The Northern California World Service Assembly Convention in Monterey, CA

My name is Blanche and I am a recovering Al Anon High. And I have been a member of the Al Anon family group since July 7, 1964. I want you to know that 22 years means I am a survivor, not a savior. Survivor, not a savior. And I say that so I will remember it too.

Sometimes those of us who have been around a while are, we have quite a few expectations laid on us. I want to thank the committee for the invitation to this very beautiful place. For the beautiful accommodations, for the snacks in my room and the orchid on my shoulder and above all for the smiles of of welcome on your faces. I get to talk in California every few years. I was figuring it out.

This is my 6th time in California. And I hope certainly not my last one. It's an awfully big state. It seems like I can, you know, go a lot of places and not see the same people every time. But I love your laid back attitude because I find that it is mixed with a great deal of enthusiasm and I and I can do kind of feeling that I like a lot.

You you're a colorful people. Someday I'm going to write a book about the ways in which I get met at airports. In San Diego last spring before last, I, didn't know the people who were meeting me and they didn't know me and when I stepped off the plane there was this group of women singing the yellow rose of Texas at the top of their hall. I wanted to get back on the plane. I had to go over.

I had to go over and plane these people, you know. But I've known Kathy a long time who met me yesterday. We there was no problem. There are so many people in this room who have contributed to my recovery and even more so perhaps to the joy in my life. And you know who you are and I wish I could name all of you, But it's very special for me to be allowed to be with you today.

For the last 10 years, I guess, I have been trying when I'm allowed to share Al Anon in various places to be as open as I know how to be. And that means being vulnerable and taking risks and it's scary for me. But you told me that that which does not come from the heart does not reach the heart. And I very much want to reach your hearts today, it would be easier for me to lecture. I did that for a long time when I started talking.

I talked about the program rather than about me. And I could tell people how I thought and not how I felt. And a lot of people listening can't tell the difference, but I could tell the difference because sharing with you is one of the ways I'm getting well. I was told I could only keep it if I gave it away. And by letting me give it away to you today, you are contributing to my therapy.

And when I was talking about the program rather than about myself, I was not getting any benefit from it. So I've tried not to do that. And as I talk to you from my heart today, I will need you to listen with yours, and I will really need you loving me back while I talk to you. I'm here to to participate in your conference and not to perform. A great many of you have told me that you've heard me talk in other places, and more of you have said that you've heard tapes and you could have had a nap this afternoon because I just have one story.

And now I'm not going to go out and do it over again just so I'll have something different to tell you. And when I say that, I say it really realizing that our stories are never the same. I don't know where we were, you and I, when we last met on our spiritual journey. But we're both at different places today. I have done a great deal of hurting and rejoicing and loving and learning over the last few years.

And I dare say that you have too, and so we meet at a different place on our spiritual journey, and we have something different to share with each other. Well, I came into Al Anon kicking and screaming and clutching my halo and protesting to everyone who would listen. But I was fine. Thank you. I had not done the drinking and I did not need any therapy.

And I said it with a straight face then. And I'm so grateful that God led me to a group of people who were practicing the principles of this program and what I know of them today, I know not because I read them or they were told to me, but because they were practiced lovingly and tenderly on me. This was a group that loved me when I was really unlovable. And who tolerated me when I know now that my behavior was well nigh intolerable. I was condescending and patronizing, and I had gone by to help them out.

God forgive me, Andy has. He keeps sending me alanums just like that. I have told him I've got the message. He can let up a little. I found out very quickly what is not.

I wasn't sure what it was, but I was taught quickly that it is not a lady's auxiliary or a sewing circle or a coffee clatch. And this was a group of people who were serious about recovery. And that's exactly what I had to have then. There are a number of misconceptions that I think we have, those not in Al Anon have about us. You know, we don't get a very good press.

I used to say that I was a typical Al Anon when I got to you, but I have learned that that brings different pictures to different minds. It depends on what your idea of 1 is. There are rumors that I'd like to dispel. One of them is that all alcoholics without exception are handsome or beautiful and talented, sensitive, intelligent, charming, and sexy. Have you heard that one?

I never get any argument on that. But the part of the rumor I want to argue with is that they are inevitably married to dull, mousy people. And if you believe that you can forget it. Don't believe my friend in Southern California AA member is that AA members have multiple personalities, and an Al Anon has 1 or less. All Al Anon jokes come from California.

And only Al Anon's are allowed to tell them. It is not true that Al Anon's make love with their eyes closed because they can't bear to see an alcoholic have a good time. And another another myth that I would like to dispel. There are so many people who seem to feel that during the drinking years, the person who was the non alcoholic sat home knitting, you know, Priscilla Pureheart. While the alcoholic did his thing, some of us did, but some of us did everything the alcoholics did and we did it cold sober.

So I think it would be better if we have no illusions about each other today. Okay? It comes out later in my story that I was an English teacher for 22 years. It will not surprise you that I want to define our terms. So I would like to make it clear that some well meaning members of AA refer to anyone in their family as Al Anon, and that is inaccurate.

It's like referring to a still drinking alcoholic as an AA member. And Al Anon is a member of an Al Anon family group who attends meetings regularly and who works the program. And if you hear anyone else talking about Al Anon, don't pay any attention. That person is uninformed. People like that are not carrying the message they're spreading the disease.

And some other things that we are not. We are not cookie bakers and coffee makers. And above all, we are not AA groupies. The Al Anon program has never claimed to be a therapeutic tool for the treatment of alcoholism. And it does not promise to save marriages, only sanity.

And I had to learn the hard way as I've learned everything that happily ever after means my personal recovery. It may not mean walking hand in hand into the sunset. This program is for me. The best analogy I can give you is this one. My mother died in 1965, and I absolutely adored her.

And I thought I could not stand it. I was in Texas and she was in Florida, and I flew home several times during the last month of her illness. My last visit there, I had stepped out into the hall outside her room because I was crying. And a woman I've never seen before or since was in a room across the hall and she beckoned me and when I stepped inside her room she said your mother's going to be alright And I said, You don't understand her illness is terminal. And the woman said, Oh I didn't say she's going to get well, I said she's going to be alright.

And mother did not get well, and she has been alright ever since. And it's very much as if when I got to you, you had said to me, you're going to be alright. And if you had, I would have said, you don't understand. I have a barely sober husband. And you would have said, oh, we didn't say you'd have a sober husband.

We said you'd be alright. Or I would have said to you, I have a very shaky fragile marriage. And you would have said, we didn't say we'd save your marriage. We said you'd be alright because I have been, you know, and better than that, and I know that I will be. Well, our story is disclosed in a general way.

What we used to be like, what happened and what we're like now. And I agree with father Martin, who says that when he is sitting out there in Europe here, he says, you're playing with my life. Don't tell me how sick you got without telling me how well you have gotten. And so I want to spend most of this time with you talking about recovery. Because of course through the grace of God I have a great deal of it and it would be a false kind of humility for me to say that I don't.

You know, if you've been around nearly 22 years and you haven't gotten some recovery, you haven't been listening. I was born and grew up in Florida. We were not tourists. We were 4th generation Floridians. In fact, tourist was a bad word.

It was thought my mother said when I behaved inappropriately. You know, don't act like a tourist. I'm a very good tourist when I go places now. I know I know how to be because I certainly saw a number of them who weren't. I lived in Jacksonville on the Atlantic and on the Georgia border until I was 10 and then in Pensacola on the Alabama border till I married.

And that part of Florida was very very much the deep south at that time. I had a charming, sensitive, talented, alcoholic father who unfortunately was violent, and I was a battered child. I was not ever, thank God, sexually abused, but I was badly battered and it was years before I could say that from a podium. And I think it needs saying. Because it does happen sometimes in alcoholic homes and it is not always the alcoholic who does the battering.

It happened to be so at my house. We lived in abject poverty. I don't mean we didn't have luxuries. I mean there were days on end with no food. I mean there was inadequate shelter and not enough clothing.

And we lived in a very blighted area of the city. I have to tell you that in order to make this point, even under those conditions, the neighborhood children were not allowed to play with me. I know now that their parents were understandably apprehensive about what was going on in my house. But at that time, I didn't know that and I just felt rejection and rage. And I wanted to get back at them some way, somehow.

And I latched on to the first rule I began to follow and I followed other rules all my life till I got to you. And you told me about spiritual laws. But the rule I followed was if you're better than, they'll have to respect you. So I could beat the socks off these kids in school and I did, and I relished every minute of it and that became my way up and out. That became my source of prestige and status and all the good things that happened to me so it became awfully important to me.

These rules served me very well but they also serve to make me pretty sick by the time I got to you. I figured that if they didn't like me, they would, by golly, respect me and they did. And so I did the right thing and if I didn't know what it was, I found out. And my life was like sort of like those paint by numbers that you know, where you don't get out side the lines because I really learned the rules. My mother and father were divorced when I was 8 and a couple of years later, my mother remarried.

As it happened, she married a man who didn't drink at all. He was a kind, good person and we had real affection for each other, but we were never close. There were no luxuries, but there were the necessities of life. And college was not considered a necessity. So when it was time for me to go to school, I was the one who decided I would go and I wanted to go to school at Baylor University, which happens to be in Texas.

And that's how I got there. This this I come from a long line of Irish peasants who really didn't trust book learning, you know. And they thought that colleges were dens of inequity with atheistic professors. I got a whole lot of static. I was the first one who wanted to go to college.

In case you don't know, Baylor is like a baptist convent. It's anything but a den of inequity. I loved it and I've never been happier than I was there. And I think I received a splendid education. But they made it clear that if I wanted to go to school alright, I'd have to somehow pay for it myself.

And I did and it was and is a very expensive school. I had one scholarship and one loan and I worked here between high school and college and I worked while I was there and I worked every summer. People who work their way through college are not the ones who recommend doing it. Okay? It's like the poverty of my early childhood.

There's nothing ennobling about it. Poverty is is a debasing and a degrading way to live. It's dehumanizing. It has absolutely nothing to recommend it. But when I was going to go to Baylor, my mother said well, alright if you wanna go to school in Texas, Texas, it's okay with me.

But she said, make up your mind that you'll spend the rest of your life out there because you'll end up marrying a Texan. And she said, they don't transplant. I told her I was going to do no such thing, but I did and they don't, and I have, and so she was right about that as she always was about everything. Most of you know that Texas is a state of mind. They have never forgotten that they were a nation.

And this year they're celebrating 150th birthday of their independence and it's just an incredible year long celebration. I had a father-in-law who was an ardent Texan, I don't know any other kind But he said that he he brought up his children never to ask a man where he was from because he said if a man is from Texas he'll tell you and if he's not it's not nice to embarrass him he said there are no ex Texans. He said there are Texans forced to live somewhere else for a while, sometimes for 50 or 60 years, but they're never ex Texans. And I love it there and I don't wanna live anywhere else, but I get back to Florida most years. Because I get home sick for the blue water and the white sand and the palm trees.

Every time I go back now, my family, all all my family is still there. And they say, why don't you come home now? And I tell them I am home now. I think that it was inevitable that I marry an alcoholic because the very first man I ever loved, you know, my father was so seriously alcoholic. And of course, that's the kind of person I felt at home with.

I know now that we had matching sicknesses, Charles and I, when we married. You see, I didn't I didn't date anyone who drank. I did everything I could to avoid letting this happen to me. And that was not self righteousness, that was fear, that was just stark terror. You know, I had had drinking.

Thank you. And Charles did not did not drink at all when we were dating and when we married. And yet I know now that the neurosis we both had fit each other so well that, of course, we found each other. I had no feeling of self worth just by existing, But I felt self worth when I rescued, and when I took care of, and when I controlled and protected. So of course, I found someone who would be emotionally dependent and who would give me a chance to rescue regularly.

And we nourish these neurosis in each other for a very long time. You told me later that he's not drinking was not significant. You said it's as if he had had tuberculosis, but he had not yet started hemorrhaging. That drinking is only a symptom of the illness, and that symptom had not yet manifest itself. I know now that we do not, those of us in the families of alcoholics, we do not just get sick as a result of, but sick people marry sick people.

As they say in Colorado, the horns on the heads of the alcoholics just fit the holes in ours. Sick people marry sick people and they rear sick children, and I hope you won't let anyone tell you anything different. For 22 years, I taught those children. I reared 2 of my own and I am one. And when I hear someone say I'm so grateful that the drinking at our house didn't affect our children.

I think I have some swampland in Florida I'd like to talk to them about. They'll believe anything. We lived in in Corpus Christi and then in San Antonio for 4 years, and our babies were born there. And then we moved to my husband's hometown in West Texas, Odessa, which is on the desert. My mother used to call it Odessa.

That's where we got our sickest and that's where we found you. And I know now looking back that there were some slogans that we lived by before you gave us some others. And I didn't have them written down but I know I lived by them. One was what will people think? Did you have that one?

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

Wasn't true of course. I did all the wrong things during the drinking years. I I did everything as if I had read the list of don'ts, you know. I I protected it and I rescued and this man was almost literally loved to death. And that can happen.

I lied and I played let's pretend as diligently as he ever drank. And I was totally obsessed with this man. I would like you to think that I stayed with him during the drinking out of love and loyalty, but I did not. I stayed out of pride. And when I'm this far from home, I have to explain that just a little.

I don't know how it's done now. But in the deep south, in my generation, women were given a very specific kind of upbringing. We carried white linen handkerchiefs. You could tell a southern lady by her hands and her feet and no matter how hard she worked, she took care of those. We were expected to flutter our eyelashes and swish our skirts and flash our dimples, but it was understood that we had steel spines and we could cope.

You know, Scarlett O'Hara in the sweet potato field saying I'll never be hungry again. And I was taught, this is just by the way, that you keep the men happy and everything else falls into place. And, I have a feminist daughter, marches and parades. And so I mean, she gags when I say that. But I, I think as long as I don't give up big chunks of myself to do it, then that is a healthy kind of nurturing.

And I like to do that. But I stayed out of pride because I was taught that one did not air one's dirty linen in public. And you did not live with a man and criticize him to other people, And that's not such a bad idea. Those were the rules I was following. And I think about it now, my answer was just to try harder.

Obviously, there was something I could do to take care of this. I had never run into anything before that I couldn't manage or control. I had put myself through a very expensive university. I had married the man I wanted and he was and is brilliant and handsome and can be charming. And I had the children I wanted when I wanted them, and if I have time, I'll try to convince you that they are all together remarkable.

And I was doing work that I loved and I had no understanding of nor tolerance for people who messed up their lives. Because I had started off with just as inauspicious a beginning as anyone I knew. And my feeling was that if I could cope, you know, by golly, so could he. I did not hear when I felt that way how very self righteous it sounded. And so I would try harder.

In the Peanuts cartoon strip, Charlie Brown's little sister Sally is learning long division. And at one point, she says to him, how many times will 24 go into 12? And he says, 24 won't go into 12. And she says, it will if you push. That was my thinking, you know?

Just try harder And I did not know that I had been keeping all the wrong rules. I had been religious and not spiritual. Now I know there are people who are both. And I know it's possible to be 1 or the other. But I was religious until I got to you and you taught me about spiritual laws.

I did a few things right during those years. I used to say by accident, I know now by the grace of God, I never thought of Charles as a drunk nor referred to him that way. I was married to a very fine man who drank too much. Who had what my Irish grandmother called the failing. And I knew at some level that he was sick.

At least I knew no one would be that way because he wanted to be. Now try to remember if you're that old, that 22 years ago, alcoholism was not trendy. Okay. It was not it was not in to be alcoholic. There were not announcements on television about it every 30 minutes.

There was a horrible stigma attached to this. I didn't criticize him to the children. I did after he sobered up, I could gripe as much as I wanted to. But on some intuitive level, they knew that he was sick. I think they often wondered what was wrong with that crazy woman who was yelling and screaming and throwing things.

Because they have since said to me many times I try to remember that you were sick too. I had during those years a God whom I worshipped and served, Not God as I understand him today, but I hope that in another 22 years God as I understand him will be far different from the way I understand him today. And I had a doctor who was my alanine before I got to you and I say that because he's the one who used to say to me, you have to do what is necessary for your sanity and your serenity regardless. And then he would he knew just which buttons to push. He would say, your children need one stable parent.

And need was the operative word. If you needed me, I was putty in your hands. And so I, followed his suggestion to return to teaching. I had taught school before my children were born and out of choice, I stayed home for 12 years when they were little, and I'm glad that I did. I wanted to do that.

But I did return to teaching. I taught high school English in a very fine, very affluent high school. There are people who who think that, a 150, 17 year old every day would not constitute therapy for anybody. There are those who have suggested that if you weren't already sick, that would do it. And I never talk without saying don't criticize kids to me or you'll have to fight me first and I think I know more often than you do.

I have accumulated several thousand through the years. They were tremendous therapy for me. I love their honesty and their openness. I never had the teacher in my life and I was hugged regularly. I like their gung ho eagerness for living and their concern for this planet that my generation did not have.

I think their values are a great deal sounder than mine were. Now it was not one long honeymoon, there were days when I wish for retroactive birth control but not usually. I have finished teaching for a while and I miss it. Unbelievably, I I would like you to think that I miss enlightening the youth of America. What I miss is spending my day with people who thought I was pretty neat.

I do not have that source of validation anywhere now, and I miss it. That's what I was like. What happened was, and I respected Charles then and I do now for the fact that he never stopped trying to find an answer. He went to ministers and lay counselors. He went through medical clinics.

He went through both our local psychiatrists rather quickly. And because because he did not drink in the mornings and because he was not violent, I never suspected alcoholism. He didn't follow the only pattern I had ever seen of alcoholics. Finally, a business acquaintance of his suggested that he see a counselor, a woman who at that time was doing counseling in Odessa strange lady, very eccentric. It'll tell you something about her when I tell you that his first appointment with her was at 12:30 AM.

And it will tell you something about him when I tell you he was there. He kept it. He'd been seeing her about 6 weeks, and it was January of 1964. Are there some moments in your life that are so lucid that you remember every detail, where you were? I remember the room, I remember the curtains, I remember everything about it.

I was still home from school for the Christmas holidays. And when I picked up the phone and said hello and she identified herself, of course, I recognized her name. And she said, your husband is an alcoholic and I need to talk to you too. And all of my deep south upbringing went out the window and I said you're out of your mind and hung up. Now I was brought up that if you do not like someone, you're kind but cool.

And I wasn't cool in either sense of the word. I hadn't left the room when the phone rang again and when I picked it up, she said, hey wait a minute, don't hang up. I know what you've been through. Well she couldn't know, I hadn't told anybody. And I stood there with the phone in my hand and I thought all the tears had long since been shed.

And I cried and I cried and I cried. This was your first gift to me. Before I ever got to you, I cry anytime I please now. Charles used to say I could cry at supermarket opening. Reading menus or telephone directory, that's not quite true.

I cry at television commercials, Well now, some of them are better done than the programs, you know that. You know the one about the little boy and they bring home his baby sister and they're making over the little girl and they're saying how pretty her blue eyes are? And he looks in the mirror in his chin covers and he says, mine were blue first. Well when he cries, I cried. I used to cry at pep rallies at school.

In the school where I taught, football was second only to oxygen in importance. And there were days when I wasn't sure which came first. And so the pep rallies were somewhat akin to broadway productions. And I used to look at those young people who felt 10 feet tall and thought they had the world by the tail and I knew what you know, some of them would be hoeing a pretty tough row. And I used to get a little weepy watching them.

Anyway, I cry cry anytime I please and I thank you for that gift. For 6 months after that, this woman sent us to you. I went only to open meetings and I wouldn't go to those if Charles was due to get any memento of sobriety. Do your groups give those for 30 days, 90 days? I didn't want to hear him say my name is Charles and I'm an alcoholic, I hadn't heard the term denial, I just knew I didn't wanna hear him say that and if anyone had the questionable judgment to invite me to Al Anon, I was kind but cool And explain to them that I was fine.

Thank you. And if we just had sobriety in our house, we wouldn't have any other any other problems. I can't even say it today without laughing. In July of that year, we went to San Antonio for the 4th July weekend. We had lived there as I mentioned, and it's a very special place to me.

And, Charles got drunk. And he says, when I tell my story, I must never say it was a slip, that it was a carefully planned drunk. And to his credit, he never drove drinking or hungover until I was driving home after this. And he said, I'm going to have to tell my group about this because I'm due to get a 6 month chip next week. And in my appalling ignorance, I said, I won't tell anybody.

And he said, that I wasn't quite the name of the game. I have to tell you that to say this is what got my attention. I've been married to him 14 years at that time and this is a man who never said to me, I'm sorry. I was wrong, I made a mistake and he was going to go down and say it to some people he had known 6 months. And he was going to go down and say it to some people he had known 6 months and I was mad So I thought I thought I'd go take another look at them and I did, you know teeth and fist clenched, I was enraged over this.

And I used to get this far in my story and say that I did not know why the invitation of one particular woman, the invitation to attend alanine, reached me when no one else had. Well, I have done 3, I think, very thorough and very comprehensive 4th and 5th steps. And it was on my very first one that God revealed why to me, and it was sooner than I wanted to know it. And rigorous honesty requires that I tell you, I heard this woman because she was someone I thought was as good as I was. I mean, I'm sorry.

That's the way it is. You see, I married considerably above myself. Charles used to say, I shouldn't say that. I don't know any other way to say it. This was a family with money and prestige and all those things.

And, There was no one not allowed to play with me anymore. That was important to me. And this woman was the wife of a prominent local physician, and she had beauty and brains and breeding and status and education and prestige, all the things I considered important. She still has all the things I consider important. But it's certainly a different list today.

And she became my first sponsor and she was my sponsor for 11 years until she moved away. And I got another one and that is a different soapbox topic for me and I will spare you an additional hour about that. But it is one of my, pet peeves. I have I have no understanding of people who talk all over the country and who do not have a home group or a sponsor. I think there's no place for gurus in this fellowship.

And I have a sponsor that I contact regularly and whom I use, you know, they're like soap. They won't do any good if you don't use them. And and she's the one who got me started. We had a very difficult stormy sobriety. In our one of our Al Anon pamphlets living with sobriety, it says although sobriety can be a welcome miracle, it does not guarantee happiness.

We did not come in on any kind of pink cloud. Charles was stark, raving, sober and very much aware of all of my defects of character and no longer held back by guilt, you know, from mentioning them loudly and clearly and frequently. The 1st 18 months to 2 years were worse than anything we ever had had drinking. They were awful. As Clancy says, when the alcohol is gone, the ism remains.

And it's that with which he had to struggle and we we had to live. I think, and I say this to new people all the time, we have this overlay of fantasy. Our thinking is even if we're not conscious of it, during the drinking is if he didn't drink, he would be or she would be, you know, the husband wife, mother father, son daughter of my dreams. And that's just not so. When a person is sober, he has to become the person that he is.

In that case, it was someone I had never met. You told me that marriage is made in sickness often don't survive health. I didn't want to hear you, but that's what you told me and I had to hear it. Of course, I got to you in pretty bad shape myself. I think one of the first things I had to learn was to express my needs.

I thought that people could read my mind and that if I had to ask for what I needed, it was no good. And I learned that from you not because you told it to me like a lesson, but because you expressed your needs to me and you never required me to read your mind and then got mad because I couldn't. And I would so much rather you say to me today I need a hug, than to go away from me feeling unloved because I didn't know that you needed a hug. I'm still not good at that, especially with men. This is part of my upbringing, you know?

But I'm a little bit better all the time. I never planned to be middle aged and single as it turns out that I am. I had planned at this point in life to be watching my grandchildren playing not sitting by the phone like a high school girl waiting for the thing to ring and it's one of the areas of growth in my life that I just as soon have missed but I'm learning to say I need and and I want and people who want a friendship or relationship with me have so far not bolted and run when I've said that. I got to you emotionally frozen, Here again, not on any conscious level, but somehow during those years, it's as if I decided that feelings had valves or faucets. And I could turn off the one marked anger or I could turn off the one marked self pity And what I didn't know is there's one valve and it's marked feelings.

And so you literally loved me back to life. And it hurts when something that has been frozen has the feeling returned to it. And for years when I hurt in a new place, it was some little frozen pocket that had not yet thawed. It's been years since I felt that. I think we come in with a great many defenses built up, all kinds of walls.

I used to batter at them. You know, let me in. I want to be your friend. I've decided that's kind of an emotional rape. I don't do that anymore.

If you have defenses, it's because you need them. And I think that new people, if they look out from the chink in their armor, can see us smiling and know that the natives are friendly. And maybe if we are warm and loving enough, the bricks may thaw and the defenses come down. But I don't forcibly remove them anymore because you waited so patiently for me to remove my own. And I began to hear this program not from 1 person and not all at once, but you know, slowly, the way I learn everything.

I got the idea that I had to accept the fact that I was sick, too. And as I said, this wasn't common knowledge back then. It took me a while. And then I heard people asking, one way or another, do you want to get well? Some people need their neurosis, and they will hang on to them.

And even in scripture, no one could be made whole who did not want to be. They told me we don't hear the answer until we've asked the question. And I didn't ask any questions because I really thought I knew everything. And this is, the worst possible kind of person to try to teach something to. My sponsor kept saying, there are a great many things you've been taught that are erroneous.

You need to unlearn some things before we can get to you. And I went to open a meetings every week and I heard chapter 5 read. And I heard this idea over and over and over that we had to get rid of our old ideas. So I knew this was true in both fellowships. And I had to unlearn some things well meaning people had taught me that they did not know the things were wrong.

My sponsor said God can only fill an empty vessel. You cannot put new wine in old bottles and so forth until I was willing to give up some of these old ideas. 1 of them and I bet you were taught this too is that God helps those who help themselves. You know, he does not, you know. He helps those who ask.

And I could, when I needed him the most, I could not have helped myself if my life had depended on it, and it very nearly did. God helps those who ask. And I grew up being told that mature people stand on their own 2 feet. They don't ask for help. And I Oh, I learned that one well.

I wouldn't ask directions in a strange town. I would buy a map. And you told me, no, babies are dependent and adolescents are independent. You know, adolescents are, I'll do it myself, but mature people are interdependent, and that is light years away from a sick, clinging neediness. Now that we don't have.

You told me that some pain would be necessary for my spiritual education, but that misery is optional, and I do not opt to be miserable very much anymore. There was a country western song popular about the time I was learning this and it said she didn't have sense enough to come in out of the pain I have sense enough today. I don't hurt very long until I reach out. By the way, I have friends in California whom I call when I can't make it through the night because at 1 in Texas, it's only 11 here. I have a friend who says you only love me for my time zone, But I I really I really appreciate.

Then it worst comes to worst. There's this friend in Hawaii that I can call. I was brought up that you always put other people first, always. And I enjoyed my martyrdom. I had suffered so nobly, you know, nobly.

I practically required plastic surgery to remove my hand from my forehead when I got to you. And here you were telling me that I had not only a right, but a responsibility to take care of myself, including emotionally. I really don't have to put everyone else first. This was this was so new to me. It was like, you know, wearing 2 left shoes.

It just felt very strange. I'm not talking about me first. I'm talking about my turn. I didn't even know how to take that when I got to you. I have a sponsor who says that in any given situation, I should ask the 2 questions, and one is, what is in my best interest?

You can't be a martyr and ask that, you know. And the other is, what will enable me to like myself later? She says that I don't have to like any situation, but it is imperative that I like myself in it. And 6 years ago, I went through a very difficult and painful divorce, and I would not change one word I said or one thing I did because I had this in front of me all the time. I don't have to like the situation, but it is imperative that I like myself in it.

And, oh, that's a good feeling. You know, it's, I I recommend that. And so I learned to take my turn in taking care of myself. And although I was told, as you have been, that we never say no in Al Anon, I am sorry. This sounds like heresy, but I do say no.

I have to say no a great deal more than I can say yes. I have learned that every time that phone rings, it is not God calling. And if I do not take care of myself, I have nothing to bring to you when I come to you. I generally talk at 1 convention a month. That's all I need to be gone unless Honolulu calls or I have been known to make exceptions.

And I was taught what you don't know won't hurt you. What I didn't know nearly killed 4 people. You know, what you don't know can kill you. And so very slowly, I began to unlearn these things. And I have always been greedy for good things in life, and I'm greedy for this program and I was not one to settle for a spiritual band aid.