December 25, 2024 • 24 mins
This episode originally aired on Aug. 7, 2024. In the summer of 2013, Laura McKowen hit rock bottom when she drank too much at her brother’s wedding, leaving her four-year-old daughter alone in a hotel overnight. This year, she celebrated a huge milestone: 10 years sober. Laura McKowen is author of “We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life” and “Push Off From Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Through Life (and Everything Else)” and the founder of The Luckiest Club, an online sobriety support community. On this week’s Wellness Wednesday, Laura takes us on her decade-long journey to self-discovery through sobriety.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, it
is Christmas Day and the very first day of Hanukkah.
Merry Christmas, Happy Honkah to all who celebrate. Okay, today
we are sharing an encore of a journey to joy
and self discovery with Laura Mcowan. She's the author of
We Are the Luckiest and Push Off from Here.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Laura joined us to share how her journey to sobriety
helped her reconnect with herself and to offer valuable tips
on removing the roadblocks that keep us from living our
best lives. It's Wednesday, December twenty fifth. Marry Christmas, everybody.
I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm Simone Boyce, and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day. Today's
Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coligard.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Okay, So, when Simone and I started creating The bright
Side with our production team, one of the goals that
we had was to set out to produce a show
that shared women's stories from.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All over the globe different walks of life.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And when I think about why, I guess I can
only answer personally, and for me, it's that women's stories.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Have guided me my entire life.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
When I was at some of my saddest moments, other
women's stories comforted me. And when I was at my
highest moments, they guided me too. If you need to
figure out how to get an agent, it's in a
woman's memoir. If you need to learn how someone else
got through divorce, it's in a woman's memoir. Our stories,
as unique as they are, are so universal too, and
(01:44):
so with Laura, we had the opportunity to hear a
story that we hadn't covered yet on the show, a
story about addiction and sobriety.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
We are thrilled that Laura McCallan is the one to
kick off this conversation and share her story because Laura
talks so openly about her struggles with alcohol and her
path to sobriety, and now hundreds of thousands of people
both online and in bookstores, turned to her on their
own recovery journeys. In twenty twenty, she founded The Luckiest Club.
(02:13):
It's an online global sobriety support group where she helps
users navigate their new lives and answers questions like will sobriety,
end my relationship now. She's put a lot of that
wisdom down on the page. She's the best selling writer
of two books, We Are the Luckiest, The Surprising Magic
of a Sober Life, and Push Off from here. Nine
Essential Truths to get you through sobriety and everything else.
(02:36):
Don't worry, we are going to be covering those truths
with Laura today. And on top of all that, she
teaches a course called The Bigger Yes, she's got retreats.
It's all an invitation to help us choose our own potential,
and she's here with us now. Laura McCowan, welcome to
the bright Side.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We're happy to have you here. And this fall was
big for you. You celebrated ten years sober in September. Yes,
that's got to feel pretty amazing. Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, it's wild if you can take us back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I have something I call PSA pre self actualization. I
went through it, I'd say about five years ago. I
committed to going to therapy pretty regularly. I read a
bajillion books. You had a moment of PSA pre self
actualization one night, and I'm wondering if you can take
us back to that night that set you on a
(03:26):
path to sobriety.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
So in July of twenty thirteen, I was at my
brother's wedding and my daughter was four years old at
the time, and she was the flower girl in the wedding.
I had separated from my husband at that time. We'd
been separated for a year, so it's just me and
her going to the wedding, And that night I drank
(03:53):
too much and blacked out and left my daughter alone
in a hotel room overnight and didn't discover that till
the morning, till I received texts from my family members,
my mom and my brother. My daughter had luckily made
it back to them. But that was the most terrific
(04:16):
morning of my life for sure. And until then I
had had a lot of consequences for my drinking, but
I really still thought nothing bad would happen to her,
like I wouldn't put her in danger, and I did,
because that's how it goes.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
There are no things that won't happen.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
So it was a wake up call, of course, and
because my family was aware of it, I couldn't just
hide like I had so many other things. I couldn't
just forget about it or sweep it under the rug,
and I started. A week later, I went to my
first twelve step meeting in Boston, and I didn't get
sober until a year later. It was really hard to
(04:57):
pull myself into sobriety. And so I say time is
interesting because it doesn't happen all at once, Right, It's
a journey.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I feel like it's a lifelong journey, to be honest,
The more I know, the more I realize I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Much at all.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, but I think when you recount that story, for
anyone listening who doesn't know about the rest of it yet,
it's pretty guttural, like it's hard to listen to when
you recount the story.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
How do you feel?
Speaker 4 (05:26):
That's a great question.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
I have talked about it so much because that's what
I learned in recovery, is that there are no secrets anymore.
All the parts of my history and all the parts
of me belong. It doesn't feel good to talk about it,
but I don't feel the shame that I felt at
that time. It took something like that to get me
(05:51):
to wake up. As horrific as that was, I am
equally as grateful, Laura. We all will go through extreme
challenges in this life, and for some of us, our
worst nights are going to happen in private. Maybe it's
a breakup, maybe it's a really difficult conversation. But for you,
the worst night and morning of your life happened publicly
(06:13):
in front of your friends, in front of your family
at this wedding, and of course in front of your
four year old daughter who is greatly impacted by it,
and so thinking about how confronting that must have been,
like you couldn't hide anymore. And I also know that
as a mother, there is a really big difference between
shame and a mother's shame.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
For us, it just hits a little bit different.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Absolutely, mom's shame is like acidic and it just goes
to the core of everything we think we know about
what good people do and don't do. And when it
comes to addiction, I have always said there is a
special vitriol for mothers who drink. It goes against everything
(07:00):
that we've been told is true about what love is
and what mothers are supposed to be able to do.
And we never let mothers off the hook. But man,
if you are a mom who happens to fall into addiction.
It kills people because the shame is intolerable, and you
(07:23):
get it from not only the inside, but the outside too.
There's really no compassion coming your way except from other
mothers who have been there. I mean, I had to
dissociate from the full experience of that for a while
until I was able to handle it, because if I
would have allowed myself to feel that in my body,
I wouldn't have been able to continue on. And in
(07:44):
that meantime, I was met by other women who told
me that, yeah, yeah, I've done that too.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's amazing how shame becomes less potent whenever you're in
a healthy community and a community that you see yourself in.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah, it is life saving, Berne Brown says. And I
always think of this. If you put shame in a
Petrie dish, it require three things to go out of control,
and that silent, secrecy, and judgment. And so when you
are in community, it alleviates the shame.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I think one of the most courageous parts of healing
is actually doing nothing at all or acquires nothing from us.
It's sitting with the emotions instead of running from them
and trying to numb them and cover them up. And
I think, if we're all being honest like that is,
it can be a big motivator for drinking, for any
kind of substance. So when you pulled the alcohol away,
(08:41):
when you took it away, what did you discover when
you finally stopped running and had to sit with what
you were running from?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So the first thing I noticed is my feelings were
really uncomfortable. There's a saying that they come out sideways
when you're newly sober, and so so I had a
lot of rage. For me, drinking was a way to
swallow anger and discomfort, and so a lot of things
(09:11):
that I hadn't been able to or chose not to
put a voice to prior to stopping drinking started to
come out. I started to get really angry about alcohol culture,
because even though I was the one who with the
quote unquote problem, everyone around me drank a lot, and
(09:34):
if they didn't drink a lot, they were running in
other ways. And there was this profound unfairness that I felt.
But then there's also grief giving up alcohol. There's a
grief period that you go through if you let go
of that, because it's an identity, And it's also who
get defines who you hang out with, how you connect
(09:55):
with people, how you socialize, how you prioritize time. For
a lot of people, it's connected to intimacy with their
partner or dating. It's connected to celebrations, it's connected to
how you mourn. Really touches so much. So many areas
(10:16):
of our lives that are about connection. So that was
a lot of what I went through is just this sadness,
like where do I belong now? Who will want me?
Will I be boring.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
When you talk about the alcohol culture.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Personally, I dealt with an eating disorder in seventh and
eighth grade and to this day, however, many you're twenty
something years later, When people talk about food in a
certain way, I feel stuff come up in me. I
think it lives within you forever, and you just learn
to live with it in a different way. I heard
Glennon Doyle say something one time that I've never forgotten
(10:55):
and I don't quite understand. I'm wondering if you can
kind of bound on it for me. She said that
people who have attended AA are the only honest people
she's ever met.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Was that your experience and what did she mean by that?
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Yeah, what she meant and what my experience has been
is most of the time, when we're walking around in
the world, we're not really telling the truth about what's
going on inside of us. There's a culture of secret keeping.
Appearances must be upheld. The way we measure success is
by a lot of outward measures. And the thing why
(11:33):
I say we are the luckiest when it comes to addiction,
which sounds like a bumper sticker, but it isn't. It's
because when you come up against something like addiction, it
brings you to your knees and it forces you to
stop lying. So when you walk into an AA meeting
(11:55):
for the first time, it is the most bizarre thing
because feele are just casually talking about the worst moments
of their lives and the hardest things they've ever been through,
and that's the norm.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We have to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back with Laura McCollen.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
And we're back with Laura McCollen.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
I think we can all benefit from the principles that
have guided your recovery, and that's exactly what you're doing
through this class that you teach called the Bigger Yes.
So how does the bigger yes offer all of us
an invitation, Laura.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
So the bigger yes came to me in early sobriety
because I felt like all this potential that I had
when I was drinking, that was hidden when I was
drinking and that I was tamping down, started to come
forward when I got sober. And for me, it was writing.
(13:03):
I had always wanted to write, and it was something
I wanted more than drinking, which there weren't many things.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I think there's a lesson about delayed gratification in there too,
because the smaller, easier yes is drinking, but the bigger
yes that requires you to delay those desires in the
moment is writing.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Absolutely, it's the short game versus the long game. And
the short game drinking is always going to be good,
and it's even going to be actually fun for most
of us and not have huge consequences. But what does
it mean if you are Let's just use drinking as
an example, but it could be anything. It could be
scrolling on your phone endlessly or whatever. You feel good
in the short term, but in the long term you
(13:46):
don't get to play that long game because you're not
available for it. Right And the quote that turned it
around for me. I was in this book shop after
I had gone to this like yoga workshop, and I.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Was twenty day is sober, terrified, out of my mind.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
And I picked up this book called The Great Work
of Your Life by Stephen Cope and open to this page,
and on the page was a quote by the Gospel
of Thomas. It said, if you bring forth what is
within you, what you bring forth will save you. And
if you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you. And
(14:23):
that was it for me. It was like, Yeah, this
unused potential that we each have is not benign. When
we don't live into that, it turns into something dark,
and it looks like depression. It looks like despair. It
looks like we know we know inside when we are
(14:44):
not living the way that we could. And what I
mean by that is not like, oh, you could be
making more money or you could be having this very
outwardly important job in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's really just internal. It's being who you actually are. Yeah,
it's alignment, it's integrity.
Speaker 5 (15:03):
Yes, and telling the truth about who you actually are
and living. See what happens when you start doing that,
living into that.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It's one of the three most common regrets that people
share at their end of life, meaning that they didn't live.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
The truth of who they are.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
They lived for other people, for their parents, for their
husband or wife, et cetera. Now, talking to you today, Laura,
I can tell that truth and untruth. It's almost like
an image for me with the scales, like that's how
important it is to you.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I can tell.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And you have a book called Push Off from Here,
Nine Essential Truths to get you through sobriety and everything else.
Can you share those nine truths and how you came
up with them?
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Yeah, So I got sober in twenty fourteen. In twenty
sixteen and seventeen, I had been writing on a blog
mostly for all those years. I also did a podcast
about sobriety. So I had started to build a little
bit of a following. And I would get letters from
people who were either struggling with addiction or you know,
someone they knew was or something. And I got a
(16:08):
letter from this sister who her sister was struggling with alcohol,
and she was in that place where people go when
someone they love is caught an addiction. She was angry
and scared and sad and frustrated, and of course wanted
to help her sister, but didn't know how. So she
(16:29):
wrote me this long letter and said what should I
say to her? And I wrote her a long letter back,
and I said, if all of that is too much,
just give her this list. And the list was the
nine things that ended up being pushed off from here.
And number one is it's not your fault. Two is
your responsibility? Three is it's unfair that this is your thing?
(16:56):
But four this is your thing. Five this will never
stop being your thing until you face it. Six you
can't do it alone. Seven only you can do it.
Eight I love you, and nine I will never stop
(17:17):
reminding you of these things. And that was in twenty sixteen.
In twenty twenty, when I published Well You Are the Luckiest,
my first book, that was the epigraph to the book,
the little quote that appears in the very beginning, and
people gravitated towards that.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
There was like a whole book to read.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
But people would often want to INTERVENI you or talk
to me about those nine things. And so when I
founded a sobriety support community in twenty twenty, I made
those sort of bar are sort of backbone, and we
read them at the end of every meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I hear you saying that other people gravitated towards them,
and they meant a lot to other.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
People in the community.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
As you spoke them, you started breathing differently, and I
could tell they mean a lot to you.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, they do.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
It was I have gone back to them again and
again and again for different things. You know, I'm six
months out of an engagement, ending a four your relationship,
and facing a whole new era of you know what
(18:31):
my thing is right now. So I have leaned on
them again and again myself because it doesn't end.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It was alcohol, and then it was then it was
other things, and it will always be.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
That way, you know.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
So there are nine things that I think we never
stop leaning on and learning, and they're paradoxical. You can't
do it alone. Only you can do it. It's not
your fault, it is your responsibility. It's kind of everything
I know about what we have to hold simultaneously when
(19:09):
we go through change.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I'm sorry that you're going through change again. It's really frickin' hard.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It is.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Thank you, it's time for another short break, but don't
go anywhere because we'll be right back with Laura mcowan.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And we're back with Laura mcowan. I have a personal
question for you. Okay, it's more asking for a friend.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Everybody in my life tells me I need to do
two things meditate and journal.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Okay, I don't do either of those things. I have
like gems in my notepad.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
You say that journaling can be a really powerful tool
for people in recovery as well as people that are
looking for that bigger Yes, what am I missing out on? Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Tell me about the journal.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Okay, okay, yeah, So I don't like saying that. You know,
there's that this is the thing that will work for everybody.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Nothing is like that.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
But there are a few things that I feel like
can benefit a lot of people, most people, and journaling
is one of them. And this is why when we journal,
and especially if we're writing on paper versus typing, because
it's more embodied and it utilizes a different part of
(20:31):
our brain. We are bringing what is unconscious into consciousness.
And it's an accessible, anytime, anywhere, any day type of
thing you can do.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
It's free, which is one of the things I like.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
It's like, you don't have to have resources to pull
out a pen and paper, and so many of the
things that we the wellness bullshit that we say people
have to do is not accessible totally. So I think
of journaling as this conversation between me and maybe my
higher self, me and wisdom whatever. It's not necessarily a
(21:07):
higher power thing, but it's like a conversation. Sometimes I'm listening,
sometimes I'm asking, Sometimes I'm just documenting things to get
them out of my body. So one of the things
that I think is so enormous, and it's part of
push off from here, is that our bodies have to
be included in our healing and in our process, in
our day to day feeling and processing of emotions, and
(21:33):
we neglect that. And so writing is an embodiment practice too.
It's not really it's a mind thing, but it's so
much more of an embodiment thing, and so you get
that going to it brings the body in.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Are there any other tools that you found really helpful
for you in a journey of self discovery?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Time and again, for me, a.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Movement is like the number one, And I think part
of that is just because I have a lot of energy,
like anxiety, just energy in my body that has to
move and so physical. I don't even want to call
it exercise because that sounds unappealing to so many people,
but just movement walking.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
I have been in this season of my life lifting
heavy things like you. I never thought that I would
want to do that.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
I was always a runner, and oh my god, it
is just it is everything for my brain. So for me,
that has been a constant tool and mainstay of my
mental health. Really, I'm a sort of spotty meditator, so
I can't I would love to say, yeah, meditation, but
I go in and out of it, and I think, again,
(22:50):
it's one of those things that depending on the type
of person you are, like sometimes a lot of times
my exercise, my movement is the meditation. Right, those are
the big things, and then the other I was a
huge thing that I find very annoying because I am
not a joiner and I just still want to think
that I can do things alone. Is community and being
(23:13):
with people, really connection with other people and allowing myself
to not be a teacher and a leader in a
space and just be a person.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Laura, congratulations again on such a huge achievement your sobriety
journey is very inspiring, and thank you so much for
joining us on the bright Side and sharing your story.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Oh, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Laura mcowan is the author of We Are the Luckiest
and Push Off from here.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
That's it for today's show.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Tomorrow, we're giving you an encore presentation of our conversation
with Italian food icon and emuinning TV personality Diata dala Entis.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Thank you to our partners at Exact Sciences make of
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(24:18):
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Speaker 1 (24:28):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
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and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and
feel free to tag us at Simone Voice and at
Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 1 (24:48):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, it
is Christmas Day and the very first day of Hanukkah.
Merry Christmas, Happy Honkah to all who celebrate. Okay, today
we are sharing an encore of a journey to joy
and self discovery with Laura Mcowan. She's the author of
We Are the Luckiest and Push Off from Here.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Laura joined us to share how her journey to sobriety
helped her reconnect with herself and to offer valuable tips
on removing the roadblocks that keep us from living our
best lives. It's Wednesday, December twenty fifth. Marry Christmas, everybody.
I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm Simone Boyce, and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day. Today's
Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coligard.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Okay, So, when Simone and I started creating The bright
Side with our production team, one of the goals that
we had was to set out to produce a show
that shared women's stories from.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All over the globe different walks of life.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And when I think about why, I guess I can
only answer personally, and for me, it's that women's stories.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Have guided me my entire life.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
When I was at some of my saddest moments, other
women's stories comforted me. And when I was at my
highest moments, they guided me too. If you need to
figure out how to get an agent, it's in a
woman's memoir. If you need to learn how someone else
got through divorce, it's in a woman's memoir. Our stories,
as unique as they are, are so universal too, and
(01:44):
so with Laura, we had the opportunity to hear a
story that we hadn't covered yet on the show, a
story about addiction and sobriety.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
We are thrilled that Laura McCallan is the one to
kick off this conversation and share her story because Laura
talks so openly about her struggles with alcohol and her
path to sobriety, and now hundreds of thousands of people
both online and in bookstores, turned to her on their
own recovery journeys. In twenty twenty, she founded The Luckiest Club.
(02:13):
It's an online global sobriety support group where she helps
users navigate their new lives and answers questions like will sobriety,
end my relationship now. She's put a lot of that
wisdom down on the page. She's the best selling writer
of two books, We Are the Luckiest, The Surprising Magic
of a Sober Life, and Push Off from here. Nine
Essential Truths to get you through sobriety and everything else.
(02:36):
Don't worry, we are going to be covering those truths
with Laura today. And on top of all that, she
teaches a course called The Bigger Yes, she's got retreats.
It's all an invitation to help us choose our own potential,
and she's here with us now. Laura McCowan, welcome to
the bright Side.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We're happy to have you here. And this fall was
big for you. You celebrated ten years sober in September. Yes,
that's got to feel pretty amazing. Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, it's wild if you can take us back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I have something I call PSA pre self actualization. I
went through it, I'd say about five years ago. I
committed to going to therapy pretty regularly. I read a
bajillion books. You had a moment of PSA pre self
actualization one night, and I'm wondering if you can take
us back to that night that set you on a
(03:26):
path to sobriety.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
So in July of twenty thirteen, I was at my
brother's wedding and my daughter was four years old at
the time, and she was the flower girl in the wedding.
I had separated from my husband at that time. We'd
been separated for a year, so it's just me and
her going to the wedding, And that night I drank
(03:53):
too much and blacked out and left my daughter alone
in a hotel room overnight and didn't discover that till
the morning, till I received texts from my family members,
my mom and my brother. My daughter had luckily made
it back to them. But that was the most terrific
(04:16):
morning of my life for sure. And until then I
had had a lot of consequences for my drinking, but
I really still thought nothing bad would happen to her,
like I wouldn't put her in danger, and I did,
because that's how it goes.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
There are no things that won't happen.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
So it was a wake up call, of course, and
because my family was aware of it, I couldn't just
hide like I had so many other things. I couldn't
just forget about it or sweep it under the rug,
and I started. A week later, I went to my
first twelve step meeting in Boston, and I didn't get
sober until a year later. It was really hard to
(04:57):
pull myself into sobriety. And so I say time is
interesting because it doesn't happen all at once, Right, It's
a journey.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I feel like it's a lifelong journey, to be honest,
The more I know, the more I realize I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Much at all.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, but I think when you recount that story, for
anyone listening who doesn't know about the rest of it yet,
it's pretty guttural, like it's hard to listen to when
you recount the story.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
How do you feel?
Speaker 4 (05:26):
That's a great question.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
I have talked about it so much because that's what
I learned in recovery, is that there are no secrets anymore.
All the parts of my history and all the parts
of me belong. It doesn't feel good to talk about it,
but I don't feel the shame that I felt at
that time. It took something like that to get me
(05:51):
to wake up. As horrific as that was, I am
equally as grateful, Laura. We all will go through extreme
challenges in this life, and for some of us, our
worst nights are going to happen in private. Maybe it's
a breakup, maybe it's a really difficult conversation. But for you,
the worst night and morning of your life happened publicly
(06:13):
in front of your friends, in front of your family
at this wedding, and of course in front of your
four year old daughter who is greatly impacted by it,
and so thinking about how confronting that must have been,
like you couldn't hide anymore. And I also know that
as a mother, there is a really big difference between
shame and a mother's shame.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
For us, it just hits a little bit different.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Absolutely, mom's shame is like acidic and it just goes
to the core of everything we think we know about
what good people do and don't do. And when it
comes to addiction, I have always said there is a
special vitriol for mothers who drink. It goes against everything
(07:00):
that we've been told is true about what love is
and what mothers are supposed to be able to do.
And we never let mothers off the hook. But man,
if you are a mom who happens to fall into addiction.
It kills people because the shame is intolerable, and you
(07:23):
get it from not only the inside, but the outside too.
There's really no compassion coming your way except from other
mothers who have been there. I mean, I had to
dissociate from the full experience of that for a while
until I was able to handle it, because if I
would have allowed myself to feel that in my body,
I wouldn't have been able to continue on. And in
(07:44):
that meantime, I was met by other women who told
me that, yeah, yeah, I've done that too.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's amazing how shame becomes less potent whenever you're in
a healthy community and a community that you see yourself in.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah, it is life saving, Berne Brown says. And I
always think of this. If you put shame in a
Petrie dish, it require three things to go out of control,
and that silent, secrecy, and judgment. And so when you
are in community, it alleviates the shame.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I think one of the most courageous parts of healing
is actually doing nothing at all or acquires nothing from us.
It's sitting with the emotions instead of running from them
and trying to numb them and cover them up. And
I think, if we're all being honest like that is,
it can be a big motivator for drinking, for any
kind of substance. So when you pulled the alcohol away,
(08:41):
when you took it away, what did you discover when
you finally stopped running and had to sit with what
you were running from?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So the first thing I noticed is my feelings were
really uncomfortable. There's a saying that they come out sideways
when you're newly sober, and so so I had a
lot of rage. For me, drinking was a way to
swallow anger and discomfort, and so a lot of things
(09:11):
that I hadn't been able to or chose not to
put a voice to prior to stopping drinking started to
come out. I started to get really angry about alcohol culture,
because even though I was the one who with the
quote unquote problem, everyone around me drank a lot, and
(09:34):
if they didn't drink a lot, they were running in
other ways. And there was this profound unfairness that I felt.
But then there's also grief giving up alcohol. There's a
grief period that you go through if you let go
of that, because it's an identity, And it's also who
get defines who you hang out with, how you connect
(09:55):
with people, how you socialize, how you prioritize time. For
a lot of people, it's connected to intimacy with their
partner or dating. It's connected to celebrations, it's connected to
how you mourn. Really touches so much. So many areas
(10:16):
of our lives that are about connection. So that was
a lot of what I went through is just this sadness,
like where do I belong now? Who will want me?
Will I be boring.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
When you talk about the alcohol culture.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Personally, I dealt with an eating disorder in seventh and
eighth grade and to this day, however, many you're twenty
something years later, When people talk about food in a
certain way, I feel stuff come up in me. I
think it lives within you forever, and you just learn
to live with it in a different way. I heard
Glennon Doyle say something one time that I've never forgotten
(10:55):
and I don't quite understand. I'm wondering if you can
kind of bound on it for me. She said that
people who have attended AA are the only honest people
she's ever met.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Was that your experience and what did she mean by that?
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Yeah, what she meant and what my experience has been
is most of the time, when we're walking around in
the world, we're not really telling the truth about what's
going on inside of us. There's a culture of secret keeping.
Appearances must be upheld. The way we measure success is
by a lot of outward measures. And the thing why
(11:33):
I say we are the luckiest when it comes to addiction,
which sounds like a bumper sticker, but it isn't. It's
because when you come up against something like addiction, it
brings you to your knees and it forces you to
stop lying. So when you walk into an AA meeting
(11:55):
for the first time, it is the most bizarre thing
because feele are just casually talking about the worst moments
of their lives and the hardest things they've ever been through,
and that's the norm.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We have to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back with Laura McCollen.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
And we're back with Laura McCollen.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
I think we can all benefit from the principles that
have guided your recovery, and that's exactly what you're doing
through this class that you teach called the Bigger Yes.
So how does the bigger yes offer all of us
an invitation, Laura.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
So the bigger yes came to me in early sobriety
because I felt like all this potential that I had
when I was drinking, that was hidden when I was
drinking and that I was tamping down, started to come
forward when I got sober. And for me, it was writing.
(13:03):
I had always wanted to write, and it was something
I wanted more than drinking, which there weren't many things.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I think there's a lesson about delayed gratification in there too,
because the smaller, easier yes is drinking, but the bigger
yes that requires you to delay those desires in the
moment is writing.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Absolutely, it's the short game versus the long game. And
the short game drinking is always going to be good,
and it's even going to be actually fun for most
of us and not have huge consequences. But what does
it mean if you are Let's just use drinking as
an example, but it could be anything. It could be
scrolling on your phone endlessly or whatever. You feel good
in the short term, but in the long term you
(13:46):
don't get to play that long game because you're not
available for it. Right And the quote that turned it
around for me. I was in this book shop after
I had gone to this like yoga workshop, and I.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Was twenty day is sober, terrified, out of my mind.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
And I picked up this book called The Great Work
of Your Life by Stephen Cope and open to this page,
and on the page was a quote by the Gospel
of Thomas. It said, if you bring forth what is
within you, what you bring forth will save you. And
if you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you. And
(14:23):
that was it for me. It was like, Yeah, this
unused potential that we each have is not benign. When
we don't live into that, it turns into something dark,
and it looks like depression. It looks like despair. It
looks like we know we know inside when we are
(14:44):
not living the way that we could. And what I
mean by that is not like, oh, you could be
making more money or you could be having this very
outwardly important job in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's really just internal. It's being who you actually are. Yeah,
it's alignment, it's integrity.
Speaker 5 (15:03):
Yes, and telling the truth about who you actually are
and living. See what happens when you start doing that,
living into that.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It's one of the three most common regrets that people
share at their end of life, meaning that they didn't live.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
The truth of who they are.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
They lived for other people, for their parents, for their
husband or wife, et cetera. Now, talking to you today, Laura,
I can tell that truth and untruth. It's almost like
an image for me with the scales, like that's how
important it is to you.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I can tell.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And you have a book called Push Off from Here,
Nine Essential Truths to get you through sobriety and everything else.
Can you share those nine truths and how you came
up with them?
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Yeah, So I got sober in twenty fourteen. In twenty
sixteen and seventeen, I had been writing on a blog
mostly for all those years. I also did a podcast
about sobriety. So I had started to build a little
bit of a following. And I would get letters from
people who were either struggling with addiction or you know,
someone they knew was or something. And I got a
(16:08):
letter from this sister who her sister was struggling with alcohol,
and she was in that place where people go when
someone they love is caught an addiction. She was angry
and scared and sad and frustrated, and of course wanted
to help her sister, but didn't know how. So she
(16:29):
wrote me this long letter and said what should I
say to her? And I wrote her a long letter back,
and I said, if all of that is too much,
just give her this list. And the list was the
nine things that ended up being pushed off from here.
And number one is it's not your fault. Two is
your responsibility? Three is it's unfair that this is your thing?
(16:56):
But four this is your thing. Five this will never
stop being your thing until you face it. Six you
can't do it alone. Seven only you can do it.
Eight I love you, and nine I will never stop
(17:17):
reminding you of these things. And that was in twenty sixteen.
In twenty twenty, when I published Well You Are the Luckiest,
my first book, that was the epigraph to the book,
the little quote that appears in the very beginning, and
people gravitated towards that.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
There was like a whole book to read.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
But people would often want to INTERVENI you or talk
to me about those nine things. And so when I
founded a sobriety support community in twenty twenty, I made
those sort of bar are sort of backbone, and we
read them at the end of every meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I hear you saying that other people gravitated towards them,
and they meant a lot to other.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
People in the community.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
As you spoke them, you started breathing differently, and I
could tell they mean a lot to you.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, they do.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
It was I have gone back to them again and
again and again for different things. You know, I'm six
months out of an engagement, ending a four your relationship,
and facing a whole new era of you know what
(18:31):
my thing is right now. So I have leaned on
them again and again myself because it doesn't end.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It was alcohol, and then it was then it was
other things, and it will always be.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
That way, you know.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
So there are nine things that I think we never
stop leaning on and learning, and they're paradoxical. You can't
do it alone. Only you can do it. It's not
your fault, it is your responsibility. It's kind of everything
I know about what we have to hold simultaneously when
(19:09):
we go through change.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I'm sorry that you're going through change again. It's really frickin' hard.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It is.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Thank you, it's time for another short break, but don't
go anywhere because we'll be right back with Laura mcowan.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And we're back with Laura mcowan. I have a personal
question for you. Okay, it's more asking for a friend.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Everybody in my life tells me I need to do
two things meditate and journal.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Okay, I don't do either of those things. I have
like gems in my notepad.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
You say that journaling can be a really powerful tool
for people in recovery as well as people that are
looking for that bigger Yes, what am I missing out on? Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Tell me about the journal.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Okay, okay, yeah, So I don't like saying that. You know,
there's that this is the thing that will work for everybody.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Nothing is like that.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
But there are a few things that I feel like
can benefit a lot of people, most people, and journaling
is one of them. And this is why when we journal,
and especially if we're writing on paper versus typing, because
it's more embodied and it utilizes a different part of
(20:31):
our brain. We are bringing what is unconscious into consciousness.
And it's an accessible, anytime, anywhere, any day type of
thing you can do.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
It's free, which is one of the things I like.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
It's like, you don't have to have resources to pull
out a pen and paper, and so many of the
things that we the wellness bullshit that we say people
have to do is not accessible totally. So I think
of journaling as this conversation between me and maybe my
higher self, me and wisdom whatever. It's not necessarily a
(21:07):
higher power thing, but it's like a conversation. Sometimes I'm listening,
sometimes I'm asking, Sometimes I'm just documenting things to get
them out of my body. So one of the things
that I think is so enormous, and it's part of
push off from here, is that our bodies have to
be included in our healing and in our process, in
our day to day feeling and processing of emotions, and
(21:33):
we neglect that. And so writing is an embodiment practice too.
It's not really it's a mind thing, but it's so
much more of an embodiment thing, and so you get
that going to it brings the body in.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Are there any other tools that you found really helpful
for you in a journey of self discovery?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Time and again, for me, a.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Movement is like the number one, And I think part
of that is just because I have a lot of energy,
like anxiety, just energy in my body that has to
move and so physical. I don't even want to call
it exercise because that sounds unappealing to so many people,
but just movement walking.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
I have been in this season of my life lifting
heavy things like you. I never thought that I would
want to do that.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
I was always a runner, and oh my god, it
is just it is everything for my brain. So for me,
that has been a constant tool and mainstay of my
mental health. Really, I'm a sort of spotty meditator, so
I can't I would love to say, yeah, meditation, but
I go in and out of it, and I think, again,
(22:50):
it's one of those things that depending on the type
of person you are, like sometimes a lot of times
my exercise, my movement is the meditation. Right, those are
the big things, and then the other I was a
huge thing that I find very annoying because I am
not a joiner and I just still want to think
that I can do things alone. Is community and being
(23:13):
with people, really connection with other people and allowing myself
to not be a teacher and a leader in a
space and just be a person.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Laura, congratulations again on such a huge achievement your sobriety
journey is very inspiring, and thank you so much for
joining us on the bright Side and sharing your story.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Oh, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Laura mcowan is the author of We Are the Luckiest
and Push Off from here.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
That's it for today's show.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Tomorrow, we're giving you an encore presentation of our conversation
with Italian food icon and emuinning TV personality Diata dala Entis.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Thank you to our partners at Exact Sciences make of
the Coligard test, which is a one of a kind
way to screen for colon cancer in the privacy and
comfort of your own home. Talk to your doctor or
healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com slash podcast
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you're forty five or older and at average risk, ask
(24:18):
your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard.
You can also request a collar guard prescription today at
coliguard dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram
and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and
feel free to tag us at Simone Voice and at
Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
Hosts And Creators
Simone Boyce
Danielle Robay
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