The Miami Valley Winter Conference in Dayton, OH

Hi, everybody. My name is Brenda Watson. I'm a very grateful member of Al Anon. And like my husband said, before my ego takes over, I want to thank the committee. I wanna thank these gals.

I wanna thank, this state. It's such a fun state. When I told a friend of mine, he says, he says, what are you doing this week? I said, I'm going to Dayton, Ohio. He says, Dayton, Ohio.

He says, what is what is in Dayton, Ohio? I said, oh, a lot of fun, I'm sure. And I was really looking forward to come and see you. And you all have been so welcoming. And Paula, thank you.

Where are you Paula? There you are. Thank you picking us up from the airport and thank you for that wonderful room that we have. Hope you love it. You're a tremendous hostess.

Thank you for that wonderful dinner last night. I mean you guys really do know how to treat guests and thank you because I know that we need to be to feel welcome. I'm certainly not a circuit speaker so you might not get your money's worth tonight. But I'm a very grateful member of Al Anon. And absolutely, this program has transformed my life completely.

And I stand here before you, a woman in recovery with dignity with my head up looking into your eyes because of this program. I wouldn't be doing it any other way. But let me tell you a little bit about what it used to be like and what happened and what it's like today because that's what I was taught. I was born into a normal alcoholic home. And there were a lot of strange things.

And the theme here that I have heard through the day is, family recovery. You know, I love hearing Ben. That was so precious. He was just so precious telling us his story and having trouble telling us his story. And it's family recovery, how alcoholism affects those who are not drinking.

You know? Who I I mean, it used to be said, I think they still said, you know, that one alcoholic touches the lives of at least 35 people. And it was true then and it is true today. And I was born to this home and I was born in Guatemala City, Central America, which was the nature of my first resentment because I felt like sort of place like many of us feel, Elena, like I was totally born in the wrong place. And there were a lot of there was alcoholism at its best going on in my home.

My mother was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen young. And she was 17 and she met him, my father. And my father was 15, I think 15 years older than her. And he was a real savvy alcoholic and very handsome. And he came into this little town and my mom just fell, you know, fell in love and just, you know, was crazy about this man.

And, in the meantime, my grandmother, who was, my mother's mother, was married to this other alcoholic who was my grandpa, who I absolutely love my grandpa. My grandpa was not a mean alcoholic. He was always happy, you know. That was my introduction to to drinking that I saw is that my grandpa drinks and he's happy. My grandma doesn't and she's so unhappy.

She was very much like Bonnie's mom. She was the meanest woman in the world. She was just mean and happy, bitter, etcetera, etcetera. And there's my mom just adorable as she could be. And and this man kept on promising her the world and, she kept on having babies.

She was a good Catholic. And I think about the time she had the 4th child, she realized he wasn't gonna get divorced. So you see, as as I came into this family, into this world, there was already a secret. There was already alcoholism was keeping a secret in our family. And there was a feeling of dirtiness and cheapness and shame from the very beginning.

From the moment I was born, there was this feeling of shame and we're keeping it secret. And of course they were keeping it secret. And what happened is after year after year of getting a telegram from my father on my birthday, my mother got a little tired and she said, Honey, I have to tell you that and she didn't need to disclose this to me, but she was in our program and she said, all those telegrams that you received on your birthday are not from your father. They're really from me. I'm the one that has been sending it to you.

And I discovered this, you know, the secret, you know, and and the reason why my father kept us a secret from his family. I have come to find out many, many years later that my father had about 23 to 24 children that we know of with 6 different women. I'm still finding them in the Internet now, you know, with that. Through the wonderful world of the Internet, I get this little email. By the way, is there any way that so and so could be your father?

And I go, here we go again. One more. And my father was a very sick man, an alcoholic. But at that time when I was a kid, I just adore my parents. I thought they were my heroes.

Kept them in a very high place. They were my mother was beautiful. My father was extremely intelligent and I had, you know, nothing but admiration for them. The one that I really could not stand was my grandmother. And my mother left us when I was about 7.

She came to the United States because when she realized he wasn't gonna divorce his, you know, his wife, he she escaped. She ran away from him because that's the only way she knew. That's the only tool she knew was to run away, leave her children behind which was one of the biggest sacrifice she could have made. But that's the only tool she knew and she came to the United States and she left us with Hitler's sister which was my grandma. And my grandma instead of being a sweet loving grandma became our parent, both parents and she was angry and she beat us and there was a lot of physical abuse and because she was so focused on her alcoholic, my grandpa being drunk, she didn't see the type of things that were going on in our home.

And there were things that happened to children that shouldn't happen to children because we are blinded by the disease of alcoholism because we're so focused on someone else that we can't see what they're doing to the children. And there were stuff that was done to me early on that was to awaken a lot of different stuff that shouldn't have been awake at that age. And I started to, you know, grow up in this home where I just had, like, the fantasy of having parents. My biggest dream was that my mom and father will come for Christmas. I mean, I was like every year, you know, I made this big long greedy list to Santa Claus but at the top of that list was but I would I would much rather have my mom and my dad.

I don't want any of the rest if you could bring my mom and my dad. And that, of course, never happened. And what it did for me, it was that I always carry this empty feeling and this feeling of I'm not loved. I'm not loved. I'm not wanted.

And very early on, I was chasing boys. I was chasing boys at a very lucky young age. And I discover that if I can use my beauty or whatever I had, I would use it and I could attain I could get your attention. You know? And I didn't care how I would get it.

And I was, you know, I was flirting with very older men when I was a child. And children shouldn't have to be doing this kind of stuff, you know, and I didn't know it was wrong. And I didn't know that I had learned it, you know, that I was innocent at one point and that I learned it from someone else. And today, I have a daughter. I have a child who is innocent.

And I think that's exactly what I was like. So I get to relive that in a sense that I was robbed of by the disease of alcohol as I get to relive it today. And so I was chasing HIMSS for a long, long time before I got to this program and chasing that feeling of comfort of just hold me and tell me that it's going to be okay. And of course, they couldn't give me that. I was always going to the hardware store for milk.

I was always going to the well the empty well for water, always, always, always. And then something wonderful happened to me. I came to the United States in 1976. My mother brought us over here because there had been an earthquake in Guatemala and she was afraid that something would happen to us and that she wouldn't be with us. So she brought us here and I landed in the very, very perfect place.

I was 17 and I landed in Hollyweird. And Hollyweird was my type of place. It was exciting and fun, full of mirrors, full of boys dancing with boys, girls with girls, dogs with dogs and it was just so fun. It was exciting and it translated to me freedom, you know. I came to the United States and I started to hear that what my grandmother had done to me when I was a kid was called child abuse.

You know, I thought it was discipline. That's what I grew up with. You know, it was that that's the way everybody in my country was disciplined. And I started to hear that if somebody hurts you, you can call the police and call the police on them. And that if I turn 18 that I was free to do whatever I wanted to do.

And I was so happy to hear that. I was just so glad. And then my life took a complete different turn, Complete different turn. Because all I cared about was my freedom, fun, partying, Who cares about the consequences? I dropped out of high school, which was a really hard thing because I had been a great student up until then.

But I thought, God, I'm so much smarter than these teachers. I was in 11th grade and I was much smarter than these teachers. And why go to school when I can go to a party? And parties will start on Wednesday and end on Sunday. And that's what my whole life revolved around.

It was just partying, being around people. I love people. I love, you know, socializing. I love to walk into a room. That's why I love meetings, and I love because we walk in and it's, like, so fun.

You know, there's there's people. I I was not a loner because when I was alone, it was the demons that would come and hunt my head. You know? The demons of what had happened when I was a kid. The demons of my father was never there.

The demons of I hate my grandmother, I hope she dies. Those type of demons, those were the ones that I was that I had when I was alone. So I didn't wanna be alone. I wanted to be with people all the time. And my whole life revolved around setting up you know, parties and going to parties and being with people, and I had a great time.

I had an absolute great time. And then I, something happened in 1986 that really changed my life. And it got me into a spiritual path, you know, and it got me to see that I could, you know, come to know a different God. You know, I I had been raised Catholic and, as being raised in Catholic religion, I knew I was already going to hell. So I might as well sin as much as I can sin because, you know, like like Sean said it, you you know, you thought it, you've done it.

So and I thought a lot too. So, you know, I might as well react on it and really go to hell. So, you know, I had absolutely no god of my understanding. I had a very punishing god, and I had no concept no concept of god, you know, and I didn't wanna have anything to do with God. But at that time, something happened to me.

You know, after a period of time of many, many years of destroying my life, you know, God gave me an opportunity to walk in, you know, in the sunny side of the street. And my spiritual journey began. But I had no clue what the problem of Al Anon was for a long, long time. There were rumors and they talked about those Al Anon and they talked about HODERIS and ALANON. There were very few ALANONs that I ever saw and they were not somebody I would want to hang out with.

They look weak. They look boring. They look they were not my kind of people. And I didn't understand what the problem of Alan was until there was one day that I called, Clancy. Because I had heard that Clancy was a person that helped alcoholics.

And my mother was killing herself. You know, I had come to the United States and I had seen what alcoholism had done to my mother. She had married another man and she had a child with this man and my mother was getting beaten up by this man on a regular basis. She was leaving apartments full of furniture, leaving with this baby in the middle of the night so she could run away from him, so she could get back to him. And when I came here and I came to see that my mother fell off that pedestal that I had her in.

And I started to watch her deteriorate and just destroy her life and destroy all of us along with her. And remember at '17/18 having fist fights with my mom, pulling hair, pulling the knife away from her arm so she wouldn't slash her wrist and the drama and the getting in the car in the 502 and they're going to pick her up and she's naked by the liquor store. You know, that's not the kind of stuff that a child wants to see in their parents, you know. And I have to see it. And what happened is it made me very callous.

It made me very cold, and it made me tough and you're not going to get to me. And I started to treat my mother like a piece of nothing. I took away at her dignity. I didn't treat her like my mother. I treated her like I was her mother and that I knew best and I knew what was better for her and I was gonna help her.

I was gonna help her. I was gonna tell her what to do and treatment after treatment center and after going to a I still have a piece of paper and I keep it as a souvenir of my own disease. Or where it says that my mother had been admitted to the general hospital for 50 57 times of alcohol dehydration. And I can guarantee you I was probably there 50 of the 57 times because I loved her so much and I couldn't believe that she couldn't help herself or that somebody couldn't help her. So my last phone call was to Clancy because I had heard some people heard me complain about my mother for years and it's amazing they tolerated me as much as they tolerated me.

I was used to taking her inventory, taking everybody's inventory and they tolerated me, they didn't say anything. They mentioned Al Anon But they didn't say go to Al Anon, they just mentioned it. Until I talked to Clancy and I called them and I said, Clancy, my mother is killing herself. I need to commit her to an insane asylum or some place where she can get better. And he said the magic words.

It sounds to me like you gotta go to Al Anon. Boom. You know, hang up the phone. At one sentence, it was very simple. You know, one sentence he sent me he sentenced me to Al Anon.

That's what he did. You know? And, coming from a man like him, you know, I heard him. I heard him. But I thought, oh my god.

You know, why am I gonna go here? So I went to my first Al Anon meeting. And, it was February 7, 1991. And for the grace of God, I haven't had to leave this program since February 7, 1991. And I walked into this meeting.

My sister went with me because I was such a drama queen and I just said you have to come with me and she was supportive and so she took me. And we walked into this church in the valley and it was full of people very much like you and everybody was laughing and everybody was joyful. And I couldn't understand why they were laughing. You know? I was hurting so bad and I was crying and my mother is killing herself for God's sake.

How can you laugh? How can you laugh at the disease of alcoholism? I didn't understand that. I really did not understand how you could laugh at the disease of alcoholism. So at the end of the meeting, they had 10 minutes for newcomers questions.

Now what I heard is 10 minutes for a newcomer question. So you know what I did. Waste my hand right away because I wasn't shy and I got up and I took those 10 minutes to tell them exactly what I thought about Alcon. And how dare they laugh and how dare they do this kind of stuff. People are hurting and people are dying of alcoholism and the room was very quiet, very quiet.

And at the end of my share, my 10 minute share, they came up to me and they said welcome to Al Anon, we're glad you're here and they gave me phone numbers and they said keep coming back. Keep coming back. And they weren't judged they weren't judgmental. If they did, they didn't show it. You know?

They were just kind. And I thought I don't want to have anything to do with these women. They were well dressed. They looked like they had it all together. They did not look like they were suffering from the disease of alcoholism like I was.

So anyway, like next day, I'm going to another meeting and I run into this other Al Anon woman who has left Al Anon since and it's interesting like my husband talked about the angels, the angels that get us to the right place. She took me to this place and she's never been back since. I see her but she's not in the program of Al Anon. And she took me to what's my home group today which the Thursday night stepped up Al Anon meeting in Westchester. And of course, you are welcome to come whenever you come to Los Angeles.

And I walked into this room and it was actually not on a Thursday night, it was on a Monday night that I went into, but it was the same group of people. And the thing that impressed me the most was that they didn't talk about God or at least I didn't hear it that night. Night. I'm sure they talked about God. But it was a small room, you know, mostly women, a few men, and they didn't talk about God.

And I thought, oh, good. I'm glad they're not talking about him because he is so on my blacklist, you know. He is not doing good with me. So they didn't talk about God and and I cried through the whole meeting. And I'm not a crier at that time.

At that time, I'm a tough woman. I'm a callous woman. Like Bonnie said, I can be the meanest woman in the world and I can just tear you apart in seconds. But at that moment everything broke down and I heard a few things. One of the things that I heard is Al Anon is spoken here.

I was coming from another 12 step program but it was extremely important to me that I remain brand new in the problem of Al Anon and that I didn't mix it up with any other knowledge. As a matter of fact I said the set aside prayer which some of you may know. I just asked God to please set aside everything that I thought I knew about the 12 steps and about the program of Al Anon and to help me to start new and to just help me to hear something that would help me. And I started to come into the program of Al Anon and coming to meetings and and, I rapidly got a sponsor. Someone that I didn't know who she was.

You know? If I hadn't known who she was, I would have never gotten her because like my husband said, it was like a pact with the devil. And she was a very strong member of the program of Al Anon. And she did not put up with a lot. And she asked me immediately.

She said, you know, when I asked her to be my sponsor, she said, wait, you you gotta go to meetings. You gotta commitments at those meetings and call me every day for the next 30 days at 7:30. Oh, God, I hated that call time because I could never make it at 7:30. No. I don't wake up that early.

And, but I was I made it and I made it through the 30 days and she said buy all the literature. It was like June or July. No, I mean that was February. But for some reason they were having some type of literature month or something. She said buy all the Allergan literature you can and start reading it.

No, she said buy all the literature and I failed to understand that what you wanted me to do was to read it. I never read it. I just bought it. And but she did say one thing that started me in doing just it was very simple program for me in the beginning, very simple program. I thought you were going to teach me how to understand alcoholism because that's what I came for.

I came so you could teach me how to handle my mom and how to handle her drinking. And I mean there are a lot of other drunks in my family, everybody nobody is in the program. But the one that I was most concerned was with my mom and I knew that you were going to help me with helping my mother. And it took me a very, very long time in the program of Al Anon to know that the program was here for me and not for anybody else. For me and the type of relationship I have with you, you know, how I react to you whether you're alcoholic or not because sobriety bothers me a lot also.

Of. I found out well after being here for a while that sobriety really annoyed me. And she asked me to read the July 1st page in the ODOT and the one day at a time. And that was pretty simple stuff for me to do because I couldn't do any big things. And I read that over and over and over and over and over and over again.

And I started to learn that somebody else's happiness was not dependent on me. That I was to take care of me first and then to lead them to God because I was not in charge. It was such a hard thing to give away because I so thought I knew best that I knew there are characteristics of an Al Anon of my type, which is, you know, one is I know it all, I know what's best, I'm in control, I'm going to manage, manipulate, I'm going to mother and I'm going to be a martyr while I'm going along with it too. I love that, you know. I, I do a lot of stuff for others but I'm gonna make sure that I get an award at the end of the day, And I'm the type that makes a tally, you know, that invisible tally of all the great things I've done for you and what you owe me and how you should treat me.

And when you walk in through that door, you better run to me and give me a kiss and tell me what a wonderful wife, what a wonderful mother I am, what a great human being. And if you don't do that, my expectations are down and you're down and you're out because you don't know how to appreciate me. So I know how to do a lot of that stuff and those characteristics have gotten me into a lot of trouble. But anyway, after I had been in the program for a while, she asked me to start walking the steps. And, it was it was like I had never read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the way that I read it, that I started to read it.

And I started to apply it to my own life. One of the exercises that I got was to read it in the iPhone in the beginning. It was like everything I did, I did, I did and to switch from drinking to controlling and thinking and manipulating and mothering and monitoring and doing all that stuff. It was great exercises. And I remember when I took my first three steps and my sponsor asked me the same thing that my husband talked about.

She said, after you take the steps, remarkable things will follow and look out for them because they will appear to you. And when I shared these steps with her, she was able to let me know that for years years years I have been blaming these people that were so extremely sick that never got a glimpse. And that's why I'm so grateful for conference and things like this that we put together because I know for a fact that less than a block away from here there's a kid that is looking through the window doing what Steve and Sean did when they were kids, you know, waiting for the car to pull up to see how their dad is doing today, you know. I know there's a woman that got beaten up last night. I mean, we saw it in the news last night or couple of nights ago here.

Was it last night? I think it was last night. I don't even remember how long long. This woman that came back from the Army and got beaten up by her boyfriend. We don't know, but most likely has to do with alcoholism and drugs.

And I know that within a block radius, there are children who are being mistreated, abandoned who were left alone because their parents went out drinking and they stayed at a bar and who knows what happened to them. And we get the opportunity, the privilege. I get the opportunity and the privilege to come and share with you a little bit about my past because my past is my greatest greatest gift that I have to give someone else that could help maybe a little bit a little bit of their pain, And I'm so grateful. I really am. I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to do this kind of a deal.

But, anyway, after I had been here and done the steps, remarkable things follow. And I started to see, my God, it was awful because it was like to me Al Anon is one of the slowest programs in the world. It is like it is so painfully slow because I would take one step forward and about 8 back. And my husband knew that I was going to Al Anon and many a times and my sister knew that I was going to Al Anon. And many a times they will say, well, what does Al Anon say about that?

And do you think you're working a good Al Anon program with that? And is that the way to make amends and all this stuff? And it seemed like the moment I arrived in Al Anon, my character defects just flourished. I mean, just, you know, what happened is I became aware of them. Them.

That's what happened because before that I was way too active, way too busy. You know, we're very busy women. And I was very busy, you know, taking care of everything and everybody else. And when I came to a halt and I was in Al Anon, I started to realize that I wasn't that great of a human being, you know, and that I had taken away at my husband's dignity, that I had taken away at my husband's masculinity, that I had taken away my mother's dignity and that I had disrespected my grandmother and all the stuff that I it was painful. But the greatest thing is that in the problem of Elena we get to share with one another and we get to say I understand, I've been there, I've done that.

I had done so much damage to my body that I didn't think I could get pregnant and that's why it took us so long to get pregnant. And I gave birth to this beautiful boy and we already had Taylor who was my stepson who has taught me tremendous things. And when my son came along, you know, I didn't know how to be a good mother. Even though I had, you know, I had had Taylor, I didn't have him on a full time basis, so I didn't know how to be a mother. And, and then I got pregnant with my daughter and my relationship with my husband.

You know, I always thought we were great and till I got to Elena. And then I started to think, oh my god, I have been mothering him to death. I've been doing this kind of stuff and I started to really hear a lot about me by listening to you. And I started to change. But like I said, I would take one step forward and I buy 8 back And I screwed up a lot.

I messed up constantly. And that's why my sponsor insisted that I will go to meetings, that I will take commitments, that I will sponsor other people, that I will take the steps, that I will pray on my knees. There is the 6 things my sponsor has me to do and she asked me to do them then and then she asked me to do them today and I still do them. And my sponsor has a sponsor and her sponsor has a sponsor. And I come from a long line of sponsorship and very strong sponsorship.

And they don't let me go very easy as you are going to hear. In 1996, my husband talked a little bit about it. I got the job. I was 5 years in Al Anon and I started to write for a newspaper, Spanish newspaper and I started to become someone. And there was an internal war that had happened in my country for 36 years and we had just signed the peace court and I became involved with all of that.

And it made me feel very important. And it made me feel like, well, a lot of people's calling is in the program. But maybe maybe my calling is some place else. You know, maybe I am to be of service to my country, to another place. So I started to travel to Guatemala and I started to do, you know, something very positive, very positive.

But in the meantime, what I was doing, it was giving me another life. And it was too hard to juggle life, you know. And then I found myself, you know, weighing £95 because I was juggling all these plates. I mean, a friend of mine showed me one day. He said, you know, here, hold this plate and hold this plate.

And I was holding all these plates. And pretty soon they all came crashing down. And she was, that's what you're trying to do. I was living a double life, and I was trying to keep secrets. And I wasn't telling you what I was doing.

And I will come into the meetings, and I will look into your eyes and my sponsor, I hated my sponsor during this time because she could see right through me. And I would walk in and kind of sneak through the back and go through the sides And she would tell me, she goes, how are you doing? I go, fine. Fine. Fine.

Good. Good. You know, and I would look down. Really good. Anything happening?

No. No. That's all. I'm leaving again in a week and it was like that kind of stuff. I was traveling a lot and I was coming and I was really just visiting.

That's what I was doing. I wasn't really working the program whatsoever. And the grace of God saved me and my sponsor was praying for me. And I remember getting these phone calls when I was in the deepest darkest moments when I knew that I was just that I was not wholesome. That the call of the wild had come for me and he had come disguised in this fabulous job, in this fabulous material world that, I was in full flight from reality.

And it can happen, you know, cold stone sober. It happens. I had taken off to a different fantasy world. And she called me a couple of times and she would say, you know, I'm praying for you. And I would just go, oh, god.

I said, why are you praying for me? I'm fine. I'm doing fine. Don't worry about me. And she said, okay, honey.

I'll see you at the meeting. And, you know, a few months later, I will get another phone call. And she says, I'm praying for you. I hated her. I just couldn't stand it because I knew she could see right through me.

And little by little bit, I remember we went to a woman's conference. I can't remember I think it was Arizona. I think it was bridging the gap or something like that. And she does the scandal light meeting that's very intimate and that opens up helps people to open up. Oh God I can't stand that.

And she said whoever is supposed to come will come and they do it very anonymously, you walk in, they sit down and whatever and of course you don't recognize my voice, I mean how anonymous is that. And I walked in and I basically took an inventory. I did an inventory and I think it was the most fearless I truly searched within me and became honest with my self and with another human being. And I love what Sean said because it is important that I do it with my sponsor because she's kept track of me. She knows me.

She knows where I've been. And it's important that she keeps on knowing where I'm going to. And she heard that inventory and she goes, woah. And she said, I'm glad that you're coming clean, and I'm glad that, you know, that you wanna do the right thing. And, and, of course, Steven and I were falling apart.

We're just falling apart. You know? It's very painful when you have worked so hard at, you know, having this wonderful sweet life, you know, great kids, great stepson, and then your whole life comes, you know, crumbling down, just a mess. And I had done it all on my own, all by myself. And the repairing time came.

After taking that inventory, she asked me to do my 6 and 7 and to make a list and to start making amends and to go through the whole 12 steps again. And to be honest, that was one of the hardest things for me to do is to be honest, to be honest with me and to be honest with her and to be honest with the rest of the world. And as soon as I did that, I was able to walk into my home group and lift my head up high and I feel like I was dirty again you know, because I for a long time, I felt like I was just dirty because all those secrets were just keeping me dirty. I used to have to take showers and I could not get clean. And I wonder why.

And it was because the dirt was inside of me and I couldn't get it out. You know? And, I'm so forever grateful that I came back into these rooms and that you restored our life because my husband said it's a very sweet life. And the reason why I'm crying is because he messed me up. I I have this whole talk plan.

You know how we have that talk plan? And, and when he talked, he messed me up because he talked you made it comfortable enough for him to talk about things that he doesn't regularly talk about. And he made me cry. He, you know, touched my heart. Because for Jesus, this happened in since 1999.

Because in 1998, he asked me for a separation. And then since 1999, you know, I've been working really hard, very hard in the program so we could repair the damage that I had done in sobriety. And, we're fortunate enough to look back. You know, I I have some incredible miracles that have happened as a result of me coming clean and doing all this kind of stuff. My dad who I hadn't seen in 15 years, I was able to make amends to my dad and was able to go sit down with him and tell him that I understood where he came from and that I didn't blame him for anything.

And this was a man that was never a part of my life that kept me a secret. You know? As a matter of fact, last year, I wanted him to meet my children and he could only give us 15 minutes. You know? And there were precious 15 minutes.

I wasn't judging him. I didn't feel like, god darn it. You know, my sisters were pretty pissed off because they said, you know, once again, all he can give us his 15 minutes. But I thought, you know, 15 minutes is better than nothing. You know, he may die.

And if he dies today, I'm so at ease with our relationship because I was able to make amends to him. And, it was interesting when my sponsor asked me to make direct amends because in the other 12 step program that I had been, my, my sponsor told me, oh, you don't need to make amends to that person. They did as much damage as you did to them. You know? You don't need to.

And I was like, oh, happy go lucky. You know? I don't have to make sure I come in. Well, my Al Anon sponsor had a different story. And she wanted me to make the recommends to several people, you know.

One of them was my father and the other one was my perpetrator, which is interesting that, you know, someone because I was a child, you know. And, but I had hated this man and this man was my uncle, you know, and I had hated him. And it was unbelievable. I did a lot of work in this area, and I was able to forgive him. And the amazing miracle that has happened is the last couple of years I've taken my children back to my homeland and they've gotten to spend time with him and his children.

And I'm able to take his in very poor financial conditions and all my children's clothes and all these clothes that I can I save through the whole year? I save clothes for him, for his children. And that doesn't happen anywhere except in the rooms of the program of Al Anon and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now that's where we get to repair that kind of damage. Well, I don't hate this man.

I don't take that poison of hating this man because we had what he had done to me. And I'm able to see him right straight into the eyes and see And my sweet grandma, Hitler's sister, remember her? You know, it's incredible because I had taken my grandmother's inventory. Many years before that, I had just, you know, tore her apart, blamed her, and told her exactly what I felt. You know, I was I think I was 21 or 22 when I did that.

Destroyed her. And I was able to make daily amends to my grandmother. My grandmother is still alive and she's still the meanest woman in the world. But the greatest magic is that she's the sweetest. She got see, she was robbed of the opportunity to be a grandma to me, You know?

And I didn't realize that. And that through the gift of the program, I'm giving her the gift to be a grandma to my children. So she gets to be the sweet grandma she wanted to be to us. She gets to be that to my children, And she treats them so well. And the other day, I gave a little whack to my son, you know, on her butt on his butt.

And my grandma goes, what are you doing? Don't hurt him. And I thought, oh my gosh. She's got Alzheimer's. She doesn't remember.

She doesn't remember the beating she used to give me. I mean, she was appalled that I had given him a little whack, you know, and and and I and I looked at her like, okay. And, she's forgotten. She treats my children like they are, you know, angels. So what a great opportunity that the program has given me to give her that gift.

And it's amazing. My mother, what a trip. She's sober. My grandmother my mother's sober. She's sober.

7 years this January. No help of mine whatsoever would really hurt my feelings because I had tried so hard. I had to just gone the extra mile. And she ended up getting sober. She ended up in a treatment program.

She went to AA for 6 months, went to a halfway house and has gone back to church, to her Catholic church. And she's been doing it ever since with church. And she's a spiritual woman and she's a sweet woman. And we had a business together, which was amazing because we had a business that was half in her drunkenness, which I was so I I went into tremendous debt. This is what Alenoz of my type do.

Because I thought if I give her something that she really loves to do and something that she really is interested, she will stop drinking. And I went into $33,000 of debt over this venture with my grand with my mom while she was still drinking. I mean, what kind of insanity is that? And my mother is a wonderful artist in the kitchen. She creates wonderful food and it was a wonderful business for 10 years and my mother got sober in that business and we got to close it successfully and be able to pay all those debts and be able to walk away and go on a vacation and say we had a great experience together.

And my mother's watching my kids this weekend. You know, she's staying at my house and she's staying with my mother-in-law, which is another story. I mean, I can't even go into this woman that has been I mean this is where I go where I get really touched is that you and I have an opportunity to sit here and this woman, you know, has been alone for the last 40 plus years, Steve, or something like that after the tragedies that happened in her life. Alcoholism took her husband. Alcoholism took her child, her daughter.