The Mesa Roundup in Mesa, AZ

Well, hi, I'm Elizabeth.

I'm usually loud without a microphone, so I was concerned. I thought, oh, there's only going to be

about

all right, get it adjusted. Oh, no,

all right. I was concerned. I was thinking, Oh no, there's only going to be three people for me to talk to and they're going to think I'm dumb. And then four of my friends showed up and they already know that I'm dumb. So that anxiety is just gone. And you know, that's one of my, I wasn't going to start this way, but I'm starting this way now. That's one of my blessings in this program is I have friends that will show up for me today, which I didn't have 10 years ago when I was coming, when I first started coming to this meeting.

And I have friends who not only will show up for me, they will show up for me multiple times. I think Joe has heard my story at least four times. So, and of course it does kind of change as we tell it as the years go by because we get a different perspective and we learn what we're talking about.

I'm a very grateful member of Al Anon. I did celebrate 10 years of recovery in October this year. So and that is absolutely amazing to me. I, I know we generally try to tell our stories in the format of what it was like,

what happened and how we are today. And if I try to do that, I get so caught in my fascinating story and all these fun details that I never get to the recovery part. So I usually start with how I welcome newcomers and then kind of explain why my welcome is the way that it is. Because when we welcome newcomers and Al Anon, we have some things that we tell them and we share just a little bit of our story, what it was like when we got here and how Alanon has helped because that's what's encouraging to newcomers. That was what was encouraging to me.

And when I got here, I was just angry. I was angry, resistant and hostile. I did not want to be here. I knew it wasn't going to help. I wanted to do anything but this. But I was out of other ideas. And so I came. You know, I was that desperate. I was not unhappy. And at my first meeting they told me, the three CS, they told me you didn't cause the disease of alcoholism. You can't control it and you can't cure it. And I went,

duh, you know, hello. Obviously it didn't 'cause it is clearly his fault.

And if I could control it, hello, I would not need to be here. And then I didn't even know why there was a third seed, because I thought controlling it was the cure. So what do you mean? And it took me several years to start understanding that the reason that I drove myself insane trying to do the right thing or not do the wrong thing or say the right thing or not say the wrong thing was because I believe that I caused it, that I was in some way to fall at fault, that I did have some kind of blame.

And, you know, I knew that I thought that I could control it, but I also knew that I had failed at that completely. So

they told me at my first meeting to try 6 different meetings because they all have different personality and same structure, but you'll see some same faces, some different faces. Some of them are big, some of them are small. And I just went, yeah, there's no way that's happening. It took everything I had to get to that first meeting. I, I was so resistant and I was so angry and I was so miserable. I just crawled in bleeding and it was all that I could do. And there was no way. And I, I've learned and I really believe that

that the higher power that I call God takes us where we need to go when we need to be there. Because I went into this meeting and it was horribly hard to do. And I was so embarrassed and so ashamed because of course all of you were going to know what a failure I was that I couldn't control this thing. It hadn't occurred to me that, you know, that was maybe normal.

I lost my drain of thought there.

I couldn't go to six different meetings. That was the only thing I could do was the meetings that I went to. So I didn't. I just said I'm I'm not going to do that. And

that's OK. That was enough. God takes us where we need to be. That's what I was talking about. And that meeting to me was enormous. It was this huge crowd of five people, you know, And if I, because I had become that isolated, I was so isolated that five people was a lot. And it was hard for me. I couldn't make eye contact at the time. I couldn't make eye contact with anybody

and that was just really as difficult as it got and I couldn't do other meetings. And so I didn't for a while. And then I learned later when my home groups both closed that there's a reason why we tried different meetings so that we have some familiarity and we we can have some flexibility in our programs and we don't have to have that trauma. They also told me to make to to not make any major decisions for the first six months to a year that I was in Al Anon because they said things can change a lot if you're working a program

and you don't want to make any decisions now that you might regret. And if you take your time to make the decision,

maybe a better thing. And that was the thing that I could hear that brought me some relief because a lot of my insanity was that trying to control it because my my husband at the time and I had been separated already for two years. And I was convinced I had to have the answer. And not only did I have to have the answer, I had to have it right now or yesterday or last week or, you know, a year ago. Who does that? They separated for two years, you know, and, and I was just driving myself insane with that. And they said six months to a year. And I said, well, OK, I can give it six months.

That's like a drop in the bucket of misery. I'd been crying non-stop for a couple of years and six months was like nothing. So I said, OK, well, I can do six months of my best shot. And my best shot sometimes didn't seem very good because of how angry, resistant and hostile I was. So I like to explain why it why it is that I was so mad because I come from alcoholism. I know that there are some people that didn't grow up with it and they and they go and they marry it and then they're really confused. And I grew up in it, so

confusion is different. But my grandmother is was an alcoholic when she was alive. And she used to talk about alcohol the way that I hear al Anon people talk about their Alcoholics. And she told me one time I always loved to drink and she just lit up like a Christmas tree because that was her thing that she didn't. She explained to me that when she was drinking, she could be the person that she wanted to be instead of the person that she was. She was outgoing, she was the belle of the ball. She was the center of attention. She was the star

and she got that from alcohol and it was important to her. Now she

had grown up in an alcoholic home. Her her father was the guy during the depression who stopped at the bar on his way home with pay packet and bought drinks all around and did not come home with enough money for his family.

So my grandmother grew up listening to those screaming fights and she vowed she would never live that way.

And she never did. She never did. She she eliminated that chaotic element of alcoholism from her life, but she still passed on the disease that still came down. My mother learned all the crazy rules that that we learn about how to how to navigate uncertain waters and she passed them on and I learned them as rules of how this is how the world works. So when I got out of my family and I got into the world, it was kind of weird that nothing that I thought was how it should be never went that way.

Very, very frustrating.

My resentment really started though, because I say resistant and hostile. I was resistant because I had a lot of resentment and I had a lot of resentment towards the program, towards any alcoholic, living or dead, drunk or sober. If you were an alcoholic, I hated you and it was your fault that my life was miserable and

and I had a lot of huge resentment towards a A and like I said, I came into a program that I already knew didn't work and I have no idea how it did work, but it it did.

And actually, I do have an idea how it worked and I can share about that.

When I was 16, some, something was really, really wrong in my home and I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I had, there was this, I had this miserable feeling in my gut all of the time. We were fighting constantly. My parents were divorced when I was six, so it was me and my mother and my younger brother and we were having these huge fights constantly. And it was always chaotic and dramatic and, and I felt horrible all the time. And I didn't have the, I couldn't find a reason.

I couldn't figure out why that was. And so I was thinking about it one day and I thought, you know, I, we had done, I'd been to counseling. I talked to a Lutheran minister, I'd talk to a Catholic priest, I'd talk to a Presbyterian youth minister. I had gone, you know, we had used all these resources and nothing was helping. And so I thought about it and I thought, well,

I know if I got a drug problem, then my family could get some help and then we'd be fine. So I, I, I, I like this. This is my my best illustration of the kind of thinking

that I do on my own. And so I set out to have a drug problem. And at the time all of my friends were using various drugs. There were there were drugs all over everywhere. You know, it was easily accessible to me because those are who my friends were, pot and everything else. But I was the designated clean person. I was the person who was supposed to stay clean so that if something went really, really wrong, somebody could explain to the cops or the fire department or the parents, whoever came. So that was always the plan. So I never participated. And that was the view of me.

And so I had access and I didn't go that way and I used some over counter medicine and made kind of a mess. But you know, I was not having a drug problem. I was creating a fake drug problem so I could get help from my family. This was what they say in our opening, forcing a solution here. I'm going to, I'm going to force this solution through. My brother found pills in my room, took them to my mother. She took them to a chemist, had them analyzed and slapped me in a treatment center

and I went cool. It worked and I stopped

because I did not have a drug problem. I had a thinking problem is what I had and I had some control issues. So I turned 17 in the treatment Center for drug addiction that I didn't have. And I went to,

I went to at that time a lot of A, A and NA meetings. And when I got to the treatment center, I said I don't have a drug problem. I did this on purpose because there's something really wrong with my family and we need help. And they said,

we call that denial, Elizabeth and I went and I didn't really understand. And so I had a lot of people in AA and NA and at the treatments dinner trying to help me by breaking down that denial and getting me to tell the truth when I was telling the truth. And in retrospect, I can look at that and say, well, of course that's what they thought. But at the time, you know, I was kind of young. I didn't really know how to handle it. And it it wasn't really good for me to have that happen.

So meanwhile, in outpatient treatment, because I went inpatient and outpatient treatment,

my mother was getting what she needed. She met Alan on and it was something new. And my brother met Al Anon and meant nothing to him. And, you know, and she had no idea because what was seeming right to her. She had no idea that we did not have the right thing going on. That there was and I don't know how she could have known that it was that sick that that we were doing that, that we had just traded places. It wasn't detected in in treatment at all, that he had a problem. I learned 10 years later that that was the

the time that I started feeling like there was this horrible problem in my family was the time that he had started doing drugs and drinking and I didn't know. And I have always felt glad that

really his really his alcoholic, you know, the the drugs aren't the thing that have gotten the stronghold of on him. It's alcohol. But what I saw happen was I saw that I didn't get helped and I saw that my brother didn't get help. And I saw that my mother got help for a little while and then stopped. And So what I saw was that this program didn't work.

That is what I saw. And it took me a lot. It took me about three years in the program to go. It works if you work it. What I saw was a bunch of people not working it, but I was angry about it and

I went off and I, you know, I got through school, I got married. My first husband was not an alcoholic, but he came from an alcoholic family and he came from that kind of violent, brutal alcoholism. His father beat his mother and all the kids until she got the gumption up to move him across the country.

And so I learned about violence in that marriage. And I didn't learn a lot, but I kind of think anything you learn about violence in your home is enough. It doesn't matter if it's a little or a lot, it's enough. And that marriage didn't last. We were really young. We got married at 19. Everybody said, you're crazy, it's not going to last. And I said, how can you say that? And it didn't. And, and

few months before the divorce, I had moved in with this other guy who was much older and handicapped

and that that kind of it was a safer place for me to be. And that relationship lasted for a little while. But his drinking bothered me. It didn't bother me hugely, but it bothered me. And I never could decide, well, it's only a six pack a night. Is that a problem or not? You know, And when that relationship ended, meanwhile, I had started a job where

there I smoked when I was younger and I had started a job where

I was a secretary and

I made friends with one of the vice presidents because he was a smoker. And when I started working there, we smoked in his office. And then within the year, that became no longer the thing to be done. And we went outside and we smoked in the snow and we smoked in the heat and we smoked in the rain, sometimes in a car. And we got to be friends and we got to be better friends. And that relationship developed over years. He saw me through some dating relationships. He moved my belongings all over the city that we lived in for me. And he was just this amazing,

amazing man. He was calm all the time. And I didn't understand calm at all because I grew up with chaos and I didn't, I didn't get it. How are you calm? What is that about? And

for example, the guy that I was living with one day got upset with me through all my belongings out on the lawn. So I went home and found all my belongings on the lawn and piled them into the back of my VW Bug and went and stayed with a friend. And then I went to work. And then I went to work a couple days with all of my stuff jammed into the back of the Bug until somebody finally asked me, do you need a place to stay? Are you living in your car?

And during, during that time, while I was trying to get that sorted out, I didn't have any money. So I kind of just didn't eat. And you know, it was not until I got to Al Anon that I found other people who understood forgetting to eat. I would just forget. I'm too busy. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not hungry, you know, or I'm hungry, but I won't be in 5 minutes if I ignore it or whatever. And I was starting to get dizzy and, and I thought, this isn't good. Why am I, why, why am I feeling dizzy and stuff? And then I went, Oh, well, maybe because I haven't eaten in two days.

So I went into his office and I said, you need to take me lunch because I haven't eaten in two days and I don't have any money until we get paid next week. And he said, OK,

that was it. That was all. He said OK, And we went and we got food. And when we were seated, I said, nothing fazes you. And he said no, not really. And I found out that that was true. It didn't matter how much chaos I had going on. It didn't matter how dramatic I thought everything was. He just kind of went. And it was amazing. I had never seen that and another person. And so I,

I was learning that from him. I had started kind of learning how to stay calm. He could keep me calm instead, because I just would sound off at the drop of anything and he could put his hand on my shoulder and I would calm down. And it was the most amazing thing. So I really had him up on a, on a pedestal. He was, he got up there pretty high because he had all of this that I had never even heard of how to be serene. I think he had Serenity and

that lasted

until a few months before we got married. When

his dog died and she was 13 years old, she'd been his only companion and it was heartbreaking to him. And I came home and found him drink. And that made sense to me because as a non alcoholic, sometimes, you know, just take the edge off it and get through. But he never stopped drinking after that. And what I learned after we were married was that he had been in a A and probably he had six or seven years sober in a A before we started dating. But at the time that we started dating, he was no longer going to meetings.

And so then when something happened, he didn't have tools anymore to deal with it. And he started drinking. And I learned that everything I'd ever heard in a treatment center was true. It picked up where it left off. He went back to where he was and the descent to me, because I hadn't been there with, you know, I hadn't been through any of that with him. His dissent was just horrifying because on top of that, also I had him up on this really high pedestal. And when he started falling off it, I just, it was just horrible to watch. You know, his,

his thinking got crazy and I didn't recognize that right away. He'd been my wisdom go to guy. And, and when he started getting crazy, I didn't notice it. And so after we had separated, just as an example, he said one night I called him at 7:30 and he knew I didn't like to talk to him when he'd been drinking. So he made-up a new rule that it was too late to be calling anybody after 7:30. So I stopped calling everybody ever after 7:30, which bewildered all of my nighttime friends that I used to talk to in the middle of the night. They didn't understand. And I was like,

Are you sure it's OK to call? Because after 7:30 and they're like, hello, I just woke up. You know, it was, I just followed right along into that insanity. And what that meant for me was there was lots of examples of forcing solutions. I've got lots of crazy thinking that I did.

I, I left out the part in my first marriage about I decided to shoot him in the knees and that that would stop the violence. And I said, I've got this plan. I'll go get a gun and I'll learn how to shoot really well and then I'll stop you.

And he said that's a good idea. And then fortunately God had other plans. And that was pretty much, you know, he pretty much immediately put us in different places so that so that we didn't have to go there. But I look at,

I look at my friends who take meetings into prisons and I know how far away I was from that. You know, I wasn't very far away from that. That was the grace of God, that I'm not in the prison. And I know today, you know, it's the grace of God that I'm not, that I'm not the alcoholic, I'm just crazy all on my own, which I'm not sure whether that's good or not

when I, you know, I, I, I was very, very high and mighty about the whole drinking thing. But then I think about it and I'm not really anymore sane, but I can't blame a chemical. So.

So I think about that

when I got here, what actually brought me to a first meeting in a program that I know didn't worked because it hadn't worked in my family and it clearly hadn't worked for my husband since he'd been doing that. And then he stopped and then he relapsed. And I just knew that it didn't work.

I had gotten into kind of a cycle where I would go crazy at the drop of a hat. And he liked dropping hats just to watch that. But I would go crazy at the drop of a hat and I would get really, really paranoid. And I would call all of my friends, all like four of them that were left at the time

and accuse them of, you know, colluding, being in my back and plotting and scheming and, and, and things like that. And then the next day I would think maybe I'm doing that again and I'm wrong again. And I no, no, no, this time it's really like that. And then two days later, I'd think, you know, I think I might have done it again. And then three days later I'd go, you know, I did it again. I can't believe I did it again. And then I would be in that shame and remorse and I would have to go and apologize to everybody. And you know, what I didn't realize at the time was I had a lot of unhealthy friends who kind of liked that about.

Me. But it felt terrible. It felt terrible. So my life was a wreck. I had I was abusing my friends this way, what friends there were. By the time I came to meetings, there was really only one left. My husband and I were separated and I didn't want that. I just, I wanted him to stop drinking so we could have our marriage back the way it was when I married him. And

you know, I was working, but I was physically broken. I had a back problem. I was, I was not strong. I was broken in about every way that there is to be broken. And I was, I was,

I would say, pretty spiritually bankrupt. And I had a day, I went through that cycle and I went, you know, I cannot keep doing this. I can't treat people this way. And I had found an online forum, I was at the time participating in CompuServe. And that was a recovery forum in CompuServe. And I had gone in and read a bunch of stuff. We called it lurking. I had gone in and read a bunch of stuff and come out and thought about it and gone in and read some stuff and thought about it. And then one time I posted and there's a there's a double winner in upstate New York that I owe a huge

to of gratitude that I try to pay forward. You know, he, he, he talked to me every time I surfaced, he would talk to me and eventually he would say, you know, you really should go to a face to face meeting. It's a little different from just lurking in an online forum. And I would say, no, you know, thanks very much. That's not going to happen. And I would be out of there and I wouldn't be, I'd be reading, but I wouldn't be posting again. And he just patiently every single time and he would welcome me. Oh, hi, how nice to see you. How's it going? How's it been?

And then he would say you should really go to a face to face meeting. And I'd be like, no, no thanks, I'm not doing that.

But that was a start, I think. And I forget that it kind of started there. I had a little bit of a start before I made it to that first meeting.

I also forgot that I had never been to an AL Anon meeting before. I'd only been to an A, A or an NA meeting and that may. And it didn't occur to me that they might be a little different. And there are some differences. In my experience, there are some differences in the programs.

When I came, what I could do was I could go to meetings and I went to two meetings a week. I had a job where I traveled a lot and there was AI had a friend at the time who sponsor challenged her to start picking up that 900 LB phone and making some calls. Well, she was going to these meetings with me and everybody knew that I had no life. I was going to work and I was going home and I was going to work and I was going home and that was all I was doing. And so she knew that. So she picked on me to call as a safe bet because that was going to be there when she called.

And she started calling me and she would call me and say, well, let's go. There's this gathering going on over here. Let's go to this meeting or oh, by the way, I'm speaking at, at something and I don't want to. Why don't you come along? And she would come and get me and we would go and do stuff and and

that was helpful. I also had, in that initial fellowship of mine, I had some people that came to Mesa Roundup dances and they would bring me to the dances and I didn't have anything to do on holidays. My first year in Al Anon,

I celebrated Christmas by doing laundry because the laundry room, nobody was using it. And I was proud of that because I instead of sitting around and going, I'm having the worst, most miserable Christmas ever. I said, what can I do and what I could do is laundry. So I did what was in front of me to do and I thought that was a good thing. And

it hadn't occurred to me to try to go home and be with my family or or maybe hook up with some other people. Didn't even occur to me. My isolation was like that. I didn't, I didn't know how to do that reaching out. But Alanine people knew how to reach out to me. Then you had to tell me, hey, there's dances on these holidays. You can at least come and dance with us. And they knew how to they knew how to call and say they're making me share on my birthday and I don't want to. And they did and

she became a really good friend. And I was not able to do sponsorship immediately coming into this program

because I couldn't trust anybody. What brought me was the realization that I couldn't trust anybody around me. And the reason for that was I couldn't trust myself because I was picking these people. And I was like, do you know, what's the point? And I had, there was a long timer when I started going to meetings. She's she also does both programs that she would, she was, you know, talking to me after meetings and being nice. And I looked at her and I said, you know,

I know what you're trying to do and I appreciate it, but I just want to let you know that it's not going to work because

I don't trust you and I'm not going to trust you. So I really don't think you should waste your time. And she looked at me for a minute and she said, well, let's go get coffee. And I went,

you know, she undid me with that. I didn't have a good response to let's go get coffee. So we went and got coffee and she did, she did some work with me for a while and it didn't, it ended up, I guess it was just time for us to stop. But this other friend, meanwhile, that relationship built up and we never called it sponsorship. She didn't want the responsibility and I didn't want the accountability. So we never called it sponsorship. But it worked for us. She, she came and got me to go to things and she would tell me things like she would talk about her

partner and I finally I would ask her, I remember this conversation. I said, So what exactly is a prayer partner? You keep talking about that. And she said, well, you know, we call each other up in the morning. I said in the morning before you go to work, She said, yeah. I said like what, 5:00? She said, yeah, I was like, OK, she'd be calling each other up in the morning. And we, we do a reading or something and we talk about, you know what, what our concerns are maybe. And we and we say a little prayer and then we get off the phone and go to work. And I went.

That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard.

And, and she said, well, it's what I do.

And I went OK. And I, it stayed in my mind for a while. And, and of course, right when I decided maybe it would be a good idea to have a prayer partner, God had one ready for me. She was right there and I had a prayer partner that we prayed every morning together for three years and didn't miss very many of those mornings. And she really made a huge difference. And you know, I, I think when I look back, I say, I have no idea how I got over all of that resistance. I do know I did things that made no sense to me,

got results that I didn't understand, but I did get those results from taking those actions.

And I never, I never once thought what a good idea. I always thought that is the stupidest thing I ever heard or how is that going to work? That's just dumb. But I always did it. I always did it. I always took whatever that stupid, nonsensical action was. And somehow those things all added up to some, to some recovery. You know, I stopped crying all of the time and I stopped being quite so reactionary. You know, it, it that one had to had to kind of reel that one in. It would be like I would notice

days later and then I would notice it two days later and then I'd notice that the next day and then I'd notice it right before it came out of my mouth and it was too late because it was already coming out. Hate that. And then eventually I could notice it and actually stop and think about is this what I want to say? But things had to back up. And I can't say that I did anything specific to work on that because I didn't. I had a prayer partner and I went to some meetings and I, they told me to go to open a, a meetings and I said, oh, hell no,

I am not doing that

ever. Don't even ever. So I don't know what your program friends are like, but my program friends went and just tricked me into going to a a meetings. They would call me up because they knew, they knew I had no life. I had no other alternatives. I had no people, I had nothing. And they knew that and they would call and they'd say, Hey, there's a new meeting that I want to go to. And I'd say, OK, and they would pick me up because I had this back problem. And that way I didn't have to do the driving and they would take me to North Scottsdale and say, by the way, it's an, a, A speaker meeting. You don't mind?

Like, yes, I mind, but it was too late. I was in the car.

It was what we were supposed to do. And I was very big on doing what you're supposed to do. So I would go and a, a meetings just would piss me off. I'd hear the speaker and I'd just be like, you know, these are the things that that that happened to me last week. I hate this man. And you know, people be laughing and I'd be like, it is not funny. This is not funny. This is my life and you guys think it's hilarious. Ha ha ha.

And my friends would tell me, you know, you're missing, you're missing the message. You're you're missing the part about recovery. And I would go, yeah, you're right. I am because what a bunch of sickos. I took a very closed mind to a lot of a a meetings and that long timer, she told me, give us a chance. Come to this a a meeting. I know you've been going to this Sunday, Al Anon meeting. There's an A a meeting right before it that I go to come join me. And I said no.

And she said, OK, well, I'll save a seat for you. I said, don't bother, I am not going to be there. She said OK. And I went. And this is a lot of how my program has been. No, no, no, no, no. And then I went and I hated every minute of it. I sat with clenched teeth and I didn't hear anything. And then there was one meeting

where there was, it was a speaker meeting and it was the guy had something like two years sober in a a SO and he was standing up there telling his story. And it was, we were arranged in kind of a horseshoe. So there were some

rows of chairs on either side here and rows out in the front from where he was standing. And I was sitting over there about 3 people in from the door. And all of a sudden when he was talking, I could hear my husband and I could hear my brother and I hear people I was working with. And I could hear other Alcoholics in his story. And I sat there and the poor guy, I cried all the way through the entire time that he was talking. And of course, it wasn't a Kleenex available anywhere. So I was sniffling and it was, and I

sure that everybody knew because I was kind of upfront where everybody could see me and I had this debate with myself. What do I get out? But then I'm making a big commotion because I'm three people away from the door. And I, it was the very first time and I started to be able to have some compassion for, for the alcoholic, for people that are suffering from something that I suffer from differently, you know, and, and to be able to hear not so much that I could always hear the message of recovery, but I could at least hear that there was

something going on in a, a meetings that in some way related to my world,

to my life. And the beginnings of compassion were interesting to me because I didn't realize I didn't have any.

I thought I was justified because I was right, because I'm extremely self-righteous and left my own devices. And I have not ever forgotten. I talked to my ex-husband at some point after that and I'd had some realizations about it and I had discussed things with people. Every time I made a discovery like that, I discussed it with other al Anon people to see, you know, check my understanding. It gained some other insights or whatever. And

it finally struck me that

light and polite and keeping things, treating people with courtesy, with dignity and respect, whether, you know, however they are.

And I talked with him and I was polite. And it was probably the first time in five years that I'd been polite. And he was so pathetically grateful sounding. But that still kind of chokes me up because it just, I felt, I realized, you know, in that moment, all I had done was treat him the same way that I would treat any other person. And he was grateful for that because I'd been so awful to be around. And it was a lesson and I learned a lot of lessons that way. And I get things a little bit and then and then they grow by inches. You know, I

none of this program worked immediately for me. I did not come in and go, wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for in my life. I didn't, I came in and said, oh, this sucks. I hate this. You people are crazy. You want me to do what? And and I had that attitude, but I did stuff anyway because I noticed that I started getting relief and I knew that I couldn't explain that. You know, when I stopped crying I couldn't explain why I wasn't crying anymore. And when

when I stopped used to automatically reacting to things, I couldn't explain why that was happening.

And so I knew it had to be the program because it was the only thing different that I was doing at all.

So I had this really great,

I had this fabulous prayer partner and I had this really good Allen on friend who acted essentially like a sponsor would be. I never did it alone. You know, I say I didn't have a sponsor, but I certainly didn't do it by myself. I wasn't just say I would go and I would read everything and I would try to figure it out. I would realize that I couldn't and I would call her or any other friend. I talked about things at meetings. My meetings were small, so we had room for some of the more personal discussion that sometimes you can't have at the bigger meetings.

And those small meetings eventually got pretty unhealthy and closed.

And when that happened, I was not prepared for it because this was my program. I had these two meetings that I went to and when they closed and we're no longer available, I didn't have any real idea of too many of the other meetings and the times that they were weren't convenient and stuff. And, and what I learned works in this program is you can borrow your friend's program. And that's what I did. I went to the meetings that she went to. They weren't my meetings, but I went to her meetings and I just kept doing what she did, going where she went and doing what she did. But I took her meetings on until I could get

settled in a new way of, of working a program

in, in there that was like a that was like a couple years stretch there when it came time for birthdays and anniversaries, you know, we celebrate that. And I got to my first year of Al Anon and I was like so pissed that I was still here. It was disappointing. And I was mad that I still had to do this and he was still drinking and I'd gone through a divorce that I didn't want and I could see that it was helping and it was pissing me off that it was helping because that meant I just had to keep coming. So I did. I kept coming, but I didn't celebrate that birthday.

And around year two and year two came around, I was a little more resigned to it. It wasn't so angry. It was more like, yeah, well, OK, fine. But it still didn't feel like something to celebrate. And my third year seemed like something to celebrate a little bit, and I forgot all about it. And I had one of those experiences where I don't know if anybody else has these experiences, but I decided not to go to a meeting because I just didn't feel like it. And I didn't clean up or anything. I thought, I'm going to go to McDonald's and go home.

And I looked up and I was at the church

and the AA meeting before the Al Anon meeting. They were all wandering around with cake. And I went, oh, that's right, it's birthday week. And then I went, Oh yeah, I was going to celebrate my birthday. And I forgot. And I shared that story with someone. And have I mentioned those sneaky Al Anon friends? She said, by the way, she has a birthday. So I celebrated my birthday even though I wasn't really intending to, but she gave me a chip and and

the next the next year birthday for I really was actually starting to have enough serenity and I was having enough results and I had enough understanding. I had gained enough understanding that I was able to