The 42nd Annual New Hampshire Convention in North Conway, NH

So it's good to be here. I think our hospitality person and the committee, Paul, picked us up at the airport with a great big little sign for us that said Denise and Dave. It was all sparkly. And I like sparkly. So I was like, hey, Paul, that was good. And then Danielle was so helpful with our emails and that that's the way we converse the whole time. And I got to see some of my old friends here, Sue and Marge, and talk to Marge all along the way, too. And how did I get here? But here I am. And then Judy's out there too.

It's good to be here. So I'm here to share my story and what brought me to Al Anon, what keeps me here and what happened and how it is today. OK, I start with with with my name is Denise. I'm a grateful member of this fellowship. Alanine and

I, I grew up, I'm the middle child. I had an older brother and a sister and then I was a younger sister. My older brother and sister about 10 years older than us. So we kind of had like 2 little families there. The oldest and the man, my, my younger sister were three years of difference in age.

So we had a really good childhood. We, we, we did everything we want. My dad gave us whatever we wanted. My mom was the disciplinarian, so she taught us manners and, and had to be clean and neat and she taught us how to behave and, and, and she made sure that we knew right from wrong. And, and, and she just, that was what she did, you know, and, and we, by having three girls, we followed all those rules and, and we knew exactly what to do and how things should be in order. So that was very orderly as a kid,

umm, as we lived on the street that was a narrow St. and I didn't know anything about alcoholism. We didn't have alcohol in our home. We had alcohol in the, in the China closet. They came out on Christmas and maybe holidays, New Year's, but it always went in and came out. It went in and came out. There was always the same bottles that kind of went in and out. My mother, my mother didn't drink every on holidays. She would

sip off with that bottle of Manischewitz that was always in the cabin. It was always in the China closet. So that's she said it would help her blood. So she would get a little bit of that on the holidays. And I don't know if it expired, but it was kind of always there. So I didn't really know about Alcoholics, alcoholism, but the street that I lived on, we had several homes where

there was some alcoholism there. Some of these

Alcoholics, as my mom would call them drunkards. At the time, that was a term she used, drunkard. And the kids, we would laugh because the Alcoholics in the neighborhood would come stumbling up the street and, and we didn't really know what to do. We would just laugh at them. And then they go on into their homes and next thing you know, there would be a fight and they'd be out on the porch and we would just all stand around and watch what was going on. We didn't know that

by him coming home drunk, this is the next step. We didn't realize. We didn't even put two and two together. That's what was going on. But that's what what my image was of

drinking alcoholism,

and that's kind of my perception of what I saw of an alcoholic. I mean, there were a couple families like that. There were a few bars on the corners,

but basically it was a working class neighborhood.

As kids we played a lot. We had fun.

I was, I got interested in comedy right away and I was just mesmerized by Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis old musicals. I used to sing and dance and just had a good old time. I was just a fun kid. I, I, like I said, my father gave us pretty much whatever we wanted and we hugged and we just smiled and we were just a happy family at the time.

As a, as when I got into high school, I was pretty active. I became a a majorette,

so I got to wear one of those little skirts and with the boots and I was pretty popular. I also joined the singing group and I was just really active and I had friends that were, some of them were really bad and some of them were really good. So I had all sorts of friends growing up and I could kind of hang out with all of them. But I always knew my limitations. I always knew my limitations as a teenager. And so I really got along with a lot of people and my attitude was,

you know, I'm just, I'm just having fun. So I, I really had a good high school year

and I but when I met my alcoholic, it wasn't that we really ever were introduced. We grew up in the same neighborhood and so a lot of us kids, we knew each other. So one day he came over and

asked me to go to the prom with him.

From what I understood, he had a girlfriend at the time, but he asked me to go to the prom with him and

so I don't know what happened there, but I said yes,

said yes, I would go with them. So we went to that prom and we

really good time, you know, and, and we went with another couple. So from that prom, we just kind of started hanging out all the time. He would always come around. He would come over and and see us and he would eat dinner with us and then he would hang around and he would help my mom do stuff and he was just always there. He also had a job where he worked construction with his dad. So he would drive through the neighborhood and and he would be dirty, just dirty. You know, he had construction boots on and he was

just really messy. And my dad thought that he was not respectful of me coming around looking like that. But my mom just loved them. You know, she said that is a hard working man and she just loved that man because he she could see that he was, he was a good guy. So he would come around and sit on step with me, pass through. We had a loud, noisy car and he always had loud, noisy cars. And when he comes speeding through the block and, you know, he was just really exciting, you know, and, and, and he also, he's, he smoked and he drank

and he had these loud cars and he was fast and he zipped through the neighborhood and, and it was just a little narrow St. you can only get one car going through, but he would zoom through the street and then he would stop at my house and, and sit on the step with me. And then we, we would date. That's how we dated. We did that for a while until we got married. But like I said, my mom liked them. My dad thought he needed to be cleaned up. And so that's when I started doing it. I started cleaning them up.

He was,

he would, he would take me by his house and introduce me to, He's had five sisters and a brother

and there was an alcoholism in his house and, and the house was always, it was always kind of messy, you know, just messy. And, and he would come to my house and everything was so orderly. And I, I started doing his laundry for him like right, right away. You know, we didn't, we didn't have a washing machine at home, so we would have to go to the laundromat. So on laundromat day, you know, I call him up and tell him it was laundromat day. So

we, I'd take his laundry and I'd take him to the laundromat and I'd fold him up all nice and neat and I'd send him back home. So

I, I was already starting to like wield my, you know, just kind of web of cleanliness for him. That's what I was starting to do. So another thing, you know, even though I didn't smoke, I used to light the cigarettes for him. And I don't know where that came from, but

started doing that. So we dated for, for, for a couple of years and then he, he wanted to get married. And I was OK with that. We picked out a ring and we started our family life. We moved our first department was in

Lindenwold, NJ, had a little apartment there. No, that wasn't the 1st place. Our first place was Upper Darby, moved to Upper Darby, PA and we had our little apartment and we started making a home. We didn't have anything fancy, any big furniture or anything, but we had a little, I don't know if that thing's got a futon or something we had, but we were both working and we were just starting to make our home. What I do recall about that little apartment is we had a little drawer that we used to put spare money in and we always had a little money in there. And so if we ever, if

needed anything, there was little money in that drawer and we could just go get it and do whatever we needed to do. So we did that for, you know, I kind of lost track of time when we were when all this was going on. So I'm not really even sure how long we stated that apartment, but after a while we got this call that

that my mom, who was going to be moving to Cleveland to take care of her sister. She asked us if we would come take over the house, the house that I had grown up in. And we were going to move back into the home. And we thought it was a good idea, you know, we would move back home and

we would save some money for a house. And so we proceeded to pack up and we moved from Upper Darby

to New Jersey. I think I'm getting ahead of myself. But before we moved back to Philly, we had also moved to New Jersey. So we stayed there for a little while. I just want to back up a little bit, but when we were in New Jersey,

I noticed, I don't know, I guess this was my first site of knowing that there may be

alcohol or other substances coming into our home, but I really didn't. It didn't really faze me at the time. I only seen it once

and I kind of disregarded it as as anything that would be a problem because I always thought that he was, you know, a smart guy and he would know how to handle these things. But just to move ahead again, I'm going to now move back to our home in West Philly, my mother's home in in West Philly. And like I said, we thought it was a good idea. We're going to save some money and, and start all over. But what happens when we move back to that home?

All our old friends were there. All our old friends from high school, old friends from the neighborhood.

So we just kind of basically picked up where we left off. I would sit down on the porch with my, with my,

my girlfriends and we would sit for hours on the porch. And by this time, I actually had a, we had a son by this time and he was a little guy at the time. And we just kind of lavished him with all sorts of things. And, and we called him Paco at the time. And that was Paco. And and so we we started rebuilding at another home, back at my mom's house.

Like I said, all the old friends were there. A lot of times I found myself sitting on the porch with a girlfriend

and I, I remember a friend of mine one time as as things were starting to change, I would sit outside with her and I would say to her, I think I'm going crazy. And I couldn't really tell why I was going crazy. But I noticed that things were starting to change. I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be. I was going to work every day and taking care of this little boy and

things just wasn't right, you know? And I couldn't really couldn't pinpoint what was going on. But come to find out,

I was pregnant. He was like, oh,

you know, I was really surprised.

I was, I was pregnant and and then I was also sick all the time. Like why am I sick all the time? I

and what was going on, I had started to, you know, at day after day I'm going to work and try to pretend like things are normal, but still not quite feeling like things were like I thought they should be like yeah, I'm sitting with my girlfriend. I would tell her I was crazy and one day I left work and I I would come home. As I would leave work, I would get to the corner of my street and I would get

physically sick as I was approaching my house.

And this was going on and on and on. And I wound up having to go to the doctor to find out what was going on. And after several visits, my primary doctor wound up sending me to a gastroenterologist because I was was physically sick. Turns out that I had developed ulcerative colitis while I was pregnant. Very stressed out. I would come home after work and

on Friday, specifically Fridays, I would come home and I would start cleaning the house.

I would move all the furniture, get out my bucket and mop, start washing the walls and the woodwork and all the ashtrays. And that's basically how I spent every Friday for who knows how long I did that. Just busy just busying myself and trying to be normal. But while this was going on, I was losing a tremendous amount of weight. You know, my weight was dropping off. I'm now carrying this baby and

things is just not going well.

One day I

decided to pick up the phone and I called women in transition and call them and they wanted to know, you know, if I had a roof over my head, was I being abused?

Told none of those things was going on and they really weren't able to help me because I really didn't have anything to give them at the time. I only thing I could say was I needed some help but I didn't know what I was looking for. There was several. By this time, I guess I was about 5 months pregnant or so. And

I, I continue to go to my doctor's down. Now I'm taking medicine, now I'm pregnant and I'm still trying to find out what's going on with the alcoholic. And at that time, I didn't know it was alcoholic. I just knew we had a lot of friends. I knew it was gone a lot. I knew I was spending a lot of time on the porch with my friends. I knew I had this little baby and I knew that

I was not happy. So every now and then I would say to him, are you happy?

And he would say, yeah.

And I was like, oh, OK, so I didn't want to make any waves. So I would say, OK, you know, we must be happy that he says he's happy.

So

I really wasn't sure what to do. So one day I came home from work and I don't know again. I'm as I approach my home, I'm sick again. And I remember telling my mother, I think the house is making me sick,

physically sick. I think the house is making me physically sick. And of course that sounded crazy. That really sounded crazy because I didn't know what's going on. But again, we weren't, we weren't really conversing about anything important. He was working. I was still working. I'm still doing my thing and I

one day I left the while I'm cleaning up, I noticed this $7.50

rebate check that he didn't put in the bank

and I kind of went off. I just went off and next thing you know, I'm flailing my arms at them fighting him, you know, over this $7.50 rebate check that didn't get put in the bank. So he did what he always did and he just left, you know, so now I'm pregnant and still not understanding why I'm feeling this way. So I

again time just passed. I did my usual. I'm still trying to pretend like things are normal.

And I remember asking him again, you know, what's he having with what was where we were. And again, he said he was, you know, he was comfortable, he was happy. And again, we didn't spend a whole lot of time together because of his shift, the ship that he was on. So again, something's going on with me. I don't know what it is. I-1 day, I came home from work and we had a library at the corner of our street. And it said free counseling.

And I said, oh, good, I'm going to go in and stop in and get some free counseling.

So I stopped off at the library that night and I just poured my heart out to this person. She must have been just a student, I guess. So I'm telling you what's going on and really not having a whole lot of details, never really defining it to any substances or any drinking or anything. Never, never even defining it as that. Just I'm going crazy. I just kept telling her I'm going crazy. So what she told me, she said, you're not crazy. She said the people who aren't coming here, those are the crazy ones.

How's that? Oh, all right. Well, that must mean I must be OK there. So still, still trying to search, find out what's going on. So because I went into that library that day and really didn't get what I needed, I started hanging out in the psychology section of the library. So now I want to start reading. I'm going to start reading these books and I start picking up all these books of

how to fix me, how to find out what's going on. Why am I feeling like I'm feeling? What's going on? Why do I not feel close? Why do I not feel

comfort it? Why do I, you know, just just all these wise? So I picked up this book one day and it said looking out for number one. That was the name, that was the title of the book. So after reading this book, I determined that I needed to be tough. You know, from that book. I needed to be tough, need to be strong. I need to be able to stand my ground and fully be able to, you know, lay them all down. You know, that that that was what I got from that book. Now I know that wasn't the intentions of that book, but that that's what I got from it because I didn't like the kind of person I had become.

I literally had I used to wear the scarf around my head, you know, so I was kind of hiding, hiding from people saying wear the scarf around my head. And all of a sudden all my clothes started being being brown. I was being brown. I wasn't brown phase and I was hiding myself and and I was losing all this weight and I was looking at myself in the mirror and feeling terrible. And I don't know how long I get. I lost track of time. I'm not sure how long I, I went through that,

but I'm still searching for, for something. And it was interesting because when all this was going on, I never thought that maybe I should go to church. You know, I knew about church, you know, as a kid, I knew about going to church, but never, never darned him. I'd rather sit on a step and talk with my girlfriends, you know, and tell them, you know, I'm going crazy. So, so that's kind of how I got my, my help from my girlfriends. And of course, they would say, you know, one girl would say, are you sitting on the porch waiting for him again?

And yeah, I was waiting for him again. You know, that's what I did.

I took care of kids. I went to work and I sat on a porch and I waited for him. So I don't know how long that went on. So after, you know, reading that book and figuring out that I needed to be strong and needed to be tough, I, I went to say, where have I had reading that book? And like I said, deciding that I needed to be tough and strong. I guess I started, I guess, I guess my disease started kicking in by this time and I started going through his stuff.

I started going through his stuff and

looking for stuff, you know, wandering around the house and just looking for stuff to piss me off. And of course, I always, I always, I always found stuff to piss me off. But but you know that that was normal. That's what you did when things weren't going wrong, going right. It looked for evidence, you know, I had to find something. So

basically, that's what I did. And I guess I wasn't, I was different, you know, I, I had changed, you know, I don't think I had seen a Jerry Lewis movie in a while. I hadn't laughed and I wasn't sleeping like I should.

And then I, I hated them, you know, and I used to think of ways to get rid of them, you know?

I would stand in the kitchen and I would wash and clean up and and I would think maybe if I had some like that poison or something.

Now I don't know where they came from, but

it did. It did cross my mind, but it was gone so often

and I guess the time wasn't right. I guess the time wasn't right and I knew I wouldn't be able to pull that off, but but it crossed my mind. It it did, it did. It really did cross my mind and

what's now that I've got the sun and now I'm pregnant with this with daughter and

so now and I was always trying to find out something for us to do. I remember that I signed us up to take CPR courses.

He he wanted no part of that. You know, I wound up taking the class by myself and,

and we just couldn't seem to connect, just couldn't seem to connect. You know, he always had something to do, whether it was working. I always had something to do, whether it was my cleaning or, or trying to figure out the best way to do something. But nothing was really working. And again, I'm sick now. I've got, I've got ulcerative colitis. I've got these visits to my, my gastroenterologist and I've lost all this weight and, and, and I'm hiding myself, you know, hiding myself behind this car. And I'm, I'm trying to blend in with my brown clothes.

So I'm just really just trying to, trying to disappear. And like I said, I don't know how long this went on, but after a while, I, you know, as we were getting closer to the baby, I remember I had this, the house that we lived in had a, a brown banister, banister that, that led up to upstairs. And I remember one day he painted the banister and he painted it white.

And, you know, white seems like a pretty good, you know, color to use. But I went behind him and I painted it back brown

and

without, without really saying anything. I guess I was really saying you can't do anything right. I think that's what I was really saying, you can't do anything right. And how come you couldn't do something as simple as just paint the banister? So I went back and I painted it behind him. Now, I didn't say those things to him. It was just my actions.

My actions were really starting to change and I was doing things that was so against my character.

I had I had become somebody else. And then one day he said to me,

this is not my house.

And after, after several things that had gone on, he said this is not my house and said, yeah, you're right. You know, because I had rules, you know, it has. The house had to stay like it was when my mom was there. I had to make sure it was clean all the time. I cleaned out all the ashtrays. He'd come in and dirty up all the ashtrays. So I was just like, I was a nut case trying to keep this house like it was when my mom left it. So we decided that we were going to move, take that geographical move. And so we moved to another

of Philadelphia, mount every section of Philadelphia, and we got our first house. So we, you know, we were pretty excited. You know, we had two children by this time. And I can't say that we were on the path of anything. We were just moving. We just moved and we were just going to do whatever we need to do. But nothing had changed. You know, they were all new friends at the new neighborhood. I found the neighbor next door and I would hang out with her, sit out with her. She would help me with the kids

and she had her own kids. So we I found another, another friend that I could sit and gripe to. You know, we could now. I could now tell her all that was going on.

And again, the alcoholic in my life, he was, he was still working, he had some shift work hours, but a lot of times he was just gone. And I

still doing what I need to do. I had two kids and I decided I was going to take on another project. So I decided to strip the banisters from the downstairs and the upstairs that I was going to do it all, all these banisters. I was going to take all the brown paint off, bring out the natural wood. So that was my project. You know, I would, I would come home from work,

get the kids ready, you know, do homework, do dishes, you know, get baths. And then I would start working on these banisters, you know, I'll start stripping. Yeah. And I would like gouge and gouge and gouge and gouge. And I was working my way up the steps. And I tried to get them to participate in this project, but no, parts of this project didn't want anything to do with that. But that was my project, you know, And I come home and I start stripping. And I was very detailed. I'm very detailed. So every little crack and crevice I had to get in, and

I don't know how long their project took, but I eventually finished all the banister. It took a while, but I guess, you know, I'm still crazy. He's still out there doing his thing. And now at this time, I think, I don't know if it was decided, but we eventually decided to split up the house. You know, he had the basement in the garage and I had the rest of the house.

Now, we, we never decided on that. That's just kind of what had happened, you know? And I used to walk around the house

and I'd get to the basement steps and I would just listen.

And I was always listening and walking around and listening.

And of course, if I walk down too many steps of the basement, then he'd stand there. Like what?

So I can never really pinpoint what was going on. And also around this time he had started to carry a flask and I didn't really, I don't know, I kind of like the flask. It was a nice one. It was clean and it was, it was, it was, it was a little thing and it was nice,

nice blast. So I thought it was kind of cool, but you know, who knows? But it was all about appearance and had to be clean, had to be clean. And it wasn't like it was a brown paper bag or anything. So, you know, that was OK with the flask. But still, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm listening and walking around and listening for stuff, but still again, never determining what's what's going on.

You know, I guess this kind of all came full circle. What was going on when one Sunday,

I don't know, I guess I decided I had enough and it was raining and he came in and I decided that I'm just leaving, you know. So I left him, just started walking and left him with the kids, and I just started walking. It was Sunday, it was raining, and I had no idea where I was going. I'm just walking, walking through town. And I really didn't know a whole lot of people 'cause I was walking way past my house, he said. I walked about two miles, but I didn't even realize where I was going.

So I wound up at a high school friend's house and I remember telling her, you know, what was going on. I've had enough, you know, and, and this has got to stop. So I sat there with her a couple hours and then she took me back home. So she took me back home. He decided that he had made this call to to go into rehab, whatever it was. I didn't know anything about rehabs, but he made this call

and when he told me about it, I said to him, maybe it's not that bad.

And I don't even know where those words came from. Maybe it's not that bad, but it was that bad. You know, I, I was, I was sickly. I wasn't, I wasn't there physically or mentally, spiritually, emotionally, but that was my answer to what he had decided to do.

So, you know, next thing you know, we're, I guess he's making all the plans and we have to take him up to

the place that he was going to go into for, for 28 days. So he and his mom, I think your mom was with us, went, went up there. We took him up to that facility and we dropped him off. And

when I got back home, because up until this point, I was kind of walking around in this, this Gray haze, you know, like I said, I was brown. Literally I was brown. Everything was brown and Gray and I was just, I was just not seeing very clearly. So when we dropped him off at this rehab and I came back home, all of a sudden the lights came on. It was like, and I could, I remember seeing these green curtains that came with the house. They were, they thinking they came with the house. The curtains were there

and I remember noticing that they were green. And I know I realized that I didn't like those green curtains. So I was going to start doing something about that, but he was gone. So now my life could begin. He was gone. And I remember just I just had a smile on my face. I was just glad he was gone. I don't know. I was just,

I could see colors again and I was just glad he was going. I was it was only 28 days, but, but he was there.

And but, but I'm still crazy. You know, things are still not not like they're supposed to be.

And I didn't tell the kids that he was gone because he was going on anyway, so I didn't even mention it to the kids. But.

Whenever the phone would ring, I would make a mad dash to the phone so the kids wouldn't get it. So I'm still crazy, you know, the phone would ring and I had to run to the phone before the kids could get to it. And I don't know, I guess I did that the whole month, you know, But the kids never mentioned it. And I don't even know. I don't, I just don't recall how we got through those 28 days without saying anything to the kids. But we didn't. My, my son probably was about 8 at the time and my daughter might have been around

maybe 2-2 or three. So I just did mention it, but he was gone. So

I guess life could begin now. You know, he was gone and we would take these trips. They didn't allow me to call him, but I kind of remember writing this letter to him one day and it was, I don't think it was the best letter, but I remember writing it because I found out that he read it in, in Group the letter that I wrote. So I,

I'm not even sure what I said in that letter, but I remember when I, when I was able to go visit,

he was a really nice place. And, and I, as we drove up, he was only sprawling grounds and greens. And I said he was on vacation. He's on vacation. You know, I would get up there and I'd be pissed off because he was, he was at this really nice place resting and, and I was home. And I remember kind of in my peripheral vision seeing this pile of papers in my dining room, not really knowing, you know, not getting to it, just too busy to get to anything. But you know, still pissed off,

you know, he's up there resting and I've got all this stuff I got to deal with. So after that time, you know, we went eventually he spent that time up there and I, at one point I had two jobs trying to do 2 jobs. Why, why, you know why he was busy. I don't know what he was doing, but I had a lot going on and I was, I was starting to get more active with work 'cause they were giving me more to do, but I was just trying to keep it all together. Just trying to just doing it all

and still not feeling

like I wanted to feel.

So next thing you know, it's time for him to come home with 28 days are up and I hear that he's got to do 90 and 90 meetings.

So I start checking it off on the counter every day. Every day I'm I'm counting up to 90 and because once we get to 90, he is really going to hear from me.

So I am checking this off on the calendar just waiting for 90 days to come. But I guess as we got closer to that 90 days, he wound up taking me to an anniversary day on my anniversary. And I wound up sitting there with,

I didn't know anybody, but I sat next to this woman who I don't know. I just started dumping again, just started telling her all this stuff that was going on and she was just not there. And she understood. And I can tell she really understood what was going on. And

I don't know, I just got so much from that meeting, that first, that first anniversary hearing. I heard an A speaker. I heard now not speaker. And and, you know, I kind of thought that that was the end of it. That was it. Because I was so I was just so hopeless. You know, my life was just always going to be miserable

and whenever I could sit and talk with somebody, I was just going to complain about what was going on. So I just kind of got used to, you know, that's how it's going to be. So after sitting at this anniversary and, and I guess getting a taste of, of, of people in recovery, but I didn't really think much of it. That was a one time event and that was the end of it. So anyway after that

my husband told me that he was going to take me. He wanted me to go to an Al Anon meeting because I got this call from the rehab

have suggested that I don't got this call one night from the rehab and they said I think it might be a good idea if you go to Al Anon. And I was like, what? What is that, you know, and why do I need to go anywhere? I'm fine. You know, he's up there with you. So what do I why do I have to do anything? So that that's how I got the call to go with Al Anon. So he decided he was going to take me to my first meeting. OK, so yeah, I'm going to this meeting. You know, he takes me there and, and I think we're, we're greeted by this very happy person

and I'm happy to, I'm thinking I'm happy anyway, so I'm going to this first meeting. And we,

we, we go inside, the meeting starts and everybody goes around the room and says their names.

But when it came out, tape came my time to say my name. I said his name, I said his name. And I said, I said that this is this is my husband and he has not missed any meetings except to take me to this one.

And one lady said she said, well, if he leaves now, he still won't miss any.

So they asked, they asked to leave, they asked him to leave that meeting. So, so I, I stayed, I stayed at that meeting and I was so glad I stayed because it was like, you know, all that searching I had done, you know, this was, I had found what I was looking for. These people knew what I was going through. They, they, they helped me see, see my part in all this. And, and I learned about the disease of alcoholism, you know, and you know,

what a concept to, to learn

that what I was going to. And then I was affected by someone else's drinking. I didn't know that. So, you know, so I continued to go to that meeting. It was my Thursday group. And we use the 12 and 1212 steps, 12 traditions. Everybody had that book. We, we use that book for our, our meetings every week. And I learned about that, not about the disease of alcoholism. I learned I didn't 'cause it, I couldn't cure it and I couldn't control it. And I also learned about, you know, my parts and some of that, too. You know,

it took a while for me to realize that that I was changing and I was affected. And I was affected by that, you know, and as I say now, so we were both going down the tubes, you know, how could that happen? We're both so highly educated,

That's all.

Not really, but we both, I thought we both would be able to, to, I guess, I guess, I don't know. I guess I thought that we were too smart for this to happen, you know, because I, I, I was really a hard worker, you know, and I, I knew right from wrong and I knew that, you know, I knew all the stuff to do when things weren't, you know, I could fix anything and I, I was just, I could do it, you know, I could take care of that. But this was bigger than me. You know, my sponsor will remind me this was bigger than you.

And I kind of used that today because there are a lot of things that are bigger than me

that, you know, I have to step back and say I can't do anything about this, you know, but I could only do my part. So, so I love that group. That was my, my very first Home group. And we were very active, you know, traditionally we did what we were supposed to do. We, we, we took our commitments. We, we went out to we, we, we carried a message of hope. And that was basically, that was only message I had to give at that time was a message of hope. And I didn't even really realize that I had a story, you know, but I had a story

hope. And people, people would listen. People understand. It's like, just like when I went to that first meeting

and I learned about my relationships when I talk about the traditions in that respect, I learned about my relationships with other people relationships and how I, how I carried a message, how I carried that message in my home, how I, how I interacted with my, my family, my, my husband, my children, how I interacted. And I learned a lot at that meeting. And that was my Home group. That was my Home group. And, and I love that Home group,

that the Home group got me interested in service right away. You know, we immediately, you know, no, no sitting around. You got that key right away. And, and you got that, you know, you knew what to do. And I remember my first time I had to first time I got the key, it was on, it was for the month of November. And so we got the key for the whole month. So mine, mine was Thursday and Thursday happened to be Thanksgiving. So I got to go off to my meeting, got that key in my hand. I got to make sure somebody's out there. So I went to that meeting on Thursday. Nobody showed up, but I was there,

so I knew right away, you know, this is what traditionally our group has committed to do. And like I said, I love that group, but that group got me interested in service right away. They wouldn't let me stop even when we moved to Delaware, Move to Delaware and

you know, he wanted to move. You know, we, we, we had done a lot of service work with people, met a tremendous amount of people. You made great relationships. We were able to travel. We were all traveling, you know, conventions, you know,