Houston Roundup in Houston, TX

but if you grab a glass of water while I'm up here

trust me just has water in it

well thank you so much for having me today I'm so privileged and honored and it's over hearing with a few people

right before when I first came in Dorothy and some of the people who were in the teens preparing this conference we're talking about here than giving birth a chip and I suddenly remembered that November is my birthday month and fifteen years for me

this is a funny how we can just forget stuff like that or put it aside or whatever and for so many years I wasn't able to celebrate my birthday wasn't able I didn't celebrate my birthday because you always felt you know towards the end of the month which was always thanksgiving and there was always you know people would Morgantown my friends wouldn't be around it wasn't good at that your friends couldn't be with you in your birthing and all the excuses and then the you know pull myself away from family stuff I mean it was really hard so it just became something I didn't really recognize but a few times in my lifetime so this isn't a special honor for me in a very special opportunity for me and I know my higher power behind the scenes ranging up to thank you so much for being here with me today in celebrating helping to celebrate my fiftieth with me I just consider you friends already just from that experience

well I'm I'm just going to tell you to do that in my experience of of

being in twelve step programs principally I was I'm I'm involved with them adult children of alcoholics because that's really where my all my issues are they really are and and how I was raised in so my story really begins with being raised in a Catholic family and for those of you raised Catholic you'll know that the that's not just a religion it's like a culture

is more my background is I mean I am far more Catholic than I am Czechoslovakian in German okay I mean I don't you know like I know about collections and that's it but ask me anything about the Catholic Church and I know about it I know it's history I know the years I was raised in Catholic going up through schools and all of that and so it really gave me my world view and it reinforced a lot of the alcoholic dysfunction in my family as well I don't know

exactly why that is I don't know maybe it was just that that I heard it that way growing up but for me that that's a lot of what I experience and I really was a very avid Catholic I really did everything I'm supposed to do and went to church every Sunday and did the whole thing and and coming up in the Catholic Church and coming up in my family I was the oldest of five children and we were all very close together in age so we were sort of like a unit of kids you know I mean I'm the oldest and my youngest brother's seven years younger so the other three fit in between so we're very Catholic you can tell and so in coming up in the in that family my father was the alcoholic rage a holic and my mother the you know the hyperventilating hyper controlling hyper you know hyper phobic you know a hypochondriac you know hyper vigilant you know there are hyper I looked out instill is from affected some to some degree and and I and I love her dearly my father passed from cancer in nineteen seventy six and so he basically as I understand now the disease of alcoholism realized that I never knew him to death over I don't believe he was ever sober long enough to really be able to claim the variety from what I understood I of course grew up oblivious to that

you can relate to that or not but I was oblivious I thought everybody just

well could drink two six packs of beer every night and that was just part of the deal you know when my mom would go to get groceries there go stop off at the ice house you get cigarettes beer milk and cereal in the morning I mean that's kind of that was the run you know

so I just grew up with that and and thought that was the way life was and it really wasn't until I got older and into my twenty that as I was dating that my relationships were really very you know problematic in and of short duration for the most part you know it's like a six week eight week deal you know like it was either I left them or they left me and you know footsteps across my face you know out the door and the whole bit and you know just all this drama and stuff I wrote poetry about you know being lost and left in the band in the

in my angst and all of that and really didn't know that that was just thought it was a love you know I thought that's what it looked like and so I was really taken by surprise that in my late twenties I was from about twenty eight or twenty nine when I met my husband I was a medical technologist working in hospital in the Medical Center and you know did a good job there and really enjoyed my work and

a gentleman who was in the nursing

head of the nursing in the emergency room and it was my idea to get these two departments together on my evening shift because I was in charge of the whole evening ship had just come on and I didn't have any friends you know it's still single and I was looking for really you know just friends I really wasn't looking for you know a relationship to last forever that was nice but I really want to get people to hang out with because when you work the evening shift you're sort of in this no man's land you know it's great because you can sleep late which I need to do and you could stay up late which is also easy for me to do but you were really out of sync with anybody else in normal hours and the third shift people when they're all crazy anyway so you wanted to hang out with them either so those really kind of a weird place to be hanging out so I really wanted to get people that I could relate to and so I just made the decision that I would stand outside my department economy of the people and one of the things I realized is that R. two departments were working well together so why when asked permission to have them come to our on their break come in our laboratories he where we did all our tests so that they would know if and when the queues US of terrible things and and things that we were doing right and that we would go to them so that they could meet us and you know be friends because it's real hard to yell at somebody on the phone if you know their fate you know it's hard when you know their name yeah you know you're at least tend to be a little bit more courteous and so we were really thinking that would work and so in the process I met the person that was that I ended up marrying but I didn't know that at the time and he was in charge of that ship and so as he and I developed a friendship it was very guarded because I didn't want to

well I mean I didn't want to spoil a good work relations might my personal life has been all that hot so I threw it into one of the six two weeks going with him and then we had to work together I mean I really you know that the crummy I was really pushing him off kind of at a distance and then finally asked me out and I agreed and we went out on one official date and after that we just sort of

Ellen together you know what I mean we just we never really we just don't we don't have any more personal data after that was just for like all season I won't go over there and we'll come over here and then well as it turned out about three weeks later he invited me to go to

with him to Corpus Christi for the weekend so I thought well this guy he's already been asking me to marry him you know so I thought well I don't know about the thing about this relationship so I'll just I tell you what I'll just go ahead and go with them for the weekend I will make or break it you know either will get along great I will know that I'll be over in the pressure will be off you know that for like a flip of the coin for me how impressed I was with my heart you know that's just where I was I didn't feel anything from a throw down you know and ask them if you feel that way sometimes too but that was kind of how I made decisions in those days so we did go out and we had a wonderful time and when we got back I told him I said you know I could see being married to you for the rest for at least fifty years now fifty and we could read with a figure it out at the end of fifty years as a career

so it was kind of one of those deals where I didn't really know anything I mean it's like my brain the needed like all the reasons you know you're like I had put it down why do I want to marry this guy it was just I don't have a clue but my my left brain needed to know what my right brain was really okay with so it's just I fear there with you to kind of get a sense of just how

the functional and and how that alcoholism is a disease really does separate us so much our heads from our hearts and our ability to really trust our intuition because that's not value when you're in survival mode growing up and so none of those things of course I was conscious of I was just aware that it felt like the right thing but I needed some justification enough

well it was shortly after I shared with him that I would be willing to marry him that he told me that by the way he was taking demerol out of the box in the E. R. where he was working and if you've been using it for about a year but now that he met me he wouldn't be lonely anymore so he wouldn't need it anymore

and I carried out work you know

I didn't know so I just decided that you know it was like one of those automatic impulses that the codependent just automatically know that if they say they're going to quit and you believe in them and the way that you show your faces you never asked him about it again and so that's what I did and so I just continue to go on not even looking at his arms if he could possibly be using anymore because he said he was going to quit and because I believe in him that's going to be that you know that was going to be the saving grace and I just never thought about it I never really given any more thought this is appalled me but that's exactly what happened so by thanksgiving we were engaged in an answer to the family bye on December I was going to Virginia to his hometown to meet family and introduce myself this is you know how to hire him here and I'm going to be your daughter in law you know I hope that's okay with you

very strange and then coming home in January back to the hospital two weeks later in the middle of January he was fired from the hospital for taking drugs from the lock box his drug addiction of course they continued I found himself incapable of stopping that we still have plans to be married in may so he moved in with me because he was without a job at the time so we were living together towards our himself the mayor to somebody anybody here

we have to get better trust me and then we this is set up for getting better and so and so we're going through our experience it's the same hospital now I'm still working the same hospital he's been fired and I'm I'm the one who put the department in communication with each other but luckily do you have any sense of how departments work they don't stay in touch with each other so they didn't really know the one department within terrible grief over the fact they had a fire one of their star people because he was using drugs and of course there are codependent around him because they should've known they should have seen that the figure that out and so I'm on the other hand keeping up the other front of things he's moved on to other things now and he's going to be working in the lab or whatever or whatever I was doing wherever he was he was working in different capacities as a nurse well throughout the summer we got married in may and throughout the summer he continued going from one job to another I'm thinking the whole time that he's at least he's out of the emergency room where all that stress from trauma is that was causing him to use those drugs right

and so I mean now he's only drinking using pot every day that's okay

but I'll tell him I will get pregnant as long as he's using the illegal stuff you can drink all he wants but he cannot use marijuana anymore that's where I made my stand and so I'm getting my education as you can see very incrementally along the process well then in August came the day where he was and still another emergency room and had once again gotten access to the drugs and with sitting in the bathroom about two thousand milligrams of demerol which is twice as does that that time which would likely have killed him

I know that in contemplating his powerlessness over this disease and the

compunction that he had a compulsion to use he thought about me he says and he realized that he really couldn't do that

and so he did what any good addict would do he shot up half of it then

and the other half later

did turn himself in the next day and his license was taken away from him and he was put into a treatment program which for the first time really involved in me he didn't come E. eight P. distance programs before but that was for like one on one counseling and I only got like half of the stuff built into his consciousness of what was really going on of course I wanted to help and get sober of course right because I am you know I'm a straight a student on the one that does it right I'm the one to look good on the you know the the hero child in my family I wanted to help make all this work well as we got into treatment there it was a whole nother world for me because what happened is we got into treatment after Labor Day this is like four months after we were married so we got into treatment as a family unit and I know where this little button called co dependency this was in nineteen eighty five I guess and codependency was really new thing it certainly was new to me and chemical dependency that was easy to use chemicals I got that but the codepen P. part I didn't understand and it was exacerbated by the fact they were continuously asked me how I felt about things what

it was the relevant wasn't it I mean I think they're going so I would meet these new therapist thing with the well Kerr and how do you feel and I would say

well I think the chemical dependency I'm the co dependent on to ask him how he feels

I was really pathetic I really thought that they just didn't understand that I was the one with the problem he was and we were all here to help him I thought that was clear and they didn't I didn't know how to handle the question and then I didn't know what the right answer what I needed to know what the right answer was right because I'm like from the throat up still and so they had to write you know the different feelings on the borders that happen to anybody else I hope at least one other person and then they made me pick one you know okay how do you feel I go

yes you could be a you're darn right I mean green really angry I'm really angry that are having to be here at any minute and like all the sudden it became clear I was able to make the connection between what I was feeling and also what what was called a meeting at the moment I think it was an education for me to really start from the gut level and I really feel that codependency is really such a tricky thing because you know with the diction

what's really clear you have an object right you have a substance you have a something you have a behavior you have something that you can point to and say that's it but when it

codependency are or when it you know being in Allentown in the situation it's call mirrors you notice that it's all done with mirrors it's a reflection of everything else and it's you know it's it looks like love but not quite love and it's like it's so hard to identify and put your hands around to realize when you put back out into the I get my gratification through somebody else you know again rather than I'm just loving them and trying to find where those boundaries are and where those fears art it was really quite an education will shortly after we began treatment the first of September

by the end of September my husband had already had to go into a two week inpatient into a hospital to detox because of the level of degree of the drug that you've been using the system we need to clear out while he was still in the hospital I ran a little pregnant because to myself in the laboratory found out I was pregnant

so now we've been married about four months

my husband's detoxing in the hospital he was going to kill himself a year a month before and I have great news for the

Hey we come into our group therapy we sit down and we go

we are excited we've got great news like a really

pregnant and their faces just dropped open their mouths drop open and we don't know who is really good news we wanted to get pregnant and they're like huh the great break they are you know did you know that I don't know but I know I know we went down the hall and I was like oh they just had a smoking break but anyway I thought they would realize

I thought that they would realize that this is really good that that we wanted to do this intentionally and we had clearly no idea nine zero what we were in for the act that may be as we went through therapy our relationship might not even laugh that you know that the pregnancy who knows what would happen during the pregnancy coming Mr a lot of variables and we were so early in our treatment and if nothing with you know nothing is a given and you know that if you start off on your process you never know where you're going to end up who you're gonna put it but clearly we were oblivious to that and and luckily for us we have indeed celebrated fifteen years of marriage and my daughter but I have had two daughters and have big grown one through high school now and the other went into middle school and so we're one of those that were able to use this process to grow through and to heal and to strengthen our relationship together and there been many times along that path that we had to re up we know we had to re commit we had to we had to take another direction we had to get some outside help and work out those issues that plagued as from my background and my prices continue to be even after the immediacy of codependency therapy was to move into family of origin work and so my connection with twelve step group has always been in the adult children of alcoholics because that's where I was at home I went to an open a a meetings with my husband when he was first trying to you know get into into the

and for going to AA of course still being a good allowing on I was going with him to help him you know boost him to get him to go there but I was weirded out by opening a meeting because it was like being surrounded by my dad you know like my dad was everywhere and it was just so weird to me and I didn't feel I mean I did not feel the the kinship that I felt when I went to eighty eight and when I would try to go to an Allen on meetings and there's some very wonderful Allen on meetings in this town and lots of recovery but some of the ones that early once that I started look anyone in the mid eighties I just happened to hit somewhere what I heard was my mother and what I would hear is a room full of some women who were

I remember distinctly this one meeting where a woman stood up and said that he had

that she had not picked up her husband's underwear today and she was so proud of herself and everyone applauded and I just was like the **** out the door you know I mean kick his **** out the door and don't come back until you do I mean that's how I felt about

I thought to myself maybe this isn't where I mean this isn't a meeting for me you know so that's where I kept looking for the right places for myself and what I discovered for me one day and being with adult children of alcoholics I am always surrounded by brothers and sisters and that no matter where we come from we experienced a lot of the things things together we certainly know a lot of the things shorthand and we know what some of those things did to us and and how we've gotten where we are and so that has been a very important part of my path to recovery in addition to continuing from family of origin work and therapy the two of them just took me logarithmically through healing in many areas of my life and I continue that process practicing the spiritual principles of recognizing that my higher power is always in charge and always working through me and that and that

bring me to this meeting today into this conference today has been another way that hi my higher power has shown up in my life in a way of reminding me of how I've gotten where I am and how I've been doing a lot of the promises that coughed up the twelfth the promises that were all given those tall promises that are starting to come alive in my life on a regular basis and I'll tell you it's just wonderful I know you know that for yourself and I know that's why you stay committed to your process in your program and I do think it's a wonderful opportunity for us to share with one another that

your call isn't that we share our pain

that's where we get our greatest comfort in connection with other people that that god somehow works through us now a powerful testimony to the power of the human spirit and how we can we can come through anything together but the key is that we do it together

so I just really appreciate your attention today and sharing part of my story

I

by saying that the work that I do today I know is a direct relationship to my recovery process and in twelve step I am a minister in a in a church here in town and it has been a minister for over six years and it's such a privilege to share my story as I as I experienced it with other people and to be able to direct them into twelve step and into other avenues of healing that I know have made a difference in my life

and able to do something that has brought my spirituality to another place two in the experience so this is a combination of my family heritage is the culmination of my of my lifetime really and the heritage that I hopefully legacy that I'll pass on to my children and hopefully that I will share the good things with them and not for much of the hurt so much to this function

so I just really appreciate all of you for listening to me today and letting me share my story and I thank you so much for being with me today thank you all