The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
Elaine, Alcoholic Talks about Peace, Grief and Community. Recovery Rocks!!!
Elaine, Alcoholic Talks about Peace, Grief and Community. Recovery Rocks!!!
24 Years in Recovery.
LinkedIn: Elaine Williams | LinkedIn
Recovery is Beautiful.
Go Live Your Best Life!!
Facebook Group - Recovery Freedom Circle | Facebook
Your EQ is Your IQ
YouTube - Life Is Wonderful Hugo V
Recovery Freedom Circle
The System That Understands Recovery, Builds Character and Helps People Have Better Relationships.
A Life Changing Solution, Saves You Time, 18 weeks
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Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast. Today's a treat. We're going to keep it in Texas. We're going to be Houston Dallas conversation, but let's always remember you got to laugh every day, Got to work hard, Work hard in recovery, Work hard in your relationships, Work hard in your business or job or in school, and you've got to love unconditionally. Just put more love out there and just let more love return. Like we always say, your EQ is your IQ. You cannot outthink an emotional issue and recovery is beautiful. The one thing we do keep encouraging people to do is to join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. It's a community that everybody can participate.
Speaker 1:Talk about recovery, talk about the steps. Maybe you have a question about recovery or the steps or something that you just want to share about your own life. Maybe you have some goal or dream or maybe you found a motivational quote, just something there to uplift. That's what this whole Life is Wonderful the 1% Recovery. We're just trying to shine the light on how beautiful life can be in recovery. Now let's just jump into this week's episode. Elaine, how is Dallas? How are you doing? How are you feeling today?
Speaker 2:I'm so good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Dallas is. You know it's not super hot yet, but I know that's where we're headed Exactly. Yeah, you know what? I went for a walk yesterday and I felt so grateful that it's not 100 million degrees yet and it was like 70 and it was beautiful and that's something I love to move my body. I'm so grateful to be healthy. I love working out. To me, it's one of the most fun parts of being sober is getting your health back.
Speaker 1:Correct Total health I always try to talk about. Recovery isn't just about stopping the drinking or whatever other addictions you have, it's about total health.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:June is that funny month in Texas, right.
Speaker 2:People who come into Texas go it is so hot I go.
Speaker 1:you ain't seen nothing yet.
Speaker 2:Nothing yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wait for July and August. This is just like a cooker. We're kind of like searing you Right All right.
Speaker 2:I peaked out and I was like, oh my God, it's so nice I have to go outside right now.
Speaker 1:Exactly you learn. That's when you start realizing hey, in recovery you can get up at 536 in the morning, so you get your workout before 8 am before the heat. Yeah, you do. All right, let's jump into this week's episode.
Speaker 2:Tell the audience one thing you love. Well, I love I. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I love, I love working out. I also love trying little hole in the wall places that have good food. Like it's fun to go to nice fancy places, but I love those hole in the wall places where you can find, like, the best tacos or the best brisket or the best whatever. That, to me, is really fun discovering.
Speaker 1:I am a bit of a foodie and so to me that's one of my fun hobbies. Yeah, I hear you, so am I. I love finding those little tidbits, those little, whether it's something you may see on Instagram or TikTok someone's posting, you go, oh, I got to try that. Or it's just something else, all right, but let's just jump in. I always like to just be straight to the point. Let's jump into the questions. What does peace and serenity mean to you?
Speaker 2:Such a great question. I think for me it means that I can be centered and grounded even if there's chaos around, and I think it means that I can still get excited about things but not get totally swept away. I'm a pretty passionate person and in the past I would just get swept away by emotions or opportunities. And so, to me, when I'm grounded and I'm working my program and I'm meditating and working out and doing my spiritual practices, that helps me really stay grounded and that, to me, is all about peace and serenity, no matter what's happening outside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is. I mean we each got to find our own level of peace. I mean that's why we always say the serenity prayer, you know, to me is like if you can't get that one piece when you walk in, that addiction means that your life doesn't have any peace, doesn't have any serenity. We got to remind ourselves on okay, control what you can, but also understand what else brings us peace, what brings us joy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. All right, let's jump into question two. Now this is a big one, just so the audience knows. This is a big one for both Elaine and I. We had major loss here in February of this year. We had major loss here in February of this year. I lost my mother. She passed away. Elaine lost her dad. So this question is about grief. Now, grief can obviously be deal with a major loss. How do we confront and accept grief? And, I think the most important thing, how do we allow ourselves to stay in grief so we can process it? They always talk about originally there was the five stages of grief. Then they kind of expanded it to more, but in the end we still got to process the feeling, the grief. And so tell us how you're dealing with grief this year as well as because I just want some has happened, maybe that you just got to go through.
Speaker 2:Talk to us about grief.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting in on May 2022. And it's one thing to come visit, it's a whole nother thing to live there. And I, I, I was all of a sudden I realized there was all these things I had not grieved, that had happened when I was 19. And my sister was like, are you going to be okay? And I just had like a week where I just was crying and crying and crying and I, you know it's not fun, but it's also very cathartic to cry and to allow yourself to cry. And I'm so grateful that I realized, oh, I never grieved.
Speaker 2:There was a series of things that happened when I was a freshman. I don't need to go into the details, but it's some pretty heavy stuff and I had made the connections that I had never given myself time to grieve all the things that had happened. One was pretty catastrophic. So then, leading to just losing my father, I was grieving before he died just because I never really got to have him growing up and so getting to help be his caretaker the past three years was really healing, but also it was really sad. So I was in this whole like sort of paradox of like grateful to be with him now and sometimes it was really sad because I so desperately needed him growing up and he just wasn't capable or available for lots of reasons. And so I and allowing myself to have all of the feelings and I've learned to go you know, I'm in therapy but I go to a lot of meetings and being able to go and just cry.
Speaker 2:And then, for example, I just came back from I was away for two weeks. I did a women, a podcast and cruise and then I did a retreat and I knew it was going to be like awesome work but also very intense work. And then I was flying back into Love Field where I used to go fly in to visit my dad when I was a little girl, but we also used to go into the ice skating rink. There used to be an ice skating rink in Love Field and I just knew, okay, lane, do not schedule anything else after you fly in. And sure enough, the minute I landed I just started crying. I went and got my suitcase crying I'm taking a breath, went to get some water, crying. I asked the poor guy, like how do I get to the Uber place? My dad, he probably thought I was crazy. And then I just got in the car and I was crying.
Speaker 2:I just knew it's going to be the first time I come back to left field that my dad won't have been able to pick me up. He didn't always pick me up and just knowing, okay, I'm probably going to be sad, tired, emotionally exhausted and to give myself a couple of days. And I gave myself the next day after coming back of, just like meditating and crying and praying and go to meetings and I didn't think I was capable of that and I think it was a lot of things. It wasn't just about my dad, but just processing the whole experience with the retreat and my cousin and all the things. And so you know it's not something I love doing.
Speaker 2:I don't like feeling sad, but I also know it's part of the process and I know that it's good for me to do it and um, but it's, yeah, it's. It's been a really challenging time and it still hits me. It's only been a few months, but I'm so grateful I'm sober, because if I wasn't sober I would be squishing all of this down. I'd probably already be dead, but if I wasn't sober I would just be pushing all of this down with God knows what food, men work, whatever, and so the gift of sobriety is being able to feel the feelings and lean into it and surrender to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, like you said, so one thing that I did not add in you know, elaine's got 24 years and 10 months. Come August she'd hit the big 25. I just celebrated 28. But I do understand that you know we've had a lot of time For me it was not drinking and gambling, for you it was not drinking that we could spend that time not only with our parents but any other person that we loved, and it hasn't been just, you know, it almost would feel like something would have been robbed if they had died, you know, and it was only been like three or four years, even though I would have probably already had done like make amends, or, you know, been able to spend some holidays or quality times and, you know, really be in the moment, you know, just having just multiple years, you know, just be able to kind of say that.
Speaker 1:That, I think, is part of the grief, to just know that we've also been able granted the gift of life, you know, and just to be really present. You know, and just to be really present and, like you said, is you're going to have those feelings of sadness, of being tired, but also those fond memories of the ice rink. You know the things that and so like one thing that we're doing differently, you know, so we it was just my brother and I, and he had two daughters, and so the four of us are kind of, either through text or you know different ways to get together to try to honor my mom as well as just to be there in our own grief, because everybody has their own within our families.
Speaker 1:We have our own grief, journeys Right, and we have to kind of just let you know what do I need, like I went out to California to get, you know, a mud bath. I had to get that healing volcanic, you know a mud bath. I had to get that healing volcanic mud on me within 30 days. You know I wanted to do something I just had to get out of Houston. Right, I was like sometimes people don't understand this.
Speaker 2:I just had to just leave town. Yeah, and do something for me. Right, there's something so great to me about leaving your environment and sometimes just stepping out of that. You can have breakthroughs or see things that you can't see when you're in your daily thing, you know.
Speaker 1:But here in Houston. But I highly encourage people you're in recovery go to retreats. It's good to unplug, to just be at some type of retreat center. You said you could be on a boat. Just have at least a weekend where you can just kind of like focus on what you're thinking, feeling and just being around other people in recovery.
Speaker 2:That's just so priceless.
Speaker 1:You can't get within just going to a meeting for an hour.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's something so special about fellowship and I know for me. So many times I was trying to make up for lost time and working, working, working, and I would go to the meetings, but then I would run and I didn't immerse myself in the fellowship. And when I finally slowed down, Hugo, my everything shifted. It was such a gift. It was such a gift to have more time and to be able to connect on deeper levels with other sober people. So I highly recommend doing some fellowship and, you know, even if it's just going to dinner or going for coffee or whatever after a meeting, that can really be life changing.
Speaker 1:Oh, it can. And as we enter into question three, you did bring up because I also said, you know, you have to grieve our addictions. You got to grieve our addictions, you got to grieve our old life. But, like you kind of mentioned, there's also sometimes we don't want, I think, what holds us back. Sometimes we don't want to confront and grieve whether it was that sexual incident, whether it was some financial blunder where we've lost a lot of money, Because a lot of times I always say, things always seem to come around back around love, sex and money, and it's always seems about those seems to like hit us upside the head. We wonder why we're. Then we're crying, like you said, but crying on the inside. But we need, like you said, cry on the outside to get through it, Because if you can cry and laugh, that means you're doing well, Because if you can cry and laugh, that means you're doing well, I love it.
Speaker 2:I always say if I'm nauseous, sweating or crying, for me I know that means I'm processing and that's just from doing a ton of other work. And I was just going to add on to what you said, hugo, is I love the 12-step world and I'm a big fan of like outside help. Whatever you need, you know whatever you need to help yourself stay sober emotionally. And for me that means I work out daily, I meditate daily, I need to be doing some kind of spiritual reading. Even if I don't get to a meeting every day, I get to four minimum a week and that just is what works for me. And I've been traveling in Europe where I couldn't get to meetings but I listened to podcasts or I listened to books or I did my Zoom meetings with my girls. So there's so many cool ways that we have so many great tools that we didn't have when I first came in the program Right.
Speaker 1:Right, that was actually one of the great. The great thing about COVID was all the onslaught of online meetings, because now you can go to I love going to meetings outside of town. But let's jump into question three. We kind of touched upon it into question three. We kind of touched upon it. So, just so everybody knows, elaine and I met at PodFest, which is the largest podcasting conference, held every year in January in Orlando, florida. We met and we kind of talked in it. I always find it fascinating. There's always a way you can hear someone talk and you feel like that person's in recovery. There's something else kind of going on. Let me hear a little more about their stories, just the way we talk or the way we move, or they kind of obviously might want to introduce myself oh, what's your podcast? 1% in recovery. And then people kind of go, oh, okay, I think I kind of get what you're about, but let's talk.
Speaker 1:You talked about fellowship and we're talking about community. But besides fellowship, how important is community in recovery?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, it's everything. And you know, if you had told me this, I don't know, eight years ago, I would have been so mad. You know one of the things they say about the disease it's cunning, baffling and powerful. And I, I love stories. I love stories, I teach storytelling, I have I'm always on a million podcasts. I have a podcast. I, you know, I have clients, whatever.
Speaker 2:And I didn't realize this, hugo, but when I was on my women in podcasting cruise, one of the women said I'm a lone wolf, and it pierced me. Sometimes people say something and you're like whoa, and I realized that I do this thing after my meeting. But if I'm getting ready for camera, getting dressed, I will put on a story, but then my brain goes into story mode and I will totally check out with two other podcast episodes of a history thing or whatever, instead of making phone calls. And I, I and maybe it sounds very simple, but I realized, like Elaine, you're isolating, you need to be making phone calls, you need to be checking on people in sobriety, but also your clients, your prospects, your colleagues, and so to me, fellowship is so important because you can hear things that are meant for you. God talks to us through people, and sometimes we don't even realize that we're doing something that might not be great for us, you know. And so, yeah, fellowship is everything.
Speaker 2:Who you hang out with is everything you know, I just started dating again and it's hilarious and terrifying, but you know, it's I'm being, I'm practicing discernment because my time and attention are so precious to me and I really want to be careful about who if I decide to hang out with somebody. You know, because, god, I used to not be discerning at all and now, you know, at 57, I'm I'm way more picky and I think that's good for me. So I don't know. That's kind of a long answer to the fellowship question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people have addressed. I've listened to some other podcasts. You know when people are aren't and they talk about dating and then you know trying to see okay, does the other person drink, not drink? I'm always comfortable, whether it's business, whether it's love life, whether it's family, because my family always drank. So I got it was never, it was never going to be an issue. I had to learn how to live within a drinking world. But, yeah, it does add questions as well. How do you, how are you going to view dating and how you know cause, that will be a little more impactful. But yeah, I think the whole thing about you know kind of getting out there.
Speaker 1:And one last thing we both did stand up at Podfest, which is one of those things that in the back of my head I was always like, oh, I want to do that. And you know those are the wonderful gifts of kind of to me recovery, where you kind of just step out. You know you go more on faith, you know we have talent. It is going to be something new. You're not going to be some ecstatic funny comedian where you're going to get laughs for five minutes. I think ours was three minutes. It was short. Yep, it was short, but I mean that's probably better it's shorter. You know, come up with a few things, but any last words you want to share about either recovery you could talk, you know something about, like we talked about whether it was grief, whether it was community, whether it was peace or just some other, or just some other, what they call, you know, gem. That you learned.
Speaker 2:I would say you know, I've had lots of different mentors and sponsors and I had a mentor who he was brilliant, he was just a brilliant guy and he he'd been in recovery and he would tell me that he meditated and every once in a while at least once a week he would just let himself cry and he said you don't have to know why, it can just be an emotional release. And that was so mind-blowing for me because if you're in a recovery, you're probably sensitive. So if you're conscious, awake and aware, there's a lot happening. Right, there's always a lot happening in the world. I think we're even more aware of it now because of social media and the 24-7 cycle, and whether you're watching TV a lot or not, there's stuff coming at us constantly. And so I think having some kind of active practice or ritual where you can release emotion is so powerful.
Speaker 2:And when I was newly sober, I had done a leadership program with the Landmark Forum, with Landmark Education, prior to coming into AA, and one of the things they talked about was call your coach. If you're messed up, call your coach. If you're happy, call your coach. If you're sad, call your coach. If you're stressed out, call your coach. And in the past, whenever I'd gotten triggered, I would turn within, and that's when I would use and abuse right. And so, for the first time, I had learned this other behavior of reaching out for help. And in the past I'd reached out, but I'd always been surrounded by my crazy family who was not healthy, or other people who are not healthy. And so, for the first time, I had access to healthy, supportive people, and so that alone, to me, was one of the most amazing foundations of my program, and that's what I tell new people to do all the time.
Speaker 2:So if you're new or just coming back, one of the best ways to get sober and stay sober is to who are the people you can reach out to and ask for help. Who are the people you can leave a message like I'm having a rough day and I just need to blah, blah, blah, get it out, get it out. And stand-up is a great way. I've been a stand-up comedian since 05. And it you know to go to open mic and just blah. So I'm a big fan of expressing yourself, whether it's crying or screaming or yelling or whatever. It's a great way to help to get sober and stay sober.
Speaker 1:So I'll finish with this. So in stand up. If you're successful, you're going to feel big smile on your face. You're going to be able to just go. Man, I made the audience laugh and if you bomb, like you said, you could just go home and cry and everything will be okay.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of that, my first class in standup. I kept thinking they told me I was funny, but I'm not funny. I'm not funny on demand. And then when I did my showcase, I talked about my dysfunctional family and everybody was dying laughing and I had a light bulb moment of like, oh, I'm supposed to help people. So yeah, it's a journey. It's always a journey.
Speaker 1:All right. With that, we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery.