The 13th annual Woman to Woman Luncheon in Toledo, OH

Here.

OK.

Thank you, Eva. That was a fine introduction. I appreciate that. I'm going to bend this down just a little bit,

OK? Would you please help me open this meeting in the traditional way with the Serenity Prayer

God?

Before I even get started, I want to thank Eva for inviting me to come here today. It's always an honor and a privilege to be asked to speak anytime and it's very humbling. And it's a privilege for me to be of service to God this way and to stand up here and look out at all you women. The site is just absolutely beautiful. All of you look so pretty with your dresses on. And the food was awesome.

And the fellowship that we have going on in this room, this is wonderful. And there's so much estrogen in here, and the energy is just really good. And, you know, and there was a time in my life when I couldn't stand women. And right now today, in this moment, there's no other place that I'd rather be than be right here with all of my sisters in recovery.

So I'm honored to be here. I truly am. As she said, I have a Home group, Woodville Saturday night. I also have Gibson Berg Wednesday night. I have two home groups and I purposely situated them about three or four days apart from each other. And I'm pretty consistent with my attendance. I have a sobriety date. It's October the 17th, 1993. So if you're doing the math, I'm coming up on 17 years. And I don't say that to brag. I say that that's for God. That's not anything I did. It's what you guys taught me and, and going down the trail the of the path that you guys

blazed before me because I couldn't have done this on my own. There's no way. I'm really active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I also have a sponsor. Her name is Constance. She spends 6 months in California and six months in Ohio. So part of the year, our relationship is long distance, but we both have Verizon, so it's free. So it works out pretty good. And so I, I always say, hey, if your sponsor is long distance, it's OK as long as she's not truly long distance, right? I want to give you a little background history about myself.

I always have believed since that I'm an alcoholic. I would think that I was born an alcoholic. I think it was just a matter of adding the liquid elixir for me.

My father did tell me sometime before he passed away, he did mention to me that during my mother's pregnancy with me, she consumed large amounts of alcohol. And so the reason that I say, I think I was born an alcoholic because I don't remember the first time I took a drink, but I clearly remember the first time that I got drunk. And the first time that I got drunk, I blacked out. So I don't know if you know as much about alcoholism as I do, but only alcoholic drinkers black out. Social drinkers don't do that. And I did that the very first time that I consumed alcohol.

So I do believe that I've, I've been an alcoholic just waiting to happen. My drinking career would begin at age 16 and it would span actually a little over a decade. I took my last drink when I was 28 years old. And somewhere in the Big Book, it does say that female drinkers often cross the line and become an alcoholic drinker much sooner than men do, oftentimes within two years. And I believe the Big Book is correct. That was my situation. That's what happened to me. By age 18, I was a full blown alcoholic. And so from age 18 to age 28, I drank alcoholically and I was

wreaking havoc in the lives of everyone who came in my path. I was like that tornado that Bill Wilson's talking about in the big Book. That was me. That's what I did. And my story is really sad. My story is really tragic. And I'm just going to give you the heads up that prison is a big part of my story. And the reason I talk so much about prison is because prison is where I found God. Prison is where I work the steps. Prison is where I got honest about what really happened. Prison is where I laid a foundation that would change the rest of my life. And so I'm going to talk a lot about to prison

and what I did. I want to give you just a brief background history. And I don't go into the whole childhood thing. And the reason I don't do that because I don't think it's that important. I came from a dysfunctional home. Didn't we all, as my sponsor would say, get over it, you know, get over it, suck it up. And and I have, I have got over it. And I'm not going to get into all that stuff. But very briefly grew up in a single parent home with an older sister. It was just the two of us and she basically raised me. My mother was a practicing alcoholic. She attended bar. So when I was coming in from school, she was leaving

for work and during the middle of the night while I was sleeping, she was coming in. And so basically my sister raised me. And as a young teenager, there wasn't any rules or structure. I was never grounded, there wasn't any discipline. I just kind of roamed the streets. I did whatever I wanted to do. And sometime around the age 15 or 16, I was introduced to alcohol.

And I hear so many times up here at the podium, people say, well, I always felt like I was the square peg trying to squeeze into a round hole. You know, I always felt like I was different. I was the odd man out. There was something different about me. And I felt that way too. And sometimes I think at age 16, when the very first time I took a drink, I was like, wow, that feeling went away when I consumed alcohol. I became very relaxed and very comfortable and I could share and every my whole attitude and outlook changed and I was like wow, this is my new.

I really liked the way that alcohol made me feel, but somewhere along the way it turned on me and it became my enemy. It wasn't my friend anymore and it would take many years for that to catch up with me for me to get that in 19, I think it was 1982, I was in my between the summer of my junior and senior in high school, I had met this 32 year old man. I was 16 years old. I had met this 32 year old man and he was a very big drug dealer in the area where I lived and he had a lot of money. He traveled a lot. He went to Florida and Texas a lot.

I was very intrigued by this man and very attracted not so much to him as I was to his money and what I thought was his influence. And at this time in my life, you know, I'm coming into my, I'm 16 years old, so I'm coming into a little bit of womanhood and my, my looks are beginning to develop. My body's beginning to develop. And back in the day, I was really cute and I used my good looks to manipulate men. You know, my thing was to sit on the bar stool and soak in that attention from men. I've heard people come up here and say, why would hide the vodka in the toilet tank? You know, I never

that I never understood how somebody could drink and I know some of us have done that and that's fine. But that wasn't my way. I had to be out there in public, had to be on the bar stool getting the attention from the men. And the bottom line was I didn't have any self esteem. So I was getting it from these unhealthy sources, which would be other men in bars. And so anyway, I'm a young girl, I'm entering my senior year in high school. I move in with this 32 year old man. And to his credit, I do want to say that during my senior year in high school, he made me get up and he made me go to school. And I wouldn't have a high school diploma today if it weren't for him.

And I know that something motivated him and that was to stay out of jail, right, Because he was 32 years old and I was 16. But, and at that time, it used to really make me angry that he would come in there because I'd be up drinking half the night till two or three in the morning. And then he'd come in and wake me up and tell me you'd get your butt up, you get dressed and you go to school. But as I look back on that, I think, you know what, that's probably the best thing he could have done for me because as a result, I have a high school diploma. And I, if I would have stayed home with my mother, I don't, I don't know how that would have panned itself out. I don't know. So shortly after high school,

I would have been in the summer of 1982. My drinking is really beginning to take off now. My birthday is in September, was just before I turned 18. I'm drinking Friday night, I'm drinking Saturday night, and I'm drinking on Wednesday to break up the middle of the week. And alcohol is becoming a very, very dear friend of mine. And the blackouts are becoming more frequent. Now. There's mornings when I wake up and I have to look out the window. Is the car out there? What did I do last night?

Or the phone might ring and I might think to myself, oh, God, who is that? Because I couldn't remember what I did last night. So maybe somebody's going to call me to, you know, to yell at me or to make sure I'm OK. Or, you know, it just got to be this really vicious cycle. My whole lifestyle was becoming this very vicious cycle

was only 18 years old. So shortly after high school I got pregnant by this man, this 32 year old man, and I had a little boy and at that time in my life, I couldn't parent a tissue box. I hadn't even been parented myself. I had no business trying to parent a child didn't know the first thing about it. And my mother by that time was in her mid 40s. So every weekend I'm dropping this baby off with her or I'm taking off for Florida and leaving the baby with her for a week. And I think by the time he was about four years old, he was pretty much living with her because, you know, I, what I had to do was way more

more important than parent a child, right? It was all about me. And I think women, all of us being in here, women, some of us could probably relate to what we've done to our kids. And, and as I look back on all the things that I've done, that's right up there in the top couple two or three, you know, it's right there. God, I wish I'd have done that different. I wish I would have been a better mother. I wish I would have parented my children the way that I wish I would have been parented, but I didn't have the skills. I didn't know how

so after this child's born, my alcoholism is really starting to take off at this time and I'm drinking constantly, not moving into the space where I don't really start to like women. I never really had any friends to begin with. All my friends were met.

As I told you earlier, I have an older sister and she wasn't a threat to me. I could hang out with my sister and drink and party. And she by this time, she's about the only female in my inner circle that I'm hanging out with. And I want to Fast forward the tape. I'm going to take us down the road. We're going to go to April of 1993. I'm 28 years old. I've been drinking for 12 years. It's a Friday night. I'm sitting on a bar stool outside of Genoa. OH, I'm with my sister. It's about midnight. I'm intoxicated. She's intoxicated.

By this time I had left that man, actually, he loved me. I didn't leave him and he moved into a barn in Fremont. He must have been desperate to get away from me because he actually moved into a barn. But you know, and I am a manipulator. I had my little hooks in him like when he left. I'm unemployable. I don't have any skills. I've never worked before. I never earned a dime. And I think I was maybe 25 or 26 when he left. And so I threatened him. I said, you're going to give me, I don't know, whatever it was, $1000 on the 1st of the month, every month

and you're going to continue to pay these bills and you're going to support me. I'm going to turn you in for child support. Well, he was a drug dealer and he had a lot of money and he could not provide for his source of income came from and he knew I had him over the barrel. Like I had my little hook in him. You know, I always had a hook in somebody. And so he conceded to my demand or whatever it was. So I'm living high on the hog in this farmhouse off this 30. By this time, I think he's in his mid 30s, maybe later 30s and getting a free ride once a month. Every month here he comes with this wad of cash

and that's how sick I was. You know, I look back on that. I think, God, why? You know what a sense of entitlement. You know, I had this sense of entitlement the size of Texas. So I don't want to go back to that night. It's Friday night, It's April 1993. I'm with my sister. I'm dating this guy named Tony. He's 26 years old. I'm 28 years old. He's supposed to meet us at this bar. He finally shows up about midnight and he wants to move to another location. He wants to move to a bar in Elmore called the PII, think I don't remember. And both of us had our cars there. So I

following him. I was following him downstate Route 51. We were going to loop by my farmhouse and drop off his his Camaro and hop in my Buick. And I was about a mile from my farmhouse. I was almost there. I entered into a curve on State Route 51. It's not even a sharp curve. I've driven that road 1000 times. You could easily drive this curve at 55 miles an hour. I'm arguing with my sister by this time of something pretty common between the two of us. Every time we drank, we fought and I'm arguing with my sister. I took my eyes off the road. I looked directly into her eyes. I went

curve and never turned my wheels and as a result I struck an oncoming vehicle and I killed a 14 year old boy that was in the backseat of that car.

That's what I did.

And for me, the gig was up and I didn't understand the gravity. I was in so much pain and so much trouble, in so much. Everything was me, me, me. Oh my God, look what I did. I've totaled out my car. I'm going to lose my farmhouse. I'm going to Marysville. My life is over. Me, me, me. Poor me.

And during the six months that I was out on bond waiting to get sentenced and go to way to prison, I would continue to drink, right? Because my excuses, guess what? If you had my problems, you drink too, right? So I would continue to drink during that six month window of time and to continue to spiral downward.

And I wasn't in touch with my feelings. I was so detached from what was actually happening in my life. And alcohol now, it's not even, it's like an enemy. But I didn't have anywhere else to turn but to the bottle. I didn't even have a friend, didn't even have a friend. So in the fall of 1993, in October, Judge Paul Moon of the Ottawa County Common Pleas Court in Port Clinton, OH, sentenced me to four to 10 years in prison.

He could have gave me a 5 to 10. So to be quite honest with you, I was relieved that he didn't Max me out because I certainly expected it.

They put me to orange jumpsuit in the sheriff's car, drove me down to Marysville and dropped me off. And there I was in this maximum security prison for women with 2000 women.

And I'm just devastated. I'm so numb. I can't even cry. I can't even feel my feelings. They have made admissions. I think I was in there for about a week while they process you into population. And admissions is kind of like you see on TV, it's a little box. You're just a little room with a bunk and a sink and a toilet. And there you are. You're just in there like 20-3 hours a day waiting for your bed and population. But I didn't know what prison was like. So I thought like, that's what I was going to be doing for like 4 or 10 years, four to 10 years. And so I finally got out into population

and, you know, cover girls always been a really big power to my package. So when I got out into population, my thing was, OK, first of all, I'm not going to speak to anybody. I'm different than you. I'm better than you. You know, I had this badge that said inmate camp 3248. OI had to wear it everywhere I went. And I was in total denial about where I was at and what I had done. So my hair and my makeup become very, very important, right? Because the thought process behind that was if I could just fix up the outside, I could fool you and you would think I was OK on the inside.

I would iron my little uniform. It had little creases, you know, and all that facade, that mask that I wore. And I pulled the staff down there. I had them full. They all thought she's just this nice girl from the country. Like if you only knew, you know, during that 12 year window of time, I failed to tell you how many men I slept with and when they would fall asleep with their Levis next to my bed, I robbed them. I did all sorts of stuff. I mean, I could go on just about the criminal acts that I committed during that 12 year drinking career,

right? So I meant this, this maximum security prison for women. And it didn't take long. They moved me to a pre release center in Cleveland, OH, the Northeast pre release center. And at that time, I know they've since changed the rules. But at that time, if you were within four years of going home or going to the Ohio Parole Board, you could be housed there even if you committed murder, it didn't matter. You could be housed right there in downtown Cleveland, OH. It's their best kept secret. It's right by Jacobs Field, you know, in the Cleveland Browns when they get a touchdown, if you broom faces Lake Erie, you can watch the fireworks go.

I was like, wow, man, this is pretty cool. You know, by then my ego, you know, my ego is really the size of Texas at this point and I'm in total denial about what's going on, what I had done. But I wasn't stupid. I thought I'm here for an alcohol related crime. Maybe I should go to some a a meetings, right? Because it was all about me. And I thought if I go to some a A meetings and get this recorded in the docket, by the time I get to my first parole hearing, the parole board might see that and smile on me and cut me a break and send me home because it's all about me,

right? I'm still running the same game. The only thing that's changed is that I'm not consuming alcohol. So I think when you take an alcohol like and you place them in an environment like that, you know, I'm still untreated. I'm an untreated alcoholic without alcohol. That's bad. So I'm going to these a, A meetings

not because I want to get well, but because I want to go home. So you know what I believe today, doesn't matter what brings us here, whether it's an employer, a spouse, a loved 1A judge, doesn't matter how we get in here. It matters what happens after we got here. How many of us came in the room skipping and whistling and singing, Just so happy to be here. And I want to share what I got right.

We're dragging in here with our head hanging down. Oh my God, I can't believe I got to do this.

This really sucks. Right? So that's the space that I was in, but I didn't care. I was in prison. So I just want to get these flip sign. My first parole hearing is coming up in the spring of 1996. In order to get to it, I only had to serve two years and four months. So I get to this first parole hearing. And in the months that led into that, there were other inmates there, obviously for vehicular homicide. So I was watching their cases very closely. I wanted to see what the Ohio Parole Board was doing to them to help gauge what they might be doing to me.

So in February of 96, this girl named Kat, she was from Sandusky, OH.

She was doing a 5 to 10 for vehicular homicide. Her sons was worse than mine. In fact, she'd been there longer than me. She'd already been to the parole board once and they gave her two years. I think she had served about three years, went to the Hall parole board. They gave her two more years, told her to come back. And during that two years she wasn't a troublemaker. She didn't go the whole she didn't get in any trouble. We just all thought for sure she was going home. She goes to her Ohio parole board and comes out crying. She said, Oh my God, they just gave me the whole 10 years, day for day.

In fact, she was on her way back to Marysville because she wasn't even eligible to be housed there. So they put her in an orange jumpsuit, loaded her in a white van and drove her back to Mary's Bell. And we were like, wow,

that's not right. So then about a month later, this girl named Denise from Cleveland, OH, was there for vehicular homicide. And she was only doing a two to 10. And she was a really nice girl. She didn't get into any trouble. In fact, her victims were not contesting her release. She goes to Ohio Parole Board and guess what? They gave her the whole 10 years. Day for day, They stripped of all the good days she had earned. They put her in an orange jumpsuit in a white van and drove her back to Marysville. I got scared. I said, oh, my God. I called my mom. I said, mom, something's not right. They're giving all these vehicular homicides the whole 10 years,

she said. Oh no, don't worry about it. You don't know their situation. Maybe more than one person was killed. Maybe they had multiple prior Duis or other criminal background stuff. You don't know. You'll be fine, right? So I get to the Ohio Parole Board in May of 1996 and guess what? I'm not special. I think I'm special, but I'm not. They give me the whole 10 years day for day, strip me of every good day I'd already earned, and put me to Orange Jumpsuit and drove me back to Marysville

and dropped me off. And there I was a second time

back in Marysville, sitting in admissions in that little box waiting to get my bed out in population.

And I couldn't even cry. I was so detached from my feelings, I couldn't even cry. I couldn't believe this is how arrogant I still am. I couldn't believe that they did that to me. Don't they know who I am, right? It's that eagle, that sick mentality. You know, at this point, I think I had served, I don't know, 2-2 years and four months. So they signed me in bed back in population. I get back out there and actually what I did, I had tell the staff members fooled down there. They all thought that she's just this nice sweet girl from the country, right?

They gave me a job working up in the wardens area. On the bottom line is I had a high school diploma. And if you have that in prison, that thing is like gold. You will not sling them off or flip a soy burger. They will find a real job for you. And I had a high school diploma and I also was a great manipulator. And so they thought that I was a pretty good girl. And they gave me a job working in the count office up by the wardens area. So there I was. I had my own little office, a computer, a typewriter and working with all the white shirts and got very friendly and chummy with all the big wigs that were employed there. And they all.

Liked me and and that was part of the game, right? Don't ever lock me up. Don't ever put me in the hole. I'm Terry Camp, right?

So anyway,

I, I had inmate runners. There were five runners that were assigned to me. They would run documents that I would prepare out into the institution. And one day, this was about five years into my incarceration, I had some bed moves that I had typed up and I couldn't find Lieutenant Wazmer anywhere. So I had walked into the Thai office. This lady that worked in there, her name was Miss Floyd. She was really cool. I just love this woman. She was an employee of the state of Ohio. She was not an inmate

and I said to her, I cannot find Lieutenant Wasmer anywhere. Would you sign these documents so I can get them run?

And she said, sure, step on in here. So I stepped into her air conditioned office and we were talking and she said to me, Terry, there's a really good program over at recovery services called hearts. And I think you'd be a great candidate for that. Have you ever thought about treatment? Now, you know, I'm like five years into my incarceration. I'm halfway to the 10 year mark. And I said to her, you know what, Miss Floyd, they just gave me the whole 10 years day for day. I'm I'm not doing the victims awareness, the a, a the parenting. I'm not doing any of that stuff.

I'm doing 10 years day for day and I'm going home. And then she said the magic words that my ego just loved to hear. She said to me, Terry, there's a two year waiting list to get into that program. I can pick up the phone, I can make a phone call and I can get you in the next group. I said, well, sign me up, right? I'm so important. I'm moving to the top of a two year waiting list. Somebody finally recognized who I am.

Jeez,

thank you. God, it's about time. So she makes the call and I get put into the next group, which took about I don't know, four or six weeks whatever that when the next group started up and I'll tell you what I had no idea what I had signed myself up for. This was an intense behavior modification program. I don't know anything about it. All I knew I was moving to the top of two year waiting list and my eagle got so attached to that. Like I didn't even care what it was. I just thought she's finally someone recognizes right. So anyway, I get reassigned to this program and what they had to do was reassign my job. Now I, I don't

at the lieutenant's area anymore, the wardens area, I am a student. The Hearts program, I have to report there every day, Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:00. And the program takes about four months to get through it. There's 14 inmates that are in it, one state employee who's licensed counselor, and then there's another inmate that kind of sits in that's already been through the program and they're called a peer leader. So I get in this group and it didn't take me long to figure out what I had done, how terribly I had screwed up.

About two weeks into it, we returned from lunch. It was on a Wednesday. I'll never forget it. This girl that sat across from me was there. She had killed one of her children.

That was the rumor that I had heard out in the yard and in prison. Anything to do with harming a child or like rape or death or anything to do with a child, if you're there for that, you do not discuss that because you're going to get dogged really bad. So the girls that had committed those kinds of crimes would never talk about their crime, obviously, because they didn't want to get dogged. And this girl that was in this group, when we came back from lunch that day,

the rumor I'd heard in the yard was that she had killed her daughter. And we come back from lunch and we get situated around the table and the counselor looks at this girl and she says to her,

why don't you tell the group what you did to your daughter?

And I know I fell out of the chair. I said, Oh my God, this is going to get deep. And this girl told this story. And, and of course, the story has no place in a A, but it was quite gruesome and quite disgusting. And the way the program was set up, when you share, when you're done sharing, you receive feedback. And while you receive your feedback, your feet are flat on the floor, your hands are flat on the table, and you do not speak. Your feedback could go on for two hours. However long it goes on during the feedback process,

you do not speak. So when this girl got her feedback, these other 13 inmates, they just leached into Herman. They just tore her up for two hours. They tore this woman up. And I remember thinking to myself, your turn is coming. There's going to be a day when they're going to ask you about what you did and you're going to be in the hot seat. But I didn't care because I liked a good challenge, right? And these girls were dropping out of this program like flies because of so many rules. Like they couldn't have a woman. You don't have them. Had a girlfriend out in the yard on the bench waiting,

which I didn't have a woman, so that wasn't a problem. I had enough issues

I didn't need to go to prison and turn gay,

and I don't have anything against gay people that just hate me. So

anyway,

they're dropping out of the group like flies and we come back from Group One day. It's on a Friday, we're about 3 weeks into the program. 1:00 in the afternoon we return from lunch. We get situated around the table. The counselor directs her attention to me, and she says to me,

Terry, why don't you tell the group that story about the night you wrecked your car?

I said, OK, now remember, I'm five years into my incarceration. I do not discuss this. These these details are approving only to me. I have not told this to anybody. I have not spoken. I've never spoke my victim's name. So I'm sitting there and it's kind of like this video inside my head starts to play. There's this old memory tape that comes down off the shelf and it starts to roll, and I'm sitting back

in my mind where my disease and my ego live. We're all up there together

and I begin to tell the story, and it's as sad as it was. I was very detached. There wasn't any feeling involved in it, right? And when I got done telling the story, which was all a bunch of crap, I mean, I just told the way that events occurred. I had to put my hands flat on the table, my feet flat on the floor and get my feedback. And I probably went on for maybe 30 or 40 minutes. My little mascara was smeared. You know, I tried to act like I was putting my feelings into it, but I couldn't because I wasn't connected to

feelings. And so when I got my feedback, my feedback went something like this. If I didn't know any better, I would think you were the victim. And you make me sick. You take no responsibility for what you did. You are so detached from reality. You just don't get it, do you? It went on for two hours. These women tore me up. It was like I had built this wall between me and humanity. And I'd spent several years constructing this wall block after block after block because I thought the world was a harsh, scary place and everybody was out to get me right. So I had built this wall between me and humanity

that I was hiding behind, right? Because everybody was out to get me. And I thought I would be safe behind my wall. But the truth of the matter is, behind the wall I was blocked off from everybody else, from humanity and the sunlight of the spirit. But I didn't get that. So I had placed myself in this dark space. So these women in the course of that afternoon had axes and chisels and picks and hammers and every comment they made, they were banging at that wall and banging at that wall. And for one moment, I just had one moment of clarity at some point in that afternoon, like a beam of light just kind of drove right through

that wall and pierced me,

you know, And I can't tell you at what moment. I can't tell you exactly what happened, but I know I kept staring at that clock. I couldn't get out of that room fast enough. And at 4:00, I stood up and I grabbed my book and I started. I wanted to leave. And that counselor looked at me and she said, not so fast.

She said, when you get back to your room, she said, I want you to wash that makeup off. I'm placing you on makeup restriction. I don't want to see any more makeup on you for the next two weeks. And secondly, I want you to write a letter to your victim. You write a letter and you bring that letter to group Monday. And I'm all crying to you. I don't know what to say. She said, I don't care what you say and I'm not going to tell you what to write. You bring a letter to your victim to group on Monday morning. I said, OK, so I went back to my room on that Friday afternoon at 4:00. I should say myself, let's just keep it real. So go back to my cell that

and I picked up a pen and a paper and I started to write and those words just flowed off that pen. I didn't even have to put much thought into it. And I was writing things like, you know, you will never get a drivers license and you will never graduate from high school and you will never procreate. I have taken all these things away from you and so much more,

right? Something was shifting inside my mind. It was like my soul was sliced wide open.

My feelings were raw, and I don't know if you've ever been in that space, but in that space you can get a lot of work done.

People are like tea bags. They work better in hot water. And buddy, I was in some serious hot water. So over the course of that weekend, I didn't even know that step one was infiltrating my life. I was surrendering. I was getting honest about what really happened, and it's hard to put it into context or put it into words because it's like an emotional growth. It was something that was happening to me on the inside, and it was a direct result of what happened in that program on Friday afternoon.

So Monday morning rolls around and I do feel different. I'm seeing things different.

Things are changing inside me. Something is shifting inside my mind. I go back to group on Monday morning and I've got my letter. We get situated around the table. We say the serenity prayer and she looks at me. The counselor does and I said I've got my letter. She said that's good. I said, well, I want to read it. She said not so fast. And I said she she looks at me and she says before we read the letter, we're going to go back to group on Friday, We're going to revisit Friday afternoon. I want you to tell the group the story about that night you wrecked your car. And I want

tell it honestly. And just for a split second I thought I was going to die. I thought, man, I can't possibly go through this again. But then I thought, you know what, screw it. I'm just going to tell the story. I'm just going to put it off there because you know what the bottom line is? All that stubborn stuffer. I've been stuffing stuff and stuffing it down and stuffing it down and something that's painful, emotional, whatever, anger, just name something. I'll stuff it down, stuff it down and all that stuff from all those years

over the course of that weekend start coming up and coming up and it was right here in my throat and I was choking on my own crud.

I needed to have an emotional vomit right there. It was a do or die. So this time I told the story, right.

But this time, although the story was a saying, the story was different because the story was from their perspective and what I did to them. It wasn't all about me, me, me, me, me. It was about this woman running up and down the street top speed, screaming hysterically because her son was bleeding to death in the back seat of that car and there was nothing she could do to save his life. And I killed him.

That's what it was about.

That's getting responsible, that's owning it, and that's what I did on that morning. I had an emotional vomit right there on the table, said here it is,

thought of Maine, what you do, what's on you. I got it out of me, but I got honest. That was the most important thing. I needed to get honest. So when I got done telling that story, I put my hands on the table to get my feedback. And that counselor looked at me and she said, no, we're not going to do that yet. She said, I want you to read that letter. I said all right, so I read my letter.

And when I got done reading that letter, I looked up and there were 13 inmates sitting around that table in a circle, bawling their eyes out. We were all connected,

all of us were connected. And on that morning, my feedback from those women after I got done reading that letter went something like this.

Terry, I don't know what has happened. It's only been three days. Something has shifted. Something has changed. I felt your pain. I felt the horror of what happened in the road that night

because you shared that with me,

and I can't tell you what it felt like for me that morning when I got that feedback from those girls. He's not getting emotional. Every time I go there, it's like it touches my heart. It's like it's touching your heart.

So the feedback I got from those girls that morning, it was we, we were all connected and I knew something had changed. I knew like I could never go back. My life would never be the same. From that day forward. All my life it's been Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. What can I get for me in a You taught me. It's not Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. It's what can I do for you? How can I serve you?

And that's what was happening that morning in that program. It wasn't all about me. It was about giving back because not only was I healing, but I was promoting healing in other people. That's what it's about.

So as that program continued to progress, I continued to progress and grow and talk about other issues that affected other areas of my life, like why I had never been in a healthy relationship. And I won't get into that now because it has no place in a A. But I got a lot of work done during the four months that I was in that program. And when the end of that program came around, they was ready to resign my reassign my position. They had already called up the wardens area. They had saved my job. They called me in the office and they said, you know what, we got to do the paperwork to send you out of here

and we've talked amongst ourselves and you know, we'd be honored if you'd come and work for recovery Services thought wow man, 2000 inmates in that prison, only eight of them are employed for recovery services and those eight are handpicked by Recovery services. And they asked me, I said, you know what, My ego doesn't need me working up at the wardens area. My soul and my disease needs me over here. So I took that job at Recovery Services and part of my job duty was every day, Monday through Friday at 1:00. When we returned from lunch, I had to set up a meeting. It might

big book one day at 12:00 and 12:00 the next I had to set up the tables and the chairs and get the books out and make that meeting happen. So I was going to a meeting every day at 1:00 and then in the evenings, every weeknight they had outside speakers coming in from the free world because there was 2000 inmates in this facility. So they had a lot of open meetings with outside guests coming in. So I was going to those every night on the weeknights and I did that twice and went to two meetings a day,

five days a week for over three years.

That's a lot of recovery and that's what I needed. You know, I've heard people say, well, I don't want to go here because it brainwashed me. I said, well, guess what I need brainwashed? My brain needed a thorough cleaning. I needed that. That was what I needed. So, you know, the, the next three years that I would spend at Marysville, I got so active in recovery services, I dove into the big book. I dove into the 12:00 and 12:00. I got really enthusiastic about recovery. You know, I, I, I didn't want to live like that anymore because I found something in this program that I wanted, you know, and, and I drove into spiritual