The 48th Annual Big Deep South Convention in New Orleans, LA

Now, I'd like to introduce our speaker. Speaker this afternoon is Adele. I first heard Adele speak in my car on XA speakers, and she was a strong, forthright, feminine voice of sobriety. It's kind of like, yeah,

but then she also has authenticity and vulnerability. And it's hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it. And that's where the secret sauce is. And it's like, yeah, could really relate to her. And so I meet her for the first time the other night, and she is kind and gracious and has the most beautiful smile and gives the best hugs. And with that I give you Adele.

Set the steps here

and my timer and whoo, up goes the microphone.

Hi, my name is Adele. I'm gratefully clean and sober,

and my home groups are

the Saturday morning Reflections group at Stutz, BearCat and in Sedona. 8:00 AM.

The Women's Chrysalis group at noon at the Unity Church

and the 7:38 AM Upon Awakening group at the Unity Church. And if you're in Sedona on the 1st Thursday of any month, we have a woman's 11 step group at our home. Just women

and you are most invited. I too

call a Home group, one that I regularly attend if I am physically able

and one where I give service and I do the things that group does. Go to the hospitals, go to the prisons,

get on the 12 step list. You can get on the 12 step list where every you are in sobriety they call you from central office. All you have to have is a meeting guide and a car,

and mostly it's to give people who call in that central office information, and often it is to give a ride, and I've been very grateful to be doing that for a long time.

I describe myself as a grateful, gratefully clean and sober because I am so grateful to be freed from the enslavement of alcohol and alcoholism.

That's how they describe an addiction in the dictionary, an enslavement to a substance or a behavior. And that's exactly what I was when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not get freed from the enslavement of alcoholism till I'd been an alcoholic synonymous a good long time.

So I am so grateful to be free today, and I'm here to give you a little different story than it'll be given by

other people. Each of us has is a unique expression of sobriety, but we are not unique in how alcoholism works or what the solution is. Thank God.

The first thing that I need to tell you is that I ate to be with me and I drank to be with you. And part of my story

is that I am also a recovering bulimic. And what does that have to do with alcoholism? Nothing. But it has to do with my story as a recovering alcoholic.

My sobriety date is June 28th, 1989 and I got struck abstinent on that date too. Today I have 26 years and 375 days of sobriety. I was struck sober at that first meeting and by the grace of God I have not had to have a drink.

And I celebrated 20 years of being sober with food in November. So that means that I came. Thank you.

I came in. Well, first of all, yeah, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous for three years

out in the parking lot chewing my alcohol because I have a brewery right here.

And brushing off the crumbs and coming into meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and pretending lying by omission about what I was doing because that was getting in the way of my relationship with God and my relationship with you and my relationship with myself and my job and everything else.

And my favorite kind of lying is lying by omission. And so I felt like a fraud and a cheat and a liar and a thief because I was,

and I heard it so beautifully described how we feel like that fraud. Now, what I had to do because both of these addictions were equally deadly, is I had to go to another program. Alcoholics Anonymous does not address those other addictions, nor should it. But there are other 12 step programs that do. And I implore you, if there is something that you're doing right now that's getting in the way of your relationship with yourself

and your God and your other people and your job and all that kind of stuff, you know, it could be gambling. It could be some medication that you've gotten on and your shopping doctors. It could be porn all night.

Whatever it is, grab one of us. We may not know someone who has that addiction, but we know someone who does. And even more important, we know someone who doesn't have to do that anymore, and they will take you where you need to go.

It's also about looking good on the outside. As long as I look good on the outside, it doesn't matter what's going on inside. And that's been a horrible addiction from which I've had to

recover from that. That characteristic is not an addiction. What it is, is a character defense. You know, it's a coping mechanism. And I use that to sustain some false sense of self I I have

about who I am, or even more truthfully, who I think I ought to be.

And it doesn't work.

Why doesn't it work? Because we are so thirsty. We are so thirsty for God.

They have a wonderful word in Sanskrit, Neti neti. It means not this, not that. We go about finding out what this divine, beloved God, Buddha, Jesus, whatever you want to call it, whatever is by process of elimination. And we Alcoholics tend to be a more enthusiastic crowd.

I'd like to follow the steps in my story.

I want to tell you a little bit about the home I came from. Perhaps I was like, Jimmy just opened us up with such fire. Thank you so much and and you were so wonderful this morning. You know, I can only hope to do 110th of the job you did for the good of Alcoholics Anonymous. And thank you, Barbara, for everything you've done.

Judy met us with flowers and Lisa and Van. They've been so beautiful to us. Everyone has been so generous to us,

but perhaps I was like that son or daughter you had in a family where the Alcoholics Anonymous never came into and the way I experienced my growing up. Now, I'm not saying this is what happened. There is no objective truth out there. It's not like truth sits there out there

and then there's an US, and you know me and you when we talk about that truth as if it is there. That's not how it happens. There's no story without a perceiver, and so I'm telling you a story. That's it.

What I did hasn't changed since I got what got sober, but how I see it sure as heck has.

And so I'm going to tell you how I perceived that

my mom married an alcoholic with seven children whose wife was in a mental institution due to alcoholism.

I was born with hypersensitiveness. I have learned, thank goodness, to carry earplugs and conventions because I can hear everything except for the very high pitches that I perceive as incoming arrows. I don't know why just came out of the womb like that. I experienced the entire world like a personal assault.

I did not drink for the party.

I wasn't one of those, although I did party. I had opera length gloves and cigarette hold. I know you can't imagine that.

I figured God gave me this long arms for something. So these long arms and I had bracelets up to here and boy, I was, I look like I was having fun.

But actually

what I did from the time I was really young was I did whatever I could to quiet down everything. It was too loud, it was too cold, it was too hot, it was too bright. And I just had to turn the volume down and I drank for this.

I don't know about you but that's what I was looking for in the alcohol.

Anyone else want that?

And so when I got to that house with all the, we had about a 14 square foot house. There were nine children, two parents. We had Peacocks in the basement and chickens. We had a postage size. I know that's maybe not that that much for people out in this part of the country, but we had a postage size back lawn. We ran. We raised English mastiffs

and Rottweilers, gerbils, hamsters, parakeets. All of these were in the house

and I experienced this. Now remember, just without any of this, I'm by myself all the time and this is what happened. And so I my first drug of choice was fantasy. I would stick around long enough in school to get what was a straight A student

in this family. I got the job of good girl, not because I was so great, but it was the only slot that was left.

My step brothers, everyone was into drugs and alcohol. So I got good girl and, and what I did was I would just stick around long enough to go away

and then I'd come back long enough to get whatever was going on in class and I'd go away. And that's how I survived. I lived at school and in the library, in a tree, in the dark, anywhere else but where I was. I was never where I was for a long time after I came to Alcoholics Anonymous

in my house.

Let's just say the walls were blue in the house.

Now. This is the way it happened in my house. I would say

the walls are blue.

Whack, the walls are pink. No, the walls are blue. Whack the walls are pink. Violence, a lot of violence,

until I start saying the walls are pink and then I start believing the walls are pink. This is called delusion. I did not come to Alcoholics Anonymous in denial. That took about 2 1/2 years. It was a step up.

Delusion means there is something either true or false about which I actually understand the truth and I'm not admitting it.

That's what denial is. Delusion is that I believe the lie.

So when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I had nothing but delusion. Here's how it went. I'm not hurting anyone but myself.

I don't drink vodka.

Took me two years. 2 1/2 years of sober to admit. Oh, I drank sweet liquors and I cut the sweet with vodka.

Total delusion.

I don't, I'm not drinking if it's going in a blender. And on and on it goes. You know,

I don't crave a drink. I just have at the same time every day.

I wake up in the middle of the night sweating. I I do not realize I'm in the progressive stages of alcoholism. Everything tastes like battery acid to me. So I put ice cubes and I get that same thing. I grew up with watching my stepfather drink a gallon of Vin Rose.

You know how I got out of justice? Screwing the top off so I wouldn't be like him. They had come out with boxes of wine by then. I drank a box of wine a day, and that was just a staple. It didn't count anything else. But I had this delusion.

So what happened was in the first step, my sponsor had me write out what is it that comes in the way of your relationship with your other people, your job, your school, your dreams and hopes, your parents, your family, other human beings?

How has alcohol come in between you and that?

What does it had you do that made you feel ashamed? And I don't know another woman alcoholic who hasn't had to do something in order to keep drinking and using about what she feels dirty and ashamed.

And when I wrote that out, I had the realize you actually make real what it is you've done. You realize what you've done. Now do this with a pen and and or a pencil. Pen or pencil, but no erasing

and paper.

And I've never done inventory except that way it accesses the wrong side of the brain when you use a computer. It just does. And it's very easy to type a lie,

but it's really hard to write one.

And so I came to realize this. Now a delusion. I would like to

describe a delusion. A delusion is entirely self referential. Has anyone here seen a movie called A Beautiful Mind?

You may have? There's a very famous physicist about which it is, and in this movie

he is going through the movie with. You don't even find out until, well, in the movie that he is seeing things. He's having experiences that no one else is seeing

and people are trying to get through to him once they realize what's happening, and he is oblivious to this. About halfway through the movie you see that as college roommate and the little niece of that college roommate

are that are with him. You realize they are only in his mind

and at one point he's going, he's rushing down the street in the rain and he realizes the little girl does not grow up. And this is the crack in his delusion.

I'd like to suggest to everyone here that we must have a crack in our delusion in order for the light of truth to come in, in order for the light of sobriety to come in. We can go down on Bourbon Street and and go yell at people who are sitting there and who are inside the self referential delusion and it will do no good

until we have that moment.

And that moment came for me in writing, that first step,

and it came from coming into Alcoholics Anonymous. Were you embodied sobriety so loudly I couldn't hear a word you were saying?

I could feel it though.

I did not come into AA because I wanted to stop drinking. I came with my sponsor from another program and she was stalking somebody.

I caught alcoholism here.

It's caught through the ears.

Motives don't matter. I've already heard this so far.

Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Step two. First of all, I had insanity in my family. Real insanity. My my father died of alcoholism. It said chronic alcoholism on his death certificate, which is you got to work real hard to get that one on there.

He was diagnosed as schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies

and manic depressive.

My my mother was consistently erratic.

I was so scared. And what did I do in that childhood to get safe, to feel safe, control my environment

and go right up into my head? I went right up into my intellect to get any kind of safety.

So now they're telling me to come to believe in a power greater than myself, and they're telling me to admit I'm insane. I'm too afraid to admit that because I'm actually afraid if I admit that I'll go crazy. Does anyone else have logic like that?

I I'd like to suggest you that nobody comes into Alcoholics Anonymous and Atheists or agnostic.

Nobody.

My favorite definition of what our higher power is, is what do we worship? That is, what do we spend our time, our attention, our focus, our whatever we have on, and what do we turn to when we're afraid? That's it, baby. I had lots of gods.

I had

alcohol and drugs and men and food and work. There's one for you.

It's the only addiction in the world. World where the sicker you get, the more applause you get.

So when I started drinking my first drinks, I was 13.

I had 10 bottles of beer, 10 cans of beer and a bottle of Strawberry Hill.

Now I know how old you are if you're laughing about that.

And I was to have what I always had when I drank a Black Hat, more like a brown out. That is, I came to now and again during the evening, I prayed for blackouts because I came to knowing exactly what I was doing.

And then I'd go back out again. And that happened a few times. And I made this decision at age 13. I am not going to drink until I get out of high school because you have no idea what I had invested in being good. It was everything. And once I put beverage alcohol into my body, I could not predict what the outcome would be.

I couldn't. And I knew that I never considered drinking less. I just didn't drink until I graduated from high school

and it was on. I went away to college on that first day. I was sick of being good. I was sick. I can't went with my little Peter Pan collars and my straight A's. And the first day at Ohio State, I found one woman who knew how to drink. We shot Foster Loggers 42 inch beers

and it was on within six weeks. I came home with purple hair I loved. I love this blue hair in the front.

You're my kind of girl, sweetheart,

just screaming, you know that chairs and cheap Italian restaurants that purple. It was 1976,

and it was cut about an inch long, and I came in all in black, and my mother screamed. She didn't know what. She did not know how to articulate what alcoholism had done to her child. That's what it did to me.

Now I have an allergy to alcohol. An allergy means I have an abnormal reaction to a substance or behavior. There are two things that happen when I drink. Number one, I flush, which means I get real hot and so I have to take my clothes off.

And if you're a six foot woman

with an upper body of a 12 year old,

people are unlikely to forget you in town.

The second thing is I just want more. I want more, more, more, more. That's all I can think of more right now.

And so it was off. Now I got that's the end of what I'm going to tell you about my drinking. It got progressively worse, as it always does. Never better. AT30I came into Alcoholics Anonymous not because I thought I would die. It was because I knew I would live for a long, long time. And that scared me.

Diane did not scare me.

I just couldn't seem to do it. You'll hear more of my story. We are indestructible. We Alcoholics. We're darn hard to kill.

And so I came into the program in this beautiful sponsor. You know, I didn't ask anyone to sponsor me for six months. I do not recommend that. I was simply too frightened. I sat by the door because people were telling the truth. And in my family, when people told the truth, things flew and people got beaten and I was scared to death. People were telling so much truth. And I went. I got sober in Los Angeles. There were 5000 meetings in Los Angeles today, probably 3500.

Then I made a wide circle.

If you have to do that, bless you, I did. I did. My first Home group had 300 people at it. That was as intimate as I could get. And everyone really, really,

you know, they left me alone. They let me do that

by the time I was nine months sober. I got the sponsor in at six months. By 9 months

I had was in the middle of the ninth step and I was sponsoring 11 women.

We were a piece of work.

Please, God will only send people who are as crazy as you are to sponsor them.

I'm so grateful I got into sponsorship. I got into all those commitments, all the commitments at the meetings I usually had to be the secretary. I knew how to organt my my, I was a college administrator. I had a lot of employees. I had my lipstick on straight. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I wore 3 and chills and I'm six feet

without any shoes on and I had this I'm in charge look. I was mystified by why no one asked me if they could help me.

They did, however, ask me for directions and to sponsor them.

I've had to recover from compulsive competency

really. It's hard when you grow up with a character defense, like always having it perfect, it's really hard. It took Me 2 1/2 years to get well enough to end up in a psych ward

where I had a nervous breakthrough.

I was, I was really tightly wound.

Step three made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. I love that. I must have read that 5000 times and thought I was supposed to turn over my will in life over to God. No care. Care is the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare and maintenance and protection of something or someone.

Wow,

can't you do that a little better?

And then I thought it was my life I was turning over. Do I beat my heart? Grow my hair? Animate myself.

No, I didn't. I thought I was going to have to give up something. Give up? I was a control freak. Why? Because I felt so unsafe in the world, I had to try to control everything around me.

What I had to do is realize it wasn't my will and my life, it was God's. In the 1st place. I had to give up only one thing, the illusion that I have control.

Isn't that easier?

It was just an idea. It was a delusion I had to turn over, not a real thing.

So relieved

the fourth step I had to write out now any other Virgos in the audience? Little perfection thing. So I couldn't get the line straight enough on my 4th step. And you know, and I call my sponsor and she was like, geez, Adele, just write it. So I read the directions very carefully and I wrote my first four step from the time of the womb.

Why? Because I had a story about what happened.

It's not what actually happened ever. I just had to get my story out there and find out where I was selfish. And actually, when I have people do the 4th step now, I have them do it directly from the big Book. I give them a worksheet, but we go through the Big Book and highlight it. If they ever lose it, they just open it up and get a pencil and a pad. And I asked them to write down how

that effect each one of those things, not just whether it did,

because we want to get down to causes and conditions. And she told me to write out those first three columns, just get it all out. And then the 4th column, that's where the piece is. That's where the recovery is. It does not say anywhere in our book what is my part in it. I've heard that parroted thousands of meetings. It says how was I selfish, self-centered, dishonest and afraid.

Resent comes the word sent from in. Resent comes from the French word meaning to feel or the Latin word meaning to sentence. So I'm refilling or re sensing something that happened. How can you do that for me? How can you have a part in that?

Certainly I was a player in a situation, but I have no part

in my resentments. I have 100%. And that's where that's where the freedom is, baby. Because that means that you can't ever take away my peace, my joy, my love, ever by anything you do. And that is miraculous. I also include 1/5

call them in the ones I do with people now and that. And what does this remind you of in childhood? Why? Because I'm pinning it on my childhood. Absolutely not. But the things that I find I react to, you know how they

5 minutes after you figure out what you were upset about, you realize that 5 minutes before you just spewed it all over someone. That kind of a thing that's from something. It's reminding me something about my childhood when I'm feeling powerless

and I'm reacting to it today. So I better take a look at it because it's taken a look at me.

My fears and harms

and sex inventory I also did with that sponsor and I've done that many, many times. I go through every five years with a group the entire all 12 steps now and I have for the last 20 years and and I go through the steps all of the time.

I live, you know, we're living the steps, but I do it in formal writing as well. I need to, I use the four step column for step 10. Now the depth of it depends upon the intensity of the resentment. And I'm telling you right now,

a tense step I can feel in my body as needs to be done. As soon as it happens,

your body will tell you right away if you've done something wrong, you know, just hit you right in the gut of your shoulders go up. And so, you know, we have built in built-ins. We just have to start paying attention to them.

Step six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I realize again that there are coping mechanisms and their character defenses, and what I had to do is I had to get down to causes and conditions. If I just try to give up the thing, the selfishness, self-centeredness, what I find out is it's like kind of saddling a bucking horse. It's just fine when you got the reins pulled, but once you let those rains go boom, that horse is off.

And until I got down to causes and conditions, I could have no sustainable recovery in those areas.

And I've had to do some work. Now, I want to tell you that I've sponsored all the way through and been very involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. I found that loving myself came through the back door, not the front door. I tried to love myself by buying shoes on a credit card. That was the best of my thinking. And what I do is I love you. And then I experience all this love inside

and I start loving me. I sit across from another woman who tells me her story and feels that's who it is. And all I see is a gorgeous, beautiful being across from me and a piece of my story, the piece of of that falls away and out in me comes the light of what I really am through that process.

And finally I had to go in and do it with me too.

It's just been the last couple years and I've really had to address this. I tried everything not to

we started.

Before I forget, I do want to say one thing. The Big Book.

My sponsors have always gone through the Big Book with me.

That's not not true.

But I have had the big. I have had gone through the big book with my sponsees. I have not always had sponsors that went through the Big Book, but I have been trained to go through the Big Book.

Please never call anybody who uses the Big Book with fervence a step Nazi. The Nazis killed 12 million people. We heal and love people back to life here.

That's what we do here. We heal we and in the process we are healed. But in step six and seven, I had to go in and really do some deep work.

Maybe not everyone has to do that, but at some point I did. My husband and I started about 11 months ago, started setting a timer, and we set a timer every 20 minutes. And I had to start saying to myself, I love you, I bless you, I trust you. Which by the way, I really didn't when I started saying that,

which is why I had to start saying that. Please forgive me.

Thank you for leading me back home. I am always safe here

and it's been shortened and I started doing that

every 10 minutes and I just drop into that silence and I bless.

May every being in the world feel the whole of God's love surging through them.

And you know something? I feel that love and that good stuff. And I also started healing inside in a way I had never started healing before. I want to tell you a story about Oh Wow, Steps 8:00 and 9:00.

Step 8. Please never make amends to anyone for what you're thinking. That's your problem, not theirs.

That's why we have sponsors. We read our A step list too, and I was taught to write a letter about what I would say. My sponsor would review it and take out all the barbs. You know those ones where I'm really telling you something

because I want you to know what you've really done to me,

those kinds of things. Now it's just I was completely wrong. This was in no way a fault of yours. I named specifically the thing I've done. And then I paused at the very end and I say, is there anything else you would be kind enough to share with me? That's probably the most important question, because invariably there is. There's something I've forgotten because I was in a blackout

Step nine. I had to pay back a lot of money, a lot more than I would have ever stolen had I known either had come a time I'd have to pay it back.

You do not need to bring back all the money when you go, but you need to bring something when you go to make to the amends. Do not wait until you have all the money to start paying back those financial amends. I went to my boss. I had stolen out of the petty cash. Someone else had gotten fired as far as I knew. When I told him he was not happy, he did not shake me. Oh, I'm so glad you're sober, Adele.

He was really, really, really pissed and he threw me out of his office. I sent a check for 2 1/2 years. At the end, he wrote me one paragraph. It said thank you for paying this back. You have restored my faith in humanity. You may be the only big book that anyone ever sees

and you can pay it back $5.00 a month.

Its consistency. You're talking to a girl that used to take six birth control pills in one day because I would forget.

Alcoholics Anonymous taught me consistency.

I know it's really dangerous. Don't do that.

Step 9.

There were two two people on my 4th and 5th step list who I was willing to forgive. I was willing, but I couldn't get freed. About one was my stepfather and one was my natural father. I want to talk about this for just a minute.

My father, as I've told you, I've told you a little about his history. I started getting raped and tortured at about six weeks old. I'm not telling this for any purpose, but for you to know that in God's world, nothing is unhealable. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I did absolutely everything to get free from that. I was physically hurt. I've had 20 major surgeries

sober. Those are one. That's when they bring out the power tools. Probably 50 or so outpatient procedures. I've had eight strokes and I'm here to tell you about this. I told you we're hard to kill.

It's a miracle

and I know it.

And I knew that because what had happened to me, I was broken and I was unhealable. There was something about me that was so dirty, that was so unhealable that I could never get free from that. I tried everything. I wrote inventories, I went to groups, I went to specialists and therapists. I went to my sponsor. I did inventory after inventory.

I got on my knees. I prayed I would be with my husband, whom I absolutely adore. I love. I love you so much, baby. I did not learn this in alcohol in my life growing up. I learned violence and retribution. I did not learn love like this. You taught this to me, and you taught it to him, and we learned it together through you.

I tried everything

and I was 16 years sober, 16 years number one. By the time I started getting a sober, about nine months in, I started getting sick. I, I started walking with a cane when I was nine months sober. I was in and out of hospitals and in and out of intensive cares and I knew I was wounded. I was just wounded. I would have to punch my husband in the middle of making love.

And I wasn't never going to get free from this. Maybe I'd stay sober, but I wouldn't get free. And I was 16 years sober and I was reaching for this, for the faucet.

And the idea came out of nowhere. He would never have heard his baby girl.

And I knew it was true.

I knew it,

and I thought in a rush came everything that I had done when I was drinking. I hadn't done what he'd done, but I had hurt people. I had stolen their trust. I had lied to them. I had done all kinds of unspeakable things to them. Maybe not that, but I've done it my own, and I had never done it to them. They were just there. I wasn't acting at. I was acting out.

I was doing exactly what he was doing. He was looking for peace,

and he was badly mistaken about its source. I believe that everyone of us are looking for peace. That's all we're doing. And we are so confused. I don't think we're sick. I don't think we're broken. We don't come in here broken. We come in here confused. We're spiritually sick.

What we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is we work these incredible 12 spiritual exercises and we get cleaned out. And so the sunlight of the spirit, which is always fully there, can just beam right through us

and help someone else. It's amazing. We can start doing the 12 step the minute we can come it, we walk in. If you're here 3 days, you can show someone the meeting guide list. You can tell them the meetings you're going to. You can help them. Absolutely. This is not brain surgery.

We can start wherever we're at. The 10th step allows us to clean out so that we can experience the 11th step and the 12th step.

The second-half of the 11th step is not extra credit.

I started with three minutes a day. I was really crazy when I came in here. I was bouncing, bouncing, vibrating. I shook my leg compulsively for 16 years. I counted people. Are there any counters here?

All right, that that means that I would have had counted all of you at least 20 times. If someone got up, I'd have to start counting it again. Someone comes in, I have to count again. Someone gets up for coffee maybe 50 times a meeting.

It was such I felt so much in danger all the time that I had to keep this going 24/7. And guess what? This is where I looked for God, the finite intellect. The intellect, by definition, is finite. What we call our mind, God,

is infinite.

We can't go to a finite source to realize the infinite, can we? It's like going to the hardware store for bananas.

It's you're not looking wrong, you're in the wrong store.

The 11th step charges us to shut up, sit down. In my case, I had to have all my limbs stop moving and I had to sit down and and my sponsor said you only have to do this for three minutes

and so I was not a day until it will grow into something else. I'm so glad he told me that I was on three minutes for 11 years. There is something to be in stubborn

and it has grown. And I'll tell you something as it grows, the quality of my 12 step changes. The nature of it changes. My job in Alcoholics Anonymous is not to fix you. You're not broken. My job is to see your wholeness and so that you can realize it

too. My job is to point you right here

into yourself, where that still small voice has been trying to speak to you and me, and we got to get quiet enough to hear it.

Each one of us will hear that voice deep down inside when and if we sit down and be quiet. Now all of you are going to tell me,

or maybe you're thinking I can't meditate. My mind looks quick. Now you're talking to someone who is moving all limbs at all time. I carried a Mary Poppins purse that I would dig into in meetings. I wore about six or seven charm bracelets that musically moved when I when I did. I carried quarters and river rocks and everything else.

We're all terrible at it.

When you take a puppy into your lap and you hold it and love on it, do you care what it's thinking?

God doesn't care what we're thinking. You're just so happy to have us there.

I really encourage you to work that eleven step, that second-half of the 11 step, and your whole life will change.

Mine has. Thank you.

Thank you, Adele. That was great.

Thank you for coming to Share your story with us. We would like to present you with this gift as a token of the Big Deep South Convention Committees appreciation.

Thank you so much.

I don't think we have any more announcements until the start of the next meeting. So we're going to have my glasses are right here.

Let's see in a a workshop healing the spiritual malady and we're going to have an Al Anon workshop and then the hospitality room is going to be open from 5:30 to 7:30 and then announcements and countdown starts at 7:00.

Would anyone who cares to join me with the Lord's Prayer?

And let's do our best to make a real circle if we can.

Thank you.

Our Father

and.

And everyone please umm, pick up whatever you brought into the room. Please leave with it. Your mom might be in the program, but she's not cleaning up.