This week, we turned it over to you! In the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode, Laura answers four questions from our listener community. She talks about why she does this show, whether or not she’d ever do another sobriety-specific show, how to choose creative projects, the truths and fallacies of the whole “you must love yourself before you can be loved by others” saying, talking about new sobriety and the importance of choosing who you tell, and making friends as an adult, especially a sober one! This was really fun and we’ll do it again. Ira Glass on creativity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbC4gqZGPSY 650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/learning/lesson-plans/650-prompts-for-narrative-and-personal-writing.html Submit a question for future episodes by becoming a member: https://tmstpod.circle.so/c/submit-qs-for-laura/submit-a-question-to-be-answered-live-on-the-show Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bhVj8EF02STFdwCLBHpGO?si=3xkOkJrHQ2CcPsgzYhKiuQ Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
AMA with Laura on Intimacy, Creativity, Making Friends, & Early Sobriety
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. I am so excited about today's episode because this is something that we wanted to do for a while. Since we launched the show, really, and it just felt like the right time. So today's episode is me answering four different questions that were submitted by listeners. You can now submit questions. Anyone can submit them through our website, tmstpod.com. And there's two ways to submit a question. One is through a form and one is through your voice, by leaving a voice message. It doesn't matter which one you choose, I suppose it would be what is most comfortable to you. And if you're comfortable having your voice on the show, I would love that because it's fun to hear the voices.
[00:00:58] And that's it. So send your questions. We will do these episodes every so often. Today I have great questions. Four of them- one's about the show and why I do it and creativity. Another one is about intimacy with self versus or before intimacy with others. And then there are two sobriety-related questions. One is about friendship and one is about honesty and telling people when you're getting sober. So let's dive in.
The first question comes from Chris. So Chris says: I have a few questions and I hope that's okay. Yes, it is. I love that TMST isn't centered around recovery, but would you ever do a recovery centric podcast again, like HOME
[00:01:51] For those who aren't aware, I did a podcast called home podcast for three years, from 2015 to 2018, and it was all about sobriety. I did it with Holly Whitaker and we interviewed all kinds of people. It was the first podcast I'd ever done. We had no idea what we're doing. It was awesome. I loved it. Uh, clearly I'm hooked on podcasting, cause this is my third one. And hopefully the last one, hopefully this is just the one that keeps going and growing. So would I do a podcast like that? Why or why not? And why do you do this show? What makes it worthwhile for you? What do you get out of it? I am someone who has trouble deciding what kind of creative projects to choose, because I'm worried I'll either end up hating them, I will suck at them, or I just get overwhelmed by all the possibilities.
I love this. I love it. I love it. So now I'll do these one at a time. I don't believe I would ever do another recovery-centric podcast like HOME. That was amazing at the time. And I think any creative project, what makes creative projects work I believe is that the creator is learning from the process as they go. And for me, I have to be deeply interested in exploring whatever it is I'm exploring, whether it's the topic I'm writing about or a show or anything. If I'm not curious, really, really curious, and deeply interested, it just doesn't end up being that good. And I think most anyone, any creative person, you can write to me and tell me if you disagree, but I think that's what makes great work great is the curiosity underneath. It's not that I'm not curious about recovery or that I have it all figured out. Hardly. It's just that I talked about it so much and when I was getting sober, that show was helping me figure out things in real-time. We were literally talking about topics- our conversations were the revealing places of answers for us. We, I mean, I learned I needed to have those conversations and I was seven months sober when I started that show. And it was just what I needed to and wanted to talk about specifically at that time. I don't have as much interest in focusing on alcohol, alcohol addiction, alcohol sobriety as a topic only. So I don't think I would do that again. I still have a deep passion for talking about recovery and I always will, but I would say through a different lens. It's not about the not drinking for me anymore. And I've done so much work around that. And for me, it's more about the broader discussion. How do we take the next step? How do we continue the process of becoming who we are with whatever is in front of us? How do we face what's in front of us? I was also at that time not even yet divorced, I was separated. My daughter was really young. I hadn't left my job in advertising, so it was like in some ways, a whole different life. I was in my early forties. I'm in my mid-forties now, and life is different. And so I have different questions and different things that I'm interested in exploring. And this show really reflects that. The thing that I love about TMST is it's broad enough to include conversations about recovery and addiction and sobriety. And we've already had some of those and we will definitely continue to do that and that's always going to be part of my story. That's always going to be a lens through which I see the world, but I wouldn't do a show just focused on that because it would feel too limiting for me right now.
[00:06:27] So what makes the show TMST worthwhile for me? Oh my goodness. More than anything, it's about being able to talk to people who I would never really otherwise get to have an hour or two-hour conversation with. I mean, we don't generally have hour-to-hour conversations anyway, face-to-face on the phone. I mean, we're doing this online and on, you know, a zoom-type platform. So we're not really sitting in front of each other, but it's good enough. It's close enough. Maybe someday we'll have a studio and you know, like Rich Roll or the others. I can bring people in. That would be amazing. But for now, this is the way it is and it works and it's beautiful. It's wonderful to be able to look at someone in someone's face for an hour or two hours and just talk and see where it goes.
[00:07:24] That's the real magic for me. And I'm getting to talk to people that I didn't even know because Mikel and I, the producer, split up the guest lists, the prospect list, and he has brought forth people that I wasn't even aware of. Nabil Ayers is a great example. Anne Helen Peterson, Sarah Kubrick. So many people that I, Frank X. Walker, I didn't know about them. And then I got to spend time with them and that's magic to me. It satisfies my deep need for variety and also keeps me on my toes. So that's what I'm getting out of it. I, it just, I am a student at heart. I will always be a student at heart, and this is a space where I get to learn and practice. Another thing that I get out of this is I know that I'm a stronger writer than I am a speaker or a talker. I know I have a much easier time communicating myself in the way that I want to and really saying what I mean in writing. And I want to develop the skill of being able to say what I mean with all the same nuance and detail and context, and eloquence and precision that I have a much easier time doing when writing. So it's a skill development thing for me too, to be honest. I want to become more of a speaker and so aside from being able to interview these people and have these amazing conversations, I get to practice something that is really valuable to me.
[00:09:26] Okay. The other question, the last question, which is my favorite one, and this is having trouble deciding which kind of creative projects to choose. And this is something that a lot of people experience. Rob Bell talked about this in our interview. Our conversation, go back to that one if you haven't heard it. Bear with me while I drink some water. So I too have lots of ideas, always. And what I've learned about creative projects and choosing which ones to pursue is if something doesn't leave me alone, I will pay attention to it. I have lots of ideas that seem exciting and I've even chased some of those and then the excitement around them dies pretty quick.
[00:10:26] So I've learned to watch and see. If something continues to bug me, won’t leave me alone, show up in different ways. And if it does, I say, okay, this is something that wants to be done and let's do it. We can't pursue everything. If you really get paralyzed, Rob Bell says, pick one, just pick one and do it because a lot of times I know I like the idea of doing things more than I like the actual, what it means to do them. Someone wrote to me the other day and she was laughing and said, she has dreamt of becoming a writer, but she has dreamt of it all her life and she hasn't written. So she's wondering if she actually just likes the fantasy, the idea of becoming a writer more than she likes what it would actually mean, and that may or may not be true, but the only way we know is to try. I know the reality of a lot of things for me is kind of a disappointment. The fantasy is much better. I've always thought that my dream job and it's probably still true, I just don't have the skill, would be to be a musician like, you know, Taylor Swift, or Brandy Carlisle or, oh, just a singer songwriter type. I have always had such jealousy. Well, not the kind of jealousy I had towards writers.
[00:11:59] I had the jealousy that hurt because it was something that I deeply, deeply wanted, like actually wanted. And, on a soul level, there was something that told me I could do that. Whereas musicians, there's no part of me that actually thinks I could do it. I just love them, I love I'm moved by performance. I'm moved by songs. And I would love to do that. I am pretty positive I would hate the actual life of being a musician. I'm a homebody. I like things the way that I like them. I like to be comfortable in my bed. All of that stuff that comes with it, being a touring musician and all musicians have to tour at least, well usually for the long haul. I'm not cut out for it. So I'm pretty sure that would fall in the category of fantasy is greater than reality. But pick one, just pick one, you might end up hating the project. You'll know that when you get there. You totally will suck at things. I suck at things. I mean, I really suck at things a lot, and I've become much better at being comfortable with that.
[00:13:21] So let's just get that off the table. Like you're going to suck. You might have some natural talent for something and that's great, but most of the time we suck. There's that Ira Glass video about creating. I'll put it in the notes. And I always seem to watch that once or twice a year and just remind myself that it's all about just continuing to create the work. That we do suck at things, especially in the beginning. And the beginning can be years, but you know, if you really want to do something, if you keep doing it, even though you suck at it. Then yeah, getting overwhelmed by the possibilities is a real thing, but that starts to go away once you dig into something because if it's really for you, you become consumed with the process of being in it. And I noticed that the overwhelm gets overshadowed by being in the process pretty quickly. That would be my advice. All right. Thank you Chris.
[00:14:12] The second question. Totally different. This one was anonymous. This does not come with the name. It’s a beautiful question. They say: I had a complete revelation that I can't actually expect to have intimacy with others until I have it with myself first. This seriously stopped me in my tracks. Any concrete steps I can take so I can speak to that little girl inside of me? I'm ready, but I don't know where to start.
Okay. First of all, and this will be a disclaimer in every episode. I'm not a therapist or a mental health professional of any kind so anything that I offer about mental health, sobriety, etc. is just based on my own research, my own personal experience and what I've learned from being in recovery communities really for the past eight years.
[00:15:36] So that's the big caveat upfront. I am always speaking from my own experience and things that I've learned. So first of all, I share in the welcome to the pain of realization. Yeah. These things that just sort of hit you over the head and like you said, stop you in your tracks. And they can feel really overwhelming, sad, frustrating, like, how didn’t I get this yet? But push all that aside. It's really pointless. I have learned more and more that there's no, we don't get taught these things. We don't get taught relationship skills. We don't get taught about attachment types and boundaries and all of these things. That would be so helpful to know when we go out into the world, but we don't generally learn these things. So we learn them as adults and that's fine and great. I didn't hear too much of it in the question. Okay. Push any of that shame or blame or guilt or any of that junk aside cause it just doesn't help. Okay. The question about having intimacy with others requires that you have it with yourself first.
[00:17:11] Yes. To a degree. I think this can be made a bit too black and white, especially in sort of self-help circles. The whole, you can't be loved until you love yourself thing can really be overdone. The reality is that we're always learning who we are. And most of that, like 99% of that, is done in relationship to other people and things. Our identity is formed by being in relationship to the world around us, to activities we engage in and mostly with other people. So there is no, as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to quote unquote, work on myself, get to know myself in isolation or in cut off, you know, as cut off from others. And then at some magical point I’ll be self-realized and self-actualized and have enough knowledge and intimacy with myself that I will be prepared to go out into the world and have intimacy with others. It's always both, and it's always learning both things at the same time. I do, however, think that if you get your primary reference of who you are in relationship to others, your partner, your friends, your parents, your coworkers.
[00:18:54] If you don't know who you are, you have a hard time feeling a true sense of yourself when you're not hearing or getting feedback from other people about who you are then, yeah, that's a great sign that you probably need to spend some real time, quote, unquote, getting to know yourself. And that always makes me laugh, kind of like the phrase alone time. So it was like a little wink in there. Maybe that's just me. I find out more about who I am through talking with people I trust than anything else. So a lot of this is about feeling comfortable to be who you are, and having people that allow you to be exactly as you are and who exactly you are, might be the kind of person right now who says, I don't know who I am. I have all these questions. I feel like I'm just standing on shaky ground, or I feel like a bit of an open vessel or a ghost or whatever words you might choose. Those are things you can actually say to people that are the truth. So the definition of intimacy that I like, and I did not create this, but it is having intimacy is having a kind compassionate witness to our true thoughts and feelings.
[00:20:28] So I'll say that again, a kind compassionate witness to our true thoughts and feelings. So kind and compassionate means it's safe. It's safe to be who you are. And then the true thoughts and feelings are the key. What's true about how you feel right now or what you're going through right now is that you're kind of feeling like you don't know who you are. You said, I want to talk to that little girl inside me. Okay. That's something you can actually say out loud to someone who is that. So, and what I find when I start to open my mouth, and hear myself reflected back to other people because I have a very deep feeling that there's more you in there than you realize. There's more. Gertrude Stein says there is no, there, there. I have a feeling there's probably more there, there than you realize. You just might be disconnected from it.
[00:21:52] And people that we trust and that really know us, know our hearts, are able to reflect who we are back to us when we forget, which is often. So the problem, I'm not saying you have to go out to others. I'm going to get to a couple of things that you can and should do yourself. There is an absolute self-described discovery and inner world I believe we all need to explore. That includes our relationship with ourself, the small S self or what is commonly called the ego and the big S self, what is referred to as the divine in who we are, our connection to, I say, God, but universe, spirits, the wisest part of ourselves. Those relationships are important, critical, and absolutely worth discovering and conversing with and exploring and spending time cultivating.
[00:23:06] Okay. So the answer is not to ask people who you are. What I'm saying is having a kind of intimacy with others, a good gauge of that is having a kind compassionate witness to your true thoughts and feelings. And if there is even one person who you may have that kind of conversation with, you have intimacy in your life and you can cultivate it more. If you don't feel like you have that kind of person in your life. And I know, especially when people get sober, they're not sure they have anybody like that and that's perfectly okay. That's just your point A. That's what you know to be true today and that can be an answer to one of the next points that I'm going to make.
The question that you can start to ask yourself all the time to, as you said, speak to that little girl inside of you, but really speak to all parts of you because depending on the situation you're in, when you're asking it what you're doing, etc., you're going to be talking to different parts of yourself. And what I mean by that is sometimes we do need to speak to the child in us that is having a really hard time and they need to be met with a kind compassionate witness. And sometimes we're talking to our adult functional self, right? We have lots of different parts of ourselves that surface at any given time. So the question is, what do I want? What do I want? This is such a more confronting question than, maybe you do realize it, maybe even hearing it kind of sends a little panic into your hearts because your immediate response is, I don't know, or you do know what you want and you're terrified to say it, but what do I want?
[00:25:30] And start small. Okay. This isn't, what do I want for my life at large, although it can be the way to start though, especially if this is an overwhelming question for you is to start very, very small. Like what do I want right now? Do I want to eat something? Do I want to stand up and go outside and take a quick walk? Do I want to make a cup of tea? Do I need to take a nap? What do I want right now? Do you want to read a book? Okay. Which book? So what do I want? And that the sub question, the really accessible question, a version of that question is what do I want right now? If you are pretty disconnected from your body, for the many reasons we might be disconnected from our bodies or from our hearts, it might actually take a bit to answer this question and that's perfectly normal and perfectly fine.
[00:26:44] The bigger version of that question is bigger. What do I want from this relationship? What do I want from this job? What do I want from this day? What do I want from this year? What do I want? So, how to explore these questions? The best way I know to explore these questions is writing. Journaling can be kind of eye rolly and, you know, so whatever. Everyone recommends that, but there's a real reason that writing works. There's a Pennebaker study, you could look it up, personal writing or writing about something personal for 15 minutes a day, four days in a row proved to significantly increase health factors for people. And they felt worse at first and then they started to feel better. So it increased mood and health factors. This is a study that was done on college campuses, I think in the eighties and nineties and it's been repeated in different formats many times since then and I can say personally, writing is one of the most powerful tools for self-discovery that I have. The other would be sort of talking with a therapist or a friend that I trust.
[00:28:19] But writing is so you can have a relationship with the page. That is, it can be easier sometimes than the relationship with a person. You know, it's just, it's like you talking to you on the page. Or sometimes I imagine that it's me talking to what I conceive of as God. You certainly don't have to conceive of anything. It can just be a way to explore your own thoughts. It is really easy, cheap, and accessible at any time. Okay. So asking yourself every morning for a little while, what do I want today? And just seeing what happens. So much of the writing process is allowing it to come forth. One of the reasons that writing is so powerful is that it taps into our subconscious. And when you make it a practice at first, it kind of feels awkward if you've never done it. But then if you start to make it a practice, it not only becomes easier, but you start to access parts of you that feel though they were more hidden and it's because they weren't. Writing accesses your subconscious and I've learned things about myself, what I want, how I actually feel, in writing. I've had a morning pages slash journaling writing practice morning thing for years and years and years now. And it shifts depending on the period of time that I'm in, what's going on, how busy I am, whether I'm struggling with things or not and all of that, but it's there and it's something like a relationship that I can just count on all the time. Super meaningful to me, really powerful. And it keeps me grounded in the day, which is what I really love.
[00:30:25] One last thing is that writing can also reveal themes to you that you might not be aware of otherwise. I can look back on my journals all throughout college, all throughout my twenties, all throughout my early thirties and drinking was a theme the entire time. Was it consciously a theme? Not always, but I can look back and go, wow. I was talking about this since I was 17. My concern about my drinking. Or I was talking about my relationship with my dad. I was definitely talking about the pain of rejection and relationships always and that was something I finally faced in sobriety. So writing can reveal themes to you, and it's beautiful because it's just you and you. If you have difficulty putting things down on paper because you're afraid people are going to find them, I suggest burning the pages or tearing them up or shredding. It'll get you going and then maybe you can find a way to secure your pages so you can really write unfiltered and from the heart. I am going to include this amazing New York Times piece called 650 prompts for narrative and personal writing. 650. So if you did it, you would have a little less than two years worth of prompts. Genuine, fresh, different, original prompts every day if you started today and they're really cool. They range from work to childhood, to spiritual life, to relationships and all kinds of things. I will link it in the show notes. And if you are having trouble figuring out what to write about, just use a prompt. I love that you said that you're ready to do this and you just didn't know where to start. So I hope that the things I've shared give you that start.
[00:32:37] Okay. The last question is: Hi. I'd like to know, oh, is this the last question now? This is the second to last question. So from Mary. Mary says: I'd like to know if it's possible for me to begin a sober journey and hide it from my family for a while, while I live with my parents. My mom has been sober for a while, but there are just too many emotions I have around our relationship to turn to her for support or comfort, at least early on. And my dad and I often drink together though we also go on health kicks too. I don't want to lie if I don't have to, but I would like to be as subtle as possible for the first few months, even if it means fudging some details like saying I'm going to a health clinic instead of blurting out all my true agony and problems with alcohol I now am aware of in general. Is it even healthy to try to hide this, this process, or fib about it? And is it even possible, especially during the holidays? Is my focus all wrong? All right, Mary, this is a great question. It's a super common question. And I love that you had the courage to write it. It shows that you're taking this seriously and that you really want to take these steps, which is great.
[00:34:00] So before you do anything, I really encourage you to write down the reasons why you want to be sober. As you said, the true agony that you feel, because it will be easy to forget. In doing this writing down, and I mean, you know, the worst morning, how viscerally, how you felt, what your body felt like, tasted, what your thoughts were, what your emotions were, what was the scenario and like really force yourself to read it because it's so easy to forget. It's like the Taylor Swift line in All Too Well, which by the way, if you all haven't heard or seen her 10-minute version yet you can listen to it on Spotify, but she also performed it on Saturday Night Live. I heard over the weekend and I have not brought myself to watch it yet because I'm afraid I will cry.
[00:35:04] Oh, Okay, so the line. There's a line that says, I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to. Oh, she was talking about a guy, I think it was Jake Gyllenhal that that song is about, but this applies to anything that hurts us. Relationships and addictions. I have to do this with social media. I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to. So write it down. This is something I've done. I did with alcohol. It's something I've done with many things, a relationship, because what happens is you might get to that place in the holidays where you say, fuck it. I don't need to. And you slide right back in.
[00:35:56] Okay. Let's talk about the honesty piece. So my experience is that you should do whatever is going to give you the best shot at success in staying sober. And that might mean not including certain people in your process until you're emotionally ready to have those conversations and manage their reactions in a healthy way. So I totally understand why your mom may not be the person you want to tell. She's probably got a lot wrapped up in you drinking or not drinking, being a sober one. So there's a difference between honesty and discernment. And this to me is a question of discernment. What is the right thing to do for you in order for you to be the most successful?
[00:36:46] It's not dishonest to say, I have made the choice not to drink through the holidays and to let them know. And I will talk more about that because I think that is something that you do need to do to set yourself up to be successful, but just change the framing in your mind around why you're choosing to let people into this very, very, very personal tender process, or not. So it's really about discernment, not about honesty. That said, you do need to have some sober support systems so that you can talk to the people that get it about what's going on with you and how you feel and the things that you said in your email or your message to me was that the agony that you felt and, you know, the frustration of not being able to tell your parents or what you're expecting their judgements to be.
[00:37:51] And all of your anxieties and all of this, we have to be able to talk with people who get it. We have to and it could be one person or it could be a group of people. Talk and share with them. Let people know what you're doing and why you're doing it and ask for accountability. And then you get to be accountable to other people, too. This is the magic of joining. I'm a terrible joiner. I always say that I am. I'm awful. I didn't want to do it. I still resist it and I would not be sober had I not joined in my way, but still joined. And some of the most beautiful things that have ever come in my life are a result of joining, joining in relationship, joining in community. Especially sobriety or sober communities. So I have a certain favorite sober community called The Luckiest Club. It's the one I founded in the pandemic, but there are so many others too. Join one and commit to opening your mouth. We have meetings, multiple meetings a day. We always make a call for people who are new to raise their hands and you don't have to have anything profound to say, you can literally say I'm new. My name is so-and-so. I have no idea what to say or how this works. Just counting myself in. There are so many other groups. Do a search online, commit to one and commit to being an active part of that group. I have learned that people who put themselves in the middle of a community and let themselves be known, as scary as it is, it's hard as it is to open your mouth. They make it. They're the ones who get sober and stay sober and have a chance at freedom and peace in sobriety. So since you do live with your parents, I would strongly advise you to let them know in a casual, but firm way that you've made a commitment to focus on your health through the end of the year and that means not drinking. So I don't know your relationship with your parents enough to know what all needs to be included in this statement, but I would make it clear that you've made the commitment through the year, because that's a way of self-binding. That is a concept I learned from Dr. Anna Lemke and the conversation we had. She wrote a book called Dopamine Nation and one of the things that allow people to actually change and whether it's to overcome an addiction or anything else is self-binding. So you cut off ways. You basically block the fire doors so you know what your fire doors are.
[00:40:59] Is it your dad wanting to have a drink with you over the weekend? Is it family getting together at your house? Is it Saturday nights? Whatever it is, you know, your fire door. And you need to cut them off at the pass as painful and scary as it might be to make the commitment and say, I'm not drinking through the end of the year. That is your wise self reaching back in time, helping you to come along. So make it clear, make it specific. If it's open and wishy-washy, this statement to your parents, it's easier to go back on it and they don't need to know more about why. You can even say, I don't really know. I just have this sense that I want to explore it and I'm really focused on being healthy during a time when most people allow themselves to become really unhealthy. Right. I don't know the right words again, because I'm not in your family, but I know you can come up with the right words. Write them down before you decide to say them and then bring it up and take the risk to open your mouth and make a statement in defense of your Self. This beautiful part of yourself that knows they want to get sober. It's absolutely possible to stay sober during the holidays. 100%. It's actually a perfect time to do it. There is nothing worse than waking up January 1st with just so much regret and feeling like you wasted another holiday season in that same shit pit that you've probably been in years and years and years before.
[00:43:03] Right. So you don't have to do that. It can actually be totally different than that. And that's not to say it's going to be great. My first couple of holiday seasons sober weren't great. They were kind of hard, but they were also good. Those mornings, Christmas morning, New Year's day Thanksgiving. All of those were profoundly beautiful because I didn't have any regrets. I wasn't hungover. I had so many more choices. So, and the sober communities, I know we do a lot. We're going to do a lot of programming around the holidays. There's a lot of people that really tune in during this time because it is, it can be more difficult for people.
[00:43:49] So it's a great time to join, to join in and start now instead of starting some arbitrary, you know, January one date when you're feeling like total crap. Okay. The last question here, this is another sobriety-related question sort of, but this question is more about friends in adult friendships. So I'm almost four years sober, but I feel stagnant. I haven't been able to harvest friendships because I relied on alcohol to help me do that. I completed the steps, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I do not go to meetings anymore as it doesn't feel right in my gut. How do I push through this friend, drought? How do I make connections in this crazy world? Thank you. Dry in Colorado. This is Kate.
[00:44:53] Kate, oh my gosh. I so get it. So many people get it. This is the thing. And this is why I said this is not really a sobriety question. Making friendships as an adult is fucking hard and we don't talk about it enough. I remember when I realized how hard, especially when I became a mother, I found that was really hard because I was just spending so much more time, you know, taking care of this little one and it's isolating in nature.
[00:45:21] So, I just want to acknowledge that having no friends, you know, feeling like you don't have, you haven't been able to cultivate friendships would be really isolating and alone. And I get that and I feel you, but whether you're in sobriety or not, making friends as an adult, like I said, is really hard. And I wish we talked about it more. This is what I know because I went through a good chunk of time, I write about it in my book about how the loneliness of sobriety, early sobriety for m,e this first couple of years is like no other loneliness in the world. I just felt so disconnected from anyone. I wasn't who I used to be, but I wasn't this new version of myself yet. And I didn't feel like I really had any friends. All my relationships felt very not there, you know? I wasn't in the room with anybody anymore. And I, I was so uncomfortable with myself that I didn't even know how to be. So this is what I've learned. We all think that other people are less awkward than we are or less lonely or feel more connected than we are. And it's not true. We're all in this boat to some degree or we have been and so we have to just, just knowing that, like, you have to be willing to be the one that initiates the conversation, the ask and I have learned that whenever I do that, there's always a very grateful party on the other side because they too feel alone. We're all kind of dying of loneliness. Like Anna Sale, who last week's guest or no, that was two weeks ago, talked about that there's this epidemic of loneliness that we’re all kind of suffering from. I think it's a combination of almost all of life living being lived online and the pandemic certainly didn't help and all these other things. So a lot of us, more of us, I would say, feel lonely and alone and isolated than not. So just know that and someone is seeking you as a friend. They can't wait to be your friend. They want you to be part of their lives just as much as you want them to. We know that it's going to take an effort. Generally speaking, people acknowledge that your partner, isn't just going to show up at your doorstep, right?
[00:48:21] You have to actually try. You have to get on a dating app or quote unquote, put yourself out there. And friendship is no different, but from growing up friendships just happened because we were put in school with people and we were put in activities with people and then we go to college with people and then we have jobs with people. But so many people work from home now, or they don't work or whatever their situation is. You're just not seeing that many new people anymore and so the opportunities to meet people and have this common ground for which you can be friends- those opportunities, just go few and far between, or they just stopped completely.
[00:49:07] And so the thing is you have to try just like you would, if you wanted a romantic relationship, you have to actually try. You have to go out into the world and put yourself out there. And that can look like joining groups based on things that you already like, or just things that you're interested in. It doesn't have to be about making friends, like that doesn't have to be the primary point, but because you, if you pick an activity that you know the activity is already something that you enjoy, you’re likely to bond with people who also enjoy that thing. When I, by the way, I was terrible at this, I remember my friend, Jim telling me that I needed hobbies a couple years ago and I was so offended because I was like, what the fuck? I have hobbies! And he's like, what are they? I said, I work out, uh huh. This is not actually a hobby. And by the way, I work out alone. I read. I was not even going to a gym or whatever and doing things with other people. Okay. Point taken. I said, I read. Debatable on whether that's a hobby or not. I certainly wasn't meeting people when I was reading.
[00:50:33] And then I really, I said, I work. I work, that's my hobby. No. Hard, no. Work is not your hobby. And plus you work for yourself by yourself. So I was challenged a couple of years ago to seek others to lean into this part of me, the social part of me that I had really pushed away in sobriety and for good reason. I needed to be alone and I needed to do all this work and all these good reasons and it came time for me to sort of head back out into the world. So I started to go work in coffee shops. I allowed myself to have conversations and the conversations, it's not that I wasn't interacting with people, but I really wouldn't let people in.
[00:51:31] Like, I always wanted to keep everybody at a distance more or less. And I had many old friendships, but I even did that with them. So I had to get over my, whatever I wanted to call it. Introvertedness, stubbornness, sometimes exhaustion, like it takes effort, but I did. And I saw it also start when I met my boyfriend, I started playing volleyball and that created this whole, I forgot how awesome it is to have community around an activity like a sport. Like it's so amazing. It's so fun. Um, and I suck at it. I played volleyball in high school. Good in high school, but it's been 20 plus years since high school. I fucking suck at it. And I hate that I suck at it. It drives me crazy and I'm letting it be fun. I'm reminding myself that the point is not to win at this. In the process, over the past year plus, I have made awesome friendships through that. So, pushing through the friend drought. Unfortunately, you have to try. You have to try and know that other people are seeking the same thing. So many people are looking for the same thing, searching for the same thing. And just to be the one, I mean, I remember reaching out to my friend, Jim Zartman. We talked about Instagram and he suggested that we go have breakfast. I went to breakfast with him and his wife, and then at the end of it, I said, okay, so are we friends? It was the most awkward thing to say. And he laughed and he's like, yeah, that's what's happening here. Like it was so refreshing and so great.
[00:53:28] And we're dear, dear friends. That can happen and you can be awkward while you're doing it. And you don't have to only have sober friends. I have many friends that are sober and many friends that are not. I think, as a sober person, because you said you feel stagnant and you mentioned that you're sober, I think it is really critical for any sober person to have friends who are sober because they can relate to your experience exactly. Just like being a parent, it would be really hard to be a parent and never talk to other parents, like really, really hard. So we need people who understand our experience. I hope that helps. I get it. Just do one thing this week, you know, and one thing next week to put yourself out there. People show up in the strangest places and I think having the intention alone, fizzles up some little magic in the universe that starts to put people into your line of sight. All right. That's the end.
[00:54:41] That was really fun. I love doing this. I hope that you enjoyed it too. And again, you can submit questions, go to our website. You can submit them with your voice or write them down. Love to know what you heard. Whoa, I've used all my words. I would love to know what you think about this format and the show, and as always, thank you for being here and thank you for listening.
[00:55:12] Ciao.
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