Carin S. Step 1 - Step Series at Twelve Step House - 7/15/2025

Carin S. Step 1, Step Series at the Tuesday Night Step Group, Twelve Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 7/15/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm Karen, and I am an alcoholic and thank you for
having me here for the next several weeks. Glad to
be here. I'm happy to know a lot of you
in the room, which is comforting to me. So my
sobriety date is September the eighth, nineteen eighty eight, so
coming up a couple of months, we'll have thirty seven
years of continuous sobriety. I am a one chip wonder,

(00:23):
so I want to say that I'm yeahha, no talking yet,
we'll get there. I am from New York City, in
case you haven't figured that out from that amazing introduction,
from the upper West side of New York with eighty
seventh Street and West End Avenue, and my home group
is first things first, on ninety sixth Street and Broadway.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
We have four.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Meetings every morning, six o'clock, seven fifteen, eight forty five,
and ten fifteen. And for the first fifteen years of
my sobriety, I went to every single one of those meetings,
every single one.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm not saying that I loved aa. I'm saying I
didn't know what else to do with my time.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
You show up there at six o'clock in the morning
and then you leave out of there at eleven thirty
in the morning, you've done half your day and you're sober.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So a couple of things I want to blow out
right now before you begin.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
You know, we're going to do a step series here,
and if you've never done the steps before, this is
not going to do much for you.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Because I found out the hard way or the easy way.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
That when I did the steps with my sponsor, I
learned very little about myself. I actually didn't know anything
about myself when I was done. What I figured out
what I did do was I did a good job
for a him, but for me, I didn't understand it
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I didn't really find out anything about myself.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
And I didn't find God in this program for five years,
So figure that one out. But I got the steps
and I understand them, and they're off the wall and
they're in my heart because I worked them for a
couple hundred times with sponsors and a couple hundred times
with people I didn't even sponsor who just wanted.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
To go through the steps.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
So if you don't get it, it's okay, you're not
ready to get it. Once you go through this whole thing,
then you grab newcomer and talk to them about it.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Because intimate relationship and relationship between you.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
And the person that's doing the steps only brings you
to yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
It does not bring you to the other person.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
And by the way, that adage is good for all
in life period. Whatever relationship you're in, whatever intimate relationship
you're in, it only brings you to yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
So I just want to say right from the get go,
because I.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Said I was going to do this, as I showed
up last month when Maddie was leading this series, because
I wanted to see how it was done.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I didn't want to come up here and make a
fool out of myself.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
And Maddie came up where he had like six books,
and I thought, God, he's smart here. I am.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
I have nothing. It's just me. It's just me up here.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
So and I have a few notes that I made,
but I will tell you that I brought my twelve
and twelve. And the reason I brought it is not
because nobody has a twelve and twelve, but nobody has
a twelve and twelve like this twelve and twelve.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
You know, when you're gefts ober in New York.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
There's there's a propensie to get like first offs of
things that they publish because they think we're idiots.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
And you know, we're not going to notice that the
steps are written wrong in my twelve or twelve.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
That they've changed the words, that all the page numbers
are different. Also, maybe do all these years is pay attention,
really pay attention when they say we're on page thirty six.
I gotta scramble because probably page forty two where I'm
coming from.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
So you're gonna get me and my sobriety and where
I came from. And I want to tell you that tonight.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
While we're on step one, I'm say a little bit
about myself, but I'm not gonna tell you anything about
coming into AA because the first step for me is
the most important step there is, because it's the step
that defines us as an alcoholic.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
And if we don't get the first step, we have
no business being here. So I'm just gonna put this
out here right away. The first step is simple. It
says what's we have been written any room? They're not
on the ras anywhere, okay, so they're on the walls
right there. So it says we were. Yeah, we admitted
were powers over alcohol when I'm drinking it.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Hello, I am not powerless over the alcohol that's in
the package store five miles away, I am, And.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I'm powerless? Well for me, I don't know if an alcohol
look like me. I don't know who I'm waking up with.
I don't know where I'm waking up. I don't know
what I've done. I'm a blackout drinker. You know.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
I've woken up on stage before.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
And I have no idea if I'm getting an award
or giving an award, no idea whatsoever. So I am
powerless over alcohol when I'm drinking it.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
And then it says dash.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
And in the English language, dash means beginning of one
end of one thought and beginning of the next thought.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Think about that. It says dash that our lives have
become unmanageable when I'm not to drinking.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Now, if either one of these things are not true
for you, If you are not powerless over alcohol when
you're drinking, and your life is unmanageable when you are not,
then you go because guess what, congratulations, you are not
an alcoholic. You are somebody who has a drinking problem.
Who just has to put down the alcohol and your life.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Is going to be all again.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
But if you're an alcoholic like me, my life was split.
I drank and used heavily for twenty five years, and
by the time I was done. I'm a nice Jewish
girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I am well educated.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
I had a weird family life, which we'll get into.
But I was all coming and by the time I
was done. By the time I came into AA, I
was walking on the streets of Broadway, eating out.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Of garbage cans in my pajamas. And how does that happen?
One day at a time.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
So I want to say that I just came back
from the International conference in Canada, and there's a couple
of my buddies who were here, and I actually took
my New York posse with me.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
I sponsor all of them. We had six of us
in the group. I sponsor many more than that.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
We'll talk about that later, but five out of the
six I sponsored, and the sixth guy was the guy
who was there when I came in. It's good to
have a reminder all the time, don't ever be the
one in the room with the most sobriety.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
When no one's ever seen you drunk.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
You know, that is a recipe for you know, Chuck
chramlay to say, it's the recipe for being an expert.
You know, who's an expert. Anybody who's five hundred miles
from home. And so if you don't have somebody in
the room with you that's got more time than you,
then you've got that propensity for this big shot ism. Anyway,
I took all these beauties with me, and we hadn't
seen each other for a while, you know, we see
each other on zoom every once in a while, and

(06:19):
I took it and we went everywhere together.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
I mean we really went everywhere together.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
And you know it was it was beautiful and crazy
all at the same time. We went to the international
call up, we went to meetings together, We went to everything,
and we went to the big meetings together. And on
the first night of the big meeting, when they were
doing the parade of flags, I saw tons of people
that I knew, just tons of people bought.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Thirty forty thousand people there. There are a lot of
alcoholics there. And when we were done with the parade
of flags, and the speaker.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
And everybody was, you know, hipped up about this whole
idea of being in the international Convention. Then they led
us out and there's like thirty or forty thousand alcoholics
walking on the streets, you know, a Vancouver with really
no lights on the streets.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
So one of the women that I sponsored, who was.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Next to me, she had trouble walking, and I thought
I would do the right thing, and I turned around
to help her and did not see the cement divider
in front of me, and when boom went right down, cracked.
My cheek was bleeding all over the place. You know.
I don't know why my pants didn't rip, but I
was very happy because they were expensive and I just
bought them. But everything under my pants was a bloody

(07:26):
mess anyway. So they sat me down because I said
that I was nauseous from hitting my head.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
And a guy comes up to me.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
He says, just sit down, I'm a paramedic, don't worry
about it. And then another girl kind of walked over
and said she was a nurse, and she stood there,
and then the cops came and it began like to
be dramatic, which for an alcoholic like me.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
You know, I kind of loved the drama, and so
everybody is coming around.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
The next thing, I know, some young guy comes over
and says, listen, I think she's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
She looks okay, but you got to go down here
because this.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Woman fell and she broke her nose. And then we
got another one over there. That woman fell and she
knocked her front teeth. That I'm like, oh my god,
I am so luckier. Then, you know, when the ambulance comes.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
And I don't know about you, but I've never been
inside of an ambulance. It was very exciting for me.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
And you know, anyway, so I sat the ambulance and
the first thing that the what are they called EMT.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
One of the first things the EMT says to me
is have you had a drink today or any mind
altering drugs?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
So I started laughing, which at the time I didn't
realize is a very drunk response. And she turns around
and says to me, you know, we're very serious here.
We take these things very seriously.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And I said, well, you see all these thousands of people.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
I said, we're here for our confidence of alcoholics anonymous,
And she.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Goes what does that mean.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I said, that means that everybody who's at this conference,
thirty forty thousand of us have convened from all over
the world really to talk about the gift of sobriety
and the joy of alcoholics anonymous.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
And she put down her band.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Aids because I'm bleating everywhere, and she said, can you
tell me about the program?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
So I want to say that if you stay.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Sober long enough, you're gonna get these god moments. They
happen all the time. You just have to pay attention.
You have to pay attention. You know, I got sobber
with the swimming in New York. She scares the crap
out of me. Actually, she comes up to about my waist,
you know. But she's like four feet tall and four
feet wide. I mean, she's just this powerhouse.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
And you know when she comes up to you to
give you a hull, you better run. I mean it's
like and she would say to me.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
All the time, you know, Karen, stuff happens when you're
not paying attention.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
In AA, stuff happens. You got to pay attention. You
got to pay attention.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
So I want to talk about why we have to
do Step one perfectly. This worked a lot better when
I wasn't so old that I needed glasses. When I'm
definitely gonna try and get up here, maybe it's gonna
work a little better up here. Okay, So we've talked
about why it says, and you'll hear this, by the way,
here's the thing, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I really want to get clear here.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
In your whole life and alcoholics anomous, you're gonna hear
this phrase, which makes me crazy. It says, you know,
when I came in, they said this, and they said that,
and I'm like, you know, who are they?

Speaker 1 (09:59):
And then I say, how did I become they? I
just became odd. You know. They were just old. They
weren't wise, they were just they were just old.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So they would say, they would say that step one
is the only step you have to do perfectly. And
I'm a why baby, w h y, I'm not a
how baby. I don't care how you do the steps.
I cared why I was doing it. And I made
my sponsor, Albert crazy. You know, in New York we're

(10:28):
not so good with the rules. So we didn't do
the men with the men and the women with the women.
So my sponsor was a black man with dreadlocks, and that.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
You know, and you'll hear about this later that you
know covered his hearing aids.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
You never heard anything I said anyway, But you know,
it was a great relationship.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
By the way, I should have had a relationship like
that at all my marriages. I'd still be married. But
you know, he basically taught me.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
We went through the steps together, and he taught me
what I needed to know.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
But I said to him, why do we have to
why don't we have to do the first step? Perfectly?
Doesn't perfectly mean in the eyes of God like perfectly
like God? And he said, doesn't mean anything like that.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
That's the only step that we have that will define
you as an alcoholic.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
And then we went through the step.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
And if I was not powerless school or alcohol when
I was drinking it, or my life was not unmanageable
when I wasn't, I know business being there. And believe me,
that's stuck in me because when I was five years sober,
I made the decision that I wasn't an alcoholic and
that I've decided to go out there and do some whatever,
you know. And I never got to whatever because God
blessed New Yorkers. They're physical and I was in a

(11:33):
very physical group and I was literally held down and
not be able to go.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So I mean, it is what it is. So a
couple of things that I wrote down. Youre on my wives.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
You know, why does self knowledge on the first step
avail me nothing? It's a really interesting question because you know,
I go through my life in AA thinking that if
I know something, I'm going to do something.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
When you know more, you do more. But it's not
like that at all. It's actually, as long as you stay,
you're going to figure Everything.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
To tell you at AA is untrue. It's the opposite.
They just tell you that to keep you coming. But
the reality is it's opposite because only stupid people get
this program quickly. The smart ones were screwed because we're
thinking of the why and the when and the how,
and we could think of all these questions when really
all it's told me is that I'm powerless over alcohol

(12:21):
when I'm drinking.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
It, and that my life is really bad when I'm not.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
My skin is too tight, it doesn't fit, and so
it leads me to you know, we used to have
powables and stories in New York and you're gonna get
them all, you know. And this is a story about
the guy, the alcoholic on the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Does everybody know that story? I don't care. I'm telling
it anyway. So there's a guy in the Titanic.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
He's clearly a drunk because there's everybody's playing the fiddles
and running to the you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Those things are, those boats like the lifeboats. He's on the.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Deck, drunk, junk, drunk, saying, I am not getting on
a lifeboat until I know what speed we were going
when we hit that iceberg, how big the hole is
in the hole, how much longer it is going to
take for this ship to go down.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
I need the information before I make a move. It's
kind of alcoholic I was.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I needed the information before I would listen to what
you have to say, trust what you had to say
was real, and then go ahead and.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Take baby steps to do it. And so what happened
to the guy He died.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
He died because that's what happens to us when we
need too much information. You know, one of the worst things,
you know, I made this list. It's so funny of
things that are not true in AA I don't know
where that came from, but I thought this would be a.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Good place to go over them, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
And the first thing that I heard in AA. Believe me,
you did not want to sponsor me because I was.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Filled with this.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
First thing I heard in AA is this is a
simple program for complicated people.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
It is not. That's lie number one. This is a simple.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Program for alcoholics who like to complicate things in our lives.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's what this looks like. And why do we complicate
this so we have some false sense of control.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Over this program and control over the steps and control
over our behavior.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
This is not a complicated program.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
This is the simplest program you will ever come across.
And we are not complicated. We are more simple than
you'd like to believe.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
But we like to complicate things. We like the drama.
We like to make scenarios.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
You like to talk about things that aren't actually in
their makeup stories because everything is about control.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
The first step talks a lot about honesty. I mean,
that's the principle behind the first step.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
And by the way, I don't.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Actually believe if any of you have studied the principles
that the principles are behind the steps.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
I think you get the principle when you do the step.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
After you've done this step, it comes to you in
a little gift box and says, here, this is your
gift for completing step one. And that gift for step
one is honesty. It's just honesty. And it's mentioned nineteen times.
And normally an old speaker used to talk about the
first step being seconds in inches, like we never knew,

(14:58):
you know, three minutes over here more and two feet
over here, you know more over this way, and you
would have a different speaker for yourself tonight. I just
wouldn't be here. So I can no longer read because
the list is coming down.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
So I have to go back this way. Is that
your camera? Okay? I kind of mess that up? Okay?

Speaker 2 (15:16):
So another why why did I have to accept everything
that I lost?

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Why did I have to accept that?

Speaker 2 (15:24):
You know, that was an interesting thing because I had
lost marriages, five of them.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
That's all I want to say.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
So I had lost marriages, money, family, friends, jewelry. We
just had this discussion before the meeting that you know,
when I go into a drawer, to take something out
to put it on.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
I realized that I've sold it. I sold everything I
owned for drugs and alcohol. That's just the way that
it was there. So why do I have to admit
all the things that I lost Because I have a
bad memory.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
I have a bad memory, and when I don't remember
things that happened, I.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Am doomed to repeat them.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
You know, I've heard this talk over and over again
in the first step that you know where survivor is
in AA.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
You know, we come from me.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
I have a very low bottom and extremely low bottom,
and I come from a low bottom and I came
into AA and I was I was a survivor.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Well, you know, fast forward thirty five, thirty six years.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
And now I've come to understand that being a survivor
is not an asset in my life. It's actually a
defect because by being a survivor, all it does is
set me up for the next crisis.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
That's it, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
But by learning through God how to thrive in the
rooms of alcoholics anonymous, and how to thrive in life
through alcoholics Anonymous, it sets me up much better than anything.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
So sorry I lose I have to put them on
I've just I've lost Okay.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
So the next question that I was asked was why
steer me towards something I.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Don't believe it? That bothered me.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Why do I need to do this? Why do I
need a God? Why do I need anything like that?
Why do I need a higher power? In the first step,
I had a hardcore sponsor that said, you know, he literally,
I will beat you down until you get this, but
you are not going out in that arena again. He
used to make me stand up in the room, haha,
raise my hand and say, you know, my name is Karen,
I'm an alcoholic, and I have a God of my understanding.
And I said, and I don't believe it. And that's

(17:17):
what I would say every time. He said, you're not
saying that for you, You're saying that for other people.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Who don't believe it.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
You know, I have very good programs in this in
this friends in this room with you know, forty and
fifty years of sobriety who only survive on an intellectual
type of God, an intellectual understanding of God, and many many.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
More people in here who get through the first step.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
We're reading the first step and think I'm going to
be doomed because I'm never going to find a god.
And we play comparison games with other people who talk
about their spirituality, but.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
The reality is that it doesn't matter. It sifly doesn't matter.
It's whatever works for you.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
And this my friend Kenny's got, you know, forty years,
and he's got a god of an intellectual brand, which
I don't have.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
And we'll you know, talk about that a little bit later.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
So those are all the questions that I was asked,
and I kept them all these years. So I'm gonna
tell me tell you a little bit about myself pre AA.
This is not going to be anything before I got
into AA, but you're going to see very clearly how
I fall into two categories of the first step.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
You know, what I did when I was drinking, and
they're really bad things I did when I wasn't you know.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
I grew up in a household of alcoholism, godlessness, and excommunication,
and those are three things that will really bring you down.
You know, I'm a former family of Holocaust survivors, so
there was very little, you know, cheer and fun in
the house. My grandparents came to live with us for
a long time. They carried that whole weight with them

(18:42):
in the house. There was no God in the house,
because if there was a god, how could he have
done this?

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Understand, the rest of my family died in the camps.
You know, the rest of them were gone. I mean
as the years went on, by the way, some of them.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Popped up around the world, which was crazy good. But
at that time we thought everybody was gone. And she
had eleven brothers and sisters. He was the sole survivor,
and my grandmother also had ten because they had big
families in Europe, in Eastern Europe. And so you know,
there was not God was not in the house because
if there was a god, he never could have done
what he could have done. And then you know, my

(19:15):
father was an amatologue. You know, my mother just enjoyed
her highs.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
I don't know house to put it.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
You know, the medicine cabinet was gold to me and
so and she never noticed.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
She's so she replaced and you know, I found out
I think I was.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I started using when I was nine nine, and I
have no memories of my childhood before and nine I
need to say that something happened.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I don't know, but I have no memories.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
But I know something happened because I started using it
nine years old, and so you know, they did a
lot of doctor work on me and psychology and all
this kind of stuff, and nobody ever found out what happened,
and they couldn't put me under, you know, long enough
to figure out.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
And frankly, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
I think it's extremely important as a sober alcoholic that
you own up to everything that happened to you and
then you put it in a drawer, because that's not
who I am today. I don't even recognize who I
am today compared to who I was thirty six years ago.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
There is no comparison. And we'll talk about that, you know,
a little bit later on.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
And the excommunication that's super important, you know, when I
have a family that excommunicates you. So my mother didn't
see her brother for fifty years, and my father didn't
see his own family for like forty years. When I
came into AA, finally came into AA, I had an
older brother, two years older than me. He was my

(20:34):
get high buddy, my drinking buddy, and he thought that
was the ultimate betrayal that I came into alcoholics anonymous,
and actually when he drove me to the meeting on
the third time he drove me where I was.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Going, he said, don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
I'm not really worried about you, he said, because you're
going to go in there and one day they're going
to figure out who you really are.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And they won't let you stay.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
This is thirty six years later, and I remember exactly
when he said, so. Thirty five years ago he disappeared
and we don't know where he is. I mean, he's alive,
that's what I know. I worked in various organizations that
will allow me to find him, but noncommunicatives just gone.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
You know, when someone wants to go, they go.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
I thought to myself, well, I'm going to break this
chain when you know, when I have my kids, and
I have a son and he hasn't seen his father
in ten years.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I don't know what this gene is, but we got it.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
And when I talked to other Jewish families and they
got it too, And I think it has a lot
to do with just wanting to forget, just wanting to
forget and just not wanting to face.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Up to whatever was there.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
So it was, you know, kind of a bizarre household.
My father was a World War Two veteran, and we
took I think I was maybe thirteen years old. I
don't know what you're doing, you with thirteen. But when
I was thirteen, I went through my father's drawers because
he had good stuff in there and I didn't know
what I could find. And one day I found, you know,
a bag of pot, which was fabulous, But I also
found a Cuban passport, and then everything opened up in

(21:58):
my family. We kind of like apart because we hadn't
been told that my father would have been born in Cuba,
that there was the history of the United States not
accepting us, this whole history of alcoholism coming in, and
so you know, when you grow up and you have
these certain tenets.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
To be true, and everything blew up.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
By the time you know, we were I was thirteen
years old, so you know, things changed after that, They
absolutely changed. You know, I was singing by the time
I was ten or eleven.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
I had a great singing voice until I was blacking out.
And I didn't have a great singing voice. I'm telling you.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I used to find I used to wake up on
stage in the middle of a song, and all I
was singing was la la la, because I couldn't remember
the words and I didn't know where I was, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
And I got fired from almost every singing job that
I did.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
And I opened up for stars, by the way, for
like big stars, and I would open up for them
because I had this bubbly personality.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
They didn't realize that I was high. And I would
get on the stage and I just couldn't remember anything.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
So that was it, and they got me off pretty quickly,
and I was fired from almost every job that I had.
I don't really care, actually, so I really don't care.
So the other thing I want to talk to you
about is this is just like my personal stuff.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
So when I was drinking, I met my first husband.
You know, we all know. I've been married five times.
Some of them are more interesting than others, let me
tell you.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Some of them just have names of the week. But
you know, they're all out there, and one died. But
the rest of them were kind of the same person
over and over again.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
All alcoholics, all drug addicts, you know, all doing.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well in life, but they were functioning alcoholics. And my
first marriage, I married somebody eleven years older than me,
and it.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Was a horrendous, violent marriage.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
We were using we were drinking, you know, back and
forth and back and forth. And at the end of
this marriage, drunk, she went away to work in one
day and I called somebody in and they built a
wall in the middle of the apartment because I asked
them to this is Manhattan, let me talk about real estate.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Real estate.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
You know, you're not giving up your real estate so
fast in Manhattan. And so they came in and they
built a wall. So when you walked into the apartment,
you had to go to the right and left. You know, see,
you know, the kitchen was in front of you. But
you know, on the right there were two bedrooms. On
the left there were two bedrooms, and there was a
bathroom on either side.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
So I really didn't think he would mind, actually, And.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
So after I did it, we got we sat around.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
And we got really high, and then I got scared
and then we ran away because that's what you do.
That's what you do.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
And when I came back, I thought that we had
been robbed, actually, because every single.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Thing in the apartment was cut in half. Everything, television,
the couch, all.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
My clothes, all the artwork on the walls, everything was
cut in half, and I called the police because nobody
was there, and I thought we had definitely been robbed.
And when the police came, he came into the apartment
and said to the police, Oh, my name is doctor
so and so, and you know this is my wife
and she's under my care.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
And they said, oh, we understand, doc, don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
And they left me with all of this, you know,
garbage in there. Anyway, he took me three and three
hundred thousand dollars to get divorced from this doctor. And
you know there's a pattern with all of my marriages.
I didn't take anything, nothing, not a dime.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
I just needed to go. That's a running line in
my life is I got to go.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
You know, I'm a running alcoholic and I have to
work very hard on that in sobriety not to run anyway.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
So that's how I am when I'm drinking. Then I
got married again.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
I was in a bar on the Upper West Side
with my girlfriend from Australia and we used to ask
them who was the most destitute men in the bar.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
We were looking for poor men and we would go
home with them because we figured they deserved us. We
were like their prize for being poor.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
And so one night, you know, we asked something and
some guy with a British accident and you know, when
they have a British accent, you think they're smart, but
they're really not.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
They're just British. And he said that, he said that
what he says says, I'm I'm destitute. And I said, well,
come on, come on.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
So I took him home, and I don't know, maybe
maybe thirty days later, I married him, you know, I.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Mean, that's just the way that it was.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
I didn't know another way, and he needed a green
cart and I needed to get away from, you know,
from a husband number one, because that divorce was finally,
you know, was fine. And I really didn't drink a
lot in this marriage because I knew what drinking and
drugging had done to me in the first one. So
I was really determined to keep this one, you know, together.

(26:23):
And I got pregnant and I was a dry drunk
when I had my pregnancy, and anyway, so not drinking,
my skin is getting tighter.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
The world is not looking right.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
I can't seem to make sense of things, and I
have these neighbors upstairs in the Brownstone who are practicing
to be Flamenco dancers. So they would pull the rug
back and they would, you know, don all night long.
And I'm not drinking and I'm not using, but my
skin is getting tighter, and I don't say anything. And

(26:58):
then one day I come in and with my little boy,
he's an infant at the time.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Maybe he's a toddler, and we walk in past.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
The vestibule and she comes running downstairs and says to me,
you need.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
To stop your little boy from being in this vestibule
because it's disgusting and it sticks. Well, we know we
never did that.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
There's obviously homeless people coming in because you could get
into the building, you know. And I said to her,
it's not him, it's not him, and she said, don't
you lie to me.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
I know exactly who it is.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
And she went back upstairs, not drinking, not use it,
not drunk. And I went into my apartment and put
my son in his father's lap, and I said.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Be right back, and I went up those stairs and
knocked on her door.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
And by the way, I'm five eight, she was probably
five feet tall. And I knock on the door. She
opens the door, that is the last thing she did.
My hands went around her throat. I knocked her to
the ground. Her legs were underneath me going like this
because she can't get out from it. And I am
going to kill this woman for what she said to
me about my son.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
And the next thing I know, you know, his father
was pulling me off of her. You know, that's how
I am when I'm not drinking. That's what I do
when I'm not drinking. You know, I'll tasting funny.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
I was probably twenty five, thirty years sober, and I'm
in Manhattan and on the bus.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
I hate the bus. It just I hate the bus.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
And I'm on the bus because I just probably couldn't
get a ride any other way.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
And while I'm on the bus, this woman sits down
next to me and she turns around looks at me.
She goes, oh my god, it's you. And I look
up and it's my upstairs neighbor.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
And by the way, just so that you know, she
won't on any of my lists anywhere. I just simply
did not remember what I had done to her, not
even there, because I wasn't drunk, so it wasn't in
that category.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
I hadn't learned that yet anyway, you know, and then
I started thinking, oh god, I have to do a
ninth step. But I it was just so awful.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
And then she kind of took over, you know, on
the bus, and she's talking to me, and we're talking
about life, and we're talking about our children and where
her daughter is and where my son is. And by
that time and you'll hear about this latter, I'd had
a massive.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Tragedy in my life.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
And you know, when I was telling her about it
and telling her that I was, you know, so earth
thirty years and alcoholics anonymous, and back and forth, and
she looked at me and she said, you know, I
don't know what's happened to you in your life, but
you appear to have found something that people are looking for.
And she said, don't lose it. Just don't lose it. So,

(29:36):
you know, is that an immense I don't know. I
find that another God moment.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I think all of those things are God moments.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know. I have a big, bad, huge, hulking God
in my life because I lean hard and I've been
to human help, and human help failed me, you know.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
And I would just say this one of my friends.
You'll hear about her too later.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
You know who die right after the Atlanta Conference used
to say to me, if you want to clear out
a room alcohol asnomus, just start talking about God.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
And so you know, this is your chance. They have
two doors you can go because that's where we're going.
I just need to let you know. Okay, So a
couple of other things.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Now, when I'm drinking, this is how I behave. I
call my friend Fat Black Judy, who's my best friend,
and I say to her, and Fat Black Judy at
the time is four hundred pounds. Now she's like one
hundred and fifty. She did whatever she had to do.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
She's one hundred and fifty pounds.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
And so I called fat Black Judy and I said,
you know what, I just had this thought, what is
going to happen to us if we get really old
together and they're not going to think we're cool anymore.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
I have no idea what I thought was cool about us.
But she said, well, I think we ought to get
some tattoos. And this is so long ago for any
of you New Yorkers in there tattoos.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Getting a tattoo in New York was illegal. You could
even get them in Manhattan. And so we got on
the train and we went to Yonkers in New York.
It's no reason to go to Yonkers for anything, you know,
other than the tattoo parlors and the bars.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
And that was it.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
And so we went to the you know, we got
out there and she she upped our cool factory because
she couldn't find a babysitter and brought her son and
a stroller, you know.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
And you know, and we're looking to like be really
cool and do all this.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
And we walked in and I said, you know, I'm
really not ready to get this done.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
She says, I'm not either. We went to the bar
with the kid.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
By the way, we had no problem ever bringing our
kids to the bar or the crack house or anywhere else.
To tell you the truth, you know, wherever I went,
they went, you know, that's how that worked. And so
we went to the bar and we drank. And you know,
I'm a Jack Daniel's drinker straight up. Anything else, I'm sorry,
it was just like a whoosy drink. I wanted nothing
to do with you, especially if you had like an
umbrella or something in there, like oh, anyway, So we

(31:33):
sat there knocking back Jack Daniels.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
And I said, are you ready to go? She goes,
I'm ready to go.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
So we take the kid in the stroller and we
strolled down the street to win the tattoo parlors. We
looked at the sign and says, you know they will
not cheat you.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
You've been drinking. We turned right around.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
We went to the bar and we drank more, you know,
and then we went back there because we knew that
son didn't mean anything.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
They were just trying, you know.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
That was like a cya. They just want to cover themselves.
And so we came back a little while later and
we were drunk, and he drunk, really drunk enough, and
so we walked in and the guys, it's me, you know,
what do you want?

Speaker 1 (32:01):
And this I'll never forget. He put on a white
coat like he was a doctor.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Like that would make me feel secure being in this
like sleazy, sleazy place.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I said, I really don't know what I want.
And fat black Judy goes, she wants something big, Just
make something big, and I said, oh no, I can't
do something big.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Let's do something tasteful, like really like a little rose
somewhere like that'll be tasteful, just a.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Little rose like right here, and so he says, I
can do that.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Meanwhile, you know, go, what is it? Thirty five years later,
it's like a long stem rose.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Now it's not at all what it was before. But
at the time it was his teeny tiny, tasteful rose.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Now that bat Judy came out with a huge thing
on the front of her.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Chest, but she's just nuts.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
But let me tell you, after they gave me the tattoo,
that's the last thing I remember, because I'm a blackout drinker.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
That's how I am when I'm drinking.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
And the next thing I know, I'm at my apartment
knocking on the door of my own apartment apartments.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Because I can't find my keys and I don't know
what to do.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
And my husband, the British one, my son's father, opens
up the door, takes one look at me. I look
over his shoulder and were we are having a dinner
party and they're all around the dining room and he's
cooked this meal and they're all looking at me, and
I do not understand why their faces have that look
on them.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
And so he said, you better do something, and so
by that time in.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
My drinking, I was drinking in the shower. I don't
know about you, but the shower was great. Nobody bothered me.
And by the way, FYI I do all my praying
in the shower. Now, I do my praying, I do
my crying, I talk to God. The shower is my
happy place. It's my just If you've not learned how
to pray to God in the shower, you are missing
something amazing. Anyway, So I went to the bathroom because

(33:46):
I knew all my stuff was in there. I took
one look at the mirror and I realized that we
had a little problem. The first thing was I had
a black eye, and I don't know how it got there.
The second thing was I was missing my front too,
And the third thing was that the whole front of
my shirt was covered in blood. Well, I guess you
know we have an issue here. We got to figure
this out. So I had closes in the bathroom because
I'm living in the bathroom. And I got into the

(34:07):
shower and I showered off everything, and I looked in
the mirror and I put some you know whatever that
stuff is, that makeup stuff here to take care of concealer,
take care of my black eye.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
And I get my hair going the way's supposed to
be going, and I reach in my pocket.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
My tooth is in there, went to the Madison cabinet,
opened up, got the crazy blue out, crazy glue my
tooth back in my mind, and looked and said, we're
ready to go.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Let's go. And I walk.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Outside and I sit at the dinner And not only
he was a fashion photographer. Not only were we having
a dinner, dinner party, it was a dinner.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Party with Vogue, and they were all at the.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Table while I'm sitting there with this tooth that like snap,
oh my god. Meanwhile, my dentist fired me because he
couldn't get the tooth out for three years because.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
It was crazy blue up there. He just fired me.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
That's my behavior when I'm drinking.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
So I want to.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Make that very very clear that I didn't behave any
better when I wasn't drinking than when and I was drinking.
And many of us come in here and we mis
read that first step and we say that we admitted
we were a powerless over alcohol and that it made
my life unmanageable.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
And it is the opposite.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
I had far worse things go on when I wasn't drinking.
Now I'm pregnant and I'm pregnant with my child, and
I'm pissed. I'm pissed because I can't do the things
that I need to do because I'm pregnant and people
are watching me. And if you're an alcoholic and a
drug addict like me, and people begin to watch.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
You, it's very scary.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
And they are watching me during this pregnancy to make
sure that I don't pick up, that I don't pick up.
And I'm not a member of Alcoholic Asnonomous. I'm just
not drinking and not drugging. And so I am in
the car. We had a car, and I'm driving in Manhattan,
and I'm probably seven or eight months pregnant.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
And by the.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Way I looked disgusting. I am not one of those
glowy pregnant women. I am a woman that looks like she.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Needs a fix. She looks like she needs a shot
of jack.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
That's what I look like my entire pregnancy. And so
there was a car in front of me and who
was too slow for me, too slow for me, and
I got out of my car with a baseball bat
and went after this guy in his car, and I
did not hit the car because he got out and
he grabbed the baseball bat and he said to me,
what is wrong with you? And I thought, I have

(36:19):
no idea.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
That's my behavior when I'm not drinking. So everybody get this.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Don't think that alcohol is the root of your problems.
It's not the root of your problems. Alcohol is on
one side, and my problems are on another side.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
And when I put down.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
The alcohol, I was left with me and that was
far worse than the alcohol. I wish I had an
alcohol problem because I could have done something about that.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
I could have put it down. So a couple of
things that.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
I want to wind up with so that you kind
of get anything that I could have possibly left out.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
You know other things that go on in.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
This program that almost killed me that I'm sure killing
people out there. Some old timer says to you, this
is a great program. Take what you want and leave
the rest. How the hell do I know what to leave?
I don't even know what to take. What are you
telling me?

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I didn't know what to do?

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Finally, you know, I don't know if any of you
remember Clancy Emilson, who was my mentor from the day
I walked into this program. I mean, I really stand
on the shoulders of greatness with him. And he said
to me, no, no, sweetheart, he said, you take it all.
You take every single morsel, even the bad stuff, because
one day you're going to use it.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Just shove it under your chair and you'll use it
at some point another one. Find a sponsor. Find a sponsor,
find someone who has what you want.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
The hell do I know what I want? I'm newly sober.
I don't know what I want, and I sure don't
know what a sponsor is supposed to give me. I
don't know what a sponsor does. But I do know
that you're telling me. If I don't get what, I'm
going to drink, and then I hear all these other things.
You know, get somebody who you know got something in
common with well, the things that I would have in
common with someone, I don't want them to sponsor me.

(38:00):
Is I know what my behavior is. I want someone
who's better than me because I don't want that. So
that's like asking a child to pick out their parents
in the room of alcoholics, anonymous, you have no idea,
Ask around, ask around, listen, go to the meeting. Shut up,
don't share. Listen to what other people are saying. If

(38:20):
they say something that resonates with you, if they push
that God button in you that says I know exactly
how they feel, that's the guy for you.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
You don't have to like them. As a matter of fact,
sponsorship works better if you don't like each other.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
And then I got to tell you I'm not friends
with any of my sponsores. You know, you'll learn about
Albert in the next next time you meet. But I
sponsor something between fifteen and twenty people at any given time,
and I frankly don't like any of them.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
And none are here to line, so I can say
that I love them all, but I opportunitly like them.
I wouldn't go out and do something with them. They
wouldn't be part of my friendship circle.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
But a sponsor that that I had nothing in common with, nothing,
nothing at all, and yet I recognized his anger. You know,
I say this because there's a lot of women in
here and I and I came into alcoholics anonymous, you know,
with a great deal of anger.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
And I had come from a home of.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Terrible physical violence, and my first two marriages were unbelievably violent.
And I thought that when I raised my voice to somebody,
a man, that the way that they could argue with
me is that they would just smack me and I'd
shut up. And it worked, It worked for a long time,
And so I didn't understand that kind of anger, you know,
But I did know that my tongue could level you.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
That I knew, and so.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
You know, my sponsor, Albert, showed me how to do that,
showed me how to have a conversation. And so when
I picked him, I picked him because I recognized his anger,
and more importantly, I recognized that he had figured out
a way to contain his anger.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
And I desperately wanted not to be so angry anymore.
This is going to be highly controversial. Get out of Zoom,
Get out of the Zoom meetings, get into the real meetings.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
It's so unpopular for me to say that that I
don't care anymore because I'm here for the hugs.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
There's some kind of chemical that happens when you hug
someone in AA.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
You know that I don't get on Zoom. I've seen
more body parts in Zoom than I would like to admit.
I have seen every person do things that I didn't
even know were humanly.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Possible to do things like that. You know, I've seen
all of these things. But what I haven't seen and
I haven't heard is that laughter.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
And I haven't heard the h and I haven't heard
the guy in the front going like she's full of crap.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
You know, I haven't heard any of that. On Zoom.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
I hear silence. And I speak on Zoom all over
the world and have for many years pre COVID.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
So I tell you that.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
If you want quality sobriety, and you want to be
loved into sobriety, and I have been loved into a
very lovely life today, let me tell.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
You, get out of Zoom, get up, get.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
In your car, get to a real meeting of alcoholics anonymous.
We have produced an entire generation of Zoom babies who
have no idea what it's like to go.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
With a meeting of alcoholics anonymous.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
This is our responsibility to let them know.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
This is how it works.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
This is how it works, not on Zoom where I
can take my screen out and I'm knitting or doing
the dishes or whatever it is I'm doing. This is
alcoholics Anonymous. So I can see your faces, and I
can hear you, and yes, I can smell you. You know,
it's important to be able to do all those things.
So and it is let us love you until you
can learn to love yourself.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Except that I don't understand what that meant. I didn't
want to be loved by you, and I shure didn't
want to love myself. I really just want to be
left alone. And that's how I shared when I came in.
My name is Karen. I'm an alcoholic. I don't in
those days, by the way, that what's it called cross talk?
Cross talk didn't exist.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
It was called feedback. And so after you share some
old for cock time where we get up there and
he would talk at you about what you just shared,
which is so what I would say. My name is Karen,
I'm an alcoholic. I don't want to hear your feedback.
I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Hear anything you have to say to me.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
And by the way, when the meeting is over, don't
hold my hand and leave me alone.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
And you know what happens when you do that. Nobody
talks to you, nobody holds your hand.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
You're not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but you can't
get thrown out.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
How about that you can't get thrown out because.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
We have a tradition that says that I'm allowed to stay,
and I stayed until I was able to hold someone's hand,
and I stayed until I was told to keep my
hands to my cell and not hit other alcoholics or
my microphone. Anyway, I just I want to leave you
with this is that I didn't think I was gonna
be able to take an hour up in this, but

(42:44):
this is rather fun.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
So thank you Maddy for pushing me in here when
I came.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
And we'll I'm gonna end with this because next week
we're going to talk about the second step. When I
actually came into AA and that's my third set of behaviors. That's,
you know, is that I came into First Things first
and two small rooms called the Little Room holds thirty
four people. That room is running simultaneously on Zoom, which
I do go to because I want to see my homies.
There's two hundred people in that meeting, which is you know, crazy,

(43:12):
and they're coming from all over the world. This particular
meeting is one of the largest.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Meetings in Manhattan. It's known, you know, all over the world,
and so I still go to that one day a week.
I do service there.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
On Tuesdays, I host the meeting because I believe in
service in that meeting. But when I came into the room,
you know, we speak a different language here in Alcoholics Anonymous.
We don't really speak English. We have like platitudes and
slogans and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
And if you're new, you're never going to understand that.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
I sat in the room and the wall was covered
the entire all three walls were covered with signs, these
crazy signs. But they weren't signs like those nice signs
over there. They were hand done signs. Some of them
were done in crayon, and some of them were done
in paint. Some of them were done where you like
cut the letters out of the magazines like a ransom note.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
You know, some of them are like that. But in
the in.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
The right hand top corner of the room where I
sat down, there was a sign that said, one day
you will know a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
And I said, I'm in, I'm in. Thank you for
letting me share.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
It's been a pleasure