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  

Transcript

Welcome to 1% in Recovery

Speaker 1 0:02

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 0:52

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

Finding Peace and Serenity in Recovery

Speaker 1 1:23

. Elaine , how is Dallas ? How are you doing ? How are you feeling today ?

Speaker 2 1:28

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 2:03

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 2:12

It is .

Speaker 1 2:13

June is that funny month in Texas , right .

Speaker 2 2:16

People who come into Texas go it is so hot I go .

Speaker 1 2:20

you ain't seen nothing yet .

Speaker 2 2:22

Nothing yet .

Speaker 1 2:22

Yeah , wait for July and August . This is just like a cooker . We're kind of like searing you Right All right .

Speaker 2 2:33

I peaked out and I was like , oh my God , it's so nice I have to go outside right now .

Speaker 1 2:39

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 2:56

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 3:24

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 3:54

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 4:43

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 5:10

Yeah .

Speaker 1 5:11

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

Navigating Grief in Sobriety

Speaker 1 5:34

. 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 6:34

Talk to us about grief .

Speaker 2 6:36

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 7:21

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 8:29

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 9:24

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 10:09

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 10:55

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 11:50

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 12:33

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 12:55

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 13:25

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

The Importance of Community

Speaker 1 13:40

people in recovery .

Speaker 2 13:41

That's just so priceless .

Speaker 1 13:43

You can't get within just going to a meeting for an hour .

Speaker 2 13:47

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 14:31

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 15:24

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 16:26

Right , that was actually one of the great . The great thing about COVID was

Dating in Recovery and Self-Expression

Speaker 1 16:30

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 17:32

You talked about fellowship and we're talking about community . But besides fellowship , how important is community in recovery ?

Speaker 2 17:38

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 18:05

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 19:17

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 19:57

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 20:41

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 21:38

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

Emotional Release as Recovery Practice

Speaker 2 21:50

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 22:41

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 23:39

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 24:20

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 24:39

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 25:01

All right . With that , we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery .