The steps and promises at the DA Regional Fellowship Day

Hi. My name is Deb, and I am a compulsive debtor, spender, and under earner. And thank you to all 6 of you who stayed for the very last presentation. Keeps me humble. I want to thank the committee that made this fellowship day possible.

You are awesome. This is a nice space. Yay. And thanks to Roger for hanging in there and looking interested. I I'm expecting that to happen now, actually.

Roger also needs, as he says, some Sherpas after the meeting to cart things out. And a Sherpa is a indentured servant. Okay. I in preparing for this today, I got a very clear message, don't. So we're gonna see what God has to say.

I've been given the honor of speaking about the steps, which always amazes me that I am asked to do this because I resisted working the program for quite some time. I worked, as somebody else said, a 12 tool program. And, I experienced miracles, by the way. But one of the things I learned fairly quickly was that tools do not result in recovery. They result in a cleaner life, but they don't result in the spiritual experience that's needed to transform me from being the hopeless addict that I am on my own power.

The 12th step says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, by the way, it doesn't say a result of these steps, the result of these steps, we carry the message. So I need the 12 steps to transform this addict, this biochemical addict from being who she is into being somebody better and different, and that is always gonna be an ongoing process. So, I would like to tell you what my emotional and spiritual experience is of the 12 steps, and I will start with a story. There was a man who was planning his eternal future, and he couldn't decide whether to go to heaven or hell. So he went to hell and had a little chat with Satan and said, you know, I'd like to interview some people here and see if this is where I wanna be.

Satan said, no no problem. You can stay as long as you want, leave whenever you want. And he said, cool. So he started walking through hell, and he saw all these people who were very well dressed and very, looking very, prosperous and but they were all deeply, deeply miserable. And he went up to us, why are you so miserable?

And they said, you know, we're not sure, but you'll find out. So he finished his interviewing in a couple days and went back to the gates of hell. And also there's a sign beside the gate that said with his name on it, before you leave hell, you must complete these two tasks. Well, he didn't remember that being part of the agreement, but he went and did the tasks and came back to the door a couple days later, and there was another sign up on the door with his name on it that said, before leaving hell, you need to complete these 4 assignments. And he started getting the first little wiggle of fear.

And he went and completed the 4 assignments and approached the gate with dread. And by cracky, there was his name up on that sign again that said, you must complete the following 8 tasks before you can leave hell. And then he got it. That that was why everybody was so miserable. And he cried and cried and cried so hard, he fell asleep.

And when he fell asleep, he had a dream. And in the dream, he walked up to the gates of hell and there was a sign there that said, you must complete these 16 16 tasks before you leave hell. And he knew it was for eternity. And he turned back with great dread and depression to complete the 16 tasks knowing it was pointless. And then something made him reach out and turn the doorknob, and the gates were open.

Well, he woke up, and he thought, could it be could it be that I could no. It's just a dream. You know, trudged up to the gates of hell, and there was the sign. You must complete these following 16 tasks before you leave hell. And he turned around to do it, and then he thought, well, what the hell?

And he he reached out and he tapped the door and it opened. That to me is what the 12 steps are about. I get to choose whether I participate in the solution or in the problem. It's up to me. Step 1 for me resulted in a one liner.

There is no one who is going to rescue me anymore. Not because I choose to, but because they died and I've used everybody. I had no other options left. I was lots of money in debt. So that insight came 2 years ago and I've been in 12, this 12 step program since 1991.

Took me that long to get honest. I went up to a woman who I fear slightly in the meeting, who is very clear and I said to her, I'm really scared. I know the steps and I know the tools and I'm using my savings and I don't know where it's going and I'm starting to feel crazy. And she said, have you worked the steps in DA? And I said, well, and by the way, anybody who answers that question with, well, busted.

What I was trying to do was I was trying to use the osmosis program in other 12 step groups. I always made sure that money was part of my other 4th step inventories. No. I had not worked the steps in DA. And guess what?

I didn't have the miracle of DA. So she said, well, we're gonna work the steps in DA because that's all I have to give you. And she was very blunt with me. So she walked me through steps 1 in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, steps 2, by the way, there are questions and answers in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 3. And when I got to step 4, I got a real wake up call about how I was expressing my disease today, back then 2 years ago.

And I came up with a list of warning signs for mid timers. The first one on the list was trying to work the program without working the steps or working the steps through other programs hoping it'll transfer occasionally, would keep my numbers kinda sorta. You know, occasionally would keep my numbers kinda sorta. You know? But, you know, I had some paperwork, so that made me valid.

Having sporadic PRGs with people who were safe, translated not in recovery. Not being willing to ask people who I wanted to be part of my PRG's that hard question. Do you have 90 days of back to back sobriety, and are you working with a sponsor on the steps? Those are hard questions to ask for those of us who are chronic codependents. I was doing all those things, dipping into savings, not keeping track of them, what I was doing, And what had led into that, I first off that I had savings was a miracle, but I had inherited those savings.

My father died. And, I I inherited over a $100,000, and that is every that's the dream of every single one of us. How many of you, just by a show of hands, for those of us fantasize about the lottery? Okay. I'll be honest.

Okay. We got a pretty good showing on that one. How many people, still fantasize about the somebody or something that's going to rescue them from their current level of worry? Signpost 12. It's been documented nationally, internationally.

We're not alone. I need there's a stretch of highway in Rochester, Minnesota that has a great big billboard that shows you the current, number in the Powerball, and I call that the most dangerous half mile freeway in the United States because you know what we're doing. Yep. Part of my abstinence is not to fantasize about the lottery, because it really disconnects me from God. Anyways, moving on to the steps.

My experience of steps 23 is an ongoing one, and, I wish I could talk more about that, and I don't have time right now. Step 4 was very powerful for me. It was it was an opportunity for me to be crystal clear in the program of debtors anonymous, and I got to document extraordinary levels of resentment. I had pages and pages, and I've done some pretty concrete, clear 4 steps in other programs. In DA, I found out that I had a chronic resentment of people who have money.

I have a chronic resentment of any institution or entity that has money. When I got to step 5 and sat with my sponsor and gave that away, it didn't take very long, but she pointed out to me my pattern of having these chronic resentments and using that to keep myself paralyzed from being responsible for my own life. I was always out there focusing on somebody else. Either they had what I wanted, not in a good way, or they owed me. When I got to 6, I really expected to spend months on 6, and she asked me a question that really was quite touching.

We had just gone through my format, and I had she asked me just to read the 4th column, which is how I, what character defects were operative with each one of my resentments. And she taught me something. She said, when you have a resentment, all of those character defects in column 4 have been activated, all of them, not 1 or 2 because I was kinda picking and choosing. She said all of them are activated, so you get to document how they've been activated, not if they've been activated. And when I got column 4, I had a very long list of my character defects.

And when we got to step 6, she said, do you find these objectionable? And I don't remember ever being asked that question, but it's in the big book. Do we find these objectionable? And I found I had a conscience, and I said, yeah, I do. And I felt it in here.

It wasn't just a, yeah, this is the next thing I need to do to blast through the steps. I felt it in here. I felt my soul cringe at how I lie, cheat, steal, and rearrange reality to suit my very sick perception of how my money life should be. So right then, she moved me on to 7, and we said the 7 step prayer together, and I had I had a spiritual experience at that moment. I had a spiritual experience of and this is where language isn't real good.

I had an experience of something being lifted from within me, and I wish I could tell you that I walked out of there hallelujah, I'm free, you know, I'm earning what I need, blah, blah, blah. But what what I mostly had was a personalization of the program. It's personal for me for this addict. 8, was fairly easy. I already had the paperwork done, a list of people I'd harmed.

9 got real interesting because I I was very vague. I couldn't I could not figure out how to make amends to the people on my 4th step and 8th step list. I just I just couldn't do it. I kept saying I'm running out of ideas. You know, I came up with living amends.

And she said, no. These remember the big book in the early program said restitution restitution restitution. So she helped me with that. So for example, a couple of the, amends I made was, I claimed bankruptcy, earlier in my life, and I definitely owe an amends to the attorney who processed my bankruptcy. I had a major resentment towards him because he wanted cash for his services, and I didn't understand why.

Yeah. Gee. Took me a few decades. So, you know, I don't remember who that person is. It's somebody in Minneapolis.

So the restitution I did was, I wrote down all the names of all the attorneys in Southeastern Minnesota who process bankruptcies, and I sent them all DA literature at my expense. That was interesting. I found out also I had a major resentment, and I had been, not well, I don't need to go into details. Anyways, I had needed to make amends to the major car, manufacturers in the United States. Nothing small in my world.

And, and I so I sent them letters, thanks for working on creating green products. That was interesting. One of my favorite amends, because it got really entertaining, was I ended up calling a a large national, publisher who I used to work for years years ago when I was a student. And I got a the receptionist who answered the phone was from New York, so I got this wonderful New York accent, you know. And, I told her, I I said, is there anybody who heads up this particular office that I worked at years ago?

And she said, oh, honey, no, that closed long ago. Wasn't like long ago. And I said, well, and I took a risk with her and I told her what I was trying to do. And she was quiet for a moment. She said, oh, honey, why do you wanna do that?

Just let the past be the past. And I was like, okay. And so I said, well, this will keep me from killing myself down the road. She said, well, in that case you know, and, so we came up with a plan, she and I, and she forwarded me to human resources and gave me the name and the, and the address of the human resource person. So I wrote a letter.

And and I wrote a letter to several former employers thanking them for hiring an active addict, thanking them for giving me job skills that kept me from dying as I grew older. And that was really moving. The other, amends that I really wanted to make and always be aware of who really wanna make amends because it involved an ex spouse. Oh, yeah. Juicy.

And I had already made amends to him. And my plan was to, do a grand sweeping dramatic gesture and wipe out part of my savings account and send him money because I owed him. And I knew he could use it. And my sponsor started kinda plugging away at what my motives were. And my motives weren't very pretty.

And she said to me, did you already make amends to him? And I said, yes. And I said, she said, what was his response to your offering to make financial amends? And I said, he forgave me for them. She said, She said, you get to let him forgive you for that.

You don't get to one up him on this. I was like, oh. And then she said something really interesting. She said, addicts like us cannot stand not to complete the conquest. You get to leave him, take a spiritual high ground, and you get to do living amends for the rest of your life.

I didn't like that, but I have not violated that direction. Another thing that I really wanted to do was take part of my inheritance, most of the inheritance, and wipe out my student loan. And my sponsor said, if you do that, you will be deadting inside of 6 months. You don't get to do that. You get to pay this off for the rest of your life or however long God decides, 1 month at a time.

So, last summer, I made a decision, right, with God's help and the help of my PRG and a sponsor, that I would pay the full amount on my student loan every month no matter what. That's $601 because I let it go for years, and the interest accrued and was capitalized into the amount that I do. I stat student loans started out at $18,000 Currently, it's, 58,000. So it is possible to debt in recovery. So I pay that $601 a month, and this is another thing that I learned in recovery is that when I approach my debts with gratitude and I say thank you every time, I say I say a prayer before I open up my checkbook and my my record keeping.

I say thank you that you've given me the resources to pay my debts. Thank you for the opportunity to show that I'm trustworthy. Thank you for the abundance that you provide. Thank you for letting me help other people do what they need to do by paying my debts on time. And that has really changed my attitude about debtting.

I used to be terrified of debtting, and I'm not. I meant debtting, but paying my bills. I'm very grateful for that tool of gratitude. Steps 101112, 10, I do an evening inventory, and I make it really simple. I ask where I have I been frightened, fearful, resentful, dishonest, selfish, and self seeking?

And if I come up with a clear example, I call somebody and unload it, so that I'm not carrying it over until tomorrow. Step 11, I could spend a whole day talking about spirituality in this program. Thank you. Could you say the 10 again? What what are those feelings that you're after?

Oh, on my actually, it's step 11 inventory. It's is I ask where have I been frightened? Where have I been selfish? Where have I been self seeking? Where have I been dishonest?

And where have I been did I say resentful? Okay. And resentful. And my gut knows. I usually get a twinge.

So step 11 is not only doing that daily inventory, but it's also doing an inventory on a daily basis. It's also doing an inventory spot check inventory where I am disturbed that matters with me. I need to take a look at that. And then there's the longer term inventories where you do once a year or however often you need to do that. In step 12, one of the ways that I practice step 12 is I occasionally go on to phone meetings and, it's really good.

It's really moving to hear people from around the country introduce themselves when we get to the introduction part of the phone meeting. There's people, sometimes I often hear people from Germany and I do the time change in my mind and they're up in the middle of the night to go to this meeting. Wow. Am I going to any lengths? You know?

I spoke at a phone meeting 2 or 3 weeks ago and got 16 phone calls for sponsorship. I could say yes to 2. That's recovery. There would have been a time when I was taking them all on, you know. Who needs to work?

I'm doing service. So if you have recovery in this program, please make yourself available for sponsorship. It's desperately needed. We're dying from this disease. And, step 12 tells me if that if I continue to work the program and specifically the steps and with a sponsor and keep my numbers that I will have a spiritual experience that will convert me from being a debtor to being a useful member of the human race.

And I would like to read to you my favorite passage in the big book as I close here. And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even deadting. For by this time, sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in deadting. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.

We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward money and debtting has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.

We feel as though we have been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.

That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition, and I would add financial condition too. So if you are a mid timer, if you're a newcomer, please grab a sponsor today. Please grab a step sponsor today who's sober. Start working the tools.

Start working the steps, and in a year, come back and stand up here and tell us how the miracle worked for you. Okay? Thanks. Thanks, Deb and Jane. And now I'm going to introduce Kari, and she is gonna walk us through the promises, and then we'll do questions for all the ladies.

Jane hasn't gone yet. What? Oh, my God. Sorry. Oh, my God.

That was fabulous. Jake. Jake. Jake. Jake.

Jake. I'm totally jumping the gun. I wanna hear you. I do. It reminds me of some auditions I've been on.

Next. Hi. My name is Jane. I am a debtor, and I am an under earner. That's Jane.

I am so very grateful to be here because I'm having a little bit of midtermitis, so so I need to hear some of the things I heard today. I've been a solvent in DEA, not incurring unsecured debt for, since March, March 3rd this year was my 3 year medallion. And I got to tell you, no one's more surprised than I am because there is nothing within me that comes naturally to me that would say, yes, I will daily work this program. Yes, I will write my numbers down. Yes, I will put them in the spreadsheet.

Yes, I will do these things. Because those things are not things that come naturally to me. I didn't know that when I first started going to DA. I would look at the people in DA, I'd be like, well, those are those solvent people. And they're they have more willpower than I do.

They're smarter than I am. Those are the people that know how to make this happen. I don't know how to make this happen. Interestingly, I never asked those people how they did it because I didn't really wanna know, not right off the bat. The only thing that keeps me solvent is the knowledge that I have a disease for which there is no cure.

There's only a daily spiritual reprieve. I am convinced today that if I stop talking to my sponsors, stop talking to my fellowship, stop going to meetings, I will be in worse trouble than I was the first day I walked in. So what does my disease look at look like? Let's take a look at Jane's brain on drugs, on the drug of deadning. So at this time, I'm living in New York.

I wake up in the morning and I don't have a wall to my bedroom and I'm listening to my roommates making noise and I resent them and I'm really mad at them because I have to get up and go to work and I have to go and clean houses, which isn't fair, but I'm a struggling artist, don't you know? And that's a very very moral thing that I struggle because you can't be a good artist unless you struggle and you go through a lot of pain. So I get up and then I argue with myself about what I'm gonna eat for breakfast. I find my one good pair of pants that actually fit me and they're not really clean. Do I wear the good pair of pants that aren't clean or do I wear the other ones?

And then I put the good pair of pants on. I go down. I get my breakfast. I eat it on the subway as I'm going to go do my cleaning job, and I'm feeling sorry for myself the whole time I'm on there. So then I start to think about the people whose apartment I'm about to go clean, and I'm like, you know what, those rich people have no morals.

Those rich people just they they're so shallow. They know nothing. They know nothing about me. They judge me by my pants. And those people are bad because they judge me by my pants, and I feel very bad for myself right now.

And I go and I clean the job, and I hate every living second of doing that job. And I sit down, and I watch their television for a while. And then I get up and I finish cleaning the job, which I now really resent because now I'm really mad at myself because I spent 15 minutes of my time watching their television, which means I don't have enough time, really, within the 4 hours to complete the cleaning job I'm supposed to do. I get their money, and the next thing I'm thinking is, I need toothpaste. I smell people don't like me because now I'm sweaty, and I smell like bleach and sweat.

And I I need toothpaste. So I go to CVS, and I stand in front of the toothpaste aisle, and I'm like, You know, do I really need toothpaste? I don't have to get toothpaste. I should brush my teeth with baking soda and salt. Because that's what good people do.

They brush their I don't, I don't need toothpaste. Okay? So then, I get back on the subway, and I'm on my way back, and then I'm starting to feel really bad for myself because I don't have toothpaste. So I get back off the subway, I go up to my favorite Barnes and Noble, and I buy a bunch of books. And you know, I have another addiction too.

So the main the the the the hamster in the wheel keeps going. It doesn't stop. It doesn't matter what's going on. The hamster keeps going, because life is not fair to me. And I would pray when I was in my disease.

I would say, God, if you had to make me fat and ugly, did you have to make couldn't you have at least made me rich? And I would think, You know what? Those those those those rich people that whose apartment I just cleaned, you know what? When I have money and when I'm rich, I'm not gonna get that bathroom towel. I'm gonna get the other bathroom towel.

You know what? That woman right there, she should not be wearing those pants with those shoes, said I in my one good pair of pants that are 4 days dirty. So then, you know, I can't really read the book and at peace unless I go get my other addiction, which is like ice cream in vast amounts, and then try to sneak it up into my bedroom. And I spend the rest of the day not dealing with the bills that came in, not answering the phone because I'm afraid of who it is. Because I know that the phone bill's not paid.

I know that I haven't given my roommates money yet, and it's hard to hide when you only have 3 walls to your bedroom. Or if it was a little bit later in my d's disease, it was the apartment where I looked out my window at razor wire. That's what my life was like in the disease. I was restless, irritable and discontent. And I went to a DA meeting and I heard someone read this thing in the big book that talked about an ego reduction.

I was like, I don't have an ego. I can't stand myself. That's not my problem. I don't need my ego reduced. I need money.

These people don't know what they're talking about. I went to DA hoping that someone would just give me money. And I would, you know, I would. I would think about my relatives. I'm like, None of them have money.

I'm not going to get any money when anyone dies. That's not fair. This is the way my mind worked. It was it was moral to be poor, but someday God would make me rich, and I would be able to buy the right things. But for today, I'm going to brush my teeth with baking soda and toothpaste and read my books baking soda and salt and read my books.

That's the way my mind worked on drugs, the drug of deadting. And it didn't stop, ever. And the longer the disease went on, the more progressive it was. But what I'm trying to say is it kept progressing. It got worse.

It really got worse until finally life was so hard. So finally, I'm sitting on the stoop in in front of my apartment building, and I'm like, the cleaning company won't give me any more jobs because I haven't paid them the commissions I owe them. And I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent. If only I had and I always had an amount of money that was the magical amount. I could make it if I just had like $300 more.

If I just if I could just get a $1,000. And then an inkling fell into my brain when I wasn't sure I was gonna pay the rent. I was like, Jane, it does not matter how much money you have. You don't know what to do with it, and you will never have enough. And that was step 1 for me.

Then I went on the subway, and I saw a guy on the subway who smelled like urine begging for money. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a drug addict. And I'm watching him, and I'm thinking there is no difference between you and me. You're begging to go get crack or alcohol or whatever it is, I would be begging for 25¢ for a little Debbie cake. That's me.

And I don't know how to get out. That was, for me, step 1. I went to a DA meeting. If you are here, you've done a step Because I was powerless over my dining, over the way I handled money. In the meeting, I practiced step 2 because I saw people who had what I wanted.

I knew that my higher power would restore me to sanity or could restore me to sanity. And I wished it was the word would. God could restore us to sanity. I'm like, what if he chooses not to? I didn't understand that because it was contingent on me being willing to do step 3, which is say, okay, if you can restore me to sanity, and I believe that sanity can happen, here's my life.

I have been turning my will and my life over to the only solution I knew, hide from the bills. That was my solution. I will live my life tomorrow. For today, I just need to not know. For today, because it's too painful.

It's too painful. And all it did was generate self hate. That's what it did. Shame, fear, self hate. Next day, shame, fear, self hate.

I was I was on this treadmill. I've had, many times that I've worked through all of the steps, in this program in the past 3 years as things come up and just working them systematically 1 through 12. My step 3 that really got me to surrender to my higher power and to work in this program was a moment on a table in a storefront doctor's office in Brooklyn where I did not have health insurance. And my mother, I knew, was here in Minnesota, and she had been diagnosed with brain cancer. And I was trying to get enough money together to come back home.

I knew that my half sister was going to be having yet another transplant attempt, and I needed to come back home. At this time, I was abstinent in my OA program, so I was feeling everything. And I'm laying on the table because I went in because I hadn't been feeling well, and I told the doctor what was going in. He said, I think you have jaundice. There's something wrong with your liver, and I hear something wrong with your heart.

I didn't admit that I couldn't solve it until I was that moment on the table. And I asked myself the question, Jane, if you were doing a call with 1 of your your program people right now, what would they tell you? And they would tell me to read the acceptance pages, which is page 4449. Thank you. In the big book.

And I was like, you know what? I accept the fact, finally that I can't do I can't get out of this one. This one's too big. How am I gonna have money to take care of all these doctor problems and move back home to be with my family? It's too much.

I can't do it. And I began to weep as this woman was putting this goo on my chest to listen look at my heart. And she thought it was that I was afraid, that I would have, you know, a problem that couldn't be fixed. I wasn't afraid of that. I was afraid of the doctor bill.

I was afraid at never seeing my mother again. Not because I would die, but because I wouldn't get back to Minnesota in time. The 5th step is that I I I started talking to people in DA all the time. A PRG is a 5th step. A 5th step is I have an inventory of the things that are not working, and I'm gonna bring them to other people.

I can't work the steps alone. I've tried for years. It didn't work. I have to have other people involved in working the steps. I have to come out of my isolation.

The 6th step, doing a temp job. Going in and training in the morning, getting ready to be willing to let go of the fear that was keeping me in my job with Tibby the Crabby lawyer, who I was very afraid of. The 7th step today, part of my 7th step is a Post it that I have at work, and it asks me this question, How are you going to be today? Not what am I gonna do, not what am I gonna make happen, but how am I going to be? And the first answer to that question is always humble.

I need to be humble today so I remember that I have a disease. The a step. I had a sister-in-law I loved to hate. It was so much fun. She's from California.

I used to resent her just if she came to Minnesota. If she flew to Minnesota to visit other people, she didn't even have to stop you talking to me. The fact that she was coming I would be resentful before she got here because she was coming to Minnesota. I became willing to make amends to her, and I was not convinced that it would work until my sponsor was like, you need to make amends to this person. And I became willing because my sponsor told me I needed to become willing.

And I did it, and I started writing my amends letter to her. And now the 9th step, the tears just started pouring out of my eyes, and my my heart was full of love for this person because the letter started out with the gratitude of what I was grateful for, what I admired about her. And suddenly, I realized that all of that loving to hate her was about fear and about ego. 10th step. Every day, I do a 10 step.

And doing a 10 step keeps me clean, keeps me in the solution and out of the problem. It doesn't let things burgeon into big big big fat problems. My mom, died of brain cancer. And before she died, she, had to move. She was in assisted living, and she had to move from where her apartment was to the apartment in what they called the memory care.

My mother was angry at her children for selling her house, giving away her pots and pans, doing all these things, evil things to her. She was very, very angry. And so the I found out that she needed to move, and it was elected that I would be the one to tell her. So I said to her, well, you know how you keep getting urinary tract infections? You know, the doctor wants you to be near a bath a bathtub.

And your apartment doesn't have a bathtub. It has a shower. Okay. That's dishonest. She wasn't going to memory care to be near a bathtub.

So when it came time for me to do my 10 step, I had to say to my sponsor, I lied. I lied to her because I was afraid of what her reaction would be. And what happened to that, consequently, is the next day, I went back to her, and she looked at me, and she said, is this where I'm going to die? And I said, I think so. I don't know the answer to that, but I think so.

The next question out of her mouth was, Jane, do you really think that I'm a danger to myself or other people? And I said, mom, you stuck a knife in the toaster while it was plugged in, and I'm afraid. And the nurses think you need to be here, and I do too. It dawned on me after I did that 9 10 Step work and after I told her the truth. And after all of that work, it dawned on me that this is a woman who's losing touch with reality.

And because I was afraid, what I was gonna do was lie to her and just twist that reality for her just a little bit more. I am so grateful that I was able to be honest with her when she asked me if this is where she was gonna die because she could trust me after that and through the dying process. The 11th step, after my mom died and my uncle died in the same week, I did not I had a hard time praying. I had a hard time meditating. I had a hard time praying.

I could say things like thy will not mine be done. I could say the serenity prayer, but you know what? I didn't mean it. And I didn't think I was that I didn't think I was that shallow. You know?

I didn't get what I wanted. I I didn't get that she was dying until she was the day she was dying. And I looked at my sister and I said, this isn't gonna end well, is it? And she was like, no. But I didn't get it, and I had a really hard time praying after that.

And I went through a pretty big depression after that. And what I learned to do was to think of the people I was grateful for and say a prayer for those people. And then someone else in the program said to me, Jane, if you can't pray, ask other people to pray for you. And that's what I did. Again, I wasn't going through it by myself.

And step 12, in doing my 9th step with my brother, he said, you know what? I think I need this program. You do too. The biggest service I can give to any other human being is to remain solvent so that the debtor knows that there's an answer out there. And I can't believe that I, of all people, have experience and strength and hope to give to anybody who walks down the street.

And I think last but not least, you know, I just wanna say that that with my sister and her the big things that happen in life are big step moments for me. You know, the thing about my mom in lying is a big step moment. Surrendering when I had nothing else to do while they're examining my heart is a big moment. But you know when the steps really count? It's the little stuff.

It's when I say, I'm gonna just ship this money from here to here, and I wanna write down this thing, but I'm not gonna put that down on today's spending plan. I'll put it on next week when I have more money. That's when I have to work the steps. All of this is practice for the big stuff that happens, but unless I'm working the steps on the little things, I'm gonna relapse. And I gotta tell you, I don't really feel like working my program right now.

I don't. I don't want to. I have a case of I don't want to. I just got done doing, a production of a show, and I don't want to do anything right now. I don't want to, but I know that if I don't, I'll go back to where I was, and it's only gonna be worse.

And that's what keeps me moving. But more than that, I have people from this program that I love dearly. And the daily spiritual reprieve is better than any miracle pill anybody could ever get me because it makes me keep getting back on my knees and saying to my higher power, please, and it keeps me on the phone with you people, and I like you. My bad. Thank you so much, Jane.

And now, we're gonna do the promises with Kari, and then we'll do questions, and then we'll have our closing. Did I do that right now? Yeah. Yeah? I'm Kari.

I'm a debtor, and an under earner, and a business owner. Hi, Kari. Hi, Carrie. I didn't realize I was speaking on all of the promises. But, what I was thinking about right now is I was thinking about when I first came into DA, and I I didn't even listen to the promises.

I I thought the I I thought whatever a promise is, it's it's not gonna happen for me. And I never got promises before, so why would I get any promises now? The promises to me are, when I read the promises, they what they say to me is I get to thrive, And I was so used to just like hanging on. I was so used to just surviving. And if I was surviving, that was it that was the that was the best it could be.

I couldn't thrive, and, I love DA. DA. I love it. I love DA. I love BDA.

I love Visions. I love, recording my money. I'm not kidding you. I love PRGs. This program has turned my life upside down, and I, I'm not telling I'm not saying that there aren't days or nights where I'm like bawling my brains out, completely struggling because I'm in some sort of spiritual growth phase that I and it's something that I have to look at and something that I have to work through.

And, I mean, I'm not in that phase like right now at this moment. So I can say that, but I think it's very interesting that I even know what I love because when I first came into d a DA, I had no idea. I think I'm going to skip around a little bit, but at one of my first PRGs, I had, my first PRG actually, they wanted me to make a list of a 100 things that I loved. And, first of all, I thought they were nuts. And, I thought, How is this going to help?

We hear all these stories about PRGs. I had to grieve my life of like, as a grown adult, I had no idea what I loved. I had no idea what I liked. And I have spent so much time in this program, getting clarity about who I am and where I want to be. And, so I'll just get into the promises now, I guess.

We're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. The in DA was the first time that I experienced spiritual freedom. And for me, physically, how that comes out is like, there's like a skip in my step. I never had a skip in my step. But, I think the last time I remember having a skip in my step, I was 5 years old.