The 13th annual Fellowship of the Spirit in Silver Creek, CO

Oh my goodness. I told Gretchen a minute ago, I said, If it's a good introduction, check's in the mail. I said, If it's bad, I know what what car you drive. Checks in the mail. This this sounded really good 6 months ago.

You know. Come out to Colorado for the weekend. Yeah. Sure. An hour ago I was looking for a way out.

And, but then I know that's that's supposed to happen. My name is Sissy Country and I'm an Al Anon from Alabama. Hi, Sissy. That's why they give me a badge. Not so much so you know me, but so I don't forget who I am.

My home group's a Tuscaloosa Al Anon family group located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Right right real close to the University of Alabama. Roll Tide, Edith. Roll Tide. Roll Tide.

This year, those that the 13th this year, those that Alcoholics Anonymous group and that Al Anon group will celebrate 56 years in this program. And for that, yes, I'm truly grateful. I haven't been around that long, but they want me to just really kiss this thing, don't they? It's a couple of things that, thank you for that audio. Couple of things I need to cover before I get started into why I'm here.

First of all, the invitation to come out here. Thank you so much. A lot of you have come to me and told me that my dad was here 2 years ago, Beau. There's yeah. That rumors floating around.

And, he still talks about this convention. He still has just great wonderful things to say about this place. And so it's it's a great honor to be out here. But I wanna tell you that, you know, I'm from the south. Deep south.

And we we tend to know a thing or 2 about hospitality and about how to treat people, how to take care of people. But I'm here to tell you that when I get home Sunday, they're going to learn a few things about what Colorado's got going on. Bob and I have had the welcomeness as I have here. And you should be really really proud of that. It reflects all of you tremendously.

So thank you for that. I'm terrible on names. I'm good to remember myself. But those of you that have had an impact on me this weekend, the list goes on and on. And and it's been remarkable.

When we walked into the room on yesterday, the neatest little gift sitting there, so practical. It was a cooler full of water and snacks. All I've heard is drink water, drink water, drink water. And so and and it's what a nice nice wonderful gift to walk in and see that. And it was all ice cold and and, sitting there waiting on us.

And so I wanna thank the committee for, for that added little bonus. When I when I come to share my experience, strength, and hope, it affects me physically. Like I said earlier, about an hour and a half ago, I wanted to run. And I know that's a good thing for me because, my sponsor told me years ago if you get up there and you're sharing from your head, you don't need to be up there. And if you don't feel like you could throw up, then you're not sharing from your heart.

So the nerves are are with me tonight, and I hope to work through those very soon. There's a couple of things I bring with me when I share just to calm me down and make me feel a little more centralized. I bring a watch. I won't look at it. But it makes me feel good to know it's sitting there.

I bring my book, my courage change book. I have a lot of stuff in here. I won't use it, but it again, I like to look down and see it and know it's there. But the thing that I bring that I will use tonight, and I do not have enough to go around, is Kleenex. Sorry.

I because I learned a long time ago that, when I get to Sharon and I talk that I will cry and I used to have a real problem with that. I didn't want anybody to see me cry. I thought that was that meant I couldn't handle it. That I didn't have it together and I was weak. And I had been in the program for a little while and a seasoned veteran, member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We don't call them old timers where we come from. We call them seasoned veterans. They like that. That's those folks that have been sober since dirt, you know. Seasoned veterans.

He came up to me one time after a meeting and he said, you know, you gotta let go of this hang up you have about crying in front of everybody. He said, don't you know the more you cry, the less you pee? And it never occurred to me. No. But at that moment, I was able to let go of my hang up about crying in front of you.

And so I just take Kleenex with me wherever I go. And that bit about more more you cry the less you pee is not true. I need to clarify that. I had a lady come up to me after I spoke one time. She was quite upset.

She said, you lied. I said, what did I lie about? She said, that bit about the more you cry the less you pee, that's not true. I said, I know it's not true. Wasn't meant to be true.

And she said, well, I've waited all weekend weekend for that to kick in and it hadn't happened to you. I told her to go talk to her sponsor. I didn't know what else to tell her. So don't come to me this weekend and tell me anything about anything about that. I am here to share with you what it was like, what happened, and hopefully how Al Anon has put me on the road to recovery.

My serenity date, it's important to me. It's not the date that I became serene. It's the date the process began. September 4, 1982. Today is my mother's 23rd birthday in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Yeah. And I've been I've had her on my mind all day today. Because, I never wanna forget how grateful I am for her sobriety. 3 years today is just as important to me as when she celebrated her 6 months. I'm just as proud.

Just as proud. So today is a special day. I want to share that with you. I grew up in a little town in Alabama known for one thing, stock car racing. A little town called Hueytown.

And that's what put us on the map. Anybody in here who's a NASCAR fan knows about Hueytown, Alabama. And we lived on a little street in Hueytown, Alabama, in an area, in a neighborhood where you could leave your doors open, leave your doors unlocked. Kids could play out outside till 10 o'clock under the street light. You knew everybody lived on the street.

You went in each other's houses. All American neighborhood. On the outside, we look like the all American family. 2 parents, 2 kids, I think we had a dog. And on the outside if you if you saw us, we look like the all American family.

Had an older brother, Mike. 17 months older than me. In my opinion, he had all the answers. Older brothers always either had all the answers or would make up one. You know.

And, and my mother worked, And Mike and I went to school half block down the road. And my dad worked, and we had stuff, and we look like we had it together. And, but my mother drank. And, she drank in her kitchen on 28th Avenue in Hueytown, Alabama. She's our kitchen alcoholic.

We call her our little winette. You know, you call the men and you call the ladies, and she was our little. And, you know, it was alcoholism, the active phase of the disease was pretty quick and dirty in our family. I don't remember it lasting a whole long time. My earliest memories of my mother drinking was probably when I was 8 or 9 years old.

And I can tell you that, those memories involved her role and my role reversing very quickly. I became the mother and she became the daughter. Because you see, she would stop on the way home from work at the little grocery store and they sold what she needed. And she could buy a loaf of bread and a half gallon of milk and whatever she needed to get through the night. And she'd come home and she'd start to fix dinner and halfway through fixing dinner, my mom would just kind of fall out.

I didn't know she was passing out. I just knew she fell out. And we didn't talk about it. We just kind of acknowledged that mom was falling out somewhere and we might cover her up and go right on with what we were doing. You know, she might make it to the bed, she might make it to the couch, sometimes she stayed right there on the floor.

But this happened pretty routinely. We didn't have any physical grew up in a family that had an unwritten rule, and that was if you couldn't say anything nice about somebody, don't say anything at all. So we just didn't talk. Talk. We just didn't talk.

We would go days without talking. And, you know, we looking back on it, it's like watching an old movie, but I I can see immediately where we paired off in teams. Everything around our family is centered around sports. My father was a semi pro softball pitcher, and my brother and I were both very active in baseball and softball. And so, I can look back and I can see we're absolutely divided into teams.

My brother was on my mom's side. He did not like to see my mother get in trouble. He did not like to see her called upon for her drinking. He did not like to see her get in any kind of consequence for what was going on, and I did. I was my dad's little informant.

I took that role on real early because he could slip me $5 and I'd tell him anything he wanted to know. And if that wasn't what he wanted to know, I'd make something up. This is this is me at age 9, you know, 8, 9, 10 years old. I'm doing these things. And, of course I would immediately go to my mom and I would say he wouldn't give me any money.

And I would, you know, double dip. Because I knew they wouldn't talk. They weren't gonna figure it out. But I was my dad's little informant. He could call he could call me before he came home from work and find out what kind of shape the house was in.

What kind of shape mom was in, really. And he would base that on whether or not he was gonna come home from work. Because he might just stop by the ballpark or stop by and hang out with some of his friends and come on home a couple hours later. He figured that out real quick. My brother had a motorcycle, a little dirt bike, and he could get on his dirt bike and he could be gone, you know.

And I just somehow felt the need to be there, And so I stayed. I was there with her through a lot of her drinking. And like I told you earlier, the roles between my mother and I reversed. She became the daughter and I became the the mother. My mother tried every way possible to teach her young daughter things that young daughters need to learn from their mother.

Simple things, and I was real resistant to learning those things. If she told me to clean my room, I would threaten to tell dad how much she'd been drinking. So I didn't have to clean my room. If she wanted me to do something around the house, I would just threaten her to tell dad how much she'd been drinking, what she'd been doing, about the phone calls that had come to the house, and she backed off real quick. So I learned to manipulate my mom pretty quick to the disease of alcoholism.

And I still hear people today say that their drinking only affected them. I'm gonna share with you a few things of how my mom's drinking affected me. My brother and I eventually got to the point where we couldn't be in the same room with each other without physically fighting. We went to the same school, had the same last name, was one grade apart and we would swear to you that we were not related. Because we didn't want to know one another.

We couldn't be in the same room without just physically hitting each other. The only relationship I have with my father was to be his informant and make few dollars off of him. Other than that, we had no relationship. And the relationship between my mother and I was deteriorating every day. I would lay awake at night and I would pray that they would divorce.

And I would lay there and try to figure out who do I want to live with? And, because the question I was trying to answer was who could I get the most from? You know, if I lived with her, kind of life would that be? I have a lot of freedom. But, you know, and I would weigh these things out, and I would eventually just cry myself to sleep.

Every single night because I could not find a way to get my mom to stop drinking. I was a straight a student, made the honor roll, was in all these advanced classes that didn't make my mom stop drinking. My brother on the other hand was failing. Couldn't pass the grade he was in. That didn't stop my mom from drinking.

I threatened to run away. She offered to pack a lunch. You know, all kind of things. And we were running around living 4 different lives under this roof, going in 4 different directions. And what we were doing was we were sending messages to one another.

We used to have a, witch hunt that I thoroughly enjoyed, looked forward to on a nightly basis. When my dad would finally come home, my mom would be passed out. And, this is what we would do. How insane is this? My dad would gather the 2 kids, we'd go into the kitchen, and he would stand at the door and say, Go.

And Mike and I would tear through the kitchen and find every bit of alcohol that we could find. It was like a game. And the minute we found 1, that's the only time we got along. We would high 5 one another and we'd slam that bottle up on the counter and we'd go back looking for more. And eventually we'd clean the entire kitchen out and lined up all these bottles along the kitchen counter.

And we're dancing around and we're high fiving each other. Saying, look at this. Look at all this. I found more than you, you know. And very ceremoniously, my father would walk over to the sink.

He would pour each bottle out. He'd slam that empty bottle up on the counter. And I would just stand there and go, wow. She's gonna get it tomorrow. She's gonna she's gonna wake up and she's gonna see all these empty bottles and she's gonna think, oh my God, I'm busted.

I must stop drinking. I really believe that. I really believe that. And it was years in sobriety. Years in sobriety.

When my mother acknowledged that every morning, she would get up and see these empty bottles lined up down the counter. And her first thought was, oh my god. I got up and drank it all. We are so sick, we can't even get a message. You know, we're sending messages and we can't even get that right.

Can't even get that right. Of course, it goes along with everything else. You never have anybody over at the house. You come home from school and there's a big slip on the door that says the power has been cut off, or the water has been cut off. And you just can't find a rock big enough to crawl under.

You know, but at the same time my mom was real popular with all my friends. Real popular. She was always the team mother. She was always the room mother. She was always signing up to do these things.

And my friends just loved her. They just couldn't believe any of this was going on. And we would be at ball practice, softball practice. And most team mothers would drive up with the Gatorade and the cookies and pull up at the ballpark and drop the tailgate, you know, and the kids would just go crazy. My mom drives across left field.

After she's had a little bit. And she'd run out of gas right before she'd get to the end, you know, things like that. And, and I would drive myself crazy trying to figure out a way to make my mom stop drinking. And I just couldn't do it. But we looked very good on the outside.

If you looked at us, we looked like we had it all together. If you walk down our street at night, you would see everybody's big front doors. In the south, we have these storm doors and then we have the big oak door, the wood door. And you would see everybody's big door open. You could see into their living room, and the drapes would be open, and you could see into their den, you know.

And you walk by our house and the drapes are pulled and the doors shut. Because we don't want you to know what's going on. I can never remember the house ever being open. It was always closed and dark, and and and we would be very careful about who we went to the door door for. That's what alcoholism did to us.

I wanna tell you about my bottom. I was probably 12 and a half years old. 12 and a half years old. And I wanna share with you what happened to me. My mother came into the living room one night and literally asked permission to go to the store.

That's where she and I were. She had to ask permission to do things. And based on where I was spiritually at the time, was whether or not she did it. And she came into the living room one night and asked for permission to go to the store and I think I was feeling pretty generous and I said, Sure. Go.

12 and a half years old. And she got in her car and she left. The store wasn't far from the house. We lived in suburbia and the store wasn't far. She should have been there and back in a good 20 minutes.

And she wasn't. Then I got scared. And I started thinking to myself, did she take luggage out of here? Did she finally leave? I went to check the closets.

No. She didn't carry anything out with her. Then I got to thinking about dead man's curve over by the high school. And how many times I'd lay in bed at night and just kinda pray that, you know, if she would just kinda die off then everything would be alright. Because she's not gonna quit drinking.

And then I started thinking about dead man's curve and I thought I wonder if she finally drove her car off the cliff. But anyway, I was getting scared. And it was rolling in an hour, an hour and a half, and she still went home. And I found myself out in the front yard. And it was a quiet night.

Not many people out. No one was out. I found myself out in the front yard and I didn't know what to do. I just was walking around in circles and I was just thinking to myself, what has she done? What has she done this time?

And the next thought that came to me was I needed to pray. Cece, you need to pray. And then I realized I didn't know how to pray. I didn't know how to pray. The only way that I knew how to pray was from watching an example maybe I saw on TV.

I wasn't raised in the church. The only time I went to church was when the youth group was going to 6 flags or the beach, and you had to go to so many youth group services in order to qualify for the trip. And I would do that. And then, you know, after the trip, I wouldn't go back. And I had zero relationship with any kind of God.

My concept of God at that time was that someone sat up there with a with a lit, you know, with a piece of paper, and when Sisi did something good, she got a check, and when Sisi did something bad, she got a check. And when I died, whichever list had more checks was pretty much where I was going. And I knew which list had the checks at that point in my life. But I I kept thinking to myself, you need to pray about this. You need to pray, and I didn't know how to pray.

The only thing I need to do was to drop to my knees, put my hands together, close my eyes, and look upward. And I said something like, dear god, if you'll just bring her home safe, if you'll just bring her home safe, I promise god, I'll never talk to my mother like that again. I'll never call my mother those names. I'll never use that language with her. I promise God, if you'll just bring her home safe, I will be the best daughter in the world.

I will treat her right. And I was sincere. I was really sincere about this. And I finished that prayer up with something like, okay, God. Thank you very much.

Sincerely, sissy. And open my eyes and I got up off my knees and I looked around and nothing had changed. And I thought, what a bunch of crap. It doesn't work. What a bunch of crap.

And I still found myself there in the front yard, and a few minutes later my mom pulls into the driveway. I see headlights coming into the driveway, and she pulls into the driveway before can turn the engine off, I'm over at the car door. She's got her window down. And I just made what I thought to be this very sincere prayer. And at the same time, I'm 12 and a half years old, I'm reaching into the car window before my mom can even shut the engine off.

And I had my hands around my mother's neck of her shirt. And I'm literally trying to pull her out of the car window saying, if you ever do this to me again, I'll kill you. If you ever put me through this again, I will kill you. And if you'd tapped me on the shoulder at that moment and said, hey, sissy. How's it going?

You know what I've done? Well, I would have straightened up and I would have have looked at you and I said, everything's just fine. Thanks for asking. And people say that drinking doesn't affect the kids. And that was me at 12 and a half years old.

And that was me at 12 and a half years old. Absolutely insane from this thing. Absolutely insane. I don't remember much what happened after that. I remember going back into the house.

It seems like a few days later, it could have been months later, that my mother met me at the front door when I came in from a ball game. And she said, I've decided to call a treatment center and do something about my drinking. Well how many times have I heard that? You know, it just was words falling on deaf ears. But I knew something was up the next day because this treatment center called back and they said, Shirley, we'd really like to help you, but we need more than your Sears credit card number.

I knew she talked to somebody, and I knew they didn't take Sears credit card number. So next thing I know is we find out we get this formal announcement from my mom and dad that my mother's going to treatment. Okay? I didn't know what treatment was. So I went to the only person in my life at that time that had the answers.

And that was my older brother, Mike. Because like I said, if he didn't know, he'd make it up. And I went to him and I said, what is this treatment that mothers go into? And he said, well, it's real simple. He said, it's like taking your car in for an oil change.

That's what he said. He said, you know, they'll give her a shot, a pill, something. She'll be fine. She won't drink. Everything will be alright.

And I'm thinking, why did she do this years ago? You know, what what took her so long? I was all for the pill, the shot, the oil change. Let's get her in there and get her whole transmission fixed. You know?

So, we leave, I think, on a Thursday morning in the summer. This is in the summertime. I'm 13. My brother's 15. And you gotta picture this for a minute.

We have a Chevy pickup truck. And in the back of this truck, there's 2 lounge chairs. Lounge chairs. The kind that your feet lay out on. And in the middle of these 2 lounge chairs is a cooler of Pepsi and the biggest baddest radio system that you can find.

Big ole box, boom box, sitting right on top of this cooler. And Mike and I are in the back of the pickup truck. My dad's driving. My mom's got her little suitcase and a curling iron. A curling iron.

She gets in the front of the pickup truck and off we go to treatment. We look like we're going to the beach. Yeah. Absolutely insane. We look like we're going to the beach.

My brother even got up early that morning, went to Hardee's and got everybody a biscuit. So, you know, we would we would have eaten before we get it. So we're taking my mom to treatment. And it's about it's about 70 miles from the house, and it's interstate. And We're, you know, Mike and I are popping Pepsi's and got the radio going.

And my mom's sitting in the front of this pickup truck with a clutch in her suitcase and her curling iron. And I'm thinking she's probably a little nervous, you know. She's fixing to get this shot or this pill and She's probably a little nervous. And, the back the pickup truck had this sliding window. You could, you know, I'm thinking poke your head in and talk to them.

And, we we're going from, wet county into a dry county. And I happen to see this big sign off the side of the boat off the interstate that said last chance beverages. Well, in my mind, I'm thinking if you're gonna give it up, you should give it up with a bang. Go out with a bang, you know. And, so I poked my head through the cab of this truck.

And I found out real quick why she was carrying that curling iron. Because I suggested to her very nicely, I thought, that we may pull off so she could have one for the road. She wasn't interested in that. She came at me with that car and iron. And, needless to say, we didn't stop so she could have one more for the road.

We get her up to this treatment center and we drop her off. Yeah? Drop her off. I don't think Micah and I got out of the truck. We just kinda wave, so we'll see you later.

This was cutting into our summertime, you know? Let's get this going. And, we drop her off and she's standing at this big plate glass window. She got her little suit case and her car on. She's waving.

And Mike and I are in the back of this truck. We're we're driving away and it's like a sad movie. We're getting further and further apart and we're waving. And she's waving, and we're drinking Pepsi and got the radio on, and we've dropped mom off for treatment. And I thought, well, they'll fix her.

You know, I literally believe they would just fix her and when she came home, she would not drink anymore and everything would be okay. Because I had that same belief. If she would just stop drinking, my life would be fine. And we ended up back home on that day, and my father looked at me. A lot of you know my father.

He looked at me, looked down at me, and he said, what's for dinner? Well, you kinda have an idea of what I was like at that age, but I kinda said something like, you know, I don't cook. I don't know. And, he got me in there and got me cooking real quick. My life changed the moment And my mother's gone to this treatment center and they're supposed to keep her 28 days and they keep her 38.

Thought she needed a little more transmission work than other people. But if we fall into this routine of, you know, doing the house and cooking and cleaning and all this. And it's an absolute wonder that the 3 of us did not burn the house down and just die while my mother was gone. I never realized how valuable she was to our family because she's not there. Because it's an absolute wonder we just didn't die of starvation or burn the house down.

I don't know how we survived. Because you certainly don't pick up the phone and call and say, my loved one's in treatment. Would you come cook for us? You don't tell people that. You just survive and get through it.

And, sometime during this during this time, my mother would get she got permission for phone calls. And it's real funny. We spent all these years not talking to one another. And all of a sudden, she gets 2 minutes to call home during the week. And if you called on that particular night, and it was supposed to be her, we'd just hang up on you.

There's 3 of us in the house. There's 5 phones. That phone would ring. And if it wasn't her, we just hang up on you because we're waiting to hear from mom, find out what they're doing to her in treatment. You know, we want to know.

All of a sudden, we all had something to say to one another. And somewhere in the middle of her treatment, my dad sat my brother and I down and said, we're going to spend some time at the treatment center with your mom. It's called family week. And my first thought was I needed break from this house. So Mike and I, we packed our swimsuits and our shorts, Collected all the quarters we could find for the video, you know, for the arcade.

Got all our toys together so we could go up there and have a vacation. And, the very first thing they did was was they put me in a room, I used to say, with a strange lady. She may not have been strange. I didn't know her. She was strange to me.

And they had no TVs. They had fruit and water. No soda machines. No vending machines. I was absolutely in hell.

And I told them they should rename their family week to hell week. And we had things like therapy 7 and 8 hours a day. We were supposed to be learning about this thing called alcoholism, and I just really didn't care. You know, that already upset me because of my one, my loved one one, my loved one. And we would sit in these groups for hours on end and, couldn't wait to escape.

I know today that I heard some stuff. I know today that some of it sank in. But I can remember one one session in particular where the they had us sitting across the circle from our loved one. And the counselor came and stood behind me. You know, when someone's standing behind you, you can feel them.

You know they're there. And he he leaned down. He whispered in my ears. He said, Sissy, I want you to look across to your mom, to your loved one, and I want you to tell me something that you don't like about it when your mom drinks. And then the next thing I heard was, woah.

Woah woah. Just just one thing. And then he did very nicely, he said, now I want you to tell me something that you like about your mom. Come on, Susie. One thing you like about your mom.

Come on. You can do it. I don't even know what I said. But he walked away and I thought I passed the test. And he walked away from me and he walked right around the room to my mother and he stood behind my mother and he leaned down and he said, Shirley, I want you to look across the room with your daughter.

He said, tell me something you don't like about your daughter. Next thing I heard was, woah, woah, woah, Shirley, just one thing. And that got my attention. And then he said, I want you to tell me something you like about your daughter. And I don't remember what she said, but she said something and he walked away and I thought she passed.

And it doesn't seem like too long after that, family week ended. We must have graduated because they let us go home. And a few weeks later, they called and said she's she's ready to come home. Come get her. And, we went up there in the same manner that we picked my mom up in the pickup truck to get her from treatment.

But something was different this time. Before we left that treatment center, the counselor pulled us in the office sat us down and said this, that surely if you have any chance of staying sober you will go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Beau, if you're gonna have any sanity in your life, you will go to Al Anon. And if the 2 of you are gonna be any parents to these 2 teenagers, you will get them involved in Alatine. She didn't say we strongly suggest or we'd really like for you to try it.

She said, Shirley, if you're going to stay sober, you will go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Period. And so we put my mom in that pickup truck and we drove back down the interstate. We didn't even stop at our house. This was a Saturday ended ended up on the other side of Hueytown in city of Bessemer.

We pulled up in the parking lot of this building. Been by this building a 1000000 times in my life. It's a brick building. It sits a little off the road. It's got two letters on the front of it, a a.

And I always thought it's good for American Airlines, and that they only worked at night. That's the only time you ever saw anybody there. And we pulled up into this parking lot and somebody said something that has stayed with me for 20 almost 23 years now. And that's get in the car. Get in the car.

Get out of your car and get into our car. And that's what we did. We got out of our car, we got in their car, and we drove 30 miles or so down the road to a town called Tuscaloosa who was celebrating an anniversary that weekend. Happens to be our home group now. And on the University of Alabama campus, they had rented out this huge building.

And there were about 600 of y'all there. And we walked into this room and there were were tables and there was food and there was all these people. There were so many of y'all there. And I never felt more genuinely welcome than I had at any time in my life. I knew it instantly.

I thought to myself, what do these people have? It was that powerful for all anniversary. A lady got up, that anniversary. A lady got up, she was our speaker, she got up and she said, Hi, my name is so and so and I'm an alcoholic. And I remember elbowing my dad.

And I said, Isn't that cool? There's 2 of them. I really and truly believed that there were 2 of them. And my mom was one of them, and this lady was the other one. You talk about green coming to this program.

I knew nothing. And I thought, wow. Of all places, we're gonna hear somebody just like my mom. And the other thing that I remember from that evening is that way on the other side of this big room, they had some special tables set up, and there were all these teenagers milling around. And I said, what's there what's up with that?

And someone said oh they're alatines. And I thought that meant like little alcoholics. And they said, no, no, no, sissy. No, honey. Those are the teenage relatives of alcoholics, and you're gonna start Allotene Tuesday night.

And I said, yes, ma'am. I was so afraid to not do what you told me to do. I thought somebody was gonna come and take my mom's sobriety. I thought you'd take it back. And I would have done anything in the world for her to be sober.

We went home that night. We left Tuscaloosa, went back to Bessner, pulled up in that parking lot, and these people said, okay. Get back in your car and go home. I mean, you talk about direction. We need a direction.

And they said, and we'll see you Tuesday night. We were like, okay. Okay. And we got home that night for the first time in my life. We the drapes were open.

The front door, we left it open. Because we didn't care if you looked in and saw. The 4 of us. We wanted you to look in and see the 4 of us. And my mother went into the kitchen.

She had not been home for 38 days. She went into the kitchen and she got half a gallon milk and some chocolate chip cookies, and she came back into the living room. And the 4 of us sat in that living room floor and just looked at each other. We just looked at each other and we agreed that we didn't know what those people had down there, but we wanted in on it. And we were gonna do anything we had to do to be a part of what they had.

To get what they had because it was that powerful. And the 4 of us just kinda shook hands on it, and said, hoorah. And started our journey from that point on. And we've been doing that ever since. You know, for the first two years, I thought the first step in this program was get in the car.

People would call the house. The phone would ring, and it would be somebody on the other phone, and they would say, When we pull up at such and such time and honk, get in the car. And out we'd go. Off, you know, we'd file out and we'd get in the car and we'd go somewhere. And we might go 30 miles here one night.

We might go another direction here. And we Saturday night, we may go down to Montgomery for a potluck or something, but we were always going somewhere. And we were always being told, get in the car. Get in the car. And you don't hear that enough today, get in the car.

But but we we survived on that. We survived on it. And changing in our family. Things started changing for the better. These 4 people that were living 4 different lives, going 4 different directions started healing.

Mike and I got immediately involved in Allotene. My father got involved in Al Anon, and of course, my mother in Alcoholics Anonymous. My teenage years from 13, 14, 15, 16, all those years when I probably, when all of my friends were at football games and and hanging out in the Winn Dixie parking lot and doing all these different things. I'm spending my weekends at potlucks and anniversaries and conventions. My Monday night consisted of a big book study that I attended with my parents.

And I attended this big book study for one reason, and it's because I went to them one night and I said, y'all are always going to meetings. You're always going somewhere. Sitting around talking about this blue book. This big book. This this thing that y'all are always having conversations about.

And I said, and I don't know anything about it. So they let me start attending. They opened big book study on Besser on Monday nights. And I would sit in on these meetings, and I'm old school. I wanna tell you how I was raised in this thing.

See, I had no discipline when I got to this program. I had zero discipline. My mother could tell me to sit down and I would just keep running. I had I didn't know the word no. But a seasoned veteran could come up to me and by quarter till 8 before the meeting started and and would hand me 50¢ and say, alright, youngin.

Go get you something to drink. Go to little girl's room and find somewhere to sit down. Yes, sir. And I would. And they'd say things like, sissy, you can sit still for an hour.

You ain't gotta be up running. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. I learned things like yes, sir and yes, ma'am in this program. Please and thank you.

Not that my parents didn't try to teach me these things. I was just real resistant to learning them. I learned things like you get there early and you stay late. You know? I could empty ashtrays with the best of you long before I smoke.

I could make heck of a pot of coffee long before I drank coffee. Because the thing was, you get there and you get busy and you get involved. And it still works for me today. It still works for me today. And I learned things like when that meeting starts, you stay right where you are.

Unless you're physically sick, sissy, you don't need to be up moving. And you know, I've sat through a lot of long meetings, but I don't get up and move around. Because I was taught early on that there are certain things you do out of respect of this program. You may not like, but you just do them. I learned that when the program calls, you jump in and say yes.

You know? And all this time, we're still I'm still going to Alatine. I'm and the time comes that it's time for me to make a transition from Alateen and to Alenar and it's the most natural thing in the world for me. It's the most natural thing in the world. I had no problems at all making that transition.