That's Me! That's Me! episode 31 with Tom W.

**Monica Kaye** (0:23)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to That's Me, That's Me. I am Monica Kaye.

**Julia Jaye** (0:28)
And I'm Julia Jaye.

**Monica Kaye** (0:29)
And we are broadcasting from the beautiful Cincinnati Public Radio Studios. Here on That's Me, That's Me, we talk about what brought people back after their first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. So often we hear about what brought us to our first meeting, how we got here. But we love to hear why somebody keeps coming back. Why did they come back for their second meeting? What did they see? What did they hear? What did they feel that encouraged them to return to the rooms?
And we do invite a guest each week to come and the show and share their story of what brought them back to their second meeting. And the moment they began to relate and say to themselves, all together now. That's me! That's me!

**Julia Jaye** (1:05)
Hello.

**Monica Kaye** (1:06)
Very enthusiastic there, Julia.

**Julia Jaye** (1:08)
I'm just compensating for how crazy my head feels at the moment.

**Monica Kaye** (1:13)
You sure it wasn't that gigantic latte you just inhaled?

**Julia Jaye** (1:17)
I didn't have all of it because I shared.

**Monica Kaye** (1:19)
You did. And thank you. Julia and I are still without electric. We've had some storms in Cincinnati for a couple of days now, maybe two, it feels like a week. And I forgot to stop for coffee this morning. I was busy doing other things, and I walked in and she had a nice latte in her hand. Thanks for sharing.

**Julia Jaye** (1:36)
It sounds like we live together, that we don't have electricity, just so everyone knows we don't. Like, I know it feels like we're always together. I actually showed up to a meeting where our editor was this week, Mike, and he said, where's your sidekick? Because, you know, we're kind of a package deal for some people.
But, yeah, we live across town, and it's been a little bit of a wild couple of days. My husband went to Arizona for a week to see his family lives there, which, you know, if it had been a normal week, would have been a great thing for him to go do. But now that the power's out, it's his fault that I'm living in third world conditions. No. I feel really grateful that we are, we're lucky, right? Like, there's, it's not, it's inconvenient, but it's not the end of the world. So, but yeah, I do feel a little bit crazy with school about to start, and just lots of transitioning, which I keep thinking I'm going to do better with change, and I just, I guess, human.

**Monica Kaye** (2:40)
So. What?

**Julia Jaye** (2:41)
I know. It's really annoying.

**Monica Kaye** (2:44)
Say it isn't so.

**Julia Jaye** (2:45)
Yeah. So.

**Monica Kaye** (2:47)
So, last weekend was my mom's service. Thank you for being there. Thank you for so many of the AA faces in the room. And, you know, it's always just a lovely time. We have just a lovely family who came in from all over parts of the world and across the country and locally. And, yeah, it was a nice time together, a nice couple of days. And then it's, you know, always kind of nice when everybody wanders back and you start getting in a little bit of routine, whatever that looks like. And, you know, and then the routine got disrupted by the big storms coming through. But, you know, it's interesting, like we're just so fortunate with Alcoholics Anonymous because the, like last night my home group got canceled because there was no electric city in the church. And then I was like, oh, shoot. But then I remembered and I was super antsy because it was a long day. And, you know, the restoration of the electricity, as we know, is a moving target, like every couple of, you know, well, now it's later, now it's later, now it's later, which is fine.
But I remembered about this meeting, that primary purpose meeting that's online, that meets at 8.3 on Wednesdays. I was like, oh, I can drop in on that. And it was super interesting. It's one of those meetings where they go through the big book like a couple of lines at a time. And there's a work, I guess there's a workbook that comes with us. Like they read something and then somebody asks questions and then they read that part of the book that answers that.
So I sat in my car with a little lantern in my cell phone. And thankfully, I guess I had internet because I was able to get on Zoom. But it's really easy to pivot in AA. Even though I was looking forward to my home group, we're really fortunate to have so many local meetings, so many options, and so many meetings on Zoom. And you get out there and you get the message, don't you? You get exactly what you need.