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 good evening I’m Jennifer and I’m an alcoholic give me a minute my sobriety date is January 12th of 1992 um I have a sponsor and I actively sponsor women um should I say my home group my home group is the Midtown group in Wilmington North Carolina um I would not be sober today if it weren’t for those three things had to get a sobriety date first it’s not a requirement for membership but it does help right um in my home group is a group of people a lot of times I hear at least in the United States people say things like I have the best home group in the whole world I do not say that sometimes I don’t even like the people that are in that meeting um but those people save my life on a regular basis and it’s because I’m there every week day in day out they see me me and when I walk into that meeting and my eyes aren’t right they know and they say are you okay that’s what I needed in my life it gives me the opportunity to be of service by being active in a home group and my sponsor is um she’s been with me we’ve been together a long time and I’ve had a lot of different sponsors as well and those women give of their time freely to me I was a train wreck when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and um they took time out of their lives when they could have been with their children when they could have been doing other things they took time to be with me um I have the privilege today of doing that with other women cuz I assure you when my phone rings and I see it’s one of them I don’t always want to answer the phone I just don’t but the thing is is I I was taught in Alcoholics Anonymous that’s not an option we don’t screen our phone calls and I can’t tell you how many times women have come to me some that I don’t sponsor and said you know what I was suicidal and I’m so glad you answered your phone um so when we talk about our common welfare you know I was taught in alcoholic synonymous by giants like I feel blessed beyond measure the people who came before me gave me the gifts of Alcoholics Anonymous and I’m super emotional tonight which I’m usually not emotional I’m not a crier and I don’t get emotional but I’m in Norway right now um 30 years ago if you told me I’d be in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Norway with a bunch of drunks I would have told you you were crazy um I feel blessed beyond measure like my cup runneth over on on bad days right the problems I have today are luxurious problems I shouldn’t be alive and I shouldn’t be here with you people um alcoholic annonymous has taught me everything I know like a lot of times when I speak I got sober really young I got sober right before my 15th birthday so my life has been an alcoholic synonymous I can tell you my brain is still alcoholic as ever right I’m crazy um but I a life beyond measure because of the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and who came into the rooms in Alcoholics Anonymous on January 12th of 1992 is not the person who stands here today and the only reason that I’m here and able to be the human being that I’m able to be um is because of AA a God that I do not understand um and people who took a lot of time right and so we talk about this concept and idea of our common welfare and and to me it comes down to like what I received when I got here and what I received when I got here was a message that kept me coming back I received hope and without hope the alcoholic cannot continue to come back um I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to do AA everybody does it different right like some people they do worksheets some people they’re rigid and they’re in the book beating people up with it you know like there’s just so many ways to do alcoholics anonymous to me when it comes down to our common welfare it’s what it’s how we greet that new person and since I have been here I have been greeted with so much love and grace and I’ve had so much fun I want to take my my new Norwegian friends home with me I keep inviting come to my house you can stay in my house um so anybody who wants to come to the United States in Wilmington North Carolina I have an extra bedroom overflow can go to my dear friend Angie that came here with me um you know in like I have friends that she has a daughter she has a 10-year-old daughter and a husband and a big life and she took time out of her life to come here with me who I was when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous is I took this girl to a party and and nobody there liked the girl and my brother passed around a hat and people were throwing money in it and my friend came up to me who I brought to the party to ask me a question and when I turned around I knocked her out knocked her out I hit her so hard that she flew across the room and and split open her eye and um that was one of my big amends I couldn’t find that girl once I got sober and um the amends that I made to that girl it was crazy because it wasn’t about me being able to make the amends what happened in that conversation is she received freedom and the freedom was was she didn’t understand what she did all those years she was wondering what did I do why was she so upset with me and it had nothing to do with her right and when I made those amends you know she just cried and she said I’m just so glad I didn’t do anything that girl later invited me to her house to meet her daughter this was like 15 20 years later it was very inconvenient for me to stop by her house in Louis and I going from Texas to North Carolina but she invited me and I got to stop and like have like pie whatever we did right we just hung out and she told me about her life I can tell you who and what I am is if you did something like that to me I’d slice your tires and burn your house down you know like that’s the type of human being I am at my core and so I’m going to share with you in a general way and I think it’s important that we share in a general way because my experience is not like everybody in this room right um but but for me when I went to meetings in the beginning it was so so important for me to understand and identify and there was lots of things I didn’t identify with you people when I got here 99% of it I didn’t identify because y’all were sober I wasn’t y’all were really old too and I wasn’t I know everybody’s old when you’re 14 but um you know so so it was really important for me to understand and hear the emotions and and to be like do I belong here or not um and and I did right like I did identify um but I I grew up in Texas right outside of the Dallas area and I have an older brother uh a younger half sister I don’t talk about her a lot cuz we just didn’t grow up together my brother and I we were thick as these he’s a year older than me and I didn’t have any friends growing up um I felt very insecure as a kid and I hated my red hair I know everybody will be like oh my God you have beautiful hair I believe I have beautiful hair today I love my hair and of the things about me I will always say God my hair looks great I love my hair I was blessed with great hair I did not think that when I was three four five six I used to wrap my little fingers and rip it out of my head um CU I hated it and that was the exterior thing that made me think that that’s why I was different it was about my hair but the bottom line is if I had dyed my hair blonde they had let me do that they didn’t but had that happened I still would have had that feeling and then I would have been really lost you know I just thought that was the thing that separated me so I just felt like weird I had the curly red hair and I just felt awkward all the time growing up and so my brother was like my I was a tomboy I did everything that he did him and his friends would beat me up I mean I like I was just a tomboy and I ran around with him um my mom was an alcoholic active Al alcoholic growing up so she was never around she was my idol of course she was my idol she was a bartender at a little Irish pub and um and when she would walk in everybody be like Barb’s here you know like she was the party girl and my memories as a child um with my mom our good times is my mom would get drunk and then we would go to the like they have these malls and they have these fountains with water that they’re there for display but what we would do is we would go dance in them because Mom’s drunk and we just thought it was so much fun like Mom was so much fun right so I loved being with Mom but Mom would never show up Mom would forget that she was supposed to pick us up mom wouldn’t show up to school so we were living with my father and stepmother and my stepmother is um uh certifiable like she has multiple personality disorder I don’t know what her problem is that she was very abusive and very um just insane it was like Liv with a crazy person at one minute everything would be okay and the next minute we would be getting beatings or whatever would happen there was just a lot of of terrible abuse that happened in that house and my father was never around cuz he was drinking and doing his thing all of these things man even in soety I thought like they’re the root of the problem what I know today is that all that stuff did was got me primed and ready for my first drink it has nothing to do with my alcoholism if I’d grown up in a perfect Picture Perfect home I was still who I was and whenever alcohol gets into this girl’s body something shifts and that result would have been the same um and so when we were 8 years old my brother and I ran away and that’s how bad it was living in the house I think about those things now like I have nephews and I’ve watched them grow up and and there’s a sadness to that you know of thinking about um what it was like as a kid and seeing these little boys and being like God I can’t believe that’s what I was doing when I was eight but we run away and inevitably we end up going to live with my grandparents but there was a short period of time that I was with my mom and during that time is when I had my first drink I was 8 years old my mom got upset with the guy that she was with we got in the car and my job was always to cheer mom up and I had these silly things I would do to make her laugh and she went and she got a six-pack and she handed me a beer now I was super excited about this because I also in that early age time period no matter where I was at I wanted to be somewhere else I would see kids on TV getting kidnapped and I’m like why doesn’t anybody kidnap me right like it didn’t matter where it was I just wanted my situation to change and so the place if you asked me when I was a kid where do you want to go it was Bentley’s all day long that was the bar that my mom ran and it was like dingy nasty dark youd walk across it and your feet would stick as you’d walk right like gross smelt like urine it was super nasty I loved that place and my aspiration was to be a bartender and um and so I knew that everybody went there to drink and everybody seemed so happy and and so when she handed me that beer I was like I’ve arrived I’m 8 years old my head barely clears the the window in the car and I’m holding the beer up because I want everybody to see that I have arrived right like I was so excited about this now I wasn’t I didn’t get like totally drunk I remember we went to Bentley’s that night that’s about all I remember but it was my first drink and um the first time I got drunk was with my brother he had a friend over again I was super weird and awkward but I thought his friend was cute and we I don’t I don’t even know why we were looking for liquor but we found a bottle of liquor my grandparents did not drink the only reason that they had that bottle was in case grandma got got sick Grandpa would make her a hot totty so we got the stool I remember everything about that night and that was something that I also loved later when I was drinking was like it was the pre-party to the party to the party after right like it was the adrenaline rush I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be doing I liked all of that if I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing I was an adrenaline junkie I loved that stuff you know and so I remember getting the stool and climbing up there grabbing that bottle of whiskey there was also some orange triple sec I couldn’t eat oranges for years um even into sobriety I could if it was orange flavor forget it um orange juice nothing so up we went and I don’t know how we knew how to play quarters but we just inherently knew how to play quarters and off we went um that first shot of whiskey when it hit the back of my throat it was like fire and I felt that burn all the way down my esophagus and when it hit the pit of my stomach everything went warm and cozy and I felt like I could breathe for the first time in my life I’m just one of those people if I like something give me more and that night what ended up happening they dared me $20 I couldn’t finish off the drink and you know I turned it up and you to say I had alcohol poisoning I was 10 right I hadn’t eaten anything and I essentially drank close to a fifs of liquor um I was I became violently ill I was um very very sick but the the magic happened I mean I loved the feeling of that but what I loved more was I remember laying on the couch and everything was spinning and it happened so fast everything was spinning and my brother was saying these terrible things to me and I could hear him in my ears but I didn’t hear him in my heart that was the power of alcohol for me it didn’t matter what you thought about me it didn’t matter who you were people that I loved the most could think the worst things about me and I was perfectly content and okay that was powerful and that became my higher power that became my everything and it wasn’t like this conscience thought like I’ve solved the world’s problems but that is 100% how I felt um and so like what happened that night and and I talk about this night in description because every drink from that time until the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous this was a resemblance and this is what I call partying okay um I proceeded to punch the boy that I had a crush on I um left my DNA all over the house I fell down the stairs myself I wet my pants and that was a party right like the thing is it didn’t matter what kind of consequence or whatever because what happened is I felt like a human being I felt like I mattered and I felt okay in my own skin I had never felt that way before in my life and alcohol gave me this ability to just be okay and to feel like a normal person I I had never felt that way and so um you know I didn’t become a daily Drinker at the age of 10 but I will tell you that night they called two places cuz I had ex I had alcohol poisoning I was vomiting blood I was very sick they called two places they called alcoholic synonymous which I always find hysterical um and then they called my uncle and my uncle was the cool guy that had a Harley Davis always had a beer in his hand they knew he would know what to do with me now I’ll go ahead and I’m going to fast forward a little bit so that you understand the impact of of that man because I sometimes I forget to tell it um when I got sober I was about six months sober and what happened for me is when I came to Alcoholic Anonymous I was at zero I didn’t have any Pride I didn’t have any self-esteem everything was gone I was at zero so I started doing these things what happened for me is that about 90 days in 60 days 90 days my ego returned and what that looks like for this alcoholic is you’re not that bad you’re not like them you haven’t ever gotten a DUI what about when you get married I start all of these reservations start running around in my head and I didn’t really share these openly what these some of them I did like the you know I mean get a DUI I did share that cuz they informed me I didn’t have a car or driver’s license and that was important to get one of those and um but a lot of those like what about my wedding stuff like that I didn’t talk about that stuff I didn’t realize it was a reservation I didn’t really understand any of that but I was 6 months over and I came home and these reservations had started popping up here and there because life got good quick right remove alcohol from my life and the destruction that I was living in my life started to get better but at 6 months over I came home and everybody was at house and my aunt and uncle had gotten in a huge fight and they got in a fight about his drinking and when she came out of their bedroom the phone book was opened up to treatment centers and um after about a week he she she didn’t hear anything so she sent people looking for him and they found him behind the house and he’ shot himself with a shotgun and everybody was coming over to tell me that he had died and they were sitting around the table and they were talking about whether or not he was going to go to heaven hell because he had committed this mortal sin which I think is really interesting because my family never went to church I don’t know where they become like you know on that topic but the clearest thought came to my head and that thought was he didn’t kill himself he died of alcoholism because what I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that night is when he pulled the trigger I knew how he felt because that’s how I felt on January 11th of 1992 when I was completely alone and I couldn’t figure out how to kill myself cuz I wanted to make sure I could never come back again my alcoholism no matter what I may not at 14 have therosis of the liver or have 10 DUIs or have all of these things but I will always get to a place that it makes sense for me to take my own life no matter what that’s what alcoholism looks like for this alcoholic um and so you know I don’t ever want to forget sharing that because it was such a hug huge part of my first step in alcoholic synonymous because even though I was coming to these meetings I was doing the deal you know I was doing all this stuff I was hanging out with you people to my innermost self that is when I understood my alcoholism and so um and the last thing I said to my uncle the last time I saw him was I said you should come to a meeting with me he was on his bike and he had a beer in his hand and he was riding off um and so like again I didn’t become an alcoholic at like 10 right I can tell you I knew the solution to my life and I am defiant by Nature I’ve been sober a while let me tell you if you tell me to do something I’m going to do the exact opposite to let you know that I can do it and do it better that way right like that’s just by Nature who I am and um so add to the fact that I have no principles in my life know nothing and alcohol is my master I did whatever I needed to to get what I needed to um I never had an issue getting alcohol being underage it it just wasn’t an issue for me um I lived in a big Metropolitan City we just sit outside the liquor store and give somebody money to go in and buy us liquor it just wasn’t an issue I like to stock up get half gallon jugs of vodka and that’s essentially what my life became is figuring out what party where we were going to go and I can tell you that it started out wanting to be social but the bottom line is what my drinking looks like is I end up alone and I drink alone I drink first thing in the morning till the last time before I close my eyes and I pass out all day every day as often as I can um My First Rehab was when I was in thir when I was 13 um and I just thought they were being so dramatic right like I didn’t understand why my um why they wouldn’t leave me alone cuz if they understood me they would just let me be and what I learned in that rehab is drugs are bad just say no cuz in my mind I could understand that like drugs are illegal there was a whole campaign in the United States just say no Nancy Reagan like it was a big thing so like that made sense to me I don’t know where in my mind that I thought somehow it was legal for a 13-year-old to be drinking their face off every single day but it was different right there’s different rules for alcoholics right like there’s always a different except exception for myself and um the rules don’t apply to me and so that’s what I thought cuz I thought that they were crazy now by this time I’m 13 years old I have an 18-year-old boyfriend which you know the family was really excited about that too um but we were in love right and we were going to get married and he was you know oh my God he was a total loser um but like at the time you know right like I just think this guy’s great and I was obsessed and um and I’m I’m hanging out with people who are 10 15 20 years older than me and and what progressed into happening prior to me coming to alcoholic synonymous is these people I referred to them as my friends I now refer to them as pedophiles because that’s what they were right because what my drinking looks like is that I have no moral compass whatsoever it doesn’t matter what kind of upbringing that I had um not that the first eight years were great but my grandparents were some of the most wonderful human being like they lived by principles that we like have to work at every day right like they just naturally were good human beings um and and they taught me to work hard they taught me all of these things that stuff I didn’t I just thought why does he ask me how my day is this is a man that it wasn’t his responsibility to care for me I was so selfish and self-centered that he asked me how my day was and I would get so mad and I would storm to the back of the house and slam the door right like um I hated him and I hated everybody and and what my drinking turned into was just this place that essentially most of my drinking happened alone I became isolated to an extent that you know I took that physically as well I shaved half my head combat boots you know like black lips black eyes I didn’t look like this when I came alcohol synonymous um I was an unlovely creature as I like to say uh but that’s just where it took me right and um and I think about those things because I see young girls sometimes come to alcoholics synonymous and it’s rare you know to see like a 14 or 15 year old but when it when it happens I look at them and I think you’re a child but I was living my life like a 30-year-old woman I was drinking daily I had bleeding ulcers I was emaciated because I didn’t eat food I didn’t need food I had vodka you know and the the stronger the alcohol the better Everclear was a big thing in Texas and so again it it wasn’t about the taste it was about what’s going to get me wherever I need to go as fast as I can get there cuz I don’t like the way that I feel and alcohol gave me the ability and and had it continued to work for me I would not be here I’d be drinking my face off you know I loved that feeling but the end for me is that alcohol no longer worked and I felt like I was going to come out of my skin I felt like a raw nerve every single day of my life and no matter how much I drank I couldn’t get drunk and I could not get to that place that I felt okay I felt angry irritable restless discontent like I just wanted to set everything on fire and by this time I’m also a very violent human being like if I was sober I was violent if I was drunk I was going to drink myself so like stupid drunk that like I wouldn’t engage with you but if I was sober and you hurt my feelings I beat you up that was just how I responded um and at this time too like my brother who him and I were like thick as seeds we didn’t run around together he just thought I was you know he still looks at me like I’m still that same person but um which is kind of funny but um he also likes to drink a lot so um you know I just I just got to this place of complete isolation I didn’t have friends I didn’t connect with anybody in my family and um and and that’s what the end looked like was I got to this place of desperation and I remember sitting in my room that night and and and for me the ultimate desperation is if I’m willing to pray and that’s true today right like I call my sponsor and she’s like what did you pray about it I’m like that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you know like can we talk about the 20 other things that we need to do to resolve this problem I don’t like my solution to be prayer I never have even today don’t like it I know that it’s the truth I know that my higher power is the thing that connects me and gives me the ability to be who and what I am but I still don’t want it to be my solution and on January 11th of 1992 when I was sitting there I was so desperate that I prayed but my prayer was not for help I didn’t want help I knew that the world would be better off and I can tell you that today based upon the way I lived my life the things that I did to the human beings in my life um the world would have been better off with how I Liv my life for me to be gone that was the truth it wasn’t like this overindulgent self-pitying thing it was the truth I was a terrible human um thankfully I believe my higher power did not want that because what happened is is at some point in time I passed out because I couldn’t figure out I’d cut my wrist before I’d taken bottles of pills before and I think a lot of that was a very dramatic thing that I did too um this was different and I’ve never felt to this date in my sbri the way that I felt that night um but the next morning apparently I woke up and I got a phone call from this girl who i’ had been in rehab with and her name was Abby and Abby was the first girlfriend I’d ever met like we met in rehab and Rehab was super fun um like it was just a bunch of derel like me you know like we just got in trouble or whatever and we ran around and I met this girl and we connected and it was the first girlfriend I’d ever really had and so when we got out of rehab she was trying to do this sober thing and I was like you know not me um and she would carry these little chips around and and I was a nice friend and what I would do is I would set up shot glasses and I’d fill them up with water for her because I was a good friend I like in Bill’s story when he talks about that um and so uh three months prior to me receiving that phone call she said I’m not going to continue to watch you kill yourself and not once did I think to myself maybe I should did not drink I didn’t think I was an alcoholic on January 12th of 1992 when I walked into that meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous I didn’t think that I was an alcoholic I thought that there was something broken within me and that there was something inherently wrong with me as a human being alcohol was not the problem and I would have defended that till the day that I died right because it was my only solution that I’d ever experienced but I was like bye Abby I didn’t again I didn’t think don’t drink or like change some things control your drink bye um all of y’all who have tried controlling your drinking I’m sorry that seems real painful to me right it was not my experience every time I drank I drank to get drunk and that is a big reason why I thought I was not an alcoholic I’m not powerless I meant to get drunk like that was my solution you know every time I meant to get drunk when I got sober I remember um I went to this I was in this wedding and and I and I had this thought that I would look really pretty with a glass of champagne and you know cuz everybody was having champagne and we had these ver Wing gowns it was like you know very hoyy toyy and um and I see these girls and they have their glass of Champagnes and I was like I would look really pretty with a glass of champagne you know and so I I do the what I’m supposed to and I pick up the phone and I tell my sponsor and and she said huh why why do you think you what would a glass of champagne do for you I was like messing I didn’t want a glass of champagne I wanted to change the way that I felt and that’s not a glass of champagne because what would have happened that bwing dress would have been tied around my waist and I would have been hitting on the groom you know because it would have been a bottle of vodka it wouldn’t have been a glass of champagne but my alcoholism likes to dress it up really pretty um not ever have I thought a glass of anything sounds good I want to feel better um and that’s just what my alcoholism looks like and so January 12th she calls me and she she asked me how I’m doing and asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting no right I did not want to go to a meeting but something inside me was like go I was so miserable and this is why I believe that pitiful and comprehensible demoralization that space that I had to get to that pain that I had to get to had to be a place that was so lonely and empty that my ego was gone and my pride was gone everything was gone otherwise I’m not willing because if I don’t have a if I have a plan I don’t need you but when I no longer have a plan and my cards are at zero have a little bit more willingness so I went to that meeting and I walked into the back Basics group in Arlington Texas and it was a bunch of like 900 year old people and they had been sober since God old as dirt right like me very Charming that I was half my head shaped combat boots like I couldn’t say a sentence without using the f word at least four or five times now outside of a meeting you might find that still to be true but in a meeting I can actually go the whole time um but I was an unlovely human being and I walk into this meeting of Alcoholics annonymous and I was not greeted with I spilt more than you drank and you don’t belong here I wasn’t treated like I was a kid what I was treated with was respect and I was at a place in my life that I didn’t have any for myself much less think that I deserved it they didn’t tell me like the coffe over there they got me a cup of coffee and they brought it over to me what I experienced that night is what I believe our common welfare becomes about is that that newcomer is important our first impression on that new alcoholic is so important I didn’t keep coming back cuz I thought I was an alcoholic and I needed help I received love and kindness and Hope in a moment of kindness from people I’d never met before and there was something endearing enough about that that had kept me coming back I hadn’t gone through the steps I hadn’t identified my alcoholism I hadn’t admitted to my innermost self I didn’t even think I needed to be there I cried the entire meeting and at the end they gave me their phone numbers and they said we don’t care if it’s 3 or 4:00 in the morning if you need help you call us here go this is so weird because there’s a price for everything in the world that I was living in I knew because I paid it and I kept thinking like these old men are going to ask for something they keep telling me they love me you know like I just knew like something was up again my experience is is that those old men were nothing but my biggest cheerleaders respectful um and they took me under their wing and they showed me Alcoholics Anonymous by the way they they live their lives I’ll forever be grateful I know some people haven’t had that experience but that’s what my experience was that’s the experience that I try to pass on as a member of alcoholic synonymous today is to remember what I say here tonight and my talk you know my ego is like I want to be like great and I want to be funny and all of these things I had a sponsor that said you know what Jennifer your job is to get up and share your experience strength and hope you’re not there to entertain people we don’t entertain an alcoholic synonymous now granted I get there’s some people that are super entertaining sometimes I can be um my job is to ask my higher power to come into my heart and share whatever message is that needs to be spoken um I don’t remember one thing that I heard in my first meeting of alcoholic know you know what I remember how they treated me I was not lovable and they loved me they loved me just because I was a broken human they clapped for me when I got my chip only an alcoholic synonymous or we like at our worst and we’re all like that’s great right like what is this that we’re a part of but I can tell you that the rest of my sobriety was just like that I have Giants and Alcoholics Anonymous that have built me up year after year after year and I’m sober a really long time and I still have giants that are my biggest cheerleaders I never had a dad that was like the kind of dad that in my mind I envisioned that we’re supposed to have I never had a mom until about I don’t know 12 years ago my mom’s 19 18 years 19 years 19 years sober and or maybe she’s 18 years sober we were talking about this earlier she’s been sober a little bit but she was sober a while before she learned how to be a mom 12 years ago my mom started showing up but I can tell you do you know how many men and women have come into this alcoholic’s life and changed my life and loved me like I was their own child God gives me what I need right it may not be in the form that I always thought that it was supposed to be in when I bought my first house I remember buying my first house and I just thought I was so excited and I wouldn’t allow myself to get excited until I had those keys and I was sitting outside that house I had a migraine the entire week I wouldn’t start packing my realtor called me and was like have you started packing I’m like nope cuz I can’t get excited about something it might not happen right I get the keys and I’m sitting there no one in my family even really acknowledged that right but my AA people they were sending plants they bought me a grill they were like doing all of these things so my experience is is that you know the way that I viewed relationships the way that I saw things was from this selfish self-centered place I was so angry for years at my father when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I was seven years sober and I was still laying in bed fantasizing like I would get so excited fantasizing about beating my stepmother with my bare hands right and I would just think I can’t wait till my Dad’s on his deathbed because I want him to be alone and feel the loneliness that I felt in the rejection that I felt to my innermost self 100% I felt that way who I am today is the only child that my that that talks to my father I call him on a regular basis because what happened through the process of the transition that happened in the steps of alcoholic synonymous it happened over the course of you know 30 years right I was seven years sober having homicidal thoughts about people still right where there is great pain my experience is is takes a lot of work I wrote a lot of inventory over a lot of years to get to a place that I was willing to pray for willingness to have understanding because I have plenty of reasons to be justifiably anger about things that happened as a child right um justifiable anger does not work for me though because I’m the one who’s going to die from it it tells me in my literature it doesn’t say like getting in a relationship your first year is going to be the death of you it doesn’t say like it doesn’t say any of that what it says is resentment is the number one offender it destroys more alcoholics than anything else and I was resentful because a resentment is a reoccurring emotion and when you’re laying in bed having homicidal thoughts about somebody I’m just going to say there’s probably a resentment there right um and so like I had to do a lot of work I say that to say that um it didn’t happen overnight for me and I’m not in a place like things will come up today and I’m like I thought I worked through that right but like whether it’s like I’ve been dishonest about stupid things lately like what is that about right my alcoholism is Alive and Well I can’t stay sober today on what I did yesterday for my recovery I realized through the process of my recovery that not only do I need the steps I need the traditions and I need the concepts our three legacies I can’t just do service work I got super active in service work um when I moved to North Carolina and but I was destroying people’s lives I was like a tornado just roaring through I was also in my early 20s right like I was doing a lot of things that you guys got to blame on your drinking but I was sober you know my worst inventory was 10 years sober it wasn’t you know my first inventory I ever did I did a lot of things in in my recovery some based upon my age but some just based upon selfishness and self-centeredness because that’s the root of my problem and the way that I view life um so when I you know when I came in and I started working these steps and I started doing this deal my life started to change they told me stay out of a relationship your first year I don’t tell the women I sponsor to do that because none of them listen what I encourage them to do is to get halfway through their ninth step and once they start repairing the lives that they’ve torn apart they can start tearing apart more people’s lives right like at least know what you’re doing when you’re doing it and um no matter what I’ve gone through in my recovery I haven’t had to drink over that and like on the 365th day I met this guy and I ended up marrying him and I know it’s going to be shocking but we’re not married today but um nonetheless it’s the reason I ended up in North Carolina so I I go through the steps I’m doing the deal my Old-Timers are my people and I meet this guy and I go through high school I went through high school all of that stuff sober right I didn’t know how to talk to people my own age I hung out with senior citizens and played Pictionary on Friday nights that’s what my life looked like I was not a cool kid in high school I didn’t talk to anybody I went to school to actually go to school and um CU I was sober but my life started to changeing and I I moved to North Carolina when I moved there I thought oh my God these poor people are going to get drunk because they don’t know anything about Alcoholics synonymous because how we do it in Texas is the right way and I got to this dark place cuz I was like like this is terrible I was judging everybody and I heard somebody told me you need to go hear this speaker tonight I was like whatever so I go and I hear the speaker and um one of my Giants um and he he recently passed away um he was an amazing human and he changed my life he saved my life that day because I was like at that place I I was sober a while but I moved this place and I hat hated everybody was three and a half years sober and I was no longer like the baby of AA nobody knew me or cared who I was right I didn’t know any of the people when I walked into rooms and this guy got up and he shared a message that was so powerful and he talked about if I’m in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I’m not hearing the message that I want to hear I have a responsibility to the people who shared their message with me to give back what was so freely given to me and he shared so passionately about alcoholic synonymous and he made me miss my oldtimers he made my heart Miss Alcoholics Anonymous he also got sober when he was really young he was 24 when he got sober but back then that was like getting sober when you’re 14 right like he was one of the youngest people in our state for a really long time and and his message was just powerful and I went up and I talked to him afterwards and I thought you know what I’m going to go to a conference and so I found this flyer and I went to this young people’s conference um I’d never been to a young people’s conference I hung out with senior citizens okay like I loved 80-year-old people that’s who I hung out with that was my comfort zone I didn’t know how to talk to people my own age that’s why I didn’t do anything in high school like I went to school left right like I didn’t know how to relate to people my own age and um I go to this young people’s conference I’m 18 years old and I walk into this room of just how many people here have been to a young people’s conference you more people over there so I walk into this conference of this electricity that you just can’t even imagine total inappropriate things hooting and hollering and yelling and just this energy and I was like these are my people right like I remember they did all kinds of stuff that weekend they got in trouble I remember delegates down the area would always talk about it and bring it up and I’m like oh my God I know that stuff happens in big people AA too but whatever so I go to this conference I get like totally involved in young people’s that night I’d never met these people started a young people’s meeting back in Wilmington where I lived and we started going to conferences every weekend literally I’d be like if I was at a job and they told me I couldn’t go I’d be like I need to quit like I lived my life to like be involved in Alcoholics synonymous I I just found this like love and and I’ll tell you that service became such a huge part of my life and during that time I went through a divorce and um you know and then I was just doing highly inappropriate things for the next I don’t know probably three to five years five four four years um I and I still did inappropriate things after that but those four years were really convinced you know um and but I also had some of the best time in my life I met people that are still a huge part of my life and I got involved in service and I was just on fire for alcoholic synonymous and I’ll tell you I love AA more today than I ever have and you may love AA but you don’t love it as much as I do you can love it equally but you don’t love it more than I do and the reason why is because through this process of getting involved in service when we talk about our common welfare and that Unity what that means is that a is more important than me nothing in my life has ever been more important than me I’m selfish and self-centered do you know who I am right but my decisions today and through the last 20 years if I’m presented with something that’s going to affect Alcoholic Anonymous alcoholic synonymous always wins my great idea gets pushed to the side and I learned that by being with these crazy erratic young people and being on these crazy committees and talking about all this crazy stuff and what that did was prepare me for general service cuz this boy that I had a crush on told me I should be a GSR I didn’t get involved in general service because of I wanted to be a good trusted servant y’all have me messed up with the wrong person because who I am is selfish and self-centered like my motive that but that’s the beautiful thing about Alcoholic Anonymous I don’t have to have good motives to get the rewards of the grace of higher power and in AA following those principes and so like I got super involved I’m doing all this young people stuff I’m also you know I have a boyfriend in every state in the United States and travel in the world and um and I get to this place where I wanted to go to bed and never wake up again I didn’t take a drink I hadn’t planned killing myself yet and I say all of those things yet but what my experience is is keep coming back it’s going to get better is not true for me I can’t just show up to meetings I have this thing called real alcoholism because when I start living basically the opposite of the ninth step promises I’m in the bedevilment and when I’m in the bedevilments they’re actually talking about a drunk person I remember the sponsor reading this stuff and I realized they’re talking about a drunk person and all of them were check check check what happened was was I wasn’t actively inventory and I heard this insane woman at a meeting and she was talking about writing inventory on her dog and I was like this chick’s crazy and I asked her to be my sponsor and um and it changed my life because that relationship with my father started to shift that’s when I started writing letters to my father on a regular basis I didn’t want to write the letters I don’t ever want to pray either I don’t ever want to do the work right I want all the results I want all the glory but none of the work I want to do but I did the work because what I know to be true is that my Old-Timers taught me the greatest lesson when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous they said we don’t care how you feel we care what you do you don’t have to feel like being in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous to actually do it you can feel not like not being here and actually physically be here so how I feels irrelevant to what I do I wrote the cards every month I was consistent and then I started making phone calls after a year and a half and during that time I I went through a lot of stuff I went through a lot of health problems and um and I ended up having to have an open heart surgery when I was 26 years old and I called my father to tell him and he said I’ll be there I remember thinking he’s not going to be here um and he was and what happened when he came in town and I went to have that surgery not only did I get to make verbal face Toof face amends like it tells me direct amends to my father but there were amends made by y’all because what my dad saw was this life this life he didn’t know that I had and for the first time I looked my dad in my in his eyes and I said I was wrong for the daughter that I was to you and you deserve a better daughter and I meant that 100% with every fiber of my being I would go home and my dad would know that I was there and I wouldn’t even call him I don’t have a kid but when my dog doesn’t greet me the way that I think she should I get my feelings hurt I can’t imagine what that feels like for a parent to be ignored by your child regardless of what happened growing up right I was a 20-some year old adult acting like an 8-year-old child my Oldtimer taught me about learning to be a participant in relationships based upon what my God wanted in my life not based upon this idea you didn’t do me right so I’m not going to do you right right like that’s just the course of how I lived my life I started becoming responsible for my actions and engaging with people based upon what I believed my higher power would want from me and um at the hospital when I woke up the nurse was like who are you I was like what do you mean who am I hope you know who I am you got my chart but um she said are you are you like famous who are you and I said I said no she said people have been calling here from all over of the United States check on you and she said there’s a Lobby of people out there so what my dad experienced was Alcoholic Anonymous y’all helped me make those amends because you we show up even when we don’t want people to show up we show up I don’t care my friend is hurting I will be there and and I learned how to do that like people who know me know like I show up 100% because I have never not been shown up for an alcohol synonymous in every area of my life I have been failed but in here I have not but that’s a direct result of actions that I also take that stuff just doesn’t happen so during that time you know and I got active in that step work my life started to change and I and I learned how to um be the person that my God intended for me to be I stopped hurting God’s kids I stopped living selfishly and using people to please myself I learned how to be what God intended me to be I’m not capable of that y’all I don’t know if y’all know this but if you cut me off in traffic I’m ready to like kill you you know like that’s where my head goes you hurt somebody I love I want to murder you you know like I just that’s who and what I am but I saw these examples in alcoholic synonymous I remember in my first home group this guy he always tried to set me up with his with his son CU his son was like 16 you know I was 15 Whatever by that time and he came home from work one day and when he opened the door his his wife and his daughter had been murdered and they had been murdered by his son I watch this man continue to show up in alcoholic synonymous I watched this man months later say to me I hired an attorney for my son because I know that’s what my wife would have wanted I assure you that if somebody hurt my family that’s not going to be my natural response but what I saw was God’s grace working in this man’s life because it’s not who he was to his core without the help of a higher power who I am to my core is I will lie to you steal from you help you look for it and sleep with your husband that’s who and what I am to my core without the grace of God 12 steps in alcoholic synonymous in my life when I got here I was a terrible friend what happened through the course of the of the I mean today I wake up and I want to please God that is weird to me it’s just weird because it’s just not what my brain naturally thinks what happened through the transformation could not have happened if I didn’t show up and do that work if I didn’t have people who pushed me and cheered for me and helped me walk through that so I feel completely blessed beyond measure that the oldtimers that were here before me what they gave me what they taught me and they continued to teach me um I I later went on and got super involved in in general service I later became a delegate and um I got to serve at the general service service conference and be a part of Alcoholics Anonymous history you know like now what I’ll say about that is when I was 18 19 going to these assemblies I’d be like I’m going to be the youngest delegate from our area that’s what I would say what happened is when I was elected delegate the old-timers reminded me of me saying that and I was so ashamed that I even would utter those words out of my mou because I was so humbled by the fact that the fellowship had elected me to do such of things like I felt so I I physically got sick before I went to my first general service conference meeting because I just felt so humbled by the fact that I got to be amongst um our fellowship and participate in a way that most of our members don’t ever get to so what happened is like my ego is this huge big beautiful thing you know I’m a big deal and and and what happens is I then get to this place of complete humility it’s not a natural thing I never would have thought that I feel compassion and sadness for my father for the human being that he is but I do I don’t feel anger towards him I feel really sad I feel sad he doesn’t have a life like I get to have I don’t know how that happens it doesn’t translate so if you’re new to alcoholic synonymous and you think this thing may not work for you I get it I didn’t think it would work for me either it doesn’t make any sense like go to meetings call somebody like how’s that going to make my life better I don’t know it doesn’t make sense today when I say it out loud verbally but I can tell you 100% flawlessly alcoholic synonymous works it works when I do the things that are suggested in spite of the fact that I don’t want to I just do it and my life changes I really was going to talk a lot about service tonight and I was going to talk a lot about my experiences because in the United States you know you don’t talk twice in the same weekend um but I like this I’m gonna try to get everybody to do it back home because I’m like people are GNA let me talk for like another hour tomorrow this is great um because I like talking about me and um on my favorite topic um but you know I felt really emotional and again like that comes from this place of just feeling like unworthy and grateful right like I am overwhelmed like I can’t believe this is my life when I was going to get on the plane to come here I was tearing up and I’m like how is this my life cuz who and what I am should never be here I shouldn’t be living this life I shouldn’t have the freedom in my heart that I have because I’m a person who doesn’t think I’m worthy I’m a person who’s not enough I’m a person who if you really knew who I was you wouldn’t like me and what’s happened is I live this big beautiful life and I’m surrounded by people who are like we know exactly who and what you are and we love you right like I get to surround myself with weirdos just like myself and I remember thinking when I was early on in recovery being embarrassed to go to dinner with these people from AA because it was like the little yellow bus just dropped everybody off and I was like oh my God I hope nobody ever sees me right like I was totally embarrassed those are my people you guys are my people because when I talk about that inability to connect and that today I’m not like this great human being God gives me the ability to be like this great human being I don’t give good AA talks God gives and so I get to blame the bad ones on him too because I’m like that was him I prayed I did my I did my part um you know like I I don’t I don’t get to live this life or do these things without God’s grace and sometimes God’s grace is in you people and hopefully I’ll talk a little bit more tomorrow about um some of my um struggles with this higher power in my life because I’ll tell you that’s been the greatest struggle of my sobriety and I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff seeking god um but I can tell you that I believe my God believes that I should pray with my feet and that means that I stay in action I stay in the steps and I stay involved in service so I am um humbled um and just honored that you guys invited me to be with y’all this weekend so I look forward to chatting with y’all and being with y’all weekend thank you 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