AA Speaker – Ashley J. – Bend, OR – 2021
Ashley J. from Bend, OR shares her journey through all 12 steps of AA, from childhood trauma and addiction to emotional sobriety. An AA speaker tape on step work and spiritual principles in recovery.
Ashley J. from Bend, OR grew up in a multigenerational alcoholic home with childhood trauma, abandonment, and loneliness. In this AA speaker tape, she walks through her entire journey with the 12 steps—from hitting bottom on champagne and wine to building a life of emotional sobriety, service, and spiritual connection. Her talk covers how she worked each step deeply with her sponsor, the role of the AA traditions and concepts in healing her family wounds, and how the program showed up for her during a life-threatening accident in Africa.
Ashley J., an AA speaker from Bend, Oregon, details her complete journey through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, beginning with childhood trauma in an alcoholic family and her eventual moment of clarity on champagne and wine. She emphasizes emotional sobriety over just stopping drinking, sharing how her sponsor taught her to work each step thoroughly—particularly step four (examining attitudes toward alcohol), step five (admission with dignity), and step ten (daily inventory and growing compassion). Throughout her recovery, Ashley illustrates how the AA traditions and service concepts have healed her family dysfunction and supported her through spiritual experiences, including maintaining sobriety during a traumatic rainforest accident in Africa.
Episode Summary
Ashley J. opens her share with an honest acknowledgment: there’s a gap between when she first encountered AA and when she actually got sober. That gap—from February 2006 to December 2006—holds the story of everything she’s learned about powerlessness, willingness, and the difference between intellectual understanding and spiritual experience.
Her childhood was carved by alcoholism. Her great-grandmother died drunk on the streets in Eastern Kentucky; her grandmother grew up abandoned by that mother; both her parents were active alcoholics. Ashley spent two years as a child living alone in an apartment, ashamed and trying to keep up appearances at private school. That loneliness was the defining wound. When she was hungry for clean clothes, she knocked on a neighbor’s door—a woman named Moren S. who had five years sober in AA. That woman became the first real safe adult in Ashley’s life. She fed her, listened to her, taught her how to live. Years later, when Ashley finally came through the doors of AA, Moren S. became her first sponsor.
The entry point wasn’t voluntary. Ashley’s sister went to treatment for an eating disorder in 2006, and at the family program, Ashley deliberately changed her answers on the alcoholism questionnaire—she wasn’t ready to be an alcoholic. But they intervened on her anyway for her adult child of alcoholic issues, and she stayed six weeks doing trauma work. When she left, she tried Al-Anon but got resentful at the first meeting over literature rules. Instead, she went to open AA meetings at a home group in Franklin, Tennessee, where she listened and read the Big Book without raising her hand. She was a woman in recovery sitting in AA meetings with a belly full of wine.
What made her an alcoholic, Ashley explains clearly, wasn’t the amount she drank—it was the obsession with the first drink and the complete loss of control once it was in her hand. She gives specific examples: on a trip in Central America, she was so desperate for that first drink that she pestered every staff member at the restaurant while waiting for a bottle of wine. When she finally hit bottom, she’d sworn to herself she’d only have one drink. She had three. The emotional anguish was unbearable. She called her sponsor, then her recovery buddy, who said, “That’s exactly how I felt when I went to treatment for alcoholism.” Ashley picked up a desire chip and has had continuous sobriety since December 30, 2006.
Her first step was deep and specific. Her sponsor asked her to write not just her drinking history but her attitudes toward alcohol. Ashley had dressed up her disease in jewelry and pretty clothes because her father’s alcoholism was violent—fist fights, fridge-pulling violence—and she didn’t want to end up like that. But she could have. She easily could have been in the gutter with other family members. Examining those twisted attitudes was crucial.
For her step two, Ashley made a collage of her higher power concept—round like the moon, covered with moss, dirt, and sticks from the Appalachian forest where she spent her childhood. She needed a higher power concept that felt safe because safe people hadn’t raised her. She also needed a concept that could take her all the way to the spiritual awakening promised in step 12. The 12 and 12’s passage about the realm of the spirit being “roomy and broad” and “open to all who seek” spoke to her deeply.
Her step three was taken in multiple ways: once on her knees holding hands with her sponsor, once flat on a bathroom floor in a strange hotel, shattered by an emotional event. When her ex-husband asked her to be godmother to his child with someone else, the pain nearly broke her. But the program gave her a way through: her spiritual director told her there was no passage in the book, no meeting that answered this—it was just her and her higher power deciding what to do. So she took step three right there, in that grief.
Her step four brought up childhood lies she’d internalized—the distorted narratives her parents used to justify their disease. Her sponsor couldn’t hear her step five (she was out of town), so she asked Ashley to find a woman in AA she trusted. That woman, Roxy, helped her distinguish between what was the disease preying on her as a vulnerable child and what became her responsibility as an adult with knowledge of her own disease. The guilt and shame that lifted was transformational.
Another step five Ashley took was outside in the sunlight, where her sponsor read words from her list and had her make a gesture of opening the door of her heart to her higher power. After each item, they’d sit in meditation silence, and then her sponsor would say: “It’s gone. It’s not yours anymore. You’ve given it to your higher power.”
By step six, Ashley was ready. The rage in her was ferocious—she vibrated with rage when she entered a room. She punched a hole in her kitchen wall and hung a calendar over it to remember how far she’d come. She’d torn up hotel rooms, gone off on telemarketers so hard they hung up on her. Step seven came in her guest room, and that’s when she felt the nearness of her Creator for the first time. She wept.
For step eight, she made three columns: people she’d harm and was willing to amend right now, people she’d get to with time and prayer, and perpetrators she wasn’t ready for. Her sponsor taught her to start with the easier, safer people—girlfriends, work relationships—to build momentum. Sometimes she makes detailed amends; sometimes she says she offers her heartfelt apology for “any and all wrongs I have done.” When she makes an amend, she reads step nine in its entirety from the Big Book because the language and guidance is, as she says, “totally infallible.”
Step ten is where Ashley started to grow in real compassion. She and her recovery buddy worked the slogans—”Just for Today,” “But for the Grace of God,” “H.A.L.T.”—checking whether they’d made a meeting, read the book, talked to another alcoholic. Later, her sponsor had her choose the word “watch” and just watch herself with detachment. At night, before her inventory, Ashley opens with: “Hi, God. I’m a spiritual being having a human experience today. I made a lot of mistakes because I’m supposed to, because if I didn’t make mistakes, I wouldn’t need you.”
For step eleven, Ashley has memorized prayers from different religious traditions. She uses the tool of “constructive imagination” from the 12 and 12—daydreaming about how she could handle a difficult situation differently next time, creating a vision for herself. When she prays for others, she keeps it simple and doesn’t project her wishes onto them: “May my mother have knowledge of her will for you. May my mother have the power to carry that out.”
Step twelve is where the spiritual awakening lives. Bill W. defines it as feeling, being, and believing things you previously could not. For Ashley, this became undeniably real on February 6 in a rainforest in Africa when she fell and her leg broke in four places with deep nerve damage. In an exceedingly remote location with no medical care for 55 hours and no pain medicine, she sat on the rainforest floor. A man walked from a village into the forest and adjusted her leg with his bare hands—twice. She had a stick to bite on. What she had was Alcoholics Anonymous with her.
She’d read the day before about how her higher power suffers with her and is with her in all ways. When the pain was beyond imagination and she was in shock, she had no expectations. She couldn’t expect help, couldn’t expect the pain to stop, couldn’t expect resolution. She held the bones of her leg together with her bare hands during a six-hour motorbike ride on a pocked dirt road with two people riding to keep her from falling off. She was offered alcohol as a painkiller and declined it—not because it made her good or perfect, but because her sobriety mattered to her. She knew her recovery and this program were with her in that darkness.
Ashley closes by touching on the traditions and concepts—how tradition one healed her either/or thinking from her family of origin and taught her to hold both/and complexity. How tradition three (the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking) is the great equalizer. How concept four (participation is the key to harmony) reminds her that she needs self-respect to speak up in meetings and relationships. She reads a passage from the 12 and 12 about how in a well-matured AA, distorted drives are restored to their true purpose—we no longer strive to dominate or rule in order to gain self-importance. We find that all human beings are important and that true ambition is “the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.”
Notable Quotes
What makes me an alcoholic is that I had that obsession with the first drink, and then when I took it, I lost all power of control over how much more I would drink.
The realm of the spirit is roomy and broad. It is all inclusive. It is open to all who seek.
I’m a spiritual being having a human experience today. I made a lot of mistakes because I’m supposed to, because if I didn’t make mistakes, I wouldn’t need you.
There is no passage in the book, there is no meeting—it’s just down to your higher power and you and what is your decision to be.
True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.
I no longer have to be specially distinguished among my fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy in God’s sight. All human beings are important.
Step 2 – Higher Power
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Step 5 – Admission
Step 10 – Daily Inventory
Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Emotional Sobriety
Sponsorship
Big Book Study
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Step 2 – Higher Power
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Step 5 – Admission
- Step 10 – Daily Inventory
- Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
- Emotional Sobriety
- Sponsorship
- Big Book Study
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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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 thank you so much Maria thank you so much I appreciate that a lot and thank you car for asking me to be with you New Horizons you are floating my boat what a beautiful format how lovely and principled and how alcoholics anonymousyt guide my thoughts my actions and my speech um that means I’m going to give three talks as I was taught by granny Pat I am an alcoholic by the way my name is Ashley there’s the talk I’ve planned the talk I will give and the talk afterwards I wish I had given and if I’m a little scared it’s just my higher power shaking the truth out of me as as granny Pat who introduced me to these 12 steps on the 6th of February 2006 said to me but guess what that’s not my sobriety date my sobriety date is the 30th of December 2006 and there’s an interesting Gap there and I’m going to tell you a little bit about that and uh I do have a home group it is the beacon group I’m looking I’m calling you from Berlin so good morning good afternoon good evening and um I’m looking forward to getting back to my home group and being able to participate in person I’ve been doing online and phone meetings uh and I do have a sponsor I do sponsor women I’m currently working step I’m reading and working Step 11 I’m I do steps 10 11 and 12 to the best of my ability and very robustly and thoroughly and um I’m devoted to the literature of alcoholic synonymous it absolutely has saved my life and I am going to try to tell you you know how I got here it’s a little bit of an unusual story but I suppose all of us have our distinct ways of finding these uh beautiful rooms and take you through my journey with the steps through traditions and the concepts of service because I’m a three Legacy woman and I have found that I have a lot of big feelings and um the concepts of service in particular really guide my behavior when I’m having big feelings you know when I’m sitting at the supper table with my husband and his daughter and his daughter’s mom which is a constellation in which I frequently find myself and my fear comes up or something I have to remind myself concept 4 participation is the key to Harmony I need to participate um so I want to make sure that I touch on the concepts too while we while we’re together um this morning for yall and I’ve got some special friends who are here so thank you all for dialing in so first of all I did grow up in a multigenerational alcoholic home my great grandmommy was a flop house drunk who DED on died on the streets in Eastern Kentucky and there’s a lot about attitudes toward alcohol in my story and when my nana her daughter was told by a social worker who came to the door of my great-grandparents home to say that her mother was dead she said well what’s that got to do with me you know just real indifference because my nana grew up with a broken heart she was an adult child and had been abandoned by her alcoholic mother and you know there’s a lot of trauma in that story my my great- grandmommy um murdered her husband and ran away with her lover and burned down the family business and just did all kinds of things in her disease and that’s just the beginning of the tale of Woe and then both my parents are alcoholics I was raised in an alcoholic home I lived in the kind of home where when the police came I wondered why they didn’t take me with them when they left and I did live alone for two years as a child because um you know one of my parents was off pursuing her addiction to her career and her dreams and then when I moved myself to live with the other parent he left $50 in an envelope at the state to go practice his alcoholism and his other ick and um I want to make sure that I tell you this little story about Alcoholics Anonymous and then I’ll speed it up and tell you about how I got here but in that second year that I was living alone in an apartment um we didn’t have a washer and dryer and I was attending a private school and I of course was proud you know I wanted to be clean and I’d run out of fresh clothes to wear and I was trying to figure out where in the world I was going to wash my clothes and I saw that there was this patio attached to my patio at the apartment and there was this woman in a bikini and a sun hat and smoking a cigarette and I thought well she looks cute you know I’m going to figure out which door corresponds with her apartment and knock on it and by golly that’s what I did and and uh I knocked on her door and I said hi I’m Ashley can I do my laundry what an introduction right um you know so ashamed but but also really out of choices and this woman at the time Moren s had 5 years of continuous sobriety in the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and she had just been working with her sponsor on how to really learn to love for fun and for free and her sponsor had said morine just find someone to whom you can give it away and Moren says that the day that I knocked on her door I was her gift from God and she fed me she watered me she listened to me talk when I came home from school she taught me how to roast a chicken I thought she was rich because she had cable TV she was an independent career woman she’s the type of member of AA that’s talked about in our 12th step where she was single and totally fulfilled by this program she read books she traveled alone and she also looked at me at one point and she said Ashley I think there’s a problem with alcoholism in your family and she gave me our book to read and I said to her well why don’t you do something about it and she said well I can carry the message but I can’t carry the person and I didn’t get here until 2006 as I said but that’s an interesting and beautiful introduction to me to the concept of recovery and Moren s became my first sponsor when I came into these rooms so I always like to acknowledge her in that beautiful way that she saved my life and basically saved me from dying of loneliness that year and abject neglect and abandonment so um my sister went to treatment for an eating disorder in 2006 and I was invited to her family program and when I got there they gave me all these questionaires to fill out including one on alcoholism and there were 20 or so questions and I changed my anwers so that I answered yes to fewer than five and I didn’t think that was problematic because I was answering all the softball questions you know do I have a cocktail before I go out um you know I I wasn’t answering the hardcore questions nobody had confronted me about my drinking I didn’t have consequences all that kind of stuff but I definitely changed my answers because I didn’t want to be an alcoholic and I did not want to give up the drink um and at that Treatment Center they ended up doing an intervention on me because of my adult child of alcoholic issues and I stayed there for over six weeks and did a lot of trauma work I’m a Survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape all the abandonment neglect and and other stuff I’ve talked about and they had said to me you know don’t walk run like hell to the allanon family groups so when I got out of treatment I went straight to my first allanon meeting and the first thing I did at that allanon meeting because the topic corresponded with a with a a recovery book that I was reading that day was I pulled out this recovery book which was not published by alanon and I said oh what a coincidence that’s the topic of the daily reading in my book and because it was a healthy structured alanon meeting that followed the Traditions the chairperson said oh we only share allanon published literature in this meeting well I got me a resentment against the allanon family groups CU didn’t they know I had just been to the best treatment center in North America and by the way I’m that person who speaks up today in a meeting you know or or reread the Preamble or I’ll read something from the traditions and or speak to the chairperson or speak to the newcomer afterwards or whatever but anyway I got a resentment against alanon and I wouldn’t go back but I was already a woman in recovery and I knew that my life depended on my recovery so so I would only so I could go to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and I went straight to the Nar in Franklin Tennessee and Steve L who’s The Speaker many of youall know that was his home group at the time it wasn’t his home group his home group was the back room group but he came to the noer Monday through Friday so I was getting some good AA but I did some things now that I know not to do um because I couldn’t qualify as an alcoholic because I had changed my answers to that on that questionnaire um but I listened in those AA meetings and they read from the big book and I started and I read the big book and I started to identify with the literature of alcoholic annonymous it is the great Obsession of every abnormal Drinker that one day I will be able to control and enjoy my drinking um with that first drink I get a sense of ease and comfort my problems pile up upon me and they seem astonishingly difficult and at night because I I had such extraordinary loneliness I would read the stories in the back of the book to console myself so I could fall asleep because I was eaten alive with loneliness when I got here you know because that was the chief characteristic of my childhood just that loneliness and I read that story my bottle my resentments in me and this guy and I had nothing in common I mean he said that his beard went down to his belt if he’d had a if he’d had a belt but he said it wasn’t what happened it wasn’t how much he drank but it’s what happened when he drank and I thought I am so screwed because I don’t drink that much but my God it’s what happens when I drink you know and then I read that story in the book um I can’t think of the name of it it’s towards the back Beth wrote it and she said you know that AA taught her how to handle sobriety and I said so it’s not so much about the drinking but it’s about getting to emotional sobriety and I really want that so you get the idea because I was going to a meeting where there were good people in sobriety and I was getting a headful of AA while I had a belly full of white wine and champagne and I was really obsessed with that first drink and I want to make it really clear that even though I came from a family of Alcoholics what makes me an alcoholic is that I had that obsession with the first drink and then when I took it I lost all power of control over how much more I would drink and I want to give you a couple of examples about that I was on a on a trip in um Central America and I decided that by God I was going to drink at the end of that day and we went into this restaurant at the hotel and ordered a bottle of wine and it was taking a very long time for the wine to come and I was so desperate for that first drink and so anxious I went to the con to the to the Matra D to the bar everywhere I could go trying to shake them down for a cocktail while I waited for that dang blasted bottle of wine to be delivered to the table because I just couldn’t wait I mean that was my level of being driven for it now when I hit my bottom I I I swore to myself I was only going to have one and I had three and I know that for some people that doesn’t sound like a lot of alcohol but the level of emotional angst that I was in I woke up the next day and just like Bill pounding his fist on the bar how did I get here again I was eaten up with that incomprehensible and pitiful moralization you know I thought I was just going to drink the correct wine with the cheese but I was emotionally at my bottom and I called my sponsor Moren she didn’t pick up which was very unusual and I called my friend my recovery buddy Nikki and Nikki said Ashley that’s exactly how I felt when I went to treatment for alcoholism now Nikki ran a human trafficking ring and prostituted herself so this is about identifying with the feelings and not so much the particulars of the circumstances and went straight to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous picked up a desire chip and I’m happy to say that I have continuous sobriety and I’ve not found it necessary to relapse and when I was asked to do my first step I was asked to write out not only the history of my drinking but my attitude toward alcohol because my attitudes were so powerfully distorted you know and I looked at why I was so sparkly with it you know with the with a jewelry or a pretty dress and it’s because my dad and my great grandom alcoholism was so violent you know that I didn’t go that way but I easily could have you know my dad once when I in front of me got so drunk with a friend and they were fist fighting and pulling the cabinets off the kitchen wall and you know I tried to break it up and tried to call the police and my dad’s friend called me a c and then I they locked me out of the house I didn’t want to be an alcoholic like that so I just dressed mine up you know but I easily could have been in the gutter with other members of my family so looking at my attitudes toward the institution of drinking was really an important part of my first step and then you know I had to look at how I drank alone because I was such an isolated person and um I’m going to move on to when I took step two because one of the stories that I that I told my sponsor when I read my step one to her about my powerlessness and my unmanageability my emotional unmanageability was epic I mean I had suicidal ideation I had a self harm addiction you know the in our famous story in the book about acceptance is the answer the page before he talks about acceptance is the answer and you know the proportion of expectations and all of that the the page that I identify with is when he says if I could just control the circumstances outside of me I might be able to calibrate what’s going on inside of me that’s the sentence that floors me because that’s how I lived my life I just needed a thermostat out there to regulate how I felt in here and I went to Great Lengths to try to do that so I told my sponsor that um one night I’d been drinking and I went back to my hotel room alone and I thought well I’m going to make myself vomit so I won’t have as bad of a hangover but I was having a you know a enlightened spiritual experience while I was drunk and I was having all of these insights that I just thought were so profound and needed to share with somebody but nobody was around so I called myself and I left myself a voicemail and the next day when I listened to my voicemail I was like what what what I mean it was just incomprehensible gibberish and my sponsor said Ashley you know that is not saying Behavior boom we were at step two boom right at step two so then I got to think about a higher power concept and alcoholic synonymous gives me the dignity and the pleasure and the respect and the autonomy of having a higher power concept that is so personal and suitable to me and then I get to fire that higher power and get a new one anytime I need one a bigger one a smaller one a more intimate one and when I read we agnostics you know the passage that is so moving to me is that the realm of the spirit is roomy and Broad it is all inclusive is open to all who seek and you know when when when Bill and eie are sitting together at Bill’s kitchen table and and and bill says that he saw that EB’s roots that his very being had sought new soil you know that’s a really profound and Vivid expression of a new way of of being and so that’s what I’m looking for in my step two is a higher power concept that can take me there that’s going to get me all the way to that Spiritual Awakening in Step 12 and so something that I did for my step two was I made a collage of my higher power concept I mean that’s not in our literature anywhere it was just something I intuitively came to and it’s round like the moon and it’s because I’m a Backpacker and a nature person and I was always in the woods in Appalachia from the time I was really little and it has moss and dirt and sticks on it because you know I didn’t grow up with Safe People a mother or a father and so I really have to find a higher power concept that I can relate to and with which I feel safe and I find that in the Cathedral of the mountains and the woods and then I have a lot of sacred places and I do have a wisdom tradition from which I come you know because my grandparents really saved my life I did have a stable summer home and their faith tradition is important to me um and uh you know and I and I consider sanity I was just working step two today with espony and you know it’s just peace of mind it’s just being able to to have some darn peace of mind you know and my Insanity was I did the same thing over and over again just harder you know just like the shoulder against the door just like get it harder and um so that’s a little bit about my step two and I do write letters to my higher power and I often write them with my non-dominant hand and when I finished my step two with my with my sponsor we got on our knees you know it was it was such an intimate and gentle and tender act to get on my knees and hold hands with another woman an alcoholics synonymous and there’s a lot to be said about step three there amazing speakers who have unpacked it in great detail and of course the book is really um Vivid about it but for me the essence of the experience was that tenderness you know um by this time my many was my as I call her CU she’s a grandmother figure to she was my sponsor by now and you know her sweet wrinkly hand with her arthritic Knuckles and the way she kind of had to uh slowly make her way down to her knees and it was tender is just the word you know a really a really a really deep experience and I’ve also taken step three you know naked wet distraught flat out on a bathroom floor or in a strange hotel in an anonymous American city when I was just completely shattered by an emotional event in my life so I’ve taken step three in a lot of different ways and that step three that I’m referring to um my my former husband and I we chose not to have children and that was a very clear Mutual decision it wasn’t something that I ever I always knew was my path was to love the children who were already here and who are suffering and who needed an advocate and he just didn’t ever want children himself and so but then after we um had a very beautiful Divorce by the grace and the power of this program and the principles of it um he had an intended pregnancy with somebody and he has a child and he asked me to be the Godmother and of course in Alcoholics Anonymous the first thing I said is absolutely I would be delighted and then I went straight to a meeting and cussed the pain off a wall um and then I had a like just a a a come apart and I was on the phone I had on speaker phone my spiritual Giant in this program Toby G and my wisdom teacher and some other people and I was just having a really hard time reconciling these things and Toby was saying to me in these moments Ashley there’s no passage in the book there’s no meeting you know there’s there’s it’s just down to your higher power in you and what is your decision to be you know and so that’s another way that I’ve taken step three and my first step four I want to tell you about two step fours that I’ve taken um you know the first one I put a lot of that pain from my childhood on there because my parents had to tell me a lot of lies in order for them to justify their disease and I put those lies about myself on my moral inventory because I really internalized that that um narrative and you know I thought this was beautiful my sponsor couldn’t hear my step five because she was out of town and she said go to a woman in Alcoholics Anonymous you trust and ask her to hear it she wasn’t proprietary about it like oh I’m the only person who’s qualified to hear it you know so I went to Roxy she was very cool and older and had shaved kind of gray hair and um and she came over and she started listening to my step five and she would say Ashley you were a blameless vulnerable child take that off your list oh Ashley you were a blameless vulnerable child take that off your list so she helped me distinguish what was the disease of alcoholism praying upon me as a needy dependent kid and the things for which I was responsible as an adult when I attained my majority and was responsible for my own disease because I had the education about my disease and I became responsible for treating it which is concept one I’m responsible for my own life and tradition 7 I’m resp responsible for being emotionally self-supporting so um which is we’ll get to that later um and then my other so that was a very powerful and very cleansing I mean the guilt and the shame that was lifted off of me by hearing that and separating out you know what my parents put on me and what what I can do something about you know what I can actually do something about effectively was an enormous transformational shift and then my other favorite step five that I’ve taken um I was this person you know had me look up the definitions of all the words and admit means to Grant access you know admitted to Grant access and um they had me go outside and we sat um I live in the country and we sat outside in the sunlight and they talked about me admitting my higher power into the sunlight of the spirit into my heart and would read something off my list and then they would have me make this gesture of opening the door of my heart and granting my higher power access admitting my higher power into those nooks and crannies you know it uses that expression in the book and so and that was and then they would have me sit in silence in meditation so bringing in a little bit of Step 11 there and then they would say it’s gone it’s not yours anymore you’ve given it to your higher power and then um when I took step six uh I I was very ready I mean the rage was something that I really wanted lifted from me I was told I was such a rager when I came in that the rage in me actually preceded me into a room I vibrated with rage um and some of it I came by very you know justifiably and but it was it was it really I mean yeah I was a rager uh I punched a hole the wall in my kitchen and put a calendar over it when I got into recovery cuz I wanted to remember how far I’d come I’ve torn up a hotel room in my life and um you know I was the kind of rager one time a telemarketer called me and I went off so bad she hung up on me and usually that goes the other direction um so I was pretty ready for step six and in Step seven as my sponsor recently pointed out to me it says someplace where I can be quiet it doesn’t have to be quiet around me it’s just someplace where I can be quiet in my spirit but I went to my guest room and that’s really where I I was very I was very touched by that I mean that’s really when I started to feel The Nearness of my Creator and I think we all have our distinct journey through these steps and feel the power of our God at different times in different ways but that was a weeper for me you know I really wept through that step seven and then I started to take step eight and the way I was taught to do it was I made um you know obviously I had my step four but I made three columns so I did my list of people to whom I was willing to make amends if they walked in the door right now I would feel confident Serene you know a little nervous but but but ready like yes I understand the nature of my wrong and I’m ready to take ownership of it and make my direct face to face amends let’s do this and then the second column was I’m I I I’ll get there I need a little time I need to reread the chapters in the book I need to pray about it um it’s not totally clean yet but with time I’m going to get there and the willingness will come you know um made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing and then the third you know my perpetrators primarily like no thank you and so what my sponsor taught me was you know go with the with the easier safer people first build up some some trust some self-esteem and um you know the the relationships where it’s easier to get that momentum going and then move on to step 10 you know and and I started with some girlfriends um I started with some work relationships and one of the things my sponsor taught me too is in some instances don’t be too specific about making the direct amend because the person I might leave out the very thing that was most defensive and hurtful and harmful to the person I may be like what what about blah blah blah blah blah man that’s what was really messed up you know so sometimes I just I say I offer my heartfelt amense for any and all wrongs I have done and other times I really unpack it but the book is so Divine because it gives such explicit direction for how to make amends and I I mean I’m very disciplined with our literature and when I’m going to make an amend I read Step n in its entirety in the big book of alcoholic annonymous because it has all the keywords the buzzwords and its guidance is just I find it totally infallible I also talk to my sponsor I might also talk to my spiritual director you know I just I I take a lot of guidance on how to make direct amends and it works and it works and then I’ll talk to you a little bit about you know working step 10 and and back then and then how I do it now and you know I did start with a recovery buddy her name was Nikki we’re still recovery buddies she’s just the best and um you know we started with the slogans with our step 10 and how did we work a slogan how did we apply just for today or think or for the grace of God and you know and halt did we let ourselves get hungry angry lonely or tired and so we did these daily check-ins did we make a meeting did we read something in the book did we talk to another alcoholic you know and I love step 10 in our 12 and 12 it obviously talks about the three different kinds of of inventories um particularly the spot check inventory that I can use any time during the day you know and it’s got that very famous sentence it’s a spiritual axiom that whenever I’m disturbed there’s something wrong with me but it’s such a generous and gracious step in in the 12 and 12 it says that other people too are suffering the Pains of growing up I find step 10 is where I really start to grow in compassion you know where I can start to hold other people as equally fragile equally trying you know stumbling and falling and also it talks to me so much about my motives you know it invites me in a broad way to take a look at why I do what I do but then bill doesn’t leave it alone he concludes with that last passage where he’s like oh look a little deeper you know because then I’ve even under my broad motives I’ve got these really subtle ways that I deceive myself and try to hide a a bad motive under a good one and he also talks about these Keynotes of how I can I can’t stand it if I like a lot of people but love very few and the people I don’t like as my sponsor says I don’t have to like everybody but I have have to love everyone and it tells me that I can treat them with courtesy Justice and kindness you know and that’s something that I’ve really gotten in recovery you know I I’ve learned how to stand for something without standing against my fellows and that really started for me in Step 10 and I just did step 10 um with my sponsor and and she asked me to choose the word watch and just to work work with the word watch and just to watch myself you know to develop that sort of external consciousness and just observe myself with Detachment and how I take step 10 at night you know obviously the instructions are very explicit but I in um particularly the big book but the way I do it before I start going through the language you know where am I selfish self-centered afraid where did I did I pack things into the stream of Life do I owe an amends is there something I need to share with someone else what I do is I say hi hi god um I’m a spiritual being having a human experience erience today I made a lot of mistakes because I’m supposed to because if I didn’t make mistakes I wouldn’t need you and my mistakes are actually designed to bring me closer to you and to have that Reliance on you and it talks about that so much in the 12 and 12 in the 12th step like greater spiritual Reliance on God greater Reliance on God you know he talks he just plays so much in the 12 and 12 on you know anti-dependence over dependence and that it’s interdependence with our fellows and more Reliance on God so I that’s how I open my my step 10 and then I journal in the morning and finish it and if there’s anything I need to clean up in Step 11 I do have a meditation practice um and I do it exactly the way it’s lined out in the book I mean it’s not a big mystery it says we select and memorize prayers that express our highest values and ideals and so I’ve selected prayers from all the world great religious traditions and I’ve memorized them and I slowly go through the words the 12 and 12 gives us um make me an instrument of thy peace that prayer so I started with that one and then I say my prayers and I journal and I think it’s very important to note that bill has this really wonderful tool in the 11th step in the 12 and 12 called constructive imagination where in my prayer life when I imagine a scenario that didn’t go well or where I wish I’d behave differently or I don’t feel good about myself I can use my constructive imagination and daydream about how I could do it differently next time I love that I love that because it helps me grow it helps me stretch it helps me create a vision for myself and we have a chapter called a vision you know that has the word Vision in it and also it tells me in the in the 11th uh step um I don’t ask for things for other people I don’t pray agendas and my wishes and preferences for other people because those are my ideas even if they’re Noble and well-intentioned cure them of their disease let them have a windfall please resolve their marital troubles you know let them get their goiter fixed so when I pray for people I literally just say the 11th step may my mother have knowledge of her will for you may my mother have the power to carry that out keep it really simple and then step 12 you know the definition of the spiritual awakening that bill provides is that I can feel be and believe things I previously simply could not and today that has come true in my life sometimes more so than others um you know and I do try to practice these principles obviously in all my Affairs and I want to tell you a little bit about a way I was able to do that when I had this big accident in um in Africa on the 6th of February I fell in the rainforest and my leg broke in four places and I had very deep damage to one of my nerves and because of where I was in a exceedingly remote place that takes days to get to I did not have medical care for 55 hours and I didn’t have any um pain medicine or anything and the first part of the experience I sat on the rainforest floor for five and a half hours with a badly misshapen leg that was broken in five places and in four places and one of the things that had to be done was a a man had to walk from a village into the rainforest and He adjusted my leg with his bare hands and that had to be done two different times and all I had was a stick to bite on but I had Alcoholics Anonymous with me and what I believe because I go back to my step two is that the god of my understanding suffers with me and is with me in all ways you know and and it does talk so much in Step 12 about greater Spiritual Development is always the answer and I mean obviously this was deeply traumatic I was in different kinds of shock it was painful beyond my wildest imagination I was like an animal but I just I could have no expectations I could have no expectations of getting help I could have no expectations that the pain would stop I could have no expectations of when the situation might be resolved you know the the the the journey also included a six-hour motorbike ride where I had to hold the bones of my leg together with my bare hands um two people this is a small motorbike on a on a pocked dirt road and two people had to ride with me to keep from falling off if I passed out and I just knew and I was offered alcohol as a painkiller and I declined it and it doesn’t make me good right and perfect it does make me value my sobriety because I also knew I would not come back to you my brothers and sisters and Alcoholics Anonymous and say I drank over it because I wasn’t going to drink over it because my sobriety matters to me and I don’t really know how to explain it I just knew that my recovery and that this program was with me during that experience and the day before I fell I had just read a book on the spirituality of the 12 Steps it’s an outside book so I won’t give you the title but it’s about the it’s about the spirituality of the 12 steps and the and the 13th chapter is about how my higher power is just with me all the time and all of my suffering and all of my joy and that’s just what I knew and when I would try to pray I didn’t have the energy to pray when I would try to say a something from my faith tradition I didn’t have the words but I I just had some kind of Supernatural strength and I I just I relate it to the 12th step of AA and there was this one moment when my partner came with the SAT phone and it didn’t work because we were Under The Canopy of the rainforest and he had to leave and the person who was sitting with me said oh he’ll be back in an hour and then an hour went by and she was like he’ll be here in 15 minutes he’ll be here in and I said we can have no expectations you know and that’s AA at work in my life in that circumstance and there’s more to that but I’m going to move on so that’s a little bit of that’s about the you know this the steps in my life and I just want to you know briefly touch on the the traditions and the concepts so tradition one talks about our common welfare and our unity and what I get out of this tradition is that um you know the group matters and I matter too and I didn’t learn that growing up with the family disease of alcoholism you know if if there was a fight in my family it was like the Family itself divorced and in fact at one point my dad said you know I divorce you and so it was really a binary and it was an either or and what tradition one teaches me is both and it teaches me how to hold complexity and how to hold Paradox and to have unified thinking and that doesn’t mean that we’re uniform but that we have Unity because the group is important and the 12 and 12 also states that the individual matters and the individual’s libert and the individual’s Liberty is also of Paramount importance and so it started to heal these these these these Fishers in my thinking you know and this is very important to me in my relationship because my my partner and I we when we’re not in America we’re in we’re in either Switzerland where he’s from or we’re in Germany with his daughter and we have this constellation with his daughter’s mother and so I’m the minority voice a lot of the time and I have to think about common welfare and unity and both and a lot and so learning how not to get stuck in these binaries I always go back to tradition one and then with tradition two you know it’s an informed group conscience the word informed is not in the in the tradition but it’s in our service manual and this is important because it means everyone needs to have access to the same information in order for it to be fair sometimes in our business meetings we don’t want to take the time for that you know but for it really to be egalitarian because our our 12 points to preserve our future as bill called the Traditions are really about egalitarianism just like it was read in this AA at the beginning you know that race Creed gender we’re equals here and then that relates to my participation in in concept for you know in order for me to have Harmony I need to participate but you know what it takes for me to participate some self-respect you know I have to respect myself in order to speak up and build that self-esteem and I build that self-esteem when I have my God concept when I have my step three when I have my prayer and meditation when I work with other alcoholics when I’m loved to Pieces by my sponsor and then um you know I did introduce myself and I’m just going to touch on this briefly as an alcoholic and then I said my name well this pertains to tradition three when you hear that I’m an alcoholic that’s all you need to know about me that’s the great equalizer that that levels the playing field and we read TR tradtion 8 which also applies to our professions because we come in here as professionally Anonymous and and tradition 10 you know we don’t have outside issues and my last name and my name can be an outside issue and a distraction and we place principles above personalities the original text said above not not before and I’ve had a lot of challenges with that in the rooms of AA I was treated differently when I got here the women did not welcome me they didn’t take out a big book and write down their number and pass it around people presented professional material to me in the rooms of AA and so I learned to say I’m an alcoholic you know like back off just treat me like someone who’s a drink away from a drunk and um and that’s important to me um and then I want to um it’s about time to close and there’s so much more to say about our beautiful Concepts and I’ll just say with if you ever have the opportunity to read the general warranties of the conference which conference which is concept 12 you know it talks about having a prudent ample Reserve which is my energy and my love you know and when I go hiking and I want to do 14 miles and I get to Seven I need to make sure I’ve got an ample Reserve to get back the the next seven miles right and that nothing should ever be punitive and so that treats teaches me how to have a Gentle Spirit which I also cultivate in my daily step 10 and things should be Democratic in thought and action how do I practice these these egalitarian principles of our traditions in my relationships you know how am I Fair how do I share the work how do I rotate service in AA how do I share the cooking how do I share the cleaning how do I share the emotional labor in my relationship um if you have the opportunity to get into the concepts please do I’m actually doing um a concept study I can put my number in the chat anyone is welcome to join it and I’m just going to close with a reading from the 12 and 12 which is one of my favorites and thank you so much for having me it’s been a real pleasure to share some of my story there’s more there there is with all of us this is um so I don’t know the exact page number because I’m reading it off my eye book but it says but today in well matured AAS these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction we no longer strive to dominate or rule the Those About Us in order to gain self-importance we no longer seek fame or honor in order to be praised when by devoted service to family friends business or Community we do attract widespread affection or sometimes singled out for posts of Greater responsibility we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service true leadership we find depends upon able example and not upon vain displays of power or Glory still more wonderful is the feeling we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy in God’s sight all human beings are important we’re no longer in self-constructed prisons these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living true ambition is not what we thought it was true ambition is the Deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today it’s really been a treat and a pleasure love yall 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