Blanche M. from Salado, TX

Yeah. Somewhere in there. I can't I grew up but not very tall. Not very far up. My name is Blanche and I'm a member of the worldwide fellowship known as Al Anon High.

Hi. I have been a member of the Al Anon Family Groups since July 7, 1964, but I have been addicted to mood changing, mind altering men ever since I can remember. A little identification out there. 30 years makes me a survivor, not a savior, and I say that to remind myself of it on a regular basis. At all times, I'm one person away from an obsession, and I have to remember that.

I do want to thank you so much for this invitation. I have looked forward to being with you. I'm going to take the time to tell you some things about the last 48 hours. I have a point to make. This is not a complaint.

It's I'm giving you information. I've done this great many places for a great many years, and there are people who say to me, oh, it must be so glamorous and exciting to fly from place to place and meet all those people. Well, now, in the last 48 hours, I have had 6 flights that were late, 3 that were canceled, these due to thunderstorms. I had a suitcase sent to Washington, D. C.

Instead of Jacksonville, Florida. I have walked through 2 rainstorms, which, explains the lack of hairdo. I spent 3 hours standing in line getting three schedules rearranged. I went to my aunt's funeral, which I'll talk about in a minute, and there was a race from the cemetery to the airport in order for me to get the plane out of Jacksonville. So I flew all day yesterday which I don't usually wear for sprinting through airports.

You know? I got into Phoenix this morning at 2 o'clock my time. They had had a storm. I didn't know it ever rained in Phoenix. I had said to people, alright.

All these storms are delaying us in the southeast, but, hey, weather won't be a factor in Phoenix. There was a electrical outage, and the young man who drove me to the Holiday Inn spoke very little English, but he managed to make it clear that he was driving. No one had any traffic lights and there were no street lights. And there was an absolutely horrendous automobile crash about 20 feet from us as we were getting to the hotel. The, hotel was dark.

There was no electricity. They had I'm not making this up. They had flashlights. The with no electricity, elevators don't work. I don't do stairs too well.

I have, some arthritic knees that I've tried to explain it's from all that praying I do, but no one's ever believed that. And it was while I was climbing 6 flights in my high heels and my suit with the bellboy with 1 flashlight that I thought how glamorous, how exciting. The room had no light and worse than that, no air conditioning. I chose not to try to shower and shampoo in the dark. And when I got to the airport to come on in here this morning, I had no ticket for this last leg of my journey.

My travel agent usually does a superb job, but this was very quick. I mean, I had to leave very suddenly. And so I got here, we were an hour late, and I couldn't find anyone there to meet me for a few minutes. And I got to thinking everything, just almost everything that happens to me is a result of choices that I make. The aunt whose funeral I had attended was very, very dear to me.

When my mother and father were divorced, my mother and I lived with her for two and a half years. And before that, she wasn't yet married, and everyone should have a maiden aunt who loves her. This was back during the depression, and she bought me things. I would never have had a store bought coat, you know, but for her. And my first roller skate, And of course, I had to be there.

Of course. All of my family lives in Florida and I thought even as I climbed the stairs in the dark, I thought I'm really just between families, you know? I left that one there and a source of great love. Oh, so much love there. And I was coming to my other family here, you know, with so much love.

And so it did take me 48 hours to get here and it was an ordeal and it wasn't glamorous and exciting, but I'm ready to share some recovery and I hope you are. I was in Taos, New Mexico last September and they had buttons and signs and bumper stickers that said, a good conference is like an orgy. When it's over, you don't know who made you feel good. I almost didn't tell you that. I mean, I'm really stodgy and it's even funnier coming from me.

But you know, I mean, we'll all go home tomorrow so part part part this weekend. But I think a lot of people will make us feel good this weekend. I don't like missing part of a conference when I'm part of it. And I've tried to tell myself that some things are unavoidable. You know, I kept thinking I could fix it all, including the weather.

I am not well yet. Well, I have been trying for a number of years now when I'm allowed to to share Al Anon in other places, to be as open and as honest and as vulnerable as I know how to be, You see it would be easier to tell you what I think than how I feel and it would be easier for me to lecture about Al Anon principles than to, talk about myself. But I want to share with you. I don't want to lecture. You told me years ago that that which does not come from the heart does not reach the heart, and I very much want to reach your hearts this afternoon.

So I'm going to talk to you from mine. Those of us who stand on these podiums behind these lecterns are very emotionally vulnerable while we're up here. We are risking rejection. We are risking being misunderstood, and I have become shameless through the years in asking for what I need and what I need is you're loving me back while I'm talking. I came to participate in your weekend, you know, not to perform.

And I never talk without using some notes. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you call your sponsor and discuss acceptance. Yes. I know God can tell me what to say, but he is not limited to doing that the minute I step up here, you know? I've known for a year and a half I was coming.

It'd be rather foolish if I got here and didn't have some idea of what I was going to say. But if you could hear me talk without notes, you would be so glad I have some. I also have found that it's hard to tell my story once or twice a month, year in and year out, and, tell a different one. I only have one story and I can't go out and do it over again so I'll have something different to tell you. Besides, I would rather you leave here thinking what a marvelous program, than what a marvelous speaker.

I really would. I came into Al Anon as many of you have heard me say, kicking, screaming, clutching my halo, wrapping my robes of righteousness about me, protesting to everyone who would listen that I was fine. Thank you. And if we had sobriety at our house, we wouldn't have any problems. I can't say that with a straight face now, but I meant it then, you know.

I've always been grateful that God led me to a group of people who were serious about recovery. A group of people who wanted to get well, and what I know of Al Anon principles today, I know not because someone read them to me, recited them to me, but because they were practiced on me lovingly, tenderly by people who loved me when I was unlovable and who forgave me when my behavior was patronizing and condescending and I was very unlovable. I found out early on that All Around is not a ladies auxiliary or a coffee clatch or a stitch and bitch club that And I don't know whether you have this problem out here, but we do in Texas and I have taken to just saying this when I talk because it seems to be a universal problem, well meaning members of AA, and I think they just truly haven't thought it through, sometimes refer to any non alcoholic in their family as an alanine. That's like referring to a still drinking alcoholic as a member of AA. An Al Anon is a member of an Al Anon family group who attends meetings, regularly reads the literature, works the steps, you know, has a sponsor.

If you hear anyone else, non alcoholic or otherwise, talking about the Al Anon program, don't listen. Those people are uninformed. They are not carrying the message, they are spreading the disease. Anyway, I learned that we were not coffee makers and cookie bakers and above all we are not AA groupies. Neither are we any even claimed to be a therapeutic tool for the treatment of alcoholism, not ever.

And Al Anon does not promise to save marriages, only sanity. When I got to you, I thought both those were in good shape, but I lived to learn better than that. What I have learned is that happily ever after may not mean walking hand in hand into the sunset together. Happily ever after means my personal recovery, and that's what I want to share with you. This program is for me.

The analogy I always use is that of my mother's illness and death. We had been with you a year. I was in Texas. She was in Florida. I had managed to fly back 4 times the last 6 months of her life.

I absolutely adored her. I know it's not fashionable to love your family, so sue me. I just thought she was wonderful, and I didn't see how I could stand this. And I had stepped out into the hall because I was crying so hard and the woman I've never seen before or since, I don't know how she knew who I was, but she beckoned me into her room across the hall and when I went in, she said your mother's going to be alright. And I said, you don't understand her illness is terminal.

She said, I didn't say she's going to get well. I said she's going to be alright. And my mother did not get well, and she has been alright ever since. Now it was very much like that when I got to you. No one said it in these words, but somehow I heard you're going to be alright.

And if you had said that to me I would have said oh, you don't understand I have a barely sober husband. And you would have said, we didn't say anything about a sober husband, we said you're going to be alright. Or I would have said, I have a very shaky fragile marriage, And you would have said, we didn't say anything about a marriage. We said you're going to be alright because at some level, somehow that's what I heard. And I have been.

And better than that, I'm convinced that I will be. Our literature tells us how to make an Al Anon talk. I haven't memorized it yet. It says Al Anon talks can be and too often are merely a repetition of past or present sorrows. Now sketching the background is important and has its place, but it's merely the foundation of the talk.

The best Al Anon talk, the one that helps the most people to the highest degree, is the one that brings out just how the program works and just how the speaker follows it. A good talk is divided into 3 parts. How sick I was, how well I am, and what helped me to get well. Of these 3, the emphasis should be on what helped me to get well, unquote. I've always agreed with father Martin who says, when he's sitting out there and you're standing up here, he says you're playing with my life.

Don't tell me how sick you were without telling me how well you are. And so in the time I have with you, this afternoon, I want to talk a great deal about what has helped me to get well. But to sketch the background, I was born on my grandmother's farm in Northeast Florida, almost to the Georgia border, and I no longer say which year. I, I have reached the point where I not only lie about my age, but I forget what I said that it was. You know?

I'll just tell you that I'm somewhere between Blue Lagoon and on Golden Pond Or in the current vernacular, I'm not old. I'm chronologically challenged. We were not tourists in Florida. My family had been there 4 generations. When I was born, I saw at my aunt's funeral grandnieces that make our 7th generation there.

Tourist was a bad word when I was growing up. Anytime I behaved in a manner my mother considered inappropriate, she would say, don't act like a tourist. There are still things I cannot do, things I cannot wear because that's what tourists did. You know? We lived in Jacksonville on the Georgia border and on the Atlantic side of the state until I was 10.

Then we lived in Pensacola on the Alabama border on the gulf side until I was grown and married. And I I think of Pensacola as my hometown because that's, of course, where we live the longest, and it's also where I went back to, you know, all those years after you marry and you take the children back to see their grandparents. We we lived those first 10 years in Jacksonville in grinding and object poverty. My alcoholic father, whom I adored, was violent. I was never, thank God, sexually abused, but I was a badly badly battered child.

And, because I guess of what was going on at our house when I say poverty, I mean, we didn't have enough food for days on end. We had inadequate clothing and shelter, and we lived in a very blighted part of the city. But even there, the neighborhood children were not allowed to play with me. I I know that their parents must have, you know, been a little apprehensive about what was going on at my house, but when you're 5 6 years old, you don't think of that. I just felt rejection and rage, and I wanted to get back at them.

I'm sorry. That's the way it was. We all went to the same neighborhood school, and I could beat the socks off of them, and I loved it. I relished every time it happened, and that became my way up and out, you know. That wasn't a good motive, but there was a good byproduct from that.

I absolutely fell in love with learning, and I have never fallen out of love with it. Throughout my life, it has been a constant factor. My parents were divorced when I was 8. This is when we lived with the aunt I mentioned, and my mother remarried just before I was 11. And a man that as it happened didn't drink at all.

We had no luxuries, but at least we had the necessities of life then, and college was considered a luxury. And besides, I wanted to go to Baylor University, which is in Texas. That's how I got to Texas, and it was and is a very expensive private university. And my mother said, well, it's alright with me if you want to go to school in Texas, but a couple of things you need to think about. One is you will have to pay for it yourself.

Well, I knew that. And she said the other is that you'll spend the rest of your life out there because she said you'll end up marrying a Texan and they don't transplant. And I told her I was going to do no such thing, but I did and they don't and I haven't. So What can I tell you? I worked a year between high school and college.

I worked at college. I worked every summer. I had one loan. It was private. We didn't have student loans back then before the earth cooled, you know, and one scholarship.

And I have stayed in Texas. Now you're close enough here in the southwest to understand that Texas is a state of mind. People in Texas have never forgotten that they were a nation, and that's the kind of pride that they feel. It comes out later in my story that I was a counselor for some years in a little country school. I had kindergarten through 12th grade, And in the elementary school of that district, when boys and girls pledged allegiance to the American flag every morning, they turned, they still do, and pledge allegiance to the Texas flag.

This happens in elementary schools all over Texas. When I first saw that, I thought it was a bit much. And then I decided, hey. There's nothing wrong with loyalty, and they love where they live. Okay?

I mean, I hope you love where you live. I love where I live. Anyway, my father-in-law, an art of Texan. Well, I don't know any other kind. Used to say he brought up his children never to ask the man where he was from because he said if he's from Texas, he'll tell you.

And if he's not, it's not nice to embarrass him. Isn't that awful? I know. I know. We have now a governor and lieutenant governor who, by their own admission, are recovering alcoholics.

My husband used to say that makes everyone in Texas eligible for Al Anon. We're all being affected by alcoholics. I know now it was inevitable that I married an alcoholic, but I want you to know I tried not to. I did not want to suffer as I had seen my mother suffer. And so I just didn't date anyone who drank, and I thought that would guarantee it.

Now that wasn't hard at Baylor. It's kind of a Baptist convent, you know, but, I don't know. I used to say I don't think Charles had had a drink when we married. Later on, he said that when he was in graduate school in Chicago, he has an MBA from had an MBA from Northwestern, but he did some drinking up there. But I had never seen him have a drink and I thought I was safe.

And it remained for you to tell me years later that drinking is only a symptom of this illness. And you said it's as if he had tuberculosis but he had not yet started to hemorrhage. Now this symptom had just not manifested yet. But of course, I found an alcoholic to marry. I know now that sick people marry sick people and they rear sick children, and I hope you won't let anyone tell you anything different.

Accumulated several 1,000 kids over the years I was teaching in counseling, and I held any any number of them. I'm alcoholic home. I was one myself and I reared a couple of them. I don't believe we can come unscathed out of an alcoholic home. Well, we married, lived in Corpus Christi, one in San Antonio, which is beautiful.

If you're ever in Texas, don't miss San Antonio. Our babies were born there. It's a beautiful old city. Then we moved out to West Texas to my husband's hometown, Odessa. I thought I had gone to the end of the world.

The the scenery around there is sort of like the landscape of the moon. Okay? My mother my mother called it o desolate, but I, have to tell you because it figures prominently in our recovery that I have never known people like that. West Texas people don't know there's anything they can't do, and so they do it. They are a breed apart.

I have tremendous love and admiration for them. And I'm grateful because that's where we got our sickest, and that's where we found you. And it was at least then just a hotbed of enthusiasm as far as the program goes. During those years of of Charles drinking, looking back, I know I had some slogans I lived by before you gave me better ones. One was what will people think?

Did you ever have that one? Don't rock the boat. How about it's not that bad yet? Did you ever play guess what I'm mad about? Charles used to say I could ask him a question, answer it myself, and go away mad.

I did all the wrong things during those years and I kept on doing them. During lunch, Pat and Nikki and I were talking football, of course. You don't understand unless you've been to Texas. It's second only to certainly, everyone I know is a certainly everyone I know is an art football fan and that includes high school football. I had a tuning woman who was just as fanatical about football as the rest of us, and she used to watch football during season when she ironed.

And she never caught on to instant replay. And she used to say, maybe this time he'll catch it. And I would look at that and think, that's what I was like, you know? Nothing I'd ever done before stopped his drinking, but maybe this time, you know, it would just about to that, unwilling to admit any kind of powerlessness. I protected him.

I rescued him. I lied for him. He was almost literally loved to death, and that can happen. I was as obsessed with him as he was compelled to drink. I would like you to think I stayed with him out of love and loyalty.

I did not. I stayed with him out of pride. In a little what deep deep south upbringing was, at least for women of my generation. Northern Florida is southern. Now southern Florida is very northern.

I visit my daughter in Saint Petersburg, and I can't even get grits. You know? Listen. When I when I was there just for 24 hours, I was there for the funeral, and I had boiled peanuts and scuppered on grapes, and you just don't know what that does for your psyche. I once said to my children, what will soul food be to you when you're grown?

What what food will fill you emotionally as well as physically and make you think of home and mother? They said barbecue, potato salad, pinto beans. I think we all have whatever we grew up with is the the food that satisfies us more than just with physical hunger. Anyway, this upbringing was specific, and it wasn't all bad. Now the the phony part, I think, was people had to think you had to look good.

Do you remember that? And yet there were some parts of it. You didn't you didn't air your dirty linen in public. And I still have relatives who can't understand how I can get up to you and talk about such personal things, and I say that's not the public. They, they think this is very bad taste.

You know? I have 2 brothers who don't understand why I do this. I was taught keep the men happy and everything else falls into place. Now that's not totally bad. If if, they had added you don't give up big chunks of your own personhood to do that, but they didn't.

I was taught by precept and example. Blanche Marie, repeat after me. Women are a good woman. Is a lady in the parlor or wizard in the kitchen or has he in the bedroom? And that's alright.

But I wish someone had said, it's not up to anyone else to see that your needs are met. You know, that's your job. It isn't God's assignment to anyone on earth to make you happy. I was a steel magnolia long before there was a play in a movie by that name. It was understood that in the south, we could flutter our eyelashes and flash our dimples and swish our skirts, but we were made of steel and we could cope.

Do you remember Scarlett O'Hara in the sweet potato field? I'll never be hungry again. You know, that kind of coping. And so, of course, I stayed with him. I thought I'll just try harder.

I hadn't yet heard you say we don't try to force solutions. I was certainly trying to force them. I'm sure you get the Charlie Brown cartoon strips up here. In one of them, Charlie Brown is teaching his little sister, Sally, long division. And she says, how many times will 24 go into 12?

He says, 24 won't go into 12. And she says, it will if you push. That was me. See, I had a very inauspicious beginning and I had managed to attend and pay for myself an expensive university where I think I got a splendid education and where I certainly had 4 very happy years. I married the man I wanted and he was brilliant and handsome and could be charming.

I had the children I wanted when I wanted them and they are altogether remarkable, which I'll try to convince you in a few minutes. And I had had a career that I loved and did well, And I didn't understand people who messed up their lives. And it was later when I, had a sponsor who heard the self righteousness in this who would say, Blanche, we are not morally superior to sick people. And she would have me say it over and over and over. Well, I did a few things right.

During those years, I used to say by accident, I think it was by the grace of God. I never called him a drunk. I was married to a very fine man who drank too much. I knew at some level that he was sick. I didn't know that word for it, but I knew he wouldn't be this way if he had a choice.

I knew he had lost the power of choice. And even during those sick years, I had a God whom I worshiped and served. Not God as I understand him this afternoon, but if I live another 30 years and after last night in Phoenix, I'm not at all sure I will. I hope I hope my understanding of God will have broadened and and deepened. And I had a doctor back then that was my alanine before I got to you, and I say that because he really told me the things that you told me.

He gave me permission to take care of myself a little bit, and he knew how to do it. He knew just which button to push. He would say, you know, your children need one stable parent anyway. Well, need was the operative word. If you needed me, I was petty in your hands.

I still have a little problem with that. And he was the one, the doctor, who suggested that I return to teaching. I had taught before my children were born, but the rules have said a good mother back then didn't work outside her home. And I did stay home with them for 12 years, and I'm very glad I was able to do that. But I loved teaching and I missed it.

And we have been with you a year, I guess. No. It was a year before we got to you that I went back to teaching. He wrote it on a prescription pad, you know, and returned to teaching. I used to tell my students they were doctor's prescription.

I taught English in a very fine, very affluent high school and had a wonderful time. I always say when I talk, don't criticize the kids to me. I think I know more of them than you do, and, I know a lot of them who have trouble growing up. But my world is full of people who have trouble growing up. You know?

I like so much about the thinking of that generation. My generation was not at all concerned for instance about this planet on which we live and theirs is. And, although it wasn't one long honeymoon, there were days I wished for retroactive birth control, you know, but not not usually. Teaching English to 17 year olds in Texas means you teach American literature and research and, of course, some some grammar and some writing, but primarily it is literature. And I want to tell that to people who, when they found out that I was an English teacher, clap their hands over their mouths and refused to say anything the rest of the day.

I, don't correct anyone's English unless I'm paid for it. And, well, there's a few exceptions I'll tell you about in a little. While. Charles never stopped trying to find an answer. And, we didn't suspect alcoholism.

We thought mental illness because we knew something was dreadfully wrong. He went to ministers. He went to lay counselors. He went to both our local psychiatrists. He went through clinics.

He did everything we knew to do. And finally, a business acquaintance of his commented that we had a counselor in Odessa at that time, a psychologist was having a lot of success helping people with strange symptoms. He went to see her, and she's the first person that said alcoholic. She called me, in fact, after he'd been seeing her about 6 weeks. I knew her name, of course, when she identified herself on the phone.

He hadn't told me anything they had talked about and that's as it should be. But, she said to me, your husband is an alcoholic. I need to talk to you too. And all of my deeps out that bringing went out the window, and I said, you're out of your mind and hang up. Now I was brought up that if you don't like somebody, you're kind but cool.

And I wasn't either of those words, you know, in any of their meanings. Before I could leave the room, the phone rang again. And when I picked it up, before I could say hello, she said, don't hang up. I know what you've been through. Well, she couldn't know.

I hadn't told anybody. You know? It wasn't good taste to tell people these things. And I remember standing there with the phone in my hand and crying and crying. I thought all the tears had long since been shed, but obviously not.

So she asked to talk to me and we did both go talk to her and it was she who sent us to you. And, oh, I came in heels dug in so reluctantly, so angrily. It was, well, I know the reasons now why I was resisting you so much. One was I was a real intellectual snob. Now I'm I'm intelligent.

I'm not intellectual, but I thought it was. If you had given me the programming words of 10 syllables, I would have heard you sooner. But because it was simple, I thought it was easy. And you know those slogans? If any of my students had used those, I would have written in the margin trite, you know, cliche.

I had a real problem. Besides which, I need to tell you that I had married considerably above myself. Charles used to say I shouldn't say that, but I had. I've married into a family that had money and prestige and listen there was nobody not allowed to play with me anymore. And I was afraid if I went down there to that building with those people, you know, I would lose all of that.

I had been, praying for help, but I thought God was showing very poor taste. This wasn't at all what I had in mind. So for 6 months I went only to open AA meetings, And if anyone had the bad judgment to invite me to Al Anon, I was kind but cool. And I explained that I had not done the drinking and I didn't need the therapy. Thank you.

We went to San Antonio for the 4th July weekend. I told you we loved it and went back whenever we could. And Charles got drunk. And he said, I must always tell you it was not a slip. It was a carefully planned drunk.

We were driving home afterwards and, you know, I think about it now. I wasn't surprised. I didn't really expect him to quit drinking. Don't you know that attitude helped him a lot? To his credit, he never drove drunk or hungover.

And I was driving back to West Texas and he said, I'm going to have to tell my group about this. I'm due to get a 6 month chip next week. Do your groups give little mementos of sobriety? I was gave poker chip cue rings. In my appalling ignorance, I said I won't tell anybody.

And he had to explain to me that wasn't what it was about. And I tell you that to say this, we've been married 14 years at that time and this man had never once said to me, I'm sorry I was wrong I made a mistake. And in essence, he was going to go down there and say that to some people he had known 6 months, and it made me mad. I figured I go take another look at them. See, I wanted to be the one to getting sober, then he would have owed it all to the love of a good woman, and he would have been grateful to me the rest of his life and you may be sure I would have seen to it that he was, And I used to say, I don't know why the invitation to attend alanon coming from a particular woman reached me, But I have done in these 30 years, 3, I think, very thorough and comprehensive 4th and 5th steps.

And with my very one, God revealed to me more about myself than I was interested in knowing. And, one of one of the things I realized was the reason why I could hear her and rigorous honesty requires that I tell you and I'd rather not. This was the woman I thought was as good as I was. I'm sorry. It takes what it takes.

This was a woman who had everything I considered important. You know beauty, breathing, brains, status, prestige, money. She still has everything I consider important but it's a different list this afternoon. And so I went and I didn't hear anything for months months And Charles was stark raving sober and no longer held back by guilt for mentioning my defects loudly and clearly and frequently. And we had just a really hard time for 18 months, 2 years, worse than anything we'd ever had drinking.

We had no pink cloud. I learned later that when the alcohol is gone, the ism remains. And then this overlay of fantasy was so hard for me to give up. We are a normal family. You know, we are alright.

And I was struggling with that as he was struggling with his own illness. I think about the shape I was in when I got to you. Yes. I was coping. Boy, you could ask anybody.

I was managing everybody and everything. Charles drinking is the first thing I'd ever run across that I couldn't control. Since then I haven't found very many things I can, but at the time, it seemed to me I was doing just fine. I know now that it's, I didn't verbalize this at the time. And look, we're not in competition as to who suffers more.

Okay? But I will, match against anyone suffering that of watching someone you love with every cell of your being, killing himself and being helpless to stop him. You can't live with pain like that. And so what I did, I know now, was active if feelings had faucets, you know, valves, and I could turn off the one marked fear. I could turn off the one marked anger or self pity.

And what I didn't know was there's one valve and it's marked feelings. And I got to you absolutely emotionally frozen. And you loved me until I could love myself, and I began to fall. I see newcomers coming now with all the defenses. And newcomers get in with this with a coat of armor on, you know, and a shield because they're you're not going to hurt them and a sword because they're very hostile.

I was. And I used to bang at people's defenses, let me in. I want to be your friend. I don't do that anymore. I think that's kind of an emotional rape, you know, but what I know today is that if anyone looks out from the chink in the armor and notices that the natives are friendly, sometimes, the person feels safe enough to put down the sword And after the hostility is eased and the person feels safe enough, sometimes he puts down the shield.

At least that's the way it happened with me. And I began to hear the program and not all at once and not from just one person. Listen, alcoholism was not trendy in 1964. It was not the end thing to be alcoholic. There were not celebrities touting it from the rooftops.

There were not treatment centers on every corner. Insurance wouldn't pay for it then. There there was not an announcement every 30 minutes on television, and nobody knew the whole family was sick. There was a terrible stigma attached to the word alcoholic. I mentioned I mentioned being a counselor.

I've been visiting with a 1st grader a few years ago and, darling, little boy, I was taking him back to his classroom and he said, my teacher's not here today. I said, yes. I noticed. And he said, though, she's sick. I said, uh-huh.

He said, they sent another teacher. I said, they surely did. He said, when I'm sick, they don't send another little boy. And I thought, oh, honey. You know, the times you wish you could send someone else.

Well, they didn't send another sick alanine to recover for me either, and so I decided no one could work the program for me and it was up to me to get well. My group used to say we don't hear the answer until we've asked the question, and if you know everything, which I did, and you know people like that, then you don't hear any answers. And my sponsor said, can you, get rid of a few old ideas? She said, it's hard to tell somebody something who already knows it all. Maybe she said, you know, God can only fill an empty vessel.

You can't put new wine in old bottles, And so very slowly, I began to unlearn some of the things that, I have been taught that were erroneous, that were wrong. I have time to mention only a couple of them. I've been taught God helps those who help themselves. Were you taught that? That's not true, you know.

God helps those who ask, and I at the times I needed him most desperately, I could not have helped myself if my life had depended on it and it very nearly did. God helps those who ask. I was brought up being told mature people stand on their own 2 feet, solve their own problems, don't ask for help. You know, you can die believing that. I had a group that said, no, babies are dependent.

They'll die if we don't take care of them, and they said, adolescents are independent. I'll do it myself. It's a phase they have to go through, But they said, mature people are happily interdependent. We don't mean a sick, clinging kind of neediness. Okay?

But we mean, an accepting the idea that God chooses to work through people and that we need each other. And, if you could see my long distance charges, you would know that I learned to ask for help. If I can't make it through the night in Texas, California is still awake. I have a friend out there, Pat, who says that I only love her for a time zone. If California is still even even California is asleep, there's always Hawaii.

I have learned to ask for help. You told me I had a right to and a responsibility for taking care of myself emotionally, that some pain is necessary for my spiritual education, but that misery is optional, and I don't opt to be miserable anymore. I no longer have to die on every cross. I was taught by some some people growing up that you always put others first. Did you get that one too?

And, my son just said, no, you don't have to do that. Every now and then, you can say my turn. Now she never did let me say me first, but she said it was alright if I said my turn. And I have a sponsor today, the first one moved across the country, who, has taught me that when I'm facing a new or difficult situation, she said, I must ask 2 questions. And the first one is, what's in my best interest?

Can you believe that? You can't be a martyr and ask things like that. And I have suffered, you know, so nobly, nobly. I I have a friend who swears that she had to have plastic surgery to remove her hand from her forehead when she got into Al Anon. After I decide what's in my best interest, she says I must ask what will enable me to like myself later, And I have used these two questions time and time again.

They got me through a very painful divorce in 1980. I wouldn't change one word I said or one thing I did. Wow. That feels good. But that's because you had told me, think about how you will feel later.

And I was taught growing up what you don't know can't hurt you. What I didn't know nearly destroyed 4 people. You know, what you don't know can kill you. And so item by item, I tried to let go of these things so that I could become an empty vessel that God could fill, and I became very greedy for the program. I didn't want to settle for a spiritual Band Aid, you know, when the immediate pain is eased.

I didn't want to settle for crumbs when I knew there was a bandwidth spread, and I began to learn some spiritual laws from you that superseded the man made laws I'd always followed so carefully. For instance, I think today, this is my opinion today, that the worst immorality is judgment. It's also my worst defect. I struggle with it on a daily basis. I have a friend who says to me, identify, don't judge.

Identify, don't judge. I pray about it. I'll tell you one deterrent that's come about through the years. I began to notice that any time I was judgmental about a person and his, her actions, you know, I would never do, well, you'd never catch me. Well, you will.

When I get that way, God seems to delight in sending me that situation to handle, and it is sooner rather than later, and I haven't stopped doing it, but at least I hear myself today, and I say, no. No. I didn't mean it. I don't want to handle that. No.

And of course, I heard you saying that we release, we detach. You said release with love, well, I would have turned him over to the Ku Klux Klan, you know, or the Communist party or anyone that would have taken him, and here again, I was told, no, no, you release him with love and that means you anger before I can with love. And sometimes I have to even today, releasing is not easy for me. Sometimes I release with anger before I can with love, and sometimes I have to withdraw emotionally for a little while, you know, before I can let go. And anything I've ever released in my life has claw marks all over it, but I'm better than I used to be.