  There is no way I could have gotten better out of life what this program has given me. Plain and simple.
15 years ago, I was a walking disaster. I watch Anna Nicole Smith and I think, man, I was messed up like that, just without the money. I had the manipulation down, the beauty, I had the alcohol, the chaos, the insanity, the egotism, I had it all and thought I was it all. But I wasn't. I was a train wreck on four inch heels. Never did I expect that I would find a partner who would love me, care for me, respect me enough not to hit me or use mindf***'s to control me.
But this program gave him to me. I wasn't even a year sober, and after being stupid and not listening to my team of sponsors, I let a guy into my life and my house who almost destroyed me and everything I had gained in those first few months of sobriety, I wasn't about to walk into another relationship until I was a year sober.
Frustrated with this guy making moves on me, I finally said, enough! And I spilled it. My anonymity on a conservative Christian college I held dear enough to me to cover my big book in contact paper so you'd have to open it up to see what it was. I figured, this guy, if he was really worth his salt, if I told him he'd either still pursue me or he'd leave me the heck alone. Well.... I told him. He said, 'That's cool, my grandpa was an old timer in AA and knew the founders.
" His grandmother became my sponsor and helped me through a difficult time in my life. She twelve stepped me into the other side of the program after watching the insanity of those who raised me at a bridal shower (my grandmother had pink hair from where my mother dumped Hawaiian Punch in her helmet hair the day before) and of course, my mother was no where to be found.
She said to me, "Lisa Mae, you and I have to talk when this is over. Because if you dont learn how to detach from these people, you're never going to stay sober, because they wont let you. " How right she was. AA got me sober, and Alanon taught me how to live with my alcoholics. In fifteen years, I got married, found success in my career, got a degree, got published, realized that no matter how much I wanted to walk away from my writing that it was virtually impossible and kept at it.
I dealt with the abuse in my life and learned how not to carry on that family tradition. God blessed me over and again abundantly. In Dec. of 1996, I wanted a baby for Christmas and was pregnant with number one, the following Christmas we had three babies! He came alone in early January of 97. WIth him, I had a stroke. I learned that while I wanted to have a relationship with my alcoholic mother again, she once again played me with a creul mindf*** and tried to steal my son from me.
I went home, sad, dejected, confused, baby in my arms and unsure of how to deal. I still had to push him in the stroller in the apartment, I didnt have enough strength to carry him. Simple tasks I had done at work seemed insurmountable and work hardly understood. Then, in May of 1997, I found out we were pregnant with twins.
Finally, after five years of trying, we had success with pregnancy, but neither of us expected three babies in a year! I had no choice but to heal myself. I had to do my own occupational therapy, I had to strengthen myself and deal with my defects from the stroke and will myself to get better all over again. My twins were born and I had staph and was quarantined from them for almost three weeks. That was hard.
But my higher power never left me. The one thing I got through this program that I never had before was perseverence. After my youngest was born two years later, we had the tubes tied. WIth her came another stroke worse than the first, but I had my child healthy, I had three children who were healthy, and a good husband. Nothing else mattered. I lost my job on maternity leave. That didnt matter. One of my twins started to act strangely.
He gave me a hard time, was angry and upset, wouldnt communicate. After a move home for a job, we entered him in preschool and the teacher told us to have him tested. Autism. Asperger's Syndrome. Two words I never knew became a big part of my life. I remember grieving this diagnosis, but not once was drinking an option. I put myself to work. HARD WORK for a child who deserved the best that life had to offer him.
I persevered. I didnt drink, I learned endurance and what it meant to complete something for the first time in my life. He was mainstreamed with his twin in kindergarten last year, and will be likewise in first grade this year. When things got bad, when I felt at my worst, I picked up a phone, I called a friend, I went to a meeting, whether online or in person, I got there, because I needed it not just for me but for my children.
They needed me to be the best I could be for them. So very hard when the rest of the world doesn't believe you can do it, that you'll ever amount to anything. But how gratifying it is to prove them wrong! WIthout this program, without my higher power, without the people who are lifelines and sponsors who told me I could make it when I believed I couldn't, I would never have given myself these gifts. Back then, as far as I was concerned, I didnt deserve them. Sometimes, in a moment of gratitude, I still believe that. But I'm glad that with this program, my higher power and those who love me, I know otherwise today.
My favorite thing to tell a newcomer is "You deserve the good life that Serenity and Sobriety have to offer you. " And I mean every word of it. 
