273. The Nine Truths That Just Might Heal Us with Laura McKowen

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Speaker 3 Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 3 If you are here, you are brave because you did the exercise that Laura asked us to do in the last episode, which is to figure out what our thing is that is keeping us from peace, freedom, truth, integrity, whether that thing is overworking, overshopping, drinking, codependency, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 You sat with yourself, you asked yourself in the quiet two questions, how do I feel and what do I want?

Speaker 3 Laura McCowan is the author of the best-selling memoir, We Are the Luckiest, The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life, and Push Off From Here, Nine Essential Truths to Get You Through Life and Everything Else.

Speaker 3 she has written for the new york times and has been featured in the wall street journal the guardian the atlantic the today show and more in 2020 she founded the luckiest club a global sobriety support community laura lives with her daughter and partner on the north shore of boston laura

Speaker 3 if these people are ready to confront the thing

Speaker 3 that they want to stop in their lives, to rip off the band-aid so that they can finally address the trauma beneath.

Speaker 2 How the hell do they do it?

Speaker 3 You have nine truths that you walk people through.

Speaker 4 Can I repeat them now?

Speaker 3 Please do, sister.

Speaker 4 One, it is not your fault. Two, it is your responsibility.
Three, it is unfair that this is your thing.

Speaker 2 Four, this is your thing.

Speaker 4 Five, this will never stop being your thing until you face it. Six, you can't do it alone.
Seven, only you can do it. Eight, I love you.
Nine, I will never stop reminding you of these things.

Speaker 4 Can we start with one and two?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 We talked a little bit about one on the last episode of it is not your fault.

Speaker 4 Number two is it is your responsibility. And I

Speaker 4 think that your framing of responsibility is so

Speaker 4 correct and liberating because I think that we live in this world where

Speaker 4 responsibility feels like something we owe to others and your

Speaker 4 concept of responsibility not being a burden but responsibility always leads to freedom yeah

Speaker 4 can you talk about that because when we take responsibility we are taking our freedom back yeah

Speaker 2 i first want to say about it's not your fault, just to, because it will set this up. So it's not your fault.

Speaker 2 People have a very strong reaction to this,

Speaker 2 not surprisingly, because

Speaker 2 of the sort of

Speaker 2 glorified notion of personal responsibility that we worship in our culture and the misunderstanding of what that means. So it sounds very victim-y to say it's not my fault.

Speaker 2 All that means is there are things in your life that you could not control

Speaker 2 for everybody. You couldn't control how you grew up, the environment you were in,

Speaker 2 your body,

Speaker 2 your appearance. There are so many things you can't control.
Okay. That's all that means.

Speaker 2 And just acknowledging that, because it sets aside enough of the burden of what we think responsibility is so that you can actually take responsibility.

Speaker 3 Also, there's queerness, there's being different races, there's ableism, there's a million things for how you

Speaker 3 could have been born into the world that we live in that caused you trauma.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 But also, as a person who is, and Abby will laugh, semi-obsessed with trying to figure out if I'm a good person or a bad person, I don't understand.

Speaker 3 I'm constantly like,

Speaker 3 I don't know. I think I might be a really bad person.
Is she a good person? Is he a good person?

Speaker 3 How do we know if we're good and bad? Your moon situation?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 Your moon metaphor has helped me so much, Laura.

Speaker 2 Believing you are good is like believing in the half moon.

Speaker 2 I didn't say that. That's Thomas Lloyd Qualls or quote that right for me, but

Speaker 2 I did not say that. But yes, believing you are good is like believing in the half moon.
Believing you are bad is like believing in the half moon. The whole moon is there all the time.

Speaker 3 The whole moon is there all the time.

Speaker 3 And so this is what helped me about it is that, because when you you are a person who lived with as an addict for half your life and then you become sober and you're being good, you don't know if you're a bad person who's now acting good

Speaker 3 or if you were a good person who in the beginning was acting bad.

Speaker 2 Okay. So when you're both frauds.

Speaker 3 And you're both frauds. Right.
So that's why every time I make a mistake or I'm late or do something, I'm scared shitless because I think what's happening

Speaker 3 is that my badness is being exposed.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 I went through something a couple days ago and I made a mistake with someone and I felt so awful because I thought, this is bad. I'm a bad person.

Speaker 3 And I remembered your writing and I thought, no, no, no, what's happening right now is this part of me is being illuminated.

Speaker 3 Like the moon.

Speaker 3 Right now,

Speaker 3 I did this.

Speaker 2 It's a full moon right now. Yeah.
It was a full moon.

Speaker 3 It's not like, why did I do that? I'm a good person. Why did I do that? No, it's like, oh, no, I did that because there's a part of me that's like selfish and kind of scared and nasty.
That's why.

Speaker 3 Because there's a part of me that is those things. And that part's being illuminated right now.
But everybody has a part of them that is that thing.

Speaker 3 So now I just need to apologize and not be in a shame spiral about it.

Speaker 2 Yes. I'm so glad you said that because For me, I could not have written that chapter until I was eight years sober.

Speaker 2 Because one of my therapists joke, we named my coping mechanisms because it makes them funny and easily identifiable. And one of mine is categorically wrong.

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 you're just categorically wrong or bad would be another way to put it. Like you're just bad.
You're wrong. You're bad.
And so you take the blame for everything.

Speaker 2 And you're just a bad person. And sorry, you know, like the yuck feeling that you get when you, like what you just described.
I lived in that for like all of my life.

Speaker 2 And it's really only started to clear up now in the last couple of years of sobriety. And it still gets me, but I get what you mean.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the thing that I have to remind myself of

Speaker 2 and that everyone needs to hear is that what Abby said earlier is something that I wrote in We Are the Luckiest, which is we are all capable of everything.

Speaker 2 Not because you're uniquely bad or you are a defect at the factory, or like some people have it and some people don't. No, we are all capable of everything.
It is sometimes called the shadow.

Speaker 2 It's in everybody.

Speaker 2 This is another reason why addiction is such a gift or any

Speaker 2 initiation through

Speaker 2 letting go of your thing and going through the pain of that because you can see

Speaker 2 how fallible

Speaker 2 and vulnerable you are as a human being and how capable you are of darkness.

Speaker 2 And then,

Speaker 2 also, how capable you are of light and goodness, and that those things are always there.

Speaker 2 But when we go around acting or trying to just be good, and believing, therefore, that other people are bad,

Speaker 2 we are always going to be stuck and we are always going to be in this personal hell of our own because we can't avoid the fact that the moon is fault.

Speaker 2 Yes, we just can't. The thing about it's not your fault is like I resisted this and resisted this and resisted this because this is not the culture I grew up in.
It was very,

Speaker 2 you know, personal responsibility at all costs. We are not a victim.

Speaker 2 We never act like one. And there was a whole gaslighting layer there around like just not acknowledging reality for people.

Speaker 2 But accepting that it's not my fault, specifically the addiction was very hard for me. So I want to

Speaker 2 really let people know that this doesn't have to come easy. You don't have to actually believe it.
Just maybe consider. that there is an entire system that you were born into.

Speaker 2 There's an entire family that you were born into. There's an entire culture.

Speaker 2 And to imagine that everything, good or bad, that has come from your life is a result of you

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 only absurd and unhelpful, but it's kind of

Speaker 2 ridiculous. Like that just isn't true.

Speaker 2 You are not God, you know?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's almost like a logical leap more than a

Speaker 2 like heart spiritual leap. Let's just look at the facts here.
Let's like look at how things really work.

Speaker 3 It's a surrender. It's a different

Speaker 2 surrender. Yeah.
And this is why,

Speaker 2 again, going back to why I wish everyone was in recovery is because unless you have seen that the limits of your own capability and your own will and your own control, you are always going to think that you are driving everything.

Speaker 2 That's right. Right.
And you will have no compassion for other people.

Speaker 3 Yes, that's right. Yes, let's go to number two.
I feel like I could talk to you about every single one of these for 16 hours, but let's go to number two.

Speaker 3 So, we've accepted that there are things in our lives that we cannot control. We have accepted that it's not our fault,

Speaker 3 and also it's not their fault. Yeah, the things that happened to them.

Speaker 2 Tragically, number two is

Speaker 2 the bad guys, the good guys.

Speaker 3 Because I'd be okay just

Speaker 3 ending after one, which is why I've been sober.

Speaker 3 I've been sober for 20. It's your fault, two years, and I am on the first step.
I'm considering, I'm considering step two.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 It is not your fault. It is your responsibility.

Speaker 3 Sister is obsessed with this one. So it makes sense, sister, that I'm obsessed with.
It's not your response.

Speaker 2 Do you like how it's like one and two?

Speaker 4 Let's not even talk about one.

Speaker 2 You know what's so funny is having no now knowing what Enneagram numbers you all are because I've studied Enneagram for so long this is an aside I thought I would not learn anything listening to Suzanne Stebiel and it totally blew my mind and I love her but now it is so Enneagram three to be like let's just go to the responsibility part because this is so fun I love this

Speaker 2 I love that it's my responsibility and I rock it.

Speaker 4 Well, specifically the idea of responsibility that I'm obsessed with is your framing of it not as you take on the burden of responsibility to fix all this shit.

Speaker 4 Responsibility is a taking on of your freedom. You say responsibility always leads to freedom.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So responsibility is

Speaker 2 there's an important distinction that I make. It's you are not responsible for everything, but you're just responsible for your experience.

Speaker 2 And even that needs to have a few caveats because some people are in environments where they can't control what's happening around them and to them. But at the base level, let's just call

Speaker 2 the inner sanctum of our minds.

Speaker 2 We have to be responsible for that space

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 finding where we have a choice,

Speaker 2 acknowledging that where we are making choices versus where we aren't or can't

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 choosing,

Speaker 2 even if we are consciously choosing things that we don't like, that we don't necessarily want,

Speaker 2 that we have to do,

Speaker 2 we are in choice about it.

Speaker 2 Meaning, like,

Speaker 2 a lot of people confuse obligation and duty with responsibility.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm so responsible, but I'm so angry. I'm so resentful.
I've done everything right. I do all the things I'm supposed to do.
That's not taking responsibility for your experience. That's right.

Speaker 2 Taking responsibility for your experience, the hardest and probably the most important thing you could do is to ask for help.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Which is

Speaker 2 counterintuitive.

Speaker 2 The number one most important thing that most people can do to take responsibility for their experience is to ask for help.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 saying,

Speaker 2 I don't have this.

Speaker 2 I am out of depth. I don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 That's like the ultimate act of responsibility.

Speaker 2 I know it's cringe.

Speaker 1 It's so cringe.

Speaker 4 Because to me, responsibility is the opposite of like things are happening to me

Speaker 4 and therefore

Speaker 4 there is only one available response because what is one to do when all of these things are happening to me so my response is a foregone conclusion in light of all of these things exactly if you are just working so hard to be good and you are doing all kinds of things in your life that

Speaker 2 aren't who you actually are or what you actually want

Speaker 2 you're doing them to be good.

Speaker 2 And you're calling that responsible.

Speaker 2 There's no freedom there. Nope.

Speaker 3 Because responsible means able to respond. Able to respond from integrity.

Speaker 3 So if you're just reacting all the time, Responsibility is the pause between the stimulus and the reaction, the yes or no, the yes in my life for that or the no in my life for that.

Speaker 3 Responsibility is stopping, deciding how do I feel, what do I want, and then responding. If we are

Speaker 3 just hitting balls back like a tennis thing,

Speaker 2 tennis

Speaker 2 game,

Speaker 3 then

Speaker 3 we are

Speaker 3 acting from our subconscious. The Carl Jung, if we do not take responsibility for our life, we will, we will.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what we do not bring into consciousness will come to us as fate. Things will just keep happening to you.

Speaker 2 You will keep dating the same narcissist, you will keep having the same interaction with your mother, the same dynamics will keep showing up in your relationships, in your life, in every part of your world

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 you are not able

Speaker 2 or willing to ask yourself what your part is in what's happening. That's right.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So that is where responsibility comes in.
It's not

Speaker 2 I have to take on the weight of the world and fix everything. It's what is my part and the part I can control and where do I have a choice and am I choosing that?

Speaker 3 Which is so interesting because it's the opposite of how we present responsibility. It's the opposite of it.

Speaker 2 Totally. We use personal responsibility as like this cudgel to like just beat people down.

Speaker 2 Like you're not where you should be because this is where everybody who you know is and you should be there by now or whatever yeah responsibility culturally is have you met your achievement framework metrics exactly yes have you hit your home run right right right and it's really the opposite as opposed to are you doing your life on purpose yes are you that's what responsibility to the extent that you can based on your particular

Speaker 3 you know this is not to say you can just create the life you want. Like, I don't believe that.
But within the framework you have,

Speaker 3 have you taken the time to decide how you feel, what you want? Yeah. When the world comes at you, are you deciding yes or no?

Speaker 2 On purpose. Yes.
On purpose. What I wrote in the book was, am I aware of how I'm contributing to my suffering and the suffering of those around me?

Speaker 2 Am I doing what I can to decrease that suffering?

Speaker 2 Am I willing to let go of what I can't control and change what I can?

Speaker 2 Do I have a sense of freedom in my heart and in my mind?

Speaker 2 And if not, what's the next step that I can take?

Speaker 2 The freedom part to me is the biggest. Yes.
Because

Speaker 2 if you genuinely know that, to use an AA phrase, that your side of the street is clean,

Speaker 2 you are genuinely showing up

Speaker 2 according to your values. You are telling the truth.

Speaker 2 You are

Speaker 2 admitting when you're wrong.

Speaker 2 You are noticing the patterns of your own behavior that contribute to the dysfunction around you or the suffering of your life and others.

Speaker 2 There is a freedom in your mind when you know that you are doing that. Yep.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 And when there's not,

Speaker 2 you feel resentful.

Speaker 2 You feel angry a lot of the time. So, here are some good tip-offs to know if you're not in responsibility.
And there's no morality around this, by the way. It's like a tool you can pick up.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Are you angry a lot? Are you resentful a lot? Do you feel out of control a lot? Like things are just happening to you.

Speaker 2 Those are pretty good tip-offs that you're not taking responsibility for your experience.

Speaker 2 And it is a hard pill to swallow. Yeah.

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Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 3 three.

Speaker 3 It is unfair that this is your thing.

Speaker 2 We kind of talked about this in the last episode, but this is really just about

Speaker 2 needing to be seen

Speaker 2 in our pain and our sorrow and having someone say,

Speaker 2 I'm so sorry and this sucks.

Speaker 2 It's like emotional honesty, really.

Speaker 2 Because for me, it was all pretending, it's fine. I'm fine.
Everything's fine.

Speaker 2 I shouldn't feel sad about letting letting go of this thing that is killing me and ruining the lives of the people around me. I shouldn't feel sad about that.
Who am I to feel sad about it?

Speaker 2 I just need to fix it.

Speaker 2 And this is acknowledging, like, this just sucks. It's painful.
I learned from Tara Brock: when our pain and our sorrow is not witnessed, we don't feel real.

Speaker 2 And when we don't feel real,

Speaker 2 we feel inhuman. It's one of the worst things that we can feel feel is to not feel like a human being, like our experience is valid.

Speaker 2 And when someone just says to you, this sucks, and I'm so sorry it's happening, it's not fair.

Speaker 2 God, that it's such a relief. And it's so simple.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So it's just that acknowledgement.
I love it.

Speaker 4 Until you get that affirmation, until you really can have someone see you in that and you can accept that this is not fair, then all you're going to be doing is circling around in that it's not fair.

Speaker 4 Like it is a condition precedent to getting beyond that to just be like,

Speaker 4 the reality is this is not fair. And I can live here for the rest of my life.
Or I can accept that this is not fair and continue down the road.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And like the other things, the number one and two, three and four go together. Like, it's unfair that this is your thing,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 sorry,

Speaker 2 it's your thing. This is your thing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it helped me so much to think about. I was thinking back on my early recovery this time and last time, and all of your talking about

Speaker 3 your obsession with,

Speaker 3 okay, there's two doors. One is the door where I'm drinking,

Speaker 3 the other is the door where I can drink.

Speaker 3 But I refuse to believe that there is not a third door.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 That is,

Speaker 3 oh my God. I don't know how to explain to you how much that is always what I'm thinking, honestly.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 3 No, truly, I mean, in hard decisions, in all that, you can know it's this or this, and you will die

Speaker 3 believing that there might be a third door. So this is like really important in all decisions, not just sobriety.
Can Can you just say what is important to you that people know about

Speaker 3 number four? This

Speaker 3 is your thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, this is all about acceptance that reality is reality.

Speaker 2 The third door for me, we didn't cover this, but I didn't stop drinking the morning after leaving Ama in a hotel room. It took me a whole year after that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was in what I call purgatory, which is like you're straddling two worlds. And

Speaker 2 I was looking for the third door because I just could not accept reality.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I mean, there is no third door. I will give everyone that spoiler alert.
There is no third door.

Speaker 2 Sometimes we face what is in the true Greek tragedy sense of the word, a dilemma where neither option

Speaker 2 is good or feels good.

Speaker 2 And yet we have to make a decision. We have to take one foot out of one world and put both feet in the other.

Speaker 2 And so this is just about acceptance and it's a process. It's not a light switch.
I love, love, love Cheryl Strade's line of acceptance is a small, quiet room.

Speaker 2 And I think of that constantly when I am trying to accept things that I don't want to accept. It's a process.

Speaker 2 But there's also on the other side of that, on the other side of this is your thing, if you can allow that to land in your body,

Speaker 2 it will hurt so bad.

Speaker 2 It will break your heart. It will seem like the end of everything.
And it might be.

Speaker 2 But you will also notice that there is relief.

Speaker 2 There's always relief. And that's how you know.

Speaker 1 And now I think even at this point in my sobriety,

Speaker 1 it took me, I think, a while to get here, but I kind of wear the acceptance of it as like a badge of honor now.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like you wear the acceptance of that this was your thing as a badge of honor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 1 you were really fucked up.

Speaker 2 And it's like, okay, yeah. You claimed it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like put like a period exclamation point at the end of the sentence now, like, this is my thing.

Speaker 2 And it also keeps it very close to never forget.

Speaker 1 Like the fact that I can wear it with an honor is like, no, no.

Speaker 1 This is your thing, dude.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's amazing that this is your thing is not a once and done. Like I, I know, it's all every day.

Speaker 2 Like Laura, I am

Speaker 3 what, 27,000 years in. I am in another lay of recovery.
I understand everything. I talk about it all day.
I'm doing, and I still,

Speaker 3 this morning will be upstairs going, I mean, it's probably, I probably don't need breakfast today.

Speaker 3 It's probably okay.

Speaker 2 Yep. Like.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 And then I still have to be like, oh, no, no, no, this small quiet room of you have lost privileges of deciding

Speaker 3 permanently.

Speaker 2 This is why number nine exists because we

Speaker 2 should continually be reminded forever and ever and ever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 tell us about this will never stop being your thing until you face it.

Speaker 2 So it's one thing to accept that this is your thing, and that's huge.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 we have to actually

Speaker 2 do the work, unfortunately. And what that means is a little bit different for everybody, but it's always something about

Speaker 2 self-awareness.

Speaker 2 What we just talked about, how am I contributing to this, to my life?

Speaker 2 What's my part in things?

Speaker 2 What's underneath it? So that big boiling scab that we've been talking about,

Speaker 2 usually trauma.

Speaker 2 What's under there? Like, what happened? How did this happen? And how did I get here? What is this pattern of lying? Like, for me, that was the biggest part is what is this pattern of lying and why?

Speaker 2 Where did it start? And what I found was so much more benevolent and kind than what I thought.

Speaker 2 It wasn't that I'm just a

Speaker 2 lying, cheating piece of shit.

Speaker 2 It's, I was afraid. I was a kid who didn't have choices.
And so I did what I did to survive. And it worked.

Speaker 2 And you just keep going. You keep doing what works.
So

Speaker 2 you got to face it. And there's a few different parts that I identified, five of them.

Speaker 2 One, and this would be what the work consists of or is

Speaker 2 around these principles. One is acceptance, acceptance of self and acceptance of everything else.
Two is honesty. You got to learn to be honest.
And this goes for everybody.

Speaker 2 For me, that is the bottom line measure of sobriety now. Like, am I being honest with myself and other people or am I not?

Speaker 2 And if I'm not, for whatever reason, if I'm holding a little bit back for myself

Speaker 2 or if I'm outright lying, I'm not well.

Speaker 2 I'm not sober. And that will happen long before I ever pick up a drink or do anything else.
So honesty, learning how to be honest, because it is a learned thing.

Speaker 2 Connection, which is very annoying to me. I don't like it.
I need it. We all need it.
But I'm not, you know, I say all the time, I'm like not a joiner. I'm not warm and fuzzy in groups.

Speaker 2 All the yummy, wonderful, lovey things that people say that they get out of. connecting with others in a group and recovery and all that.
I don't feel that way. For me, it's more of a practical thing.

Speaker 2 And of course, I do desire connection more than anything. I mean, I do need it, but I'm talking to the people out there who kind of cringe at that, like,

Speaker 2 I get it, like connection, but I don't want to do that. And then there is embodiment,

Speaker 2 which I don't think you can heal without involving the body.

Speaker 2 I don't think you can face your trauma, your past, your history without involving your body, because your body

Speaker 2 has so much more information than your mind.

Speaker 2 And then, service.

Speaker 2 And service is a tricky one, especially for women, because they feel like their entire life is service. And, like, what do you mean? I need to be of service.

Speaker 2 If you just learned how to be honest with yourself and others, that is the biggest act of service in the world.

Speaker 2 Just existing as an honest person in the world.

Speaker 2 You've checked that box. You're good.
So rare. God, it's so rare.
It is, I know. Honesty.
And it's like that is a continual practice for me.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, God.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I tried to be impeccable with my word one year after I read like the Four Agreements 20 years ago.

Speaker 2 It was the hardest year of my life. I know.

Speaker 1 Way harder than giving up drinking.

Speaker 4 On this number five,

Speaker 4 for a

Speaker 4 shortcut to get an idea about

Speaker 4 how you begin to face it.

Speaker 4 Laura has a question. She said, What would you say if you weren't trying to be strong?

Speaker 4 What would you say if you told the truth?

Speaker 4 If you just

Speaker 4 think about that for a second, what would you say if you weren't trying to be strong?

Speaker 4 You might

Speaker 4 start to get a glimpse of what you need to face.

Speaker 2 Yes. I love that.
Yes.

Speaker 4 You can't do it alone.

Speaker 2 Also, annoying. Bummer.

Speaker 4 Big capital B bummer.

Speaker 2 My least favorite.

Speaker 4 Is this the community piece? Yes.

Speaker 2 Does this tell us? Yes. Yeah.
I mean, it goes back to what I said about responsibility. And for me, and for most people, I know asking for help is the ultimate act of responsibility.

Speaker 2 I couldn't get sober alone. I tried very hard.
I I did not want anyone to see what was happening

Speaker 2 to me, inside of me, none of that.

Speaker 2 I always wanted to keep an extra, like 10%, 20% for myself. I'm just not going to show you this.
And look, you don't need to be that way with everybody,

Speaker 2 obviously. But yeah, you can't do it alone.
Like one of my best friends, name is Jim Zartman, and he says there is sanity in community. Yes.

Speaker 2 And I love that. And I've learned that from him

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 we sometimes are not

Speaker 2 well.

Speaker 2 And I think Anne Lamotte said something similar, like, just as long as we don't all go crazy at the same time, like we're good.

Speaker 2 And if you are in community of people that are paying attention to you and paying attention to your life and you're paying attention to theirs, and they can tell when you're not okay, and they can stand in and they can take some of the weight.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And then when they're not doing so well, you do the same. There's sanity and community.
Another way to look at that is like, my mind does not always tell me the best things to do.

Speaker 2 Like I had to learn how to date and be in a healthy relationship by listening to other people.

Speaker 2 Like me tell an experience of what happened and have other people who had my best interests in mind reflect back to me what had actually happened.

Speaker 2 Because what my mind would tell me what happened was so colored by trauma and all of my shit that it was skewed. Yeah.
It was not right.

Speaker 2 And so I, if I didn't have the sanity that came from community, I would just keep repeating the same pattern over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 And also, if you're worried about not having a community yet, that was me when I first got sober. I did not know where to turn.
I didn't, I didn't ever consider going to an AA meeting.

Speaker 1 And actually what ended up happening is I got a DUI and the world found out about my problem before I could say I need help. And so I then decided I was just going to tell my story.

Speaker 1 And what I found was with the response from people is when I realized that A, I wasn't alone. And then I felt like, oh, this isn't just something I have to suffer with silently.

Speaker 1 I can now go and find these communities. Like, so sometimes you don't know which communities to go to or how to, how to ask for help.

Speaker 1 Sometimes just saying like the thing out loud without asking necessarily for help is like, I've got this problem.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2 And like the amount of

Speaker 1 people that have come to me that said, me too, me too, me too. Like the phone calls, the voicemail, the one, I got one voicemail after I got my DUI, and it was from this former teammate of mine.

Speaker 1 And it touched me so deeply because it just made me feel less alone.

Speaker 2 I'm so glad you said that. The other thing is you don't need, like, it only ever starts with one person.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think people imagine that they need an entire squad around them or a giant group of people.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, you do kind of build that, hopefully, but it just starts with one person, telling the truth to one person.

Speaker 2 And I like how you put it that way. And it goes back to the whole honesty thing.
Like, if you can just start to tell the truth a little bit, you will start to have community. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Because there is so much

Speaker 2 freedom and

Speaker 2 honesty. We all want it desperately.
We all want it, but we don't know how to do it or we're too afraid to do it.

Speaker 2 But man, the people that are ready for you and the people that want to be in your community, that want to be in your circle, when they hear you speak the truth, they're going to find you.

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I went through it in my first marriage.

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Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 because Laura always gives us good news and then bad news, so we don't have to do it alone, but tragically number seven is that only we can do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this just could, I almost had this chapter be that sentence. Only you can do it.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay,

Speaker 2 no, but it's so important.

Speaker 3 It's so important because you can convince yourself that if you just go to enough things.

Speaker 3 If you just show up at enough meetings, if you just, because it's the we, but then it's the I in the center of the we that has to go home and do the work and not drink or not do the thing like there is a fierce there's a loving we but there has to also be a fierce

Speaker 3 full of dignity full of integrity I

Speaker 2 to withstand the time to get back to the we that's a beautiful way to put it because personal like you said the other morning if you if you're sitting there going I you know I could do without breakfast it's not necessary you could probably get away with it

Speaker 2 There might not be anyone to stop you.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 2 Even maybe if Abby, for example, could stop you, she might not. Right.

Speaker 2 Because it's yours.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's right.
I was using a lot of excuses for drinking, keeping a lot of doors open that no one really knew about but me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I realized in those moments, like, no one is going to stop me. There will be a trip where I'm alone on a plane and I could drink and no one will ever know.

Speaker 2 No one is going to sit on my shoulder, unfortunately, and tell me what to do and make sure that I do it. So yeah, it's simple, but very difficult.
Only you can do it.

Speaker 4 And not only will they not be there to save you from yourself, there will always be 1 million reasons

Speaker 4 why

Speaker 4 you could

Speaker 4 return and you should return. And the people in your life might most often be the ones that are convincing you you don't don't have to.

Speaker 2 Oh, thank you for saying that. Yes.

Speaker 4 The crab effect that you talk about with the pulling you back in.

Speaker 4 I had a friend go through this and she kept talking to me about like how it was unfair that the no one was supporting her and trying to convince her she's fine.

Speaker 4 And, and, but that is the only way you can do it. There's going to be a million reasons why it would be excusable for you not to.
And at the end of the day,

Speaker 4 the freedom of the responsibility is that your ass is still the one deciding.

Speaker 2 Yes. So don't tell me about the rest of them.
Glad you brought that up because that's more often almost what happens is the crab effect is basically like, if I can't have it, you can't either.

Speaker 2 And when crabs try to leave a bucket, like the other crabs will try to pull it back in.

Speaker 2 And when we try to change, especially when we try to grow, especially when it's breaking a pattern of our family or our unspoken agreements in our friend circles or in our relationship,

Speaker 2 it's met with a lot of resistance because it's scary for one. You know, it threatens the attachment, but also

Speaker 2 it's human nature. It's like, if I can't have it, you can't either.
So I'm so glad you brought that up. Okay,

Speaker 3 let's end with eight and nine. Okay.
Eight is I love you, and nine is I will never stop reminding you of these things.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 I love you,

Speaker 2 or you are loved, as I changed it for

Speaker 2 the community.

Speaker 2 This one's hard because love is often just like too

Speaker 2 big to wrap our minds around. The idea of loving ourselves or that other people love us.
It's too far of a reach.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 we can find love or think about love as moments where we've had acceptance from somebody, moments where we've had grace show up in our lives,

Speaker 2 undeserved favor, which is what is grace or the definition of it that I like. You know, we get something we didn't deserve and we didn't expect, but it happened.

Speaker 2 I think of that as love.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the fact that we exist at all to me is proof of life. It's proof of something.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 to be able to hear that, to hear you are loved, or I love you. I put it at the end of all these things because these things are hard to hear.

Speaker 2 A lot of these things are very hard to swallow and hard to hear. But at the end, I love you.

Speaker 2 You are loved. Period.

Speaker 2 End of sentence, right?

Speaker 2 It's beautiful. And then number nine, I will never stop reminding you of these things is just, this is not a once and done.
This is a continual process forever and ever.

Speaker 2 If you stay in it, you get to stay in it, right?

Speaker 4 I love that one too, because it's not the threat of like, this is your list, you get to read it once. And if you don't get your shit in a pile, I am out the door.

Speaker 4 It's like, this is your list for today.

Speaker 2 If you come back tomorrow, needing the list of lists, I'll give you the same list. Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like, the more I learn, the less I know.
I have to remind myself of these things constantly.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we get to keep doing that. We get to keep practicing.

Speaker 3 That's for sure. So when you were young and you suspected that you had some weird big energy going on inside of you that was going to inevitably have to come out, you were so right.

Speaker 2 Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 You were so

Speaker 3 right. I mean, I just believe you.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 3 I am so grateful that you answered the call to the ripping of off of the band-aid,

Speaker 3 allowing the wound to heal and using your big energy because I can only imagine the people that you're helping. You're really good at this.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Thank you.
You've helped a lot of us. Yeah.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 It's funny. I got like choked up there because I've never told you this story, Glenn, and I don't think, but

Speaker 2 after the wedding incident,

Speaker 2 when I had knew I had to get sober, but was, you know, searching for the third door and things got really, really, really dark before they got better.

Speaker 2 And I would spend a lot of time in my apartment alone because I was afraid to go out and drink.

Speaker 2 And I found your blog

Speaker 2 and I went to your bio page and

Speaker 2 I don't remember anything else you said, except for you said, I think it was like the first sentence. I'm a recovering bulimic and addict.
And you just said it.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I want that. That's what I want right there.
I want, I want to just say that.

Speaker 2 And I wasn't sober yet. And it was kind of funny because I started writing and blogging like then.

Speaker 2 Even though I couldn't say I was recovered anything. Yeah.
It was, that's what I wanted so bad. I wanted to be able to tell the truth and I wanted to say, it was like my future self reaching,

Speaker 2 reaching back and like pulling me and it came from stumbling on your blog and so you've always just had this incredibly special place in my in my heart because of that you showed us how to do it your soul talk said i want that yeah

Speaker 3 that i want that that laura we are the luckiest we are we are we are just the luckiest okay we'll give alma a push off from here she's so awesome thank you that's your new book.

Speaker 4 Push Off from Here is the newest one. We are the luckiest was prior to that.
And can you just real quick finish that relationships book?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 3 that was happening.

Speaker 2 I was hoping we would talk about that, but come back. Come back.
Come back. I will come back.
Yes. I call it my second sobriety.

Speaker 2 It was

Speaker 2 way harder. Woof.

Speaker 2 Love addiction, codependency. I don't even know all the words, but it was

Speaker 2 total dysfunction.

Speaker 1 And we are familiar.

Speaker 2 I know, I know. I listen along and we don't talk about it.

Speaker 2 Like I say all the time, the fact that I'm in a healthy, life-giving, life-affirming relationship is as big of a miracle as me quitting drinking. Same.

Speaker 3 Will you come back soon and talk to us about this?

Speaker 3 Anytime.

Speaker 2 Obviously.

Speaker 3 Obviously, that's the next frontier of sobriety. Sobriety at first is relationship to self, and then we have to try it in the field.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 It's untenable, is what it is. It's one thing to abstain from doing the thing that you're pretty sure is going to kill you.

Speaker 3 It's a whole nother thing to go out there in the wild west and commingle with other humans in intimacy.

Speaker 2 That is craziness. Yeah, it's so much deeper, too.
It is the ground zero.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
So, yes,

Speaker 2 I'm writing it right now. It'll be out in 2025.
So, but I'll come on anytime you want to talk about it. Okay, good.
Great. Thank you so much so much.
I love you too. Abby, my daughter is

Speaker 2 just beside herself that i got to talk to you today she's a big soccer player well you tell almo we love her and i would love to meet her one day i hope you do she would pass out

Speaker 2 she's 14.

Speaker 2 she just got to high school she made the team she wanted to make she

Speaker 2 badass like she went all in two years ago on soccer and i'm so proud of her so good for her she's proud of you too laura i bet yeah Thank you. All right, pod squad.

Speaker 3 See you next time.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Laura. Bye.

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