Tom and Joy Interview

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Welcome to Creativity and Difference, a podcast series from Creativists in Dialogue exploring the personal and cultural forces that shape creative lives.

In part one of this episode, we sit down with Tom Adams and Joy Jones, two celebrated DC-area writers, educators, and change-makers who have collaborated on A Marriage that Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and The Addiction Recovery Movement. We explore the creative and spiritual dynamics of their collaboration, the challenges of writing about real lives, and how stepping into another’s experience can open new pathways of understanding, not just in storytelling but in our lives.

Part two of our conversation is about spiritual awakenings, cultural myths around creativity, and the enduring power of connection. Let’s dive in.

Elizabeth: Welcome to the Creativity and Difference series of Creativists in Dialogue, a podcast embracing the creative life in this, our fourth season. I’m Elizabeth Bruce.

Michael: And I am Michael Oliver.

Elizabeth: And our guests today are longtime DC-area writers, educators, and change-makers, Tom Adams and Joy Jones, who have recently collaborated on an important and unique new book, A Marriage that Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and The Addiction Recovery Movement.

Tom Adams writes and speaks on topics vital to the intersection of our personal lives with our community and global lives. He has for decades been engaged in and written about nonprofit leadership and transitions, spirituality and spiritual growth, how we each contribute to a more just and equitable world, and recovery from addictions and the 12-step recovery. [00:01:00] He’s also the author of The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide, and has contributed greatly to the development of nonprofit practice related to executive transitions, succession and sustainability planning.

Joy Jones is a trainer, performance poet, playwright, and author of several books, including the YA Novel Jayla Jumps In and the picture book The Sky is Not Blue, published by Free Spirit Press, as well as Private Lessons: A Book of Meditations for Teachers, Tambourine Moon, which was selected as one of the best books for children by the Black Caucus of the ALA and featured on the Bernie Mac Show, and Fearless Public Speaking. She’s won awards for her writing from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Colonial Players Promising Playwrights competition, plus awards from both the DC Department of Recreation and Parks and the DC [00:02:00] Commission on National and Community Service for outstanding community service. Joy Jones’ provocative op-ed on marriage trends for the Washington Post, “Marriage Is For White People” went viral. She’s the director of the arts organization The Spoken Word, and the founder of the double dutch team DC Retro Jumpers, which has led exhibitions and classes throughout metropolitan Washington and abroad. Joy often leads workshops on creative writing communications in black history.

Welcome, Joy and Tom. So, let’s jump in. Joy and Tom, what were your earliest experiences of creativity?

Joy: As a small child, my father would read me bedtime stories, so that was my introduction to both the written word and the spoken word, and that made me ultimately want to be a creator of stories too.

Tom: For me, I loved reading from a very [00:03:00] early age. I got a library card, it was one of the very exciting days in my childhood, I would ride my bike to the library and always liked to get more books than I could read. Just liked to have a lot of books.

And in terms of other creativity, a friend of mine, when I was a child, we decided we wanted to build a tree house. And my grandfather had a farm and he had some old lumber out in the barn, and I asked him if I could have the lumber, and he told me it was oak wood and I could never get a nail into it. And I persisted. I harassed him until he eventually gave up and gave me the oak wood, and he was right.

Michael: And did you learn from that experience?

Tom: I did indeed. Not to listen, but I learned about oak wood.

Michael: So, Joy, now you’ve written both fiction and nonfiction books. So now moving back and forth between the two genres, how have the [00:04:00] differences in the writing of those two forms changed your creative process?

Joy: Actually, I don’t feel a large gulf between fiction and nonfiction.

Michael: I agree with you.

Joy: In terms of being a writer, I bring the same kind of creativity to either genre. There are different rules of course that you have to obey when doing fiction versus nonfiction, but as a creative person coming to the story, the impetus and the… means of expressing myself pretty much the same.

Elizabeth: Tom, similar question, different field of expertise. You’ve had a long career helping nonprofits resolve conflicts and galvanize their missions, as well as navigate leadership changes. So can you speak a bit about how this consensus building work prepared you for the collaborative writing process?

Tom: So there’s, I think, a thin line between consensus building and people pleasing. [00:05:00] And I grew up in a home that looked good on the outside, but it wasn’t always safe. And I learned to pay attention to signals and to try to figure out how not to get hurt and how to please people. And that served me well in a nonprofit world. I could size up situations pretty quickly and I began to learn about organizations and what was healthy behavior and what wasn’t. And so I learned to listen to people and look for the clues about what was working and not working. And then applied a little bit of my 12-step experience of the Serenity Prayer, what I could change and what I couldn’t change. And that served me well in all venues, including my collaboration with Joy.

Elizabeth: Let us remind our listeners of what the—I’m sure most people know the Serenity Prayer, but can you just remind us what it exactly

Tom: It’s a very simple prayer. It says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I [00:06:00] can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Michael: Speaking of collaboration, Tom and Joy, you are longtime friends and writers. I don’t believe you collaborated on a writing project before this book.

Joy: No.

Michael: Knowing you both have different processes, everybody’s got their own specific process for writing, so what changes did you both have to make or did you notice occurring as you collaborated, particularly as you moved towards reaching some kind of consensus on what the final draft of the book would be?

Joy: This was Tom’s vision and so I understood from the beginning that this was his story and he was going to tell it. I was just supportive. I saw myself as the guide on the side. He was the sage on the stage. So usually when there was a difference, I yielded to his vision for the book.

Tom: And I wish that were true.

Michael: We all have our beliefs, right?

Tom: She [00:07:00] was very supportive but she brought a lot of wisdom and I listened to her wisdom and. I asked Joy to join me in collaborating on this book ’cause I knew it would be a better book. I knew she was a storyteller and I knew that a dry history book, fact after fact, was gonna put people to sleep. So I wanted to be a readable story and a compelling story. And so I counted on Joy to help and she brought that to each chapter. She looked at it and brought a lens to where do we need to make emotion pop here. She looked at the beginning and the end of each chapter and made sure there was a hook to draw you in and have you want to carry on to the next chapter. So, she brought things that I wouldn’t have my own brought to it.

The place where we probably had our most interesting discussions was around the length of the book. Joy was fascinated with the idea of the marriage and just writing about that. I was fascinated by that and how it changed the world. And then when I began learning about how it changed the world, [00:08:00] that became a bigger and more complex topic. And each time I’d go back to Joy and she would pull a few hairs out.

Joy: Tom wanted to include everything that was ever known about addiction recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon. And I would say, “Wait a minute. We’re not telling the whole story of the planet. We’re talking about the marriage that changed the world.” I would have to say, “That’s an interesting story, but can we leave it out? I like that anecdote that has nothing to do with the topic.” So sometimes we had disagreements about that.

Michael: But at some point, the two of you got on the same page about the length, and how this relationship between the marriage and maybe how it changed the world a little bit versus how the world changed and the marriage participated.

Tom: We did. We had a great editor. And Joy and the editor tag-teamed to get my attention.

Elizabeth: Did they like gang up on you?

Joy: I had told him prior to the editor reading it, “This doesn’t have anything to do with the story we [00:09:00] are trying to tell.” And then the editor would say, “Tom, this interesting, but I don’t think you need to keep it in the book.”

Tom: Do you have another question? Moving on…

Elizabeth: I wanna riff a little bit on this collaborative process. As you’ve been discussing, you each had your own preconceived notions and impulses about how to write the book and as well as how to listen to each other. But can you dig a little deeper into how this collaboration and this openness affected your own very particular creativity?

Joy: It was helpful and disturbing in several ways. I knew about Bill and Lois Wilson in a general way, and I admired them, and I was grateful for the work they had done. And so I had them on a pedestal. And then as I started reading more about their lives, I was like, oh my God. Their lives were a lot more messy than I first was aware of. And so they fell off the pedestal. And that made me unhappy to know that they were human and [00:10:00] flawed like everyone else, including me.

And I’ve now come to embrace that. Even if God has chosen you for a divine assignment, that doesn’t mean you escape being humble, having to stumble and falling apart before you succeed.

Tom: Probably for three or four years, as it got close to the end of the year, I would begin to plan the book launch for the next year. And then I didn’t find out there was something new that we needed to rework or redo. And so the book taught me openness, to be open to the creative spirit and just go where the book take takes you and takes how long it takes. And I had to let go of some perfectionism and some fear along the way, that can get in the way too, but it’s really about being open to the spirit and where is this leading. And ultimately I feel great about the book because our integrity was maintained throughout the process. We didn’t compromise.

Elizabeth: That’s really interesting. I love the creative [00:11:00] flow piece that you’re talking about, which is often credited to the fiction writer more than the nonfiction writer, but clearly it’s a part of both your experiences. To dig a little deeper into that, the techniques, as you’ve been describing, in the book include an imagining of how Lois, for example, probably dealt with a particular challenge in her long marriage to Bill. Can you talk about that process of trying to imagine the consciousness of your subjects?

Joy: I don’t think it takes a big stretch to imagine how a woman might feel married to an alcoholic and then, when he sobers up, his work takes precedence over paying attention to you. I don’t think you have to stretch very far to see how Lois probably felt. And the other part of it, though, was Lois did have a Christian grounding. She was raised to be of service to others, and so she was frustrated, I am sure, but she [00:12:00] also was devoted. And so trying to balance those two poles of being angry and frustrated and being committed and devoted, I was trying to keep those two poles in mind when I was thinking about Lois as I was writing.

Elizabeth: Those were some of my favorite parts, where you go into the head of this particular character who is not fictional, but it’s an imagining. So I thought that was very inventive.

Michael: Now, AA, Al-Anon and other recovery movement organizations, they have many passionate stakeholders. And the narrative of your book creatively imagines aspects of Bill and Lois’s relationship where you’re stepping outside the strict sort of history and imagining those relationships. How did different resource people or different members of these organizations respond to the imagined parts of the book? Have you gotten feedback on that?

Tom: That was a tricky part to learn. Bill Wilson was a storyteller and he [00:13:00] was not real worried about details. And so when you try to tell a story about Bill Wilson, there’s a lot of variation in what’s available. Plus everybody in AA wanted to say they were sponsored by Bill Wilson, or their sponsor was sponsored by Bill Wilson, where they knew somebody and they’d have a story about Bill Wilson. And then it was further complicated by the rumors that he was a unfaithful to Lois and was a womanizer.

So a Harvard historian, Ernie Kurtz, was the first person to begin to use primary research to tell the story. And there’s developed within AA a group of people committed to primary research and to not repeating stories that have no validation. And so I was a little naive about that when I got into this. And I’m a person who doesn’t mind making things up. And I found [00:14:00] that was not warmly received.

Michael: Oh, really?

Tom: In very direct terms. And I came to appreciate their point of view that our job is to tell the story from the most factual way we can. And not to make up things about Bill and Lois, but to learn. And so we spent a lot of time at Stepping Stones. The good news is that they were prolific writers, both of them. Lois kept a diary, there’s years of her diaries available to be read, her writings. Bill was a prolific writer. And so between them, there’s a lot of firsthand information that helps you get a sense of the marriage. And while I was annoyed by this pushback initially, I came to respect it.

And then there are guardians within the 12-step movement who guard different pieces of information and they have rules. And again, I’m not adverse to moving around rules, but in this case, I decided it was important to respect the rules and to respect [00:15:00] their point of view because, for people in recovery, it’s a sacred institution and you just don’t mess with it.

Michael: So did you ever have moments where you shared something that you had written or the two of you had written and they said, “Wait a minute. You’ve added to the story.” Or you’ve somehow—

Tom: Oh yeah. Very direct moments.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Tom: I had somebody who spent a number of years doing research tell me that—what was his word—I think that it was very strong language of disapproval of the book. I sent him a draft in the number of chapters and he said, “It gives me a headache to go back and forth between real and imagined.” He says, “Do one or the other. Make it fiction or make it real, but don’t go back and forth.”

Joy: One thing I find interesting about historical accounts in general is a lot of times the people who are making history, when they’re making the history, they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. And so they’re not documenting every little thing they’re doing. They’re not taking photographs. They’re not assembling [00:16:00] records. But they’re busy doing the activity. It’s only later then they say, Oh, that was a pivotal moment. Oh, that was an important detail. Oh, we should have saved that document. Because you’re busy doing the thing, whatever that thing is, and so you often have to go back and recreate or trust your memory or ask somebody else what happened when the thing that was happening.

One thing I found a little bit frustrating, there was some detail, I can’t remember what it was, but I had reported, I think, Lois saying such and such happened in 1932 or whatever, but the archives at Stepping Stones said, “No, that’s incorrect.” Even though Lois herself said this happened in 1932, but they had her diary from 1931 saying it happened today. And even though Lois is the primary source, they had a [00:17:00] more primary source by Lois that corrected her recollection of what happened in 1931 or ’32, or whatever it was. So that was strange.

Michael: That’s why historians even today are still writing histories of the Revolutionary War. Because people interpret these things differently.

Elizabeth: I wanna jump in here and just say, primary research—you all are scholars and I’m not—but primary research is what you said, the actual diary, or the census track, or the receipts of this transaction or that, whereas secondary sources would be someone’s interpretation or an article that was written about this or that. So there’s a big push between—and also that Stepping Stone, we’ll ask you about that later, but that’s the foundation center that is at the home that Bill and Lois lived in Upstate New York.

Joy: Correct.

Tom: And where the archives are maintained.

Elizabeth: Anyway, to just talk some more about this research aspect, Tom, [00:18:00] research is a kind of deep listening, a concept that requires the listener—you talked about your history of listening in nonprofits—a concept that requires a listener to delve into the motivational elements of the speaker. So can you talk some more about how you processed all of this input from individuals and organizations and how you filtered and synthesized these perspectives into this your own unique book?

Tom: Yeah. I used a method that I’ve used throughout my professional career, which is to find people who are leaders and ask for their help. And I was really fortunate, graced, blessed, whatever you like to call it, that people are very generous in this field. There’s a fellow named Bill White who has written extensively and I reached out to him and had a conversation with him back when I was at the basic question of should we write about the marriage? He says, “Yeah, that’s a [00:19:00] good idea. It’s never been done.” And so in this conversation, I said to him, “Why are you taking the time to talk to me?” He says, “The person I learned from, Ernie Kurtz, when I tried to thank him, he says, ‘Just pass it on.’” And there was really the spirit of pass it on. And so I had probably a half a dozen people who were content experts on different pieces.

And I would, when I got into something controversial or something I wasn’t sure about, I would go to one of those content experts and have a conversation with them, or two or three of them. And that gave me comfort that I was doing my due diligence and that we had synthesized this best we could with what the truth was.

Michael: Speaking of this notion of deep listening, which in many ways is sort of the foundation of this series that we’re doing now where change occurs through a process of encountering perspectives different than your own, and through a process of deep listening or coming to know those perspectives [00:20:00] ultimately changes you and and makes you a better person in some sense. So listening I would believe would be at the core of AA, Al-Anon, the 12-step program. Can—this is a two part question—first, can you just speak about the role that deep listening plays in the addiction recovery movement?

Joy: Yes. One of the popular slogans in AA is “I’m learning to listen and listening to learn.” And of course, when you go to a meeting, somebody is talking, they have the floor. Nobody can ask them a question, nobody can interrupt them. And so that fosters in everyone else in the room to listen to that person carefully. And for the person, a lot of times it’s one of the few places where you can feel heard, you can feel seen, you can talk without being judged or corrected. And just that alone is a very powerful space. To be seen and heard and be able to tell your story is a very transformative [00:21:00] act. Even if nobody gives you advice or nobody makes a comment, just to be able to talk in that space and hear yourself express your thoughts out loud is very useful in giving you some insights about what you should or should not be doing.

And I think in our society in general, we don’t do a lot of listening. We are often just waiting for our next turn to talk. We don’t give ourselves much time to be quiet. There’s always the television playing, or the computer is beeping, or the phone is ringing and we don’t have many quiet spaces that allow you that deep dive into your soul or the wide expanse to grace somebody with the opportunity for them to share and you to listen. 12-step rooms are one of the few places where you can have that experience, and I think it’s sorely lacking that we don’t have more spaces like that in our society.

Tom: The other factor is the steps themselves, that the steps partially derived from [00:22:00] a group called the Oxford Group that was trying to replicate the early Christians’ approach to spirituality and one of their primary practices was called guidance. That every morning they would basically have quiet time to have guidance. And when Bill and Lois were in Akron with Dr. Bob and Anne, the co-founders, the four co-founders all together for the first time, Anne Smith, who had the most experience with guidance, taught the other three how to sit and listen. And that deep guidance was what led them for Bill and Bob to come together on Mother’s Day. It was the listening and that became the 11th step of the 12 steps. It’s sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact. And so meditation and discernment is an active part of the 12-step life.

Michael: And since the book deals with the marriage of Bill and Lois, did deep listening—I would [00:23:00] imagine it did, most relationships and marriages require a certain amount of listening to survive—what role did deep listening play in their marriage? And obviously you tracked their marriage over many years.

Tom: Right. So they had a commitment to quiet time together in the morning. In our book there are a number of prayers that they used prayers, Lois had prayers, Bill had prayers, they would pray out loud together. One of the things that gave Bill I think the humility and the grace to deal with all the controversies that he was involved in and all the opposition to the things he wanted to do and thought were right for AA was his affinity for the St. Francis Prayer. Which is a very simple prayer about “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there’s hatred let me so love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there’s doubt, faith.” And it goes on like that. And watching him, you can see him living that. There were times in AA’s history [00:24:00] where AA was just radically attacked by some scientific study. It’s oh, this is just voodoo. And all the AA members would be up in arms and say, “We gotta defend ourselves.” And Bill would say, “No, that’s an outside issue. We’re gonna just see what we can learn from that. We learn from the people that find fault with us and move on.” And I think that was his commitment to this praying and meditating and deep listening.

Michael: And if I understand that praying and meditating is the 11th step. Okay. And I am assuming that before his recovery began, he probably wasn’t doing a lot of praying and meditating.

Tom: He and Dr. Bob both had been raised in Vermont in church-going families, and both rejected that at a very early age. It’s amazing that they founded a spiritual fellowship.

Michael: But Lois, I gather, was much more firmly rooted in [00:25:00] the sort of the prayer and meditation, Christian—

Joy: Yeah, she grew up in a Christian family, and I think her grandfather was a minister in the Swedenborgian sect. But she too had to find a different way into a broader spirituality because some of that didn’t prove effective in trying to save Bill.

Elizabeth: You talked about these conflicts that Bill and Lois face, clearly many challenges. Can you talk some more about what changes in their character are outlined in their marriage and some more about what conflicts they were each responding to. You’ve mentioned conflicts from the outside, but what about conflicts internally?

Joy: First of all, Bill’s drinking, that was a conflict-ridden situation. Lois wanted to save him. Again, she was brought up with a tradition in her family religion to be of service. And so she thought her Christian rectitude and beautiful personality would certainly convince him [00:26:00] to behave in like fashion but to no avail, right?

Michael: Many a woman has thought the same thing.

Joy: And so she needed some spiritual fine-tuning herself, although it took her a long time to realize that. She, after many tears and anger, realized that the spirituality that she saw making changes in the men who were following the AA way of life that she needed as well. And Tom also alluded that Anne Smith, Dr. Bob’s wife, taught her the value of a quiet time in the morning and sitting and communing with God to find out what his direction might be for your life or for your day or for that moment as the case may be.

Tom: And Bill was very clear that—the primary text for Alcoholics Anonymous is called that, Alcoholics Anonymous, called The Big Book for short—and he writes throughout there about his own [00:27:00] selfishness and self-centeredness and how that’s the root of the problem. And he talks about how painful it was for him to know that he was hurting Lois and not be able to change. So clearly, their transformation, both of them, through these 12 steps.

And the thing that people who challenge how much in love were they and was the marriage real? I just love reading their journals about their travels and the time they would spend out looking at different kind of flowers in South Carolina. Or they’d go for a walk on the beach and find something that was fascinating to them. And how they read books out loud on a whole range of different topics to each other. People who aren’t getting along don’t do those kind of things. And so it’s just really clear to me.

They opened their home every [00:28:00] Saturday. Anybody wanted to basically came to their home and came in for a cup of coffee and they had people from around the world who’d come to New York and say, Oh, I think I’m gonna go out to the stepping stone to see the Wilsons. And they’d knock on the door. And they had this sense of hospitality and openness and it had to be draining. But they found a way to always be giving and to take care of themselves and to take care of their marriage and to signify their love. Every year of their anniversary, they would send notes to each other. It was just a lot of touching things that you just wouldn’t be doing if you weren’t changing and growing.

Michael: Okay, so speaking of Lois specifically, my understanding is she grew up in a comfortable middle class world. I think she was a doctor’s daughter. But then she married Bill Wilson and then his drinking led to financial and emotional hardship. Some of it pretty severe emotional hardship and financial hardship. And for years after Bill got, fired for his drinking, Lois supported [00:29:00] them, if I understand, with her job as a department store clerk. Then when Bill, and I think it was Dr. Bob and others began organizing their sobriety programs, Bill and Lois were essentially homeless for many years. They lived in different people’s houses, which must have been very hard. But it was a radical change from the world that she grew up in. So she was put through a trial of a different life that she had never imagined. Can you speak about Lois’s transition from the comfort to being the emotional anchor, at least during certain periods of a sort of impoverished yet revolutionary journey, helping others through AA and Al-Anon?

Joy: All I can do is shake my head. I can’t imagine how she managed to keep herself together. There was a two year period where they moved 54 times. I would’ve lost my mind. Again, she had a notion of being of service and she certainly loved Bill. She was also codependent and so there’s the strengths from her[00:30:00] her devotion and love and then the craziness from her codependency. So it’s all of that mixed together kept her committed to the marriage

Michael: In her diary she kept, was that a regular diary? Did she ever—

Joy: She didn’t write too much negative in her diary.

Michael: No, but did she like pray to God in her diary to help her get through it?

Joy: She did.

Michael: Was God, her Christian faith—

Tom: In classic surrender terms, she hit bottom a number of times. She would write letters to God saying, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t know if I’m doing any good doing this.” And her doubts would come out in these and at the end of them, she would always say, “But I love Bill and I’m gonna persist.” She would always circle back around. She would state her doubts and state her an her anger and her fears. He drank for 17 years and drinking is a progressive disease. So at the beginning it wasn’t so bad and it just, it progressed, but towards the end it was hell. There just [00:31:00], there’s no other word for it. She was living in a hell. She was trying to keep him from jumping out the window during blackout. She just, it was a very—

Michael: So he had blackout drunks? He was a blackout drunk?

Tom: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And convulsions and, yeah, no, he was near the end and she didn’t know what to do. Before he got sober, she was, the doctors were telling her she might have to have him committed and she was beginning to take that in.

***

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[END OF PART 1]

Elizabeth: Welcome to Creativity and Difference, a podcast series from Creativists in Dialogue exploring the personal and cultural forces that shape creative lives.

In part one of this episode, we sit down with Tom Adams and Joy Jones, two celebrated DC-area writers, educators, and change-makers who have collaborated on A Marriage that Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and The Addiction Recovery Movement. We explore the creative and spiritual dynamics of their collaboration, the challenges of writing about real lives, and how stepping into another’s experience can open new pathways of understanding, not just in storytelling but in our lives.

Part two of our conversation with authors with Tom Adams and Joy Jones, we shift from the creative process of writing their book, A Marriage that Changed the World, to the deeper emotional and spiritual landscapes of addiction and recovery. We explore Bill and Lois Wilson’s seismic personal transformations, how creativity itself gets rewired in the wake of sobriety, and how recovery enhances and sometimes challenges our sense of identify, agency, and belonging.

Elizabeth: Let’s talk some more about addiction itself. I’m a former chain smoker who quit cold turkey 44 years ago, August 22nd, 1991. So I am really conscious of what a complete rewiring withdrawal and abstaining from an addictive substance can be for your psychology, your psyche, your whole operating system, if you will. And there are all the retrainings you have to do of your behaviors and your muscle memories that go along [00:32:00] with white-knuckling it through whatever withdrawal you’re going through. It’s like a shedding of one’s skin. A part of that, I think, operating system is your creativity and how you express your creativity and if you rewire your operating system, that changes for the good, obviously.

But how did both Bill and Lois deal with this foundational rewiring of life through recovery Bill as the addict and Lois as the spouse and the, as you mentioned, the codependent wife of the alcoholic. It’s just a profound seismic shift.

Tom: I think the first thing to say about that is the role that Bill’s spiritual awakening had. I don’t personally think he could have done what he did without that spiritual awakening. It was a foundation. It’s the white light experience. Not everybody has that. Most people don’t. [00:33:00] Most people change more incrementally. He changed quickly and radically. And at the same time, he needed help. And meeting Dr. Bob, he tried for months to get other people sober and he was unsuccessful because he was preaching at people and Dr. Silkworth told him, “No, that’s not working for you. You have to tell him about your pain. And that this is a disease. It’s a mental obsession, a physical compulsion.” And when he began to change the message, and Dr. Bob could hear it, and then he had a colleague and then they went and carried it to others.

And so it’s those two foundations, having a spiritual anchor of some kind and having fellowship, people that you can identify with, that they’ve had similar experience to you. And that allowed both Bill and Lois to change.

Lois brought together women, and that’s how Al-Anon got formed. It’s interesting that there were 84 or [00:34:00] 87 family groups that existed even before Al-Anon started. It was like spontaneous combustion. The women said, “We need these steps or we’re gonna go crazy.”

And the book is clear about the family afterwards, that there’s a long road of reconstruction ahead. Families don’t come back together. Roles have been out of whack because of the drinking. Women have been angry and depressed. And so, it’s a family disease. And so the attention to both the individual and the family was a critical part of that healing.

And the other thing that was helpful to both of them was Bill’s relationship with Father Ed Dowling and with other people. One of the things that’s very obvious in doing the research was all the couples they were friends with. And they hung out with—some people say that the reason AA works is because you’re hanging out with people who are committed to recovery. You’re not hanging out at the bar with people who are committing to getting drunk.

Michael: You’d think that would be [00:35:00] key.

So you mentioned this moment of what spiritual awakening. Could you one just describe that more for Bill? ‘Cause I’m just assuming that spiritual awakening is also it’s a turning point, obviously, it is a moment of change. It is a moment of self-realization as well. And so can you first just describe that event and how does, I would assume he documented that. And then the recovery from that sort of revelation, for lack of a better term. Then comes the longer sort of process of rebuilding or constructing a new self or a new person or whatever, a new series of relationships, et cetera. But first start with just describing the experience itself.

Tom: There was a alcohol rehab place in New York, one of the first in the country called Towns Hospital. He’d been there twice before and had left, and then got drunk again, and he went back. On his own, he decided he needed to check himself back in, [00:36:00] and he went there and he was working with a doctor called Dr. Silkworth.

And he had been visited by a friend, a guy named Ebby T, who had been a childhood friend, went to school with him, and they were drinking buddies and Ebby was sober and Ebby had gotten sober through this Oxford Group and basically gave him some basic principles and told him that he needed to consider forming his own conception of God. That he needed some spiritual power and that he could decide that on his own. So Ebby came to visit him in the hospital and Ebby left, and then Bill’s laying in the bed and a depression came over him that was deeper than anything he’d ever experienced in his life. And he knew a lot of depression, but he just went into a deep funk. And so he cried out, “God, if there is a God, help me.” And he had his dark moment and he cried out for help. And as he reports it, and it’s quoted in our book and in a number of AA [00:37:00] books, there was a white light and there was a wind, like a spirit that blew through the room. And he felt a peace come over him that he’d never felt before in his life. And he describes that in very vivid terms. And then he woke up and he wasn’t sure if it was real or not, and he called the doctor and asked the doctor, “I don’t know what’s going on and am I going crazy or—?” and the doctor said, “No, Bill, you have had a spiritual transformation. Whatever it is, hold onto it.” And Lois knew that he had changed, which he came to see him. That he was different as a result of this transformation. And he was able to then begin trying to help other people.

What he learned though, and what it says in the AA literature is most people have a garden-variety, ordinary spiritual awakening, not a bright light one. And the way we have those is through working the 12 steps. [00:38:00] That what the book promises, if you work these 12 steps and go through them one by one and pass the message on and continue to help others, you will be, quote, “recovered.” You stop drinking by having a spiritual experience and you have a spiritual experience by have working the 12 steps. And if you work the 12 steps, you will be recovered and the desire to drink will, will leave you.

It took three years for Dr. Bob to lose the desire to drink.  And so it’s not an automatic thing, but if you trust the 12 steps and trust whatever higher power you begin to form and you get connected to this fellowship, people recover. That’s what happens.

Michael: And did Lois go through any kind of—obviously, she was always grounded in the spirit of Christianity—but did she go through any kind of self-discovery that is documented in her diary or in your book?

Joy: [00:39:00] In her particular case things were a little bit different. She and Bill were going to the Oxford Group meetings. AA had not started at this point and they hadn’t broken off from the Oxford Group. And one evening Bill said, “Hurry up, we’ll be late. We need to get to the meeting.” And she took a shoe and threw it at his head and said, “Damn, your old meetings.” And of course he was surprised that his loving patient wife all of a sudden attacks him with her shoe. And she was surprised too. She was like, wait a minute, where did that come from? I should be happy He’s sober. He’s affiliated with a Christian group. He’s excited about what he’s doing. What I’ve been praying for is happening. So why am I feeling so angry to the point that I would attack him? And that was her catalyst to look at herself differently. “I call myself a Christian but that’s not a very Christian act, so what’s wrong with me?” She was going to these meetings to help him. He needed the spiritual support. She was good, in her mind. But that incident let [00:40:00] her know, no, I’m not good and I need to look at this a little bit more carefully.

Michael: And did that experience have any effect on her sort of establishing Al-Anon?

Joy: Eventually she came to the realization that the 12 steps and the recovery they offered alcoholics was good for everybody, even if you weren’t an alcoholic. It was especially good for her and the other wives because they were hurting, they were suffering, they had a spiritual disconnect. And the 12 steps would be the bridge to help them restore a connection to God and to their families.

Tom: So AA started in 1935, and Al-Anon started in 1951. But in that 16-year period, family members of alcoholics had already begun to come together. And if you can imagine, they had a choice at the beginning. Do we sit around and complain about our spouses and about how hard it is, what victims we are? And over time, Lois [00:41:00] and Anne Smith and the early members convinced them to work the steps to apply the 12 steps to themselves. And that was their spiritual awakening. And the same process that the AA has, you work the 12 steps and you get recovered.

Michael: Sure. And I just, I would imagine there’s a similar sort of relationship to agency, if you will. If she was trying to save him, if that was her mission to save him. At some point she realized he’s gotta save himself and there are other things I can do, but my frustration—maybe I throw the shoe because I’m, I can’t save him. You go to your damn AA meeting. And so there may be a similar sort of relationship to this, the prayer that you shared earlier about what you can actually have agency over versus what’s beyond your control, and then just finding those things that you can control and be happy with that.

Tom: Exactly.

Elizabeth: I heard you, Joy, once to talk about in contemporary times going into a church [00:42:00] basement or something where there’s an AA meeting in at one end of the hall and an Al-Anon meeting at the other and one group is laughing and the other group is sobbing. So can you retell that observation?

Joy: Yes. Sometimes AA meetings and Al-Anon meetings are held simultaneously so both husband and wife or whoever, addict and family members, can attend meetings at the same time. And the AA meetings are a lot more joyful which makes sense ’cause they’re the ones who were getting high. Whereas the person in the Al-Anon meeting is the one who has to clean up the mess behind the alcoholic. And so they come to the meeting with a lot more resentments and a lot more awareness of the problems that have been created and have taken on sometimes inappropriately the responsibility for correcting those problems so they’re not as joyful when they’re discussing their particular issues.

Elizabeth: Or [00:43:00] maybe their partner is not in recovery yet, they’re not necessarily down the hall. So they’re in an active state of dealing with all the fallout.

Joy: That’s absolutely true. Yes

Elizabeth: Speaking of all of this I understand I don’t know if this is formal, but I’ve heard that a part of the discourse around recovery involves finding another way to “rebel.” So can you elaborate on addiction as a form of rebellion? Like, how does recovery affect a person’s sense of themselves as different or as bravely going against the norm or something like that?

Joy: I think the anonymous factor in 12-step programs does give someone an opportunity to savor being different or rebelling because you are part of this secret society that the average person is not much aware of. So you can play out your rebellion in that way. [00:44:00] Also, you’re going against the grain of society. As I mentioned earlier, there are not that many places where you could be quiet and still and listen and be heard. And so having that tool in your tool belt makes you different from the average Joe in the street. So if you want to be rebellious, you still can have that flavor of rebel it’s just going to manifest in a different kind of way.

And I like to share this particular story: I once heard a man say that when he was drinking, he had a job. And it was an okay job. He liked the people well enough and they liked him well enough. It was a job. Then he got sober and once he got sober, everything got on his nerves. And he got on their nerves and the job became intolerable. And ultimately, the boss fired him. And he’s like scratching his head. When I was drinking, I had a decent job. And then when I stopped drinking, I lose my job. What? This doesn’t make sense. But what ultimately happened [00:45:00] was the next job was much more in concert with his true personality and his true talents and gifts. And so there was that rough transition in the middle. But he rebelled against the job once he got sober, but that made the way possible for him to have a really good job.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Sounds like he was anesthetized too the inadequacies of the first job. He was just self-medicating.

Joy: Exactly. Yes.

Tom: And the question of rebellion and sense of being different. They talk in AA about terminal uniqueness.

Michael: Terminal?

Tom: Terminal. Meaning you die from it. I’m different. I’m not like you.

Elizabeth: It’s a real artists’ disease.

Tom: My drinking problem is different than yours, it’s is not that bad. Or it’s this or that.

Michael: And so every room full of alcoholics sitting around and going—

Tom: Right, and so the rebellion, when you first get sober they say to you that some days the best you can do is just not say, “The hell with it.” ‘Cause that’s [00:46:00] really the ultimate rebellion is, screw it, I’ll drink, screw it, I’ll take a drug. Oh screw it. I’ll do this or that. Just how do I escape the inner pain? The soul sickness. That’s at the bottom of this, the ultimate desire to be loved and to love and that you can’t fix and so you rebel against it. But the 12 steps give you a way to not have to rebel. And then it teaches you that you don’t have to be terminally unique, that you can respect each person the way they are.

And humility, one of the definitions that’s used, is to be one among many. Just to be one among many in this group. And that’s the inclusiveness, that’s the culture, that’s really miraculous when you think about today’s world. That in the 1930s they were able to, all these people from all these different backgrounds say, “The only requirement for membership is a desire is to not drink.”

Michael: So speaking of creativity, I mean we live in a society that praises itself on [00:47:00] its creative culture, right? And one of the sort of, definitely one of the tropes that I grew up experiencing was this trope that there’s nothing like a little alcohol to get the juices flowing. Or maybe it’s marijuana or maybe it’s some harder drug. Anyway, there’s nothing like loosening the mind up right through some kind of intoxication. Now I don’t believe that anymore. Obviously I was grown up on it, but I rejected that ’cause I found out I didn’t need any of that stuff to really be creative. So can you maybe just speak about that persistent assumption in our society that somehow creativity is associated with an uninhibited mind or freeing the mind through some kind of drug or alcohol.

Joy: I think sometimes people use a substance because they’re inhibited by their creativity. They’re overwhelmed by their creativity.

I remember a friend who was an addictions counselor, and he mentioned that one of his clients, [00:48:00] she could sing, she could dance and she could act. And he says, “I understand why she started using drugs.” Because she was overwhelmed by all this talent and didn’t know what to do with it. And so, by drinking and drugging, that tamped down the creative urge that she didn’t know how to manage. I think a lot of times people turn to substances because they don’t know how to cope with the gift God has given them.

Tom: And if you believe that we’re all creative in some fashion and so it really is about our authenticity and getting in touch with it and how fear—I know for me, writing this book was a fear-based moment. Just, particularly when I got some of the criticism and we talked about earlier—

Michael: Could lead you to drinking.

Tom: Or certainly put the book somewhere else.

Michael: Yeah. One or the other. Yeah.

Tom: But the thing about the processes that you learn to face the fears and learn. And so each we find our authenticity and our integrity. And then [00:49:00] it’s hard for people that don’t embrace any kind of spiritual beliefs, not that they need to believe, but having some kind of faith allows me and others to walk through fears, that we need to have faith in something. Life is tough, and having that faith and a community allows you to not only survive in life, but to to really do your best work.

Michael: And is authenticity an important concept in the 12-step program?

Tom: I think integrity is.

Michael: Integrity. Okay.

Tom: Some people talk about how how hard intimacy is for people that are addicted. We run away from people. We run away from closeness ’cause we’re afraid of it. And so learning to love ourselves and to, again, to be in relation allows us then to be intimate with others. And having a sponsor for some people is the first time that they [00:50:00] trust somebody.  And trust is obviously key to closeness.

Elizabeth: I wanna dig into that concept of trust and uniqueness. Michael and I, in a earlier conversation for the podcast, talked about creativity and alienation, and I asked him a lot of complicated questions about the role alienation plays in the sort of intellectual and creative lives of a lot of artists or writers about how the creative person feels separate from the mainstream.

And back to your point about terminal uniqueness, that often the creative person feel feels that they can provide a kind of unique creative prism, if you will. The showbiz world, for example, is filled with parties and all kinds of heavy drug and alcohol use that isn’t particularly intimate or authentic, if you will. So I guess I’m curious as to if Bill or Lois spoke about, or wrote about, or if there are [00:51:00] references to how they dealt with alienation as either a creative force or as a trigger for addiction.

Joy: I’d like to address that, but from my own perspective, not necessarily Bill and Lois’. I’ve known since third grade that I was going to be a writer, that I wanted to be a writer. And as a young adult in my twenties, I set out to make that happen. And I had terrible writer’s block and I couldn’t understand it. I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing, yet I’m having difficulty doing it. And one thing that was part of my journey is if I wrote something and then I showed it to you, and you would read it—let’s say it was a journalistic piece, and it’s a Q and A with the CEO of an organization, and all I’m doing is just asking him questions. When did you start the organization? 1962. How many employees do you have? 120. And so I show you my essay where I interviewed the CEO of the X, Y, and Z [00:52:00] Corporation, and you read it and say, “Oh, this is an interesting article, Joy. You and your mother don’t get along, do you?” And I’m like, “Wait a minute. This is an interview with Mr. CEO. My mother’s not mentioned anywhere in the story. Where do you get off of asking me about my relationship with my mother? As a matter of fact, we don’t get along, but how did you—?” “I don’t know. I was just reading the story and it just occurred to me that you and your mother don’t get along very well.”

And so that used to infuriate me. People would read something I’ve written and. Unbeknownst to me, parts of me were bleeding out onto the page. Things that I thought were hidden. Sometimes things that I didn’t even know about myself, but the person reading it would be spot on, and that irked me to death. So, time passes, I joined Overeaters Anonymous. And the nature of the program is you’re telling all your personal secrets to strangers all over the city. You come in to talk about how your mother got on your last nerve and [00:53:00] what she said and what you said back to her and how that made you angry and you’re trying not to go to the grocery store and buy a box of cookies to cook with those feelings. And one of the byproducts of that experience of being in Overeaters Anonymous is my writer’s block disappeared and I got more productive. I was able to do what I knew I was supposed to be doing, and I lost my antagonistic feelings when people would read something and parts of me would be transparent because I was used to being transparent on a more regular basis as a result of being in a 12-step meeting. I went to OA ’cause I wanted to be able to rock a cute outfit. I wasn’t, I didn’t go to OA to be a better writer, but that’s what happened.

Elizabeth: Interesting. What a great story.

Tom: And then you went to another 12-step program that took that further, right?

Joy: Yes. In fact, there is this 12 step program called ARTS, Artists Recovering Through the 12 Steps that directly addresses people who want to tap into their creativity and make use of it. [00:54:00]

Tom: Alienation is an interesting word. And to me it’s about separation or not fitting in, not belonging. And again, Bill and Lois, to put it in their terms, they were looking to build community. And it was that connectedness—Bill had an awful childhood. His father, they divorced, his mother left and went to school in Boston. He was raised by his grandparents. His first girlfriend died, just on and on. And his desire for connectedness and not being separate drove him in a lot of ways. And they built community.

And in my own journey, the part of—people talk a lot today about trauma and how we experience trauma. And I didn’t really think about my childhood as being traumatic, but there were persistent traumatic events that [00:55:00] occurred. And as I’ve been working on this book, I’ve done some work with a therapist about that and I’ve found out more about that. And that’s part of where my alienation or separation came from. That this feeling of not belonging and being in an unsafe place. And so my mission over a long time has been to expand safe places, both for myself and for others, because that is what overcomes the alienation.

Michael: You say that the creation of community became Bill and Lois’s driving force. At some level, AA is a community and in some essential way, Bill and Lois created that community and that now it is self-creating, obviously. Or creating through the various members and people belong within that. And so they overcome their alienation by the community that they create.

A somewhat related question is this notion of curiosity as a [00:56:00] component of creativity and dynamic change. What role did curiosity play in the relationship between Bill and Lois and in the evolution of the addiction recovery movement?

Joy: I think they were both people who had varied interests and they pursued them. Bill was offered a job by Thomas Edison. He turned it down. But Thomas Edison was like the Bill Gates of today, the leader and innovator in technology. And to be offered a job by him was a a big deal. But Bill decided he didn’t wanna do that. He completed a law degree.

Michael: Oh, Bill had a law degree?

Joy: Yeah, he went to law school. The rule at that school was your degree wasn’t complete unless you attended graduation. And for some reason he didn’t go to commencement, so he never completely finished that process. But he went through the school, he did all the coursework and the job he did take was as a Wall Street analyst. And he was groundbreaking in that regard [00:57:00] because at that time, if you were thinking about investing in the company and your research was mainly talking to the man who was the head of the company. And of course he’s gonna give you a rosy picture. But what Bill did is in addition to talking to the leadership, he would go to the place where the workers would hang out for lunch or where they would go after work to drink. And he would drink with them and talk with them to find out what’s really going on the factory floor, what’s really happening behind closed doors. And so he was able to give a more comprehensive report about a given company and he helped a lot of folks make a lot of money. And he made a penny or two himself.

Tom: Lois lived to be 97 and there are stories of her reading wide ranges of books about science and other things into her nineties. She had a mind that was always looking and when you look at her gardening and her, she was a trained interior designer, she just was curious about a lot of things, and I think it allowed her [00:58:00] to express herself. It’s interesting that after Bill died, not very long after that she decided that she’d write her own story. And so Lois Remembers was written a few years after Bill died. Oh, okay. And she felt the freedom then to talk about what she had been learning and what her life had been like.

Elizabeth: Speaking of freedom, I wanna ask each of you how, in the researching and writing of this book, just… tell us more about how you set aside your 21st-century values about gender roles and marriage and the sort of contemporary sensibility to really accept the marriage of Bill and Lois Wilson on its own terms, as opposed to judging it from the—what is that expression—from the lofty perspective of the 21st century? And maybe, Joy, I should ask you that particular question.

Joy: It did take some mental gymnastics to put myself in Louis’s [00:59:00] shoes marriage. And today the prevailing thought is if a marriage is bumpy or rocky, get out of it, that’s the common wisdom the average person would receive. Then, the thought was, preserve your marriage at all costs. Keep your marriage together, don’t let it fall apart. So she grew up at the beginning of the 20th century with that mindset, and of course, with the Christian mindset that divorce is the wrong thing to do. But, with that, I found that maybe our attitudes are not so far afield.

I remember talking to a friend about this project as we were writing it, and I was saying, “I don’t know how Lois stood all the stuff she took. I wouldn’t have done it. I can’t condone it.” Blah, blah, blah. And this friend who happened to be an ex-boyfriend, he said, “Why did you take on this project?” I said, “Oh, Tom is fantastic. He’s such a great guy, [01:00:00] and I like what he’s doing, and I think his message is important. And I wanted to support him. And I wanted to encourage him. And my ego got involved a little bit. I thought it would be cool to write a book about this.” And he says, “You sound just like Lois.”

Elizabeth: Yeah. That’s such a great story. Speaking of women and gender roles, most of the members of AA were men, but they weren’t exclusively men. So just as a little kind of insert into the history of it, when women alcoholics began to become members of AA, that also is a departure from the kind of traditional gender roles and stuff. Can you talk a little tiny bit about that?

Tom: Yeah. It was a very difficult transition for the women particularly, and it was scary to the men. Dr. Bob particularly was really afraid that having women in the meeting would disrupt them, would cause people to get [01:01:00] drunk. And there’s a saying attributed to him that “behind every skirt is a slip.” Meaning a slip back into drinking. And at the same time, he welcomed women who came to the meetings and eventually they became open.

Lois was a particularly effective bridge builder. A number of the first women that came in New York, particularly Marty Mann and woman named Florence R. Lois was the gatekeeper, helped them get into the meetings really looked out for them. Because men and women were going to the meetings together. But understanding the role that sexism played and how hard it was, it was difficult for women. And so over time they began to create women’s meetings so there was a more safe place for women. And this, it took time for the numbers to change to where women felt a part of it.

Michael: And also it seems to feed into your comment earlier that the [01:02:00] struggles with intimacy can lead to or feed into alcoholism. It sounds like Dr. Bob was saying it’s the struggle with intimacy and the women will only remind men of their struggles with intimacy, and that’ll just make them drink it again, right?

Tom: Right. And in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill talks about that alcohol is but a symptom. And so for some men, they were sex addicts. And so sex addiction is not a myth. There are people that are addicted to sex and some of them are in the meetings and they have a saying in the 12-step rooms around about the 13th step which is when somebody who’s sober for a while tries to hit on a new person and get into a romantic relationship before the person’s had a chance to recover.

Elizabeth: And so the 13th step is don’t do that.

Tom: Exactly. Exactly.

Elizabeth: That’s a no-no, don’t do that.

Tom: Correct.

Michael: But there’s also the emotional intimacy aspects that [01:03:00] can lead to alcohol, drinking, wanting to drink.

Tom: Yeah. There’s studies some years ago about what causes relapse and the biggest cause was relationships.

Elizabeth: Interesting.

In your book, I know you’ve talked a little bit about how open and you spoke, it was really beautiful what you said about the sort of radical community and acceptance and equality that existed in AA meetings. And now they’re all over the world and now they’re incredibly diverse culturally and age-wise and ethnically. But can you give us a little tiny history lesson about how AA meetings became more inclusive racially or ethnically or religiously? It’s a surprise question, but I’m curious.

Tom: It’s a human organization, and it had ordinary human beings in it. So there are all kinds of stories in the lore. One story is Bill went to a prison outside of New York and [01:04:00] spoke and there were three African American men there. And he said, “When you get out, come to our meeting.” So they did, they came to this meeting and the White people didn’t wanna let ’em in. And so Bill was in a quandary about what to do about this ’cause he had invited them and he wanted it to be open to everybody. And so he said to the White men, he says, “Do you agree that these gentlemen ought to have a right to get sober?” And they said, “Yeah, of course.” He says, “Good. Then we believe that everybody has a right to be sober.” And he says, “Would it be okay if we allow them to come to the meetings as guests?” And so that’s what they did at that particular situation. They let ’em come as guests. Now I’m sure that didn’t feel great to the African American men.

And over time the story here in Washington, DC, there was a doctor, Dr. Jim Scott, who was from Virginia, small town, grew up, his father was a doctor. He was a doctor. He had to give up his practice because he drank. And [01:05:00] Washington, DC was segregated. This is in the 1940s. They couldn’t even be in same spaces together. And a White woman introduced him to a White man in AA. And that White man began to help him get sober, help them form a group. It’s now the Cosmopolitan Group here in Washington, DC and it’s the old, one of the oldest Black groups, integrated groups in the country. And each city has its story of how White and Black people work together and eventually, there were both Black groups and integrated groups over time.

And the same is true with the LGBT community.  There were very early on members who were gay. But it took a long time, obviously for there to be open gay meetings.

Elizabeth: This has been fabulous. I wanna ask you both quickly one of our last questions to all of our interviewees is what tangible practical advice you would give to our listeners on how they can sustain their own creativity or authenticity, [01:06:00] if you would their integrity. Do you have any succinct, practical advice?

Joy: Give yourself at least five minutes today to pursue your creativity. Everybody can fit five minutes into their schedule.

Tom: Yeah, I think it’s, just do it. Just, if you have a hunch, follow it. See where it leads you, and to realize that creativity is a spiritual process. And you may need help. And just be open to getting help to put the water that’s needed in the soil and everything to come together for your creativity.

Elizabeth: Gentle people, what is what is next for you both? How can our listeners find out about this book and other books? What are your websites?

Michael: And buy the book.

Elizabeth: And buy the book, yes! Please buy the book.

Michael: Where can they do that?

Joy: The book is available wherever you buy your books including your local independent bookstore and Amazon and Bookshop.org. And you can visit our webpage. [01:07:00] My website is www.joyjonesonline.com. Or if you want to learn about Lois and Bill Wilson, visit our Facebook page at Lois and Bill Wilson Marriage on Facebook and Instagram.

Tom: And my website is THAdams.com and we have a Wilson book page on it. And that tells you where you can buy the book and where we’ll be speaking. We have a speaking event this coming Sunday, Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day was a big day in AA history. It’s when Dr. Bob and Bill met for the first time, and we’re gonna talk about the role of women related to Mother’s Day. And that information is on our website.

Michael: And we’ll put those addresses on our Creativists page as well.

Elizabeth: Yes. If the past is any indication of the future, you will have many more public events. You’ve been out there really pounding the pavement.

Tom Adams, Joy Jones, thank you so much. Buy this incredible [01:08:00] book, A Marriage that Changed the World, Lois and Bill Wilson, and The Addiction Recovery Movement. Thank you all for listening and thank you both so much for being here.

Thank you.

Tom: Thank you for this great opportunity.

***

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[END OF PART 2]