Carin S. Step 6 - Step Series at Twelve Step House - 8/19/2025

Carin S. Step 6, Step Series at the Tuesday Night Step Group, Twelve Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 8/19/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Karen, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome everybody who's come back.
How many people here last week?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
That's pretty good. It's pretty good. We're gonna be working
on step six to nine a little bit.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Anyway, My sobriety date is September the eighth, nineteen eighty eight,
and we are getting dangerously.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Close to my anniversary next month. So I'm trying to
keep my AA cool as we move.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Along here and not let those you know, issue things
you know, come to hit me.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So I'm timing about step six.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
You know, I generally make some notes before I come here,
and they're they're sort of concise and cohesive, and.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I know what I'm gonna say.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
I have more cross offs and crossouts on these two
pages and i've had since I.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Started the steps. I made a decision.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I was telling Jim I was going to do six
and seven together, and then I decided to do six
separately and seven together.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
And then.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I am going to do eight and nine together. You'll
figure out why when I talk through about it. Anyway,
up until now, step six is pretty much the dividing
line for us. You know, we've done these first five steps,
and we've had a lot of help, and you know,
we had a sponsor who was sitting on us and
we you know, talked to God or whatever our concept
was of God and kind of moved along. We still

(01:19):
haven't had a drink, and all of that's good. So
we figure out, you know, at some point we turn
around and we say, something must be going on here
that I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Because I'm still sober. I don't I don't understand that.
I do not understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
You know, I have very clear memories of you know,
being in my home group in New York and you know,
literally waking up in the meeting. I had blackouts and
meetings for a very long time. I'm a blackout driver
to this day. You know. I'll start on exit twenty
five and I look up and I'm on eighty two,
and I have no idea how I got there.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I know what that's all about. You know, I don't
care if they pull me. They aren't not gonna find anything.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But still, it would be nice to be awake when
you're driving your car. I should read you out my
license place a case I'm on the road.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
You know, I want to follow me.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, So I've done a lot of thinking about this
this week. It's been a very interesting week for me,
a challenging week.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
So I just need to put that out there. So
these are theories.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
This is in fact, this is my opinion. Everything I say,
you figured this out already. Everything I'm talking about is
my opinion. So you know, Bill w gets together with
all his cronies and he writes the Big Book of nineteen.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thirty nine, and he does the best he can with
what he's got at the time. That's a very important phrase.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
He did the best he could with what he knew
and what he could do at that time. And then
something happened and we don't know what it is. But
fifteen years later he decides that we need to have
the twelve and twelve, and what he writes the twelve
and twelve, I don't know what happened. So I have
suppositions of what happened in those fifteen years that he
didn't have when he was working on the Big Book initially.

(02:49):
First of all, I think he had fifteen years of
working with us with other alcoholics. That will change anybody's mind,
anybody's mine, because you know the expression of new show
show you one alcoholic if you've seen one alcoholic, you've
seen one alcoholic. You know, there's like, we're not a
one size fits all type of group of people. And
so I think he worked with a lot of people

(03:09):
and came to understand that. Although I believe I believe
that the Big Book was divinely written, because I don't
think it three years sober, she knew enough to even.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Write that book.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
But I do believe that working with other alcoholics for
fifteen years.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Changed his mind about everything.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
And the reason I think that is because the last
fifteen years of my life have shifted what I think
about things dramatically, because I pumped up my working with others.
You know, I'm big. I'm keeping AA wonderful. And how
you keep it wonderful it's for me is you know.
I still speaking is my form of service. But I
also sponsor a lot of people. And I begin to
take sponsors on that I don't like because that keeps

(03:48):
me fresh and going, you know. And I got to
show up for them, and I got to take the
phone call. And I'm not going to mention her name,
but there is one that I just have not taken
her call for two or three days. I don't have
an ivy. I don't know what I'm human. Okay, So
that's the first thing. I think Bill worked intensely with
the other alcoholics. And by the way, this is not
written anywhere. This is my opinion because I based on

(04:09):
what happened to me. The other thing is that I
think happened is that he became much more acquainted with God.
I think he wrote this stuff in the Big Book,
and I think he believed it, but I think it
was based on a white life experience. I think it
was based on this big, bright thing that happened to him,
and then what do I do from there?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
What happens after that? And figured out.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Very quickly, by the way, because of the rewrites in
the Big Book, that that doesn't happen to everybody.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It doesn't happen to everybody.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
As a matter of fact, most people go through alcoholics
anonymous and the Steps and stay sober for decades with
no other concept of God than the intellectual one.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
And that's fine. It's whatever gets you through the night.
It doesn't matter. Some people have had this experience. Most
people have not had this experience, and yet everybody, So
what does that tell you? It doesn't matter at the
end of the day, it doesn't matter. So the other
thing that happened, and this is killer, by the way,

(05:10):
the other thing that happened between the Big Book and
the twelve and twelve is that the Big Book and
we're big on this phrase. How this gets us out
of all of our gems. It's progress, not perfection. Every
time we screw up, that's what we say. It's progress,
not perfection. And all of a sudden, all through the
Big Book, where it's talking about progress, it's not talking
about perfection. And now we get flung into the twelve

(05:32):
and twelve and your brand new sponsor says, I have
a better way of doing the steps with you, and
we're going to work it through.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
The twelve and twelve.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
And the only hitch is this book is based on perfection.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
That's a problem for me. It's a problem. I couldn't
stand the pressure of perfection.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
And if we accept all the premises of the sixth Step,
the whole thing is based on perfection and that we're
going to be perfect in God's eyes. And if you're
an alcoholic like me, and I believe you are, that
is one scary concept. How am I supposed to do that?
The pressure, the pressure of perfection was way too much
for me, only because I always failed. It's not going

(06:12):
to be a lot of pressure if you figure out
how to do it. I've met anybody who has, by
the way, but I failed, and I failed repeatedly at
the most precious and big things that you could possibly
fail at. I failed at marriage, and I failed at
marriage five times.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I'm a professional, but I.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Failed at marriage each time, figuring that if I did
something different than something different would happen, and never understanding.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
And we're going to talk about this more.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
On the seventh step, that every marriage except for one,
was predicated on fear.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Never saw it, never saw it.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
When you get to the seventh step, we're going to
figure out almost everything we've done in our lives.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Has been predicated on fear. And so.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
The alcoholics perfection definition of perfection is what brought me down.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
You're not a sponsor could just backing me on the
head with this, he said. It is not about being perfect.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
It is not about being a perfect wife. It's not
about being a perfect employee. It's not even about being
a perfect friend. For an alcoholic, the definition of perfection
is being painfully aware of my imperfections. Now that's profound
because when you are guided by that, you are living

(07:31):
in this constant state of less than. And if you
are an alcoholic like me, I drank so I didn't
feel less than, so I was either equal with you
or hopefully above you.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
And that's how I drink.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
So the beauty though of step six, and this is
the thing that we don't really remember, is that we
don't actually have to do anything at all.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
That's the beauty of six seven.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
And we'll talk about seven next week, but in sixth
this week, you have to do a thing. This is
after you do your fifth step. You give all this
stuff to God. Is now it's his job to do it.
So whatever concept you had of God that you had
moving in for the first five steps, that's what you're
gonna give this stuff to. All these you know, quote
unquote defects of character or what's the other one, shortcomings.

(08:22):
Please please do not get hung up on the terminology.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
This is Bill being clever. They are all the same thing.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
It's whatever what these are or these are the tools
we use to get us out of crisis. That's every
single thing that we find out about ourselves in the
fourth and fifth step everything lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, every
single one of these character defects that I found out
about myself, you know, use I used to get out

(08:51):
of crisis.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
And I am an alcoholic that lived in crisis. You know.
Clancy used to tell me all the time, you.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Never met an alcoholic which stands surrounding more than three days.
I understand that I can't stand strough editing more.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Than three days.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
And I'm almost thirty seven years sober. You know, after
like two and a half days, I gotta be stirring
up some shit in the back just so that I
feel comfortable.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
In my life. That's the bottom line. You know.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
I have met some alcoholics that are like Zen and
they can do this. They're not my friends, by the way.
I don't really hang out with them, but I know
that they exist. Sometimes I hear tapes about them. I
tend to fast forward those tapes because when did the
bad stuff happen?

Speaker 2 (09:28):
When did you.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
React like I reacted, you know, when you were an
alcoholic like me.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
So in step six. The beauty of this is is
that all we have to do is get out of self.
Is get out of self, you know, And how do
you do that. It's you know, it's a thing, it's
I don't know, it's a thing that just says that,
you know, you just got to do it. There's no
magic to it.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Getting out of self means this is the list of
things that I use. These are my tools that I
use to get me out of my jams or if
you're from the you know, New England, of my jackpots.
These are the things I used to get me out
of all of those things. And I'm going to give
them to you whatever this entity is that you know about.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
And I did not have.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
A strong belief in God, and when I took this step,
I need to say that, you know, if you've been
listening to me talking, I did not have a God
in my life for the first five years of my sobriety.
Intellectually yes, but not a God that I depended on.
So now I'm going to give all of this stuff
to God, and then what happens to me?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
What am I left with?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So I mean, I know for a fact that you know,
God and nature both ab horror. Vacuum doesn't exist, and
you know I know that you stop drinking and you
filled it with other stuff. If you're sober in this
room tonight. You had a void when you stopped drinking, and.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
You filled it with something else. Something else stepped in there.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
So anything that you get rid of I can promise you,
I can guarantee you is going to be filled with
something else. You know, hopefully it's love, you know, hopefully
it's service. You know, hopefully it's it's just plain old
garden variety sobriety.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
But it's gonna You're gonna fill that void. You're not
going to walk around with that.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
So I am of the opinion, and I said this
when we started that I believe that when I'm going
through these steps and I'm talking about these terrible things
that I did, And by the way, I'm an alcoholic
that didn't do little.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Tiny things that were terrible. I did big, big, arrestable
things that were terrible. Some I got caught for, some
I didn't get caught for.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
But they were big things, and I had to give
them all away to this god, you know, whoever this
god was. But I also believe that I did the
best I could when I was out there. I'm talking
about when I'm out there, when I'm drinking, when I'm
using I did the best I possibly could at the
time with what I had. And that's very important for

(11:42):
me to remember, because I'm an alcoholic. When I was
twelve years old, I wanted to be fifteen, I said
I was fifteen. When I was fifteen, I said I
was twenty. You know, When I was twenty five, I
said I was thirty five. Now that I'm seventy, I
kind of say I'm fifty five. And I absolutely know
that when i'm eighty, I'm going to love to tell
people I'm seventy. I mean, that's how we are. But

(12:02):
that is an alcoholic is just an indication. It's a
picture of how much I don't want to be here,
how hard it is to stay in the present, how
hard it is to just be here.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
I don't talk about this a lot because I'm fairly
certain it will get me into trouble at some point.
But for fifteen years, I had a career in politics,
can you believe it? And so I love my career
in politics. So I worked presidential politics. And the reason
I loved it so much is that I was never
required to be where I was. I was always four
years ahead, four years ahead, thinking, four years ahead, and

(12:37):
for an alcoholic, that is heaven. That's heaven because I
don't have to be where I am.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
You know, you think about that, if we.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Could have stayed where we were, doing what we were,
we never would have had a drink. The reality is
we don't know how to do that. So, you know,
I worked hard with my sponsor on this because a
lot of stuff, and he did an exercise with me.
I don't recommend it unless you know you have this

(13:07):
real trust with your sponsor. But after I wrote down
all of the things and all of my tools that
I had used, and they call them your defects wherever
you want to call them, but I wrote them down
as my tools that I used to get me out
of my next crisis. He labeled them all and we
made up imaginary badges for each of them, and he
put the badges on me and he said, I want

(13:27):
you to wear this one.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
He says, here's a big one because you're a liar,
and I want.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
You to put here's here's your badge for cheating, you know,
here's your badge for sleeping with married men.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
And he says, I think you need a few more
of those badges. You know that was my second career.
When I was drinking, I don't know what to say.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
And each one of these things, he put an imaginary
badge on me and we stood in front of the
mirror and he said, I want you to look at
yourself and I want you to see the badges that
you're wearing, and.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Then we'll work from there.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
And I looked in the mirror and I said, Albert,
I don't see them, and he's neither does God.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
He said, now we're going to take these badges off of.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
You, one by one, and we're going to open the
drawer to your coffee table and we're going to put
the badges in the table. All of the imaginary badges
are going in the table, and this is where they're
going to stay. And when you begin to work with
other people and that man or woman tells you what
horrible thing they did, you're going to say, wait a second,
hold on a second, and you're going to open up

(14:29):
that drawer and you're going to take out that badge
and you're going to say, I did this too, and
I'm here today and i'm sober today, and they will
understand that whatever they did is okay.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
They did the best they could with what they had
at the time.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
And you know the weird thing is, I hate that
coffee table. I just need to tell you, but I'm
afraid to throw it out. I'm afraid to get rid
of it.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Scott like the best juju around.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
I just you know, I had a friend from who's
at the house the other night. He's like, what is
that on the corner of the table?

Speaker 2 (15:00):
I says, where the dog ate it? You know, the
dog's been dead for a long time.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
I'm afraid to get rid of the table because I'm
afraid of what I'm going to throw out when I
throw out that table. Anyway, I think this is my again,
my personal opinion. I think we do ourselves a disservice
in this program when we compare ourselves with where we
are right now in our work in AA, with some

(15:24):
imaginary goal that's out there.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
You understand what I'm saying. We don't even know what that.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Goal is, but we're very busy comparing ourselves to where.
You know, you hear that expression, you know, I'm not
where I used to be, But I'm midd what is that?

Speaker 2 (15:41):
But I'm not where I want to be. That's bullshit.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
That is absolute bs. Where I am right now is
one hundred percent correct. Where I'm going to be in
two weeks, I have no idea. And I learned this,
and I think Bill learned this. In the last fifteen
years of sobriety took.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
A long time.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
I went through a lot of trauma, a lot of tragedy,
a lot of beauty. And what I've learned is that
wherever I am okay today is good.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's good.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
And so if you you know, I don't know, I'm
very old. So I want to say, does anybody remember
who Katy Carlyle is? Yeah, okay, so she used to
be a one hand an old guy over there.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Let me tell you something I pegged you before the meeting.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
So he's like sober one hundred years and he's a
dealer in the hard rock.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
He might be my sixth husband.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
You have no idea anyway.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Chati Carlyle was a she was a TV personality.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
I mean I've only ever seen her in black and
white on TV, so that'll tell you how old.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well she's dead, but how old she was even then?
And she used to say I heard her on a
talk show once. It's funny because I didn't know I
was alcoholic. I heard her on a talk show.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
She got up and she said, you want to know
what my routine is every day? While I wake up
every morning, I look in the mirror and I forgive
myself for the mistake because I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Make that day. And I thought, as she knows she's
going to make.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Any because I'm the alcoholic. I'm the one that thinks
I can go through a day perfectly, and you know,
we know that that's never gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Anyway. The point that.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
I'm trying to make is that if we set this
stage of this imagined landscape that we have to reach,
we lose sight of the fact it's so weird that
we're actually closer to it.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
We've lost that not making sense.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
But if it's this goal that's down there, and I
keep comparing myself.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Every three weeks or every month, I'm comparing.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Myself to where I am as to where I want
to be, I lose sight of the fact that I've
actually moved closer, that I'm not where I was three
weeks ago, that I'm not where I was six weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
That is pure tea alcoholism, because that always.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Leaves me in a place of feeling less than you know,
these are familiar feelings.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Up. Oh my god, I'm on page two. I'm very excited.
You know. I want to give back to the step
for a second here.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
And I've said this many times in this series that
I don't really care how you do these steps. I
don't care just because it doesn't matter at the end.
It matters that you do it, but what really matters
is what you do with yourself after you do what
happens after you do this sixth step?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
And so, how do we become entirely ready? Well?

Speaker 1 (18:24):
I answered that question very easily when I did the
sixth step. I've never been entirely ready for anything in
my entire life, so.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
That gave me my apt.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I wasn't ready to get married, I wasn't ready to
have a baby. I wasn't ready to go to work.
I wasn't ready to get a job, you know, the
first real job that I had outside of politics. So
I decided to be a CEO. And I got a
job as a CEO. I didn't know what did that mean.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
I didn't even know how they hired me, but they
hired me, and I'm in this office, and I thought,
I know what I'll do. I'll move the furniture around
so it looks like I belong here. You know, I'm
a furniture mover, so it looks like I belong doing
what I'm supposed to be doing. But I have no
idea how to become entirely ready. But I think it
has something to do with talking to God. I think
it has something to do with letting God know that

(19:05):
you're doing the best you can with what you have
at this particular moment, and.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Where you are as good.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
You know, we don't use that phrase with us. We
don't talk about alcoholics as being good. I will say that,
you know, if you are sober as long as I am.
I've been to many many meetings. We're an alcoholic when
very good time. Unfortunately a lot of time get up
there and say, you know, I'm.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Just as sick as I was or the day I
walked in. We're just a bunch of sick alcoholics. That's
the biggest lie you will hear.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
At AA, There's not a person in this room. Your shining,
fabulous faces are not a person in this room tonight.
I'm sick nobody's sick.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
You're well.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
You're going to be weller tomorrow, and you're going to
be even more well than that the day after.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
But right here, right now, you are good. You are good.
And that was.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Important for me to understand, and I didn't know how
to get that myself, so.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
I had a sponsor. They had to show that to me. Okay,
so you.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Can ask God to remove your defects if you want
in the sixth step, because it tells you to do that,
you can say remove them. But the problem with that
is that we actually don't know what we're asking him
to remove them.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
We don't know what that is. We're looking at.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
This list and we're amateurs. We really are amateurs at
this point.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
We're looking at this.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
List and we're asking for something that we don't even
understand what it is that.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
We're asking for.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
So my feeling is is that at that point, when
you're talking to God.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
About your defects, that you want him to take your.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Defects, your shortcomings, your crisis management tools.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
You got to make a deal. You got to make
a deal with God. You got to say, I would
like you to take.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
These things and in return, I will drop my armor,
so that you can return to me over and over
and over again, so that I can find people in
this world where I can see God with the skin on,
and I won't be wearing any armor, and everybody will
be allowed in.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
And I'll get hurt.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
From people that take advantage of me, but I will
be open to an enormous amount of love and trust
where we find this. So if we're going out on
the street corner, I got to tell you where do
we find this?

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Look around the room.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
We find everything for the first time in the rooms
of alcoholics anonymous.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
You have to look for it out there. You have
to look for it at a husband or a wife
or a partner. You don't look for it in a job.
You don't look for it as a parent, you know.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
I sometimes I go through I keep my son's letters
to me because they make me feel better when I
think that I've not been a good parent, and I
think that I've been, according to him, a great parent.
But I don't know when that happened, and I don't
know how it happened.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
But I do know this.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
I do know that I had men and women in
the program of AA who showed me how to be
a parent. And the way they showed me how to
be a parent is that when I strolled into AA
with my eighteen month old.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Son, they took him. They took my.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Son from me, and they strolled him around and they
talked to him, and I watched what a parent was
supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
And then when when my.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Husband was killed and I got his kid, and his
kid was my son's age, and I brought them into AA,
the old timers took care of two of them, and
nobody ever said anything. So I learned all of my
basic ABC's coming to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And
by the way, there's nothing you can't learn in here
that you can't take on the outside.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
You know, when I was in politic because I did
a lot of speech writing, and you'd be amazed at
what kind of speeches were coming out of this politicians'
mouth when they would say things, you know, like I
intuitively know how to handle this situation.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
And they would say this to great groups of.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
People, and some people would be clapping at other people
who were clearly one of us would be looking at
it like who is this guy? You know, who is
this guy?

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Anyway?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
I want to talk a little bit about my sixth
step and my marriages because this was you know, I
joke about it a lot, and you hear five marriages.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Ha ha ha haha, it's always pretty funny. But I
will tell you that.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
I married the same person five times, not the same guy.
Come on, it's the matter with you. Get your head
out of there.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
No, I married the same person.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
It looked different five times. Five times all alcoholics, none
of them in recovery. Some of them were drinking, some
of them are not drinking. Same person five times.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
I married them for what I.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Thought was five different reasons, which is unfortunate because it
turned out to be the exact same reason every time.
And I went through this with my sponsor because it
made me feel like a failure.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
And he would continuously say, you did the best you
could with what you had at the.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Time, and I said, I think so, because I kept
repeating it expecting a different result. You know, I don't
think any of these Maybe some of them were bad guys,
but I don't think any of these guys were like
particularly awful, awful guys. But I had very violent marriages,
I had very apart marriages. I had very insular marriages.
I had very I lived on a farm. Can you

(24:20):
imagine that? Literally it was green acres.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
I can't even begin to tell you on you know,
he's out there farming and I'm thinking, you know where
sacks at that avenue. It was a horrible situation. I
don't know what possessed me to do this. On top
of that, I couldn't understand anything he said. It's such
a bad Southern accent, you know. I mean, after a
while I understood that. You know, he was saying the mall,
the mall, go to the mall, because that would make
me better. You know, I understand. You know, I lived.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
I lived at this guy for like seven years in
the rurals of North Carolina because my husband had been
killed in New York and.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
I ran away.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
I ran away, and I ran away where nobody, nobody
would find anybody there where nobody would find me, And
I thought, this will cure me. He will not recognize
me for the type of person I had become, which
was a fear based, pretty much crazy person. The only
thing at that time that I wasn't doing.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Was drinking or using And of course you know that
didn't work out well.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
It had something to do with communication. I'm sure, because
I didn't understand anything. I mean, they all had these
very very heavy Southern accents. I couldn't undertand I couldn't
discern what the food was everything. I'm sorry if I'm offending.
Everything looked slop, you know, like slopping on the plates.
You know, I didn't see it. And plus, needless to say,
my son and I were the only two Jews in
the hotwn.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
We were kind of like on the tour bus stop.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
When people would go through, they'd say, that's where they
live over there. And you know, when I finally got
my act together to divorce him, you know, I was
in AA.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
I was in AA everywhere. I have to tell you.
I was in AA with every marriage.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
No, the first three eight nots first two and a
half not and they were the worst. They were the
most violent, they were the most crazy. But the last
two and a half I was sober for and they
were no less crazy.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
So what does that tell you? We talked about that
in Step one.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
With or without alcohol, I was a crazy wife who
was incapable of being present. And so after I got
rid of him, I waited a long time to get
married again, and I married the worst one. The worst
one was the fifth one. And I remember talking to
my sponsor about it. Now I'm in the middle of
step six and I'm feeling like this failure and.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
He said, I don't have an answer for you.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
That's a scary time with your sponsor when you ask,
you know, how do I get rid of this? How
do I give this to God? This is pretty much
an affront to God? And I waited, you know, I waited,
and I could because I couldn't get the answer. And
by the way, if you don't wait in AA, you
will get the wrong answer. If you're an alcoholic like me,

(27:02):
when I had a question, I used to go to
meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting and ask the
same question and keep getting different answers. And one day
I say, well, I like his answer the best. If
you force this, you will get the wrong answer. And
it was I don't know, maybe I'm going to say.
Twenty years after that and I had the opportunity of
interviewing doctor Ruth Westtheimer on stage. She was doing a

(27:25):
big show and I was the interviewer, and she was
just a hoot and holler.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Rest you know, God rest her soul or whatever we say.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
In any case, I had time to talk to her
in the back in the green room, and I said,
here's my big chance. I'm going to ask doctor Ruth
what is wrong with me and my five marriages. I
figure if anybody knows, she would know what's wrong with me.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
And I asked her about it, and she said, to me, darling,
you have it all wrong.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
She literally said, your glasses are on backwards.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
She said, you love love, you believe in love.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
So what you've had is five legalized love affairs.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
I thought that's the answer. I could live with that.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
And I gave those five legalized love affairs to God
and said, don't let me do this again. Don't let
me do this again. And so far he hasn't, except
the dealer in the back. He's looking pretty good today.
So you know, over the last fifteen years, don't leave, okay,

(28:36):
just stay here. So there's a couple of more things
that I want to go through in the time that
we have.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I think that we changed.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
So much over time that you know, I've said this before,
I've only through the steps once. You know, that's how
it was written for me, that's how it was written
for Bill, but I've done the steps hundreds of times
with sponseeaes and learned a lot about them as I
went on. And one thing that I learned is that
I think strongly that God wants us to keep trying.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
God doesn't want us to give up. I can't tell
you what God's will is, by the way, but I
know that God wants me to keep trying. And the
reason I know that is because I think God loves
me for the trying.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
You know, if you try sincerely, and you try from
a place in your heart, I think you get God's
love as you're trying. You may not succeed, but I
think God loves me for the trying. And I'm just
having a conversation with somebody, you know, for the meeting,
And it's been on my mind this week that I
had an experience, a beautiful experience that I won't get
into the incidentals about, but you know, it occurred to

(29:48):
me that in the beginning of the book, when we're reading,
it says over and over again that we need to
develop our own concept of God, our own concept of
a higher power, because yours can't be mine. I have
now come to understand that we also have our own
concept of love. We have to come up with our
own concept of love, because what love looks to me

(30:10):
looks like to me now, I guarantee you did not.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Look like this two days ago. And so it's.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Important because these are things that are important in an
alcoholics life as much as God and sobriety and staying
sober and working the steps is love. We're here for
the love, We're here for the hogs, We're here for
all of that.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
But everybody in.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
This room will develop their own concept of love, because
for me, it used to be the par of diamond earics.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's not any ore.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
And so think about that, because you'll all want your
own concept of God at the same time, and you'll
all watch your own concept of love. So I think
that God loves us for the trying.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
So I keep trying. But the one thing that I've
learned from doing.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
This step, the most important thing, if you take anything
away tonight, is that being human is not a character defect.
Being human is not a character defect. I will continue
to make mistakes, I will continue to make bad mistakes,
I will continue to have poor judgment, but I will
keep trying and if you keep trying, I can tell

(31:20):
you that God loves you for the trying. You know,
whatever happens on the other end. I like at the
end of this step that they they threaten us at
the step. You know, I always think that's very effective
for someone like me because when I get threatened, I leave.
So but it threatens us literally says delay is dangerous

(31:43):
and rebellion may be fatal. I mean, he definitely did
not mince words there, but he's threatening me.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
And it took me a while to figure this out.
I mean, are they you.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Know, what are they telling me here? That I'm going
to die if I don't do this? No, pretty much
die spiritually. I think what they're saying in step six
is but that's the point where we recognize the difference
between surrender and abandonment, that we recognize that surrender in
the sixth step is.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Not going to cut it. Because I'm a negotiator that
was on the list. I will negotiate a conditional surrender.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
And so I believe at the end of the sixth
step when I'm doing this that this is about abandoning
myself to God because God is going to remove only
God is going to remove all of these things that
I've used to cope with.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
This is these are my coping mechanisms. And what am
I going to do make a surrender.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
I have to slell with open arms, and I have
to abandon myself to.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
God, and I have to know somehow what His will
is going to look like for me.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
And so that's been a problem because I have no idea,
never did, never will if I did.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
I have a poor concept of God.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
But I will say this that somewhere in the sixth step,
as we are talking to God by ourselves, we are
moving ever so slightly from humanness to godliness, from humanness.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
To godliness, and we give these things the way. We're
gonna talk about that in the seventh step. But you
know how exactly we do that.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
But I can tell you that when I get confused
and I don't think that I understand this humanness to godliness,
something always happens to me in the room. Somebody says something,
somebody does something, and I realize.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
That God is in a room's skin.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
On That's probably the most important thing that I come
to meetings for that. Again, I'm not trashing Zoom. I
see all my friends on zoom hello. But I can't
get that on a computer screen. I need to be
in a room where I can hear somebody say, under
the breath, my god, she's full shit.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
I need to be in a room where.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
I hear people say, she must love me very much.
I need that human contact. I need the help, I
need the hugs. And I can't but think that that's
probably God's will for me, is that I have all
of that. Otherwise I'd be living in a completely, you know,
different life. So I want to close by telling you

(34:19):
a little bit about this week, which I don't normally do,
but the whole week has weighed heavy on me. My son,
my only son, who's not been able to get pregnant
for years.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
They're pregnant. I don't want to no, no, no, no, no, no no.
It's not that type of thing. It's not that type
of thing. That's the thing. The thing is, it's not
that type of thing. Is that I just have to
be cool and I have to be calm, and I
have to.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Say things like that's lovely news and that's the end
of it. And I don't say things like I will
pray for you, and that's going to be grating on
some people here.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
But the reason I don't say that, and that is
is absolutely evening and left the step, is because if
I say it i'm praying for.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
You, I have tacitly saying that God doesn't notice you,
but I do. God doesn't know that you've got this
thing going on, but I do.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Don't worry.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
I'm so big in AA that I will handle this
for you and I will be praying for you and
everything will be okay. So I don't say I'm praying
for you. I don't say anything at all. I said,
that's lovely news, keep me posted. That was it, and
I hung off the phone and I cried for half
hour half hour, couldn't get past it. Then I had

(35:33):
this wonderful experience about love where somebody showed for somebody
I love, showed me a different definition of love.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
And I'm old has that happened? And when I hung
with the phone cried for half hour. It was a
good crying week. I need to tell you. Cried for
half hour.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
And then somebody that I just respect and love and
she's a kind, kind person, and her little doggie died.
And I want to tell you that for years as
a not so alcoholic. You know, I had a lot
of animal amends, to make amends to the animal world.

(36:12):
And so when she told me that, you know, her
dog died at seventeen, seventeen years old. This dog was
I don't know, four hundred in human who knows that's
an old dog?

Speaker 2 (36:22):
You know, And you don't say, oh, the dog lived
a good life. I mean, I think that's a people thing.
But the dog died.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
And I was able to say, I'm so sorry, I understand.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
I remember when my dog died. Is there anything I
can do for you? That might be the most quintisential
AA response? You know there was? And I hung up
with her and I cried quite cry for another half hour.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
This is half hours or And then this morning I
had another experience happen where I felt I was betrayed
by the rooms of AA, and that one went right
to my gut, and I thought, this is one of
these experiences where, you know, I used to say that,
you know, I'm so lucky I'm in AA, but this

(37:05):
was one of the experiences where I said, you're so lucky.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
I'm in AA.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
And so I had what they call an AA ha
an appropriate response. Go figure where that happens. You could
only have an appropriate response when all of those defects
have been replaced by something else. So and after I
hung up that phone of texting, I cried for.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Another half hour.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
So I am depleted, but I am filled because God
abhors the vacuum. And as much crying as I did,
I was instantly filled with a greater good and a
greater God. So as I said, I don't know what
God's will is, I think I'm looking at it. I
think I'm looking at it in all your faces. I
think God's will is.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
For me to be here and for you to be here,
and for us to continue to meet, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
A week after week and next week we're going to
talk about steps set, which by the way, happens to
be my favorite step because talks all about fear.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
You know, fear is you know the best. So I
want to thank you all for coming. It's a great
day to be sober. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
S