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The Truth About Addiction
Dr. Samantha Harte is a physical therapist, best selling author, performing artist and sober mom of two. She is here to tell the truth about her life, which requires telling the truth about her addiction: how it presents, how it manifests, and how it shows up again and again in her recovery. This podcast is one giant deep dive into the truth about ALL TYPES OF addiction (and living sober) to dispel the myths, expose the truths, and create a community experience of worthiness, understanding and compassion.
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The Truth About Addiction
Transforming Grief into Purpose: A Fresh Look At Emotional Sobriety and Personal Growth
Grief has a way of shaping us in unexpected ways. After the heartbreaking loss of our sisters and fathers, we realized just how much these experiences could fuel personal growth and give our lives new purpose. In this episode, London Reber and I reconnect after two years to reflect on our shared journey through grief and emotional sobriety. We discuss the impact of these losses on our lives and explore how principles of the 12-step program can apply beyond substance abuse, emphasizing our powerlessness over people, places, and things. Our evolving professional paths, including London's work as a certified relationship coach and current pursuits in parenting coaching, also come to light, underscoring the importance of mindful living and honoring the memories of our loved ones.
Ever wondered if lived experiences could outweigh formal education? We dive into this idea, sharing our decision to merge personal expertise with academic credentials. By repurposing daily conversations for broader outreach, we've found unique ways to inspire and support others on their paths to sobriety and spiritual awakening. As a new board member for Sober Awakening, London highlights how the organization bridges the gap between sobriety and spiritual growth, capturing the essence of our ongoing recovery journeys. This dialogue emphasizes the transformative power of sharing one's story and the unique contributions each person can bring to the table.
Emotional resilience is key to navigating life's ups and downs. By confronting grief head-on and leveraging sobriety tools during good times, we've managed to better navigate crises. This episode is rich with personal stories and practical strategies for emotional healing, such as "shopping your thoughts" for self-regulation. We also touch on the importance of supportive communities and the concept of reparenting our inner selves to foster emotional sobriety. Through these reflections, we aim to inspire others to find strength and purpose amidst loss, honoring the legacies of our loved ones while embracing both joy and heartbreak in equal measure.
If you're enjoying this podcast, please leave a review and share an episode with a friend who it might help. See you soon!
Dr. Harte
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no-transcript congratulations oh my god, it's been so long since we've caught up.
Speaker 2:Did you see that text? That it was literally like two years ago, almost to the like. It was to the month two years ago when, when you had said like hey, do you want to be on my podcast? That's crazy. Yeah, you were like let me know when, like kind of, the dust settles or whatever you said about my sister passing, and it was. It was June of 2022. And here we are.
Speaker 1:It's just too good, it's too. You know it's. That's one of the, you know, one of the very cool things about recovery is, man, you start to notice, notice things like that and you're like whoa, you gain some evidence that this whole faith game is spectacular really. So, okay, this is not going to be part of it. So so what? I? This is what I typically do, and then I want to, I just want us to brain bounce for a second before we officially start. I I will do a separate video where I do a formal introduction, and it's great because then I know what we end up talking about too, so I can sort of allude to it and I'll also read a formal bio. So after this, just send that to me and that's like you know, a couple minutes intro. Then I play a little music and there's something that goes across the screen that says the name of the podcast, and then we roll into this part and before we officially start, I'll count myself into that way.
Speaker 1:I know to edit out this front section that we're doing now. And you know, in the beginning this was before my sister passed away I started this podcast and it was definitely addiction centered in the sense of substance abuse, traditional addiction, and as I have evolved and as I wrote my book and really what I understand now to be my mission in the world, I'm trying to totally break boundaries with the idea of what it is to be addicted to something or stuck in an emotional cycle of dysfunction, so that the 12 steps can help anybody on earth who's suffering from anything at all. And so I you know you're somebody I know from recovery, right, so you're any part of your actual substance abuse stuff that you want to share we can. I think what I end up doing is really tackling what's unique to the person I'm interviewing in terms of some of the life stuff they've traversed and the ways in which addictive tendencies show up and how we're using all the tools that we have to overcome them to live an emotionally sober life. So it's much more about the idea of emotional sobriety, but not just for the addict, for the person, and I think you have a lot of things you could speak to.
Speaker 1:I mean, you and I obviously have the loss of our sisters in common, but if there's anything in particular of our sisters in common, but if there's anything in particular right, because there's people who are single, parenting, trying to live a sober life under those pressures. There are people who have had wild career successes and failures and can speak very much to that and what it is to live mindfully and soberly through those things. Every person has their a thing, a real point in which they want to touch on. So if there's something you're promoting, if there's something you want to be known for, you've been stepping up your own stuff. I see all over social media, which I love, and it feels like we're doing similar things. I'm not sure, but if you want to steer it towards however, you want to be seen and known uh, let's do that too. So what comes to mind? Just so I know how to kind of navigate the conversation with you in terms of what you'd really like to talk about today.
Speaker 2:Okay, I know, yeah, we we also. You also lost your dad, right, and me too, in sobriety. We also have that. So it seems like between us, um, related to emotional sobriety is how grief has been like a magnifier what our like passions are or what our purpose is and what really matters to us, and how we both used grief as a catalyst to support more people and, yes, bring more inspiration to the world. So I think that's a key element, because being able to stay physically sober through something, through things like that, is one thing, and emotionally sober people could white knuckle it and, you know, just go into deep depression and not pick up. And we have decided to live in the honor of those people. And we have decided to live in the honor of those people.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, so I think the grief comes to mind right away and I guess I mean I can, like I can speak, since, since your book is bringing the 12 steps to like everybody and not needing it to be about a substance, I can speak to how the steps have helped me with my powerlessness over people, places and things like more generally and all the things that I've gotten out of it. Like you know, the the acronym of how, like honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. You know, like how I've used that in my life Cause, being 12 years away from the mind altering substance, I've definitely used, you know, maybe like TV and food and relationships and shopping and all the other things to try to fill that hole that only a relationship with something greater than myself that is loving has been able to fill. So I mean, is that what you're looking for is like speaking to emotional sobriety?
Speaker 1:Sure, yes, all of that. I think. I think the grief thing is going to be a big one and a and a wonderful place for us to. I mean, we could probably easily do that in in the hour that we have. And let me just ask you work wise, and what sure what? What do you? What? What are you right now? Are you a coach? Are?
Speaker 2:you like I've been a certified relationship coach for the last five years and I am currently getting certified in a parenting coaching certification program. It's like a seven month. I'm halfway through to add that, um, yeah, I facilitate groups and, uh, go to the retreat and, um, I do tribes, pivot tribes, where it's six people and we do six weeks and we kind of dip our toe into the core curriculum. It's a curriculum based process that I take people through and it looks um, through a whole perspective lens, um, which is which is emotional, intellectual, spiritual, financial and physical. And like how, how does this fit for me from the whole perspective?
Speaker 2:You know, like when I'm trying to make decisions or when I'm determining my values, and then we look at your boundary system and we call it the circle boundaries and like where are people in your boundaries? And that boundaries are not demands on other people's behavior, they are an internal guidance system on, like I know that this is how much time I can spend with that person. I know that this is a safe topic with this person and this is my no-go zone with this person and you, that commitment to yourself to not cross your own boundaries. It has nothing to do with trying to get someone else to do something, and that has given me a really strong emotional sobriety in being able to, you know, not blame others or shame myself for the cycles that we, that I, used to get in in relationships, also about survival patterns, and basically that's where I think your concepts are coming in, where it's like we're in this habitual do and how the what, what fires together, wires together, concept, right, and so we just wake up and we have emotions and they're based on our past memories, because nothing's happened yet today, or on our future fears, right. So we're either anxious or depressed or, you know, I mean, if we're looking at past memories that are excited, then maybe we wake up feeling okay. But what happens when you wake up? And and then what? Right, like, how do you divorce the past from the future? How do you create in this day a future that looks different than those habitual dues and through pivot it's, it's called healthy dues and that is the pivot, you know in real time, from habitual dues into healthy dues.
Speaker 2:And also, like, how we're attaching and to like, take accountability for how we're attaching to a people, place or thing, and that's where the blame comes in. You know, like, whenever I'm around that person, you know, they make me anxious. Well, actually, I feel anxious because, right and making ownership for our own emotions and like um, instead of like I have to pay my car bill, I choose to pay my car bill because I want to drive that car Right, and that we're not our our trauma, that idea that our trauma was not our fault and it is our responsibility now how we relate it to the world today. And that that's where, like, the resentments often live, and that acceptance doesn't mean approval. We can accept what somebody did to us even if especially if we don't approve of it, and once we do that, we can reach our own freedom from the control that it's had over us ever since it happened.
Speaker 1:Do you do that for people in recovery or for anyone?
Speaker 2:Everyone.
Speaker 1:Great, amazing, okay, london Reber, amazing.
Speaker 2:All right, I haven't quite got that doctor yet, though, dr Hart.
Speaker 1:I know it's funny though it's, it's really it's interesting for me and maybe we can get you know talk about this more on there. But, like, on the one hand you know, certainly I consider myself an expert in the physical body. For sure, my book and everything that's happened to me has made me very much want to move into spaces and places where I can speak about my lived, sober experience outside of the rooms of AA and coach people in that realm as well. And there's this small part of me that's feels the imposter syndrome a little bit, because I'm like you're a doctor. You know a shit ton about rewiring the brain body connection. You can speak to that about the physical body, for days, but you don't have a degree in psychology or mental health or whatever.
Speaker 1:And yet the life coaching industry right, the coaching industry is a fucking billion dollar industry with a lot less qualified people than me, and I feel like, well, my book is definitely a facilitator and now that it's a bestseller for me to be considered, you know somebody to take seriously in this space, who you know who can earn money doing that. But it's it's funny that you say that you know, because for for years, I mean, I've been thinking about getting a degree in like spiritual psychology, you know. But then the university of Santa Monica changed their whole program and when I really looked into it I'm like I can't commit to this, I'm not, I'm not getting into even more debt, and so there's no part of me that like would actually go back to school to to get a degree and some other thing to make me qualified. But you know, it's like, yes, I'm so proud of doctor, but there's, there's that voice that's like, well, you're not a doctor in this, you know.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you saying that, because Todd has been, todd has been on me for like most of our whole relationship, that I don't need it and I don't, it's not worth it Time, energy, money to do that.
Speaker 2:That just to like what you're doing is so inspiring for me, that like just to get into action and get a book out and and just share what I do know like trust, that there's value in it and that I have studied, like plethora of literature and the lived experience of it to offer that is completely unique to myself, that no one can do it the way that I do it, no one can do it the way that you do it. Right, whatever we bring to the table, only we can bring to the table and we're all like, we all have a place at the table, we just show up to it. And so, yes, I, of course, I think it would be like easier, like, oh, maybe the door would open easier if I had doctor there, and like I agree with you that it's not the, it's not the most beneficial investment of our time and energy, totally Right now, when we already have this so much you know.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Oh my gosh, okay, I'm super excited about this conversation.
Speaker 2:There's one other thing. I actually recently just got voted onto a board, so I'm a board member now, um on a nonprofit called sober awakening, so that's a thing, and it's about how you can either have the spiritual awakening that can lead you to a desire to be sober or become sober, curious, or or you can get sober and have that lead you to the spiritual awakening, and that it goes both ways.
Speaker 1:Very cool Okay.
Speaker 2:Soberawakeningorg.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's do this Ready, I'm going to count myself in.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I also like try to catch some content while I'm doing it, so that I have little clips to share. You should do that too. By the way. If you have your phone, put it up somewhere so you can catch a piece of our interview, and then you have a clip for social media.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't know that. I can put it somewhere where you can't see it.
Speaker 1:Or I can send you what I capture, but then it's of me. You know what I mean. It's like my face instead of yours. So you're saying like, like my phone right now, yeah, it's on a thing facing me.
Speaker 2:I thought you meant filming the screen. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just catch your. You know I'm starting to get really smart about wait a minute. I'm doing stuff every day. I'm talking about this every day with at least somebody in some capacity, so I don't actually need to come up with content. I just need to capture how I'm living and share. That makes it easier, you know, because you could repurpose things that you say in multiple posts.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and then, and then, eventually I'll clip up this.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and also I can give you the link to this and we can make a ton of really good clips, you know, minute or less clips that we can use for social.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the lighting of my phone is not as good as the lighting.
Speaker 1:Mine is not great right now. I'm like I wonder if my camera is like fucking all fucked up, but it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2:Fucking, fucked, fucking motherfucker.
Speaker 1:Clearly I curse Are we ready? Sure, okay, I'm going to count myself in now. One, two, three. Welcome back everybody to the truth about addiction. Man oh man, the universe works in mysterious ways. I am here with a longtime sober girlfriend, london Reber, who I remember meeting and thinking, wow, this woman's program and recovery is so sturdy. I met her at a time when I was very emotionally wobbly. I don't even know if she remembers this, but my marriage was literally falling apart when I met her. And we've been trudging this sober road for so many years now and we have a lot in common and we haven't had a really intense, deep conversation in a long time. But boy, are you guys in for a treat, because the parallels with what we have been traversing in our emotional sobriety are pretty astounding, and we're going to touch on quite a few things today that are going to hit home and be tough to hear but really important to listen to. To listen to London. Thank you so much for reaching out to me and showing back up in exactly the right time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is my honor and thank you so much for arranging this and having me here. And absolutely, when you were saying that, I just saw like two parallels and then we go like this and then we're parallel. Then we go like this and then we're parallel and we go like this and it's like our paths keep crossing and and we also both keep growing and expanding on this journey through each phase of our development, so that when we reach that new phase, we cross again. And I just absolutely admire you for all the work that you've done and are continuing to inspire others in doing themselves.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. You know London. I've been seeing your posts on social media lately, and while I was writing my book for the last two years, I was really healing and grieving, and healing and grieving and writing, and in between doing all that, I had these chances to dance and travel and sing and do these things, from when I was little, that I had longed to do, and so every post I was making was me just flipping my hair around town like a fool, which is fine. Dance is part of my love language, it's part of my joy metric, and having had so much experience with grief, you know how they say in recovery we have to match calamity with serenity, and I remember navigating my husband's extramarital affair, and at the time what came to me was I need to match the level of betrayal and resentment I feel with equal amounts of forgiveness, or I'm in trouble. And if I fast forward to grief, I have had to chase down joy in the face of my sorrow, like the air that I breathe. It is that important.
Speaker 1:And so I've been posting like a fool about all these joyful things, and then I realized, wait a minute, I have a book coming out, and it's not just about joy. It's about addiction, grief, loss, resentment, betrayal recovery, hope, resentment, betrayal recovery, hope, resilience, laughter, play, pleasure. I need to get on there and talk about it. I need to talk about it and I need to let people hear where I am and how passionate and purposeful I feel. And your posts are exactly the same. I'm watching you do this thing in your own unique and special way, on the heels of everything you lived through, and it's so beautiful. And you just got right back on my radar as a result of the truth telling mission that you're on, because I see myself in you and I'd love for you to share knowing that you have overcome not just a substance abuse disorder but so many other things. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, where you started and we'll move into the present day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, man, that just pierced me right through the heart Like that just touched me so much because, you're absolutely right, I saw you dancing and I saw you out there at traveling, and then, once I heard about your book, I was like, hey, hey, we need to connect again. And then, listening to you right now, though, the most wild thing is my my sister passed in May of 2022. And in January of 2023, I joined an adult dance class and I did six months and I performed on stage. I did a recital last June, yes, and I didn't put it together that that was my joy matching my calamity. That that was my healthy adult repair in my grief. Oh my God, I was like center stage and it was like doing kicks and all kinds of things that I hadn't done in like decades, cause I, too, loved dance when I was younger, I still do, but I hadn't done it. I hadn't done it for so long and yeah, so we also have that in common.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's that is incredible.
Speaker 2:Isn't that wild. And you had reached out to me like two years to the month, two years ago, asking me to be on this podcast, and my sister had just passed, like weeks prior, and you were like you know when the dust settles or when you're able, and I was so much in it at that moment that I actually didn't even remember receiving that invitation. And so when I went to reach back out to you now, I saw that text and I was like, wow, god's time is always better than mine, right, like the universe's plan for my life is here and is available and I just need to turn towards it. And when we're in grief, often it's natural to turn away and there is a hibernation period that I've experienced. That's necessary in grief. And yet through grieving some really big losses in my life. So my dad passed suddenly in sobriety and my sister has passed also.
Speaker 2:My dad passed on our honeymoon and I went to a really dark place and there was a lot of hopelessness at the time for me and anger, right, resentment at the situation. I had developed a relationship with a power greater than myself that I, by that point, that I truly believed was loving and always had my back, so I was able to skirt the common pattern of blaming God for what happened. Instead, though, I went into a a deep depression about, like, all the things he was going to miss and all the things I was going to not get my dad to be at, and, about a year after his passing, through the 12 steps and through continuing to seek a spiritual practice, with developing this relationship with this loving higher power that I wasn't blaming right, I was able to actually create gratitude for the timing of it all that he passed a week after my wedding and not a week before that. He was able to walk me down the aisle and and have, like the last time that everybody saw him pretty much in his life, be like one of the happiest times of his life, and that's how everyone remembers him now. No matter all the things that he did in his life and the wreckage that he caused, people remember him like that and like what a gift that is, you know.
Speaker 2:And then I met women on my recovery journey after that whose fathers had already passed, who were much younger than me, who were never going to get the opportunity of having their dad walk them down the aisle, and so I was able to, to replace the calamity with the serenity of through gratitude that are what I do have, instead of focusing so much on what I don't have. And I think that is a really big pivotal point in emotional sobriety is where is our focus? Because if we do believe it's a disease of perception, how I'm perceiving reality is determined inside my own wiring right. How you're talking about breaking this circuit, how am I? What am I focusing on? Because what we focus on grows.
Speaker 1:Do you remember a moment in particular where you were going down that depressive chain of thinking about the loss and where you were able to interrupt it or see it differently, like was it something outside of you that made you go wait a second? Was it something inside of you that said you need to, you need to do this now? Instead of that, like what was that pivot moment?
Speaker 2:I love this question, I would like to say, I think, intuitively, my answer is both. What I love about this question is that I have come to believe that the way we see the world, what is going on outside of us, that perception of reality, comes from inside, and so often, before emotional sobriety, we're looking for outside things to change how we feel inside and that, again, we have to shift that to being the inside is what's driving the outside. However, the way I got to that connection on the inside was through having sober feet, was through gathering so many slogans and so many suggestions from people I trusted, who had a life that I wanted in sobriety, and who told me how they got it. And I listened because I was. I, I am a seeker, so I, I was looking for like, okay, how did you get this thing? You know and I believe that anyone listening to your podcast is probably in alignment with that right how are they doing this thing? And I was able to do.
Speaker 2:I was able to get my pen to the paper during this time and write, and write, and write, and to me, I believe that's a conscious contact with God, it's a stream of consciousness and I can write, and write, and write, and write and write until my thoughts get out of the way. And then I start to hear intuitive thoughts come out onto the paper and what I heard from the inside was this thing that, um, what I recalled was the thing that I had heard in sobriety that, like one foot in yesterday, one foot in tomorrow, we're in the perfect place to piss on today, one foot in tomorrow, we're in the perfect place to piss on today. And I remember this aha moment and I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly where I'm at. I'm, my foot is in yesterday, depressed, depressed, depressed about losing my dad and and all the things that, like, I wish I would have done differently and I wish I would have said this differently to him the day before he died. Right, Like I, all the things that, all the things that I was, like, um, regretting and and sobriety teaches us not to regret the past nor shut the door on it Right To be in that gray area between those two things. And I was in the future of, like, all the things I was going to miss, and dah, dah, dah, dah.
Speaker 2:And I was like, and that's where anxiety lives, right, my anxiety lives in the future and future tripping and my depression lives in the past, and it was keeping me stuck in this state, and I literally took both feet and I put on my bed. I rolled over because I was binge watching Downton Abbey. It was his favorite show. It was his favorite show and I used to make fun of him about it. I was like, no, I'm not watching that. And then I watched all six seasons to feel connected to him, and I ate a lot of cinnabons and and I remember rolling out of bed, though, and putting both my feet down on the ground and and looking at them and saying this is where I am today. Right, like this is where I am today. Right, like this is where I'm at. This is I'm. Both feet are in today.
Speaker 2:And the woman, my spiritual guide, the woman guiding me through this process, was like just stay in the day that you're in, just stay in the day that you're in. And if you are trying to be physically sober, what she said was that I was actually carrying the message with the most depth and weight of any message at all, which was that I was staying stopped no matter what, because I was super clear that if I picked up. It wasn't going to bring him back. I couldn't stay drunk long enough to never sober up and realize the reality of the situation again. It wasn't going to bring him back and I wasn't going to be able to escape these feelings. I was willing to not take something from the outside to try to change my mind, a mind altering substance. I was willing to try to change my mind, to then change my experience of the outside.
Speaker 2:And I mean, I had a temporary use of binge watching the show and food, and I think that's natural. I think that's natural to and and then I realized those don't work either. Right, it was another.
Speaker 2:It was another human power coming from the outside trying to change the way I felt on the inside and whenever I'm using some human power, I'm always at the mercy of that and I can, and there's always a crash for me, like whatever I'm using if it's shopping, if it's attention from people, if it's power and success and workaholism right, Whatever it is that we're using from the outside to change the inside is actually something that is going to leave us a victim to that, because once it's not there for us, then what Right it's gotta? It's gotta be this re wiring on the inside about how we're looking at the world and therefore how we're showing up in it, basically how we're attaching to the people, places and things, instead of using the people and places and things to create a sense of security for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean what you're saying is so important. And the reason I asked about that moment is because in my personal and professional experience, again and again and again, whether it's the patient who came to see me and they're just so sick of being in knee pain, chronic pain of any kind, or it's the addict in recovery who's stuck in a loop of behavior or relapsing chronically and they're tired, they're tired and they're in enough pain to wake up for a second to have that moment of wow. Look at the way I am living, look at the way I am thinking, look at the way I am perceiving this situation and how sick it's making me, how stuck it's making me. And that's, I think, often and in some ways unfortunately, where we need to go to get woken up out of the sort of intrinsic, automatic behavioral patterns that we're stuck in. And then we have choices to make.
Speaker 1:When we wake up, we realize, wait a minute, I have a choice. And then the question is what are you choosing to do? And so I'm wondering in that moment what, how, how important was it that you had had some time sober and you had a bunch of tools that you, that you knew were healthier than some old coping mechanism or whatever you were picking up in the moment binge watching Netflix, binge binge eating how helpful and important was it that you went oh shoot, I do have all these tools. I just haven't been picking them and using them. I'm going to get right into action.
Speaker 2:Versus the person that you work with, that you coach, whose tools are very limited, who just got hit with that kind of grief, I would say that is the benefit of actually doing some, doing as much healing work, as much investment in your sanity and your serenity as possible. When things are good, when stuff hits the fan that most of us need yeah, initially, when we're younger and when we're just living, living, living right, we do need to be sick and tired of being sick and tired to a point of desperation to be willing to change. Even the person with their knee, Like for me. I was having all kinds of aches and pains that I came to you for after having my first biological child and it was like I had to really look at the sugar and the inflammation and how that was coming from sugar. And was I? I was sick and tired. I mean sick and tired of being in pain so much to the point that, okay, I'm willing to do something different to get a different result. And I had a similar experience, relationship wise, when I was almost three years sober. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired in my relationship life. It was like, okay, I put down the drugs and alcohol and now still, why are my relationships not working? And that actually drove me to get some outside help at a place called Pivot and do the Pivot process, which was like 10 years ago. And now, five years later, I got certified as a pivot relationship coach because in those five years I was living out the that process. I was doing it so much in real time on top of my foundation of the 12 steps. Right, the 12 steps gave me the ability to show up for pivot, and I was. I was constantly doing things different to get a different result.
Speaker 2:So then, when my dad passed, a couple of years after doing Pivot on top of my sobriety also, I did have this toolbox to pull from and, being realistic with our own expectations of ourself, it still took me nearly a year to turn it all around into a place of gratitude, even with tons of tools. So if you're listening to this and you don't have a lot of gratitude, even with tons of tools, so if you're listening to this and you don't have a lot of tools like this is an opportunity to create self-compassion and to give yourself grace. That, like we can't do better until we know better, right that thing. And so right now you're you're learning that there is a, there is a solution and there is a way to build a toolbox of things that individually support you to do healthy do's instead of your habitual do's. That real pivot in real time. How to go from this, just like autopilot, this is all I know how to do to survive a survival pattern which did help you survive something. It's there for a reason which did help you survive something. It's there for a reason Whenever you created that survival pattern. It allowed you to survive that situation and thank it for that time in your life.
Speaker 2:And now, pivoting in from that habitual survival pattern into a healthy do, recognizing that it's also the thing that's now blocking us from thriving. Right, that it allowed us to survive, but now in, when you're trying to live a healthy adult life, it's the thing that's blocking you from thriving. So, being able to build your toolbox during times of joy, I think, is a key component. That we don't have to just do it when we're experiencing grief and loss and depression and like that doesn't have to be the main and only catalyst to when we grow repairs. And like that doesn't have to be the main and only catalyst to when we grow repairs for, like, okay, we can play it out. Right, like, play the picture.
Speaker 2:What would I do if, like, I just heard this podcast and these women were talking about how they're. Both their dads and their sisters have died and they've been able to, like, stay emotionally sober, play that out. If there was something like that to happen in your life, what would you do to support yourself? What would you need to feel supported, to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel loved, to feel lovable, to feel enough to feel like you matter, and start doing those things now so that you'll have sober feet when or if the time comes? Because all of us experience loss. All of us experience the natural cycle of life, which concludes, in physical form, death right.
Speaker 1:God. That's so important, and I want the listener to really take a second here, because something else that London said that is so important that I immediately and unequivocally believe is the hibernation period. So I want to know for you, london, what you mean when you say that. But for the listener, in the beginning stages of losing my dad and my sister, there were just disruptive upheavals of grief that were untimely, that I wished would stop, and once they started, there was no stopping it until my body was done, erupting in shrieks. There were fetal positions, there were many bouts of hopelessness, many terrifying thoughts of what is going to happen to me now.
Speaker 1:Am I actually going to lose it all, my sanity, my sobriety, my joy for living? Who am I now that this person that I was sure was always going to be there, even if I were in a huge fight with them and bitter about all the things they had done or didn't do, I was sure they were always there and that gave me a sense of sturdiness in my life, walking around in the world, even if we weren't on speaking terms. And now they're not. What is my life without them there?
Speaker 1:In it, in physical form, it's, it's scary, it's lonely, it felt so much, so much of the time, like I was on a ship sailing around in a massive ocean alone, having no sense of when I'd see land again. Yeah, and, and then some days weren't as dark, and and then I could see that I had some options on the table, the worst of which would have been to relapse, which would for sure meant death for me, certainly on a spiritual level, but on a physical one too, a physical one too. And then the options were numbing, and in the case of my dad, I did that. I did that, on the one hand, successfully in some ways, because I hunkered down on making myself as physically skinny and shredded as humanly possible, lying to myself, thinking that it was all about getting back in shape after baby number two.
Speaker 2:Because he died, you told me you weren't eating pizza and I was like I could never do that.
Speaker 1:I remember that because we had our, we had our children at a similar time, yeah, and I mean for there were months and months where I was just sure this was part of my you know, baby weight loss program. And then I got to the point where I was back at pre-pregnancy weight and the voice inside my head said I wonder how much more weight you can lose. And that was my unhealthy voice.
Speaker 2:In a way to control the outside when we feel out of control.
Speaker 1:Exactly Right, that was me just out the outside, when we feel out of control. Exactly Right, that was me just outrunning, trying to outrun my grief and proving that we can't actually do that Right.
Speaker 2:We could spend a lifetime trying to outrun it and we never do. It's always there when we put our head down on the pillow at night. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:And really until until I exhausted that option and found out it wasn't working. Because I was in this sensory deprivation tank with my husband. That was his idea of a good date night and for me it felt like torture because I had been running really right, because I had been running really right, just completely obsessive about food and body, for nine months after he died. And then I was stuck in this tank by myself for an hour and I hadn't really set aside time to meditate like I had normally done in healthier periods of my recovery, to meditate like I had normally done in healthier periods of my recovery.
Speaker 1:So I was stuck with the voices in my head and it was loud and incessant and obsessing about what I was going to eat and not eat at sushi dinner with my husband and how I was going to not gain weight from all the sodium that night into the next day and what I was going to do to work it off at the gym. And then at 45 minutes everything went quiet finally in that tank and my intuition spoke up finally and she said why are you punishing me? And it was so disarming to hear her again after nine months of not being in deep communion with her and because of what she said, because I knew what she meant. I knew in that moment that I had been starving myself and running because of the regret and the shame that I felt about where my relationship was with my dad before he died and all the things I could never make right.
Speaker 2:Or so I thought. Right, all the things you are out of control of.
Speaker 1:Yep, and all the ways in which I was trying my damnedest to control it. But but really what I was doing was trying to make myself disappear. I was slowly wiping out my own existence.
Speaker 2:And that present in the moment is wiping out your existence in that moment, cause your head was doing all these other things. You weren't really present, so you were wiped out. You were in a fantasy reality.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, yes. So spiritually and physically right I was. I was literally trying to disappear, and that was the beginning of that level of consciousness and awareness where I started to go. I'm going to have to choose to lean into this grief when it shows up. If I want to heal and if I want to have something to offer, not just myself, but my children, my husband, my friends, the community at large, if I want to be able to make this pain purposeful and live a life worth living, I'm going to have to turn toward it, right. And so I'm saying all this because you touched on a hibernation period. You touched on some insidious ways in which you were trying to run from yours too, and then you touched on the pivot and all the choices that you had kind of surrounding you that you eventually said I'm going ahead and I'm going to live in this choice now, in this decision, in this day, in this moment, and do something about my sorrow and change the way I'm seeing the world.
Speaker 1:But God damn it, you guys, you got to hang on at the beginning because you're hearing us spout off at the mouth all these tools and all this. We're laughing on the podcast. We've got all this joy in our arsenal. We've got a lifetime of experience of getting to the other side of really hard things. But do not be fooled that this isn't also devastating and that both things can be true, because we really live in a world of spiritual bypassing, of quote unquote good vibes only, and I call bullshit to all of it. It is all we you and I are very similar in that way. We are such guttural truth tellers. So I just want to know, like, as I'm saying all this for the listener who is face down in a pit of despair, in grief right now, who cannot see their way forward, what do you want them to?
Speaker 2:know, yeah, there's. So there's so many things that came to mind while you were sharing that and thank you for bringing that up. Another pivot coach has written a book called when grief is good, and I was given that book at a very pivotal point in my recovery and that has helped a lot. I highly recommend it. Her name is Cindy Finch and I already knew that there was love or fear and that I could always just pick one, or that I was going to be experiencing one, and I had already been proven that every single thing in my life could either be a blessing or a curse, based on how I was looking at it, how I was thinking and feeling about it and acting on it.
Speaker 2:And in pivot, to be a healthy adult, to be in alignment, we talk about needing to think, feel and do congruently all at once, and when we're in grief that's not happening right. Like the feelings driving an action, like my feeling of despair was driving me to eat those Cinnabons, and then I would think about it later and I would think something like shameful or guilt, and then I would have another feeling of disappointment in myself and that would drive another action right, I was attaching anxiously to my grief, which you just described as well, trying to outrun it, staying so busy, focused on the food, that I couldn't even be present to have the grief happen. And what happened to me when I got physically sober that also happened when I was returning to emotional sobriety through this grief was it was like driving a car and it was like I was just throwing, like eating Big Macs and eating whatever and just throwing the junk in the back. Or smoking packs and throwing the junk in the back metaphorically, right, I'm just filling the back of my station wagon is how I picture it, with all my wreckage and all my things that I'm not willing to look at. And then to be willing to look at it. What happened to you at that 45 minute mark right, like it were, before the 45 minute is you were slamming on the brakes, getting in that tank, slammed on the brakes and everything came like on top of you and you were just covered in it and it took you 45 minutes to climb out of your stuff to then hear the, the intuitive thought, to hear your, your healthy adult, come in and say, like you know, basically, I don't deserve to be punished. This is not the path for me right. You do not deserve to be punished. And probably that was your healthy adult speaking to your younger parts of self, letting your child know she does not deserve to be punished.
Speaker 2:And in pivot, something that we do is we do parts of self-work where we look at the developmental psychology that, yes, there's the inner child, there's also the inner adolescent and there's the adult self. That's not our healthy adult, that's not our highest level of consciousness, it's the one that might be paying the bills and there's a spider on the wall. I just had caught my eye. You saw me go and it's okay, I can live with that today. But the adult self might be doing all the adulting Right, but there's still like the adult self was telling you that it was your healthy adult by getting you in shape and losing the baby weight, right. And we get to actually take our higher level of consciousness and go back in and reparent those parts of self and in that moment you were reparenting your child. You do not deserve to be punished, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And you talked also about being lost at sea. Emotional sobriety to me is being a lighthouse, is being cemented onto a foundation that I do not go out and try to save any other ship Because if I do, all the other ships that could be making their way in through my light will not have the lighthouse shining the way. It's become my mission to stay grounded on the ground. No matter how much sick and suffering I see out there, I shine the light in the direction of how you can make your way home in in the ship. I do not go out and save the ship anymore, and that was a huge aha moment for me because when I was younger it was like I was going to save all the other ships to make myself, prove myself that I was needed and worthy of love and enough, and and I was then constantly like drowning out to sea or being lost out to sea myself.
Speaker 2:So becoming the lighthouse was part of my recovery in my, in my emotional recovery and sobriety, and shining the light and then not trying to control how people, what people do with the light, or if they can turn in or if they go the other way and letting that be okay. That's like a form of the. Acceptance is not approval. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today, like I can accept whatever they do with the seed that I plant and if they don't water it and they don't give sun to it. It's not personal, it's not about me, it's right Like I just need to keep giving seeds and see who plants what and how they grow. I need to keep shining the light out to all those ships and then when I don't feel like I have any light to give which was that that moment when I was like I have nothing to give the people who are looking to me during that time and that's what we're talking about here I looked to trusted people in my life who were shining their light and in pivot, because I had gone to the retreat and done this work before my dad passed.
Speaker 2:We learn about circle boundaries and how. There's five areas that people are like in our life, in our relationships, is there's an outer. It's no contact at all, for whatever reason, and it has nothing to do with how much we love someone. So if someone's in the grips of their disease and every time they come in your house they steal something right, or every time you speak to them like you lose your serenity and your sanity and you start to enable and it makes it da, da, da, da da they could be an outer, with no contact at all and you could love them completely and desperately. Right, but no contact is what is going to keep you safe at this time, so outer. And then there's acquaintance which is like your barista, you know, like you go hey, how are?
Speaker 2:you Like how are the kids? And that's about it, right, it's just like cordial. And then there's your semi category, which is like the most vibrant, or needs to have the most people in it, which thrives on shared interests. And so if you have the shared interests of grief, maybe it is safe to share with them about that. If you have the shared interest of losing a family member, maybe you do share with them. But if you do not have that shared interest, they're probably not a safe person to turn to in this time. And if you do, it's probably an unrealistic expectation of their behavior for how they're going to be able to show up for you.
Speaker 2:Because when people were like, oh, I'm so sorry for your loss, it was like, yeah, thank you, you know. Or they're like let me know if I can do anything which is so kind, right, like they really want to do something and I, just in my head I just heard like I can't even think of what you could do that could help me right now. Like there's, I literally can't even think of something. Like, just do it. If you want to love me, you know, just do it. Do like drop some food at my doorstep or don't, but like I can't give you directions on how to show up for me right now when I'm in that dark place, and so going to somebody that we just have shared interests was actually causing more hurt or pain, I was creating pain within myself for having this unrealistic expectation of how they could show up in my life. And the next category is what we call the good category, and that's based on reciprocal trust. And so the more I tried to go to my semis, the more I just went darker, the more I stepped to my smaller group of goods that could see me with snot everywhere, you know, literally wiping my snot on my clothes, you know, and that who could see me like that and I could still feel safe. Those were the most important relationships that I needed to turn to in that time.
Speaker 2:And then the inner category is unconditional and I'm still, you know, kind of convinced that we can't be unconditionally loving to a human like I or be unconditionally loved from another human, like there's always some condition, right, like if my husband, like murdered my child, could I still unconditionally love him, you know, like there's condition to the human experience. So inner is usually like a pet or your higher power, right, like God and I and I needed to invest in my relationships with God, my God of my own understanding, which is which is defined by love. So doing something loving, thinking something loving, saying something loving, my internal dialogue, being loving. How can I invest in that? And how can I spend time with the people who are shining their lighthouses while my ship was out to sea, lost in the darkness, and remembering that everything has seasons? Right, we're not supposed to be summer sun all the time. There is winter and that's part of the growth, right, that's part of how spring gets the, the flowers, we have to have the rainfall, and and so like, as cliche as it is, it's like we're, we're a caterpillar and we're in our cocooning stage and we're becoming the butterfly.
Speaker 2:And that old saying it's darkest before the dawn, right, it's now. If you're in the darkest part, it's darkest before the dawn. And every feeling is like a tunnel. And I learned I learned that through this book burnout, breaking the cycle of stress. Every feeling is a tunnel and they say, like in recovery, right, like, don't quit before the miracle happens. This too shall pass. And so the feeling is information. It is not the fact, right, it's the information. And if we can keep going through the darkness of the tunnel, there's always light at the other side. We just have to not hurt ourselves or somebody else while we're in that feeling. Hmm.
Speaker 1:I feel like I could talk to you forever and I okay, the lighthouse analogy is just so good and I have to tell you what it is making me think of. And and then I think I want to use it as a. If we're going to keep using the word pivot, let's just go all the way in as a pivot to your sister. So, before this conversation, my most recent podcast interview, which has not been released yet, was with a man who is a doctor of psychology, who wrote a book called how to Get your Resisting Loved Ones Into Treatment, and he found me. He wanted to come on. I was super interested in the work that he does, how he ended up writing a book like that, and I didn't prepare him or myself for what was going to come up in the conversation. And I said I have to tell you, the title of your book is really triggering for me and we got into that in a loving and important way. Right, because here I am, having lost my sister, having tried everything to get her into treatment, into recovery of her capital S self, and having, quote unquote, failed. Right, I don't see it that way, right? But but, but there is there. In the wake of that grief. It would be impossible, I would be lying to the listeners if I said that I didn't consider the last things I said or did, jogging back into the library the emotional filing cabinet of everything that had transpired, good and bad, between us, and if there's anything I could have done differently.
Speaker 1:And then this guy comes along with a book about maybe, what I could have done and he talked about a boat, so many analogies of ships and seas and oceans, and he talked about, let's say we take the immediate family unit and in my case at the time, at one time, there were four of us my mom, my dad, my sister and me and I said he was talking about everyone doing 100% of their 25% and all the ways that that could look. And I said, yeah, know, he was talking about everyone doing a hundred percent of their 25% and all the ways that that could look. And I said, yeah, but what if? What if I'm the only one? What if I'm doing a hundred percent of my 25% but nobody else is on the goddamn boat? Or when they get on it it starts to sink?
Speaker 1:What do you say to somebody like me? And I just can't tell you how important it is to hear again, in a new, fresh way, this lighthouse analogy, because you better fucking believe that every night of my life until the day she died, and probably more than ever in the aftermath of this loss, I am a fucking lighthouse. I am lighting the way, I have been lighting the way and I had no control over whether or not she was going to row her own boat towards that light or into that sea of darkness. And I know your story with your sister is so different from mine. But because we talked about it when we first got on this interview and it's coming back around now, I would be remiss not to ask you about that loss, that relationship and this part of your grief journey and how you are getting to the other side of it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, and I can't even begin to imagine what you went through with losing your sister, because in how we lost our sisters is so vastly different and I don't wish that on anybody and the fact that you have used that as this catapult to jump you into this way of living, in her honor to the greatest capacity of reaching the most people, is so admirable, and I'm I'm absolutely inspired by how you have taken the grief around your sister and used it to magnify the light that's possible for other people to see, and I appreciate what you're doing here deeply. So thank you again for having me on and for sharing your story and for writing this book and for doing these interviews. And, like you, I also had a totally different experience with grief when I went through it with my sister than I did with my dad, right. So each time we have the lived experience of it, it we ha. We carry the tools of what we learned in the aftermath, in the hindsight, after losing our dad.
Speaker 2:Both of us we were able to apply that in losing our sisters and I almost said like bounce back. But it's different than not bounce back from the grief, but have the grief really be this propulsion, this energy, this motivation that gets us into? Okay, my, for me at least, my sister doesn't get to live on this earth anymore, and if she was, what would you know? What would she want to be doing? What would her message be? What would? How can I carry forth her legacy through mine as well?
Speaker 2:And right, and I think that's what you're doing here with the book, and and I love it and so part of it all too, when you're talking about the, the ship and where we go and stuff is like the obsession, the obsessive thoughts and that's part of physical sobriety and emotional sobriety is like how much are we monitoring our obsessive thoughts and being a conscious observer of our thoughts and the stories that we're attaching to those thoughts and are we living off those stories? Or are we observing the thought and being like? It doesn't work for me anymore, you know or no, I don't believe that and doing going a different way, giving it a replacement thought with parents too, like when we don't want our children to do something. If we just give them a consequence, we're leaving this gaping hole of what do they do. Instead, we have to offer them a replacement behavior or the one we're taking away. So I had to also with like physical sobriety when I took the alcohol away. I had to offer a replacement relationship with something greater than me, because alcohol was absolutely greater than me and it did give me a psychic change. Right, I had to replace that with my relationship with God. And so here now, with grief, the obsessive thoughts, when we are trying to observe what's going on, is the stories that we attach to these thoughts and how those take us to a spiral.
Speaker 2:So I like to do this. This is a tool, a tangible tool that you can apply. It's called shop your thoughts. I imagine that if I had all the money in the world and I could buy anything I wanted and I go in a store, I still wouldn't buy every color and every size of the same blouse that I liked, right, I would buy the one that fits me. And if I bought things that didn't fit me and I walk out the store or I go home and I realize they don't fit, I bought the thought and I go home and I realize it doesn't fit for who I am today. That's not like the direction that I'm going to. I can return it, right, I can just like give it back. I don't have to believe that thought. So I go in and I hear, I hear my thoughts and I'm like oh, that one doesn't fit me. Oh, that one looks great on me, right, like my thoughts.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I only buy the ones that fit for my life today, the ones that fit for the future that I want. And our pain body wound, which is that deepest relational trauma that we had at some point right, mine created the belief that I'm not enough. That's my deepest pain body wound and it's at the root of all these other behaviors and thoughts and feelings that don't fit for my life anymore. Behaviors and thoughts and feelings that don't fit for my life anymore and that aren't that I imagine, like right, the tree, the pain body tree and the branches and the twigs, all those are stemming from I'm not enough. So all the whatever your pain body is is what drove you to that compulsive behavior around your eating and stuff, right, yep. So we can experience something in real time today and it can feel, like you said, triggered. It can feel like that pain body wound is getting activated. I like the idea of activated because trigger is like a gun right and it's going to hurt no matter what if you get shot. But activated is a mindset shift, is a pivot in your mind, is a re circuit, rewiring of that circuit, where I like to think of it as like a dimmer switch on the light, so like, oh, I'm getting activated right now. I better watch out, I better get into some repairs, I better separate myself from this person right now. You know, like get some space, I'm getting activated. So it's not just like boom. And then I'm like snapping at someone, hitting someone, cause when I feel triggered at least for me, um, I shoot back right, like I get hit and it's boom. And then it's this battle.
Speaker 2:And so when, if we can be a conscious observer of our thoughts and the stories we're attaching to it, like the stories you were initially attaching to your sister's death, about how you could have done something different, about how, what if I just did this and this and all the stories, right, if we're shopping our thoughts as a conscious observer, just noticing them and not attaching stories to them, we can see that often the thing that's happening in real time in the relationship or whatever like he didn't get home in time for dinner and I cooked this dinner and now I don't feel appreciated. And now you know like it's underneath, it's activating maybe your pain, body wound that you don't matter. Well, he didn't do that to you, right? The pain body wound is coming from deep and long ago and core, but it could feel like a level eight, nine, 10. And then he walks in the door late and you're at him or it's a blows up and maybe the relationship even ends because he was late for dinner, because we allow our pain, body wounds to take over and tell us that the threat in front of us is the same as what happened to us then at level eight, nine and 10. So by shopping our thoughts, we can observe the pain body getting activated and instead, right, we can go in to support ourselves like I do enough, I have enough, I am enough Right, show yourself that you matter, am enough, right, show yourself that you matter. And so then, when he walks in, you can have a healthy, adult discussion about the pain that you're feeling. That's like between a one and a five in reality, right, a level two being late for dinner, not a level eight.
Speaker 2:And and your relational life can thrive and be more connected and have less chaos and confusion when we understand our pain, body, wound which is an Eckhart Tolle thing and when we can show up to support ourselves in meeting that need without needing someone else to do it, and when we cannot use what's happening to the people's places and things outside of ourself that we cannot control and use those as stories about ourselves to then further propel this pain, body wounds, like justification.
Speaker 2:To me, this is how I have stayed a lighthouse or or gotten back into my lighthouse when my light has gone dim Right, and, and ultimately, how I've been able to like, live out the serenity prayer, which I think is just written so brilliantly that we first have to like. It's a prayer that we can do this but accept the things we cannot change. We're going to be using all our courage and energy trying to change the things we cannot change right, instead of using it to change the things we can, which is really only ourself, because we can't change people, places and things unless we're just manipulating, and that's going to be another addiction or another thing that we're eventually going to crash from. It's not sustainable. And then to have the wisdom to know the difference. So I've invested a lot of time and energy in the wisdom to know the difference between what I can and cannot change, in order to be emotionally sober.
Speaker 1:I'm so curious about. By the way, I feel like I'm getting coached in real time.
Speaker 2:So well, I also realized I didn't really talk about my sister.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, but but here. But you said so much, that was so important. So I I'm wondering was there a pain, body wound within you that got activated when she died?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Thank you, um, so body wound is not enough, and how it played out was like I made up stories that I was eventually always going to be abandoned because I was not enough, and that was the way that I was going to be. Enough was everything I was doing for others and I became a human doing and I planned my sister's memorial primarily, and I I was in do, do, do, do, do, do, do. It's gotta be like enough for everyone else. I have to honor her life in a way that is enough, right, and this not enough was driving me to have like so much anxiety about how it was going to turn out and was it going to be enough for her and for everyone else to feel like they were able to celebrate her life and all these things. So it absolutely was activated as a result of this grief was activated as a result of of this grief and because I have sober feed.
Speaker 2:What I did was I I got myself in the middle of a pack of goods and and people that I trusted or people that had shared interests around grief and emotional sobriety. And I also went to the 2.0 retreat at the, at the, at the glass house, which is the pivot retreat. So the 2.0 is for people to come back in after they've done the first retreat or they've been working with a coach and done the whole core curriculum and you can come and do like the next level. And I went as a client that summer and, um, and I was able to look at my priorities and I was able to look at how I was just just so disconnected with being, with being a human being and, like you said, staying so busy so that we don't sit in that prayer and meditation with the feelings right, and that's so valuable and it's and it's so scary and it's not easy, and that's so valuable, and it's so scary, and it's not easy and it's worth it.
Speaker 2:And I realized I needed to take more showers so that I could just feel the water washing it over me and that I could cry freely in the shower. I just cried and cried, and cried. That's a place that I feel safe to cry. No one sees me, there's no mirror that I can even see myself, and I would also turn it really cold to like wake up my senses too for a little bit like do kind of like a cold plunge. I was doing that for myself and changing the temperature of the shower helped me to like bring me back into the day that I'm in, and I got back into the practice of mirror work, looking in the mirror, straight in my eyes, and telling myself something that I appreciate about myself and something that I cherish about myself, and like thanking myself so and and when we're in that dark place, it could look like thank you for getting out of bed today, thank you for drinking that glass of water, right, like it can be that simple and I. Simple is truly our superpower and in in the 12 steps we were taught like it's a simple program for really complicated people, right, and it's like this is a very simple process for really complex life stories and how to show up differently for your life.
Speaker 2:So so my sister passing because my sister technically passive natural causes at 33, she had down syndrome and she was born with a one chamber heart and so all her blood was just flowing together and she had a heart surgery immediately and it separated it into just two chambers and she lived that way. She got leukemia between her second and third open heart surgery and we had two years of chemo in the hospital when I was seven to nine years old, and then she had heart failure in 2010. And the surgeries had just been invented, like a year before she was born, and so there was no way to know how they were going to play out. And they started collapsing about 20 years in and they were able to rebuild it, but they basically at one point, when I was pregnant with our middle daughter in 2018, she had her last heart surgery. It was eight hours long and they said there's so much hardware in there, we cannot go in long. And they said there's so much hardware in there, we cannot go in again. We can't. There's no way to get in and maneuver in there anymore. This is the beginning of the end for her body, right?
Speaker 2:So we all moved in together. My husband is blessed. His heart was like down to live with his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law and our children, and we all moved in together and thank God that we did. God's plan was better than mine, because then COVID happened and we were in lockdown together and she never really left the house again after COVID and she passed in 2022. She passed in my mom's bed, in a different house, obviously, but she was born in my mom's bed and when she was born I did skin to skin and I got to name her middle name and we were like so we were only four and a half years apart, we were so connected. I'm her older sister and when she passed my um they declared the time of death. Like um, our older sister, who has the same dad, different mom, came and made it there and she was in a pediatrics ICU nurse. So she just automatically said time of death and she said 1103 and AM and 1103 is my sobriety date.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God Right.
Speaker 2:And so so, like my sober, my emotional sobriety teaches me constantly to look for signs like that, to look for that I'm on the right path, to look for how I'm being guided and to trust that like that to me is like true faith with works, is like looking for how God, your higher power spirit, is working in your life today. And that's that perception of reality. Am I looking for how I'm going to get hurt or am I looking for how I'm going to be helped? Right Am I? Am I focused on something that's going to lead to relapse? Am I focused on something that's going to lead to recovery? Fear, love.
Speaker 2:And I get to recognize now, the longer I stay physically abstinent from changing or altering my mind from an outside substance, I get to consciously observe the thoughts that lean this way and I get to choose to replace them with thoughts that lean this way. So I could be like my sister, you know, like is gone and I, I, how, how am I ever going to move on? And then I'm like, oh my gosh, she literally just passed on the same time as my sobriety date, and, and, and. She could have died anywhere anytime. And the fact that she passed in my mom's bed at home, surrounded by loved ones, is just such a such a gift. So so I too took her passing and I and I got into how can I have my legacy? Carry on her message?
Speaker 2:Cause she was fighting to live or not fighting, she was in the joy of living whole life, that she just wanted to live longer and live more and and have more love. She literally, if you hugged her and you and and you didn't like stay, or you did the side hug or something, she'd be like I need more love, I need more love, another hug, I need more love. And like I think that's how she even lived to be 33. They thought she wouldn't live past six. You know, it's because she was living in the joy, and yet there it always is accompanied with the calamity, right. And the love is always accompanied with the fear, and the darkness is how the light is appreciated, right? So she had all these examples of how precious and fragile life was, that she was surviving her whole life and she just kept turning to the joy and feeling grateful for this because it offered her this.
Speaker 2:So if you are in the fetal position right now, listening to this trust, please trust us that by feeling the depths of that pain, is opening the door to you, feeling the heights of that joy, and you don't just want to play small and live in the middle and never feel that right, numb it and run from it and never feel that, because then we also don't get to feel this, we also don't get to get a place where you have tears of gratitude, tears of joy, right. There's tears of pain and then there's tears of joy and I have, at least in my experience, to reach tears of joy level on this planet. I had to, I had to allow myself to have this, this pain of this grief.
Speaker 1:It's so, so good to talk to you. I have no doubt whatsoever that the work you're doing in the world and the work you are going to do in the world is going to be life-changing for people. I've gotten so much out of this conversation and I'm pretty self-aware, so from one lighthouse to another. Thank you for coming on here. I would love for you to tell people where they can find you, how they can work with you, because they're going to want to.
Speaker 2:So my handle is at hey, it's London underscore and I have the website that you can go to wwwlovetopivotcom. There's a questionnaire there you can fill out and then Kayla or Will and somebody from the Glasshouse will reach out to you and pair you with a coach that is the best match for you. And also, if you want to go to the retreat, it's in Northern California, it's Monday through Friday. It's a five-day retreat. I highly recommend it, especially if you're like, oh, my life is going good, how you know. Like I just want to like, clean up a few loose ends, right, you go in there and you're like, oh, my goodness, this is how I keep jumping in the driver's seat, this is what's blocking me. Or if you're in absolute crisis right now. It's also a place for you where you're going to be nurtured and carried through this experience to your next phase of development through that tunnel. It's where there's facilitators that can take you through that tunnel. And also I am a board member.
Speaker 2:I recently became a board member on a nonprofit called soberawakeningorg and the mission is to connect people that either become sober because they had a spiritual awakening. So you had a spiritual awakening and it got you to become sober, curious or at least more sober want to use less mind altering substances. Right, be more truly authentic. Or, if you got sober and now you're having a spiritual awakening, we are having the two come together in this space with resources and inspiration and support. So I would love to see you there, and soon. I'm moving actually in like less than two weeks, to Dallas and I've got a podcast room there, so I'm going to also be starting a podcast soon, so I'll share that and I'll have you on as a guest online.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, I can't wait. I can't wait, and the privilege and honor has truly been mine today. It's amazing to see your face and really to see what you've done with your pain. I need people like you to do the work I'm doing, and people like you are hard to find. Very, very special. You're very, very, very special.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I believe that I'm a reflection, right, I am a reflection, and you can see what you see in me because you have it in you as well.
Speaker 2:I love the concept of oh that's telling us that we're done, we're wrapping up. I love that Saved by the bell. I was just going to say the concept of like turning our mess into our message, right, that's the overarching thing here is that like, yes, we're in the mess, and how are we going to use this to be a message to someone else? Because, no matter how far down we've gone, the bottom is just whenever we stop digging right. And so you can stop digging right where you're at today listening to this, and you can start right, like turning it into how am I going to be of service to someone else through sharing what I've been through? Because everyone's story, someone else is going through it now.
Speaker 2:Whatever we've been through someone, there's everyone's story Someone else is going through it now. Whatever we've been through, someone else is now going through it and needs us to show up. We have to carry it, we have to give it away, to keep it. We have to write show other people the light, because somebody else is also going through. Whatever you're going through now, or what you're going through now, someone will go through, and so your life is worth living, no matter how dark it looks right now, is like the most important message I think that we can offer. You have. You have a message of depth and weight today too. And, and, man, I, I am so grateful we got to do this because, yes, I, I too, feel connected with you on like a soul level, and so I have no doubt that our paths will be meant to cross again. They sure will. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and making this space for us to share this today.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome. I love you.
Speaker 2:I love you. Yeah, please come find me at. Hey, it's London underscore. I would love to connect with your listeners and share more of this. And yeah, uh, love grows by giving. So thank you for all that you're giving. Amen, you're amazing.
Speaker 1:Dr Hart, you're amazing. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, please, all right, bye.
Speaker 1:Hi, so good. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:My, my children knew it was, it was after our time because they started knocking on the door. And then that's my alarm to take her to the learning center.
Speaker 1:That was so good. I cannot wait.