Sober coming up on one year since 6/30/2020, Jenn came to her first AA meeting 1/13/2014 and thought she had it all figured out for 9 months without opening the books.
This is a story with interesting insights, surviving a fall from a Grand Canyon cliff and powerful metaphors including one about a box embedded in clay.
She grew up awkward in a small town of 700. She graduated high school in the top 32 in a class of 32 but did better in college.
She describes her soul as shredded from incidences of abuse starting at age 4 by a male babysitter friend of the family.
"But I carried that shame and that secret around for years and years."
Still, she always had a belief in God from an early realization of somehow not being alone.
She was mostly a good girl around alcohol until college where she became a binge drinker.
After graduation, she moved to Atlanta. There she got married and had the first two of three children. She did not drink through those pregnancies but started back after.
Starting in 2010 she began moving the line she said she would not cross. She would lay it down, it would start getting grayer, she would cross it and draw a new line. She realized her selfishness one day in 2014, came to AA the next day but went out after 9 months for 4 rough years.
"I like to say that AA is like the Mafia, right? So, you can't talk about what you hear or see here or who is in here, but if you leave here, you die."
She shares about her amazing kids and how she is learning through the Steps how to forgive herself and to finally feel worthy of not only God's Grace, but more so, His Mercy.
"Vintage Box
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I am living in a box held together with red clay. The clay is alcohol. It's holding me in this box. The clay is not sturdy. The clay crumbles and to keep the box together, I have to add the ugly clay. The clay is dirty and temporary. The clay leaves stains that are so hard to get out and it's so much harder to look at. When the rain comes, the clay washes away leaving a naked vulnerable box and the ugly red clay stains. The decision, time and time again, is to simply add more clay. It seems to be the only way to keep the box - my life - together. I am discovering a new way to remove the clay - alcohol. And this is the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I will be painstaking about this process. I will take time and I will have to learn to deal with the clay stains. I will find comfort in knowing that some will eventually fade the stains, maybe not completely, but over time the box - my life - will have a little vintage look instead of the ugly dingy box that I see now. This cool vintage box - my life - will have an amazing story to it: how it was buried in the ugly red Georgia clay and now it is sought after by others who feel buried alive in their ugly clay - alcohol."