I am not sure when it started. It seems that for as long as I can remember, I was mad at my mom.

I came to AA mad and mean. I wasn’t this way as a young girl. In fact, I was just the opposite.

What do you do when there’s a person in your life to whom you are trying to make amends and they don’t want to hear anything about it?

My sobriety date is 2006 and since then I have made many, many amends through this amazing program.

In 1974, I had a serious auto accident. I was not drinking that day. I ran over two people, killing a 43-year-old woman who was married and had three young children.

“Kathy died. The funeral’s in three days,” the voice on my answering machine said.

I was raised a Baptist and my mother was very religious.  She made donations to the church and televangelists frequently.  I remember one winter when she donated our heating-oil money. 

The oldtimers in my home group were sometimes cantankerous and blunt, but they welcomed me when I was new to AA. “Keep coming back,” they all told me. I thought that was really nice.

At around 10 years of sobriety, I was involved with starting a women’s AA meeting. It was absolutely perfect for me.

As an active alcoholic, I lived with a constant feeling of loneliness. My predominant thought was that life was better elsewhere, in another town, another country, another continent.

I had just turned 31 and had been arrested just a week before I walked into the rooms of AA. I didn’t arrive here because I wanted to get sober.

I can’t help but think about the story I once wrote about her in this very magazine in May of 2014. I was praising her for how she saved me.

When I was about 28 years old and two years sober, I moved to Galveston, Texas, where I went to work for the county government.

My sobriety—in the 18 years I’ve been blessed with it—has involved a lot of geographic changes, including multiple moves to new states in the U.S.

In early May, following my home group meeting at 7:15 A.M. on Saturday, I felt motivated to get on top of my yard work and spring cleanup.

When I had only a few weeks sober, I went on a 10-day cruise. While I was on the ship, I went to the AA meeting daily.

I’m in my 44th year of sobriety now. Grapevine published my story “Homeless Bound” back in November 2008. What has changed since 2008 is really amazing.

April 1985: At the height of my drinking, I bought front-row tickets to see the Rolling Stones at a sold-out concert in Madison Square Garden.

I walked out to my mailbox and retrieved my mail, finding among the bills and junk mail a letter from the Probation and Parole Board.

Early in my sobriety, my sponsor Linda told me that I was allowed to call and whine about a situation exactly once. After that, we were going to talk about solutions, not problems.