Kyle C. – Al Anon Family Recovery Speaker – “Good Down Home Healing”

Kyle is a fantastic Al Anon speaker and someone who you can definitely point to as a great example of what the twelve steps can do. Sometimes people associate Al Anon with mostly women, and sometimes this can make guys apprehensive to go. Kyle, who was a college football player, tells how he is so grateful he got over his fear and gave the program a try! This is a REALLY cool share and I hope you enjoy it!

Life on life’s terms

When I was playing football, I did play hard. I did do better then and there were a lot of accolades that came my way as a young man because of all that effort. But the problems didn’t go away. So somewhere in my early life I decided two things. One was I was never going to participate in drinking because nothing good could happen with alcohol. I mean, I was logical and that was logic to me. The second thing I decided was that if I can get my parents, my brother, and the people I loved clean and sober, then my life is going to be okay. I was doing well in school, sports and everything else in my life. Fast forward a little bit. I go off to college and then I got a call one night from my from my father. He asked me to come home for the weekend, which is a little bit strange, but I didn’t ask any questions and I was able to go home during the offseason so it was no big deal. When I got there, he sat down with my brother and I and said “Your mother had gone to rehab.”

To this day, my mother going to rehab is the most courageous thing that I have ever known anybody to do. She did it on her own, and she will tell you today she did it cause she didn’t want me to go through what she’d been through. And I love her for that. So at that time I was thinking, my problem is about be over; mom goes rehab, she gets clean, and dad follows up. He gets clean. Brother goes, he gets clean. My life is great. I was happy and truly my prayers had been answered. This was something that I prayed for many, many years. God had heard my prayers along the way and all of those people had taken their steps to go get some help. Somebody didn’t mention that I might need some help. You know, it’s a family disease. I know my whole family’s got it and here’s what we’re trying to say to me, “You may be as sick too.” I was an athlete and I was a very self-confident person so it was just “blah blah blah.”

So I go on with my life. They go on with their life. I got married to a beautiful woman, she was a beautiful wife, and we had a beautiful life. Everybody seems to have baggage when they get into relationships, and we both brought our baggage to the house and it set up shop there. When the baggage starts getting to be opened and you’re young, and you haven’t dealt with these things yourself, sometimes you don’t deal with her baggage very well. After about fifteen years in that marriage, I didn’t know how to be a husband. I thought I knew how to fix stuff, or at least to try to fix stuff.  Then one day I wake up and I am mad about the failure of my marriage and I start having a little pity party for myself. Nonetheless, that marriage ended in divorce. I’m glad to say that today she has remarried and has two beautiful children. We are best friends too. Believe it or not.

A moment of change for me during this time was when I was at Thanksgiving dinner with my family, all these former drunks, brother is married now and he has two beautiful kids, my mom and dad are there too and we’re eating Thanksgiving dinner.  We go down the beach , and they’re laughing and everybody’s having fun, and I’m sitting there thinking, “This isn’t right!” I start to get mad. I thought to myself, “I am happy miserable.”  That was such a moment of clarity for me.