you and that the program that worked for you might not work for him and when I heard him say that I knew I knew that’s why I was identifying as that right to let you know that while you guys got here drinking a little like I was tough right so and and by the time I did my inventory I was in Alcoholics Anonymous long enough to to be attracted to what was happening here and so from that day till this I’ve only I’m just a garden variety alcoholic that’s it I’m just and it’s so funny today because I I can’t even think of myself and it I am a garden variety alcoholic it’s not something I say it’s something I know to my innermost being so I you know I do that and my my sponsor gets me gets me busy uh with new people and with um with commitments and madeup commitments when I can’t get commitments I’m just all over the place you know learning to be of service and Alcoholics Anonymous and my sponsor like I’m somebody that um if you come to my home group I have like Ira can tell you I have like many many commitments there’s lots of things that I have my fingers in um and it isn’t because I’m a good person right my sponsor got it in my head when I was pretty new like I’m somebody my head is very loud it talks to me all the time very busy and it’s never nice it’s always how terrible I am um how different I am um I’ll never be like you it’s it’s constant and my sponsor said the louder my head is the more work I have to do and it seemed like she is right in the sense that the more service I did the more I did for others the better off I felt and even better if it was things that nobody knew about right like uh you know like uh like here like whoever baked the cakes and brought them in I didn’t get to see who baked the cake so you get humility for that right you just maybe some people here know who baked the cakes but um we know who cut them it was great heading matter of fact where is Alex is he here anyway um and so I got I got very very busy and alcoholic annonymous and it and it gave me relief but so things kind of progressed along that way but my sponsor at that time had never been beyond the fifth step so I was not beyond the fifth you know we just kind of stopped there um and and the concept we had was uh was that uh you make amends by living differently right um which is important it is important to live differently but where I got sober there was a man who used to say um he would say he would say when we when we amend the Constitution we don’t apologize to it we change it right and when I was new I would think yeah that’s right that’s right except for that the word amend is different from the word amends in the dictionary they have two different definitions in fact the word amends is both singular and plural I make un amends and I make plural amends right it’s the same thing I don’t make un amend and the word amends the dictionary is to make direct restitution right and so yes I have to live differently but what I needed to learn eventually was that I also have to write the wrongs I did um but we weren’t there yet because my sponsor wasn’t there yet and uh and like I said I had no relationship with God and um and it was the one thing that I wouldn’t do when I was two and a half years sober I flew from the DC area to um Southern California to go to a a conference an a conference out there in Southern California and we had um we had been going my home group had been going to uh um so in the DC area there’s not very many speaker meetings as I said but there were many conferences within a 6 to8 hour drive right and I have I have a feeling that you guys are like this too right so we have the lithuanians here because there’s a conference this weekend yep um if there was a conference within an 8 hour drive we’d we’d pack up a bunch of cars and rent a couple of hotel rooms and just put bodies everywhere and just go and and we would listen to uh I remember just when I was new like I said I still hated meetings the the meeting part I like the before and the after but the meeting part I didn’t like and then the first time we got packed into a car and drove somewhere and I heard uh I I can’t even remember who my first speaker was it was like Johnny or it was Clancy or it was Sharon or it was Tom ivester and I remember just feeling like uh like full right like uh like satiated like what is this you know I um it was the first time it was and hearing people share their experience um in getting sober and in staying sober that I started to to fall in love with Alcoholic Anonymous and then I was like I was uh I had no money that I would get tapes whenever I could and um and my car didn’t have um I had a car that a church donated to me I still remember it was a powder blue 1978 Honda CV CC Civic Civic I think yeah and it had no tape deck but my daughter had a little Fisher Price tape recorder and I would put that in the cono and I’d have to turn it up as loud as I could because the car was so loud it was stick shift and I would put the tapes in there and I remember like going um when I was about 18 months sober a a bunch of people in my group there was an iipa in um in Hawaii now I live in the projects I have no money I’m not going to Hawaii and then somebody bought me a ticket to go to Hawaii with them and uh and and my mom watched my daughter while I went that weekend and they invited me to stay in the hotel room with them and then some other woman took me on a side trip to kwaii and I I couldn’t even believe it and I remember hearing um Bobby coil from Philly that weekend and I bought his tape my mom gave me some money that weekend and I bought his tape and if you got in my car you had to listen to Bobby and I started to fall in love with alcoholics on and when I was two and a half years sober we went to it was an iipa Anaheim and um a bunch of us went out a few days early because going to those conferences I kept hearing all these speakers from the Pacific group I mean I heard speakers from other groups too but there were so many from the Pacific group and I thought what kind of a speaker Factory is this it’s so weird and I remember um about 80 of us went that night and and in my home group if you come visit um there’s a part where they ask if if you’re out of state and you’re visiting to stand up and introduce yourself and we love to know know who you are so we can say hi to you at the break and and and I remember how fun it was that night because it was 1 2 3 four 80 people were all from the same home group and and everybody was cracking up and and it was so funny but but the most important thing is I remember walking in there and thinking I love this like this meeting like walking into a meeting with um I think there were maybe like 800 people there at the time and um I loved the energy of that room and I was like I want to move here and be part of this like I love that and then I after that when then I went to the conference that weekend and after that weekend I I got on the airplane and and um and uh um here’s the thing I um I I got really distracted that weekend with a boy he um was paying a lot of attention to me on Thursday but not on Saturday and so by Sunday I was obsessed and um we were on a layover in Houston and I was paying attention to him and her and I was not paying attention to myself and and when I stood up really quickly I I had my backpack on and it it fell off and my arm jerked up and I had you know those like boarding passes used to be hard kind of like card stock paper I jerked it up and I clipped off some cornea from my eye sorry it’s really nasty and um and I just thought you know when you poke yourself in the eye it hurts really bad but it it goes away in a short period of time and so I got on the airplane I mean what else was I going to do but I thought you know it was stinging but I thought it’s cuz I hit myself in the eye I thought it was going to stop I didn’t realize I had literally clipped off cornea and um by the time we got to DC um I was dying I was dying the whole way I remember the flight attendant felt so terrible for me there was I just couldn’t if if you’ve ever gotten something in your eye or cut your cornea you know how bad it is it was it was horrible and so I I go to the emergency room as soon as I get off the airplane and uh and they tell me what happened and they said not a big deal you know cornal tissue is the fastest reproducing cell in the body you know 3 days of it’ll be totally recovered except it didn’t recover it didn’t grow back and and what happened is the the hole kept expanding wider and wider and uh what happens when when that happens is that um we don’t have blood vessels in our cornea but they will grow in there to try to heal it and uh as they grow in they blind you right because they Scar the cornea as they go through it so so over the next couple of months I’m getting blind Blinder and Blinder and Blinder and it also won’t heal and and so I’m in excruciating non-stop pain and I go from a regular doctor I went from a regular eye doctor to um I was I was in college at the time at George Washington University and I went to GW and then G GW transferred me out to John’s Hopkins which was an hour and a half Drive each way in uh Baltimore Maryland and I had to go see them every day they needed to see me every day and on Sunday they didn’t have appointments we would just my mother would have to drive me cuz I I couldn’t drive anymore um because of the light sensitivity but we would um we would just wait in a dark waiting room for the on call surgeons to make the rounds and they would know I was there and they would come in and and see me that day and and I was in uh I was in so much physical pain it felt like somebody was sticking a hot poker in my eye all of the time it was relentless the most horrible pain I ever experienced in my life and at one point um for more than a month I had to put eye drops in my eye every half an hour 24 hours a day I remember I had to switch them um and I never had to set an alarm clock for 30 minutes because I couldn’t sleep that long because of the pain I just and and you know if you’re here and you’ve suffered from some kind of chronic or acute you know physical condition one of the greatest problem problems is the lack of sleep right just not being able to get enough sleep and and uh and my sponsor wouldn’t allow me to take pain medication and here’s the thing is that it was the right call um there may be a time when it’s necessary for something that is shortterm I don’t know we’ll see when it happens but someone like me I I cannot with my background live on something that’s going to take the edge off I have to find another way it’s no amount of pain is worth the risk of returning to the life that I had before and that’s as simple as it is for me so that’s that’s how I handle that um but I I was I was in excruciating pain and um no sleep and one Saturday it’s Saturday evening by the time I see the doctor and the doctor says Ivonne there’s nothing more we can do for you 50/50 you’re going to lose your eye all together in the next week and I just remember being so devastated that night and uh and my mom drove me she would drop me off at my meeting and then someone at my meeting would give me a ride home so she drove me from Baltimore to to to my meeting which was in Maryland whatever it doesn’t really matter but on the way there I made a decision that the next day I was going to go downtown and uh and I’ll talk specifically about I I couldn’t take painkillers but I decided that the next day I was going to go get a bag of heroin right because made perfect sense um because I knew it would take the pain away right I felt like I cannot possibly go another 24 hours in the kind of physical pain I’m in and I knew that would remove the pain so and it it wasn’t that I felt sorry for myself I mean don’t get me wrong I felt extremely sorry for myself but it wasn’t the self-pity that was that that led me to make the decision to to to not be sober it was the phys physical pain I didn’t feel like I could go through that physical pain anymore and so I showed up at my meeting that night and I’m not going to share that with anybody because I don’t want to feel guilty about my decision it’s it’s made it’s done it’s going to happen um and uh and a woman approached me that night um and she told me what I needed unsolicited right I’m sitting there in pain and she walks up to me and says you know what you need to do oh please tell me I mean John’s Hopkins doesn’t have an answer but I’m sure you do right um she said I needed to go home and pray for the removal of the obsession I had with my eye I wanted to kill her I hated her so much um I’ve realized today that um I guess I thought she thought I was faking it or something like you know there it there was no faking like people when I took the subway to school they’ move move it looked like there was something crazy happening but it looked really contagious but um and I went home that night I remember I was so angry with her it was like one of those things like I I for a couple of hours I was in bed plotting her murder can you really stick a cigarette in a coke bottle and you know I mean just just you know when you ever have that experience where you’re so angry at someone you find yourself screaming right at them with all the things you want to say to them and then you’re like what am I doing I’m alone you know and I’m I’m just furious but after a couple of hours because I’ve had this surrender and alcoholics annonymous about everything except prayer I will not I will not give up the prayer um but after a couple of hours I start to get that second voice in my head that says why don’t you take the action and then the head no that’s stupid I mean it’s stupid I have a physical malady but why don’t you just do it no it’s stupid you know and and and this is happening so much that I finally get down on my knees to shut this to stop it to stop the voices in my head from arguing with each other I got down on my knees and I don’t remember what I said because it wasn’t important at the time I can tell you that the spirit of it was God please remove the obsession I have with my eye whatever I mean Alcoholics Anonymous is a great experiment is what it is right whatever it is is it working for me is it not working for me right Sandy always his sponsor always said how is it working for you and sometimes it works really well and sometimes it doesn’t and this particular night I I said that ridiculous prayer and I got I crawled back into bed and I fell asleep and I woke up 6 hours later I wasn’t setting the alarm clock cuz I didn’t have to but I I slept is what happened and I woke up 6 hours later and when I woke up six hours later there was very little pain it was totally tolerable I had a little bit of pain completely tolerable pain it was it was fine and I remember we were living in the projects and we had those cheap blinds and they were dusty but I just remember how beautiful the light was that morning hitting the dust Moes right um and I had this feeling in my chest that morning when I woke up and I realized what had happened I felt like 100 % certain that God was in me right not even like not even just that God existed but I felt God in Me God was part of me and I just remember the most incredible feeling that morning and my mom picked me up that day and the doctor we saw that day was the same doctor I had seen the night before and uh and he said he had no medical explanation for the healing that occurred in my eye overnight and I know what happened I I surrendered to something right I said this prayer I got sleep and the Sleep healed right that’s what happened I prayed for removal of the obsession and it happened to work because I surrendered to it is is that’s what I think happened and uh and yet it doesn’t even matter what happened What mattered is that it it it worked because I surrendered to it and um I’m still blind in the eye by the way sometimes people get that wrong oh now she can see again but I I was blind I it’s still blind but it didn’t matter I didn’t care if I was blind I cared that the pain was gone I I just it was such a tremendous gift and the thing is too is that um we were talking about this earlier today in the pandel and I was thinking um about how like um is it Omar yeah from Iceland yes so we’ve never met before and you grew up in Iceland yes and I grew up in in the states and you use language that’s the exact same language that I use uh I love that here in alcoholic synonymous because what happened for me that day as I was thinking about the remarkable thing that had just happened this this feeling of God this this feeling that I lost when I was 11 that was now back the thing is that I recognized too was that the whole time I was going through through that process which went on for months right like four months or so I felt so sorry for myself I thought I I’m blind in my eye now right it’s bad it’s a terrible thing that happened to me and yet from this thing that I thought the whole time was bad I received the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten right the grace the grace of of the feeling of God in a moment right Serendipity unmar right I did nothing to deserve the feeling of God and yet it came because I follow I surrendered to some direction that made zero sense you know as a side note the person that gave me that direction her sponsor gave her that direction when she went through a bad breakup I am so glad I didn’t know that because I would have judged it even more what that’s some emotional pain go away of course you were obsessed I have a physical malady that’s not going to work right but but it did because I surrendered right and from what I judged to be a horrible experience I went blind I went through this whole thing I received the greatest gift I’ve had so I can no longer judge what is good or bad I have no idea what is good or bad I know that whatever is going through like and I remember like being like when my daughter was out on the streets being terrified for her terrified that I would lose her but also having the certainty that nothing I did that she had her own God right like I had the best mom in the world and there was she could not interfere with my drinking until until I was ready and I didn’t look ready but obviously I was because here I am right that my daughter had her own God and while it was scary in the moment to experience that I knew that no matter what happened everything would be okay because I have God no matter what it looked like at the end of it and so so whenever these are powerful lessons because whenever I experience something in life that like I don’t get what I want and it feels so important to me that I have this thing right or this new job I want this it’s got to be this job or whatever it is I know that um I don’t think I leave claw marks all over everything anymore because I I do know that whenever I look back at you know 5 years later or 10 years later or 15 years later I’m always like oh my God it’s so wonderful that it happened that way because that’s how I met Irma or you know like whatever it is I get these great gifts at at at life going exactly the way that it that it went and so um um so there I have my um you know that that feeling of God and and here’s the thing too is that I kind of thought like once I had that feeling of God it just it just stayed and um and it did for a long time and where it kind of faded was when my mother died right and um and it wasn’t even like um like I knew like I know God didn’t give my mom cancer and make her die he didn’t choose my mother over your mother or that that the I wasn’t mad at God I had this like weird experience where I couldn’t I I knew my mom was going to die for quite a few months before she died right it was so fast um and I thought I was prepared for it but I wasn’t when she died I felt such a tremendous sense of loss um right and I had this thought that um that my mother loved me so much that she would touch me right because I was in so much pain and then if she didn’t do something to make me realize she was in the room with me where I could feel her then obviously there’s no afterlife there is no God right and I couldn’t I just had this period of time and I like about a month where I kind of had this feeling about it and I would say Okay van we’re not going to worry about it too much it’ll come back around right just take the action of prayer so this time I know better so I take the action of prayer even though I feel stupid and then of course that lifted and I remember my sister because I was kind of having this conversation with my sister and my sister was like I feel mom all the time and I was like see yeah it’s right you know it’s just not something yeah whatever so so since that time I recognized that um that that we do have to be Seekers and um and Sandy has been you know a powerful teacher for me talk about him ad nauseum I know um but he has been such a powerful teacher for me of being a seeker and and he he I remember him talking about like he says um he said something along the lines of that you know that God could and would if he were sought right and and how sometimes we think like we hear that as God could and would right because what is seeking and he said you know when I was a little boy and I my dog ran away from home what did I do to look for my dog you know I made signs I put them up everywhere I knocked on neighbors houses I you know he had his parents drive him around seeking that dog like the all of the actions what did that look like and why wouldn’t I take those same actions to seek God and then you know it it was like a revelation to me that that God should be that important to me right like this feeling is so important that I should invest a lot of time into what does seeking look like um and it it seems to me today that that that is also another form of surrender right that’s why it works for me is because I surrender to this idea it’s a humble act for me to look for God however that is so and there’s many forms that I do that I that I take or many actions I take you know it could be uh reading other people’s experiences right it’s um service not just uh not just an Alcoholics Anonymous most of my service is an Alcoholic Anonymous but I like to do this thing and I’ll just talk about it because you can do it and then you’ll see it’s really fun I’ll give one example but only women should do this okay because men if you do this we’re going to think you’re creepy but I’ll just some random woman on the street she’ll be walking by me and I’ll say oh my gosh you look so beautiful in that dress and then the what happens to her face in that moment I feel God so closely and uh it’s little acts like that that you know uh that make me feel god um and so I try to incorporate those kinds of things in my day all of the time because they’re constant reminders of of of how to feel close to God and and what to do for God’s kids so you know so I ended up uh um um my sponsor and I became really good friends and um and I ended up the two of us ended up getting uh other sponsors at the same time who who who were able to take us through the rest of the steps because we had both only gone to the fifth step and I was like four years sober and so you know when um and my sponsor brought me through uh steps six and seven and like I said the whole idea like like a um okay I’m going to jump back to the third step really quick because because I always worried about what the right action was to take is this and I could go crazy about whether this action is this the right thing to do and I love in our book Alcoholic Anonymous in the third step it says at the top of the must be 60 61 6 must be the top of 63 um where it says that God provided what we needed so long as we stayed close to him and performed his work well so like when I’m trying to decide should I accept this job or that job God doesn’t care God is not my pimp right what matters is am I close to him am I performing his work well and then then that makes me feel more comfortable that there is no decision now that’s going to totally change the course of my no positive right I could I could do harm that would change the course of my life but but choosing one job or another is not going to change the course of my life it’s irrelevant staying close to God is what changes the course of my life so you know along those lines my sponsor used six and seven to help me um reduce the demand to meet the supply so that I would be comfortable where I was there was never going to be enough money enough hym enough whatever it there would never be enough anything outside of me to make me feel comfortable in my own skin it had to be it had to be addressed another way right God I had to use God and then um as I said with the amend process my my sponsor taught me to make direct restitution to sit people down eyeball to eyeball to uh tell them what I did wrong and then to invite them to include anything I had forgotten I remember um when um so Caitlyn was in foster care for a little while and this family was so lovely such a lovely family they two parents and six children Caitlyn was the seventh she looks somewhat like them they’re all strawberry blondes and uh and and when I went to treatment um the mother came and and met with me and said um she said I I don’t want to give put any pressure on you I want you to do do what you want to do but I want you to know that we love your daughter and if you don’t want to be a full-time mother we would love to adopt her right and uh and I I was uh I made the decision to keep her because I was selfish now I’m glad I did but but I did it because I was selfish because she would have she would have had on paper a much better life with with the family than she would with me and it worked out the way it should have but um but and here’s the thing too so my daughter comes back to me with a lot of issues because she’s been abandoned and taken you know as an infant through crack houses and all kinds of I’m not a crack smoker but that’s the kind of place I liked I feel comfortable in a crack house right so um so she had a lot of issues she comes back to me for like two days and then I have a temper tantrum and tell them I’m going to kill myself so they put me in a mental institution so she comes back to me reattaches to me and then I go in a mental institution because I have a temper tantrum and then she goes back to the Foster family it it was so confusing for her and she had such a hard time adjusting right and so when I sat down with that family and I made amends to them um for how I ripped their children loved my daughter they thought of her as her sister they wanted to be with her and uh when I apologized when I told the woman that I was sorry for what I did and and she said well no no no you know I mean she was so nice about it and I said well no and then I took her and then you had to take her back again when I went to the mental in stitution and then she was like yeah actually she was like that was pretty bad but she was still really kind about it but just the humility in in in in meeting those right things and and with my mother um my mother died when I was in law school and I owed her a lot of money but I was still in the projects and um I’m really grateful that my sponsor told me um she said go ask your mother she said you obviously can’t pay your mother back before she dies but ask her what she wants you to do do with the money and uh and so I did I I met with her and I made direct amend I had done that before but I brought up the money thing and asked her what to do and of course it had to do with paying for school for my daughter right um but but that was met right I I knew what she wanted I got to make that direct amends and the money got to go where my mother wanted it to go and and uh you know and and and and then my sponsor um you know in the process of making those nine step amends brought me through 10 11 and 12 right and and and in the 11th step in our book alcoholic synonymous it gives us a a um some actions to take upon Awakening and some actions to take when we retire at night and you know my sponsor asked me when I was new and I started to like when we retire at night we constructively review our day where were we selfish dishonest self-seeking and fright and something rsad resentful selfish afraid and dishonest is that as opposed to the four step um and uh my sponsor told me I was not I had done a four step but I was not in the pract a regular practice of taking inventory so she told me to write it down and I wrote it down for a few years and in the process of like every night my sponsor wanted me to to write it and then call her in the morning and report to her what I what I wrote and uh in the process of doing that it became intuitive right so like I know immediately I don’t need to wait till night because if I say something un in it hurts me right away I feel it right away in that moment and then um hopefully I have the humility to clear it up right away because as uh I have my friend Rita says like if you have to eat dead crow better to eat it while it’s warm right you know and the truth is is the longer I sit with something like that the worse I feel and the harder it is it’s just better to to rip the Band-Aid off and and get it out of the way and and uh and as a result of that I I get to continue to feel close to God and and have this great life like the The Sweet Life I have today is ridiculous you know I have my dogs at home I have my chickens my little hens um you know my um I have this great relationship with my daughter that and and by the way if you heard her today our relationship says way more about her program than it does about mine right because I always wanted to her in my life she had to she had to uh process things in order to feel comfortable with me after after what I did but um but I get this this sweet life with this little girl and um and my life is just filled with Alcoholics Anonymous just totally filled with Alcoholic Anonymous I feel like um almost like work is what I do in between meetings to tell you the truth and I have a big career and a big job and they don’t even know I’m sober they think I’m like this goody two shoes they know nothing about me um and I’ve worked for them for a long long time but I do that in between meetings because I I feel so close to God here with you guys and and I really want to thank you for allowing me to come out here thank you for listening to sober Sunrise if you enjoyed today’s episode please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message until next time have a great day