The Heartland Roundup in Omaha, NB

Morning, everybody. I'm a grateful Ellen. I'm my name is Carrie.

You guys are great early Saturday morning,

sitting down there just a minute ago. It's a little early in my coffee hadn't kicked in yet and I thought, boy, it's early in the morning. Then all of a sudden when everybody started reading, I get that familiar my heart doing like this so that we're all good now. Still a little my heart's racing in a few minutes it'll slow down. I'm thankful to be here today. It's always an honor and a privilege to be us to share my story of recovery and any Al Anon or a a meeting or round up or wherever I go. And I want to thank the committee for inviting me and and a great room basket. Just wonderful hospitality. Thank you for letting me be here today.

Is anybody here in Al Anon for their first year? Could you raise your hand just just so? I welcome, I want to welcome all the newcomers or even if you're new in a A for your first year, I want to welcome you to the 12 step way of life. I hope that you find in this program the freedom and the serenity and the spiritual whitening. I've found it changed my life. It gave me a life. I was spiritually bankrupt when I got here. So I hope that you can find something and I hope that me being here today can share a little bit of hope for you.

I I

May 17th and next month I'll celebrate my 23rd island on birthday, which is

clearly by God's grace because I don't think I've ever done anything except show up and breathe every day for that long. I I was raised born and raised in a in a little community in Mississippi and little farming community. I was born and raised on a 500 acre cotton and soybean farm out in the middle of nowhere South of Memphis, TN and it was really far out. I was not raised in active alcoholism. There was no drinking in my home growing up. I was raised and affected by family disease of alcoholism, but there was no drinking in my house.

I didn't know this until I arrived in the rooms of Al Anon. I was very, very sick by the time I got here, and I didn't even know what was wrong with me today. I think I was like trying to tell a fish that it's in water, you know? How could you know that you're in something that you've been in all your life? Like, what's air, Right? At any rate, excuse me. We were in the middle of nowhere. I'm 47 years old. Yeah. I'll be 48 in December. We didn't have a phone in our community until I was like, 12 years old now. It was really like, even more far back than Dukes of Hazzard. It was kind of like the

Billy's where I live, you know, we had a family farm. We live next door to my grandparents and my dad was a baby. There were three kids and and my father was the only one that lived near and we worked the farm together with my grandparents and my grandmother was an untreated Al Anon. Now a lot of these words and terms I didn't know until I got into the rooms. But she had been raised and I can remember she was a great storyteller. She would tell us stories about her step dad who was a drinker. They didn't use the term alcoholic, but they would talk about him drinking. She would tell stories of how he would come and call softball games,

umpire the softball games, and the longer the game went, the drunker he would get and they would get in fights with the other team because he would make bad calls and she was taking up for her stepdad. And, and then at night sometimes they would go out and they used wagons at that point with mules, you know what, to plow the fields and haul the wagons. And they would take his wagon apart piece by piece and hang it from the tree. And he would never know because he'd be so drunk. And he'd get up in the morning and see. And they just thought it was in great fun. And I thought it was fun too until I got here. I'm like, wow, that's kind of messed up, you know?

But that's what I come from my father,

He never really severed the emotional umbilical cord for my grandmother. He was like the baby. Even as an adult,

my family didn't have very good boundaries. So my mom married my dad when she was 16. I was 18. She was 18 when she had me.

Yeah, I was. I gave.

Sometimes I'm a little nervous yet, so it's good. We're all laughing. We're having a good time, right?

So my mom is a kid essentially going to marry my dad. She was 16 and I was born two years later. And when I was I think I was like 7 years old when they divorced. Looking back now to me, it's kind of like my mom, my dad and my grandmother was one too many people in that marriage. You know, she only be two and there was 3. And so my mom moved back to where her mother lived.

My my mom's mom was a paranoid schizophrenic, and I didn't know what that meant until I got older. But there's a lot of dysfunction in my family,

so when my parents divorced, it was pretty shocking to me. I thought my mom had just abandoned me. And so I didn't want to leave home. My dad got custody of us, and I didn't want to go visit my mom. Honestly, as a small child, I was afraid if we were left home when I came back, maybe my dad wouldn't be there. So I had this huge abandonment wound that I walked around with until I was way into recovery. What a big victim. You know, it was good training for getting here in Illinois. Anyway, I was supposed to be the first born. I wasn't. I mean, my father wanted a son to be the

and I wasn't a boy, but he raised me like 1. So I got my first shotgun when I was eight and he taught me to hunt and fish and chew tobacco and play ball and all that good stuff, and I thought it was great. He got a little upset later on when I went a little farther with that than he liked. You know,

wasn't like I planned it. You know, I mean, it just happened. At any rate, I, I love growing up on a farm. I mean, we were outdoors all the time, you know, and hunting and fishing and learning to fix things. And it was just wonderful. There was a lot of freedom. I was grateful for that freedom because my father remarried right away after he divorced my, my mom and my stepmother didn't know this then. So much of this is in hindsight. My stepmother was an adult child of an alcoholic, but I didn't know that.

What I knew is shortly after they married, it seemed like we were in competition for my father's love.

Excuse me? And she began being emotionally abusive to me. And she would tell me that if I told anybody, it would be worse. When my father was out of the house and he was a farmer, he was out, you know, a lot. And he also happened to be a compulsive gambler who played poker and dice a lot. But, you know, we didn't talk about that much. At any rate, I had no reason to believe that she wasn't telling me the truth. So I kept secrets. And I began to shut down and just pretend. And this was very good,

making me sicker to get ready to get to the rooms of Al Anon. Well,

not too long after the emotional beast started, she began to get physically abusive with me. And again, she would tell me if I told anybody, it would be worse next time. So I learned early on that if I just put on a face, a smiling face, and told you everything was OK and everything was fine, that you would believe me. And we were just going like nothing happened. Well, I, I learned to be numb. I learned to not acknowledge my feelings. I learned to go against my instincts.

Childhood I, I spent most of my time trying to be outside because I didn't want to be in home with my stepmother.

When I was 15 years old, my grandfather died. He lived just across the, we live. I could throw a rock and hit their house. And I remember that distinctly because we, I blow my hair dry one morning and the phone rang and we hadn't had a phone very long, you know, and the phone rang in the morning and we ran across to my grandmother's house. And I can remember turning my grandfather's head over. He had blue eyes, the only one our family had blue eyes. And at 15, I watched the life leave his body. And that's a very, very intense, powerful, tragic thing to have

at 15. And I can remember I was so concerned with being strong for the family that I couldn't cry in front of them because my grandmother was upset, my dad was upset. And about 2-3 weeks later, I went to where I had been squirrel hunting with my grandfather recently before he died and finally was able to cry after two or three weeks. And it just, everything just came out. Just let it go, let it go. But I couldn't see it, couldn't let anybody see me do that because that was, we were supposed to be strong. Crying was a sign of weakness. And you didn't do that in my family. So

went to college, my father told me

that if I wanted to go to school, I had to get a scholarship because he couldn't afford to pay for me to go to school. I was a softball jock, you know, All Star. I wanted to get a softball scholarship. And I say that I have a disease of perception. I wanted to get a softball scholarship because I thought that would be cool, you know, to be a jock and that they didn't give very good softball scholarships. So I had to resort to a four year fully renewable academic scholarship that paid for everything. And I thought that was like a step down, you know?

See, it's a disease of perception, you know? I mean, it's the way I look at things. It's just a little twisted, you know,

And you know, we laugh and you hear people talk about the Alcoholics being sick, but think about this. Al Anon's do those crazy things and they don't even have to take a drink, you know? I mean, who's really the sicker ones? We are? But I got to college and I was at college for maybe, I don't know, six weeks now. When I was growing up, there were no words for people like me. I didn't know what that meant. Even like me, I just knew my insides were different than the girls that I played with. But I didn't know what that meant because I was so cut off from everything. Well, I got to school and I found out what that meant.

I went to a women's college and there were a lot of gay women there and I sought them out very quickly. And it didn't take me but, you know, like that to get into a relationship. And I was in a relationship with the my first partner for a couple years. And here's what I like to say, really, I was in the same relationship for 10 years, but the face has just kept getting different, you know, I mean, there was no time in between any of them. I would just leave one, go right into another. No, no introspection, no looking at myself, just, you know, and usually I kind of had one on the line a little bit before I even let the next one go, you know,

But I didn't officially be unfaithful to any of them because that would be beneath me, you know. Anyways,

my right before I finished college, my father and stepmother, while I miss him stuff, my childhood. Let me back up just for a second here. When I was 12 years old,

we were way out the country. I told you that already. We all we did was like hunting fish, play ball and drink and have sex out there, right? And there's not a lot to do. And so when I was 12, we had the family car and a whole group of us kids went out one night and I was seeing this little boy that my father didn't want me seeing. And I lost my virginity that night to him. Well, on the way home, my stepbrother, who was two years older than me, he raped me. But because of my disease of perception, I didn't know that what he was done had done was worse than what I had done earlier. And I thought that I would get in trouble

for what I had done if I told on him. So I didn't. And I just kept another secret. So for a couple more years, every night when I would go to bed, I tried to go to bed before my parents did so I could go to sleep. Because if I didn't, I would be so filled with fear that I'd lay awake till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, afraid that my stepbrother would come into my room. That's really not a way for a teenager to live at all, you know, But it's, that's what my childhood was like. And a couple years later,

in the in the two years that passed, I would manipulate and control situations so that the adults didn't know

that I didn't want to be around my stepbrother. That's pretty difficult to do when you live in the house with someone, but it just shows you how distorted and and messed up I got because I was so focused on doing that, I became a master manipulator. And a couple years after that, it happened again. And this time I told my father made him leave and my stepmother just got her.

Her abuse just got worse at that point,

which is about the time that my grandfather died and I got to move in with my grandmother, which was so wonderful because my grandmother, we called her Big Mama and that she was probably weighed about 120 lbs soaking wet. But she was bigger than life. I mean, she ran her whole family. She was the matriarch and no one bothered me while I was around her. So I I enjoyed being able to live with her and I went to college, got to college, started getting into relationships, did really well in college

and, and was really imagined in my relationship.

Excuse me, I'm not used to eat that close to speaking. So it's messing me up a little bit here. And so

right before my senior year of college, my dad and my stepmother had moved to Dallas, TX. They were no longer farming. They were driving truck cross country. And my stepmother was really nice to me now that I didn't live at home anymore. And I found out that my stepmother had cancer. She was really sick and my father brought her home to my grandmother to live to be nursed to death because he didn't have any health insurance. He was in between jobs or whatever. And so my grandmother was nursing my stepmother. I was in college and the last semester my college, I was getting ready to take the Mcats to go to medical school.

I was smart for sure would have gotten into medical school and my mom's mom, paranoid schizophrenic, died. And two weeks after that, my stepmother died and it was my final semester of college. And something in me, it was just like a chip blew in my brain or something and I couldn't, I just couldn't function and I, and I knew it couldn't take the MCAT. And so I said, well, I think I'll just go with my partner. My second. I was on my second relationship at that point, I'll just move with her to Los Angeles because she's going out there because why not? It sounded like a good idea. This little redneck had not been

West of Dallas, TX. OK. And I said, oh heck, I'll just move to LA. Well, that was a geographic, but I didn't know the word for it at that time. You know, my family thought I was crazy because I loaded up my little brown Pinto. Here we go driving out to LA. You know, Mississippi has one Interstate. It runs from the north to the South to the to the South end of the of the state. And it's two lanes each side. You've been to San Bernardino where there's like 10 lanes on each side. You know, crazy. I'm out there going, Oh my God, what did I do? And no one can understand me because my drawl is so thick and I talk in complete cloak realisms and no one knows what I'm saying and

my feelings and because they're being rude at this little redneck, you know. So get out there and I get a job and I do what I do. I don't know how to communicate with my partner because I wouldn't know a feeling that or how to say that I had a feeling if it hit me over the head. And so things, you know, life starts to happen and I can't talk. I can't communicate and make them carry on a conversation. But I can't tell you how I really feel or if I have a need. I don't know what a need is 'cause I think you're supposed to fix it, you know, without me telling you. You're supposed to read my mind. And so I had gotten a job and there was this cute little thing that that worked where I did

and I started getting interested and, you know, I'm a person of ethics and morals and I come home and tell my partner that I want to date somebody else. So I want to break up with her and she has to move. I didn't see anything wrong with that. Bludgeoning people with the truth was not something I was really schooled on at that point, you know, and we learned in program to be compassionate and I didn't know much about that at that point. So I got continued in these relationships and, and one right after another. And finally I found myself unhappy with a a gal that drank a lot and did cocaine and she had a little baby and and,

you know, the drinking wasn't too bad, but the cocaine kind of tipped me right over the edge, you know, because I would be going to bed to sleep and getting ready to, you know, needing to go to work the next day and she wouldn't come in the baby be crying all night because cocaine makes you do some crazy things. And so I finally left that relationship in a in a dramatic fashion. It's so funny to me because I don't know if there's any other Al anons like this in this room, but I want to make out like it's the alcoholic who's dramatic, you know? Yeah, You don't corner the market. I'm being dramatic. We're dramatic in our own right. You know, I can remember slinging the shower curtain back while she's

say, what's this in your purse? It was cocaine. And I'm like, I told you, if I found this again, I was going to leave, you know, And so I leave and, and then I proceed in my very dysfunctional way of, of talking to people to find out all the lies that she'd been telling me because I just had to know. I don't know if you guys do that at all or used to, but got to find out all the dirt. And in the process of me doing this to, to just have a little more drama in my life, I bumped into

a person who was two years sober in A and A Well, I just moved to Lai knew what AAA was, but I didn't know what a A was, you know,

and they tell me that this person was sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, which meant absolutely nothing to me. I just thought she was a bit. And so it doesn't it stand to reason that the next time I met her, I felt desperately in love with her, right. And we moved in together on our first date. And then I began going to a meetings with her because I have the disease of being the good guy. I'm riding in on my White Horse. I will save you. I am the good guy. And I went to a A with her because she had a problem. I didn't. There was no reason for me to go. I didn't have a problem drinking. I could take it or leave it,

but I was raised in the Southern Baptist home. So we go sitting in the rooms and the steps and the traditions are on the wall and that God word would come up, you know, and I'd flinch a little bit, you know, because of what that meant to me. But we used to go to a lot of 10:00 speaker meetings and they would, it would be candlelight. And there was something that would happen in those rooms with the laughter and the spirituality and the talking about God and the sharing, the sharing

members there. I hadn't been out in on that point, but there was something about it that felt like home to me. Not like I, I knew it wasn't my place, but it just felt safe. It felt like home

and I was really sick. Wait, I hadn't been in that relationship but probably 2 minutes until we were right around one day and I opened her. I have to tell you how sick I am if you aren't getting an idea yet. I opened her glove box and there were 100 parking tickets in there and we weren't even living together yet. Well, we've been dating like a week or two, 100 parking tickets and I went to work at my credit union and took out $1100 loan and paid all those parking tickets for her because I thought it was something that I should just do right?

Sick, sick, sick. So if they just got kind of worse from there, but

we were together, she had a problem with anger and I had a problem saying no. And she was just, I tell you what, she would walk in the room and my heart would start to pound and my hands would start to sweat. And I had a physical reaction to the alcoholic in my life, you know, so I, I don't have a physical allergy to alcohol, but sometimes I have a physical allergy to Alcoholics, you know, so I can kind of understand a little bit about, you know, the phenomenon of craving. I can get that. It just doesn't happen to me when I take a drink in my body. And it was very dramatic with us and, and we started, it started getting kind of

sometimes when she didn't know how to control her anger. And her sponsor came to me, God bless that moment, and suggested that I might try to go to Al Anon. And just because I wanted to make everybody happy, I said that I would go. And so I went to an Al Anon meeting. Now I've been going to a lot of 10 o'clock, you know, candlelight meetings of a A and I walk into when and you know that to me, like they were smoking, they were drinking coffee, they were laughing, they were having a good time. It's like a bar with no alcohol, right? And so then I go into this Al Anon meeting and there's like 50 people in this room sitting in a circle with Kleenex boxes in the middle and they're crying,

talking about their feelings. And at the break I shot out of there like, I don't want to be there. I just can I stay here with you up here? She's that's fine.

So I was getting pretty sick in this relationship, but I didn't know it and I was sitting in a lot of the 8 meetings and I was listening to the steps and things would soak in. You know, you get, I was getting it by osmosis while I wanted to or not, you know, because we went to a lot of meetings. I have to paint this picture for you because you certainly you don't know yet how sick I was, but we had another roommate who had an issue with the she tried to commit suicide sometimes. And so, so this is our sober household. I would come home on a Friday night, my roommate would be laying in the floor and I would see how just how deep she had cut her

before I go to the bedroom to have a big blowout knock down drag out with my partner before we go to the 8:00 AA meeting and there's no drinking in our house. You know what I have to say is there may be sober households where that kind of stuff is happening here today and we don't have to live that way anymore. There is a way out. We don't have to live that way. We have a solution.

I didn't know there was a solution. I didn't even know how sick I was at that point, to tell you the truth. But life happened and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And they were busted eardrums. There were broken windshields. There were, you know, fists through windows. There were emergency room trips just because she didn't want me to go back to work. And, you know, this was crazy. It was insane. It was a roller coaster, high highs and low lows. And that was my life. And finally, at one point, I, I had this suspicion that my partner was having an affair with our mutual best friend, but I wasn't sure. No one would tell me

and I had this feeling in my gut. But remember, I I've learned long since not to trust what my guts are telling me. So I'm looking for you to tell me the truth and no one's validating what I'm afraid of. And about this time, I was going to make a trip home when I was when I was 12 years old, my father set me down and said, Carrie, there are three things that you can do that I will disown you for. Steal love a black or love a woman. And here is where I always say I wish I had stolen my first girlfriend and she been black, but it wasn't the truth.

My first sponsor was black, but I don't think that counts.

Anyways, I went home and I honestly, I could I, I didn't have courage. I wasn't working the steps. I wasn't in a program. I was just kind of getting a little bit by osmosis, which is really dangerous. You know, when you're not, when you're not even in a program, you can see that they say that, you know, going going to meetings and and not working the step is like sitting in a garage and thinking your car right. It doesn't make you want. And I wasn't even saying I was in a program at that point. So I was really on the edges, but I told my new stepmother this is how covert I was still. I said what do you think my dad would do if.

If maybe you were to think that I were gay, I couldn't even come out and say it, you know? And what he did was he, I told her that right before I left to go back home at the end of my trip. And when I arrived back at Los Angeles, he had left a very long message on my answering machine and said, you're dead and buried. As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist. I don't know what I did wrong, blah, blah, blah. But don't come around me. I don't want to have anything to do with you. You don't exist. And that was just like someone cut my heart out because I was raised that blood sticker and water. And if you don't have family, what

gotten and my father had been like my higher power, well couple. That sense of laws was the fact that my other roommate confirmed for me that my partner was having an affair with our mutual best friend. And that's when I hit my bottom. I was spiritually bankrupt. The lights where you could look at my eyes and you would see the lights were on, but no one was home. I was so desperate and so hopeless at that point.

Our roommate had been through a treatment program for

codependency or alimony if you will. And I was fortunate enough to get into that 21 day program because I knew that if I didn't go somewhere, I was probably going to try and do something stupid like take my life. And that had never until that moment that had never happened to me, that I never had that thought. And that to me is like the first step because to ask for help, I knew that I was powerless and I had to do something. So I went through this treatment center and in essence the professionals over 21 days

made me put words to the things that had happened to me all my life. I had never been able to put the word rape with the the event.

And there's something about putting the words to the situations that make them real. And I think I hadn't been able to say them before because then I would have to deal with them. And I hadn't been able to say that my stepmother had abused me because if I have said it, I'd had to look at it. I couldn't look at it until now. I had to be locked up somewhere to look at it, you know, thank God. And so we, I like the kid around and say that we had to do a family tree where he drew it out to the genealogy and look at all the dysfunction. And then he had to put I had to put colored lines around the different types of dysfunction in my family. And I had a freaking Christmas tree, all

balls. You know, I mean, like some I've had five or six different colors around him. You know, it was pretty twisted. But the good news was, excuse me, let me see how I got so sick and that there was a way out. And at the end of the 21 days, they told me, they said, Carrie, we've shown you what the problem is. And now you need to go find a way of life. You need to find a spiritual way of life because your belief system is founded on lies. Well, if that doesn't wake you up, I don't know it will. You know, I mean, everything, everything I believe is founded on lies. Oh, great. What do I do now? You know, 711 doesn't have

systems, you know, I mean, you can't just go buy them. And so I had been to that Alan on meeting and to to remember at this moment that arrogance with which I had left at Alan meeting that I literally crawled back into. But they told me, you know, go ask those people for help. They will help you find a way to live. You have to find a spiritual basis for your life or you won't make it. So I went to Al Anon and I had, you know, I love the 90 meetings and 90 days that I heard him talk about in NAA. And so

90 meetings and 90 days and I got to sponsor. My sponsor told me I had to go to meetings. I had to call her, had to work the steps. I had to be of service. And I did everything. She I called her every day. I was so afraid that she wouldn't help me. I was so afraid not to do what she would tell me to do. And so I went to 90 meetings in 90 days. I took a day off and I did another 90 and 90 and meetings was the only place I felt safe at this point. You know, I, I was fortunate not to lose my job when I went to treatment, but the universe sometimes I think almost has a twisted sense of humor because

I got out of treatment and went back to work. I worked in like a 12 by 12 room with white walls with an instrument. I'm in the sciences and me and, and like, talk about being alone with your mind. Oh my God, it's a wonder I didn't go crazy. And I, I can remember I would cry on the way to work and I make a deal with myself that I could, if I could just work till lunchtime, I could cry all the way through lunch. And then I knew I could go to a meeting when I got off work at night on the speaker.

The speaker was sharing last night about a teddy bear. I can remember I had a teddy bear when I was when I was first in program because I cried all the time.

And they tell me that when I finally left the relationship that got me there, it took a while that, that I just needed to, to let my feelings come. My sponsor asked me what was my biggest fear and I said that my biggest fear is being alone. No, I didn't leave that relationship when I first got into program. I was in program probably about 12 or 13 months before I got out of that relationship. I can remember we had a this is so funny. When I look back now, it's like, Oh my God, it's so sick. But we have been together a year and we had a a cake for our anniversary, had a A and an al Anon symbol in it

at the bar. We were shooting pool, right? We weren't drinking,

celebrate our anniversary in a bar. Perfect, you know, and, and it seemed like that relationship lasted about 15 years and it lasted maybe 15 months at most, you know, I mean, just high drama all the time. I look back now, it's like, Oh my God, how did I live? Because I have sponsors that my life is pretty boring today for the most part, you know, but I lived in such high drama, it would kill me today. The adrenaline of it. I just don't think I could handle it. I'm having some challenges now. We're moving right now

into a new home and the adrenaline of just things related to a mover overwhelming to me, you know, not to mention how my life used to be like that way all the time. But

thank God I have steps and meetings today in prayer and meditation and things that keep me grounded. At any rate, when I got ready to leave that relationship, my sponsor said, what's your biggest fear? And I said, being alone, If I'm alone, I'll die. And I thought if I was alone, I would die because I didn't know how to go through life alone. I had no sense of who I was or what to do. I have to tell my second step story real quick. When I went into that treatment center,

my insurance would only pay a certain amount for my treatment. And so they did all this negotiations.

And the only way they would take me into treatment is for me to sign a paper to say that I would pay them $315 for 18 months. And I didn't think that I could afford that because I was, you know, supporting an alcoholic well beyond my means. And I didn't have the money. But my sponsor, I mean, my partner pulled me out in the hall and said, my sponsor says if you get, if you have money problems, you don't have problems. The most important thing is to stay alive. Sign the paper, you're going to die. So I signed the paper and I got out of the treatment center.

You know, I already said I'm doing 90 meetings in 90 days,

thank you. And I come prepared. And so I got out of the treatment center and I was just making it day by day, getting along, going to meetings at night, just, I mean, barely trying to keep my butt on on me, you know, And so I would go to the I'll call my sponsor and say, I don't know what to do about money. I'm juggling my bills. How do I get through this? She said, go to meeting, pray to God and ask him to show you what to do. Well, I didn't have a God at that point because

the idea of God that I knew was not not fun. He was going to, like, make me burn in hell for who I was at my core.

But my sponsor had an idea of a God that worked for her. I could look in her eyes and there was this thing about her. I didn't have a word for it then. I know that today's serenity, but I wouldn't have known if it hit me over the head. I thought she was boring, you know, but she had peace about her. But I couldn't identify peace because I didn't know what it was. It was foreign to me. And she let me use her higher power. So I would go to bed at night, get out of my knees, Dear Stephanie's God, when I said my prayers, you know, And so I said my prayers. And then I kept doing this and I was juggling my bills

and I was just asking God to help me and show me the way and really trying to understand that there could be a God that loved me because I was having great difficulty getting rid of someone elses idea of God. And I went to the mailbox one day. It was a third month that I had sent my check into that treatment center and I opened the mailbox. I still have this letter today. It says, Miss Keller, your hospital bill has been paid in full and we are returning the last check to us that he sent.

And in that moment, I knew that something out there had to be on my side. I didn't know what to call it. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that something was in my corner

and it was just a little notch in the wall that had built had been built up against God, you know, so I kept going and I would still like, I think at first I made a decision to turn my will in my life over the care of Stephanie God, and she didn't care. She really didn't. And you know, I've learned my God to to people today. Oh, the teddy bear. When I, I remember I used to cry for like the first six months. And so like I got a teddy bear and I named it Patterson. And it's so funny because I, this last week, I think somebody brought Patterson back and I give him to spontes when they need him to, to, to when, when

more love because this, this little bear has more love poured into it over 20 something years than I could even imagine. And the other day Patterson came home and I was like, oh, good, somebody needs him. And he went right back out the door with another person that same day. So cool. Because Patterson helps people, you know, I mean, it's just the love that we, we give and it's symbols that we use. But

this program works. I can't even tell you how full my life today is as a result of doing these steps. You know, at first, like I said, a term I will in my life over the care of Stephanie's God. And I needed her God at first. And then we had a group, she got all responses together and we went through a, a four step workbook and we did the four step. And that was kind of frightening because I had only told professionals at that point some of the secrets that I had. But when I did my footstep with her,

it was a very frightening to me because I was so afraid that she was going to judge me for some of the from the things that I had done and and experienced. And she didn't look at me any different. And I watched, you know,

every time I'd see at her meeting, I'm looking, she's looking at me different, you know, she could careless, but you know, I know that today. But you know, she just loved me. And that experience that I had with my first sponsor was the first time I probably had experienced unconditional love because she didn't want anything from me. She just wanted me to get better. That's what I wanted. She wanted me to do the things that she had done that helped her to get better. That's all she asked me to do nothing. She never asked me to do anything that she hadn't done herself, you know,

So we kept going through the steps

and I did the 5th step with her. And then to the best of my ability, I was entirely ready to get rid of the character defects that I had on the daily basis that I could. And some days I think I'm not some I'm not entirely ready to get rid of because I still exhibit them. I don't know about you guys, but I still have some character defects and they, they raise their ugly heads some days more than I would like, particularly being judgmental. I get to work on that one. And I think the the more I've sought out the prejudices that I have

that remain in me,

the the bigger my heart becomes. Because when I can see where I'm prejudice against something, my sponsor, my current sponsor talks about how the 4th step is to help us find the ways that separate us from God. What ways do I still have self will that keeps me from God? And I look at, if I look at the ways that I'm prejudice, particularly against God or against religion or anything like that, when I can find what those prejudices are, then I can ask God to help me be relieved of them. And I can start to have more freedom and start to have more open mind

because the closed minds, that's a terrible thing. And I got here with mine completely just slammed shut. I humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings.

And this is about the time I started deciding this was so funny. I had left that relationship through no power of my own. God did for me what I couldn't do for myself and have my partner move like 80 miles away. And I tried to stay in that relationship. I would drive out there in the middle of the night and we'd fight and I'd drive back and I couldn't keep a job and do that very long. I tried. Oh, I'm so tenacious, you know,

And so I, I, I call my sponsor up and I said I have a plan. She just fell out laughing.

She said, OK, sister girl, tell me your plan. And I said, well, you know, I've been doing this thing all wrong. I've been putting the cart before the horse.