As it is
The world keeps turning, and I'm grateful to turn with it
Today marks my 12th year of sobriety, and I want to celebrate it by honouring the woman who got me through the first several years, whom I found out last night had passed away at the end of August. I don’t usually write about people, so my intent is to share my story with her as gracefully as I can. She was instrumental to my recovery, and I grieved her bitterly when I discovered she was gone; there were some pain points between us.
I met Nancy in a Big Book meeting that someone in her home group had informally put on. I was coming back after a relapse, and the moment she spoke, I knew I wanted her to sponsor me. She spoke so calmly that her serenity was palatable. I asked her to sponsor me, and she said yes. But more than sponsoring me, she offered me direction. In a way, she was like a mother figure to me.
I was bartending and she said, “I know that if I sit in the barber’s chair, I’m going to get a haircut.” (I can still hear her voice saying this). So I quit my job at the local bar and got a job at Hudson’s Bay. It was a very exciting time to be there. The company had rebranded into a more luxury direction, and our store was being renovated to accommodate the old money coming in. I got a position as a brand ambassador for Ralph Lauren, and I made a lot of friends there. It was a lovely time, and I remember Nancy affirming my choice, saying, “It’s your sober job”.
Before I met Nancy I had met a young woman who mesmerized me, also from this Big Book meeting. Her and some other members travelled around preaching Jesus in the rooms. I was amazed by their ability to proselytize, and with her having converted from Judaism, I figured she was extra powerful. I had asked her to sponsor me. I wanted to be like her, and have the friends and the conviction and the skills that she had. Unfortunately she believed that I wasn’t sober because I was taking a medication for mental health, so I abruptly stopped taking it, destabilized, and relapsed.
It was coming back from that relapse when I met Nancy, and the Christian was still there. After I started getting a bit better working with Nancy, I started to stray a bit toward the Christian group that was very actively working to revert AA back to a time right before its inception, when it was a 6 step Christian renewal group. I went off my medication again and started to destabilize again, and at about 6 months in, I nearly picked up a drink.
By this point, I was so done with being in and out of the rooms. I was getting some significant sober times in: 6 months, 10 months, now 6 months again…and I just knew I didn’t have another recovery in me. I didn’t relapse. I heard the devil talk to me, and I still didn’t relapse. I went to bed and everything changed. I woke up the next morning, resolved to get well, and I reached out to Nancy. I told her what was happening with me, and she said to “stay in the middle”. We don’t get hurt when we stay insulated in the program.
And this is the turning point. This is when I surrendered again, leapt into Step Three, and did another inventory where I shared a secret with her. That was one of the most frightening things I had ever done. I had prayed on it, and God gave me the strength to do it far sooner than I imagined I would. Once I had it in my mind to share, we were talking about it within days. And this is when everything changed for me. She made me feel like I was normal, and like I was just doing the best I could with what I had. The chains of addiction were broken. I no longer felt like alcohol had me; to not drink became a choice.
Nancy and I continued to work together, but it felt more like she was nurturing me more than sponsoring me. We went out, like walks and shopping, and she cooked dinner. But we still didn’t get to spend a lot of time together, and that bothered me. When I would send a text, I would often hear back days later. I justified it by thinking that while I didn’t get to see her or talk with her as much as I wanted to, when we did connect, it kept me filled up for quite a while. She was very protective of her time. She often said “No one is taking me hostage”, and while she wasn’t saying that in response to me, I internalized it and didn’t want to ask for more.
I also wanted to go through the Steps “by the book”, because I was wanting to sponsor others, and I didn’t know how to do that. Nancy agreed that we could meet regularly, it was weekly or bi-weekly, to read the Big Book together, but when time came to meet, she changed it to the supplementary text, and we really didn’t meet at all for it. The relationship, for me, was starting to fray.
Then tragedy struck her in the most profound way - her daughter took her own life. Nancy didn’t isolate though. She practice what she preached. She still attended her meeting and we stayed connected. But it put pressure on a relationship that was already beginning to feel conflicted to me. I eventually met a young woman who had been “booked”, and she agreed to take me through the Steps the way I believed I needed to be taken through them. She became my new sponsor and I grew in confidence as I felt I had sufficiently worked through the Steps, and felt ready to pass them on.
Nancy and I still stayed in touch, going for walks every so often. She remained a big supporter of mine. When I got engaged, she said she wanted to come to the wedding. When I last saw her at a meeting in the summer, I told her that got married. I felt badly that I didn’t invite her. She said, “This is what you always wanted”, affirming that she still cared about me. She asked to see some photos, but I got caught up after the meeting and didn’t get a chance to show her.
The thing about breaking a sponsor/sponsee relationship, is you never really come back from it. At least that’s been my experience. The bond is forever torn. My connection with Nancy, already strained, suffered even more once I went my own way. And what hurts the most in it is that I didn’t even want to go my own way. Maybe if I could have addressed my grievances back then, we could have stayed working together, but I don’t believe in judging the past with the lens of the present. Nancy and I still made an effort to keep in touch over the years, and I know that she cared about me deeply, even if she didn’t always show it the way I needed.
The most recent time we spent quality time together was a year and a half ago, after a member from her home group, who remembers my time with her, asked if I heard that something was wrong with her. I texted her, just saying hi, and she let me know she had cancer and that it was terminal. We met and I felt confused. She didn’t look sick at all, she looked perfectly normal. She let me know that the doctors had done all they could, and now it was just a matter of time before it would fatally spread. I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying, and looking back, I think I didn’t really believe it. Walking with her felt like it always had, she was as she always was. And I felt as I always did with her - happy.
Last night in my home group meeting we read from Chapter Two, “There is a Solution”. Now that I have grown in age and spirituality, I share from a different place. I have been sharing more my direct experiences as opposed to more abstract ideas of recovery, and therefore in these meetings where we are in the early Steps, I’ve been sharing a lot about those first couple of years, and being led by Nancy.
The particular reading was about the spiritual experience, and I shared how mine was of the educational variety,1 because I needed to be taught how to have one. I reminisced on how Nancy told me to ask God to “replace my fear with faith”, and how I recited that like a mantra when I was raw and terribly insecure - how that was the foundation of having my spiritual experience years later, when I was ready to surrender all that I believed was objectionable, allowing me to truly be secure in my sobriety.
When I got home, I knew I was overdue thanking Nancy. I sent her a text message saying how I was sharing about what she taught me from when I first got sober, and how grateful I am to her for helping me. The text went through as green. My immediate thought was that she switched to an Android phone. Then I saw the error message come up and read “Not Delivered”. Then I thought she might have changed her number and wondered who I could contact for the new one. Then I tried to send the message again and thought it went through, only to see the exclamation mark pop up followed by “Not Delivered” again. And then it hit me.
I Googled her name, and lo and behold, saw her obituary. I was stunned. A flood of emotions came over me and I didn’t really know what to do with myself. The first line in her obituary said she was reunited with her beloved daughter, and I just thought, yeah, that’s it. And as I processed my grief over the next hour or so I further suspected that she used the MAiD program.
As with grief, there is regret. But it seems that as I grow and as life keeps on, I get better with managing that regret. While I don’t remember having a special moment with Nancy where I thanked her for those formative years, and for continuing to show such genuine interest in me (up until the very end), I know that I showed my love for her. The only time I shed a tear in a meeting, was when I was speaking at a women’s meeting, and I choked up sharing how her mentorship saved me, how her care for me ultimately got me sober, because for the first time in decades I felt love in a way that was more powerful than the darkness that wanted to destroy me.
I wasn’t expecting to be observing my anniversary with tears, but that’s okay. Because sobriety has taught me that life doesn’t have to be sunshine and rainbows to be beautiful. God is everywhere, and the same way I choose to not pick up a drink today, I choose to see him in all things. His angels minister to me when I am heartbroken, and I know that all things will work out for my benefit, because God loves me and I am committed to his cause.
And I am grateful for all of the love and connection that I have received in my recovery up until now. Part of getting better is being able to practice loving detachment, and I need to apply this in different areas in my life. It’s hard for me to move on in various ways, but I have learned that it can be more painful to stay in areas I’ve outgrown. I lovingly release the tension and the expectations and the hope that I had placed on Nancy, and I will continue to pray for her as she has entered into the next life. We will meet again, and I trust that next time will be so much better than what the limitations of our time here together offered us. God Bless.
