Topic: Forgiveness and Healing - Sandy B

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

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Sandy Beech (0:27)

Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy B and I'm an alcoholic.

And I'm sure honored to be here at your 17th Pennsylvania State Convention. I love being in the middle of AA celebrating itself. And that's what's going on here. We're so thrilled, each one of us in this room with the amount of sobriety that we have. And we like to tell the state and the fellowship how grateful we are that we're all here together.

And I want to thank the committee, and it's been fun seeing old friends.

I think the highlight of my weekend occurred this afternoon when I was in the coffee room.

And I saw a table that looked like it would be a good one to sit at, and I ended up with the Unholy Trio from Lancaster.

They were all new, and it was very exciting to be amongst them. And one of them, Rob, particularly struck me that he was expressing how hard it was to be brand new and be in the middle of all these people. And what do you do? Am I sticking out like a sore thumb and all that? And we stayed there, and we had a great time, and it felt good. And so I got a new friend in my prayers and thoughts.

And Rob, I don't want you to let me down because you have a mission to accomplish, and that is you're going to go back and work with your sponsor. You're going to get sober, and pretty soon you're going to be sponsoring people, and you're going to be back here a couple years from now because you can hardly wait.

You know, you're not going to be uncomfortable. You're going to really enjoy it, and you're going to wander into that coffee room, and you're going to see a guy with that deer in the headlights look, about ready to leave the room, and you're going to go over and introduce yourself, and you're going to save his life. So don't fail us on that mission.

I don't want to put a lot of pressure on you, but...

I've had some surgeries, so after the... I can stand up okay, but not the whole time, so I'm going to sit on that stool at the end of the meeting. So if you're looking for me, I'll be over there.

I want to talk about my daughter's.

The AA grapevine is really powerful, and when things happen to people, it somehow gets all over the country, and I got about 350 cards, I've gotten telephone calls and emails, and it's just been amazing. And the reason I want to talk about this, briefly, is to share with you some lessons that I learned from others over the years that carried me through this. And these are very valuable lessons, and so I hope they'll be helpful to you. But March 3rd, my youngest daughter, Barbara, was murdered in her home in Madison.

She had taken her daughter to high school, and when she came home, somebody was waiting and really brutally murdered her. And my second daughter, Conway, and my first daughter, Barbie, had five years in AA, and she was the chairman of the New Haven conference, big conference. And I had the honor of speaking at it, and my other daughter introduced me. So this was quite a celebration. Anyway, the second daughter, Conway, discovered the body and took charge, and was just a mainstay throughout the whole thing. Because it's very difficult because you have the press, and you have the police, and it's just, she got the family together, and after she talked to me, I had just had surgery, and I couldn't go up. And it was killing me not to be with my family. They were all there for three or four weeks, waiting for the police to release things and all that. But I was able to make it up to the memorial service. And my girlfriend, wonderful lady, my spiritual partner, and so on down, and my best friend, Chris Brubaker, went with me, and they kind of helped me get upstairs and get through it, and it was a wonderful memorial service, 300 AA's and 50 family members. And it was just very powerful, typical AA event. And the next month, my girlfriend and I had been on, she's one of the most spiritual people I knew. She'd been at this about 30 years in her church. And we just talked about God, and she helped me a lot understanding her point of view and this and that. And she just was moved to go and get closer on her path, and decided that we weren't on parallel paths. I know it sounds complicated, but so that came to an end, and we decided to pray for each other to get through it. And then earlier this month, my oldest daughter, Kathy, died of alcoholism up in Virginia. And she died of alcoholism in spite of the fact that her father had 45 years and her two sisters were in AA, and she saw how happy we all were. But it shows you the powerlessness of this disease, and how you can't reach in if the whole family is in denial. And it was just, and so she suddenly got sick and went to the hospital, advanced cirrhosis, and within a week, she, and it's a horrible death when the liver kicks the kidneys out, and then boy, it is ugly. So with that and the surgeries and all that, it's been an interesting year. So, but I wanted to share with you the lessons that I had ahead of time. Oh, thanks.