Sober 12 years since November 1979, Sharon was raised in an alcoholic home. She drank rarely and responsibly until she was thirty.
At five she remembers seeing the school bus come for the first time. She did not know how she was going to make it up those big steps. A teenage boy lifted her up into the bus. That became the story of her life, feeling like she was waiting at the base of those steps in panic not knowing what to do next.
She got married at 17 to get away from the raging, alcoholic dad. She had two kids in two years - a daughter and son.
She left the marriage and moved to upstate New York and was shown the night club business and did very well eventually managing a club and buying a small house. She loved her kids.
She met and married an orchestra leader and had all the material things she required but was missing something. Then she found booze.
Before long she had a younger lover and left the marriage. Then she got wild. She moved to Florida and sent the kids to live with their father in Oklahoma.
She came to her first AA meeting in 1977 but could not stay sober.
She gave birth to another daughter early in sobriety.
Her son was killed by Argentine drug dealers when she was 2 years sober.
Her dad drank for 70 years dying recently at age 86.