The 10th Fellowship of the Spirit, NY at the Graymoor Spiritual Retreat Center in Garrison, NY

The time of the retreat where we have a speaker and it's an Al Anon speaker, and I've only known Linda for one day, but I feel like I know my whole life because she's such a sweet, loving, kind woman. I had the privilege of driving up from New York with her and Scott, and it was a great drive because they're very interesting people, especially when they go to Manhattan and they get on a bus and they meet people and they love it. So it was great. So anyway,

I'll introduce Linda

Scotts wife.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Linda, and I'm a grateful member of Al Anon. Hi. And it's Saturday Night Live in Graymore, right? OK. OK. Yeah, OK. Well, I feel outnumbered here. Are there any Al Anon's in the room?

Excellent, excellent. OK, yay.

And, and I feel very honored to be here, Very, very honored. But Al Anon has taught me to ask for what I need. And in some areas of the country, they have a moment of silence before meeting and then they have the Serenity prayer. And I, my understanding is one time somebody asked Loyce Wilson, who is the co-founder of Al Anon. She was married to Bill. Somebody asked her what she did in the moment of silence. And she said, I invite God to the meeting.

So what I need is a moment of silence. And if you'd be willing to ask the God of your understanding to come to this meeting.

I feel like I'm prayed up, but I always think that until I get up here and then I get the eye contact. So I need to do a little jump start of a moment of silent prayer please.

Thank you. And now I'm not up here by myself, you know, I've got the people that were in the rooms before me. I've got the loving blessings of my sponsor. I've got the respect of your eye contact, which is a little overwhelming to me. So I guess what you'd like to know is how did I qualify for Al Anon? Well, I qualify because I seem to have been born into a family that has a dad and I've known my dad all his life and

that 62 years. So you don't have to do any other math. And for 62 years I've seen my dad drink and most of the time I've seen him drunk. He's now in his mid 80s and he's

is is going to continue to do three things for the rest of his life. And he names them like sporting events. I'm going to play golf, I'm going to fish and I'm going to drink. And because I'm a member of Al Anon, that's just fine with me. And if this gentleman walked into the room, you would absolutely embrace him with enthusiasm. He's one of the most interesting people you'd want to hang out with. But I qualify because that was the household I grew up in. Secondly, I seem to

marry Alcoholics and then I seem to divorce them, and then I seem to marry him,

and then I seemed to divorce him and then I seemed to marry him. And I am in my third marriage with my now and forever husband, Scott, OK, who is a recovering alcoholic. Go figure. And I give birth to Alcoholics. OK, So This is why I qualify to be here in front of you. In fact, I absolutely adore and love Alcoholics. And Scott has pointed out to me that I have a very good intuition on picking them out. It's like something, you know,

I've got a predisposition of being able to have my antenna go beep, beep, beep, beep when I, when you walk within, you know, 3 feet of me, 10 feet, 30 feet. I can pick them out from a distance. Many times we're going to conferences and Scott's only talked to the a, a guy over the phone and, and we'll get into an airport and Scott will say you go pick him out. I'll go get the luggage, you know, because I can, I can. And Scott is always trying to improve

recovery in our hometown of Nashville, TN.

And so for my birthday several years ago, he gave me, I don't know, 300 or 500 business cards. And he said, these cards will be very helpful. I said, OK, He said, you know, you're so attracted to Alcoholics, he said, but, you know, it would just save time. He said if you if you go to the grocery store and you look over there and you see somebody you're attracted to, you could hand them one of these cards. I go, OK, I'll share the card with you. The front of it has my name, phone number, couple of butterflies, that sort of thing.

Listen to what it says on the back. Hi, my name is Linda. I am a member of Al Anon. I find you attractive so I suggest you go to the nearest treatment center and having an assessment done.

Oh yeah, he said. Just think of how much time that would save. And, and I think that's probably true. And thanks to Al Anon I can stand up here and say I love Alcoholics and I can also say I am not the enemy, okay, My love I, I have almost love Alcoholics to death.

And until I got an Al Anon and knew the difference about detachment and loving

my daughter, my oldest daughter just turned. Well she's like 40 1/2 now. I can't remember how many 39 birthdays she had before that, but she's 40 now

and this August, about mid mid month, she will celebrate 19 years of sobriety. I think that's incredible. Yes, a a parented her so well, but I have to tell you it came a different She graduated from college, she came home, she's newly sober. She's every night going to a meeting and then they would all the young people would kind of end up at my house. I'm newly divorced and, and I'd hear them playing cards and laughing

everything and not go. Isn't that wonderful? I know where my daughter is and these other parents know where their children are, their adult children are. And that went on for quite some time. And then pretty soon it dawned on me, she's a college grad. She's sleeping all day. She's going to a A and drink a lot of coffee at night. She's staying up playing cards all night. She's sleeping in. She's going to I thought. And so she came down the stairs one day and I handed her half of the water bill, her half of the phone bill, her half of the electric bill. And I said,

you know, this is you're living in in my homes. You're living in apartment upstairs in my home. And this is your part of it. And she says a very, very profound thing. She says, mom, the day you treated me like an adult was the day I could be one. And she was in her. She turned sober at 21. She says, you know, go figure. When it was legal for her to drink, she stopped drinking. That's, you know, that's alcoholic thinking in my opinion. I don't know.

So I tell that story because there are a lot of us that have, you know, Al Anon believes that alcoholism is a family illness, that it can be. It's passed on from generation to generation. I said about my dad, I said about my daughter. For some reason, it skipped my generation. I'll do it. Although I did a lot of bonding drinking. I have to tell you that I did a lot of bonding drinking, but I just I just didn't have the the knack is what Scott says. I just wasn't any good at it. It's what he says. So whatever. So, and I as an as a

in al Anon, I choose not to drink. Now we get this a lot like, oh, you're an al Anon, you can drink. And I get this a lot about women and al Anon that I am going to sponsor that they drink. But our fifth tradition says that we will get support and encouragement to the alcoholic. I don't think kissing a glass of wine is encouragement to the alcoholic that I'm married to. So as an al Anon, I choose not to drink. In fact, I carry it a step further when I get

woman in al Anon that I she's asked me to sponsor her. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start going through the steps. And that means I'm going to be dedicating my time and I want her to be present when we start going through those steps. So I'll say, OK, would you be willing to contract with me? And during this time that we're going through the steps, I'm going to ask you not to drink or drug. And usually they say, well, I I don't drink or drug anyway, I said, OK, that's fine, but would you be willing? But every now and then I'll get a woman that I'll say, would you be

willing not to drink or drug while we're going through the steps together? And she says not drink. She said, well, my cousin's wedding is next weekend and they're going to be serving champagne. I go, that's just fine. But I'd ask you to drink Coke, Coca-Cola or something else besides the champagne when we're going through the steps together. And then she might say, but my high school reunions coming up and I go, that's just fine, but I'm going to ask you not to drink. And if she keeps arguing too much, I hand her an A, a schedule. OK.

Because

because if to me, I need these women present and I want them to be present in their own life. And so I choose not to drink. OK.

I've been hanging out in Al Anon quite a while. When I was invited to San Diego, I don't even know how many years ago that was, I was invited to go out there to be on Scott. That was our Scott and I was first international. We got to go out there together. It was wonderful. And I was invited to be on one of the panels, not tell my story like tonight, but I was given an assignment ahead of time. And I think

our topic was living with sobriety after the honeymoon's over. And since I was in my third marriage, I thought they thought I was a good planner of honeymoon. So I thought, you know, that's good. And I think I did a good job looking doing the research. See, since you knew the topic ahead of time, I could go to our Al Anon conference approved literature,

which the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is not conference approved literature for Al Anon That's been going on that that conversation has been going on for over 20 years. I've been in Allen on 20 years and it was going on the day I came in. It's still going on. I don't, I don't go there. It's almost an outside issue in my opinion.

I love the Big Book. I was taken through the steps the first time from the Big Book and I can share that with you because I'm in a room of loving people of the Big Book. OK,

but it is not Alan on conference approved literature. But anyway, I'm doing the research on living with sobriety after the honeymoons over and but we do have some great literature around that. We've got sex and intimacy, a little booklet. It's no longer in print. I think they should have put some pictures in it and I think it would have stayed in print a little longer. But anyway, and we've got the dilemmas of the alcoholic marriage.

We've got a brand new book that just came out called Choices, which is, is all about relationships. So Al Anon is about relationships, but in truth, it's, it's not just saving relationships, it's about saving lives. So, so anyway, so we're out there in San Diego and I'm and I and I have to tell you ahead of time that I really feel like I did a good job to prepare for my 15 minute talk around living with sobriety after the honeymoon's over. But the woman that introduced herself before me,

she told my entire Al Anon story just in the way she introduced herself and and I forgot everything else. And this is what she did. She she was from Georgia. She was even more southern than I am. OK, I'm from Tennessee and Georges even Southerner and this is what she'd say. She said hello, my name is so and so I'm from Georgia. I'm a member of

Al Anon and I am addicted to mood altering men.

I go, OK, that's it. That's me and and I don't have to apologize for that. You know my story. You know the video of my story looks wonderful. It's I, I can tell it. It's a great life. I'm an only child. I grew up in West TX. I graduated from high school in 1964. It was a time of of innocence. We had sidewalks. I roller skated up and down that sidewalk for miles and miles. If you want to know what my hometown life was like, there was a book under

Friday Night Lights. They made a TV show out of it. That's that's where I grew up. That's Odessa. And being an only child meant that my parents could give me a lot of stuff. My parents came from a very poor background. They lived in rural Oklahoma. They both lived without electricity and indoor plumbing at times in their life. And together as a couple, they put together an unbelievable estate. And since I'm an only child, I benefited from that. I had all of the budget for shoes, all the budget for clothes.

They showed me love by giving me stuff, you know, And all through this, I never heard my mother and dad argue about anything except my daddy's drinking. But it didn't seem like that that would be causing any problems. I couldn't say that my daddy's drinking caused any problems any more than I could have stood up and said, man, this family has got to stop eating macaroni and cheese.

Macaroni and cheese is killing this family. We've absolutely got to stop it because it was in everyday event and my dad had to entertain a lot. And so he's drinking out at the Country Club, he's taking people out to dinner.

I see it as a party. I see it as a very nice party. My girlfriends dad, in the meantime, I'd go pick her up in the morning. He's already drinking, He wrote, he worked graveyard. He's already drinking in his underwear. He's taken his teeth out and he's drinking out of a bottle when I go pick her up in the morning. And I made a judgment. I thought, wow, that's kind of unusual.

But see, since my dad would be drinking in the Country Club, I didn't think he had a problem. But what happened during that time is what I call step zero started happening.

That unbelievable void that we get right here in the gut. I've heard us talk about it. We try to fill it up with things and we don't even know what's happening. I mean, I look back in my life and it was it. There was laughter. I traveled with my parents. They gave me a convertible in high school. I mean, I was given a lot of stuff and they absolutely love and adore me. But I had this step zero happening and I did not know that was going on until I got into Al Anon and I got my

on some Alatene literature and you get this little pop quiz and and we're going to discover that we're not the first flowers to bloom in the garden sometimes. OK, I recommend whatever program you're in, you get your hands on some Alateen literature. This let me know why I didn't do so well on that math test in the 7th grade. Because when I'd be at school, I'd be wanting to be home so I could keep my eyes on things and make sure things were OK. And then when I'd get home and have to step over my dad's clothes because my mother

out of the house again, I was thinking, how can I get out of here? Listen to this little pop quiz and see if any of it. It says, has your life been affected by someone elses drinking? Alatin is for you. Alatin is from 13 to 19. OK. It's a it's a precursor for al Anon. OK, so #1 says do you believe no one could possibly understand how you feel? Did you cover up your real feelings by pretending you don't care? Do you feel neglected, uncared for and loved? Do you have a problem with

40 figures? Did you stay out of the house as much as possible? Well, holidays frequently interrupted by someone elses drinking. Are you afraid to speak up for fear that drinking or fighting will start again? I mean bingo, Didn't some of us have some of those feelings when we were that age? So

so the so my part is that this step zero happened because that's what was going on in my household. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't loved, that I wasn't cared for. I would go for days and punish my dad by not speaking to him.

I was always one of those pre al Anon saying if you're going to act that way, I'm going to show you and I'm going to act a different way. I can remember that that I would go for days and not speak to my dad because I was angry with him about something. And now I I my dad just recently moved into an apartment on our property. I have belly laughs with him.

It's just unbelievable, OK? And it it all is a result of Al Anon. It's all a result of Al Anon. He's an incredible man.

So I have step zero. My mother and daddy are only fighting about my dad's drinking. I want to get out of the house. I don't know. I want to get out of the house because our house was where all the kids came over to hang out because, you know, back then it was big news. We had a ping pong table. Believe me, that was big. OK. So all the kids after school would come to our house to play ping pong. And I decided not to go off to college. I think I was encouraged not to go off

because of my parents, because some way at this point in time, I had become the net. They're doing the tennis match and I'm the net.

And if I leave, that's going to that's going to make the net disappear. And I don't think any of us knew this consciously. OK, This is just what was going on. And so I, I lived at home and I went to a junior college there in Odessa. And I've been going on that campus probably for less than two months. And this young man came across campus. Man, I could have given him one of these business cards because my heart went pitter patter pad. And you know, something in him went pitter pat, pitter pat because in two weeks we never had a date. But he asked me.

And I thought that was a great idea. And I took him to my parents and I said, hey, we want to get married. And they started asking all of those, you know, really pesty questions, like, shouldn't he have a job 1st? And we go, that's just details. We'll work it out, you know, and and they actually fought that marriage because it didn't look like a good idea to them. And because I think they fought it, that kept us as a comment. We had a common enemy. And with it, within six months we are married

and I am walking down the aisle in a storybook wedding. I had a white gown on and and I deserve to wear it. By the way. I think part of my wanting to marry is I had been a good girl for about as long as I could be and y'all can figure that out. We're adults. And so I walked down this aisle and we had the storybook wedding and we live happily ever after for the first two weeks. And then to celebrate our two week wedding anniversary, my husband brought home two of his very best friends.

Now we're still students. You know, we're students all of this young life of this young married life for for a long time, we were students. And he brought home two of his best friends. Cliff, I think was probably in his history class. And their other best friend, Bud came in between them in the cooler. OK. And that night to celebrate our two weeks of marriage, I saw Cliff kind of passed out go to sleep on the couch. I saw my husband kind of pass out, go to sleep in our bed. And we're in student marriage, student housing, which is about the size of

table, if you'll remember. And I took the stance, the pre al Anon stance, you know, I'm looking at it. These look, these guys look like a bunch of fallen trees. And I'm not going to let my husband get away with that. I'm going to show him. I'm going to punish him. I'm going to let him know that he can't drink and get away and celebrate our two weeks of marriage. And I came up with a great idea. I had these unbelievable great ideas that night to punish my husband.

I slept in the bathtub.

Now, it was so logical at the time. I mean, it was ridiculous. Yeah. I take my pillow, I take a blanket and I sleep in the bathtub. And. And that set up a walls for a long time. I get up with a backache. He gets up with a hangover. But it set up the dance of if you're going to do that, I'm going to show you. You can't get away with it. We'd been married about two years when my first daughter was born. And for some reason I thought when we came home from the hospital.

The fine print said. You're now adults, your parents, so now you're going to live happily ever after.

Evidently he didn't get those same that same news because his lifestyle didn't change

where students in on several different campuses. We kept moving around, moving around. In fact, in 16 years of marriage, we moved 13 times and there were times that we even lived without an address. That's like homeless and, and, and I think if you look at the history books that Lois and Bill Wilson, before they moved to the loving place of stepping stones, they had like over like 50 to 57 different mailing addresses.

And we desperately try to outrun this disease.

Every time my husband would say, I think he'll be better if we move to Houston. Oh, it's going to be great if we go to Dallas. He wasn't trying to set me up. He didn't know he was trying to outrun the disease of alcoholism. He really believed it was going to be better. And because he believed it, I believed it. And what I know through Al Anon is that you pack up the dishes, you pack up the kids toys, you pack up the books and you pack up the disease and you move it on down the road. But we were. And which means you have no contact with community. You have to redo your finances over

over again to set up the deposits for the water, the electric, etc, etc. OK, so here we are. We have been trying to outrun the disease. We have a young daughter and we're still students. And then one day he accidentally gets a job. And the reason I say accidentally is because he was drinking at his favorite saloon, which was a Holiday Inn bar. And the bartender who he knew very well said, I'm thinking about putting a little stage over there in the corner and maybe having somebody

guitar. And that would keep people here longer and they'd drink and they'd want to come here and hear music and drink. Music is is never about making music. It's always about selling alcohol. If you really look at that closely, that's what it's about. So he runs home, he grabs his guitar, he goes back and he does this audition and he gets this job. So now all of a sudden, in one week's time, he's making more money than we had seen in like months,

and he does a gig at that Holiday Inn and now they want him to go to another holiday in 30 miles away.

I was OK then. They wanted to go like 120 miles away. And then pretty soon they wanted to go 300 miles away and they wanted to go to Dallas and do all of those Holiday Inns. And I've got this young baby and I did not think that man should go off without adult supervision. You better believe. I didn't think that. I thought the only way we could stay together was if we stayed together. And I threw away what I didn't know then was a dream. I was,

I was one semester away from graduating with honors,

and yet I just walked away from that. You know, I didn't have the conscious thought that maybe I should stay here and finish and finish my college degree. I didn't have that thought because it was about him. OK. So I packed up the baby. I packed up the hot plate, and now we're living in Holiday Inns, and it's always in the telling. It looked like a great life. I'm up there with this baby. We're hanging out in the pool in the daytime. He's going down and working and he comes home at night, you know,

two, 3:00 in the morning. He kind of smells like, acts like and looks like he's been to a party,

but since its work, it must be OK. And we're 30 days in one town, 30 days in another town, 30 days in another town. I'm packing up. I've got this baby, I'm in this hotel room. I'm, I'm, I'm going crazy and I, and I can't tell you why. I mean, this gut feeling is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and this lifestyle is, is not fitting or suiting me. Did I think a conscious thought of maybe I should go home and make a home base? No, I came up with another great idea

on Friday. My husband came in and I said, hey, I'm going to be the drummer in the band.

He said, have you ever played drums before? And I said, that's just details, we'll work it out. OK. So I took the bass player with me to a pawn shop on Saturday and for 50 bucks you can imagine what they look like. I bought a whole trap set of drums. I'm talking to ride to ride Toms, a floor time, a hi hat, a crash symbol, a snare drum, a bass drum. Monday night I was the drummer in the band. OK, You can't tell me. We're not determined people.

I, I needed to do that

to be with him. It had nothing to do with love of music. It got me out of the room and it got me there keeping an eye on him while he was working and drinking. And I have to tell you, this time in our, in our life, it manic. It could look like a great time. We'd pull into these little towns and there our name would be up on the marquee and there our room would be ready in the Holiday Inn and, and the innkeeper would get a babysitter 'cause we started putting that into the contract. OK, because somebody, I've got to be the drummer,

so I'm just got to take care of our dollar upstairs. And we became so well known in Texas that all of the touring people, all of the really famous people would always find out where we were because we were the after hours club. Y'all may remember those. The law says you can no longer serve alcohol. So you lock the door and the party continues all night. And I tell this because I think that I did something that I'd probably get arrested for from Family Services.

In this day and age, the babysitter would eventually have to go home. She was probably a student. She needed to go to school the next morning.

Meanwhile, I want to hang out with the guys and make music with them all night. And they, they would let me be the drummer with whoever. I mean, they just, they, I just, I became a very good drummer And, and I and I, they would let me make music with them all night long. And they're drinking and partying and writing songs and drinking and partying and writing songs.

And I needed to be there. Well, my daughter's upstairs by herself. So such a good mom that I am, I'd go upstairs and I'd take the phone off the hook. And then I'd go down in the bar and I'd take that phone off the hook. And every now and then I'd go over and listen to see if she was awake. And I thought I was really being a good mom and a Good Wife. And I'm totally lost all evidence of self in this. I, I am what I think I'm supposed to be a good mother and a Good Wife and,

and we had a lot of success and we moved a lot

and finally do through certain turn of events, we ended up in Nashville, TN. And I thought this is great. Where else could a songwriter singer be but Nashville, TN? And there's eight years difference between MY2 girls and I am pregnant with our second daughter. In fact, she turned a year old in Nashville. And now I'm thinking we're going to live happily ever after because now he has a job and we live in Nashville, TN. Well, the progression of the disease is just that. And sometimes taking care of business

isn't as important as the party.

And business is very serious about them around the music in Nashville. And he became disillusioned and it didn't happen. The success didn't happen as fast as he had seen it for him in Texas. And he came in one day and he announced, get packed, we're leaving. We're going back to Texas. And I have to tell you, that day

part of me died. I was so old, I could not have packed one more cardboard box. I was absolutely used up, exhausted, totally finished. And I I said, I can't go. And he did this little trump card that he'd been holding over me for a long time. He said, I guess we just get a divorce then. And because I was so desperately afraid of being alone, I have so many abandonment issues. I would always say, Oh, no, no, I'll do whatever you do, whatever

site, not to get a divorce, not to get a divorce. But this time he said, I guess we just get a divorce. And something in me said, I guess we do. And so our neighbor was an attorney. We paid him 50 bucks and within 30 days back then we we get a divorce. And that that husband, my new former husband packs up his music instruments. He takes off and he goes back to Texas and I keep him in my prayers. He married a young woman. They're raising a second family

and I wish him the best because the happier he is, the better his relationship is with his. He is the natural father of my daughters. OK. And here's what he left in the rearview mirror. He left a three-year old, He left 11 year old and he left the mom that says drummer in the band. OK. And and the attorney that handled the divorce said there's a guy that's in real estate on the 25th floor, the First American Center, Bank Center downtown. I think you should go and talk to him. You're going

to be making some money and he's looking for an office manager. I did not know my control skills could be used to make money. See, I'd been controlling for a long time. And I go in there and I get this job now I am managing shopping centers. I am managing the office. I am managing his day timer. I am managing and I'm getting paid for it. And I took to commercial real estate and it took to me, I, there weren't a lot of women involved in commercial real estate

during that time. I got my brokers license as fast as I could. I opened my own company. I am making megabucks

and I have to tell you that I turn my back on my two daughters the same way anybody would with a drug or a drink. The message I would give them would I would call home and I'd say y'all just stick something in the microwave for dinner because I have very, very important people in from out of town and I have to take them to dinner. Very important people. All right, I'd say hurry up, hurry up, get ready, get ready. I've got to get you off to school because I've got a real power breakfast this morning, see. But I thought if I put enough zeros in the

my daughters and I would live happily ever after. This is what I truly believed. I truly believed I was doing everything I could to make us live happily ever after by making a lot of money. And I got a lot of strokes from community. You know, I'm a successful business woman. I'm at my my dad, my parents are looking at me. I'm, I'm very successful. And Christmas comes and I buy my daughter's stuff because that's what had been given to me to show love. So this Christmas we had stuff.

And when you have stuff at Christmas, you also have paper. And the photos come back. And I think our living room was about as this deep in paper. And here's the picture of the little daughter, the older daughter and the mom and all of this stuff. And I look at it and we don't look too happy,

you know? And I go, what's missing from this picture?

A man that's right. And I am now in my mid 30s. I don't think I have a lot of time. So I marry my boss now.

Now he had been asking me out, but he had been married at the time, so we hate. And that was just details, he said. We'll work it out, you know? So here's the Cinderella story.

Very successful businessman marries his secretary, who's turned out to be very good business person,

adopts her two daughters, adopts her two daughters. I gave him my two daughters legally and he moves us into a mansion. It was a, it was a mansion. It had six bathrooms. It was directly across the street from the governor's mansion in Nashville, TN. I mean, this is a perfect story. We are living the fast life. We are movers and shakers. We're developing shopping centers. We're traveling all over the world. We own about about 6 sailboats. We have a wine cellar that would rival

a small restaurant where in all of the proper clubs, like, you know, friends of the 100 year old cognac club and you know, all of this kind of stuff and and I'm and somethings wrong, something's wrong. It's it's this whole year, something's wrong. And I'd go to my doctor and I'd say, I think I'm going crazy. And he would look at my address and my lifestyle and he'd say, what do you have to complain about? And I'd go away. OK, I'd go to my friends and I'd say

I really believe something awful is happening in my household and I don't know what it is. I think I'm going crazy.

And they'd say, but you just got back from South America. Wasn't that a great trip? Yes, it was. Well, aren't you going to go to Jamaica next week? Yeah. And So what do you have to complain about? What did I have to complain about? I'd go away. You know, this is the time that my daughters are in private schools. We're brought. We're buying the brand new cars, the first ones that come into Nashville, TN. We're living this fast life. And I look back on it now and it was like a movie,

you know, up front it looked great. But if you ever step behind the set, you would see that it was all sawdust and a lot of unhappy things were going on. And I would go, I, I would go over and over again and I would say, I really think something bad is wrong. I really think I'm going crazy. And so we would have these terrible fights And for I don't, I couldn't tell you what we would be fighting over, but they'd be horrible fights. And so I didn't think a second

divorce would look too good on my resume. So I picked out this doctor in the phone book

man that I was married to kicking and screaming into a very popular word at the time. And it was called marriage counseling. OK, so we'd go into this doctor and I would immediately stop crying. Can't tell you why I'm just weeping, weeping. And my my second husband then would rock his chair back, fold his arms and, and just totally shut down and, and we'd do that. And pretty soon the doctor would get kind of bored. That's a pretty boring scene. And I'm not, I can tell you time and

again, I saw this man pick up a paper clip, open it up just right, make it kind of like that in any kind of twirl it like a little helicopter, you know? And then he'd see his watch and he'd go, oh, you're out of time. And he'd tell me you're too sensitive. And he'd tell my husband, you're not sensitive enough. And we'd go away and we would have another horrible fight and would show up at the doctor's office again to all the 12 You're too sensitive. You're not sensitive enough. Another horrible fight. You're too sensitive. You're not, you're not sensitive enough.

And this repeated over and over and over again until one time we had such a horrible fight that I walked out on him. We were on a holiday down in the lower Florida Keys. He was actually on a holiday with his best friend. And I was just kind of A tag along, I decided. And some very uncomfortable things happened and I started the run toward Al Anon. Now, I did not know it was a run toward Al Anon. I just knew that I'd had enough because there was going to be a public scene in a very nice restaurant and I didn't want to participate in another one of those.

I'd always thought that volume was the voice of reason. OK, I could tell it louder. Maybe he'd get it. And I just wasn't willing to participate. So, so I I I went back to Nashville, TN and after a long hard time, in fact, I was kind of stranded in the Miami airport overnight and it was open to the public and it wasn't a safe place. And here I am a successful business woman with a lot of money in the bank and I have my

back up against the wall just trying to stay safe all night. I mean I did, I did a one night stand as a bad lady and I, I really defended my life that night and I used a word, I said a prayer, I said God, my life is unmanageable. How could I be in a situation like this now? Unmanageable did not show up in my vocabulary. I managed, I manage shopping centers, I managed 3 businesses. I managed our office, our cat and dog,

They had daytimers on when they're going to the vet. You better believe this woman managed OK. And here I am all night in the airport just trying to stay alive. And I get a flight back to Nashville. And this man comes home a couple of days later. And I did what I'd been taught to do. I waited. I didn't know what else to do. I just waited for him to come home. And he comes through the door. And boy, I had seen him angry, but never that angry, never that angry. And he came and he said, you embarrass me in front of my friends,

his fourth wife. I really thought I was the one that was going to make the difference, you know, and and you know, anger it, it was just going to be a horrible thing. We know what we know what anger sounds like. It's lamps against the wall, plates against the floor, skin against skin. We know what anger sounds like. And because I was so organized, I'm just trying to buy some time. I said, why don't we go see that doctor? This is going to be a bad fight. Why don't we just go see this doctor now? You had to go and call the

and make an appointment like weeks ahead of time. But just to buy some time, I ducked around. I call the doctor and the young lady that answered the phone said, well, isn't this interesting? Somebody just cancelled. And if you can be here in 15 minutes, the doctor can see you. God had stepped into my life and I didn't even know it. So I said we can go see the doctor right now. And if you think that anger is noisy,

silent anger is absolutely deadly.

The silent anger in that car going to see the doctor was absolutely frightening. And so we go in to see this doctor, the one that twirled a paper clip. We sat down beside him

and he came around on his side of the desk and he said,

before I start listening to you, I need to say something. My name is Doctor so and so, and I'm an alcoholic and I need to make amends to my patients because I haven't always been as present as I should have been. So from that time to the time before the man had gotten into recovery and he was a changed person, he was present. His face was soft and gentle. He was aware of what we were saying. And he picked up right away what was going on in my household because his household had been living it.

They were in all of the right clubs, too. The only thing that might have been a little different about my husband that he tapped into right away was that my husband was also a cocaine addict. Actually, he was a cocaine entrepreneur. That's drug dealer when you live on a nice neighborhood, OK,

And you better believe some crazy things were going on in that household. So this doctor said look to make amends to you. He said my wife and I were going to go to this week long couples retreat and we can't go and things were different then. So he handed us the schedule. He handed us their tickets