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