The SoberLady's Story

More of the SoberLady's Story and Writings

The SoberLady does a lot of her recovery/meetings online and belongs to several online topic groups, from which many of her writings come.

OK, so the non-topic topic question for the week: excluding the Bible and AA literature, what book has provided you with the most inspiration and/or help in sobriety and in life? I exclude the Bible and AA stuff, by the way, just because I already know about those, not because they are not wonderful. I would like new ideas for things to read and hope that all of you will get new ideas, too.

I am an avid reader and I read a lot of mysteries, science fiction and really good ficiton. Alot of the time I go to the library and go up and down aisles picking out the thickest books to take home with me. That is how I found one of the two books I am going to mention.

That book is called The Source by Mitchner. It is about an archeological dig in Israel and bounces back and forth from more or less present day to the late forties and the beginnings of the state of Israel and then all the way back to the beginnings of time as recorded archeologically at the dig. The story traces the roots of religion and history, and philosophy from many thousands of years BC to the present (present when the book was written). It is wonderful, will make you think, question and maybe even help you to believe just a little bit more.

The second book is a series. I have never told you but I am a "Dunie". So my second most important book is the Dune series, all 6 of them by Herbert. It is about a society in our future and the series covers this society over a period of about 50,000 years. Just like The Source, iis wonderful, will make you think, question and maybe even help you to believe just a little bit more.

As for the topic: T.S. Eliot said, "Humility is the most difficult of virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself." What is humility? How does one practice it? How does it come into play in your daily life? So often, it seems to me, humility is misinterpreted as the need to keep your mouth shut while continuing to fume and believe that another person is actually dead wrong! Whereas, St. Francis said, "Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation." What do you think about humility?

As I was taught to do in early sobriety, I had to look this up and found humility to be: the quality or state of being humble. So of course I had to look up humble and that is where I part company with the dictionary - humble - not proud or haughty: not pretentious: unassuming: insignificant: meek, modest, lowly: marked by modesty or meekness: respectfully deferential: to lower in status and condition. But I don't think any of this defines what humility is to me. Humility to me has nothing to do with being lowly or meek. It has to do with being willing to follow advice and even to be able to ask for it. It is about accepting the guidance of 1) God 2) your sponsor 3) people who have been sober longer than you and have traveled the path just a little bit farther 4) people who may have experience that you have not yet gotten and 5) the infamous "Eskimo's" who are out there and keep popping into your world to bring you just the right answer, at just the right moment, often to never be seen or heard from again.

Humility has an awful lot to do with surrender, to me. But surrender really has nothing to do with giving up, as far as I am concerned. Actually surrender is really more about admitting that I just don't know and am willing to let someone else guide me, someone who just might have a better idea than I do. Remember, my best ideas got me to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous ( and that is no longer something I see as necessarily a bad thing). Humility has to do with being teachable and able to take criticism, guidance and direction. All of which are things I could not do while I was still out there drinking and drugging.

Before I got here I was the know-it-all on the outside and that petrified little child on the inside, who was always afraid you would find out who I was on the inside. Today, that is not the case. I am not so much of a know-it-all. At least if I am acting like it there is a better chance that I do know at least some of what I am know-it-alling about. And if you find or meet that pretrified little girl inside of me today, she is not nearly so petrified and she mostly doesn't care if you find out that she is really still there. In fact she is actually starting to grow up very nicely, thank you very much (due to people like you guys, in particular).

Humility is also about being honest with you about what is going on with me. If that means admitting that I am grieving (more on some days than others) over the loss of my dad, then so be it. It also means being willing to actually tell you that there is at least a part of me that is scared about going to trial against Walmart the end of February. There is also a part of me that is getting really excited about the very same prospect. I have to be willing to tell you that I still have trust issues because I can often become frightened about what will become of me now that I am totally disabled, if my husband should decide he doesn't want to stay. But most of all humility to me is about knowing that it is only by the grace of God that I am sober and alive today and it is only by the grace of God that I am able to continue to trudge this happy road of destiny that he has laid out before me, good days, bad days and in-between without needing to take a drink or a drug, no matter what.

And ultimately humility ends up being able to express my gratitude for what life has become for me today and is becoming for me in the future. I haven't got a clue what that is most of the time and so in that instance humility ends up being about putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that it will all work out just fine, no matter what.....and the journey continues.....

When I truly trust in God, I can leave my expectations at home. After all, my expectations versus God's plans are really no contest in any case, so I only waste valuable energy (and getting more valuable the older I get!) I have sure had to learn this the hard way, though, by continuing to have the expectations anyway and having them fall down around my shoulders.

This makes me think of the line someone was using a few months ago (might have been Jo, I think) something about expectations being resentments in the making. Have to keep reminding myself of this one so that my expectations don't keep screwing me up.

Was thinking of Guilt feelings as a topic. Guilt that we actually own or guilt that we take on. Got the idea from an email earlier on..and thought it was good.

It came to me in thinking about this topic, that maybe I didn't even know what guilt really meant, so looked it up. Didn't really help much though. The feeling of responsibility for having done something wrong.

You know the strange part about this is that this ends up falling into that unknown category of feelings not being fact but just being. Most of the things I have felt guilty for in my life were things that I didn't do and therefore really should have felt no guilt for. All those kinds of things that I so successfully used as excuses for my drinking.

When a girl-child or a woman says no how can she be guilty for what is done to her. But I was, or at least that is how I felt. When a woman is beaten by a man who supposedly loves her, not only is that not love, but she has nothing to feel guilty for. But I was or at least that is how I felt. I felt like it was all my fault. If I had only been a better little girl. If I had only stayed inside my apartment and not "tempted" my neighbor. If I had only been a better wife. None of these things would have been done to me and for that I was guilty.

Then of course, I used that guilt as an excuse to drink which reduced my inhibitions allowing me to do things that I was ashamed of doing and then I really was guilty (at least when I remembered it). This gave me more and greater reasons to drink. Thus continuing to create the vicious cycle of more drinking, doing more things to be ashamed of, causing more guilt and more reasons to drink more.

Then I got sober and came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the first things that happened to me or that I was told; and perhaps one of the most important was "Screw Guilt". I was told that guilt was one of the most useless emotions. Now don't get me wrong, I do know that as all emotions have their purpose, guilt has it's purpose and that it is tied to our conscience in order to help us do what we believe to be right and not do what we believe to be wrong.

But as with so many other emotions I don't use them rightly, and I wasn't using guilt rightly. Guilt's purpose is not so that I can take out my "cat o nine tales" and whip myself for all my presumed faults or wrongs. But that was what I was doing and how I was using it. Guilt kept me down, guilt kept me from seeing myself as a person of value, guilt destroyed my self-worth and my self-confidence. Guilt kept me in that vicious cycle of drinking, becoming ashamed of my actions, and drinking more to forget.

Once I began to adopt the attitude of "Screw Guilt", I began to be able to grow and become the me that I am today. I began to see things more as they truly are and not as my guilt wanted me to see them. I was able to get and stay sober. I was able to start to live life as I believed was right. I was able to start a cycle of sobriety rather than the vicious cycle of drunkenness which I had lived in for so many years.

So I guess my message for all of you is very simple, "Screw Guilt" and get on with living life on life's terms. When you truly have something to feel guilty for, your gut will tell you and the steps teach us how to deal with that.