By Roxy Redrum

Step 11 says we “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him.”

But what happens when the God of your understanding doesn’t look like a robed man in the sky?

What if she walks with a smirk, wears boots that stomp like boundaries, and holds a microphone instead of a Bible?

I met her today. In an AA meeting.

I wasn’t looking for her—

but she showed up anyway.

And she looked a lot like me.

Or rather, the version of me I’ve been afraid to be.

Step 11 is about conscious contact.

For some, that looks like kneeling.

For me, it looks like recording.

Like whispering into a mic with my heart half-exposed and my voice shaky but still showing up.

Every time I open my mouth and tell the truth about where I’ve been,

what I survived,

who I became—

I make contact.

With something higher.

Something bigger than my ego, but still born of my experience.

For years, I thought healing would mean becoming someone better.

Cleaner. Softer. Palatable.

But recovery didn’t make me pretty—it made me honest.

And honesty, when fully embodied, can be terrifyingly powerful.

Roxy Redrum was born from that power.

Not as a persona to hide behind—

but as a guide.

A survival guide for anyone crawling out of the wreckage of their old life,

looking for signs that it’s possible to become someone new.

Someone safe.

Someone whole.

When I speak in meetings, I do it to carry the message.

Roxy does the same thing—just in louder lipstick.

She’s not about performance.

Experience. Strength. Hope.

She’s about transmission.

She shows what happens when a woman stops apologizing for surviving,

and starts documenting it.

She is conscious contact.

She is prayer in action.

She is meditation through movement.

I am not who I was in those old stories.

Not the girl crying on the bathroom floor.

Not the woman silenced by shame or survival mode.

And neither are you.

So here’s my eleventh step:

I turn the mic on.

I let her speak.

I become the woman I once needed to hear.

Because sometimes,

the God of our understanding wears red lipstick—

and she talks back.