071 Finding Hope: My Bipolar Story

In this episode, Hope Andersen talks about her painful journey through bipolar disorder, diving deep into her experiences with both depressive and manic phases. She discusses the challenges of promiscuity and alcohol as she sought healing, ultimately leading to her inspiring book, How to Remodel a Life: a guide to living well with alcoholism and bipolar disorder.

✨ *What You'll Learn:*
•⁠  ⁠The importance of mental health awareness
•⁠  ⁠Coping strategies for managing bipolar disorder
•⁠  ⁠The power of vulnerability in the recovery process
•⁠  ⁠How seeking professional help can change lives

You never have to be alone in your journey x

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Thank you for watching.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hi guys, Danica here from Multispectrum. I'm here to share with you a new episode where I interview Hope. She's a beautiful individual who talks about living with bipolar disorder. And for her, it manifested with alcohol, it manifested with promiscuity, it manifested in very impulsive behaviors. The interesting thing is how there is common ground between all of these guests that I've interviewed before about bipolar disorder, but there's also such vast differences in the ways that it displays itself. You might have someone that you believe could be potentially displaying signs of it, this episode could be really, really useful for you. Do give it a listen. And if there's any sort of story that you would like to hear more of or learn more about, feel free to let us know. We're always, always on the lookout for stories that can match your needs. So hope you enjoy the episode. I hope. Welcome to Multispective. I'm so excited to have you here with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I'm excited to be here. I am really thrilled to have this opportunity to share

SPEAKER_00 1:23

with you. Yeah. You know, you do have quite an interesting story, and I feel like there are little bits and pieces that kind of center around your name. Curious, is your name self-picked, or was this given to you by birth?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

No, I actually have quite a long name. My birth name that I was christened with is Christiane Frances Hope Koston. That was my maiden name. And Hope was actually a family name that got passed down as a last name. The fellow who discovered the Hope Diamond, he was one of my relatives. So that's where the Hope comes from in my name. But I have really clung to that name. It really means a lot to me

SPEAKER_00 2:11

that I'm named Hope. Yeah, I love it. And we'll get more into your story a little bit. And I'm sure there's like a lot of connections to that and I feel like a name is such an important part of a person. It's like your own personal identity, right? And it's the word that you probably use quite a lot in your day-to-day life. So, you know, putting those words into your daily kind of routine is quite powerful as well, I would say. But yeah, Hope, why don't you tell us a little bit about where are you from and where does your story sort of begin? Well, I'm, let's see,

SPEAKER_01 2:40

where am I from? I'm initially or originally from New England. I was born in Connecticut and lived in Connecticut. for the first eight years of my life. And then my parents had a job change and moved down to Maryland. I'm in the U.S. We lived in Maryland from the time I was eight until I was around 16. And then I went away to a girls' boarding school in England for a year because I had graduated from school a year early. I had skipped a grade. So when I came back to the States, my parents had moved to Vermont, another New England state. And I basically, you know, I spent time in Vermont, but most of those years after I got back from England were college years. I went to college outside Boston and kind of stayed in the Boston area, got sober, which is a big part of my story, in the Boston area when I was 20, went to graduate school in Connecticut, and then came back to New Jersey, where I had my first teaching job in Princeton, New Jersey. And I met Wow. So you've really been around the States. I mean, like

SPEAKER_00 4:08

all around. What has it been like for you? I mean, you know, as a young person sort of moving around, would you say that that was kind of like a more of a positive, like, experience? experience you look back on it? Or would you say you kind of wished you'd been put for your younger years? I

SPEAKER_01 4:25

wish we'd stayed in New England. I mean, you know, you look at your life and you think you wouldn't be the person you are today if everything that happened to you hadn't happened. So there's that perspective that's like, okay, everything is as it should be. And it all turned out very well. But you know, I love New England. And we just had snow here yesterday in North Carolina, which was wonderful because I miss the snow I miss we get seasons here in North Carolina we have spring summer winter fall and winter but we've been lacking in snow over the years and to have snow yesterday was such a treat right around this holiday season so yeah I kind of miss New England and the mountains and the snow and skiing and that you know the ice skating outside and doing all that

SPEAKER_00 5:19

That's really nice. So what was it? You mentioned that the first time when you guys moved was because of your parents' work, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

school. And we lived there for a number of years.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah. Would you say like growing up, I don't know, possibly because you were traveling around and moving around a fair bit growing up, would you say that that affected you socially in any ways? Or would you say that you were quite a social individual?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

You know, I'm pretty private person. And I think because of having the diseases of both alcoholism and bipolar disorder, I am not somebody I'm fairly introverted and I'm not somebody who feels comfortable necessarily in social situations. So the fact that we moved around and didn't really lay down very firm roots, I think it contributed to my sense of isolation that I felt anyway because of having those diseases. Even in recovery, which I've been in for 43 years now, I've been sober and recovering from a bipolar disorder since 1998, I still prefer being either in very small groups or one-on-one. I don't like social situations very much. I don't feel particularly comfortable in big groups of people.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

So can you recall, tell me a little bit about what bipolar looked like for you? So I know it can be quite different for different people, the

SPEAKER_01 7:17

experience. I was just rereading my memoir that I wrote. I'll hold it up here. It's called How to Remodel a Life. And the subtitle for it is A Guide to Living Well with Alcoholism and Bipolar Disorder. And as I was rereading it, because I'm about to make it into an audible book next week, I'm recording it. I was impressed with how much I talk about my bipolar disorder in that book. I hadn't realized I had done that quite so much. And I believe that I was born with bipolar disorder. I believe that a lot of the behavior I exhibited in my early years was because of that disease. I believe that the reason I became an alcoholic and got involved with alcohol and drugs was in part and parcel because of my bipolar disorder. I tend to be somewhat I wanted to say I was more on the depressive side, but I really wasn't. I was this very, very, not black and white, but like having two personalities. I was this, on the one hand, very, very caring, loving, productive, dynamic person who did things like orchestrated an entire creative arts festival for our school all by myself. I got all these musicians and artists and chefs and dancers and actors and everything all involved in this celebration. And I basically did it single-handedly. But there was also the other side of me that was very, very depressive and suicidal. I had in my teens multiple suicide attempts. Couldn't stand the sight of myself in the mirror. Would cover mirrors up when my family was gone and just really loathed myself in a very big, deep, dark way. So there were those two extremes of my personality that were going on throughout my early teens and teens and into my 20s. And that to me was my bipolarism at work.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

I do want to ask, for individuals that may not know, how would you be able to differentiate bipolar disorder with someone who just is very just emotional who generally feels a lot of emotion like being diagnosed this could this be dangerous to an individual's life and was it ever for you

SPEAKER_01 10:46

there are at least for me there are certain telltale symptoms that i have when i know i'm becoming either manic or depressed when i'm becoming manic what happens for me it starts out kind of nice and it's a warm fuzzy feeling like i'm becoming more productive i have more energy i have a you know more joy of living and that's a good thing that's that's a nice place to be you you know we we we'd like to feel that way. But with someone who has mania, that quickly becomes, for me anyway, it feels like I'm in a carriage and the horses are running away with the carriage. The momentum, the, you know, suddenly I'm not sleeping at night. I'm producing, producing, producing. I'm up at night writing emails, writing novels, writing letters, doing art, but not sleeping. So my sleeping goes down the hill, goes away. My eating changes. I don't eat as much as I should be eating. I become very, very sexual. I want to have sex with everybody that I see, basically. I become overblown. My sense of reality becomes very twisted. I remember when I had that manic episode, I played tennis with somebody and I really believed that I was Chris Evert. I really believed that I was Wimbledon level tennis player, and I can barely serve a tennis ball. So it was really a very distorted view of myself. And that happens. Now, you know, one of the things I've learned in coping with bipolar disorder and taking my meds and doing a self-care routine that keeps me balanced is that I can have good feelings. I can feel and do feel very frequently an overwhelming sense of joy and happiness and bliss. I feel a connection to the universe. I feel energetic. I mean, this last year has been one of tremendous productivity for me and energy, but I haven't been manic. It's like I have balance. So that I can pay attention to the different facets of my life. I can't do that when I'm manic. But when I'm just being healthy in my body, I can exercise moderately, eat well, but moderately, have sex with my husband and not somebody else, you know, do my work, but leave space for my kids. give myself time for myself to play and meditate and just enjoy life. And it all becomes much more fluid and possible when I'm not manic. When I'm manic, I'm run by my extreme emotions. As far as

SPEAKER_00 14:09

what can trigger mania, like upper mania, the one that you were just talking about, the manic phase, what would What can trigger that?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

that I'm kind of getting hyped up and I need to pull myself back down. And I think one of the things I've learned over the years is how to be so self-aware and how to take my own inventory on a daily basis. You know, I spend a lot of time in the morning. I get up at three or four in the morning and I spend three hours meditating, praying, writing in my journal, looking at my belly button and saying, how are you doing today? You know, where are you today? Who are you today? And I take that time and I take time out during the day to meditate and to check in with myself. And I'm constantly aware of my thoughts, my feelings, my actions, because I have to be. And it may sound like a lot of work and it is work and it isn't work. It's just become second nature to me to kind of constantly live in this state of evaluating what's going on. So when I start to fly off the handle a little bit, usually what I'll, the very first thing I do is I talk to my husband and I say, it's happening. What do I need to do? Because one of the things I've learned is I can't rely on my own mind when I'm starting to get that way. I really need to ask for help. And whether it's a or whatever it is, I need to speak that truth and own the fact that I am starting to go off the deep end. But I haven't been off the deep end in a long time. That one instance, I do believe, was triggered by my father's death, which was a traumatic experience for me. And for all my sisters, it really had a very profound impact on all five of my sisters and And, you know, we all handled it in a different way. slow slide. It's like a landslide, actually. And one thing that triggers depression for me is not taking care of myself, you know, falling out of my routine of getting exercise on a regular basis, eating healthy food, getting enough sleep, talking to friends and making connections during the day. For me, attending meetings, 12-step meetings. These are all things that I really need to do. Taking my medication. If I forget to take my medicine, which I very, very, very rarely do, or I'm even, for some reason, I ran out of it because I just wasn't paying attention, I can very quickly fall back into depression or mania So I have to be, I'm very, very disciplined. I have to be very disciplined about my life and what I do and how I live my life. It's very intentional, the way I live my life on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

How did this impact your family? Were your parents well aware? Were they picking up on these signs in your early years? How did it impact your family? What about your siblings as well?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

My parents were clued out. They, they had six children of their own, and then they worked in these schools where they had 200 or more surrogate children that they were responsible for. My parents had their own issues with addictions that they were, you know, engaged in. And so basically they were, they were very checked out. I had an eating disorder when I was in my early teens. I've had eating disorders most of my life, but I used to keep this concoction in the refrigerator of lemon juice and soap and water. And I would drink it at every meal to make myself throw up after I ate. And one of my sisters told my parents, you know, she is sick. She needs help. She's, she's bulimic and she's getting anorexic and you, you know, you need to do something. And my parents' reaction was, it's just a phase shift. going through. And, you know, there was kind of that attitude of, they had, they were in denial about what was going on. As far as my sisters go, I think I was a real pain in the neck for my sisters, because I was such an emotional roller coaster. And I demanded so much attention, you know, and on the other hand, I refused to show up for the family. I I disassociated from the family and I held on to this kind of victim status that I had of, you know, nobody loves me. Everybody hates me sitting in the garden eating worms. And, you know, I do feel like I had a very negative effect on my sisters when I was growing up. But I could be, I could misguided about that. I mean, we all, as we've grown up and talked about the way we perceived our childhoods and our relationships with our parents, you know, everybody had stuff going on and everybody had issues they were dealing with. And it wasn't just me. And I wasn't, I wasn't the only, you know, I wasn't the only one who was screwed up. And I, and I also wasn't the only one who was impacted by our parents. And I think over time, I've come to recognize that maybe I just wasn't that important. Maybe I wasn't doing that much damage. I mean, I did damage and I've tried to make amends for that. But I think as you grow older and you grow hopefully wiser, you change your behavior and it's your behavior, your living amends that you make when you remember people's birthdays and you call and you reach out and you send Christmas gifts and you show interest in people's lives. I think that's the way that I have been able to make amends for any kind of harm I might have caused my siblings when we were growing up.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

I'm curious though, like when you talked about the eating disorder, is it common for people that have bipolar disorder to also have eating disorders? Do those two things go hand in hand?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

I have no idea, but I know that people who have addictive personalities often put You know, that addiction, that addictive personality finds different venues to express itself.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Interesting. Because that means that when you were a lot younger, you know, it started off with the food habits, the eating habits. And then as you grew older, you got exposed to alcohol and it kind of switched out, would you say? Or did you continue to have eating disorder while you also developed an alcohol addiction? Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

I mean, I think that definitely was something that happened for me was as I got older and discovered alcohol, alcohol took over where the food kind of left off. But I mean, I think I've always had dysmorphia, you know, an unrealistic or untrue appreciation for my body, if that makes any sense. My mother had her own issues and she was very, very body conscious and she put me on my first diet when I was seven years old. She was very, very fat phobic and just did not want any of us to be fat. She really, really messed us up in a big way with her own eating problems that she had. A number of us in my family of the six girls have had eating disorders. You know, that's partly brought about by society and what society says you should look like and how you should come across, but it wasn't helped by my mother's actions. I remember in college when I would call her, the first question she ever asked me was, how much do you weigh? And And it was always about the body. It was never about what's going on in your soul.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

I want to ask, because you did talk a little bit about, at least when you were in your mania, you slept around quite a fair bit, or at least you wanted to. And you mentioned as well previously to me that promiscuity was a thing that you battled with as well. Do you think that there could be a link here between your eating disorder, between your mom's expectations of all the girls and how to maintain their body weight and Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

I mean, there's that, you know, as an addict, as a human being, I think we all have holes in our soul. We have a void that we want to fill with something. And I think we all, I mean, I speak for myself, I guess. I know I always wanted to feel loved, that I just wanted to be loved. And I didn't feel particularly loved growing up. And I didn't feel particularly trusting of my parents because they had their own addictions and they were not particularly loved. trustworthy. So when I would have these encounters with men and boys and then later men, it was to fill that hole to make me as though having sex somehow could make me complete and it would make me feel full that that emptiness wouldn't be there anymore. But that absolutely backfired. That definitely was not my experience. And yet I kept seeking that same solution for the whole time that my addictions were in full swing.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

So,

SPEAKER_01 25:59

you know, I think it's all about wanting love and looking for love in the wrong places, looking for completion in the wrong places. The only place that I have found that I have felt really complete and I felt that void filled is in meditation with my connection with the universe, with what you want to call it. You can call it God. You can call it source. You can call it Tao. You can call it Buddha. You can call it whatever you want. When I meditate and I connect through nature, through whatever form of meditation I'm doing, then I feel full and then I feel joy. And it's fleeting. It doesn't last forever, but I can live with that. I realized that today. I don't have to go for the long-term effect. I can live on the bits and pieces of joy that I experience in my life. And, you know, at one time I thought maybe that was blasphemous not to say that I experienced that completeness through my relationship with my husband, but my relationship with my husband is a really good relationship because we don't expect each other to complete one another. We live parallel lives. We interact. Yes, we have sex. Yes, we enjoy sex. Yes, we enjoy more than that with each other. We enjoy one another being separate human beings and coming together at times in very loving and intimate ways and also in very silly ways and very boring and usual ways and kind of just eating soup together. I

SPEAKER_00 27:48

do want to go back a little bit more, just talk a little bit more about the bipolar experience. Can you recall and specific instances that really stand out to you when you are either in a mania or in a depressive phase of yours. Just to give our listeners a little bit more of an idea as to what that might look like. Yeah, I mean,

SPEAKER_01 28:06

one instance when we moved from Princeton, New Jersey to Michigan after my major manic episode during which I had spent thousands and thousands of dollars that we didn't have and had an extramarital affair and tried to commit suicide and, you know, it had been a train wreck. And it had seriously impacted my husband, who has PTSD. anyway and so his life fell apart our life fell apart my life fell apart and we moved to Michigan to to kind of start over with a new job that he found so while we're in this place he was living down at one point he was still in Princeton with my son who was finishing up his school year and I was out in Michigan with our two daughters getting this new house that we had bought and you know, all ready for the guys to come out. And we were fixing up the basement for my son for a bedroom for him and doing this stuff. And there was a construction, the guy who was in charge of the construction was just a really nice guy. But I remember coming on to him, like flirting with him and trying to get him to sleep with me. And it was like, he wasn't having any of it. But it was that was the red of my mania that whole hyper sexuality thing and I know for me if I ever feel that way about a man if I ever have sexual feelings about another man aside from my husband it is a huge red flag for me because promiscuity was a thing that accompanied my addiction and my bipolar behavior so that that That is, you know, that is something that I am very, very aware of and sensitive to.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah, so it sounds like for you kind of a lot of it really manifested in that sense, because it reminds me of some episodes that I did in the past. And many of them kind of had very different kind of effects. Some of them would start hallucinating and getting godlike images, feelings, illusions. And there were others that actually became pretty violent. And so they were kind of like pulled into the system. him to be weaned off of it or helped. In your situation, it was the seductiveness. How would you come down from a mania? Would there have to be someone to take you? Were you ever taken to a ward or a psychiatric hospital? How did you come down from one of those?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I've never had to go back into a psychiatric hospital since the first time that I went when I had that major blowout in 1998. Then I was institutionalized. But like I said, when I become aware that I'm having manic thoughts or that I'm heading in that direction, I call my psychiatrist and I tell him, you know, whichever psychiatrist I'm using at that time, whether it's the one in Michigan or I've got one down here in North Carolina or whoever, I tell somebody. I mean, I have to tell the truth about what's going on. And then my medication gets adjusted I tell my husband and I'm able I don't know why I feel so blessed that I've been able to do this to just pull back and say okay you are headed toward mania you need to make sure you're eating right you know not crap food you need to eat three meals a day healthy food you need to get some fresh air and exercise you need to make sure you're getting to bed on time and getting eight hours of sleep. You know, you need to chill out and not, and just be, not do. And, you know, so it's a combination of reaching out for outside help from the doctors and maybe changing my medicines a little bit. And then also my self-awareness and taking care of myself. You know, I talk about in my book, How to Remodel a Life, at the end, end of every chapter, I have a toolkit. And in those toolkits, I have the practices that I have engaged in over the last 43 years to help me maintain, get and maintain recovery from alcoholism and bipolar disorder. And they're very practical pieces of advice, just suggestions that I take and use still today. But being honest with yourself is one of the most Yeah, I think that's what it is. It's like

SPEAKER_00 33:26

also having that awareness. I think for a lot of people, you included as well. And the previous guest that I'd done a bipolar episode with mentioned that. It kept coming back. They lived with it. He lived with it. You lived with it for several, several years of your life. And the thing is, it kept coming back because the awareness was not there. You guys didn't know that, hey, look, like this is what is triggering my feeling this way. And so therefore I should act on it. Maybe the moment that you got, and I'm asking you this, the moment that you got diagnosed or the moment that you were taken to a psychiatric hospital where you were There were tests being done. Once you had that awareness, were you able to get the ball rolling on making the necessary changes? Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Well, when I was taken to that psychiatric hospital, I had no idea what was wrong with me. I had no idea why I was, because I had not been diagnosed bipolar yet. I was taken there because I was suicidal and I was, you know, my husband committed me because I was a danger to myself. And it was in that experience that I met this wonderful doctor named Julia Temple, who interviewed me, met with me, talked to me, and she gave me the diagnosis that I was bipolar at that time. You know, it was almost a tremendous relief to have a diagnosis that maybe was true, because I had been given diagnosis. before and medicines before that hadn't worked for me. I had this one crazy quack doctor who told me that my problem was that I was addicted to chaos and he put me on Prozac and it did absolutely nothing for me. The depressions increased. I experienced postpartum depression while I was on Prozac. I just, it was not a good experience and it didn't do anything for me. But when Julia Temple said, you have bipolar disorder and here's what we're going to do about it. And she worked with me on getting a mix of medicines that really worked. It gave me hope that there was something that I could do about my life. And she had a counselor that worked with her. She was a psychiatrist who did the medical, the pharmaceutical part of things, Julia did. But she had a counselor who worked with her who talked to me about what path I was going to take in my life and what direction I was going to head in. And she helped me tremendously get the kind of disability insurance that I needed to get so that I didn't have to try to hold down a job at this very fragile time in my life. So I was able to just kind of take a breather and know that, okay, you are a sick person trying to get well and you need to give yourself time to recover So I feel very fortunate that at that time I did kind of have an aha moment that, you know, you're wounded and you need to take care of yourself. You're not a bad person. You're not awful. You did some pretty bad things. But, you know, you are a sick person and you need to get well. I

SPEAKER_00 36:59

know you mentioned that for you bipolar was something that you believe you were born with. An addictive personality can also be something someone is born with but do you think there is a possibility that the environment also played a role in in some of it

SPEAKER_01 37:12

oh yes you mentioned your parents i don't i don't think it's just genetic i think your environment always plays a role and as i said my parents you know my parents were heavy drinkers and they were unpredictable because of their drinking and what was modeled for us as kids was that was how you how you dealt with life was through you know drinking every night. And I certainly followed in my father's footsteps in that line, along that line. I followed in his footsteps in other ways as well, which were positive ways that he really influenced my life and had a very profound and wonderful effect on my life. But the addictive nature of their, they never said they were alcoholics or anything like that. But when you look at the track record, if you can say that somebody as an alcoholic, I would say that both my parents had alcoholism.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Did your siblings also develop any addictions? Excuse me? Did your siblings also develop any addictions or addictive behaviors?

SPEAKER_01 38:17

I have one other sister who is in the 12-step program. I have a sister who has done 12-step work but doesn't go to the acknowledged that she has eating disorders and you know and another one who hasn't acknowledged that she has eating disorders but she does so you know they've all I think all of them have had something going on with them

SPEAKER_00 38:50

the full range yeah the full

SPEAKER_01 38:52

range

SPEAKER_00 38:52

yeah so talk to me a little bit about like the therapy side of it the healing side of it the overcoming all of this the addiction and the bipolar living with it

SPEAKER_01 39:03

well what's been most instrumental in my life since i got sober when i was 26 years old really the most instrumental thing in my life has been working the 12 steps and you know that is a program in which you accept that you are powerless i'm powerless over alcohol i'm powerless over food when i you know i i don't know how to manage those things and i need help and so then in the second and third steps, you go on and you develop a relationship with some power, whatever you want to call it, it has no name, that you can turn to and develop a relationship with that where you give, you go to that power for help. And whether that power is the 12-step group that you're in, a group of drunks or good orderly direction or something more spiritual or religious or whatever it is, it's really up to you. And then you do an inventory of yourself and take a good hard look at yourself and say okay here's me this is what got me into trouble here's why I have resentments toward these people and places and things here's my part in it take a make a good house cleaning and then you share that with somebody in the fifth step and then in the sixth step you And the seventh step, you become ready to have those things that are obstacles that stand in your way of your recovery. You become ready to have them removed and you ask that higher power to remove those things. In steps eight and nine, you make a list of the people you've harmed. And in step nine, you make amends to all of them when you can. In step 10, you continue to take your inventory. So you keep on looking at yourself the way I've talked about, just that salt awareness in step 11 you continue to improve your conscious contact with that power that's greater than you and in step 12 you share what you have gained through working these steps and you try to help other people and you make service a huge part of your life you know it's it's really through helping others that we get out of our own little small selves and can enjoy our lives so that has has become the kind of dance of my life over the past 43 years. And it's led me into a lot of places, a lot of readings that are outside of the program, books that have helped me along the way, so many books that have helped me. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is one of them. The Book of Joy is another. Sermon on the Mount, The Road Less Traveled. I could go on and on about all the books that have, you know, The Power of of your subconscious mind. I mean, there are so many books that have helped me in my recovery.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

And,

SPEAKER_01 42:07

you know, one of the things that has been so wonderful about recovery is letting the recovery happen in its own time. In the beginning, I was in such a rush to be well. You know, I wanted to be well. I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to be you know perfect and I had to let go of that notion of perfection and just accept that okay you're always going to be imperfect and that's okay you're fine just the way you are and just keep trudging the road you know just keep working these steps keep trying to be open to intuition and imagination and creation and your higher power and just listen and learn and grow and change gradually. And so my spiritual recovery has been a very slow and steady process. But I have to tell you that in the last 10 years, I have to tell you this story. For the first 30 years of my sobriety, I always felt like I kind of, I mean, I made recovery. I had recovery. I changed. I was becoming a different person. But it wasn't until I turned 60. In 2015, after a long bout of illness, my husband was finally given a liver transplant. He almost died of liver cancer. He was given three months to live. And he miraculously was given a new liver. And it was a woman's liver. And he became very sensitive and cried at the drop of a hat once he had that new liver. And I kind of liked that because He had developed this sensitivity that he didn't so much have before. So he went on after he had this miraculous, and it was miraculous, liver transplant and became a personal trainer. And my kids had all moved out of the house by then. I didn't have a job because I had been let go from my teaching job, which was a good thing because I became his caretaker during the last years of his illness. So I didn't have a job. I didn't have kids in the house. I I didn't have a husband in the house anymore because now he had a job as a personal trainer and I was left with nothing. And I thought to myself, what am I going to do with my life? And I asked the universe, what am I supposed to do? And the answer I heard was write. So I started writing. I went to a conference with my husband. I brought some marble notebooks and I sat by the pool while he went to workshops and I wrote what later became my book, When the Moon Winks, which is a woman's fiction novel. that's very funny and uplifting. And I love that book. People love that book. So that started my career, my second career, because I'd been a teacher for a lot of years. That started my second career as a writer. And in the past 10 years, I've published almost 10 years. I've published three novels. I have a new one coming out next year. I published two chapbooks of poetry. I was asked to go to England to read my poetry as I was a guest poet at a poetry festival in Ledbury, England in 2019. I've been on TV and lots of podcasts. I'm a columnist for a magazine in the area. I don't know. I wrote a memoir, which was How to Remodel a Life. I've been hired by film companies to work on projects with them and have been a consultant, written two screenplays for people as a consultant. So my life has just, in the past 10 years, exploded. And in January of this year, I formed my own company called Lion's Tooth Literary Services, in which I help other writers in the process of writing their books from concept to completion. And I provide coaching and editing and ghostwriting and screenwriting and anything in between that you might want. So anyway, the recovery The recovery part in the last 10 years has been absolutely explosive. And my life today is so fulfilling and so rich. I think to myself, I'm turning 70 next year, but I feel like I'm 25, feel like my life is just beginning. And I have so much energy and so much enthusiasm for life. It's like, this is the best thing. This is the best. I never could have imagined this ever could be my life. I have wonderful relations with all my children with my husband with many friends and you know I'm involved in church and I'm involved in exercise classes and swimming and I don't know I've got good terms with all my sisters so life is really very very very rich and good right now very rich and good and it's taken a long time but it's worth the wait it's been worth being patient and I

SPEAKER_00 47:33

love it. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that what you said earlier as well is like when you start to own your truth and you start to like really, really accept who you are, where you are and your process, then everything sort of starts to kind of fall into place a little bit. You find your sort of equilibrium in the journey, in your journey and everything that you work is working towards owning your truth in a sense. And I think that's kind of what I'm getting that feel from as well. And you and this last 10 years, it was It was like you opened that door to maybe sharing a part of your journey in your writing. It didn't have to be directly, but it could be in the little creative processes of a story that you're building. But that's you really living out your entire truth. And it's coming out in all of these creative ways. And it's obviously paying off. People are drawn to it, which is amazing. And I think this kind of goes to that little message that I think is really important in this this interview and you know your name being hope as well that there is hope out there and you know just just first thing it is really for all listeners that may be going through something really difficult it's just you know acknowledge pay a little attention to your own self your mind your body and the more you kind of introspect the more your universe is opening up to to to giving you the messages that you need to hear absolutely

SPEAKER_02 48:54

yeah

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Thank you. Thank you so much, Hope, for being on Multispective. It's been such an honor to have you here. And it's just been so great to listen to your journey and everything. I'll definitely put in some links into the description for anyone that might be wanting to read your books as well. So yeah, thank you once again.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the time.

UNKNOWN 49:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show, please follow and subscribe. You can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description. I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we're human. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen. The show would be nothing without you. I'm multi-spective.