The New Horizons group in Bend, OR

Guys, I was so excited about the birthdays I got out of that screen. OK, What is a A? My name is Carrie and I'm an alcoholic. This is my Home group and I'm currently working steps 10:11 and 12:00. We have Alcoholics Anonymous R many thousands of men and women who have recovered from alcoholism. We have solved the drink problem. We believe that strenuous work, one alcoholic with another, is vital to permanent recovery. The purpose of an A A meeting is that of carrying the A A message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

We share our experience, strength and hope with each other as to stay sober and help others recover from alcoholism. Experience when with alcohol is one thing all a A members have in common. Therefore we have to confine our membership to Alcoholics. Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence, we may refuse None who wish to recover nor a A membership ever depend upon money or conformity, regardless of age, gender, race or religion.

Any two or three Alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation, meaning we are not allied with any religious or political organization. We do not affiliate with other 12 Step fellowships, the treatment industry, or any other institution. We do not wish to engage in any controversy and we have no opinion on outside issues. We neither endorse nor oppose any causes. There are no dues or fees for A A membership.

Each member squares his debt only by helping others to recover. In the words of Bill W, Sobriety, freedom from alcohol through the teaching and practice of the 12 steps is the sole purpose of an A A group. Thank you for letting me participate. Thank you, Gary. Thank you very much.

Without further Adele, the format of this meeting is as follows.

Our speaker will share with us for about 45 minutes, describing in a general way

what they were like, what happened and what they are like now. Please allow me to introduce our guest speaker, Ashley J from the Boston Beacons Group. Welcome, Ashley. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Maria. Thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot. And thank you, Carrie, for asking me to be with you. New Horizons, you are floating my boat.

What a beautiful format. How lovely and principled. And how

Alcoholics Anonymousy, I'm loving it. Thank you so much.

I have had a moment of silence and I've asked my Higher Power to guide my thoughts, my actions and my speech.

That means I'm going to give three talks, as I was taught by Granny Pat. I am an alcoholic by the way. My name is Ashley. There's the talk I've planned, the talk I will give and the talk afterwards I wish I had given. And if I'm a little scared, it's just my Higher Power shaking the truth out of me as as Granny Pat who introduced me to these 12 steps on the 6th of February 2006 said to me. But guess what? That's not my sobriety date. My sobriety date

is the 30th of December 2006 and there's an interesting gap there. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that. And I do have a Home group, it is the Beacon group. I'm looking, I'm calling you from Berlin. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And I'm looking forward to getting back to my Home group and being able to participate in person. I've been doing online and phone meetings

and I do have a sponsor. I do sponsor women. I'm currently working step I'm reading and working step 11. I'm, I do steps 10:11 and 12:00

to the best of my ability and very robustly and thoroughly. And I'm devoted to the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. It absolutely has saved my life. And I am going to try to tell you, you know, how I got here. It's a little bit of an unusual story, but I suppose all of us have our distinct ways of finding these beautiful rooms and take you through my journey with the steps, traditions and the concepts of service. Because I'm a three legacy woman and I have found that I have a lot of big feelings and,

and

the concepts of service in particular really guide my behavior when I'm having big feelings. You know, when I'm sitting at the supper table with my husband and his daughter and his daughters mom, which is a constellation which I frequently find myself and my fear comes up or something. I have to remind myself concept for participation is the key to harmony. I need to participate. So I want to make sure that I touch on the concepts too while we while we're together

this morning for y'all and I've got some special friends who are here. So thank you all for dialing in. So

first of all, I did grow up in a multi generational alcoholic home. My great grandmommy was a flophouse drunk who died, died on the streets in Eastern Kentucky. And there's a lot about attitudes toward alcohol in my story. And when my Nana, her daughter was told by a social worker who came to the door of my great grandparents home to say that her mother was dead, she said, well, what's that got to do with me? You know, just real indifference because my Nana grew up with a broken heart. She was an adult child and had been abandoned

by her alcoholic mother. And you know, there's a lot of trauma in that story. My, my great grandmommy murdered her husband and ran away with her lover and burned down the family business and just did all kinds of things in her disease. And that's just the beginning of the tales of woe. And then both my parents are Alcoholics. I was raised in an alcoholic home. I lived in the kind of home where when the police came, I wondered why they didn't take me with them when they left.

And I did live alone for two years as a child

because, you know, one of my parents was off pursuing her addiction to her career and her dreams. And then when I moved myself to live with the other parent, he left $50.00 in an envelope and the state to go practice his alcoholism and his other ick. And I want to make sure that I tell you this little story about Alcoholics Anonymous, and then I'll speed it up and tell you about how I got here. But

in that second year that I was living alone in an apartment,

we didn't have a washer and dryer, and I was attending a private school. And I, of course, was proud. You know, I wanted to be clean, and I'd run out of fresh clothes to wear. And I was trying to figure out where in the world I was going to wash my clothes. And I saw that there was this patio attached to my patio at the apartment. And there was this woman in a bikini and a son hat and smoking a cigarette. And I thought, well, she looks cute. You know, I'm going to figure out which door corresponds with her apartment and knock on it. And by golly, that's what I did.

And I knocked on her door and I said hi, I'm Ashley. Can I do my laundry? What an introduction, right?

Umm, you know, so ashamed, but also really out of choices. And this woman at the time, Maureen S had five years of continuous sobriety in the program and fellowship with Alcoholics Anonymous and she had just been working with her sponsor on how to really learn to love for fun and for free. And her sponsor had said Maureen, just

find someone to whom you can give it away. And Maureen says that the day that I knocked on her door, I was her gift from God.

And

she

fed me, she watered me. She listened to me talk when I came home from school. She taught me how to roast a chicken. I thought she was rich because she had cable TV. She was an independent career woman. She's the type of member of a A that's talked about in our 12th step where she was single and totally fulfilled by this program. She read books, she traveled alone. And she also looked at me at one point and she said, Ashley, I think there's a problem with alcoholism in your family. And she gave me our book to read

and I said to her, well, why don't you do something about it? And she said, well, I can carry the message, but I can't carry the person.

And I didn't get here until 2006, as I said. But that's an interesting and beautiful introduction to me to the concept of recovery. And Maureen's became my first sponsor when I came into these rooms. So I always like to acknowledge her in that beautiful way that she saved my life and basically saved me from dying of loneliness that year and abject neglect and abandonment. So

my sister went to treatment for an eating disorder in 2006, and I was invited to her family program. And when I got there, they gave me all these questionnaires to fill out, including one on alcoholism,

and there were 20 or so questions. And I changed my answers so that I answered yes to fewer than five. And I didn't think that was problematic because I was answering all the softball questions, You know, Do I have a cocktail before I go out?

You know, I, I wasn't answering the hardcore questions. Nobody confronted me about my drinking. I didn't have consequences, all that kind of stuff. But I definitely changed my answers because I didn't want to be an alcoholic and I did not want to give up the drink.

And at that treatment center, they ended up doing an intervention on me because of my adult child of alcoholic issues. And I stayed there for over six weeks and did a lot of trauma work. I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape, all the abandonment, neglect and, and other stuff I've talked about. And they had said to me, you know, don't walk, run like hell to the Al Anon family groups. So when I got out of treatment, I went straight to my first Al Anon meeting.

And the first thing I did at that Al Anon meeting, because the topic corresponded with a, with a,

a recovery book that I was reading that day was I pulled out this recovery book, which was not published by Al Anon. And I said, oh, what a coincidence. That's the topic of the daily reading in my book. And because it was a healthy structured Al Anon meeting that followed the traditions, the chairperson said, oh, we only share Allen on published literature in this meeting. Well, I got me a resentment against the Alamont family groups because didn't they know I had just been to the best treatment center in North America?

And by the way, I'm that person who speaks up today in a meeting,

you know, or reread the preamble or I'll read something from the traditions and, or speak to the chairperson or speak to the newcomer afterwards or whatever. But anyway, I got a resentment against Al Anon and I wouldn't go back. But I was already a woman in recovery and I knew that my life depended on my recovery. So I would only so I could go to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went straight to the Nooner in Franklin, TN. And Steve L, who's the speaker, many of y'all know that was his Home group at the time. He wasn't his Home group. His Home group was the backroom group. But he came to the nooner Monday,

Friday. So I was getting some good AA. But I did some things now that I know not to do because I couldn't qualify as an alcoholic because I had changed my answers to that on that questionnaire.

But I listened in those a A meetings and they read from the Big Book. And I started and I read the Big Book and I started to identify with the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker that one day I will be able to control and enjoy my drinking.

With that first drink, I get a sense of ease and comfort. My problems pile up upon me and they seem astonishingly difficult. And at night, because I I had such extraordinary loneliness, I would read the stories in the back of the book to console myself so I could fall asleep. Because I was eaten alive with loneliness when I got here. You know, because that was the chief characteristic of my childhood, just that loneliness.

And I read that story, my bottle, my resentments in me and this guy and I had nothing in common. I mean, he said that

his beard went down to his belt, if he'd had it, if he'd had a belt. But he said it wasn't what happened. It wasn't how much he drank, but it's what happened when he drank. And I thought, I am so screwed

because I don't drink that much, but my God, it's what happens when I drink, you know? And then I read that story in the book.

I can't think of the name of it. It's towards the back bathroded. And she said, you know, that a, a taught her how to handle sobriety. And I said, so it's not so much about the drinking, but it's about getting too emotional sobriety. And I really want that. So you get the idea. Because I was going to a meeting where there were good people in sobriety and I was getting a head full of a, a while I had a belly full of white wine and champagne.

And I was really obsessed with that first drink. And I want to make it really clear that even though I came from a family of Alcoholics, what makes me an alcoholic is that I had that obsession with the first drink. And then when I took it, I lost all power of control over how much more I would drink. And I want to give you a couple of examples about that. I was on a on a trip in Central America

and I decided that by God, I was going to drink at the end of that day. And we went into this restaurant at the hotel

and ordered a bottle of wine. And it was taking a very long time for the wine to come. And I was so desperate for that first drink and so anxious, I went to the to the, to the maitre-d', to the bar, everywhere I could go, trying to shake them down for a cocktail while I waited for that Dang blasted bottle of wine to be delivered to the table because I just couldn't wait. I mean, that was my level of

being driven for it. Now,

when I hit my bottom,

I, I, I swore to myself I was only going to have one and I had three. And I know that for some people, that doesn't sound like a lot of alcohol. But the level of emotional angst that I was in, I woke up the next day and just like Bill pounding his fist on the bar. How did I get here again? I was eaten up with that incomprehensible and pitiful demoralization. You know, I thought I was just going to drink the correct wine with the cheese,

but I was emotionally at my bottom. And I called my sponsor, Maureen. She didn't pick up, which was very unusual. And I called my friend, my recovery buddy, Nikki,

and Nikki said, Ashley, that's exactly how I felt when I went to treatment for alcoholism. Now, Nikki ran a human trafficking ring and prostituted herself. So this is about identifying with the feelings and not so much the particulars of the circumstances. And I went straight to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, picked up a desired chip. And I'm happy to say that I have continuous sobriety and I've not found it necessary to relapse. And when I was asked to do my first step, I was asked to write out not only the history of my drinking, but my attitude toward alcohol

because my attitudes were so powerfully distorted, you know, and I looked at why I was so sparkly with it, you know, with the with the jewelry or a pretty dress. And it's because my dad and my great grand mommy's alcoholism was so violent, you know, that I didn't go that way. But I easily could have, you know, my dad once when I in front of me got so drunk with a friend and they were fist fighting and pulling the cabinets off the kitchen wall. And, you know, I tried to break it up and

tried to call the police and my dad's friend called me a CUNT. And then I, they locked me out of the house. I didn't want to be an alcoholic like that, so I just dressed mine up, you know, but I easily could have been in the gutter with other members of my family. So looking at my attitudes toward the institution of drinking was really an important part of my first step.

And then, you know, I had to look at how I drank alone because I was such an isolated person. And I'm gonna move on to when I took Step 2 because one of the stories that I that I told my sponsor when I read my step one to her about my powerlessness and my unmanageability and my emotional unmanageability was epic. I mean, I had suicidal ideation, I had a self harm addiction. You know, in our famous story in the book about acceptance is the answer, the page before he talks about acceptance is the answer. And

you know, the proportion of expectations and all of that. The page that I identify with is when he says if I could just control the circumstances outside of me, I might be able to calibrate what's going on inside of me. That's the sentence that floors need because that's how I lived my life. I just needed a thermostat out there

to regulate how I felt in here, and I went to great lengths to try to do that. So I told my sponsor that one night I'd been drinking, and I went back to my hotel room alone. And I thought, well, I'm going to make myself vomit so I won't have as bad of a hangover. But I was having a, you know, a enlightened spiritual experience while I was drunk, and I was having all of these insights that I just thought were so profound and needed to share with somebody,

but nobody was around. So I called myself and I left myself a voicemail.

And the next day when I listen to my voicemail, I was like what? What? What?

I mean, it was just incomprehensible gibberish. And my sponsor said, Ashley, you know, that is not same behavior. Boom, we were at Step 2. Boom, right at Step 2. So then I got to think about a higher power concept. And Alcoholics Anonymous gives me the dignity and the pleasure and the respect and the autonomy of having a higher power concept that is so personal and suitable to me. And then I get to fire that higher power and get a new one.

I need one. A bigger 1A, smaller 1A, more intimate one. And when I read we Agnostics, you know, the passage that is so moving to me is that the realm of the spirit is roomy and broad. It is all inclusive, is open to all who seek.

And you know, when Bill and Ebby are sitting together at Bill's kitchen table and Bill says that he saw that Ebbies roots that his very being had sought new soil, you know, that's a really profound and vivid expression of a new way of of being. And so that's what I'm looking for in my Step 2 is a higher power concept that can take me there, that's going to get me all the way to that spiritual awakening in step 12.

And so something that I did for my step two was I made a collage of my higher power concept. I mean, that's not in our literature anywhere. It was just something I intuitively came to. And it's round like the moon. And it's because I'm a backpacker and a nature person. And I was always in the woods in Appalachia from the time I was really little. And it has Moss and

dirt and sticks on it because, you know, I didn't grow up with safe people, a mother or a father. And so I really have to find a higher power concept that I can relate to and with which I feel safe. And I find that in the cathedral of the mountains, in the woods. And then I have a lot of sacred places. And I do have a wisdom tradition from which I come, you know, 'cause my grandparents really saved my life. I did have a stable summer home. And their faith tradition is important to me.

And,

you know, and I consider sanity. I was just working Step 2 today with the sponsee. And you know, it's just Peace of Mind. It's just being able to have some darn Peace of Mind, you know, And my insanity was I did the same thing over and over again, just harder, you know, just like the shoulder against the door, just like, get it harder. And.

So that's a little bit about my Step 2 and I do write letters to my higher power and I it's often write them with my non dominant hand. And when I finished my Step 2 with my, with my sponsor, we got on our knees.

You know, it was, it was such an intimate and gentle and tender act to get on my knees and hold hands with another woman. Alcoholics Anonymous

and there's a lot to be said about Step 3. They're amazing speakers who have unpacked it in great detail. And of course, the book is really,

umm, vivid about it. But for me, the essence of the experience was that tenderness. You know, by this time, my many was my, as I call her because she's a grandmother figure to me. She was my sponsor by now. And you know, her sweet wrinkly hand with her arthritic knuckles and the way she kind of had to

slowly make her way down to her knees. And

it was a tender is just the word, you know, a really, a really a really deep experience. And I have also taken step three, you know, naked, wet, distraught,

flat out on a bathroom floor in a strange hotel in an anonymous American city when I was just completely shattered by an emotional event in my life. So I've taken step three in a lot of different ways. And that step three that I'm referring to

my, my former husband and I, we chose not to have children. And that was a very clear mutual decision. It wasn't something that I ever I always knew was my path was to love the children who were already here and who are suffering and who needed an advocate

and he just didn't ever want children himself. And so, but then after we had a very

beautiful divorce, by the grace and the power of this program and the principles of it,

he had an unintended pregnancy with somebody and he has a child. And he asked me to be the godmother. And of course, an Alcoholic's Anonymous. The first thing I said is absolutely, I would be delighted. And then I went straight to a meeting and cussed the pain off a wall.

And then I had a like just a come apart. And I was on the phone. I had on speakerphone my spiritual giant in this program, Toby G and my wisdom teacher and some other people. And I was just having a really hard time reconciling these things. And Toby was saying to me in these moments, Ashley, there's no passage in the book. There's no meeting. You know, there's there's it's just down to your higher power in you. And what is your decision to be,

you know? And so that's another way that I've taken step three and my first step four, I want to tell you about two step fours that I've taken.

You know, the first one, I put a lot of that pain from my childhood on there because my parents had to tell me a lot of lies in order for them to justify their disease. And I put those lies about myself on my moral inventory because I really internalized that, that

narrative. And, you know, I thought this was beautiful. My sponsor couldn't hear my Step 5 because she was out of town. And she said, go to a woman in Alcoholics Anonymous you trust and ask her to hear it. She wasn't proprietary about it. Like, oh, I'm the only person who's qualified to hear it, you know?

So I went to Roxy. She's very cool and older and had shaved kind of Gray hair and

and she came over and she started listening to my Step 5. And she would say, Ashley, you were a blameless, vulnerable child, take that off your list. Oh, Ashley, you were a blameless, vulnerable child. Take that off your list. So she helped me distinguish what was the disease of alcoholism, praying upon me as a needy, dependent

kid, and the things for which I was responsible as an adult when I attained my majority and was responsible for my own disease. Because I had the education about my disease and I became responsible for treating it, which is concept one. I'm responsible for my own life and tradition 7.

I'm responsible for being emotionally self supporting. So which is? We'll get to that later.

And then my other. So that was a very powerful and very cleansing. I mean, the guilt and the shame that was lifted off of me by hearing that and separating out, you know, what my parents put on me and what what I can do something about, you know, what I can actually do something about effectively was an enormous transformational shift. And then my other favorite step five that I've taken, I was this person,

you know, had me look up the definitions of all the words and admit means to grant access, you know, admitted to grant access. And they had me go outside and we sat, I live in the country and we sat outside in the sunlight. And they talked about me admitting my higher power into the sunlight of the spirit, into my heart. And I would read something off my list and then they would have me make this gesture of opening the door of my heart and granting my higher power,

admitting my higher power into those nooks and crannies. You know, it uses that expression in the book. And so, and that was, and then they would have me sit in silence and meditation. So bringing in a little bit of step 11 there. And then they would say it's gone. It's not yours anymore. You've given it to your higher power.

And then

when I took step six, I was very ready. I mean, the rage was something that I really wanted lifted from me. I was told I was such a rager when I came in that the rage in me actually preceded me into a room. I vibrated with rage. And some of it I came by very, you know, justifiably. And but it was it. Was it really?

I mean, yeah, I was a rager. I punched a hole in the wall in my kitchen and put a calendar over it when I got into recovery because I wanted to remember how far I'd come. I've torn up a hotel room in my life. And

you know, I was the kind of rager. One time a telemarketer called me and I went off so bad she hung up on me. And usually that goes the other direction.

So I was pretty ready for step 6. And in step 7 is my sponsor recently pointed out to me, it says someplace where I can be quiet. It doesn't have to be quiet around me. It's just some place where I can be quiet in my spirit. But I went to my guest room

and that's really where I I was very I was very touched by that. I mean, that's really when I started to feel the nearness of my creator. And I think we all have our distinct journey through these steps and feel the power of our God at different times in different ways. But that was a weeper for me. You know, I really wept through that step seven. And then I started to take step 8 and the way I was taught to do it was I made, you know, obviously I had my Step 4, but I made three columns. So I did my list of

to whom I was willing to make amends. If they walked in the door right now, I would feel confident, serene, you know, a little nervous, but but but ready. Like, yes, I understand the nature of my wrong and I'm ready to take ownership of it and make my direct face to face amends. Let's do this. And then the second column was I'm I, I'll get there. I need a little time. I need to reread the chapters in the book. I need to pray about it.

It's not totally clean yet, but with time

I'm going to get there and the willingness will come. You know, made a list of all persons we had harmed

and became willing. And then the third,

you know, my perpetrators primarily like no thank you. And So what my sponsor taught me was, you know, go with the with the easier, safer people first. Build up some, some trust, some self esteem and

you know, the, the relationships where it's easier to get that momentum going and then move on to step 10, you know, and, and I started with some girlfriends.

I started with some work relationships. And one of the things my sponsor taught me too is in some instances, don't be too specific about making the direct amends because the person I might leave out the very thing that was most defensive and hurtful and harmful to the person that may be like,

what what about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Man, that's what was really messed up. You know, So sometimes I just I say Ioffer my heartfelt immense for any and all wrongs I have done. And in other times I really unpack it. But the book is so divine because it gives such explicit direction for how to make amends. And I, I mean, I'm very disciplined with our literature. And when I'm going to make an amend,

I read Step 9 in its entirety in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

because it has all the keywords, the buzzwords, and its guidance is just, I find it totally infallible. I also talked to my sponsor. I might also talk to my spiritual director. You know, I just, I, I take a lot of guidance on how to make direct amends and it works and it works. And then I'll talk to you a little bit about, you know, working Step 10 and, and back then and then how I do it now. And you know, I did start with the recovery buddy. Her name was Nikki.

We're still recovery buddies. She's just the best. And you know, we started with the slogans with our step 10. And how did we work a slogan? How did we apply just for today or think or for the grace of God? And you know, we and halted. We let ourselves get hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And so we did these daily check-ins. Did we make a meeting? Did we read something in the book? Did we talk to another alcoholic?

You know, and I love Step 10 in our 12:00 and 12:00. It obviously talks about the three different kinds of, of inventory,

particularly the spot check inventory that I can use anytime during the day, you know, and it's got that very famous sentence. It's a spiritual axiom that whenever I'm disturbed, there's something wrong with me. But it's such a generous and gracious step in, in the 12 and 12, it says that other people too are suffering the pains of growing up. I find step 10 is where I really start to grow in compassion. You know, where I can start to hold other people is equally fragile.

Equally

trying, you know, stumbling and falling. And also it talks to me so much about my motives. You know, it invites me in a Broadway to take a look at why I do what I do. But then Bill doesn't leave it alone. He concludes with that last passage where he's like, oh, look a little deeper, you know, 'cause then I've even under my broad motives, I've got these really subtle ways that I deceive myself and try to hide

a bad motive under a good one.

And he also talks about these keynotes of how I can, I can't stand it if I like a lot of people but love very few. And the people I don't like,

as my sponsor says, I don't have to like everybody, but I have to love everyone. And it tells me that I can treat them with courtesy, justice and kindness, you know, and that's something that I've really gotten in recovery. You know, I, I've learned how to stand for something without standing against my fellows. And that really started for me in Step 10. And I just did Step 10 with my sponsor and she asked me to choose the word watch

and just to work, work with the word watch and just to watch myself, you know, to develop that sort of external consciousness and just observe myself with detachment.

And how I take step 10 at night. You know, obviously the instructions are very explicit, but I in particularly the big book. But the way I do it before I start going through the language, you know, where am I, selfish, self-centred, afraid? Where did I did I pack things into the stream of life? Do I own a men's? Is there something I need to share with someone else? What I do is I say hi, hi, God.

I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. Today I made a lot of mistakes because I'm supposed to,

because if I didn't make mistakes, I wouldn't need you. And my mistakes are actually designed to bring me closer to you and to have that reliance on you. And it talks about that so much in the 12 and 12 and the 12th step, like greater spiritual reliance on God, greater reliance on God. You know, he talks, he just plays so much in the 12 and 12 on, you know, anti dependence over dependence and that it's interdependence with our fellows and more reliance on God. So I, that's how I open my,

my step 10 and then I journal in the morning and finish it. And if there's anything I need to clean up in step 11, I do have a meditation practice. And I do it exactly the way it's lined out in the book. I mean, it's not a big mystery. It says we select and memorize prayers that express our highest values and ideals. And so I've selected prayers from all the world's great religious traditions and I've memorized them. And I slowly go through the words the 12 and 12 gives us,

umm, make me an instrument of IPS, that prayer. So I started with that one. And then I say my prayers and I journal. And I think it's very important to note that Bill has this really wonderful tool in the 11th step in the 12:00 and 12:00 called constructive imagination. Where in my prayer life when I imagine a scenario that didn't go well or where I wish I'd behaved differently or I don't feel good about myself, I can use my constructive imagination

and Daydream about how I could do it differently next time.

I love that I love that because it helps me grow. It helps me stretch. It helps me create a vision for myself. And we have a chapter called a vision, you know, that has the word vision in it. And also it tells me in the 11 in the 11th step, I don't ask for things for other people. I don't pray agendas and my wishes and preferences for other people because

those are my ideas, even if they're noble and well-intentioned. Cure them of their disease. Let them

have a windfall. Please resolve their marital troubles. You know, let them get their goiter fixed. So when I pray for people, I literally just say the 11th step. May my mother have knowledge of her will for you. May my mother have the power to carry that out. Keep it really simple.

And then step 12, you know, the definition of the spiritual awakening that Bill provides is that I can feel, be, and believe things I previously simply could not.

And today that has come true in my life, sometimes more so than others,

you know, And I do try to practice these principles, obviously in all my affairs. And I want to tell you a little bit about the way I was able to do that when I had this big accident in

in Africa on the 6th of February. I fell in the rainforest and my leg broken four places and I had very deep damage to one of my nerves. And because of where I was, in an exceedingly remote place that takes days to get to,

I did not have medical care for 55 hours, and I didn't have any

pain medicine or

anything. And the first part of the experience, I sat on the rainforest floor for 5 1/2 hours with a badly misshapen leg that was broken in five places and in four places. And one of the things that had to be done was a, a man had to walk from a village into the rainforest, and he adjusted my leg with his bare hands. And that had to be done two different times. And all I had was a stick to bite on,

but I had Alcoholics Anonymous with me. And what I believe, because I go back to my Step 2, is that the God of my understanding suffers with me

and is with me in all ways, you know, and it does talk so much in step 12 about greater spiritual development is always the answer. And I mean, obviously this was deeply traumatic. I was in different kinds of shock. It was painful beyond my wildest imagination. I was like an animal. But

I just I could have no expectations. I could have no expectations of getting help. I could have no expectations that the pain would stop. I could have no expectations of when

the situation might be resolved. The journey also included a six hour motorbike ride where I had to hold the bones of my leg together with my bare hands

to people. This is a small motorbike on a on a parked dirt road and two people had to ride with me to heat from falling off if I passed out. And I just knew. And I was offered alcohol as a painkiller and I declined it. And it doesn't make me good, right and perfect. It does make me value my sobriety because I also knew I would not come back to you, my brothers and sisters and Alcoholics Anonymous and say I drank over it

because I wasn't gonna drink over it because my sobriety matters to me. And I don't really know how to explain it. I just knew that my recovery and that this program was with me during that experience. And the day before I fell, I had just read a book on the spirituality of the 12 steps. It's an outside book, so I won't give you the title, but it's about the, it's about the spirituality of the 12 steps and the, and the 13th chapter is about how

my higher power is just with me all the time and all of my suffering and all of my joy. And that's just what I knew. And when I would try to pray, I didn't have the energy to pray. When I would try to say something from my faith tradition, I didn't have the words, but I, I just

had some kind of supernatural

strength. And I just, I relate it to the 12th step of a A. And there was this one moment when my partner came with the sat phone and it didn't work because we were under the canopy of the rainforest and he had to leave. And the person who was sitting with me said, oh, he'll be back in an hour. And then an hour went by and she was like, he'll be here in 15 minutes. He'll be here. And I said,

we can have no expectations, you know, and that's a A at work in my life and that circumstance. And there's more to that, but I'm going to move on. So that's a little bit of that's about that, you know, this the steps in my life. And I just want to, you know, briefly touch on the the traditions and the concepts. So tradition one talks about our common welfare and our unity. And what I get out of this tradition is that, you know, the group matters and I matter too. And I didn't learn that growing up with the family disease of alcohol.

You know, if if there was a fight in my family, it was like the family itself divorced. And in fact, at one point my dad said, you know, I divorce you.

And so it was really a binary and it was an either or. And what Tradition 1 teaches me is both. And it teaches me how to hold complexity and how to hold paradox and to have unified thinking. And that doesn't mean that we're uniform, but that we have unity because the group is important. And the 12 and 12 also states that the individual matters and the individual's liberty and the individual's liberty is

of paramount importance. And so it started to heal these, these, these, these fissures in my thinking, you know, and this is very important to me and my relationship because my, my partner and I, we, when we're not in America, we're in, we're in either Switzerland where he's from, or we're in Germany with his daughter. And we have this constellation with his daughter's mother. And so I'm the minority voice a lot of the time. And I have to think about common welfare and unity and both and