The Firing ling Big Book Weekend in Warwick, NY

See.

Hi, I'm Kerry. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank you for hanging in there in a really long day, but a wonderful day.

I'm going to start off by saying that my sobriety date is September 6th, 1994. My Home group is the Red Door Charge in Washington and my sponsors name is Melissa. And the reason why I start off every talk that I give, giving those three things is not, they're not why I'm sober today, but they're the things that help to build a foundation for me to have a spiritual experience.

So those are three things that I feel to be very important.

I gotta tell you, have an awesome day. I heard some really wonderful speakers and people that I've heard before.

I, I feel privileged to be here tonight. I think it's always a privilege when somebody asks you to speak, and I'm always happy to listen to other people share about their spiritual experiences and for me to be able to grow.

But I'm here to talk about, you know, Chris told me to tell my story and steps and, you know, and it, that happens to be like my favorite type of talk.

You know, I do workshops, I do all kinds of other stuff like that. But I like, I like talking about,

not only I like talking about what I do here and giving you a very good idea of what the past 15 years has been like because

it's incredibly surreal to me that I am who I am today. In fact, it is categorically impossible for me to be anything other than what I was, which was a hopeless alcoholic who could not stay sober, who was miserable, unhappy, couldn't die and tried a lot of times to do that

and to go from that to being the person I am today. I mean, there are times when I take a look at my life, I look in the mirror and I look at not even just look at the mirror or look at my life, but look at how the people who are in my life see me. And I'm absolutely amazed that I, if I could be half the person that they think I am, it's a freaking miracle,

you know? So I'll tell you a little bit about me and to, to explain why that's such a miracle.

I, I obviously got sober at 18, which means that and what I hear people say all the time, they're like, wow, you're so lucky. I'm like, yeah, I am. I'm incredibly lucky to have from my, from my entire adult life thus far, never drawn or never been drunk and always drawn a silver breath meaning to that's amazing. That's a miracle. My kids have never seen me drunk

again. That's a that's a miracle. But on the other hand, you got to think about what is it would motive that would motivate an 18 year old girl

to stop drinking the thing that she loved to do more than anything else on the face of the earth.

And I'll tell you what it is. And for me, it was the benefits that I was getting from drinking did not outweigh the psychic pain that I was carrying. You know, I was I'm somebody. My my husband likes to say, you know, in the into the wives in the wives, it says it talks about the different, you know, phases of types of alcoholic and you know, you have type type one, type 2, type 3, type 4. He says that I drink like a type 3

but my spirituality is a type 6.

That I'm ultra sick,

you know, funny, but you know, and, and that was really true.

I was somebody

who felt very empty for as long as I can remember. I don't remember ever being really happy. I mean, I can remember times when I probably should have been happy in my life,

but I wasn't. There was always a feeling of not being worthy or undeserving of whatever that was,

you know? And so you take somebody who feels like that about themselves or looks at the world always from a place of less than or not good enough or unworthy of love or affection,

and you give them something that kills that feeling, namely alcohol. And why would I want to not do that anymore?

I mean, alcohol was able to. What it did for me is it turned down the voices, the pain, the suffering in my head. That being me and being here, present in the moment and not having some buffer between my thoughts and you was so painful.

I could not live, I could not function.

So when I, when I put alcohol on my body and it did this amazing thing for me, it made all that go away.

And so I did it again and again and again. And we've heard today in detail, you know, what craving is, what mental obsession is and what the spiritual mality is, you know, and whenever I give talks, I always, even if you've heard it 1000 times, there might be that one person who didn't understand it or didn't hear it. So I'm just going to quickly give it to you. Basically, when I drink, I can't control how much I drink that I have

physically unable to do so and I can't. I can't decide when I'm done

and when I put it down and I try to control my drinking, I can't enjoy it.

I have a mind that says that's OK,

why not? I have a mind that says that secretly everybody else is doing exactly what I'm doing. They just lie about it.

I have a mind that says, you know what?

You grew up in an alcoholic household, your dad beat the shit out of you, you were raped, molested, you had a horrible life. You deserve to drink and screw them if they don't like it because they deserve to be punished because you made they made you an alcoholic. My mind tells me things like that when I have an alcoholic mind

and I have this spirituality that says be afraid, always be afraid.

It says that no matter what I do, I'll never be good enough. It says that I'm always 5 lbs too heavy. My boobs will never be big enough.

It says that I'm just not smart enough and everybody knows it. And even if you pretend to be something that you want to be, eventually they're going to find out,

you know? And that's the state of my being. When I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, the first time I darkened these doors, I was 13 years old. I didn't come here because I wanted to. I came here because my parents went to Al Anon and they decided I should come here

and I didn't do anything here. I, you know, I, you know, I drank some coffee. I met some boyfriends. I, you know, I found rides to Newark. I did that for five years.

I kept coming back to alcohol. It's anonymous. I kept being driven by my parents and dropped off at the door saying you need to get this sign to prove you were here. You know, whatever outpatient rehab I was in, whatever, whatever contract I signed with them and it was, you come here, they'll fix you.

But I didn't want to be fixed because I didn't believe that it was, I was, I didn't believe it was capable or that you were capable or this program was capable or God was capable of fixing me because I felt so incredibly broken and I felt completely unworthy of having a normal life. You ever feel like that, Like you know that it works for everybody else and everybody else says they're happy and you look around the room and you're like, but you don't know how I feel.

And if you were me and you had my experience,

it wouldn't work for you that somehow you're special, you're different and it works for you because maybe you're just not as flawed as I am. So I came to these rooms and I felt very, very, very, very flawed. And, you know, people tolerated me. This is, I love alcohol Anonymous. I mean, I, I've been thrown out of meetings, I've come drunk. I've I've stolen things which I have made no men's for.

I have been disruptive. I have. I had a my Home group had a group conscience on me because I didn't wear underwear.

They were going to throw me out. I'm not kidding,

but they decided to keep me. I guess I was entertaining enough,

but that's what, you know, that's what I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. And obviously I didn't stay sober, but I'll tell you a little bit is

when I was when I was ready to have an experience that was going to allow me to recover from alcoholism. You know, thank God, God presented me with somebody who can give me an answer that would actually work because the things that I was doing or that that what I heard in these rooms were it was killing me. You know, I heard make 90 meetings in 90 days. I did that.

And you know what? Half the time I showed up drunk because I couldn't get from my house to the meeting without drinking,

because I didn't have the power to do that. And I didn't understand that I had to get a higher power and an experience with that higher power in order to do that. So I thought, why is it that I can't leave my house and get to this meeting without getting drunk? I must be a complete and utter failure.

You know, I had a sponsor. She told me to get a higher power. I said I don't believe in God. She gave me a rock. She said that that's your higher power. My mother threw it out. What happens? My mother threw out my higher power. What am I supposed to do now?

You know, I thought if I got a boyfriend in a A that would work, except we kept drinking together, you know, and I kept cheating on him and he kept cheating on me. And then we, then the people we cheated on would drink together and it was just a bad scene. That didn't work. You know, I did dances, you know, AA dances suck, by the way, when you're a club kid, you go to an A a dance and you're like, Oh my God, you guys suck. So that didn't work,

you know,

So what am I supposed to do? Everything that I'm being told in these meetings is not working for me. And I'm thinking to myself, you know what? That's absolutely right. That is confirming the fact that I'm an absolute failure and that, you know, it's not just that I'm an alcoholic, that I'm completely unworthy of having a good life. And that's why I can't get sober,

you know, And I don't know why on September 6th, 1994, I came back to Alcoholics Anonymous and for whatever reason, God had grazed me with a period of abstinence long enough for me to have an experience with the steps so that I could,

I could become recovered.

I don't know why that happened. And I can't tell you what I can't because I didn't know what being an alcoholic was. What I described to you as far as the threefold disease, I didn't know that. All I knew is that. And I remember the day I was in East Orange. And if you're from Jersey, you know where E Orange is and you know what people are doing in East Orange when you're in East Orange. I was in East Orange and my mother was driving home from work. And I mind you, I'm 18 years old and it's like maybe a couple weeks past my 18th birthday and I had just run away. I ran away from home on Mother's Day

and I left with a thinking it was 35 or 3730, say 35 year old man who had a couple kids, a couple ex wives and I just my Hefty bag and my backpack on the back of his motorcycle on Mother's Day. That's the kind of daughter I was. I did make amends for that too.

But the idea is I ran away from home. I was living with this guy, and then I decided that this guy wasn't cool enough. So then I went for this other guy and we decided to live in East Orange or down in East Orange, and we're doing what we're doing. And my mother, who hadn't seen me in weeks, who didn't know whether I was dead or alive, and I'd run away with this guy, who could at that. He could have been my father, for that matter.

Now that I think about it. She sees me standing on the street corner and our eyes connect in her, like she's driving, you know? And she sees me. Her eyes connect,

she looks away and keeps driving because, and I knew she could not stop her car, because she knew if she pulled over that I would break her heart again, that she could. Just having a conversation with me would be more painful than not knowing where I was.

And you know what even that experience didn't? I didn't get sober for months after that because that wasn't enough to help me to stop drinking.

What helped me to stop drinking or what happened when I put when alcohol was done with me,

was I woke up in a basement and I was homeless again and I had no one, nothing, no money. I'd just been robbed by the biggest junkie in town.

At that point, there was not one person who was willing to speak to me. But I knew that a, a still tolerated me. I knew that they would be OK with me and let me come back and someone would at least talk to me. And so I, I just said, I just said to God. I said, God,

if you can get me to this meeting and if I could not drink, I'll do whatever I have to do.

And I walked to that meeting and I promptly stole the big book from that meeting. Was a big book meeting. I stole it. I made amends for that too.

And, and you know, and I found the first person who seemed to know what they were doing. I said, will you be my sponsor? And she said call me at 6:00. So I did. And she said call me at 6:00 the next day. And I did it. And, and I was able to do that for a little while. And because I was scared enough and because I was burnt enough and I was willing enough to do anything, I was able to stay sober for almost two years. But I was miserable

because I still had all that pain. I mean, I could remember I was living in Staten Island and I had about an 18 month clean. And I remember being in a meeting and I had this cup of coffee. And for me, they used to call me Shaky Carrie because I would walk to the table with a cup of coffee in my hand and I was so full of fear and so full of anxiety. My hands were shaking. Half the cup of coffee would be on the floor and all over me and I would just sit there and I hope I don't have to pee and get up.

And I remember being I was 18 months sober and I was sitting in this meeting and I get, and I get my cup of coffee and I realized I look around and I'm absolutely terrified.

And I'm looking at everybody and I'm like, they know how absolutely empty I am and how broken I am. And they see through me and what am I going to do? How can I live like this? I can't do this anymore. I can't even live sober.

I had AI, had a one year old.

I real I knew I had an experience with alcohol. They taught me that I couldn't drink. I had an experience with suicide, IE dying for two minutes, waking up in eye in the ICU days later and realizing that not even God wanted me. That kind of sucked too. So I had that experience so I couldn't kill myself. I couldn't drink and I couldn't live as I was and I didn't know what to do.

And a couple weeks later, my sponsor decided that we were going to try a new meeting. So I walk in this meeting and there's this guy sitting there and he looks like a he if, if Captain Kangaroo and David Crosby had sex, this is what this guy would look like.

And he's sitting there and he's talking about he's talking about the 9th step in immense. And he's talking about having had a spiritual awakening. He's talking about being free. And it was right before he was leaving to go to go to India. And he's talking about all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, screw you, man. You don't know shit. You know, you know, who the hell are you and what are you talking about? And like, what are you doing here? And I'm like giving this attitude, this Jersey girl, snotty brat, punk chick attitude.

And he, you know what? He just pulled me aside very lovingly and said, you know,

do you know what the big book is? I'm like, yeah, He's like, you know, have you ever done any step workout of the big book? I'm like, I've read it and it sucked, you know, you know, and he's like, well, you might want to consider, you know, getting a sponsor and maybe doing some of the stuff in that book. And I'm like, that stuff's old and we don't need to do that. And we've evolved past that. And you know, I read self help books and I do all this stuff and I've been in therapy for a really long time and my

child is really angry and this stuff isn't gonna fix it. And, and he asked me some questions. He asked me about craving, he asked me about mental obsession and he asked me about spiritual malady. All of the things that we talked about today, all the hot button considerations. And what he did was he, he qualified me as an alcoholic. I didn't know that's what he was doing. I just thought he was weird

and he asked me all these questions and then he pulled in somebody else's over.

Well, you know, now he's got me in the corner and he's got me answering these questions. He's got me thinking about it. And then he starts pulling people and he goes, you know, get this kid. And I've done this, so I know exactly what he's doing. Now he's like, get this kid. Do not let her leave this meeting without a sponsor, you know, and I didn't. And I started to go through the steps in the big book and I began to have a spiritual experience and I began to wake up and I began to get free. And I began to realize that that incredible weight of

terror, anxiety, unworthiness, all of those things,

they began to lift and they were it was not for me. It wasn't the first time. It was not instantaneous. It wasn't like I woke up one day and said, I'm great and Brandy new honey, because I was a very broken young little girl when I got here. And it took some time for this stuff to really penetrate all of the all of the walls that I had up, you know, because I had a war with God. I hated God. I wasn't going to go to a higher power for, you know, recovery from my alcoholism. I only did it when I was absolutely desperate. But that whole

thing, no way, you know, to me, God was somebody who I felt God was responsible for the horrible things that had happened to my life. And what happened was I had a sponsor that explained to me that what free will was. I mean, I had never considered that it wasn't God who wasn't playing chess with me, making bad things happen because he thought it was funny. Because that's exactly how I perceived it when I got here, you know, But when a sponsor sat down and explained to me that what free will is and what that means and, and the and the best way that I explain it,

you know, I'm going to use my friend Anthony as an example. I always use him when he's talking. I said when I'm talking, I said, you know, there's nothing stopping me from walking across the room and punching Anthony in the face. Nothing. Who's going to stop me? You guys going to throw yourself in the way? Maybe. But there's nothing really going to stop me from doing that. I can punch him in the face if I feel like it. And whatever consequences I'm going to get, I'm going to get right. But there is something that's telling me that it's a really not a very nice thing to do.

That's a really bad idea because I like Anthony. He's my husband, sponsee, and a very good friend.

So why would I want to punch a very good friend in the face? That's not a very loving thing to do, Carrie.

See that? So I have free will. I can go punch him in the face if I want to. But then I have this inner, this inner experience that I have with God that tells me, Gianni, that's not a really good thing to do. And you might want to take a look at that.

And that for me is that that conscious contact with a higher power. So what I didn't understand was all the times that I did things that I didn't want to do,

all the times that I hurt people, I thought it was because I was a bad person. And what I realized was what it was is I wasn't lining my will with gods and that I was so blocked. And a big book talks about it says we're blocked by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things. You know, I was so blocked by those things that I couldn't hear that voice. And that voice had a scream in order for me to hear it

today. I hear that voice all the time. It's a part of me.

I rely on it. I mean, it is. I rely on it in the same way that I rely on my lungs to breathe for me and my heart to pump my blood. Because I could not function in my daily life if I didn't have a connection to that.

Because there's no way I could show up for my life in the way that I do if I didn't have a conscious contact with my higher power, if I didn't have a relationship with my higher power.

So when, when he, when there's all this stuff was explained to me and I had an experience with these steps, A lot of this stuff just started to fall away, You know, and what I really like to talk about, I mean, and that's my, you know, what I really like to talk about is not just how I was first introduced to the steps, but how, how

over the past 15 years, how that's changed for me.

What, what's, you know, what was very simple and was just a matter of writing down some, you know, resentments and doing my forced, I'm taking a fist up and actually just telling somebody the truth for the first time in my life, you know, and not holding anything back. And I remember being terrified that this woman was going to hate me and she didn't she, you know, I walked away feeling so relieved and full of love, you know, on going out and making those amends. I mean, they were not easy amends to make, but they were absolutely beautiful.

I mean, I had,

I was such an angry person that I just bulldozed over everyone around me, you know, and to be able to go back and make the amends to my family and the people who love me, you know, I was thrown out of five high schools in the state of New Jersey. And eventually I just dropped out.

I, I went back to every one of those schools and made amends.

You know, I've paid back my parents for the rehabs, the lawyers, the schools. My parents are working class parents. I mean, they don't make an incredible amount of money, but they're very generous with their children. And if we have potential, they're willing to show up for us and work hard and make sure that we can get an education or the opportunities that they believe we deserve. So they put me in private schools in which had I completed them, I probably

I probably would have went for a better college. But anyway,

you know, they put me in these schools and, you know, and I didn't see that. Then I saw them put me in Catholic school to make me be good,

you know, and they put me in. One of them was an all girls Catholic school. I felt that was the supreme punishment,

you know, until I use my bus money that I was supposed to be using to go back and forth to school to do what I needed to do and hitchhike down Bloomfield Ave. I felt that was a good in my Catholic school uniform. I felt like that was paying them back a little, you know, to sit down with my parents and, and, and, and, and the, the change in my perspective and my perception and, and to be willing. And I'll tell you what, it took me a long time to truly set right the harms that I caused

it did. I don't think my family trusted me for a good 3-4 years after that,

you know, they really didn't because I was really crazy to pay back the money to me, you know, to do those things. I mean, I mean, I can remember that. The most freeing events I can remember, it's the silliest one. It was walking into the CVS that I shopped in every day. But when I was a kid, I used to shoplift from them

and to walk in and say, you know, I'm a member, you know, of a program of recovery, and I'm not going to get over my drinking unless I'm willing to pay this back. What can I do to set this right? And these people saw me all the time. I lived down the street, you know, when I went in and I was terrified to do it. And I did it. And I walked out, and I realized I could make any amend at any time, anywhere. And it sounds silly. I mean, I wasn't going to go to jail. Wasn't anything. It was a matter of swallowing my pride and going in there and being willing to do it.

You know, I realized that there was not anybody that I couldn't see, that I wouldn't be willing to step up and take care of it, you know, And that was incredible to me. And that wasn't because of me. It wasn't anything that I could do, because anything that I would do would be full of fear and dishonesty and selfishness that it came from the this power. But this power wasn't outside of me. It was a power that was actually coming from within me,

that was giving me the courage, the strength and the ability to do things and I never believed myself capable of doing.

It was absolutely amazing because I knew that it wasn't me yet. It was,

you know, and so I had these incredible experiences and I've had, I've been privileged to do a hell of a lot of 12 step work. I'm a lucky woman. I'm going to be lucky because I've had the right teachers in my life. I've had the right spiritual teachers. I've been able to, to, to, to work with some of the most wonderful people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And because of that, it puts me in a position to meet a lot of people. And I've got the, I've gotten the opportunity to do the wet drunk calls and I do them pretty regularly. Not as early as, not as much as the early a as, but I think probably

more than the average Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, my husband and I detox people on our couch when necessary. You know, these are the things that we do mostly because a lot of the drugs we have, they won't be Saint Clair's just won't take them back. They've already been there 37,000 times. They have no insurance and nowhere to go. So we babysit them. We let them rock'n'roll, let them do what they have to do. We clean up the mess when they're done and, and as soon as they're done shaking just a little bit, give them a couple days,

they're through the steps.

That's our experience. That's what we do. You know, I, my husband and I, you know, we have four children. You know, we, my husband got sober on the same day I did. We've been married for 15 years.

We work together. You know, our program of this is something we bring into our family, my children, my daughter has done 12 step calls. We had this humongous house meeting at our house and we had this little 3 bedroom apartment for the longest time, but it was infamous

in Alcoholics Anonymous. And we would have 30-40 people in our living room reading the big book. And everybody would leave and they would go and they would go to their Home group. They would grab newcomers and come back and then they would start meetings and they would. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And all these people, I'd meet people I swear I'll be out of meeting. They'd be like, dude, I was at your house. I'm like, you were oh cool, man. You know. And they're like, yeah, you know, I remember seeing you this. And I'm like,

all right,

I mean, like this is how awesome it is, you know? So we, you know, we have this meeting and we were inspired by other people who were doing that same, very same thing, you know. So we've had this house, meaning it had been going, it has been going on since we were two years sober. You know, we just moved. So we took a hiatus, but it's starting up again in another month because we moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. We got a bigger house where we could fit more people

score. So the idea is, you know, and now we have decks and stuff too, so maybe we can move it outside. Inside it's going to be fun. We're thinking about what we can do,

but the idea here is that, you know, we've had this ongoing meeting for about 12 years and through that we've been able to touch a lot of people and my children when an alcoholic is they know that mommy's an alcoholic, they know that daddy's an alcoholic, but they know what being a recovered alcoholic is. So when one of my

daughter's friend's mother said, you know,

I hear your mom and dad have some kind of meeting at their house, I think it has to do with AA. My daughter goes, absolutely. My mom and dad have sponsees and they have sponsees and they have sponsees and they all sit around reading the big book. She goes, well, is it by invitation only? And my daughter goes, no, anybody shows up.

She said, well, can I come? She goes, sure. And the next Wednesday night she was at my house,

my daughter knew enough to be able to tell this woman what it is that we do. And it's because we do it every day. It's in my daily life. It's not something I just talk about. It's something I absolutely believe in with every fiber of my being. I do not believe that I could be standing here today if I didn't actually do what I say and say what I do. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I'm not, you know, I can be totally, totally crazy and I'm I'm perfectly OK with that. I do not want to be an, a, a robot. I love the fact that I'm a complete fruit loot,

and I think God loves that too. And I'm OK, we're chill with that. But the idea here is that I live this life where I get to do some incredible things and help some incredible people. I get to be a part of something that's so much bigger than what I am or what I could do in my own little tiny square. And that to me is so amazing and it's such a gift. And it's so beautiful

because I can. I can remember sitting across my kitchen table

listening to somebody's first step and watching them heal and seeing and seeing God come into them,

seeing them light up from the inside and seeing pain fall away from them and realizing that I was getting the most supreme

privilege to witness it.

And I witnessed that stuff every day. So on the day that I'm having a bad day and I'm not getting what I want and I feel like being self-centered and self seeking and I, I do all the stuff I'm supposed to do, but I'm still not with the program, you know what I mean? And I'm just saying, well, it's still not fair. I mean, I do my 10 step. I admit that I'm somewhat at fault, but I'm sure other people are more to blame that sort of stuff. And I stand there and I say, you know what? I'm how dare I,

how dare I? I mean, I get to have a life or I get to see things. I get to be involved in things that are incredible and how dare I not be grateful for what I have.

How dare. And I get to see God every day. Not only do I get to experience God within me, but I get to see you experience God. So on the days when I want to doubt or that I don't want to play ball, I'm constantly reminded by the people that I have in my life how absolutely silly that is. Because whatever idea I have for myself is so incredibly limited

compared to what God has planned for me. I was a high school dropout. I had a 10th grade education,

and trust me, the two years I spent in high school, I really wasn't there. I mean, the fact is, I had an eighth grade education when I dropped out of high school in the 11th grade,

I was a mess. I, you know, I didn't think I could do anything, you know? And my sponsor was like, you know, you really need to get that GED. I'm like, I'm going to fail that test. I can't take the GED. She's like, well, you know, what about God and sobriety and that whole thing. I'm like, oh, yeah. So I took it and I passed it. Oh my God,

I went to college and I found out that I wasn't that. That you know what? When you're not thinking about yourself every moment of the day, when you're not crippled by fear, self centeredness, and you don't lie all the time, there's a lot of room in your head to learn stuff.

It's amazing

you actually remember stuff too, because when I'm forgetting stuff, it means because I'm thinking about me. When I'm not conscious and I realize I'm forgetting my car keys, I'm forgetting my cell phone, I'm dropping stuff, that's because I'm not present

because when I'm present, I'm not doing things like that. So that's one of my little guidelines. When I start losing my car keys, it means wearing my feet. But anyway, I started to do this and I started to go to school and I started to find out that I was actually smart and that I was capable of doing things that I didn't think I was capable of doing. So here I am. I have an eighth grade education. I graduate college soon would come loud, you know, And that's not because of me. That's not because of what I'm capable of. That's because I've had the benefit of the grace of God in my life,

and that contact and that relationship and that connection between me and God has allowed me to do things and allowed me to use the potential that I always had, but I never knew how to use.

You know, my kids are wonderful children.

They're respectful and kind and considerate and generous. They also fight all the time and their kids, but they're great kids. I was a juvenile delinquent and my husband, when I met him, he was five months off of parole.

You know, these are, you know, we're not the type of people to have great kids. We're the type of people who are typhus comes and says, I want those kids. You can't have them anymore. Yet we have a wonderful family. And I'll tell you what, you know, most of the people that I sponsor don't, it's not really what I have that they want, you know, like me as an individual. But I realize one of the things that I say is the life that I live in, the family that I have is so supremely attractive to people,

the love that we have in our life, the compassion,

you know, because ultimately, you know what I have monetarily, which is very little. I have a lot of kids, very little

what, you know, those sorts of things. I mean, they're, they're that in the grand scheme of things, they mean absolutely nothing.

But to have love and compassion, wholeness, happiness and a freedom and to share that with other people. I mean, that to me is one of the greatest things that any person can actually do. And so I think that when people come to me and say, Hey, Carrie, here's my broken life, fix it. And I'm like, well, you know, I just want to remind you I'm not God, but I'll show you how to get to him so you can take care of that stuff.

But they but for me and what I think that that attracts them isn't, you know, all of the stuff that I have or don't have,

but who I've become. And the most amazing thing for me and the most beautiful thing is not that I want what other people have, but I like what I have and I want to be who I am. I definitely want to be a better version of me. But I want what I have and to be able to say that with conviction and to know it to be true within me. To say yes, there are things that I would like to do with my life.

There are places that I'd like to go, goals that I may have that I've set for myself as an individual, saying that

if it's God's will, I'll be there.

But ultimately, who I am as a person in my character,

I'm incredibly comfortable with that.

And for me, I think that's the greatest benefit that I've gotten from

AA, from the recovery program. Now, I've done a hell of a lot of service on the in the service structure. I mean, I've been at DCM, I've been AGSR, I've served on committees, I've done all of those things. And I've gotten a lot from that, you know, you know, but my life and it and I love it. And again, you know, it was today, the program of recovery was so supremely covered that I feel it's almost repetitive. But I mean, the idea is I do try to keep that triangle imbalance

and I do try to make sure that I'm not paying attention to one aspect of that triangle more than another, you know, because as an alcoholic, I get carried away with stuff, you know. So I'll speak everywhere, but I won't be at my Home group,

you know, or, you know, I'll be busy in service. But you know, a newcomer walks up to me and I'm busy. I have to go home and work. I have to go home. I have to go to sleep. I have to work. No, I can give them 15 minutes of my time. I can give them an hour of my time. It's not my time anyway. God gave me a job to do, and it's my job to do it

because it's presented in front of me. And sleep, That's a freaking luxury. I'm sorry, TVI don't watch it. I read a lot of books, though, I'll give you that. But you know, these are things that I'm willing to sacrifice because of what I get from it. I mean, I don't remember the last time I've actually been to a movie. I think. Wait a minute. No, no, I saw the last Harry Potter. The time before that was a year before.

And it's not because I don't have a life. It's because I have a life,

you know, and it sounds silly, but, you know, these are these are things that I'm willing to sacrifice because I get to do all kinds of cool shit.

Excuse my language, you know? And so, yeah, well, I don't know what the newest movies out and I, you know, and I have to Tebow everything and watch it in 15 minute increments every day. It takes me a week to watch an episode of House, but I watch it. But the idea here is that I would much rather sit with an alcoholic and give them my time then watch a stupid TV show. I would much rather be with my children and be present with them

instead of yelling and stomping around the house and everything's a mess and stuff like that. You know, which I can do,

which I make amends for. But anyway, the idea is I'd much rather be present with my children in my family and bring to them the mom that they deserve, the wife that they deserve. And the how I do that is through all 36 principles,

I can't do it,