As I began to face some challenges on my new journey a friend suggested I start this blog. I believe her thoughts were ones that touches a core of who I am. Maybe by writing my experiences, when others read it, they may feel they are not alone. This sharing stems from a profound lesson I learned when I was 12.
My very first speaking gig came at this age. I know it sounds rather young. But I, like many I know, had childhood issues. My dysfunctional past stemmed from having two parents that suffered from the incredible fondness for drugs and alcohol. Their lives and choices, as all of ours do, had a tremendous effect on those around them. It is like throwing a pebble in a calm pond and watching how far the ripples go until they dissipate. A small pebble can cause a lot of disturbance, and one person’s life affects many others, either in positive or negative ways. Their addiction eventually brought them to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon and me, as a pre-teen and then a teen, to an incredible group called Alateen. I learned a lot going to my weekly meetings at Alateen. The group was transformative at such a young age-truly group therapy. You learn to let go, not take on blame for another’s actions and how to work on yourself. And if you are lucky, you get to meet incredibly cute dysfunctional, boys, that give you first love kisses on the steps of the meeting house after the meeting. I digress. During that time, the serenity prayer and its incredible wisdom permeated our home life like the alcohol and drugs before it. My mother embroidered it with unshaken hands, had it framed, and it hung in the den.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
After one of our meetings in the upstairs church room before some teens broke into a group that went off to see if they could find, steal and drink the sacramental wine. Hey, many came from dysfunctional homes and carried that dysfunction as a generational curse. Family dysfunctions become the curse operated by inherited genes or influenced behavior. But for the most part, the group was an excellent impact in my life. That one evening I was asked if I would like to speak at the up and coming conference. I didn’t even know what this meant, “speak?” Remember I was only 12. At the time “leading” a meeting was my greatest quest. I found it incredibly exciting to pick a topic, find support material and guide a session into an intimate and personal discussion.
The appointed advisor for our Alateen group approached me that evening and informed me of the details of “public speaking.” “All you have to do is tell your story and what you have learned,” He said. It seemed easy enough. I thought about it for the few months before the event. Wrote down some things, but for the most part, I was winging it. That day I entered the room here was water and glasses at a table next to the podium where other speakers were supposed to sit. I discovered, for this room, at this conference, for my very first speaking engagement— I was the only speaker. There were also other chairs at this table. One for my Al-Anon advisor that was running the meeting, but only one other cup next to the sweating pitcher of water, on the long table. I sat at the table with hands that were now reflecting similar symptoms as the cold water pitcher. I had no idea, at the time, how very many times I would be in this same situation, how very familiar all of this would become. After a simple introduction, I walked up to the podium. “Speak into the mic,” the Al-Anon advisor said as he adjusted it and abandoned me off stage. I stood before a room filled with hundreds of people. Okay, maybe it was not that many, but it felt like it. My memory remembers it as “filled” with people. Maybe there were only a few people, but there were enough that it would take me my entire time of speaking, to be able to look at every face in the audience.
Let It Begin with Me When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, let the hand of Al‑Anon and Alateen always be there, and—Let It Begin with Me.
If AA, Al-Anon , and Alateen did not have the motto of what is said here stays here, I’m not sure I would have been able to open up. I was honest, and I was vulnerable. In Alateen, I learned the earliest lessons of self- evaluation. I learned that it wasn’t the situations that were important, but my feelings and how I coped with them. I found out that what I thought was natural or helpful, such as searching for and pouring bottles of gin down the sink, were not the best options in a situation. I learned that though I lived in a house where there was a big purple polka dotted elephant called addiction, that no one spoke about. In Alateen we talked about it. Most importantly I learned that the only thing I could control was myself.
Through that first speaking engagement, I had to give some context to my situations. I had to describe the details so that others would know. That day I became a storyteller of my life. But I also told total strangers of my fears, hopes and mistakes. I may have even choked once or twice, in those very personal an intimate hurting times that, to this day, still cause me to choke and cringe. Like the day my mom broke open my bank and stole my money for booze. After the discovery, I walked right up to her and though previously I thought my mom rocked the world and I was teasingly called a “mommas girl,” at that moment, I walked right up to her and became a different person. I remember spitting at her feet and told her I hated her and blurted out in tears, “That is what I think of you.” I spoke about the day I cried in my dad’s lap. It was a tender moment as he coaxed out of me about how torn I was that I loved my mother, but that I wished she was gone. But I also told the audience of how I helped her to her first AA meeting with a broken arm from one of her falls. Every alcoholic has to hit their bottom; my mom says she had two things that influenced her. They both included me. One was the breaking in of my bank and my reaction. The other was that my father threatened to leave. ” He threatened to leave many times before, but never did he threaten to take my kids.” She would say this when she too became a speaker in the program. On that day, at times, I spoke at that podium and got so emotionally naked in front of strangers I thought I might cry, and I certainly choked up. I also shared some early writings.
I shared because Alateen and the mental help I was receiving at such a young age and after such absolute turmoil and hell, helped me.
When I was done, I stepped off the podium. The man fromAl-Anon that had introduced me dismissed the group, and I proceeded to gather my things and go back to my seat and encounter that incredible emotional embarrassment of nakedness strangely combined with elation as you walk out. But before I could do that, several people came up to me. This is something I later learned people do after a speaking engagement. One young lady, a little smaller than I, but probably the same age, approached me timidly. I could see she had been crying and I wondered, did my story do that? She said, “I just have to say thank you for being so brave and for sharing your story, if you could make it through this, I know I can too.”
I have no idea who she was. I never saw her again; she got lost in the crowd before I could offer to give her my phone number, in case she needed to talk. I hoped she had a support group. But though she was absent, her words have stayed with me for my entire life. Without even knowing it, her small words have played a part of everyone that I have touched in my life. It was a huge revelation. If I am vulnerable and share myself, there is a chance that I might be able to help someone else. In some of my most difficult times I have said, “Lord, help me through this, there is someone that needs to see how I do it.” That thought has helped me through my darkest days. A bonus to dark days later in life, and as a writer, is that I learned that many of the trials and tribulations make great experiences and are good fodder for writing.
So maybe now, as I enter this new stage in life there will be someone along the way that will receive hope, comfort or camaraderie in these words.
Psuche