My mother was a suicidal alcoholic. She spent much of my childhood in and out of hospitals and psychiatric facilities. I grew up during the sixties and seventies, when “sex, drugs and rock and roll” became our battle cry. I tuned out the chaos by creating my own and numbed my existence with every substance I could find. My parents died in a fire labeled suspicious when I was 14. From then on, I lived under a shadow of distrust from people, including my own family members, who thought I either set the fire or had something to do with it. Because of this I was physically separated from the people I grew up knowing. At 16, I moved in with a guy because he had the drugs. We bought and sold drugs, harmed ourselves, harmed others. I was miserable and suicidal myself, ending up in several state-run facilities. At 18, as an orphan, I discovered that I would be paid for attending college. Even with a drug habit, I attended school and received a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice. But because of my reputation no one would hire me. My addiction brought me deeper into the seedy side of life, getting and using and finding ways and means to get more, sinking quietly into pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I had no self-respect at all. I ended up in jail on a possession charge. By then I had been to my first rehab, where I learned enough to know that my continuing to use was a choice I was making. It was the first one that set me on the path of insanity. I had a serious awakening when I received a visitor there. A woman inmate next to me, in an orange jumpsuit which denoted seriousness, was saying to her visitor, “They’re trying to get it down to 25 to life.” I knew at that moment that we were no different, she was just in another place on the destructive path I was on. God was showing me where I could end up. It took another devastating incident and more God-shots, but I found my way back to the rooms and the fellowships. It took even longer for me to surrender to the principles of the program and give up not only the substances but also the behavior and thinking to which I was clinging. I’ve been to four rehabs and thousands of meetings. I began to change from a self-centered, self-seeking, selfish individual into a woman whom I could respect. I learned in order to have self-esteem, I had to perform esteem-able acts. I had two children, and I realized that I am their role model, and the way I treated them was the way the world would treat them. I was told “as you were parented, so shall you parent, unless you learn otherwise.” I was determined to learn otherwise. I received counseling, I attended workshops. Parenting classes helped greatly. Child-rearing books became my handbooks. Attending women’s meetings with babysitting saved my life and those of my children. I learned to watch the other women. They told me “If you want what we have, you do what we do.” Other women and their children taught me, by example, what not to do. I would say I grew up alongside my children. In some ways, my children are way more mature than I am! I was told “Recovery is like a bed. If you get in the middle, you can’t fall off.” 12 Step meetings became my life. I worked with a sponsor and completed the steps and continue in step studies two decades later. I have a sponsor and I sponsor other women. I attend meetings in several fellowships and in different formats weekly. Everyone who knows me knows I am a woman in long-term recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The most important thing in my life is that I am clean and sober, because if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have this life. Most importantly, I have a God of my understanding, one who is Love and nothing else. Love only loves, unconditionally. When I follow Love, I have no fear. What I have today is a daily reprieve from my disease which is based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. I work diligently to remain close to Love and follow Love’s will for me. When I do, the gifts are infinite.