The Into Action Big Book Group's 10th anniversary in Berkeley Heights, NJ

This is for you. This is for You probably wanna sit down for this. She doesn't know what I'm about to say, and, I can't believe I'm gonna say it. It's funny. Mike and I were talking before the meeting started because I couldn't remember when I first met, Carrie and Adam.

And, I guess it was about 4 and a half, 5 years ago. And soon after that, pretty immediately we had some conversations, and pretty immediately it was obvious that we had similar passions. And, recently, someone referred to someone else as a a a serious spiritual seeker, and I would refer to Carrie as a serious spiritual seeker. And, one of the first things that I had, seen her do was a a presentation, and and it was sort of a back to basics, with a lot of Oxford group stuff involved, if I remember correctly. And, we're in a really silly mood that weekend.

And, what we did was we started noticing that each time she would describe an aspect of the book in a very, knowledgeable and experiential way, that very often she would use sexual connotation unknowingly. And we sat there and we kept track of all the different innuendo that she had kept track of, and it got distracting for her because she saw we were doing something. We were laughing because she absolutely wasn't meaning to do that. And I'm wondering if she's gonna do it tonight now since I brought it up. But notice it if she does it because it's very funny.

No. I'm just kidding. And, and, I I was I was very impressed with, this woman that I got to know and that I've seen over the years because, most definitely, there's been some incredible growth, from the 5 years that I've known her and, to the point where, a lot of you know that that we do big book studies and stuff like that. And and, a woman had come to me from Allentown, Pennsylvania and said to me, you know, Bill, would you do a big book study for us? And I said, yeah.

Definitely. And they said, well, but the the only condition is is that you need to do it with a woman because we wanna get a male perspective and a female perspective. And without batting an eye, I said to this woman, I definitely would love to do a a a big book study with a female, but there's only one that I would be willing to do it with, and that was Carrie. And if she's available that weekend, I definitely am available. And if she's not available, then I'd rather just say no.

And, she was available that weekend, and we did a study and it was really phenomenal, and it helped a lot of people. And and, I personally do not know very many women that do as much work for AAE as Carrie does. There's an amazing amount of women that Carrie works with. There's an amazing amount of of personal transformation and and reworking the steps and carrying that message to other women. And, with that, I'd like to introduce Keri See.

Hi. I'm Carrie. I'm an alcoholic. Sorry about that. I didn't know when I was supposed to get up or not.

And everything Bill said was lies. Not kidding. I really wanna thank you for asking me here. You know, it's an honor to be invited to speak at a group. I mean, it's always an honor.

It's an honor to be invited to speak in the a meeting, but it's, it's an immense honor to be asked to speak at this meeting for many reasons. First of all, because when I first really started to get serious about working the 12 steps, I found people in this group who helped me. Because you guys have been a beacon of light in Alcoholics Anonymous for a very long time, and because there's so many women that I know today who are really involved in this group and have gotten so much from it. So not only have you given to me, but you've given to people that I love. And for that, I am I am so honored and so grateful to be here with you tonight, and I'm I'm just amazed that, you know, you guys have been doing this for this long.

And and more than that, there are some people in this room tonight who would like Bill, and Mike, and so many other people who have really helped me so much on my path and have helped me to grow immensely, and they've touched my lives, and because of my life lives, they've touched my life and because of that I am so honored to be here tonight. So 45 minutes? I think I can do that. I'm kidding. You know, the one message the one thing that I wanna get across to everybody tonight, and the one thing that I want to do when I speak are the my main thought, my thesis for the night, I want it to be that the power of God is real and the power of God works.

You know, you know, I I could beat the big book, but I think I'm preaching to the choir here. But what I what I really wanna talk about what I wanna talk about is what happened to me, how a girl who came into Alcoholics Anonymous when she was 16 and got sober at 18, who wanted to die, who committed attempted suicide. I don't I'm I don't know how many times, like, but if you have to start counting, you know it's bad. I was completely, completely nonfunctional. I could not live in the world.

I could not have relationships. I couldn't be in the same room with my mother. I couldn't be I couldn't have relationships with my family. I couldn't have a boyfriend because, like, I just couldn't. I would drive them away.

I could not have close relationships. What I the only relationship I had in my life was with booze. And I went from that, it'll be 10 years next week, God willing, to this. And the question is is how did I get to that point? You know, how did I come from being a hopeless alcoholic to being a recovered alcoholic?

And the answer is very simple, the power of God in the 12 steps. Not all that easy to do, but a very simple answer. My journey through the steps has been an interesting windy one. I don't know I I know I don't know a lot of people who like it, like, you know, who go straight out the gate and, you know, I mean, I think it's wonderful the people who, like, walk out of detox and find a big book thumper and bring them through the steps, and they do it right away and have this great experience. It's not exactly what happened to me.

I did some time in AA. I I call it 90 dances in 90 days. I, I first hit the rooms when I was 16. I hit the rooms when I was 16 because, well, because I was drinking uncontrollably. I first started drinking, the first drink I can possibly remember, I think I was 9.

My parents gave me wine when I was younger. I drank I lived two lives. I was the good little girl on one side, and I was the bad hell raiser on the other. I never really never the Twain shall meet. And I lived 2 very different lives for a really long time until, like, I couldn't pretend to be the good little girl anymore, and I was just the alcoholic mess.

What's really funny is like there are people in this room who've known me since I was like 15 years old, And so it's kinda weird telling this story because it's like, you know, there are people, like and people have known me since I got sober. I mean, this is an amazing night. But, so basically, what happens to me when I drink alcohol, I have this thing called craving. What that means is that once I put alcohol in my system, I can't I can't stop drinking. And I find that once I take one drink, I want another.

And if I don't drink, I become irritable, restless, and discontent, and I get filled with anxiety, my heart pounds out of my chest, and all I wanna do is drink, goddamn it, and you're in my way. That's what happens to me when I drink. I have this mind that says, but that's okay. Everybody else drinks like that. You it'll work this time.

It'll be okay. You won't end up back in the psych ward. Four point restraints aren't that bad. You know, you won't get caught, you can hide it. And I'm not I've never been a very subtle person, you know, I said, there is no subtlety in my drinking either.

So and I have this spirituality that that, kicks my butt, and has kicked my butt more than once in the past 10 years. What it does is this, is that I have an extreme insecurity complex. I mean, like to like the, you know, like to the, you know, like I just I'm such an insecure mess at times, and I was when I got sober. I had I didn't know where I ended and you began. What you thought about me became my truth.

Like, if you thought I was a bad person, then I was a bad person. If you thought I was great, I was great. Because the problem is is that I couldn't behave well. I had a real trouble with working well and playing nice with others. So I was in this constant state of self hatred because I had no sense of self, no idea who I was, and I kept stepping the toe on the toes of fellows, and they would retaliate, seemingly without provocation.

So what would happen to me was simply that I would bring my little tornado, my whirlwind of alcoholic insanity into people's lives, and they'd kick me out like they should. And the more that happened, the lower and smaller I felt. See, the thing is, I didn't want to be messed up. I didn't want to be a crazy alcoholic. I didn't my nickname in high school was Crazy Carrie.

I had 2 nicknames. It was Crazy Carrie and Janis Joplin. They used to call me, hey, Janis. Because I had this big mop of hair that came down to here, you couldn't see my face. Looked kinda like Cousin It.

Or Krazy Kari, you know, because I was known for lighting fires. I was known for I was known for, like, if you pissed me off in class, I would go over a desk and smash your face into it, like a lot of times. I was known for not being able to control my behavior. Let's just put that, and almost all those things were done under the influence of alcohol. So, basically, I would bring that into people's lives and they'd kick me out.

And then, I would sit there and think, What's wrong with me? Why can't why can't I just be normal? Why can't I be like everybody else? Why can't I just not say these things or do these things? Or why do I have to set fires?

And and I never really understood. I didn't understand that that I had this illness. I didn't understand that that I was as powerless over my spiritual condition as I was over my drinking. I didn't understand that. All I knew was that I felt alone, degraded, filled with sale self hatred, and the one solution that I had in my life, which was alcohol, didn't work for me anymore.

You know? So I wandered into Alcoholics Anonymous after, like, I don't know, the umpteenth suicide attempt. Some of them weren't all that serious, some of them were. I, I just I got thrown out of my house, and I got sent to live with my sister for a year. And, see, I was literally physically separated from alcohol because she lived in the woods, and I didn't drive.

Yeah. Oh, It was not a happy year for miss Carrie. So miss Carrie spent most of her time in her room hiding, and when I wasn't in my room hiding, I was out drinking. And, I didn't really tell anybody this. My sister kinda kept it under wraps because she didn't wanna get me in trouble because she felt that I had all this trouble because, you know, I got thrown out of my parents' house.

I was dating drug dealers. I was doing all these bad things that I shouldn't do, and she didn't want me to get in any more trouble, so she did tell my parents. So I got sent home from Pennsylvania, a mess, and my parents really didn't know they I had gotten I had managed to get good grades that year in school because, you know, I was locked in the woods, you know. You when you're in the woods with no car and it's like a 3 hour walk to the liquor store, there's nothing to do, except when you walk to the liquor store, which I did do. But beyond that, I, you know, I ended up getting good grades and getting accepted to this pretty decent, private school.

So my parents were under the impression that because I got good grades, and I I only threatened to kill a teacher once that year, and I did, that I was doing okay. So, I came home and I tried to be okay. I tried so hard. I wanted to be the little little good little Catholic school girl in my little kilt. I wanted to behave.

I wanted so bad not to be that person. I thought that I could just leave that Carrie behind, that I could just leave her in Pennsylvania, nobody had to know about how bad I was. Well, what happened was I met a nice guy, liked him, liked him a real lot, so I dumped him, ate a bottle of pills, woke up 3 days later in the in the, intensive care unit of, Saint Joseph's Hospital, and it was another trip to the psych ward for Carrie. You know? And the main reason why I did that was because I started drinking again.

See, I started drinking when I came home, and I wasn't really telling anybody, and I knew. I I got suspended from school too. In the middle of this, like my 3rd week of school, I got suspended again, because I was drinking in school. And, so basically what happened with me was the delusion that Carrie was gonna be normal, that if I could just leave that that alcoholic, that bad Carrie, that sick Carrie in another state, and I could just pretend to be this some somebody else that I would be okay, but I wasn't. And, I found somebody to drink with, and I drank, and it started all over again.

But see, I couldn't face that anymore. I couldn't face failing one more time. So I did what any good alcoholic would do, I attempted suicide. And, I ended up in Fair Oaks and another psych ward, and it was not bad as psych wards go. But what I did do is I ended up going to to to to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I started to go to meetings, and I began to identify that my problem was drinking and not, like, my family, not my brother, not my sister, not because nobody loved me, not because I had all these bad things happen to me, and I did. I I have to say that I I had a very interesting childhood, and that's but see, the one thing that I learned about alcoholism is it's not causal. See, I'm not an alcoholic because, you know, alcoholism and drug addiction runs in my family. I'm not an alcoholic because I experienced physical abuse as a child. I'm not an alcoholic because I experienced sexual abuse as a child, and I'm not an alcoholic because I was date raped as a teenager.

None of those things have anything to do with my alcoholism. I might be crazy because of those things, but I'm not an alcoholic because of those things. And, you know, all of those things happened to me, and I had to learn how to deal with insubriding. So anyway, so I ended up going to some meetings, and, it was interesting. I I started attending, NA before I started attending AA, because I thought that was, like, more fun, because there was more younger people there.

But what happened was, you know, they made this announcement at the very beginning of NA meetings. They said, we don't know if you have any drugs or alcohol on drugs on you. You know, you need to leave them out the door. You know, you can't bring them into the church. So every time they made that announcement, I'd wait about 3 or 4 minutes, and go smoke a cigarette, and kick around in the bushes, going, Did anybody leave anything?

So needless to say, I wasn't all that serious, but I I began to go. And I began to see that there were young people there, there were young people in AA, there were young people in these programs, and they were getting better. But see, I didn't wanna get better, I just wanted the pain to stop. So naturally naturally, I couldn't stay. And what happened is I ended up picking up again.

I ran away from home. It's gone for a while. Put my mother and my father through hell, and towards the end of my 17th year, no, my 16th year. I'm sorry. My mom had me arrested in her living room.

Yeah. I heard the Al Anon saying good job. I came home after being run away. After running away, I came home, and I it was a Monday, it was a Monday morning, it was 9 o'clock, and I really thought my parents weren't gonna be there. So it's hot up here.

I'm, like, so sweaty. My hair is sticking to me. I'm, like, sweating to death, if you excuse me. But, I really thought my mother wasn't gonna be there. So I went to go break in, because, you know, naturally, I didn't have a key.

I went to break into my parents' house to steal from them, but my mother was home. So she said, okay, you can come in, but you have to go to rehab, you have to go. And I said, okay, I can stay on the streets and continue drinking, or I can get locked up again. See you. And I left, and I waited till what I thought was her car pull away, and I tried to break in again, like like an idiot, and she was still there, it wasn't her car.

So she called the cops, and I ended up fighting about, I don't know, 4 to 6 Bloomfield police officers in my parents' living room. And, they arrested me, they brought me to the police station, and I got a police escort to my last rehab, and they sat with me through the whole intake. They brought me up to the ward. They were making sure that I was in there. But, so I, you'd think that you'd think that that would scare an alcoholic sober.

Your mother has you arrested. You have to beat up, you know, you're fighting. I got my butt kicked, you know I got my butt kicked by 6 police officers. I was like £90, you know, there is no way that I was like winning that fight, you You know, and you would think that getting your butt kicked in your parents' living room by a bunch of police officers would make you stop drinking. Right?

No. So I I went to I went to rehab, and I, I took all the slogans. You know, all the slogans, you know, like, easy does it, you know, first things first, think, think, think, upside down, all that crap. And I lived that, you know, I lived a slogan recovery. And, I got out, I got a coffee commitment, I I made meetings every day, I got a boyfriend.

That was important. I I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. You know. I took it easy does is would do it, you know, so I didn't get a job. Moved off my parents.

I first things first, I went to meetings every day, and I I did these things, and I thought that I was I thought one day at a time, I didn't drink today, this is good. I'm doing a good job. Well, a year later, I picked up a drink. A little over a year later, I picked up a drink. And I picked up a drink because I didn't have a sufficient solution.

I have a sufficient substitute, excuse me. I didn't have a sufficient substitute for alcohol in my life. See, I had taken the alcohol away, but I hadn't filled it up with anything, but fluff, but frothy emotional appeal. And because of that, there came a point in time in my life where it was more painful to be sober than it was to be drunk. And the consequences that I got from drinking paled in comparison to the excruciating emotional pain of reality.

Have you ever been there? Oh, it sucks, doesn't it? So, you know, knowing all that I knew, all the self knowledge, all the, you know, just don't drink today, I went to a meeting, and I walked in the meeting, and I said, well, if the speaker sucks, I'm leaving, and I'm going to get drunk. And naturally, the speaker sucked. And I left, and I got drunk.

In the meantime, oh, by the way, I was already on my second boyfriend, did I? I didn't forget. I was already on my second boyfriend who was clean, like, 3 days when I met him, cause, you know, like, you know, that whole 13 step thing is really healthy for your spiritual life. So, I had I was working on my second boyfriend, and, you know, he had a couple days clean. I had a little over a year, but I was miserable, and we decided we're gonna go get drunk.

And it was, like, if this this meeting sucks, we're gonna go drink. And naturally it sucked, so we went and got drunk. And I said to myself, this is what I said, and this is why I'm a real alcoholic. I said, okay, I'm gonna drink tonight, and I'm just gonna have this drink, and I'm gonna get drunk because I'm 18 and I deserve it because I should party like a kid because I'm a kid and I deserve this. And I'm gonna get drunk, but I'm gonna go back to AA tomorrow.

What's time mean? What's clean? Time, it means nothing. I'm sober only as long you know, it's you know, basically the idea that it like the person who wakes up earliest in the morning is sober the longest. So so what if I drink?

I'll wake up early the next day, and I'll go to AA, and everything will be okay. So after not having had any alcohol in my system for a year and a half, I proceeded to drink massive quantities of alcohol, like, massive quantities. We're talking, like, anything to get my hands on. Tequila, I mean, like everything I hadn't done, and the new stuff that came out while I was sober. Like Zima, all this stuff.

I drank and drank. I drank like my whole paycheck in one night. And I woke up the next day, and I'm standing too close to the mic, I woke up the next day, and I had about $5 and change on me. Because to Yeah. 1 night of drinking cost a lot of money, man.

I had $5 left on me, and I said, well, I can either buy cigarettes or I can buy alcohol. Now this is a tough decision. So I dug around on the couch cushions for a little bit, found a little bit more change, and I went to the liquor store, and I bought cheap wine and a pack of cheap cigarettes, and I drank for the next 4 months. And see, for me, no matter how long I'm away from alcohol, no matter how long I'm away, once I put it into my system, I have no choice of when I stop. See see, the thing with me is I don't get done with alcohol.

Alcohol gets done with me. I have no choice as to when I stop drinking once I put alcohol in my system. The only thing that comes between me and the bottle is a power greater than myself. And one day, about 4 months later, the day after my my, now husband's birthday, I woke up and crawled out of a basement because I had lost my apartment, I had lost the 2 jobs I had, I was about to lose the boyfriend, And, everything that I had built up in that year, year and a half, I lost everything. And I was homeless, living on the streets, and, my clothes were in a garbage bag.

And, I've been out the night before, and we parted our paycheck away again because we were gonna get an apartment. We swore we were gonna get an apartment this time, but, you know, I had a drink. And I woke up, and, I crawled out of this basement, and I'm, like, I can't do this anymore. I don't know why that came to me. I don't know.

All I know is that that moment, the power of God came into my life, and I walked. And it took me about an hour, and I walked to an AA meeting. And I went and sat in that meeting, and I cried. I stole their big book, which I had never replaced. I have now made amends and replaced.

And I went to another meeting after that, and then I went to another meeting later that night, and I went to a meeting the next day, and I just kept going to meetings. But see, the problem was, at that point, I was scared enough of drinking, but I still didn't have anything to replace the alcohol with. So I was a very miserable person. And I lived unhappily like that for 2 years. And, I wandered.

God see saw a foot fit to move my husband and I and my daughter, because I ended up getting pregnant 60 days well, I found out I was pregnant 60 days sober. So I ended up getting pregnant I think it was during detox. It was during detox. I got pregnant during my detox, I found out I was, I was pregnant with my daughter when I was 60 days sober. And, I knew, like, I knew that I couldn't drink, because I had someone else to be sober for for the first time in my life.

But, see, I didn't know how not to drink, and I didn't know how to live, and I was very miserable. And, I had my daughter when I was a little over 10 months clean, and my husband got an opportunity, a job opportunity in Staten Island. And, I moved to Staten Island. And, see, there's this this awesome community in Staten Island. This big book community who, you know, worked the steps out of the book.

And I kept hearing these people talking about, like, working the steps out of the book. And I had worked the steps out of the step book. And, well, actually I worked some of the steps out of the step book, some of it I took out of the big book, and I did a 3 column, 4 step because that was the picture. I I still like the only thing I would change about the big book is have Bill illustrate the 4th column because there's a lot of lazy alcoholics like myself, you only put 3 on here. So that was the amount of work that I had done up until that point.

And I had this 8 step list, and I had made some really half ass amends, just enough to alleviate the pain. And, not enough no see, I hadn't done a forceps, so I couldn't really own my part. So I made amends so that everybody would like me and didn't really, you know, sink in, like, exactly what I did, or why they didn't like me to begin with. So I ended up moving to Staten Island, and my husband met these people who were working the steps out of the big book. And little, you know, a little bit at a time, I met all these people who were doing this, and there was this awesome community of people who were doing this thing.

And, and I started to go through the steps. I got caught up in the enthusiasm of it, and that's what I love about these meetings. I love people who are enthusiastic about the steps. Because if you're boring about the steps, what why would I wanna do them? If the steps don't illuminate your life, if they don't change you on a radical level, in the deepest fibers of yourself, then why would I wanna do them?

But I saw these people who had this immense change, who did this awesome stuff, who worked with all these people and had all these groups and did all this stuff. And I was like, I wanna do that. I want that. You know? So I began to work the steps.

And, I, I got up to my 3rd step. I was working with a man, and I felt uncomfortable continuing to do a force in the 5th step with a guy. So I ended up, I found a set of Joe and Charlie tapes. And I got their little worksheets, and I filled them out. And my friend and I both, we were doing the steps together at the same time.

So we both my friend, Denise, I shared my fist step with her and she shared a fist step with me, and we swapped fist steps. And, we wrote up our 9 step amends and, our 8 step list, and we went out and made our amends. And something happened in my life. Something changed. I didn't wanna die anymore.

I didn't have I didn't have the rage inside of me. You know that rage where you just can't control it? It's it's like, I'll see myself throwing something, before I know it, I threw it. That doesn't happen to me anymore. And there was a time in my life where I was so uncontrollable.

My emotions dictated every aspect of my life. If I felt it, I was saying it and doing it, You know, which was dangerous to those about me. Trust me. I went through many remote controls because of that. I had a habit of throwing the remote control, because it would seem like the least, like, harmful thing to throw.

You know, I don't know. Anyways, handy, portable, fit in my hand, nice toss. But, so, you know, something began to happen in my life, and I stopped doing those things. Like, I stopped reacting to the world like that. And, I began to work with newcomers.

And then, you know, God brought me to New Jersey, and I was doing this in New Jersey. I was doing I found back to basics, and I was doing back to basics out of my living room. And, and there was a group of people who were all like minded, and we were all doing this. And, and the amazing thing is I was sitting I was actually at a sober club promoting a dance. And, there were a bunch of girls there who knew the set aside prayer.

It was something I had learned in Staten Island from a guy who worked with Joe Hawk. And I'm like, you know that? You speak my language? You you know what I'm talking about? Hold me.

I'm like, oh, my God. Who the hell are you? Who's your sponsor? Where do you go? And, I winded up I wound up, wandering into Bernardsville.

And, I ended up getting a sponsor, and the first time I had been sponsored by a woman through the book. Up until that point, I've been kinda working it on my own and with other people and with sponsors, and we all kinda did it in a communal thing, but I had never been brought through the book from page 1 to the end. And I had this woman who did that for me, and it was the most amazing experience in my life. And that's how I said, I had this windy path through the steps. And anybody who sitting here, who is an early sobriety in doing this work, I mean, God bless you.

I mean, it took me years of pain in order to really, really find the solution. And it's been an amazing journey for me. I I I have like I said, it's like the one thing I wanna I wanna get across is the power of God is real and it works in my life. I have an amazing life. I do amazing things.

I have a family that I, you know, I look at my family, the family that I grew up in, and I still can't believe that they were the same people I hated for years. You know, I I went through the steps and I made I made direct amends to my mother, owning everything that I did. And for the first time in my life, I didn't own my amend I didn't make my amends, wanting her to return it, demanding that she be who the mother I wanted her to be. Because she failed me, don't you know? She's the one who messed me up, and that's why have to be in this damn place.

And that's the way I felt my whole life. It was like, she did something wrong, and that's why I'm stuck in AA. You know, because at that time, for a long time, I really believed that my alcoholism was caused by outside circumstances. I didn't know about craving. I didn't know about these things.

I didn't know about my spirituality. No one you know, and when I found out about it, it's like I couldn't blame the people in my life for doing what they did, because I am who I am because of who I am. You know, and I went and I made these amends. And I had such a sense of relief, such a sense of I I it's indescribable to me. I can't tell you what happened inside of me.

All I know is that, I was a terrified little girl, you know, when I when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I was a terrified little girl for a very long time, and something happened inside of me. And I became a woman. And I and I mean that I had strength and integrity that I never knew before. I had this confidence that I never knew existed.

And I had the ability to love other people in a way that I had never done before. See, the most amazing thing about the 12 steps is it gives me the gift of love. For years for years, I was dominated by the belief that if only you behaved differently, I would be okay. And if only you loved me, then I would be okay. See, I never thought about what I was bringing to anything.

I never thought about, what do I bring to this relationship? What do I offer this person? What can I do to be of service to you? It was always about, you make me feel good because I am nothing without you. And what the 12 steps have given me is given me, what God has given me, is the ability to love people without the condition.

Doesn't mean I do it perfectly. You can ask anybody around me, but I really do. I mean, I can have unconditional love for people in a way that I never knew before. And I can live without judgement. See, because one of my one of my biggest issues was that I love issue, man.

One of my biggest issues was that I judged myself and everyone around me to such an extreme level. Like I I was Basically, and I this is what I learned through doing a lot of inventory, was I I learned that I judged other people because I was afraid you were gonna hurt me. And if I found out what it was about you that was threatening to me, I could push you away before I had to risk being hurt. So I lived my whole life keeping everybody at arm's length, evaluating everything about you. But the problem is is that every time I judged you on something, I I would look in the mirror now and again, and be like, oh, I did that.

And then my sense of self, my self love would shrink. Because I judge you, I behave the same way as you, and have to hate myself because of it. And I love it in the big book, on page 42. It tells us that, you know, we can have philosophical convictions galore. It says that we can have all these moral beliefs.

It tells us that we could we can we can believe anything that we wanna believe about spiritual terms, but we have a hard time living up to it because we lack power. See, lack of power was my dilemma. I knew how I should behave. I knew how other people should behave. But the fact is is I lacked the power to institute that in my life.

And what the 12 steps did, what god has done is given me the power to live up to the ideals that I set forth to myself and to be loving on my with myself when I fall short, to admit it when I fall short. And so my judgment, and it it it kept me from being able to really love anybody, to let anybody in, to develop close relationships, to let go of the anger towards my family, to let go of the anger towards the people in my life. And what I learned and when I realized that my judgment was killing me, It was that I was doing absolutely nothing to you, but it was killing me. Because, see, love and judgment can't live together. They don't work together.

And I can I can say I love you, but if I'm in my head going, but if only you, then see, I'm not loving you? I'm telling you who you should be. Then I'm playing God. And see, when the what I love about the 3rd step is it tells us it says that, first of all, we have to quit playing God. See, God is my director.

I am the actor. He is the principal. I am the agent. He is the father. I am the child.

And I can't I cannot allow. God can't work through me when I'm fighting him. See, I can't serve God when I'm playing God. And I spent most of my recovery doing that. And when I learned that this is what I was doing, when I saw it and I felt the powerlessness of it, when I realized that I was as powerless over my fear, my resent, and my selfishness as I was over my alcoholism, that I could not wish them away any more than I than I could wish away alcohol.

I had to have a power greater than myself. I had to turn to God to fix me because I could not fix me. So for a long time, I believed that if I gave God my alcoholism, my drinking, that I would be okay, and that I would control my relationships. I would control, my job. I'd control my children.

I control all these things, and everything would be okay. Just you just keep me from drinking God, and I'll handle everything else. And what I learned was that I can't live in communion with my higher power like that. That's not how God works in my life. So what happened is I hit bottoms in recovery.

I'd hit a bottom with a cert with with a certain relationship, a certain thing. And when I say relationship, I don't just mean people. I mean my relationship with myself, my relationship to God, my relationship with my husband, my relationship with my children, my family, my sponsees, my friends, add infinity. You know, when The 12 steps are about relationships. And they are not about They are about my relationship with God, And as a result of my relationship with God, what happens with my relationship with people?

It's very simple arithmetic. If my relationship with God, if I'm living in communion with my creator, if I am living in the sunlight of the spirit, if I am in the realm of the spirit, then my relationships with people are pretty good. They're full of love, they're full of compassion, empathy, companionship. See, when I'm not living in those things, my relationships are the complete opposite. And what I really love, and I love to do with my sponsors, and whenever I'm doing a big book workshop, I always I love to go to page 52, and I love to read the bedevilments, and then I like to turn it to 9 step promises.

And if you've ever noticed the 5th the bedevilments on 52 are almost the exact opposite of the 9 step promises. There's a reason for that. Because somewhere between step 2 and step 9, something happens in your life. If you really do this and if you live this, something happens in my life. Something happens in an alcoholic's life.

What happens is God comes in and starts to rearrange you. And I love that. That's why this 3rd and the 7 step prayer, it's like, my creator, build with me as that will. And, of course, I'm, you know, I'm not saying, like I'm like taking little pieces of it. But what I'm saying is, I'm talking about my creator, and I ask God to build me as he will.

So, what am I saying? I'm saying, God, create me and use me in your creation. So, I can be I can be involved in the creation of this world on 2 very different levels, internal and external. I can serve God and be a part of life at last. And I can allow God to create me in his likeness and image, in the way that he wants me to be, good or bad.

Take it all. I don't evaluate anymore. I don't have the kit the capacity to evaluate my own self anymore. All I can do is surrender this self to god and ask god to do it for me. And when I live in that place, I'm a very happy person.

I'm free. I have hope. I have joy. I can do things that I never thought I could do. I can be effective in ways that I cannot imagine.

You know, what what I love is when I'm doing my morning meditation, and, you know, I sit down, I have my pad and my pen, and I do the actual group meditation. As Bill pointed out, I'm a little bit of an actual group person, and I love I love I like big book AA, and I like big book AA without a lot of fluff. You know? Just give me the big book, and I'll and I love it. I love it.

I eat it up. I enjoy it. I suck the marrow out of the big book. I love it. That's a poem, by the way.

I didn't make that up. I'm not kidding. But I I devour the big book. And what what what I love is I sit there in morning meditation, I still have my little pad, my little pen that I had when I first started doing the work, and I made my list for the day. Like, you know, how am I to serve you today, God?