How to Listen:
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/ozIUtBEOl7E
Guest Links: Free e-booklet: Self-Love for Your Inner Child
Website: https://www.wideawakerecovery.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wideawakerecovery/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wideawakerecovery/
Email: cybele@wideawakerecovery.com
Book recommendation: Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore: Getting Through the First Year of Sobriety : https://amzn.to/3ixAeDi
What I wish I knew: “You’re okay, it’s not your fault”
Hello Loves,
Thank you for checking out the podcast, my name is Arlina, and I’ll be your host.
Today, my guest is Cybele Botran. Cybele is a SHE RECOVERS® and Holistic Coach. With a Master’s Degree in Education and over 30 years of teaching experience, she coaches women individually and leads online, group coaching courses. Her coaching practice empowers women to look inside, nurture themselves, and create lives that spark joy. She is a dear friend and I can’t wait for you to meet her!
Before we jump in, did you know I am also the founder of Sober Life School? It is a resource site to help you apply the information that will help you get sober, stay sober and go deeper.
I am a certified life and recovery coach and offer private 1 on 1 coaching, and I also teach group classes to help you stop drinking, end self-sabotage, end toxic relationships, and start living a life you love.
Everyone is different, so if you want to set up a time to discuss your unique situation with me, then visit soberlifeschool.com to schedule a free strategy call. Let’s get the solutions that will work for you!
So, one last thing before we get to Cybele’s story, I just wanted to share a funny story with you. Apparently there are some people who don’t like the fact that there is more than one path to recovery. I know this because there was a man in one of the sober groups on Facebook who reported my podcast post as “offensive”. That lead to me being banned from posting to said groups, even my own private groups!
I’m not entirely sure how to get the word out about the podcast, so I’m asking for your help. There’s a link at the bottom of odaatchat.com page that takes you to iTunes where you can rate it and leave a review. That will help a ton!
Also, if you tell your friends about it and share links to the podcast, that would be awesome as well. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. <3
So there ya have it, please enjoy this conversation, with Cybele!
Transcript
I’m so excited to talk to you. You and I are part of the she recovers. Coaching community. And you and I have been doing lots of work together. Gosh, it’s been a while since you went through the podcasting class, but we had
so much fun I have, I just want to thank you publicly for all the generous support that you’ve given me. And you’re such an inspiration for me and many people you’re really generous with, with what you have.
So sweet. Yes, it’s I mean, it’s my pleasure, right? Those of us who sort of been to the edge and have sort of survived, we do feel this impulse, this natural impulse to try to save people from their suffering. And so and you know, right back atcha sister, it’s like, I love all the work that you’re doing. You’re you’ve just been doing a ton of work and, and helping other people recover, and, you know, come out of their suffering. So, yeah, fun.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love collaborating. I love being inspired and hearing what other people are doing. And I’m definitely in the stage where I met with, you know, everything I’m doing that I’m having fun with it. It’s like
playful, it is playful, and you’re doing so much good work. So you’re launching a podcast, you’re coaching, you’re just you’re doing classes, so blasts lots and lots of stuff. So, as I’ve been doing lately, we’re gonna start with the lightning round. Are you cheated? You already heard somebody else’s?
Oh, definitely. I prepared a fair. Yeah, I wanna I want to be, you know, not too good care of myself taking care of that. Inner Child work, right. There’s always now Okay, speaks about taking care of teenage Savelle in this situation.
Okay.
That is awesome. Because I didn’t don’t really, you know, I’ve been sober for a long time. And I don’t know if I’ve actually already done inner child work. But I can’t wait to hear about your perspective on that. Yeah. Good. Okay, we’ll get into the inner child stuff. But let’s do a lightning round questions. What’s your favorite? What was your favorite recovery book when you first got sober?
Yeah, I love that question. Because it brought me back to probably like 2010, I was at the grocery store. And I was, you know, I had my wine in my cart. And I remember looking, you know, how they have all those magazines, as you’re checking out. I don’t even remember which magazine, it was like a woman’s day or one of those. And there was a title of an article that said, mommy doesn’t drink here anymore. And I grabbed it and hit it and bought it, read the article, and then threw it away. But that was really the beginning of planting the seed for me that that was something I wanted to look at. And I remember in the magazine article, she said, You have to tell one person, and I thought to myself, no way.
Not telling anybody.
So then, I got sober in 2011. And I thought about her in that article. And I googled, mommy doesn’t drink anymore. And it was a book. And so the, you know, the magazine article was probably four because of the book. And I Her name is Rachel brown now. And I ordered the book and read it. And that led me I’m not even exactly sure. But somehow that led me to the online group for well, and it took me to the bfb, which is the booze free Brigade, which was a private Yahoo, I think was Yahoo group. And that led me to a secret Facebook group and that was kind of like the beginning for me of that’s where I met Don Nicole, that’s where I met all the women that I still know today who are in my gratitude group and and just yeah, led me to she recovers and, and all of that. So that was that. That’s the book that I you know, would say was like the most instrumental for me for planting the seed is mommy doesn’t drink here anymore.
Mommy doesn’t drink anymore. That is amazing. Yeah. You mentioned on Nicole and she is the co founder of Shiva covers and I think they’re one of their Facebook groups has a total of like 300,000 women on it. I mean, there’s
Yeah, the page the business page has at least 300,000 and then there she covers together private Facebook group is over 8000 right now. It really it really blew up over the with the pandemic of women, you know who who were looking for support or trying to get sober during during quarantine.
Yeah, and we both facilitate meetings now I can say that after you helped me, coach me, it was so funny because when I did my first group, there were a couple of women who had actually been listening to the podcast for a couple of years. And it was so sweet.
Were they were they knew you, they were probably super excited to meet you. And, yeah, that’s such a great opportunity. We’re volunteer hosts, because it is a nonprofit now, and that it’s a beautiful way to kind of, you know, connect women. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, they say that. alcoholism is a disease of isolation and connection is the cure. Right? I love that.
Yeah.
Okay. So that’s a great, that’s a lot of resources, where they’re looking at us. So we got a book booth free brigade grew. she recovers page and group. So awesome. I love tons of resources. Do you have a regular self care practice? Is it like daily, weekly? How do you dress your self care?
Yeah, I love that question, too. I’m gonna say that for everyone, I love all of your questions. I love that question too, because I really thought about it. And I would say everything down to breath. Probably breath is the one that I use the most. And so that’s just like pausing mindfulness, take a deep breath in, hold it, exhale, I do throughout the day. So that would be I would say like the easiest and most simple one all the way to you know, weekend long retreats. that have been a way that personally I up up level, my recovery is by connecting with women in a weekend or week long retreats. So I’ve done several of those, but and then everything in between is, um, I do go to meetings to gatherings. I’m part of, like I said before, I’m actually have two gratitude groups. I love podcasts. So all of those are part of my self care in the way that I helps me stay connected. Getting out into nature, meditation, good sleep, nutrition. Yeah, just pausing. Like the whole self regulation thing. I feel like you know, once you let go the alcohol, you have to figure out a way to self regulate. So my self care is about self regulation.
I love that. Yeah. So do you in the morning. Do you have like a little routine that you do like, like mine is prayer, meditation and journaling?
Yeah, I mean, mine is usually a coffee.
First thing coffee. My first coffee, yeah,
coffee, and then absolutely like the, you know, beautiful music, I actually have the privilege of looking out at the ocean. I live in Miami, Florida. And so I look out and look at the color of the ocean. Any form of stretching or movement? Anytime I get outside, so yeah, I mean that, you know, and just connecting, I try to do my gratitude. I don’t always but I try to do it in the mornings and, and just differencing with others.
What a difference it makes to do it in the morning, right kind of sets the tone for the whole day days that I miss it. I totally feel it.
That I was just gonna say that when I don’t, then you know, I love this idea of like, you can start your day over at any time. You’ve heard that. And, and I do notice that if I haven’t really been attentive, I’ve spent too much time scrolling too much time online. That I think okay, I really need to take a break right now and do some me time and reconnect.
Yeah, something that about two o’clock in the afternoon. I’m like, I just need to like replenish in some way. I love the breathing the breath work stuff that you do. That’s very helpful. Yeah. Let’s, um, and what’s one thing you wish you knew when you first got sober?
I think that has to be the shame component. Like I wish I when I first got sober, I was so so ashamed. And so a lot of my stories about hiding, hiding when I drank and then hiding when I got into recovery. And I think like if I could go back to my younger 47 year old self, I would say you’re going to be okay, and you can let go of the shame. This is not your fault. And you’re beautiful and I love you. But there’s so much shame and I think, you know, like that’s kind of attached to what we’re talking about the anonymity like for me, anonymity had less to do with a tradition and more to do with my shame. And so I think that that’s kind of the part that I if I could go back to my younger stuff I would hug her and say you don’t have to be ashamed.
I love that. Yeah, I wrote down your okay. It’s not your fault. Right? All these things that maybe we did that we’re not so proud of were things that we did we listen, I’ve just believed that everybody is doing the best that they can.
Right. Yeah, I believe that I know
that today. Yeah, I did not know that in the beginning. Yeah. And we Yeah, you and I talked a little bit about anonymity before we started recording. And we’ll definitely dig into that, because that’s something I also had to wrestle with, as well. Especially launching a podcast for about four and a half years ago. It’s uh, yeah, you definitely have to come to grips with that.
What do you do for fun these days? So fun for me would be a bike ride with my adult children and a Friday night kind of mini dance party cooking together with my husband. That was like just hanging out with with my family and something really simple, like a bike ride. I
love bike riding.
Yeah. Cooking while your husband actually dance the cooking dance party. How’s life? Ooh,
from Spain, so he’s, yeah, he actually does most of the cooking. He loves to cook. It’s his love language. And he cooks for me every day.
My husband My husband is does the majority of the cooking too. Although I will. I will confess that I am loving. I love YouTube. I learned how to make sushi this weekend. Oh, that’s so fun. Yeah, it was super fun. So yeah,
I love I love I do love cooking, do it. But right now he has more time than me. And our kids are grown. We have three children. And they’re grown and they’re gone. And he really loves cook. It relaxes him. And so we both love cooking, but that’s really his love language.
That is so nice to have. Yeah, likes to cook. Awesome. Well, thank you for playing along with the lightning round. So typically, what I do next is I would love to hear sort of your recovery story a little bit about what your family was like, and you know, maybe why you started drinking. And then what happened, that you decided that you wanted to stop if that was indeed I mean, at some point, I’m sure along the story, you decided you wanted to stop. So I would love to know how your journey went?
Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking. So let’s see, um, I was born in New Jersey, I’m the oldest of three girls. We lived there until I was in fifth grade. And the big kind of traumatic event that happened was when I was in second grade, my dad died. And he was young. He was 45 years old. And he died of heart failure. And he I do have a half brother and half sister from my dad’s first marriage. But when we were in when 1975 when I was in fifth grade, my mom said, Hey, girls, do you want to move to California? And I was like, Yeah, let’s go. She said there was this beautiful tunnel with a rainbow on it across the Golden Gate Bridge. And it sounded fun. And so we moved to California. And up until that point, I had been at a small school that had farm animals. And, you know, I was I had friends and it was a very kind of sheltered, simple childhood, in that sense. And when we moved to California, I went into a very big school and experienced bullying. So I mean, now I can trace it back to the fact that my dad died. And then the move and then the bullying like those are what would lift your your a score your adverse childhood experiences. And so I had one friend, and she’s in sixth grade, and she moved away and I just I had a really hard time for about four years. So sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grade, were pretty rough for me. And then in 10th, my mom could see that I was really struggling. And by 10th grade, she said, we’re going to switch schools and you’re going to go into a different school and on day one, I met a group of girlfriends and we instantly all hit it off and within a week or two had gone to my first keg party. So I put you know, hand in hand, I was maybe 14 or 15 by then I was a sophomore. I you know, for me just hand in hand went popularity, friends, alcohol, and it wasn’t like my first drink. Like some people describe their very first drink as being so magical. I barely remember it. But I do remember it. Feeling like drinking meant I could be, I could connect and have friends and all that. And so everyone that I kind of hung out with and you knew, drank the way I drank. And it was very normalized. I mean, this is the 80s in California. And I kept drinking through high school, college, went to Spain met my husband, we met in a bar. And it was something I did not worry about. It wasn’t I’m not one of those people that got sober really young, I now can look back and think, you know, I really liked alcohol, but I wouldn’t say it was interfering with my life. And then we, we moved, my husband and I moved to California, and then we moved to Miami, we had three children. And my drinking started to increase in my 40s. And by that time, I was homeschooling my three kids. And I was trying my hardest to be the perfect mom. That’s really like, My story is around perfectionism, worrying about what other people thought trying to do the best job ever taking, taking on too much staying too busy, and not really having any other way to self regulate, except for wine. And that was my thing was, you know, my glass of wine at the end of the day, which, you know, started to become more and more of a habit, then it became a daily, a daily habit, until I was 47. And I had stopped, I would stop drinking when I wanted to lose weight. So that’s that, you know, for me, like not drinking meant calories and all of that stuff. And then I would get to a goal weight, and I would just bring it back in. And I started to notice that every time I brought it back in it, I would get right back to the amount that I was drinking before. And so I’m in February of 2011, I decided to stop drinking, but I didn’t have a problem. So I didn’t need to get help.
You know, for me, it was like, You cut out chocolate, you cut out wine, you just you just do this, and you just you know was that whole like self will. And, um, that didn’t work. Because four months later, you know, I didn’t understand that I was you had been using alcohol to numb and regulate my feelings. So four months later, um, I picked it up again. And that took me very quickly to to July of 2011. When I literally from from one moment to the next I was like, Oh, I have a problem. So I wouldn’t have like, identified myself as having a problem. I just had a problem with managing it. I thought if I can just keep all these fires burning, I can continue to do this thing. And luckily, that I mean, for me, you know, thank goodness, I, I woke up, I woke up and you know, I had a moment of clarity. And I realized I can’t keep doing this. And so I reached out for help. And I stopped.
That’s it. So yeah, you into did you go through the traditional 12? I think I already have my answer to this 12 step. We’re
not going to say which one?
Absolutely. I reached out to a family member and she took me to my first 12 which was wonderful. I remember it so well. And I got sober in Seattle. I was on vacation. I was on vacation at my mom’s. And it was wonderful. I remember it was a very packed room. And I walked in and I was like deer in the headlights. I had thought I believe that I was totally alone in this. There was nobody like me. I was bad. And nobody else was as bad as I was. And I walked in and I was like all these people too. And I remember there was a little old lady, like across from me and she’s knitting. And I thought she had a problem with alcohol too. And it just made me want to cry. Yeah. And then in that meeting, they have greeters in Seattle and the greeter when I can’t gotten, you know, arrived, he greeted me and we said hello. And as I was leaving, because they asked us anybody on day one, I said I am and when I was leaving, he said just remember two things. Love yourself and no matter what Don’t pick up the first strike, which I thought was just, you know, of course I’ve heard it since but it was so profound to me. And I was like, Okay, okay, I can do that. That’s like a recipe card, you know, do these two things I can do that. things I can do. Right. And I thought to myself at the time, what does loving myself have to do with this? Oh, yeah, yeah, right. I know. It’s like, what does that have to do with this? Okay, sure. Why? And I’m sure enough, two weeks later, I remember thinking to myself, Oh, maybe just one drink? And I’m like, Oh, no, no, that guy told me no matter what, don’t make up the first one. And that’s kept me sober since
Oh, my gosh, that’s amazing. Love yourself. And it’s so funny, because a lot of the language and information doesn’t seem to make sense at first. But after repeated exposure and some context, it all starts to make sense. We get a sense of what to apply where, and yeah, it’s the simple truth. Love yourself, and don’t pick up the first drink Bowser. Yeah, great. So you got a sponsor and did the whole the
whole thing I did I did
your sponsor?
Oh, she walked up to me.
Oh, isn’t that nice?
She walked up to me. What so my story is, is that when I came back to Miami, I did drive bys where I knew where the location was, but I was like, too busy. And really what it was, is I was so afraid of seeing somebody who I knew, I will comment Oh, wrapped up in my own kind of reputation and the shame that we talked about. And so I actually didn’t go to two meetings for four months. And finally, I talked to another family member. And I was like, yeah, you know, I don’t drink anymore. And she was like, how do you love the meetings? And I was like, Well, I don’t really do those. And she’s like, well, that’s kind of part of it. And so I was like, okay, and, and so she say, Fine, a woman’s meeting, they’re gonna, you’re there, they will love you, being a newcomer. They’re just gonna love you. And I said, Okay, and so I knew where to go. And I went, and then I just started going, and then right away, like I said, that person walked up to me, and she was like, hey, do you want need a temporary sponsor? And I said, Yeah, and that was the beginning. And I, yeah, transformational is, is really, you know, everything. The way I look at it is nothing, not very much changed. On the outside. I don’t want to say nothing. But really, from the outside, probably nobody noticed. You know, I had a lot of people tell me, I didn’t even think you had a problem. And yeah, you know, and I just, I think I hit it really, really well. And from the outside, you would say, nothing’s changed, everything changed. For me on the inside. I mean, I don’t do not even, it’s hard for me to remember what it felt like to be me before 40, you know, earlier and I, it’s like, I feel like the way I like to describe is I get to live in a parallel universe. I completely right. Totally moved over to this whole other way of being where you connect, and you have deep conversations like you and I are having right now.
For sure.
It’s it’s just a different way of being and looking inside for like when things bother you looking at yourself and all the other things that I was never interested, I was never interested in any of those, you know, therapy or meditation or sitting quietly or
that’s so funny. So it sounds like
you’re just very high functioning. And, and I hear that a lot from people that are high functioning is that the the outside opinions of people that are high functioning? It’s like, Oh, I don’t think you have a problem. Did your husband ever tell you he was worried about your drinking?
Yes. So I yeah, I wouldn’t say I was high functioning. He definitely was like, Hey, you got to pull yourself together. But we didn’t really understand any of this, you know, and my kids notice, but really, that was about it. I mean, maybe I don’t know, I don’t really know if other people noticed, you know, I thought of myself as a party girl. And I was I was very you know, I loved anything frenetic and hyper and pop, you know, like, that was the way I was coping was keeping really busy and being kind of hyperactive. And now I can see that’s I was self medicating. Yeah, right.
Did you experience a blood lockouts are like losing periods of time or did you get fired from jobs or DUIs or anything like that?
No, no, no DUIs. I mean, I was a stay at home mom. So
me to get fired from here.
I didn’t I didn’t fire myself.
Yeah, I was, you know, full time stay at home homeschooling mom. So, you know, no, no outer consequences no DUIs nothing like that. I would say towards the very and that’s another book that I love, by the way is blackout. I think it’s a hot pursuit papilla
you’re the second person to recommend that.
That’s a really good. Oh, really? That’s a really I really enjoyed that book. And that’s been interesting to me. I would say by the end. I haven’t you didn’t black out. What I was gonna say is by the end. Yeah. By the end, I had some brownouts. Definitely where I was, I would you know, by the very end, I was in conversations, and then afterwards, it would be, you know, chunks of time where I was not, you know, remembering it all the next day.
All the time.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, you Oh, yeah. Not even
sober again. Right? I did. I
got sober when I was 25. But I started drinking, probably when I was like, 10. Not I mean, I obviously didn’t drink every day. But I started drinking super young and black started blacking out almost immediately.
Oh, if you haven’t read that book, then you’d be super interested because she really gets into kind of the biology because not everybody blacks out.
I know. That’s so crazy. I feel sorry for people who have to remember everything. Now I remember feeling like I remember when I first started drinking, I was like junior high, like on the weekends with friends. And I remember thinking, like, parts of the evening were like dreams. I was like, was that a dream? Or Did that really happen? That kind of thing. But I think the very first time I drank, I just remember, like, I did miss pieces of the evening. But yeah, that that was crazy. I started way too young. But yeah, definitely at the end, I had like no recollection of like entire evenings.
Well, I mean, maybe that’s what got you into recovery. So if you were if you were blacking out almost from the get go. I mean, you like you said from the very first time that you tried. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that’s so that’s your brain constitution? I think. I mean, that’s kind of what that book is about. It’s super interesting.
I’ll check it out. Yeah. Okay. So I also am aware, and you don’t have to answer this question if you don’t want to, but I am aware that you had some trauma in your past and that stuff that you’ve been addressing lately, do you want to just share as much or as little about that?
Yeah, I
feel comfortable with?
Yeah, um, you know, I just recently did a bubble hour interview, and I talked about it on there. And just to say that I do have part of, you know, my recovery is from sexual trauma. And that did happen in my childhood. Like I said, my dad died. And so this was with one of my mom’s boyfriends. And the interesting thing about it is that, of course, I think maybe I was nine or 10. At the time, I, you know, you’ve nothing to compare it to. So you don’t know. And I normalized it. And it kind of just got tucked away. And it wasn’t something that I ever really even worried about, or thought about. I mean, early on. And when I first got sober and told my story, it wasn’t part of my story. And it wasn’t until the me to movement, that I, I revisited it, and I actually revisited with my mom. And she and I were both talking about our HDMI two stuff. And it kind of came forward then. And I took it to my therapist, and I was like, hey, but what was that about? And that was kind of the beginning of me really looking at it from a different angle. And so I have done the work around it. And now I guess I’m talking about it public. You know, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it’s a very it’s a difficult subject, you know, but it’s very common. I also had sexual trauma when I was growing up, and for me, it defined who I was thought I was, right? It happened to me really young, and it was a repeated thing, but it happened to me. really young. It defined who I thought I was, it made me feel like I As a bad person, did you also wrestle with those things? Or you said you normalized it. So does that mean? You didn’t feel bad about it?
No, um, I felt like I. I dealt with it in the moment. And I did not, I don’t know. But I don’t feel like I felt bad about it. And I didn’t actually even dislike the person, because he remained in our lives. I mean, he was around us, and he was a nice person. And so now, as an adult, I can say, I’m glad I was, I was kind of feisty, and I stood up for myself. And I’m glad that I did that. And yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know the extent of it, I do know that there are certain things that I’ve stored in my body. And this was where the inner child stuff comes in. Because if I can just tell you like how I even got interested in inner child work is really connected to this.
Tell me about what inner child work means to you can maybe can define it a little bit and maybe share some
practice. I mean, I think the way I look at it is your inner child is really the part of your mind your brain that was formed in childhood. So it’s like your emotions, your beliefs, your stories, the things that scare you how you felt abandoned, that all formed in childhood, and how you are now interacting in the world, in your adult body. Based on those fears, and beliefs and stories that you might not even be aware of. So it could be subconscious, right? So, for example, one of mine is angry people scare me. So if I’m in a public place, and someone’s yelling, I will feel really tense and like, become hyper alert. Um, I’m very hyper vigilant. And now I understand that that’s stuff from my childhood. And so things like that, like interacting with the world today, with beliefs and fears that were started in childhood. That’s kind of how I look at it. So really, going back and doing inner child work is really re parenting. That part of you that got scared.
Okay, I love that re parenting the part of you that got scared or felt abandoned or,
right. And the thing about doing it, the inner child work is that it’s hard to see things like sometimes we have this idea that, you know, like abandonment has to be this big traumatic thing, right? I might it but it might not be a big dramatic thing. You know, some like some people say big t trauma, little t trauma. It might be just something like being scared going into kindergarten, or being worried when your mom went out, you know, in the evening and put lipstick on, I remember my mom putting on perfume and feeling like oh, no, she’s gonna leave. Now. That’s not, you know, a huge abandonment, but it’s how I felt. So it’s how it’s kind of like the the ideas that were formed in childhood that you bring with you into adulthood.
Okay. Yeah, I like the differentiation between little t trauma and big t trauma, because I feel like trauma is like on a scale, just like addiction is on a scale. It’s like a spectrum. I should maybe I should say, a spectrum where Yeah, low grade, and then it. It can be, you know, did you feel abandonment, like when your father passed away, like, obviously, it wasn’t his choice. But did you have to deal with feelings of abandonment from when your father died?
Yeah, I mean, it was mostly just grief. Like, it’s so much sadness, like, Oh, I don’t get to. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I don’t get to see him again. And then, yeah, absolutely. My, I have great memories of my father. And, you know, one day he was gone, he died of a heart attack so sudden, and I was at the end of second grade. And it was a big loss. It was definitely a big loss. I missed him. I still do. Yeah, 57 I still do because really, you know, when you’re a kid, you kind of just make do and it was just part of our reality, and our dad died. You know, that was part of our reality. But then when I met my husband, and on my wedding day, I was like, Oh, I wish you were here. When I had my children. I was like, Oh, I wish that they knew grandpa Gerard and I kind of kept him alive and for my for my kids by talking about him. But even the other day, I was thinking I really wish he was around, you know, yeah, he sounds like a cool guy. Yeah, he was amazing.
Okay, so I want to transition a little bit to So now, I mean, so you’ve been gotten public with some very intimate information. And thank you so much for sharing that. Because, you know, that is part of normalizing, you know, things that happened to us, it’s part of normalizing pain. And you and I had had a discussion before about anonymity because I was also got sober through 12 step programs, and anonymity is the foundation of, you know, the whole the whole thing. And while I get the need for privacy and anonymity, because like you, I was scared to death, that I would run into somebody I know, it didn’t like, taught on me, that was not funny. But if they were there, they were they too, were also struggling. So funny. Didn’t quite connect the dots. Right? Again, if they are in the same room, it’s for the same reason for the same reasons. But I did. I did appreciate having that sort of shelter and protection of the anonymity. So I feel like there’s a time and a place for it. But then again, in our broader society, there’s it’s still so shocking to me how stigmatized, mental health issues are, you know, like people like, Oh, don’t I told the lady not too long ago, we were talking about the coming out process of when you’re in recovery, or you don’t drink or do drugs, or whatever. It’s like, you pick and choose the timing of when you tell somebody and you share that information. I shared it with somebody recently. She gasped. She was like, Oh, really? I thought that was so funny. Yeah, really? I was like, ah, not you. Yeah, that’s me.
Yeah, I mean, we we’re in such a different space now. Because we’re in a place where we celebrate recovery. I mean, pretty much everyone I interact with, over. So it’s, it’s so you know, it just feels like so normal to me. Now. It’s, it’s, but it’s absolutely. You know, the truth is, that it is stigmatized, and there is kind of shame. Still, I feel like it’s rapid. And I really don’t know why. The anonymity, you know why that was that way in the late 1930s, and 40s. Um, you know, I just, I don’t really know the history of it. And I do feel like for reasons for mental health, that that there needs to be a coming out there needs to be lessening of the stigma. And it’s going to only happen when we recover out loud. So you
know, so part of the history is that there were two things that spurred on the anonymity from what I understand is that the people who were, you know, as funny is people used to get sober through letters, like they would No, I’ve heard Yes, not while Yeah, so it’s like people now who are getting sober on zoom. You know, to me, I’m like, that’s a step up from how they used to do it in the beginning, right? Imagine trying to, you know, process your feelings, and you write it in a letter and you send it in your way, like maybe a couple weeks before you get a response. That’s so nuts. But in the beginning, these people what there were so few of them, that they had to be anonymous, because they were inundated with requests for health. There were there was like nothing out there. And there were just 1000s millions of people who are struggling. And then the other thing was, is that they were also anonymous, because they felt that it would limit their financial prospects. Like if it got out that they were a quote unquote, alcoholic, that they would not be employable. And so those two things are outdated, Reagan can totally get a job, if you are, you know, in recovery, and there are lots and lots of people available to help. So I feel like we really need as a community, we really need to revisit the whole idea of anonymity, because I’m with you, we need to recover out loud. That’s how the information gets out there.
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think each person gets to do it in their own way. But it shouldn’t be that we can’t talk about it or that if we do talk about it, we’re so ashamed. And I think you know, like, like you said, like if you have to stay anonymous because you’re afraid you’re not going to be able to get a job or you’ll be fired for your job. I think that There’s still some of that around the people feel like that what, you know, we’re worried about what other people think of us. And I, you know, when I likened it to, if I had anything else, any other kind of disease, you know, I don’t know about the disease model or how you feel about that. But if I had anything else, and I was able to just let people know, I’ll give you an example. Okay, so my daughter was a Girl Scout, and in the Girl Scout troop, um, oh, I think everybody else, all the other women were breast cancer survivors, and, you know, pink ribbon all the way and they talked about it openly. And I remember one time the topic of addiction came up, and someone said, Oh, my brother in law or money, you know, this type of thing. And I remember just staying quiet, and feeling maybe mad at myself that I didn’t say anything, but also feeling like why didn’t really have a place to sit, you know, like, and I thought to myself, where’s my pink ribbon? You know, like, I want to be able to say, like, this is my story. This is what happened to me, this is, you know, this is so common. And I think there’s also a connection with the legal system, you know, the sharing, you know, people being jailed versus getting actual help, you know, the system with rehabs and all of that. So I think by talking about it, I mean, I think this is the hope. And I know that this is what she recovers, saying, When you’re ready, recover out loud, so that more money is put into research so that more conversations are happening so that more people can be helped. And it’s, it’s really across the board with all mental health.
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