Low Country Roundup in Charleston, SC

Good afternoon. My name is Linda, and I'm a grateful member of Al Anon. I I wanna thank you. I wanna thank the readers. I was so touched, and I would enjoy sitting beside you in a meeting anytime.

Thank you so much. And Nancy, thank you. You're you're just a a new friend that I just met yesterday. It's so great to hang out with you. I'm gonna apologize for my voice.

I I truly got laryngitis 30 minutes after I finished speaking in Houston, Texas last Saturday. I mean, it turned into a whisper. And I whispered to my husband, it's every AA's dream, an Al Anon that loses her voice. And I went back to Nashville, and I told my sponsor. And she says, maybe God wants you to listen instead of talk so much.

So with all that help and the help of some of my doctor and some pretty strong medication, and plus I've been drinking iced tea, caffeine, and I haven't been able to talk for a week. So hang on. I have no idea what this is gonna look like. But, you know, as they're reading the the steps and then the traditions, when it's about my turn to speak, I sometimes wish I wish they would read the concepts and maybe even the warranties also, also, you know, to just kinda drag it out for as long as we could before I have to get up here. Because I I get anxious.

I I have a great sense of love for Al Anon. It's it's it's something that literally saved my life and changed my life and is very much a part of my my life. I've been in Al Anon a little over 18 years, and I absolutely embrace it on a daily basis. And I I feel very honored to come here and speak. What a gorgeous place that we are.

But I but I I have anxiety. I think it's because of my love for Al Anon. But you've taught me to ask for what I need, so I'm gonna ask for a moment of silence. In some areas where they say the serenity prayer before the meetings, they have a moment of silent prayer. And somebody one time asked our, Lois Wilson, the of Al Anon.

She was married to Bill, the of AA. Somebody asked her what she did in the moment of silence, and she said, I invite god to the meeting. So if you'd be willing to ask the god of your understanding to come and be here with us, and that'll give me a chance to breathe. I've already said my prayers, but I just need that little extra prayer. So some silence, please.

Thank you so much. And, you know, now I'm not up here by myself. I've got the god of my understanding. I I know I've got the support of my sponsor because she she cheers for me, and and I think that's a characteristic of a sponsor or a good sponsor. She cheers for me.

I can call her, and she cheers for me. I don't know how to say it any other way. I've got the support of my home group. They gave me this little safety pin because that's how we help one another in our group. It was kind of our low budget guardian angel.

When somebody's gonna go off and do something scary, we give them an everyday household safety pin. Everybody in my home group held it. And they said it's for when you're gonna go do something scary, like give a talk or visit parents, you know. So I've got my group up here. And I also have the support of this committee.

What a fantastic committee you have here. I just they were so supportive when we called and told them about my laryngitis. You've been so supportive. If I had to put one word about this committee and this conference together, it would be the word happy. And this seems like a happy place to be and happy recovery.

I just feel very honored. Florence, thank you so much. Conferences don't just happen, and my observation is the better and the more fun the committee has, the more fun the conference is. And your 3rd annual looks like at the low country looks like you're having a great, great time. I, I got rather tickled though because when Scott and I got here yesterday, they, they put us in a lovely room.

Actually, it was room 134. When we got our program, it was also the hospitality room. I thought, this is a new commitment for speakers. This is this is gonna get a bit interesting. But don't we love the party?

You know, we may have given up the drink, but we're not gonna give up the party. We are social animals. We like hanging out together. And that's why we have these conferences. And that's why they're planning that big birthday party, July 4th, up in Toronto.

I don't know about you, but I'm saving my nickels and dimes and pennies, and I'm heading that way because the internationals are so much fun. You get 60,000 people saying the serenity prayer, your toes feel it. Your heart feels it. Now I've been in Al Anon long enough. I could have gone to Seattle, but that just didn't work out.

So my first international was the one out in San Diego. And Scott and I were married, and we showed up at the airport in Nashville, Tennessee. And you know, not too surprising, we ran into some people we knew from meetings. And they were getting ready to go to that big celebration out in San Diego also. And I think that I like to tell this story because it kind of sets it up of the attitudes about our having a good time.

I think that plane left Nashville and stopped in St. Louis. And some of the earthlings, the regular people got off, you know, but some more of us got on. And because you could tell because of the jewelry with the circles and the triangles on it. So it was a huge, huge jet flying all the way out to the west coast.

And, it was absolutely a big, big airplane. And I'm on a holiday, so I'm having a great time. And I'm at the back of the plane waiting my turn to get into the ladies room, and I start chatting with the flight attendant because she's working. And and, I mean, she was working hard. I could tell.

And I said, well well, are you okay? How's it going for you? Are you having a good day? And she says, well, yes. She said, I am having a good day.

She said, we're we're very busy. She said, every single seat is taken, and we have never served so much coffee. Yeah. Yeah. That's us, you know.

And, and we got out there at the international. And kind of what I encourage us to hear, you know, sometimes the conferences are great and the speaker meetings are great. But sometimes that meeting out there walking on the beach, isn't that sometimes the best meeting? So they encouraged us in San Diego to wear our badges everywhere we went. And, the conference hadn't started, but we picked them up.

And Scott and I were gonna go out to SeaWorld. And as we got out of our taxi, there were 2 Japanese men and a Japanese woman that they had badges on, and they were trying to get into the taxi. And we all noticed our badges, and we stood there on the sidewalk. Now, they had absolutely no English and we had no Japanese. But we stood there, and we bobbed, and we hugged, and we pointed, and we cried.

And we spoke the language of the heart. There, it was an incredible exchange. So I I really I support committees and anybody that comes together to put a conference on. I support you for participating in your recovery this afternoon on a Saturday afternoon. I mean, this is a grand thing.

You you wanna you wanna know who the winners are? Look at the person right beside you, because you're participating in your own recovery. So out in San Diego, I was invited to be on one of the Al Anon panels. Not like tell my story, but like months ahead of time, they gave me an assigned topic. And I could use our Al Anon conference approved literature and my experience strength and hope and kind of share for about 15 minutes around the topic.

And my topic that came was, I chuckled. It was, living with sobriety after the honeymoon's over. Since I'm in my 3rd marriage, I thought maybe they wanted a honeymoon planner, you know. I honestly can't tell you too much about what I said that day, because the woman that talked before me, in her introduction of herself, she told my entire Al Anon story just in the way she said hello. Fantastic woman.

I've visited with her often. And this is what she did. She said, hello. My name is so and so, and I'm from Georgia. I'm a member of Al Anon, and I'm addicted to mood altering men.

I go, woohoo. That's why I've been having to go to all those meetings, you know. I do. I just have this wonderful gift that I get or antennae that just goes right there to that creative, that living on the edge personality. Scott and I get to go across the country and do this quite often.

Most of the time, it's to an AA function. Most of the time, he's only talked to the AA member on the telephone. So somebody's gonna greet us at the airport that we've never laid eyes on. We've worked out this great plan. Scott says, I'll go get the luggage and you go pick them out.

Because I can. I just I just have this this talent. In fact, Scott is so supportive of this gift, this talent that I have. He and he's so supportive of recovery in our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee that he came up with this great plan. And for my birthday several years ago, he had about 300 business cards printed up for me.

And he says, you know, this will really help our community here. He says, if you're at the grocery store and you look over there and you see somebody that you're attracted to, He said, you can hand them one of these business cards. The front of it has my name, phone number, a couple of butterflies, you know, very appropriate. The back of it says this. Hi.

My name is Linda. I am a member of Al Anon. I find you attractive. So I suggest you go to the nearest treatment center and have an assessment done. Just to help, but, yeah, just to help with that.

And and I can lovingly tell you that the that the first man that just took my heart away, that probably could use an assessment is my dad. You know? I've known my dad all my life. I've seen my dad drink almost every day of my life. I've seen my dad drunk a lot of days of my life.

And I wanna tell you I had an incredibly wonderful childhood. I grew up in in West Texas, Odessa. And it was a wholesome time. We had sidewalks and we played outside and we looked at the stars at night. And I traveled with my parents.

I was an only child, so they gave me a lot of stuff. All the money that needed to be divided between other brothers and sisters, I got it all. I had nice clothes. I had nice shoes. I had my own room.

They gave me a spiffy, spiffy car, a little sports car convertible when I was in high school. So my parents gave me a lot. But something strange was going on in that household. And I couldn't have told you what it was. I couldn't have told you how to do with my dad's drinking because it looked like such a fun time going on.

And it was such a daily way of life. I couldn't have said, eating macaroni and cheese is really wrecking this family. Any more than I could have said my dad's drinking. Now, my dad is in his early eighties, and he shared with me that he's gonna do three things for the rest of his life. And he named him like sporting events.

He said I'm gonna fish, I'm gonna play golf, and I'm gonna drink. And thanks to Allen on, I can say I love you, dad. He's one of the most incredible men you'd ever wanna hang out with. He's just he's just an incredible man. I never heard my parents argue about anything other than my dad's drinking.

And my mother was one of the women that would wait. You know, we'll wait for supper. We'll wait to ask your dad if you can go to the prom. We'll wait, and we'll wait till your dad comes home. So things were happening in that household that I didn't know was affecting me until I got into Al Anon as an adult.

And I got my hands on some of the alateen literature. And I don't care which program you're in, you take this little pop quiz, a little twenty questions of it's alateen for you, and maybe you'll realize that we're sometimes not the first flowers to bloom in the garden. That some things were going on in a household that would have allowed us to qualify for alatine. Like, did you stay out of the house as much as possible? I did.

I'd be at school, and I'd be wondering what was going on at home. I'd be at home and I'd be thinking of a way I could get out of there. Were holidays frequently interrupted? Did you think that nobody loved you? Just take this little quiz and read the Alatine literature.

It has got simple language that goes straight to the heart. And it's got recovery in it. And it makes you understand that maybe why you didn't do so well on that math test is in the 7th grade is because your mind was someplace else. I really recommend it. So that time that I was living in that household with my parents who gave me a lot of love and gave me a lot of stuff and they still continue to love me and give me a lot of stuff, I still begin to get that hollowness inside, that empty space, that vast abyss that I didn't know what to fill it up with.

I think now that I was started working on what I've now come to call step 0. I had a big nothing in my stomach, and I was looking for something. So I chose to stay home and go to college and still live with my parents because I I still kinda had to keep an eye on the situation even though I think I thought I needed to get out of it. And I'm on this college campus, and I look over and I see this young man. And I could have given him one of these business cards.

My heart went pitter patter, and something must have pitter patter in him because in 2 weeks, he asked me to marry him. And we went in and announced to my parents that we were gonna get married. And they started asking difficult questions like, don't you think he should have a job first? You know? And we're going, that's just details.

We'll work it out. Because you see, we were very, very much in love. I graduated from high school in 1964, for those of you that need some dates to work with. I married this young man in 1965. And quite honestly, back then I'd been a good girl for about as long as I could be.

And so I married this young man and my parents gave us a perfect wedding. The gown, white gown coming down the center aisle. And we lived happily ever after for the 1st week. And then to celebrate our marriage of 1 week, my then husband brought home 2 of his best friends. Now we were still college students and Cliff, I think, was probably in my husband's history class.

And they came in carrying their other best friend, and that was Bud, in the cooler. So that night, I saw Cliff, my husband, and Bud have a party to celebrate our 1 week anniversary. And I saw Cliff, our friend, kind of pass out or maybe go to sleep on our couch. And I saw my husband kind of pass out or go to sleep on our bed. And we lived in a very small apartment.

In fact, it could fit in this room. It could fit in half of this room. And I took the pre Al Anon stance, hands on my hip, looking around at these guys like they're a bunch of fallen trees. And I had a conscious thought, I am not going to let him get away with this. He's not gonna get drunk to celebrate our being married for 1 week.

I'd never seen him drink before. And I thought, he's not gonna get away with this. So that night, I was always one of these pre alanines that I would come up with a plan or a script or control, whatever whatever title you want to call it. But I just knew if I did what I was supposed to do, then and I could make you do what you were supposed to do. So that night, to show my husband he could not get away with getting drunk on our 1 week anniversary, to show him I slept in the bathtub.

It seemed like a great plan at the time, and you know, the next morning, he's got this horrible hangover. I've got this horrible backache, and it was kind of a hangover and a backache that lasted for 16 years. And 2 wonderful daughters, you know. We we just started doing the dance. Now this young man had a little trouble finding himself.

He just really couldn't get settled down. And that kind of meant I couldn't get settled down because he couldn't get settled down. But, we'd been married about 3 years when our first daughter was born. And for some reason, I thought when they sent you home from the hospital with this baby, you also got little unwritten instructions that said, here are the diapers. Here's here's how you take care of the baby, giving him a bath.

And now you're gonna be adults. You know, I thought parent equaled being an be equaled meaning being an adult. So now we're gonna live happily ever after. But in truth, it didn't get better. In fact, it got more desperate because there were more bills and more, uncertainty about what was going to happen.

So accidentally and truly accidentally, my husband got a job. I mean, he went to a local club, like at a Holiday Inn. It was a Holiday Inn, and he went and auditioned for the lounge act. He was a very good singer and he could play the guitar. And at that point in time, every remodel, every Holiday Inn had a lounge.

It was a private club. You had to pay a dollar to become a member. And they all had entertainment. And now he started making more money than we had seen in 1 week, that we had seen like in 6 months. I mean, he now has a job.

And that Holiday Inn asked him to go to another Holiday Inn 30 miles away. And that Holiday Inn asked him to go to another Holiday Inn a 100 20 miles away. And I've got this young baby, and he's out there singing. And I thought, well, I can't let him go off without adult supervision. So I packed up all the diapers, and I packed up the hot plate, and I started being the camp follower.

And I followed this man around from Holiday Inn to Ramada all over Texas. At this point in time, we didn't even have a permanent address. We didn't have any place to pick up mail because we were the rolling stone. We were just going on down the road. And when I first got into Al Anon, I look back at that year, that 16 years of marriage.

The times that we did not have an address, we also moved 13 times in 16 years with an address. We call those geographic cures. You gave me a name for that. And when this young man would stand in front of me and he'd say, let's go to Houston. I'd say, okay.

And it's not that he ever was trying to set me up. He really believed it too. I think we desperately try to outrun this disease And we pack up the dishes and the books and the disease and we move on down the road. You know, 13 moves in 16 years, that sounds like a lot. I I think if you go over there in that archives room and really do some research, that Lois and Bill Wilson had 52 different mailing addresses.

We desperately try to outrun this disease. So here we are living in hotels and my husband's coming home from work every night. Now he kind of looked like and acted like and smelled like he'd been to a party. But it was work, because he's going down to the club every night singing. And and he's having a really good time.

And I am living upstairs with a with a toddler by now. And I'm looking at 4 walls and reruns, and I'm pretty bored. And I don't know anybody. And I'm I think, well, I come up with a plan. So I announced 1 Friday afternoon to my husband, I said, I'm going to be the drummer in the band.

He said, have you ever played drums before? I said, that's just details. We'll work it out. I took our bass player, who is who is now a very successful musician in Nashville. But then he was part of our band.

I took him to a pawnshop. $50 I plopped down and I bought a whole trap set of drums. I had a bass drum. I had 2 ride toms, a floor tom, a hi hat, a crash cymbal, a snare drum. Monday night, I was the drummer in the band.

You cannot tell me we are not determined people. I thought I had to be there to stand by my man. And so I would play drums night after night, night after night. And we would travel around and we'd get some, local high school girl to take care of our daughter upstairs. And now we're doing this fantastic life.

We'd come into a town and our name would be up there on the marquee. We're becoming very, very successful. Other bands like to come and make music with us. The after hours party, you might remember some of those. That means the law says you can't serve any more alcohol.

We lock the door and we take the party all night long. And many, many, many nights, the babysitter would have to go home because she was a high school kid. And she had to get up early the next day. And I've got this baby upstairs, and I don't wanna miss the fun. So I would go upstairs and I'd take the phone off the hook and I'd put it by my daughter's head on her pillow.

And I'd go downstairs where the party was going on and the and and the drink is happening and the music is happening. And I'd take that phone off the hook in the club and I'd lay it down. And I'd make music all night long. And every now and then, I'd take a break. And I'd go over and I'd listen to that phone to see if that baby was awake, that young girl was awake.

And I thought I was a really good mom. And and and now I look back on that and it seemed like such a good plan. But what insanity to leave like a 2 year old up in a hotel room by herself. What if there had been a fire? What if somebody had broken in?

What if she, you know, she she did get into the med the her baby aspirin and her cough syrup one time, and I had it up on the clothes rack. She climbed up there and got it one time. I mean, this was but it seems so sane at the time. I guess the days before I got into recovery could best be described like in her step. I mean, we were living in insanity, and we were calling it insane.

It was unbelievable. So, here we are making music and traveling all over. And we had just really had a hard time, but a successful time. And I think finally this young man comes to me. And he says, let's move to Nashville, Tennessee.

And I thought, great. What better place for a musician and a songwriter to be? This has to be the end of the moves. So our they're 8 years between our girls. And so, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and our youngest daughter turned a year old.

And now we're gonna be at the end of it. All this traveling, we are gonna live happily ever after. And what happened in Nashville, Tennessee, the music industry is very, very serious. And sometimes what happens with the progression of the disease, taking care of the party becomes more important than taking care of the business. And I saw this man become disillusioned.

He did not get, he got some success, but not a lot. It didn't come fast enough. And he came to me one day and he said, get packed. We're leaving. We're going back to Texas.

And I have to tell you, I stood there very, very old and very, very worn out and very, very used up. And I only could say I can't. I cannot pack one more time. And he said, well, I guess we get a divorce. And I said, well, I guess we do.

And this man that had fathered my 2 daughters, the gentleman next door was an attorney and he brought up a simple divorce. And, and that husband packed up all of his music instruments and he took off to Texas. And, he's living there happily ever after. He started a new family with a new wife. And just recently, circumstances happened that we could we had to we hung out together for 2 or 3 days.

And, you know, it it was it was a gentle time because I was able to thank him for the for these 2 wonderful daughters he gave me. I was able to thank him for ever getting me to Nashville, Tennessee. It ended up being a wonderful place for me to grow up as an adult, you know, and to get into program. And I keep him in my prayers every day because he's the natural father of my children. Meanwhile, it's my story and we're the little family left in the rearview mirror as he pulls out of the driveway.

And here's the mom whose resume says drummer in the band. Here's the here's the preteenage daughter and here's a little 3 year old. And, and I'm at a loss. But the same attorney that handled the divorce, he said, there's a gentleman that has a commercial real estate company on the same floor, the 25th floor of the First American Center downtown. That's one of the high rises, very, very prestigious office building.

He said, this guy, you go talk to him. He's looking for somebody to an office manager. And, man, I didn't realize that my character defects of control could be used so skillfully. I go down and I sometimes slip and say, I go down I went down and auditioned for that job because that's what we always used to do in the band. We auditioned.

We never interviewed. We auditioned. But I interviewed for that job and I got it. And all of a sudden, I am managing. I am managing this office.

I am managing shopping centers. I'm managing my family at home because, my I taught my daughter to take care of the house and the little girl's gonna be the family. And I'm out there managing things. And I have to tell you that I took to working the same that anybody would with any drink or drug. I, got my broker's license and I started working in commercial real estate.

And I started making a lot of money because now we're gonna live happily ever after, my girls and me. Because mom's gonna bring home in a lot of money. And I have to tell you, I turned the back on my girls the same anybody would being obsessed by a drug or a drink. I would give them messages like, just get yourself off to school. I've gotta go for a power breakfast meeting.

I've gotta network a little bit here. Or I'd call them and I'd say, y'all just stick something in the microwave because mom's got some very important clients in from out of town. Now what's that message to them? Very important clients. Y'all just y'all just get your little life done and and I'll be over here taking care of this.

So that was the lifestyle that I did for for several years, really, really being very successful. And I got a lot of strokes. I was a female in a mostly male dominated business. And I got great rewards from society saying, go girl, from my family because I was making a lot of money. You know, it it just it looks so neat.

And yet, it it was a horrible time now that I look back on it. I was it was desperate, a desperate time. So we get the Christmas pictures 1 year, and I look at them. There's the mom, there's the teenage daughter, there's the little daughter. We don't look happy.

What's missing from this picture? A man. I'm now in my mid thirties. I don't think I have a lot of time, so I marry my boss. Now this man, when I went to work for him, he'd been asking me out, but he was married at the time, and he kept saying, that's just details.

We'll work it out. And, does this not look like a Cinderella story? Here is a man who marries his secretary, who had become very successful. He adopts her 2 children. He moves us into a mansion, literally a mansion.

It had 6 bathrooms and it was right across the street from the governor's mansion. And now I know we are going to live happily ever after because we are putting my girls in private school. We are wearing designer clothes. We are driving brand new automobiles. We have about 6 sailboats.

We are traveling all over the world. We're in all of the right clubs, like friends of the wine club and the 100 year old cognac club. And we're the movers and shakers. And it looks like we're having a great, great time. But but something very scary was going on in that household.

Some unbelievable things were going on behind closed doors. And and I say that was the time that we were the looking good, feeling bad family. I mean, we were like a movie set. It looks so great up here and you walk behind it and some frightening things were going on. And, I would go to my, people at my church and I'd say, I think I'm going going crazy or something's not right with my life.

And they would look at my lifestyle and my mailing address. And they'd say, what do you have to complain about? So I'd go away. I'd go into my doctor and I'd say, I am I am really losing it. Something very, very strange is going on in my life.

And he would look at my mailing address and my lifestyle, and he'd say, what do you have to complain about? So I'd go away. Things got really bad, and, I didn't think a second film marriage would look good on my resume since it was kinda short anyway. So I took that man into kicking and screaming, actually, into marriage counseling. It was a buzzword at the time, and I'd pick this doctor out of the yellow pages.

And we would go in to this doctor every time we'd have a fight. And I would immediately start weeping and weeping uncontrollably. And I was a pretty altogether woman because I was a businesswoman. And my husband, who was, would sit there and after a while, he would fold his arms and actually totally shut down. I mean, just go away.

And the good doctor on his side of the desk, he would listen and watch for a little while. And then after a while, I think out of boredom, he would pick up a paper clip. And I remember this time and time again. He'd pick up this paper clip and he would undo it and he'd get it just right and it would look like a little helicopter. And he'd kinda twirl it and, you know, and, you know, and then then he'd look at his watch and he'd say, oh, you're out of time.

He'd say to me, he said, you're too sensitive and you're not sensitive enough. And he'd send us away. And we'd do this. We'd meet with him over and over again. And he'd tell me, you're not you're too sensitive and you're not sensitive enough.

And we'd go away. And every time we'd have one of these ferocious fights, we'd also make up by having some kind of wonderful little honeymoon. I mean, we'd go to South America. We'd go to Jamaica. We'd we'd go to Canada.

We traveled all over. I mean, what an incredible life this looked like. It's always in the telling. This looked like a true fairy tale living happily ever after. But we were on one of those little, we were gonna go on it was in February, and we were gonna go on one of those little honeymoon trips.

And and my husband and his friend left for the it was for Valentine's Day. They went on down to Miami a couple of days early. And the girlfriend and I were supposed to come a couple of days later. Now you figure out why these guys had to go a couple of days early to get ready for our vacation. You can figure that one out.

So these guys go on down there and we fly into the Miami airport and I had just finished up a really big deal. And I was exhausted. I mean, it was a big one one of the biggest things that I'd ever been involved with. And it just closed and it was a celebration, but I was absolutely exhausted. And so they pick us up at the Miami airport and we start that day out with road trip.

That's road trip with a capital r. You might remember those. And they had the cooler and they had the fun and they had the music on. And I'm in the back seat. I'm just exhausted.

And we traveled all that day without stopping for to eat or anything, just to party on wheels. And finally, the end of that day, it's probably about 9 o'clock, maybe 10, we finally end up in the lower Florida Keys at a very nice restaurant. I know it was nice because I do remember it had tablecloths. I know it was very nice. And we're sitting there for our holiday and this other couple is right across from us.

And I look around and I'm I'm gonna have this nice meal of seafood. And oh, we are gonna live happily ever after. I just know it. And then I said something wrong. I said, pass the salt, please.

Or I said, please pass the salt. But whatever I said, it was wrong. And what I know now is I saw the monster of the disease show up in my husband's face. And I recognized it, and I knew there was gonna be a scene for some reason, and it was gonna be ugly. And it was gonna be loud and it was gonna be public because we had played that scene before.

And something in me snapped. I said, that's it. I'm leaving. I'm going home. And they thought I was going back to the hotel.

I went over to the cash register's desk, and I called a taxi. We were in this small town that probably only had about 4 or 5 city blocks. And I called this little cab, and this little cab driver picked me up and where where to ma'am? And I said, take me to the Miami airport. I'd seen it done in the movies, you know.

And this is, you know, many, many miles away. And this little cab driver was trying to explain something to me. But I was so distraught, I couldn't figure it out. And I had traveled a lot. And I'm pretty sophisticated.

To tell you the truth, I've never been home with a cab driver before. And that's what he was telling me, that he was taking me home with him. And about the time I should be concerned about this, as we pull up in his driveway, his wife opens the door and she says, hey, honey, come on in here and wait inside. He says she says, that cab won't make it to Miami. He's gotta go get the big van ready to take you.

So you come wait inside. So I go up there and I step into their house, which was really almost like one room. Maybe they had a bedroom over here. But I stood there at the threshold of this house and I stopped because it was a home. I backed up.

She was folding clothes there on the couch. And she had some kind of wonderful soup or gumbo cooking back there at the back. The kitchen was just on the back wall of this room. And I thought, this feels so safe. And I'm going back to that Cole mansion with 6 bathrooms, but this feels so safe.

And she said, you look kind of rough. Is there anything I can do for you? And I said, well, I would like to buy a pair of those cotton socks that you were I'm always a business person. I'd like to buy a pair of those cotton socks because I had on a sundress and some sandals. And this was in February, and and, Nashville had had a pretty good snow for Nashville, and I knew I was going back to that.

And and I'd walked out without anything. And I said, I'd like to buy a pair of those socks. And she said, honey, I'll just give them to you. So she gave me those socks. And and I say she trusted me with her husband because I really was a distraught woman.

And I also always like to add, they were very good business people. They made me pay them in cash. I was a distraught woman. I mean, you know, just hysterical. You know, you've heard I was a hysterical woman, I guess.

So he but, you know, I've got a plan. I'm gonna get to the Miami airport. I'm gonna get on a plane. I'm gonna go back to Nashville, Tennessee. I'm on a run.

I'm on a run here. And we get back early early morning at the airport, and there were no planes going to Nashville. In fact, there were no planes going anywhere. And so I called to get a hotel room. No big deal.

I'll stay the night in Miami. But there was a sailboat show going on and some kind of automobile race going on. And there was not a room to be had. Trust me. I could have found a room.

I can negotiate a deal. I could but there was no rooms to be had. So my only option was wait until there was an early flight out to just spend the night there in the airport. Doesn't sound like a big deal. And I don't think it is now.

But that particular night and that part of the airport where I was, it was under construction. And it was open to the street. And this very sophisticated businesswoman that had a lot of money in the bank spent the night like a bag woman just trying to stay safe. I mean, it was a rough, rough night, a rough few hours. And I'm moving trying to keep on where the light they kept turning the lights off.

I guess they were closing that part down. And I just kept moving on a little bit more. And some of these not so comfortable people just kept kind of, you know, stalking and moving around. And it was a difficult night. And I ended up, with my back against the wall, praying.

Now I probably hadn't prayed since the now I lay me down to sleep with my daughters. But with my back up against the wall, I prayed. And the prayer sounded like this. God, my life is unmanageable. That was my prayer.

My life is unmanageable. That morning, I get a flight out and I go to our very nice house. I don't even go to my bedroom because it was not a comfortable place. My oldest daughter is in college, and the young daughter was over with the babysitter. And I go into my small daughter's bedroom and I climb into her twin bed with all the stuffed animals and all the little pink furniture around.

And I did what I've been taught to do. I waited for him to come home. That's the only thing I knew to do. I waited. And when this man came through the door, he was angry.

I was this man's 4th wife. And the first thing he said to me was, no woman has ever walked out on me before. And you embarrassed me in front of my friends. And now there's gonna be a scene and it's gonna be awful. It's gonna be really severe.

But I had that moment of clarity. And remember the doctor? The one that twirled the helicopter? I said to my husband, I said, every time we have a fight, we go see the doctor. Why don't we go see him now?

And he stopped and I'm just trying to buy some time. And because I was very organized, the phone list was there. I called this doctor. You used to have to call weeks weeks ahead of time to even get an appointment with this doctor. And now I call and I say, can we get in to see the doctor?

And the young receptionist says, well, yes, somebody just canceled. And if you can be here within 15 minutes, the doctor can see you. Unbelievable. We get in our car, and and it's only about 10 minutes away. And and I wanna tell you what that 10 minutes of a lifetime what it felt like.

We know that anger is very, very noisy. I'm talking about a lamp hitting a wall. I'm I'm talking about dishes hitting the floor. I'm talking about skin hitting skin. We know anger is very, very noisy.

But the silent anger in that car was absolutely deadly. Silence is so very, very frightening. He is white knuckling it all the way to that doctor. And I am in my side of the door as far as I can be to get away from him. So we go into this good doctor's office and I sit there and my husband sits there and the doctor goes around on his side of the desk and he says, look, before you start talking, he says, I need to tell you something.