In this episode of Bottomless to Sober, I talk about why “rock bottom” is a myth and how recovery doesn’t have to wait for a crisis. I share how I kept finding new lows in my own journey and what it really means to stop digging and start healing. I also offer guidance for those watching someone they love struggle—how to protect your peace when their “bottom” isn’t enough for them to change.
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless to Sober. I wanted to start today’s question with… or today’s question. I wanted to start today’s episode with a question.
Jessica Dueñas: And that question is, if any of you have ever said to yourselves.
Jessica Dueñas: This has to be it. This is my rock bottom.
Jessica Dueñas: Only to find that somehow there… there’s still more, right? There’s still something way below that, and then another level below that. And it kind of just keeps going to infinity. And no, the honest truth is it doesn’t go till infinity, because
Jessica Dueñas: Really, when we’re talking about situations such as addiction, right, the ultimate bottom is the loss of life.
Jessica Dueñas: But there are many levels of bottoms that a person can hit before getting to that point, to that point of tragedy.
Jessica Dueñas: Going back to that question, though, right, like…
Jessica Dueñas: Have any of you ever said to yourselves, this is it, this is my rock bottom? I’ll be the first one to say, I have been there many times.
Jessica Dueñas: I don’t even know how many times I’ve experienced something that I did as a result of my drinking, and then I convinced myself that that was my bottom, and I would never do it again, only to then land in the exact same position, if not worse.
Jessica Dueñas: I mean, there was my blackout and hospital stay in , very early on in my complicated journey with alcohol.
Jessica Dueñas: Years later, as we start to approach when I eventually get sober, my diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease in …
Jessica Dueñas: Mind you, that was the same year that I was supposed to give a TED-Ed talk for the first time, but instead I had to check myself into rehab, so I didn’t get to give that talk.
Jessica Dueñas: And here’s the thing, even after all of that, I still relapsed.
Jessica Dueñas: I remember in one of my spirals, under the influence, I ran back to an ex’s house. This ex was definitely not a safe person.
Jessica Dueñas: And I was sort of in just this entangled space.
Jessica Dueñas: with my romance… with my romantic life at the time. And there was a journalist who had also kind of caught my eye, and I had texted the reporter, and I was like, hey, I’m in this really bad spot, I need you to come save me.
Jessica Dueñas: And he did. You know, he came, he pulled me out of that ex’s home.
Jessica Dueñas: And even got the police involved, and that was so messy. Like, I remember just being in tears.
Jessica Dueñas: drunk, I don’t even know what I was wearing, you know, whatever I was on, barely clothed, I feel, if I really think about that memory. And I was just shattered.
Jessica Dueñas: And I thought, that was my bottom.
Jessica Dueñas: And then I drank again.
Jessica Dueñas: And then I went into rehab again.
Jessica Dueñas: And here’s the thing…
Jessica Dueñas: I used to definitely think that rock bottom was one single moment, and that whether it was for me or for anyone else experiencing a so-called bottom, that… that would be the moment where the light bulb will go off and, you know, I would suddenly be scared straight.
Jessica Dueñas: But… that’s just not the case. And so, you know, I hear people say, I hit rock bottom often.
Jessica Dueñas: But my… my thought really is, I don’t know that a bottom really exists, honestly.
Jessica Dueñas: And so, with that said, I feel like the truth is that
Jessica Dueñas: We’re digging, we’re digging ourselves deeper every time that we continue to pick up and continue to use or continue to drink, and that eventually we… we…
Jessica Dueñas: We are the ones that have that choice.
Jessica Dueñas: to…
Jessica Dueñas: recognize that maybe we need to seek help, right? That we don’t have to keep digging before we decide to seek help to help us stop.
Jessica Dueñas: And so I want to think about that a little bit.
Jessica Dueñas: Like, I don’t know, maybe you are someone who has sworn that this will be the last time that you wake up hungover.
Jessica Dueñas: And you just find yourself drinking a few days later.
Jessica Dueñas: Maybe you’re like me, and you promised yourself you would never go back to your ex, and then the loneliness mixed in with a little alcohol convinced you otherwise.
Jessica Dueñas: or… maybe you’ve watched someone else, maybe someone you love, like I did with my boyfriend Ian.
Jessica Dueñas: Truly believed that they had hit a bottom.
Jessica Dueñas: Only to find themselves slipping right back into the same pain they swore they’d escaped.
Jessica Dueñas: And I will say, Ian, he did hit a bottom, right? He… he did not… Outlive his addiction.
Jessica Dueñas: And so I say that to say that
Jessica Dueñas: A true bottom for me, like I said earlier, is a loss of life. But in the meantime.
Jessica Dueñas: There’s lots of digging that we can do before we get to that point, and
Jessica Dueñas: it’s so important to recognize that we don’t have to keep digging, right? If we find ourselves having a repeated
Jessica Dueñas: back-to-back breaking point, or a back-to-back setback. It doesn’t mean that we’re hopeless.
Jessica Dueñas: But it does mean that we’re human, right? Because this recovery journey, this growth journey that we’re all on, it’s not linear. And so, sometimes it’s going to take more than one massive setback before we finally are just
Jessica Dueñas: tapping out and saying, that’s it, I’m done, I really need some help.
Jessica Dueñas: I remember in , when I ended up in that hospital bed, I was recently married, and we recently got a house, and I was just so excited for our future together.
Jessica Dueñas: And everything came to a pause when I found myself in that hospital bed, because immediately, I wondered if I was worthy of my marriage, if I was worthy of this relationship, if I was worthy of everything that I had, because I judged myself so harshly.
Jessica Dueñas: for… Having a problem with alcohol.
Jessica Dueñas: I genuinely believe that I was less than because of it, and I was so ashamed.
Jessica Dueñas: And I remember in my head thinking, like, how could I possibly get here? Like, how could I possibly black out, have my then-husband find me, and call ? Because I blacked out and passed out, right? And he was terrified for me.
Jessica Dueñas: how could I do that? I’ll never do that again. That’s what I said back then, in . My sobriety date is November 28th, , so that goes to show you that we might say one thing, but what we actually end up doing can be entirely different.
Jessica Dueñas: That moment… That was supposed to be my rock bottom.
Jessica Dueñas: But it wasn’t.
Jessica Dueñas: And what I’ve learned between my experiences and those of all the people I work with in sobriety meeting groups and in coaching people one-on-one is that
Jessica Dueñas: the rock bottom idea, it’s not even about how far you fall, but really, it’s about when you decide to stop digging yourself deeper, right? It’s that moment that you decide that
Jessica Dueñas: You’re gonna start building.
Jessica Dueñas: And, you know, when I look back at the young woman that ended up in the hospital, Terrified.
Jessica Dueñas: I’m not even mad at her.
Jessica Dueñas: You know, she was doing the best that she could with what she had. She was stressed out, no way to cope, no education on how to cope in a healthy way. So, she was doing the best with the tools that she had.
Jessica Dueñas: And I know some of you might be listening right now, you know, trying to survive yourselves.
Jessica Dueñas: Even when you are breaking your own promises. And so I hope that you hear me when I say this, that you are not broken, you are not alone.
Jessica Dueñas: when you have a setback, when you hit yet a new level of rock bottom, consider that the invitation to try again. Consider that an invitation to ask yourself, what have I not tried in order to get sober?
Jessica Dueñas: Because what I promise you is this.
Jessica Dueñas: When you think that you’ve hit a rock bottom.
Jessica Dueñas: If you’re still here, if you’re still alive, if you are still breathing, the unfortunate truth is that things can get worse, right? But they really don’t have to.
Jessica Dueñas: And so, you don’t have to wait for another heartbreak as a result of your alcohol or drug use. You don’t have to wait for another fall, or another hospital visit, or another trip to rehab. You don’t have to wait until you get a scary diagnosis as a result of your drinking. You don’t.
Jessica Dueñas: You, you can stop digging right now.
Jessica Dueñas: And you can start building.
Jessica Dueñas: Even from the middle of a mess.
Jessica Dueñas: And I hope that if you remember even just one thing from this episode of me rambling, that it’s just this. You don’t have to wait for things to get worse.
Jessica Dueñas: Before you start to make them better.
Jessica Dueñas: And so, before we wrap up, I just want to speak to those of you who might be
Jessica Dueñas: Watching someone that you love struggle.
Jessica Dueñas: someone who, maybe, according to you, has hit what you thought would be a rock bottom, and you’re like, alright, well, now they’re gonna go get their… get their lives together. But…
Jessica Dueñas: your loved one doesn’t see that they hit a so-called rock bottom, right? Maybe they got a DUI, and they’re still out there drinking. And you’re like, what? How is this not, like, clicking for them?
Jessica Dueñas: I know how painful that is. Trust me. It is so hard to watch someone drown while you are standing there on the shore.
Jessica Dueñas: Screaming for them to… swim towards you, right? It’s one of the hardest forms of heartbreak.
Jessica Dueñas: I…
Jessica Dueñas: I can’t even tell you how hard it is to love someone who is not ready to save themselves.
Jessica Dueñas: And what I’ve learned…
Jessica Dueñas: Both from being that person who’s drowning, but also from loving others who have been there.
Jessica Dueñas: Is that you… you can’t make someone see their bottom, and you cannot drag them into clarity.
Jessica Dueñas: What you can do is stand in truth.
Jessica Dueñas: What you can do is be compassionate.
Jessica Dueñas: And sometimes, support looks like you needing to set a boundary that protects your own peace.
Jessica Dueñas: Or maybe it looks like you refusing to participate in their chaos?
Jessica Dueñas: And sometimes you do have to remove yourself, right? Sometimes you might have to say, I love you too much to watch you destroy yourself.
Jessica Dueñas: Love does not always mean rescue, and sometimes love means stepping back.
Jessica Dueñas: So they can finally feel the ground for themselves.
Jessica Dueñas: we… we can’t force people to believe that they’ve hit a bottom, and everyone’s path is different, everyone is… everyone’s journey is different. We don’t know when they’re going to finally say enough.
Jessica Dueñas: But we can model what it looks like to live differently, right? We can show them what hope looks like, and when they’re ready.
Jessica Dueñas: They can remember the person who stood in compassion without losing themselves.
Jessica Dueñas: And so, if you want some reflection questions, feel free to grab a notebook and press pause if you need to, but here’s just some reflection questions to take with you for…
Jessica Dueñas: Until the next episode.
Jessica Dueñas: So my first question is, when was the last time that you thought, this has to be my bottom? And what did that moment feel like in your body?
Jessica Dueñas: What was your body trying to tell you?
Jessica Dueñas: What small whisper inside you knows when it’s time to change? And do you listen to it, or do you quiet that whisper?
Jessica Dueñas: And what would it look like to take one small step toward healing today?
Jessica Dueñas: But anyway…
Jessica Dueñas: I would like to thank you all for spending this time with me. If this episode spoke to you, please share it with someone who might need to hear that they are not alone, and again, remember, you do not have to wait to hit
Jessica Dueñas: Any kind of so-called bottom before you decide to start to get back up.
Jessica Dueñas: Thanks, everyone. Appreciate your time today. Have a good one.
In this deeply moving episode of Bottomless to Sober, I sit down with Navy veteran, men’s coach, and fellow TEDx speaker Alex Lange, a man in recovery who opens up about losing his 18-month-old son, Liam, and how grief reshaped his life. Alex shares his process for healing and how he transformed unimaginable pain into purpose. We also talk about breaking the stigma around death, redefining masculinity through vulnerability, and what it truly means to live fully in the present moment.
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless to Sober. Appreciate all of you joining.
Jessica Dueñas: Before we start.
Jessica Dueñas: Just a heads up that today’s conversation does come with a heavy content warning, so if this is not the episode for you, I completely understand. But we will be talking about the death of a child, so if you do choose to continue to listen, please take good care of yourself and listen in a way that feels safe for you.
Jessica Dueñas: With that said, I am very honored and excited to be joined by Alex Lang. He is a Navy veteran, a men’s coach, and a speaker. We crossed paths just recently because we were both fellow TEDx speakers, and honestly, you all, his talk on turning pain into purpose, I mean, it left an impression on the audience, but it also really left an impression on me, and so I really want
Jessica Dueñas: wanted to give him some space to share a little bit about himself and his work, in case any of you need to listen to this message today. He and his wife lost their son, Liam.
Jessica Dueñas: at just 18 months to… it was a rare, undetected heart defect that Leanne was born with, and Alex shares his story, honestly, to help others find meaning, connection, and healing in the midst of grief. And a lot of people, struggle with that, and so I’m just so…
Jessica Dueñas: I’m honored to have Alex here and kind of continue that conversation. So, Alex, thanks for joining. Hello, hello.
Alex Lange: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just want to say first, before I get into this, I told you at the TEDx event that I wholeheartedly do believe that people are put in our life as mirrors.
Alex Lange: And it’s an honor to be on this podcast, because it does hold a place for me, not just personally, within my own recovery and how I was numbing my own pain, but growing up in a broken home with my mother, who was a drug addict, and she passed away from drugs, and then my dad being an alcoholic, so…
Alex Lange: it was… it was a big, integral part of my life, and then just hearing your own story, and how you’ve overcome it, and how you’ve shared, and then you’ve just been welcomed through your sharing, that is healing in itself. So, listening to your talk, I told my… I told my wife, I told my sisters who were there, I was like, hey, this is the talk you need to be at, because she can rel… you know, she shows everything, what we’ve been going through, and just talking about it, so thank you.
Jessica Dueñas: Oh, no, thank you, Alex. And so, for my listeners who may be new to you, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, and share a little bit about your story and Liam’s story?
Alex Lange: Absolutely. So I’m a father, father of five, husband, 13 and a half year Navy veteran, as Jessica said. I live in the Dominican Republic. I am a writer, speaker, podcaster, men’s coach, post-military. And, I just, real quick, as I shined in my childhood.
Alex Lange: I grew up in a broken home, my mother was a drug addict, my father was an alcoholic, and so for me.
Alex Lange: Chaos was what I knew.
Alex Lange: And I am a firm believer as people that we learn… we’re conditioned at a young age from the people that raise us, from those relationships that we’re around, and I learned how to cope effectively a lot with a lot of the challenges that I had in my life. My dad wasn’t there, he was providing, he was a financial provider, but he wasn’t there emotionally, physically, and mentally. And my wife, or excuse me, my wife, my mother was, she was a drug addict, and so…
Alex Lange: we did more parenting to her than she did to us, and I… that’s my whole life, that’s all I knew with regards to my mother as a drug addict.
Alex Lange: That kind of sets the story, because for my whole life, up until Liam, as we talked about, my… I coped through all of the pain that I had in my life.
Alex Lange: And we’ll talk about 2021, which was the breaking point for me and the future here, but Liam…
Alex Lange: being able to sit with it. In February of this year, we were in Cyprus. We were a full-time traveling family. Seven of us traveled around the world, we sold everything, we were traveling Europe, went to Africa, and made our way to Cyprus, which is a small island across from Israel.
Alex Lange: And, we were there for a month, and the last day before we were leaving to go to Turkey, we were packing.
Alex Lange: And my sons, I have 5 kids, as I mentioned, my two oldest sons were playing with their little brother, and they were pushing him on an empty suitcase.
Alex Lange: And they were, they were pushing them around, and there was a doormat.
Alex Lange: And the suitcase got caught up on the doormat, and Liam fell, and he busted his lip. Really bad cut, it went through… it went through his, lip, and you could see it on his chin. And so, my… we took him to my wife, because he was still breastfeeding primarily, and…
Alex Lange: he wasn’t… he wasn’t breastfeeding. And so we… we were like, okay, let’s just give him a little bit of time, we’ll give him some water, do some other, you know, give him some other forms of food to try to see if he’ll… he’ll eat, but he was refusing everything. But he was calm the whole day.
Alex Lange: And so, for 14 and a half hours, he refused to eat consistently, consistently. That night, for the first time in his life, he went to bed without
Alex Lange: a boob, you know, he was breastfeeding, so he went to bed by himself, and we were like, wow, that’s so crazy. Like, that’s interesting.
Alex Lange: You know, we were aware that dehydration is a thing, so we were like, hey, we need to try to get him to eat, especially that we’re traveling the next day.
Alex Lange: And so it was about 11 p.m. at night, and my wife says, because he started crying because he wasn’t eating, my wife said, hey, go to the other room with the boys, and get some sleep, because we have a long travel day. I’ll stay up with him, and I’ll try to get him to eat and take care of him.
Alex Lange: So, I do that, and I just feel like something’s off. I wish I could tell you… I wish I could tell you really what it was, but I knew something internally was off. I started to research.
Alex Lange: dehydration in kids in the other room. I was on ChatGPT, I was looking up to see how I could help if I needed to, and I ended up falling asleep, and at around 4 AM, my wife just
Alex Lange: busts into the room, and she starts freaking out, and my wife is very calm. If you were to see our relationship, she’s the very calm, level-headed, in the sense of, like, when the kids get hurt, me, I’m like, oh, what’s going on? Let me try to fix, fix, fix, fix.
Alex Lange: She comes in, she’s like, Alex, wake up, wake up. Liam, he’s seizing, he’s seizing, he’s fainting, we need to take him to the ER, I think he’s dehydrated. And so I, without hesitation, because I had already thought about it, I got into the car, we all packed into the car, I woke up our nanny, and said, hey, I have to take my kids, or I have to take Liam, can you please stay and watch the kids? We were in Cyprus, we had a traveling nanny with us.
Alex Lange: get in the car, I don’t even know where the hospital is, I find a police officer on the side of the street, I pull in, they’re asleep, so I bang on their window. I’m like, hey, where’s the nearest emergency room? My son needs to be in the ER right now, like.
Alex Lange: where do we need to go? And they told me 20 minutes that way. So they gave me the name, I typed it in, and it took us about 15 minutes. I was speeding, I was frantic. We get to the ER, and they’re not… they don’t really speak English, they’re speaking Greek.
Alex Lange: There is some broken English that they’re speaking, but long story short, they start doing tests, and I’m telling them, my wife and I are telling them, hey, he hasn’t eaten in 14 hours, he’s probably dehydrated.
Alex Lange: Can you put an IV in? So they’re starting to try to put IVs in, and the woman says, what’s going on with his skin? His skin is a different color. And we’re like, well, when he’s cold, his skin turns a little bluish.
Alex Lange: And and they were like, but feel him, he’s not cold.
Alex Lange: And so we felt him, and he was… he was warm. And that was… that was like, oh, wow, this is something different. Now they started to worry about that, so they took him back to do scans.
Alex Lange: And they said, they came back, and everybody’s frantic at this point. Like, the nurses, the doctors, everybody’s frantic. And they’re like, he’s critical, we have to get him to a hospital, we don’t have the capabilities to take care of him here.
Alex Lange: So I’m… I’m watching them because they start doing an EKG. I… myself, having some medical conditions, I… I was very familiar with the EKG, so I looked, and the EKG had all this crazy terminology that I’ve never seen before on an EKG, and I was like, oh, shh…
Alex Lange: snap, something’s wrong. And…
Alex Lange: they say, hey, he has an enlarged heart, we have to take him to a different hospital. So I have to go run back, I call this… the Airbnb.
Alex Lange: and the people, and said, hey, I couldn’t clean it the way that I wanted to. It’s not dirty, we didn’t leave the place messy, but I just want to let you know my son’s going to the critical care in this town 2 hours away.
Alex Lange: I can’t… I gotta go now. So, I cancel the Airbnb in Cyprus, I cancel our flights, we’re… I pack up all my kids in a car with all the suitcases, our nanny, and I’m…
Alex Lange: Driving behind, behind my wife and my son.
Alex Lange: And my wife, she’s texting me, my son’s… my kids in the car are screaming because I had told them, hey, something’s going on with Liam, it’s very serious, and knowing them, I had… I wanted to make sure that I re… like, I made sure that they were okay with the fact, like, hey, you didn’t hurt your brother, you saved his life.
Alex Lange: You know, they found, they caught something in these scans, you didn’t hurt your brother, you saved his life, because they were worried, like, oh, we heard him, what’s next?
Alex Lange: We get to the hospital, and the doctors tell my wife, go fill out paperwork.
Alex Lange: And, we’ll take… we have to take Liam.
Alex Lange: my wife goes and fills out paperwork, and Liam is… they sedate Liam without asking us anything like that. We come back, I arrive, Liam’s ventilator, he’s all hooked up, and they say that he has a…
Alex Lange: A serious heart condition that, he only was born… he was born with 3 chambers in his heart, but 2 were only functioning.
Alex Lange: He had two left atriums, so he didn’t have a main aorta that was going to his lungs. So his, his, basically, internally, his body had made a way to function, but his heart, if he wanted to live, it was going to be a long process.
Alex Lange: But it was gonna take, like, 3 years after surgeries, after surgeries after surgeries, and the woman, after doing more tests, they were like, there’s nothing that we can do.
Alex Lange: But we’re gonna trans… we’re gonna transport them to Israel, so they… they had gotten an air medevac.
Alex Lange: And they said, we’re gonna transform, and we’re gonna try to do an open-heart surgery. We’re gonna try to put a stent in his heart to his lungs to see if we can kickstart the growth in his lungs. But that doesn’t promise anything. That’s gonna have to be a year long, where we see if it holds, and then we can replace his heart. He’s gonna need a whole new heart.
Alex Lange: And, 18… er, excuse me, 16 hours after he was sedated, he, he passed away. We were walking…
Alex Lange: We were driving in.
Alex Lange: I was dropping my wife off, because she was going to be on the airplane. The medevac was here, they were coming to get him, he was about to leave, and my wife calls me as she gets into the room, and she says, Alex Liam’s in cardiac arrest. I parked my car in the middle of the street.
Alex Lange: I don’t care what’s around, and I sprint as hard as I can.
Alex Lange: And I walk into… a man doing CPR,
Alex Lange: my wife, who I see, she’s so strong, she’s never really been someone to lose it, She’s…
Alex Lange: Screaming and crying on the floor.
Alex Lange: And I’m just… I’m trying to process it all, you know, and…
Alex Lange: after 10 and a half minutes, I know I went long here, but after 10 and a half minutes, the cardiologist pulls me aside, and she says, look, she takes a Doppler monitor from an ultrasound, and she says his heart’s not beating.
Alex Lange: It’s…
Alex Lange: protocol, we have to… the parents have to call it. They have to tell them to stop. Do you want us to stop?
Alex Lange: And I remember… I remember looking at my wife, Looking at the man.
Alex Lange: And… it’s like, what you see in a movie, you’re like, this is never gonna happen to me.
Alex Lange: Yeah. And, I said yes, and that, you know, we’re here…
Alex Lange: And without, you know, one less kid. 18 months old.
Jessica Dueñas: Oh my gosh.
Jessica Dueñas: Alex… Ugh, that is so heavy, and I’m…
Jessica Dueñas: I am so sorry that that is what your family went through.
Jessica Dueñas: And I remember, you know, hearing the short inversion when you did this for TEDx, and I looked over at the audience, and…
Jessica Dueñas: We were all just… Breaking for you.
Jessica Dueñas: that… I can’t imagine it, and… the…
Jessica Dueñas: The fact that you have since… Turned around, and…
Jessica Dueñas: found purpose in this, and meaning in this, is…
Jessica Dueñas: I mean, it brings awe to me, honestly. I was looking at some of, like, your work online that you shared, and one of the things that really struck me
Jessica Dueñas: is you talk about this idea of pain having two sides, right? And there’s either one that can keep you stuck.
Jessica Dueñas: Or one that guides you to a deeper version of yourself. And…
Jessica Dueñas: I… if anybody went through what you went through and stayed stuck, I wouldn’t blame them, and I wouldn’t fault them, because I feel like, wow, what an incredibly human response, right, to… to be…
Jessica Dueñas: Just broken by this and stay… stay down and stay broken.
Jessica Dueñas: So, how did you move into the…
Jessica Dueñas: the deeper version of yourself. How did that happen after such a devastating moment?
Alex Lange: I first want to say every healing journey is different for anybody that’s listening. My… how I’m able to move through this challenging time in my life.
Alex Lange: doesn’t mean that you… that you need to move at the pace that I am, right? You have to move at a pace that works for you, what fits, but I think the framework that I’ll introduce at the end, it’s important to go through those frameworks to then be able to do it on your own time, right? There’s choice. I… I think I…
Alex Lange: I sat with my wife a couple days after, and I said, you know, our daughter… I have a… my oldest daughter, she’s 7 now, but when she was 2 and a half.
Alex Lange: She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She was having over 10 seizures a day. She had a lot of autistic tendencies, and…
Alex Lange: My life in 2021 was very challenging. I mentioned at the very beginning that I had coped and ran from every challenging moment in my life.
Alex Lange: And I ran through alcohol. I ran through working, overworking. I ran through porn. I watched a lot of porn for a long time. And I’m sitting here in a humble place of telling you, because something that you said, Jessica, that I want a lot of people to realize is that
Alex Lange: Part of our healing journey Is sharing our story.
Alex Lange: And in sharing our stories, it doesn’t just help other people, it helps us through that process. And so in 2021, when my daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Alex Lange: you know, I kept asking, why me? I was stuck in this victim mindset of, like, why did I have to get
Alex Lange: you know, why did someone have to do this to me? And then a few months later.
Alex Lange: I have… I was diagnosed with 5 brain tumors.
Alex Lange: And then I’m sitting here, like, why? Like, why am I getting hit with this?
Alex Lange: And then my wife, you know, because I had coped and ran from everything in my life.
Alex Lange: my relationship wasn’t good. You know, externally.
Alex Lange: In the Navy, I was a hard charger, what they call a hard charger. I made Chief Petty Officer, which is a high senior enlisted rank, in 7 years. I was very successful at my job, but my identity outside of the uniform, I had no clue.
Alex Lange: I’d get home, and I’d scroll, I’d watch porn, I’d drink, I would busy myself staying away from
Alex Lange: what was really going on. So my wife asked for a divorce. She had an abortion that we had, it was a 12-week-old baby boy. When she passed the baby. You could see that it was a boy. And so it was like, I went through a lot of these things.
Alex Lange: And that was my wake-up point, is I had to ask myself, at what point do I stop running?
Alex Lange: And I just stay with it.
Alex Lange: I don’t need to do anything, I don’t need to distract myself, I just need to stay with it.
Alex Lange: And so I started to just…
Alex Lange: sit in the pain. I stopped drinking because of the medical… the brain tumors. I realized that my relationship with my wife was broken because of my porn usage, like, the intimacy is affected, like, how you relate in the world to people is affected.
Alex Lange: I realized that I had a lot of childhood trauma, and still do. Like, I want to make sure people understand that a healing journey is a lifelong journey, especially anybody that has been an addict knows that it is a lifelong
Alex Lange: journey. Every day is a new day. And so, for me, I had to… I had to wake up and accept these things.
Alex Lange: So I sat with it.
Alex Lange: And… within sitting with it, I realized that there was some wisdom in the emotions. New thoughts were coming up.
Alex Lange: And with those thoughts, emotions were coming up. I started to really feel and lean into these emotions.
Alex Lange: And then I surrounded myself with men that were doing the work.
Alex Lange: And that’s very important within the healing journey, and I’m sure you could speak on this too, is when you surround yourself with people, like-minded people that are taking steps in that process, it helps so much.
Alex Lange: And so I started to see that other men were going through the same things that I was going through. And where I was isolating myself and thinking that I was the only one that was having the problem, there were other people that were going through the same thing, and hearing their stories, and hearing their perspectives.
Alex Lange: I was going back to my wife and being a totally different person because I could see how people were showing up in the world and what they were struggling with that were just like me.
Alex Lange: And so through that process, when Liam came, I had already built this foundation. I didn’t have a name for it. I didn’t have a name for this framework. I just knew that, hey, Liam died.
Alex Lange: And I needed to be… I needed to allow this to stay with me.
Alex Lange: I can’t numb it through scrolling, or working, or anything that I’ve done in the past.
Alex Lange: I gotta stay with it.
Alex Lange: And I cultivated that environment for my kids as well. I think that’s what helped me, because we were traveling, and so it was just our family.
Alex Lange: I didn’t have any external distractions, I didn’t have going to be a football coach, or a basketball coach, or the Navy, or things that were pulling me away, because I had committed that year, you know, that time frame to being fully leaned in, full-time dad, full-time partner, you know.
Alex Lange: For me, when I got kicked out of the military, I got a pension.
Alex Lange: for all the medical things that I was going through. And so that was what was our… that’s our passive income. So we just decided to reallocate our budget. Instead of having a mortgage, and a car payment, and all these other things, we decided, hey, you know what, let’s live the… let’s… let’s live. Let’s fully…
Alex Lange: See different cultures, let’s be present with each other, let’s silence… silence the external noise.
Alex Lange: And let’s… let’s really connect with each other.
Alex Lange: And so when Liam passed away, that was… being in that space and having that availability to just be with myself.
Alex Lange: And then when the emotions came up, and then asking the questions, instead of being in a victim mindset, and getting curious of what this is here to teach me… and I know that’s a challenging process when you’ve lost a child, or a partner, or, you know, you’re struggling with alcohol, or drugs, or whatever the battle is, or whatever the challenge is, I know it’s challenging.
Alex Lange: But if you can just get curious on, okay, what is this here to teach me?
Alex Lange: Why is it in my life?
Alex Lange: And that’s where I started to see a lot of change.
Jessica Dueñas: Ugh, that’s incredibly powerful, and, you know, I’m…
Jessica Dueñas: I’m so grateful that you were able to kind of get into community before all of this happened, because one of the things I’ve noticed, again, just from kind of, like, looking at all of your stuff and slightly stalking, especially in preparation to talk today, right? What I did notice is that you share very openly, and you share very vulnerably, and
Jessica Dueñas: 100%. I mean, I see it in being in recovery from alcohol, and in the sobriety community that I’m a part of, the Luckiest Club, right, that…
Jessica Dueñas: When people open up, when they share vulnerably, they break down that narrative in our heads that we’re the only one. And… because the truth is, we… we’re never the only one. And what I’ve seen in response to a lot of what you’ve shared about your story, specifically about Liam, are other people who have
Jessica Dueñas: experienced something similar, saying a version of, like, Me Too. What I’ve also seen, I have seen some people who push back, and they’re like, why are you doing this? And I’m curious, what is your… your mindset around the people who push back, and they’re like, you shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t be posting this, etc?
Alex Lange: Well, I first want to say that I’ve never been the type of person that attacks the other side, like, in anything. I’m a big firm believer of education and then choice. So, you know, if we all have the same information and you make a different choice than me, then cool. Like, I respect it.
Alex Lange: It’s been… that’s been an interesting… I’m glad you brought this up, because this is something I’ve sat with the last few days, because I’ve received more backlash of, like, why are you being… like, why are you showing this? Your son just died, why are you taking a video or a picture? And at one point, I believed the same thing that they did.
Alex Lange: I’m like, this is a vulnerable moment that needs to be shared… that needs to be, like, quiet. Why are we sharing this? And…
Alex Lange: I feel like we’ve, as a society, gotten conditioned that there’s only perfection. Like, life is only, you know, if you work hard enough, if you have the big things, you know, you’re successful, we talk about success, that’s priority. And then on social media, we push the success picture.
Alex Lange: No one shares the challenges. So then, when we share the challenges, it becomes taboo. You know, like, it’s… it’s…
Alex Lange: It’s uncomfortable for some people. Death is uncomfortable for people. And
Alex Lange: I think that’s where I’m leaning into a lot, is to really say, you know what?
Alex Lange: This is my opportunity to help people realize that it’s a normal process of life.
Alex Lange: And everybody’s gonna die.
Alex Lange: We’re not able to escape that. Unless they find some miracle for us to live eternally, right? Everybody’s gonna die, and so I… in my own process, as I’ve been vulnerable and shared.
Alex Lange: I’ve heard so many beautiful stories, and that’s what I’m leaning into.
Alex Lange: You know, the positive of listening to a woman who had a 6-month-old child that passed away of the same condition.
Alex Lange: And how she got to spend so much time with him, and they knew because they got an ultrasound at 20 weeks. You know, just to back a little bit, the reason why we didn’t know Liam had a heart condition was because my wife gave birth at home and had no ultrasounds at all.
Alex Lange: And so, the doctor, when Liam passed away, she said that he was a medical miracle. He shouldn’t have lived past a few days. And so I lean into that as well, you know, where people have hit me on that, like, you guys are careless, you didn’t get your kid checked out, like, I hear it. I respect your opinion, but I also know
Alex Lange: that this happened for a reason, and he lived long, that he lived a longer life because of what we… like, of how we brought him into the world, and we got to have all these beautiful memories. So I… I tell them, these people thank you, right? Like, I don’t want anybody that comes to my page, and I’ve said this before.
Alex Lange: Everybody has an opinion. Now, for me, my opportunity is when someone hits me in the chest with something that I don’t like, how can I just acknowledge it.
Alex Lange: Thank you for your opinion, and you can… you can continue to carry on just like I’m gonna carry on.
Alex Lange: Because the… the medicine, the story, which is the medicine, It’s so much more powerful
Alex Lange: than the onesies or the twosies, the people that come hit me and say, hey.
Alex Lange: Why did you record your son?
Alex Lange: And that’s all I have, though. You know, like, those are the only… those are the last memories, and yes, he’s dead, but being able to see him…
Alex Lange: Still… I wish I could explain it to you, but it’s just… those are memories now.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and you know, the thing I’m hearing
Jessica Dueñas: some of the arguments, and I remember seeing some of that posted in, like, response to some of your content, you know, we can’t change the outcomes of things in life, right? Like, if you would have
Jessica Dueñas: done… if you all would have known earlier on, you know, the timing was his timing. The other thing that I think about, too, quality of life, you know, it looks like Liam had a really beautiful life, and, like, you all did so many awesome things, and, you know.
Jessica Dueñas: I wonder what his life would have looked like if you had known that, you know, there was this heart defect going on, right? Like, would he have just been in the hospital his entire existence until his passing, and then what kind of life would that have been? You know, so it’s like, I see what those folks are saying, but at the end of the day, like, this was his lived experience, and it sounds like he did live a beautiful life with his siblings and you all until his time came, and so.
Alex Lange: So, it’s so difficult, right? And I think, like.
Jessica Dueñas: there’s so many different things that people are bringing with them when they’re making those charged comments, right? Like, their own stories, their own experiences that make them feel like their way is right. And so, I… I love that you just kind of use that as an invitation to just practice, like, alright, you can have your thought, you can carry on, and I’m gonna carry on.
Alex Lange: Can I say one thing, too.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah.
Alex Lange: You made me think about, most people suffer in any situation, any challenge, most people suffer because they’re either thinking about the future, or they’re thinking about the past.
Alex Lange: And in this healing journey for me, I’ve really found solace in staying in the present moment as much as possible. Like, when I acknowledge, when I start to see myself thinking about the future, or I start to think about, what if we did this? What if we did that?
Alex Lange: And I feel the emotions, I take it… I stop and I take a deep breath.
Alex Lange: And I’m like, okay.
Alex Lange: Where am I at right now?
Alex Lange: Am I safe? Am I okay? Like, I start to ask myself these questions, because…
Alex Lange: That’s how… it’s so interesting how the brain works, because it’s going to take us to this what-if scenario, or this, and especially in the future, if we’re thinking about something in the future, but it hasn’t even happened, why are we anxious about it? Why are we freaking out about it? Now we have to go through that process twice.
Alex Lange: But if we can just stay in the moment and control the controllables for us.
Alex Lange: We can look at how we can control ourselves and how we show up in the world.
Alex Lange: When that moment comes, then we… then we navigate through it.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and you know, when you talk about controlling the controllables, like, the only thing we’re in control of is ourselves.
Alex Lange: Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas: how do we choose to respond to things? Like, even that first emotion we’re not in control of, right? It’s really, like, we’re just in control of the decisions and, you know, what thoughts we choose to continue to, like, cycle through our minds versus not. I’m curious, I know that you do coach people, and…
Jessica Dueñas: how have you helped others, aside from sharing your story, which I think is incredibly important, and it breaks down shame, and it helps to build community.
Jessica Dueñas: how else do you support others who are grieving when they… when they share, like, hey, me too, like, what help, what… what do I do with this pain?
Alex Lange: So I created this framework. I went back and I looked at my own life as I progressed through 2021, and then the coaching clients that I had, like I said, I didn’t have a name for this process, but then as I was writing the TEDx.
Alex Lange: you know, Dr. R kept telling me, hey, I need you to create, like, some type of framework that people can take away, something tangible.
Alex Lange: So then, I thought about my son, and I’m like, hey, what a good way to honor him with the Liam process. And this process, what I do with… and I coach mostly men, so I’m not saying that I don’t take women, I’m in a different phase of my life, I was hardcore men for a long time, but…
Alex Lange: The big thing is listening. So just being there, asking them to sit with what’s going on.
Alex Lange: Not scrolling, not coping with whatever their coping mechanism is, listening to what’s going on.
Alex Lange: And then, having them write it down, I either have them write it down, so journaling, voice memos, some form of getting it out, because the thoughts that are in our head, we close the loop when we get them on a piece of paper. If we just… we… they’re there, and we just keep pushing them, they’re gonna recycle.
Alex Lange: And so with my clients, I have them do a lot of either writing, which I know is something that I saw on your page. You do a form of writing with regards to coaching. And then, I’m a big speaker, I love speaking, I love connecting to people, so I really relate with people on the voice, so I have them do a lot of voice connection, if that… voice processing, if that relates to them.
Alex Lange: And then the action piece is action to self.
Alex Lange: So…
Alex Lange: you acknowledge, or I skipped the I, the integration. So the feelings, listening to the feelings, listening to what’s coming up, and then integrating it into your life.
Alex Lange: So, not acting like it’s never happened to you, like you don’t have something going on, acknowledging it, giving it a place, giving it a name, face, whatever you need to do.
Alex Lange: Integrate it.
Alex Lange: And then let’s act with it. And that action, once again, can be as simple as a walk, it could be a phone call, it could be a journal entry, a voice memo.
Alex Lange: starting to get movement from the body, because somatically, movement is medicine for the mind. So when we start to move around, when we start to take action within what we’re going through.
Alex Lange: Other things start to flow. Ideas, thoughts.
Alex Lange: And then part of this framework that I’ve asked people to do is service to others.
Alex Lange: Now, it doesn’t mean, like, you have to go out and be so insert, like, being a servant to other people and lose focus of yourself, but the service to others is sharing your story and talking about it.
Alex Lange: Because this is the… this is the thing with regards to self-worth, is when these things happen to us, we don’t think that we’re worthy. We don’t feel like we belong in the room.
Alex Lange: And the mental part of this all, that’s more than half the battle.
Alex Lange: So I say, hey, let’s go share your story. I want you to share your story to a few people.
Alex Lange: Like, let… whatever… however… whatever platform, it doesn’t have to be Instagram or TEDx, or… but maybe it’s someone that you know that you just… that they don’t know what you’re going through. Share it.
Alex Lange: And a lot of times, the people come back and they’re like, man.
Alex Lange: I didn’t know this person was going through this, too.
Alex Lange: And especially working with men, that’s the constant theme that I get, is because we leave it… we keep it so internal, because we feel like we’re the only ones going through it. When they start to open up to other men.
Alex Lange: They… they realize that other men are going through the same thing, and then they…
Alex Lange: They stop believing that it’s… it’s not manly.
Alex Lange: It’s, it’s not manly to, to open up.
Alex Lange: You know, I think that we’ve been conditioned as men to… to keep it in, to suck it up, to… to push through it.
Alex Lange: But human beings are not meant to just always do, they’re meant to be as well.
Alex Lange: And so, we have to create a space for that.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s so important that you bring that up, because that can be such a block for men’s mental health. Like, the idea that, you know, it’s manly to not express your emotions, and then, you know, you keep all of this bottled up, and I mean, eventually, it’s like a pressure cooker, right? Like, you’ve got to let these feelings out, you’ve got to find a way to process them, otherwise it’s gonna be like an explosion, and that
Jessica Dueñas: Helps no one. Literally, it helps no one.
Alex Lange: Absolutely.
Jessica Dueñas: So I’m so glad that you’re creating, and, you know, having these spaces, having these conversations for men to really get in touch with their feelings, because it needs to be, like, we need to change the narrative socially, that it’s okay for men to carry these emotions, and to be impacted, and to name it. Again, you know, they don’t have to be suffering in silence.
Jessica Dueñas: The other thing that you had mentioned earlier that I wanted to come back to that I think is really important is With regard to, like, looking at death as a transition point.
Jessica Dueñas: I… I wanted to talk about that a little bit, only because…
Jessica Dueñas: what I’ve noticed is a lot of people are incredibly uncomfortable with speaking about death, when the reality is, is that
Jessica Dueñas: you said it yourself, everyone is going to pass away. It’s guaranteed, as much as being born is a guarantee, so is the fact that one day we all transition off of this earth. And I’m curious,
Jessica Dueñas: How you perceive death, or, like, how you aim to break the stigma around that with the work that you do as well.
Alex Lange: Yeah, I…
Alex Lange: I feel, in my own journey, this is an I statement because it starts with me, anything that I say here, it’s something that I’ve done, but I do believe that it relates with a lot of people. I was scared of death for so long because I didn’t like the life that I was living.
Alex Lange: So many people are in a job that they hate.
Alex Lange: They’re chasing the dreams of other people, they’re building the dreams of other people, they’re doing things that they don’t like to do, but because they have to financially. And so I think that they’re… in my own experience, when I ask myself, why was I so scared, it’s because I’m not living a life that I’m really enjoying.
Alex Lange: So, I am hoping, as I share more, and, you know, I talk about
Alex Lange: inspiring families to live with purpose. You know, post Liam, it’s about inspiring families to live with purpose, inspiring people to do things that they want to do.
Alex Lange: And it doesn’t have to look like mine, right? It just requires you to sit, to say, okay, what is it that I really want in the world? What is it… what fills my cup?
Alex Lange: Because a lot of times, we lose focus of that. We’re doing things because we have to do them, or we’re told to do them.
Alex Lange: Maybe, maybe you’re listening to this, and, you know, you’ve been told that, hey, you need to go this career path.
Alex Lange: You know, I was in the military for 13 and a half years, and the majority of the reason why I was in the military was because
Alex Lange: I didn’t have a relationship with my dad.
Alex Lange: Until I joined the military. My dad was a retired… he was in the military for 20 years, and he retired. And I went to the military because I didn’t really have any other options that were gonna push me up into being a productive human, and he was like, listen, you have to… you either get… you get out of my house.
Alex Lange: Or you join the military. And I was like, well, I don’t wanna… I don’t know what I’m gonna do with regards to career-wise, I’ll join the military. And so I just sucked it up. I was just continually focusing on building this… this beautiful career within the military. And then I sat back in 2021, like I mentioned, and asked myself.
Alex Lange: What am I doing this for?
Alex Lange: Who am I doing this for? Like, I hated… I loved leading people. I love leading people.
Alex Lange: But my job and being in the military, I was just like, this is not who I want to be. So then I started to take these steps of, okay, what fills my cup?
Alex Lange: What did I like about the military? How can I incorporate that into my life?
Alex Lange: So if you’re listening to this, I would ask you to just have a direction, understand where you want to go as a person.
Alex Lange: Are you in a career that really fills you up? Are you doing a job that really is giving and not just taking?
Alex Lange: If something is just taking from you, how is it serving you?
Alex Lange: And that’s… that’s why, for me, I was afraid of death, was because I’m like, man, I’m not really living a life.
Alex Lange: that I’m… like, if I was to die today, I’d have a lot of… a lot left on the table.
Alex Lange: regret. Resentment towards myself. Like, there would be a lot left on the table. And so now…
Alex Lange: Being able to…
Alex Lange: really redefined success, which I’ve changed that whole narrative in my mind. It’s not the cars, it’s not the six-figure paying job, because I had it all, and I was still struggling internally. For me, success is now about my inner self, like, having self-awareness.
Alex Lange: And then, now that helps me show up in the world differently. So, any challenge that, in my life that happens, I want to make sure I say this, because I’ve been thinking about it as you’ve been speaking.
Alex Lange: For death, when there’s death, there’s rebirth.
Jessica Dueñas: So anything that is no longer serving us that, like, falls off, it, you know, I use the word, maybe it’s a little harsh, but it dies, right?
Alex Lange: There’s a part of you that’s re… like, that’s gonna be rebirthed.
Alex Lange: You know, when forest fires… when there’s forest fires that happen, and they burn all down, the soil is actually more rich with nutrients for new trees to… to birth. So, like, that’s where I’m… where I lean into with death, is like, okay, how can I make the time that I have on Earth
Alex Lange: You know, the dash between the dates that are on the headstone, right? How can I make that dash more meaningful to me, not to others?
Jessica Dueñas: And that’s incredibly powerful, too, because if you’re kind of going off of what you’re saying, if you’re living a life that feels satisfying to you, because you’re defining what that satisfaction, what that success is.
Jessica Dueñas: then when your time comes, there’s kind of, like, that piece of, okay, like, well, I lived a good life, and so…
Jessica Dueñas: now I’m transitioning, as opposed to, like you said, that idea of, like, the stuff on the table, like, all this regret. And, you know, I hear it so much when people talk about, like, interviewing people, like, on their deathbeds, and, you know, like, the list of things that they regret, and I do hope that I’m
Jessica Dueñas: not with a lengthy list by the time that comes for me, whenever that is meant to be. I really hope and pray that I don’t have that experience either.
Jessica Dueñas: So, as we start to kind of, wrap up here, I want to think a little bit about the listener who might be… feel stuck, right, which happens to a lot of us.
Jessica Dueñas: What do you want them to kind of take from your story, or Liam’s life, or even if they get to listen to your TEDx talk? Like, what do you hope the stuck person does next?
Alex Lange: I think it’s important that…
Alex Lange: We take a moment, if you’re really… if you’re struggling in life.
Alex Lange: Possibly, if we could reframe, what if your biggest
Alex Lange: Perceived failures is actually your greatest success.
Alex Lange: So, really, when we are able to sit with ourselves, and just get curious on the emotions, the thoughts that come up, I want you to just give yourself that space.
Alex Lange: It can be… it can be in silence without any type of distraction.
Alex Lange: And this is… this may not be a one-time process. It may be a few weeks, a month’s process.
Alex Lange: But give yourself a space to know a direction that you want to go in.
Alex Lange: I talked about at the very beginning of the podcast, of educating yourself, and then having a choice.
Alex Lange: Most people follow blindly.
Alex Lange: From what the traditional narrative has been.
Alex Lange: They don’t even look into what things, like, the things that are happening in the world, and making a choice for themselves, they just follow blindly. So for yourself, I want you to really…
Alex Lange: And I steal this from a friend that told me after Liam passed, he said, love in all moments.
Alex Lange: Liam, love in all moments. He said, your healing journey, your addiction journey, your… whatever journey you’re going through.
Alex Lange: It’s about being able to love yourself. That’s how you’re going to get through the challenging times.
Alex Lange: And if you’re having a hard time loving yourself, I think it’s very important to surround yourself with people that are in this journey that you are on.
Alex Lange: That are… that are maybe a step ahead of you, or two steps, so on and so forth.
Alex Lange: And then as you’re on that journey, and you’re starting to see you’re able to love yourself more, you’re pouring back into your cup, part of this healing journey is then to look behind you and see the people that are maybe in step 0 or Step 1, and pulling them with you, guiding them.
Alex Lange: And so that’s what I want anybody that’s listening to this, is to give yourself a space to first listen.
Alex Lange: Listen to what’s coming up. Acknowledge it.
Alex Lange: Integrated into your life.
Alex Lange: Feel the feelings.
Alex Lange: Like, if you need to cry, cry.
Alex Lange: If you need to scream, scream. Give it a place, give it a name.
Alex Lange: And then take this action. Love yourself. Fill your cup.
Alex Lange: Identify a list of things that make you feel better, external of the coping mechanism. So, like, I get it, like, for me, you know, for a long time, I thought, okay, alcohol helped me feel better, porn, working, like, that’s what gave me value. But as you sit with yourself, you’re gonna realize, okay, those just took from me.
Alex Lange: What really gives me life? What makes me feel good?
Alex Lange: And when you start to do that for yourself, once again, that multiply.
Alex Lange: Get service to others by sharing your story. Everyone here, when they share their story, gives permission for others to do the same.
Alex Lange: And that’s how we heal the unconscious collective, so to speak.
Alex Lange: Our healing journey is we’re connected, we’re so interconnected as people. And when we suppress things, they come out sideways, through addiction, through drugs, through whatever it may be.
Alex Lange: And that’s why it’s important to have this expression, this creative expression.
Alex Lange: Hopefully that answers your question.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, no, it totally does, and when you talk about, like, that, what if your greatest perceived failure is, like, actually, like, your greatest success, or… you said something along those lines.
Jessica Dueñas: You know, it made me think immediately about my relationship with alcohol, and how there was a time when
Jessica Dueñas: I was totally in that, woe is me, why do I have to be the one that’s addicted to this stuff, and now I have to figure out how to get sober when all these people in the world just get to enjoy their casual drink, like, with dinner, I can’t do that. There was so much resentment that I had about the fact that I’m one of the lucky 10% who struggles with, you know, some sort of substance use disorder.
Jessica Dueñas: And at the same time, while I didn’t ask for it, I look around at the life that I have today, and nothing that I have today would have
Jessica Dueñas: been here, like my daughter, my relationship, you know, sort of like this rebirth that I’ve had to experience myself. None of this would be here if I didn’t have the struggle in the first place. Again, you know, resiliency, that’s a tough one because we become resilient when we go through really hard things.
Jessica Dueñas: But I’m really glad that I am a resilient person at this point, and I… I am so grateful that there isn’t anything in this world
Jessica Dueñas: that I don’t believe I can’t face, if that makes sense, you know? And the confidence that I have, and a lot of that is because
Jessica Dueñas: I overcame the struggles that I had with alcohol and continue on a daily basis. I make that choice every day to stay sober, to work to protect that sobriety. I… it is my greatest success. Everything that I have today is because of my sobriety, even though…
Jessica Dueñas: you know, would I have asked for this, you know, lot in life? Sure, no, of course not. Like, nobody wants to go through those struggles, but I did it, and here I am. So, I definitely think that it’s hard, because in those moments, when we’re in the thick of it, we don’t see the way out, but if we can just, like you said, be in community and see that there’s other people who were in our shoes, and they got through it, and trust that if other humans can do it.
Jessica Dueñas: I can too. That can really, really take us a long way. So, thank you for that point. So, Alex, before we wrap up, how can people connect with you? How can people find you, follow your work, or learn more about what you do?
Alex Lange: Absolutely. So, you can find me right now, I do a lot of more of sharing my writings, and just being vulnerable on Instagram, at alexlang22. I am not official in the sense of having a website, I do have a substack, but I’m very infant in the speaking journey. That’s been a dream of mine.
Alex Lange: And when Liam passed away, I said, hey, you know what? The reason why I did a TEDx was because Liam passed away. And I’ve been holding my own dreams off.
Alex Lange: And I was like, hey, it’s time to share. So, at alexlang22, Instagram, and then you can email me, a lot of my… I do a lot of coaching at, it’s alexlangcoaching at gmail.com, and
Alex Lange: things are evolving. You know, the TEDx, and I’m sure you could speak the same, a lot of opportunities have opened up for me since. You know, a lot of people have reached out asking me to share, and so I do… if you’re listening to this and you have a podcast.
Alex Lange: please reach out. I’d love to share my story. I’d love to have you share your story, because I think at the end of the day, as humans, we thrive on connection. Connection to self, and connection to others. And if you’re going through something that’s challenging.
Alex Lange: there’s a lot more people that are gonna have… your story is medicine to them than the people that think… that are gonna shame you, and be on you, and give you a hard time. And I… and I hid my mom… you know, for a long time, I hid my mom’s addiction, my dad’s alcoholism, because I thought it was something so bad.
Alex Lange: But the reality is, we’re all human, and we’re all going through something. We connect when we come together, and we’re just honest, vulnerable, and we’re there for each other.
Jessica Dueñas: Absolutely. Well, Alex, again, just thank you for sharing Liam’s story, thank you for opening up about how grief has shaped your journey and has you… how you navigated everything.
Jessica Dueñas: To anyone listening, just that reminder that if today’s conversation brought up anything heavy for you, please remember that you don’t have to go through grief alone. I mean, Alex shared his contact information, but also remember that there’s always a trusted friend in your circle, a support group, or even a counselor to help you talk through these things. We don’t have to go through this human experience alone, so…
Jessica Dueñas: Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Alex, for joining. Until next time.
In this episode, I sit down with Abigail Teixeira for a powerful conversation on sobriety, generational healing, and parenting with intention. Abigail opens up about the courage it took to share the parts of her story that had been “silenced for too long” and what reclamation and decolonization look like in her daily life. In our conversation, we address breaking cycles of trauma and addiction, how recovery connects to healing our lineage, and the ways imperfection and vulnerability shape how we show up as mothers. This conversation is an honest reminder that sobriety is about more than not drinking, it’s about reclaiming your voice, breaking cycles, and living in alignment.
Resources:
About Abigail Teixeira:
Abigail Teixeira is a trauma recovery coach, international speaker, and 3x best-selling author devoted to helping cycle-breaking women heal their trauma and rise into leadership. A former nurse turned decolonized business mentor, Abigail blends over 17 years of clinical experience with deep lived experience, ancestral wisdom, human design, nervous system healing, and woman-centered coaching.
Abby empowers mothers and creatives to rewrite their stories, reclaim their voice, and lead with purpose. Her mission is to end cycles of pain by building legacies rooted in love, sovereignty, and truth.
With four children and a thriving coaching business, Abigail shows that sacred boundaries, bold vision, and healing are the foundation of true success. She believes that our deepest pain often holds the key to our greatest power—and that healing ourselves is how we heal the world.
Jessica Dueñas: Hey, everyone, welcome back. Well, I am super excited to be in conversation today with Abby Teixera. Abby is someone who I’ve been following maybe for years, I don’t even know how long it’s been, but I saw her first in conversation with another good friend of mine named Priscilla, and Abby really just captured my attention. She is a mother of four, I believe.
Jessica Dueñas: A coach, I know an author, an entrepreneur.
Jessica Dueñas: kind of all the things, but really, some of the things that really struck me about you, Abby, and why I’m so glad that you’re here, is, just kind of seeing how you talk about parenting. I know you are in recovery. I know that from your post, that you have survived some trauma in Europe history and addiction as well, and, that you also have a community for mothers, right? I think the Healing Mama Collective.
Jessica Dueñas: So really, I just wanted to bring you on to kind of expose folks to the good work that you’re doing, in case anybody is looking for support in their own healing journey, in their motherhood journey. Again, there’s so much that you do that always inspires me, so I would just love to learn more from you. But before I just kind of introduce you, do you want to tell people who you are, and formally what you do?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Jessica, for having me. I am so excited to chat with you. I’ve also been following you as well at the… I think the same time that you started following me, I started following you too, and it was through our mutual friend, Priscilla, who I love and admire her so much.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, you’re also a fellow Latina, which I love, always supporting. I am, like you said, all the things… I am a mama for, the age ranges is from 7 is my oldest, 1 is my youngest, and 4 and 5 are my middle 2, so very intense, full life, that’s for sure. I’m also a coach, I’m a trauma recovery coach, a feminine business mentor.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I’m a speaker, an author, my fourth book is actually about to launch next week, and it’s actually about parenting. It’s called Parent… The Art of Parenting. It wasn’t in the manual, and it’s a co-authored book, and so,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): my chapter specifically on my journey through postpartum depression, and really breaking the stigma and the silence around, what that journey can look like. Interesting with that, a little off the cuff here, I actually reached out to my community on Instagram, when I got this opportunity to write this chapter, and I did a poll in my stories asking, you know, different topics that people wanted to
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): To hear from me, like, write about.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, that’s the one that won by a landslide, postpartum… my journey through postpartum depression, which was interesting, because I’ve never written about it fully, and so it was really good to be able to go back there, and then now it’s being launched, and, you know, that’ll come out into the world.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But yeah, like you said, I am in recovery, 11 years coming up here in October, recovering from addiction to alcohol. I’m also a childhood trauma survivor, complex trauma survivor, and advocate now.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, yeah, those are the things that are my passions, these are the things that I live for, I speak for, I write, and, you know, these kind of opportunities to have conversations like this just fill me up so much, because I know
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): What it was like for me in… whether it was the early days of my recovery journey, or in my parenting journey.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): just looking for others, you know, looking for others who sounded like me, who look like me, who had similar stories, because one of the biggest things that I find.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that many women struggle with is that feeling of isolation and loneliness, right? That, like, we’re the only ones, nobody gets it, all of that kind of stuff, right? And so I think we just need more voices speaking out about these real-life experiences, especially breaking cycles, right? When we come from families that…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, they did the best they could, but unfortunately it wasn’t good enough, you know, and it left many of us with trauma. And then we have to rewrite, you know, kind of that script, and learn as we go.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): it can be very daunting. It can be very daunting, right? And so I think it’s really important to be able to share openly about these things so that others can see themselves, and they have hope. They know that, you know, healing is possible, and that we can do this.
Jessica Dueñas: I love that, Abby. I know there’s times that I’ve seen you post about the concept of reclamation, and I was curious if you could speak to that, because I was going to ask you what’s the importance of sharing your story, but you already hit on that, which is beautiful, right? And it is so important for us to feel seen, it is so important for us to realize that we are not alone in the struggles that we share. But as you talk about healing, I’ve heard you talk about
Jessica Dueñas: reclamation, I’ve heard you talk about decolonization of our minds, and I’m so curious if you can speak a little bit to that, and what that might look like for you in your daily life.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Absolutely. So, like I mentioned, as a Latina woman, my parents are from El Salvador, I was born in Mexico, and, what I’ve learned in my healing and recovery journey is that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): When we look on a spiritual level, a lot of the things that we carry, yes, you know, our environment, how we grew up, the things that we were exposed to have a really big part, and they play a big role in shaping us.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But also, it goes a lot deeper than that. There’s actually intergenerational patterns, trauma, things that we are carrying that come from, you know, ancestors. You know, and when I think about, a couple of years ago, I started getting really curious about my roots.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And about, you know, who are the people in my lineage? Because, like I said, when I took on this role of the cycle breaker in my family.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And I started to really look at the lineages I come from, my paternal and maternal. I started to see, as far as I could see, there was a lot of war, poverty, addiction, abuse, like, on both sides. Both of my grandfathers on both sides died of alcoholism at some point, like, as a result, you know, in addition to other things that were going on.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But they had problems with addiction, that kind of a thing. And I started getting really curious about, you know, this whole lineage thing, and, you know, they say that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): As a woman, when we step into healing and recovery, we’re actually healing 7 generations before us, and 7 generations after us.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And I found that statement so impactful, so that’s what really kind of sparked my curiosity to start digging into, you know, my history, my lineage, and so I ended up doing, like, an ancestry DNA testing, just to kind of see, you know, what was my mix, you know, in terms of, like, bloodlines, I guess.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And it was very interesting, because when, it came out, it actually turned out that I was, genetically 51% indigenous. It said Indigenous.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): At Maya, and and then the other was, like, mixed, 39% European, so, like, Spanish, Portuguese, and then a whole bunch of, like, all these little mixtures in there as well. And that was really eye-opening for me, because
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, it’s… it was the… when I started to really explore about lineage and… and decolonization, which is really what decolonization is, to me, it’s about unlearning the colonial ways of thinking and being that happen to many of us as Latinas.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? Like, we come from these long lineages that are very mixed, and where that mixture happened was, you know, at one point in time in the… for example, in the land that I come from, you know, Mexico, El Salvador.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): There was Indigenous people that lived there, and then, you know, the Europeans came, they colonized it in a very brutal, horrific way, basically almost erasing. There was 100 million Indigenous,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): people that were massacred, right? And so, it was, like, this whole thing that got me diving into all of that. And that… what happened during those times deeply affected our bloodlines, right? Our ancestors that survived those times.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they had no way of processing what they had just experienced, right? They were seeing the wiping out of their culture, their languages, their systems, all of that kind of stuff, right? And a lot of our practices, all of that kind of stuff was banned, was not allowed, and what happens when, you know, the ones that were most affected were the children having to witness all of this and not being able to process
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): and grieve, and so the way it’s been put to me is that when you have no way of processing the grief, the pain, the loss of seeing your culture literally being almost banished.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): it goes into your blood memory. And so that blood memory and the, like, into our bones, basically, that’s what… that’s genetically what gets passed down. And so that’s where intergenerational trauma starts to happen.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so that’s when you have the violence and, you know, the addictions and all of that kind of stuff to try to soothe.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, this feeling that many of us are born with, you know? You were gonna say something?
Jessica Dueñas: Oh, yeah, I was going to ask, well, this makes me think, and I’m curious if it’s the kind of like the same thing, when I think about epigenetics and how I’ve read about how epigenetics is the study of, you know, how the environment or things that happen literally impact your genes, right? And so I’m curious if that’s kind of, like, what this basically is.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Exactly, exactly. So, just like…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, this deeply affected our genetic makeup of our ancestors. We have the power to reverse that, in a sense, and change it for our future, right? And so the things I’m healing from, my children won’t have to heal from, right? And it takes one person in the lineage to literally stop and say, you know, I’m no longer passing this stuff down. I’m no longer… it’s not okay for me to parent in this way, the way it was done for me.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): That kind of a thing, right? And so… but it’s a deep, deep process, because these are things that are hardwired in us, and also, you know, we’ve… we… we develop these coping mechanisms, so for me,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, growing up, like I said, like, in a violent alcoholic home, you know, lots of abuse, lots of just really crazy things happening, I developed these, like, kind of, coping mechanisms to deal with it, because nobody was there to teach me, like, you know, this is what grief is, this is what loss is, you know, this is how you process anger or sadness, and, you know, I was just told, like, many of our, you know, kind of culturally, is just, you know.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): kind of shut it down, sweep it under the rug, move on, you know, and you don’t have to think about it. But obviously, it manifests itself in different ways. Depression, anxiety, addiction, all of these kind of things.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so these are hardwired in us, not only in our environment, but also, like I said, ancestrally, right? And so that really took me down that route of really discovering about, you know, my lineage, and just how deep it runs.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And the ancestral ways of healing, of being, and living, and all of that kind of stuff, and unlearning the colonial mindset, which is, you know, hustle culture, which is disconnection from self.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): disconnection from each other, you know, this individualistic mindset that, you know, we all doing… we’re all doing things on our own, we don’t need anyone, all of that kind of stuff. Whereas, you know, our ancestors deeply, revered community. You know, we all healed in community, we grieved in community. Even as mothers, there was, you know, the village, the idea of the village coming around you, taking care of you when you had your children, all of that kind of stuff.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): That all kind of dissolved when colonialism came.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): into play, and it was all about survival, right? It was about survival, and really having that disconnection to not only ourselves, but also the Earth, you know, which is what decolonization really is.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): it’s about learning to reconnect with ourselves, and then with our Great Mother Earth, right? And then just going deep… deeper into all of those kind of things. That’s in a very nutshell kind of way, describing it, because it’s deep, it’s deep stuff, right? But, you know, that’s the work that I’ve been really diving into recently, and it’s life-changing. It really is life-changing, you know, and it’s things that I’m now passing down to my children.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): They’re seeing me doing certain things, and they have questions, they’re curious, and they want to come and do things with me, and I’m explaining to them and sharing with them. And that in itself is, you know, breaking cycles, because one of the cycles that I’m very proud to break from my lineage is the cycle of silence.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, where we don’t speak up about things. You know, we don’t talk about things, feelings, emotions, what are those? We don’t, you know, like, especially coming from children, and it’s like, you know, in my home, all emotions are welcome, we talk about them.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, anger is okay. You know, I always tell my 5-year-old, my 5-year-old’s a very intense little boy, and when he gets upset, you know, like, he goes, like, 0 to 100 with anger, and, you know, I tell him, like, Papa, it’s okay for you to be, you know, angry, but it’s not okay for you to be mean, you know, if you’re angry.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And then I show him ways to be able to process that anger in a way that’s healthy, instead of suppressing it and shutting it down and saying, like, you know, smacking him, or like, you know, those kind of things that I grew up with.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, and so, yeah, so it’s been like a whole journey and new discovery, and it’s really allowed for me to start coming home to myself and remembering. So that’s what reclamation is. I’m remembering who I’m actually… who I actually am beneath all of the trauma, beneath all of the conditioning and the programming and all of that kind of stuff.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And who my ancestors were. You know, I’m able to be now the voice that they weren’t allowed to have, right? And especially as a woman. And so, so yeah, so like I said, in a nutshell, you know, that’s what…
Jessica Dueñas: Love it.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Decolonization and reclamation is.
Jessica Dueñas: So, I think that’s so incredibly powerful, and as you were giving the example about your son.
Jessica Dueñas: I thought about how I grew up as well, and some feelings were allowed, like, if I was happy, that wasn’t a problem. But yes, if I was frustrated, if I was upset, if I was getting emotional, there’s the classic, I’ll give you something to cry about, you know, you know, that kind of language, I feel like is very pervasive in a lot of…
Jessica Dueñas: cultures, and definitely, like, you know, my family, my father was from Cuba, my mother was from Costa Rica, and, you know, I definitely experienced a lot of that, too. I’m curious, how early on did you start having these conversations with your children? I mean, because all of your kiddos, they’re young, and so I’m curious, like, was it as soon as they were verbal that you were having these conversations about feelings? Like, when did you start to set that stage with them that
Jessica Dueñas: Whatever they’re feeling, it’s okay, and then giving them guidance for how to, like, manage the feelings.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, that’s a great question. So, for me, it was really, the moment that I became a mom, I was already… I want to say I was about…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): about 4 years into my healing and recovery journey. So I felt like I had a pretty stable foundation, you know, going into becoming a mom. But nothing prepares you, truly prepares you, to becoming… to entering into, you know, motherhood. And,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, what happens is, as a cycle breaker, you enter into this process of what’s called reparenting. So what reparenting is, is that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): We think about an inner child, which lives in all of us. We all have this spirit that lives inside of us, this inner little, you know, that when we close our eyes, you know, is very present there, right? Even though externally we are, like, whatever age, you know, and we’re at this kind of level, internally, we have this inner child that lives within all of us.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that, there were certain things for me, personally, that, weren’t given to me, you know, as a child, weren’t, like I mentioned earlier, certain emotions, certain, things that I was not taught how to process.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so what I have to do in order to be able to do that to my kids, like, help them learn to process, I have to teach myself how to process my own emotions, and go into this kind of reparenting, while parenting kind of journey. And so…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): what happened was, you know, I had a journey of postpartum depression early on in my first two pregnancies at postpartum with both of them.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I learned a lot through that. And, you know, the early stages, they don’t really talk, you know, they’re just kind of doing stuff, they’re babies, they’re, you know, it’s manageable. But then they started reaching the ages where it was very triggering for me, and I didn’t know why. There were certain things that…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): They were, they were starting to do that would trigger me deeply, like, on a very reactive level.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And I started getting super curious, and this is where the foundation that I had before becoming a mom was really vital for me, because I had already…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I kind of… I had these tools. I had tools and resources that I can lean into when I came across these situations where I was kind of stumped, and I was like, what is happening here? You know, and one of the biggest tools was leaning into curiosity.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): One of my coaches talks about becoming curious over defeated. And there were times when I was very defeated, because, you know, I would, so, for example.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, when kids start reaching the age of toddler, they start, you know, kind of, having a little bit of a voice, you know, they start kind of having a little power struggle, they start having these meltdowns and big, big emotions, big feelings, and that was super triggering for me, because
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I really felt lost how to deal with them in a way that wasn’t, scary, in a way that wasn’t abusive, because for me, as a child, what I discovered, the reason why I was becoming triggered when they were starting to express themselves in these ways, is because I… when I was witnessing them doing this.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): It brought me back to a time when I was their age, and it wasn’t safe for me to express myself in those ways.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so, you know, it was… and so it was my inner child, you know, kind of in this, like, fight-or-flight kind of survival mode, that, you know, if I… if I screamed too much, or if I… if I, you know, had a meltdown, or all that kind of stuff, like, it would… I would get, like, physically attacked for those kind of things, right? And that was something that was a non-negotiable for me. I was not gonna repeat that with my kids.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But, it was scary because, well, you know, I would react, right? They would do something, and it would startle me, and I would react. And, like, you know, the most common thing that would happen is, like, I would yell, right? And I could see…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): in them, when I would react that way, that they were scared. Like, I would see the fear in their eyes.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And that crushed me as a mom, you know? Like, I was… because I recognized that fear, I recognized, you know, that reaction in them, and so I kind of took a step back, and… and I was like, what is going on here? You know, getting really curious about that. And then that’s when I discovered it was because, you know, this is triggering for me, because it wasn’t safe in my nervous system to witness them acting in ways that I was not allowed to act.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? And so then that’s when I had to learn different ways.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, taking, like, lots of… so many different things. I, many different modalities, like EFT tapping, breathwork.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, going out for a little timeout when I’m feeling activated. I started to also start naming things, vocally with my kids, so if I was feeling overwhelmed, I would say, mama’s feeling overwhelmed right now, I just need a minute. I’m gonna step away. You know, and I would go to, like, the bathroom, or, you know, wherever was the case, or I would summon my husband and kind of tag team with him, and I was like, I need a moment, I need to collect myself, because I’m just in this, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): this state, right, that I know… that I’m not… I don’t feel in control right now, right? And so…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And then, of course, I have other supports. I have…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): lots and lots of, like, incredible resources and tools that I’ve picked up along my journey that I leaned on, you know, including others who were doing the same journey as me, who I knew were also trauma survivors, who I knew were parents that now had teenagers, had adult children, and I started asking them questions, like, how do you navigate this? Like, how do you do this? Like, really, really humbling myself and asking those who are a little bit further down the path than me.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): For their support and their advice and their tips. And so, so yeah, so those are some of the things that I started to really implement. And now, to this day, I am, you know, like, it’s a messy journey, but I am very much, and I talked a lot about this in my content,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I don’t pretend like I know it all with my kids, you know, whereas, like, growing up, my parents had all the answers, you know, like, and if they didn’t, like, you know, it’s like, you don’t question them. Like, it’s just, like, it’s just the way it is, right? Like, they are the all-knowing, they had them on a pedestal, all that kind of stuff.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): when I don’t know things, I tell them, mama doesn’t know, let me… let me find out, or let me… let’s learn together, those kind of things. I name emotions in my house, so my kids know what overwhelm is, they know what anger is, they know what sadness, frustration, all of those kind of things, because I name it to them, you know, when I’m experiencing those things. And then when they’re experiencing things, I also give it name, so that they’re not so confused, and they’re like, you know, because they’re just learning, you know, they’re…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they’re growing, and they’re feeling these things that they’ve never felt before, and it’s very overwhelming for them, right? And so then we learn to co-regulate together, right? Where I’m learning to regulate myself, my emotions, my nervous system, at the same time showing them, you know, how they can learn as well, right? But it’s messy. It’s messy. It’s not perfect, you know? It definitely… there’s days, you know, when it’s
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): doesn’t go as planned, you know? But then this is when, you know, again, the cycle breaking happens, and then I go into repair mode, right? There is never a time
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): when I have done something, said something, reacted in a way where I felt remorseful and regretful, where they didn’t hear about it after. You know, and it’s gotten to the point now where they call me out, you know? Like, sometimes, you know, I’ll say something, and it’ll hurt my, sort of, for example, my 4-year-old, and a few hours later, he’ll come to me, he’s like, Mama, you hurt my feelings.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And I’m like, okay, buddy, let’s talk about it, right? And we sit down, we talk about it, and like, you know, I have this conversation with him and stuff, and, you know, and I tell him, you know, Mama sorry, I’m sorry that I spoke to you that way, you don’t deserve to be spoken to that way. I want you to know that, you know, and Mama sorry, and I’m gonna try my best.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): So that this doesn’t happen again, do you forgive me? You know, and he looks at me, he’s like, yeah, I forgive you, you know, and he gives me a hug, and, you know, and so we do that, and so I will never get tired, be too prideful, you know, to, like, apologize and own up and take responsibility for when my actions hurt them, you know, which is completely different than what was done to me, you know?
Jessica Dueñas: I mean, I was going to say.
Jessica Dueñas: how safe is that for your children, right? Because, again.
Jessica Dueñas: I think about my family, who did the best that they could, given the circumstances that they had, right? And they didn’t have the privilege to do the self-reflection that, like, a lot of our generation gets to do, right? And do the self-help and get into, like, therapy or coaching, etc. But, you know, I think about the times that
Jessica Dueñas: I, like, I dared to actually try that, right? To say, hey, that hurt my feelings, you know, like, for me, I would get so many comments, specifically, like, body-shaming comments, because I’ve always been in a larger body since I was small. And, and you know, like, I’m tall, I’m, like, 5’9″, you know, so I’ve never been small.
Jessica Dueñas: And there, you know, I think about all the times that I’ve tried to do that voicing, and how quickly it… I was, like, squashed like a little bug, you know? Like, it was…
Jessica Dueñas: that conversation space was not there to express if we were hurt, to express a possible mistake being made, and so I love that your children really can just come to you and say that, and that you don’t come off as threatened either, and I think that that’s really, really big.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Exactly, exactly, and huge, you know, and… and again, this has been a very messy journey, like, I want to emphasize that, because, you know, I have a lot of friends, I lead support circles for parents, all that kind of stuff, right? And they always joke, like, oh, we want to come and live in your house, we want you to be our mom, and like, all this stuff, and like, you know, and I’m like, listen, I’m not perfect, you know, like, but I am trying every single day, right? And I will
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): never give up trying to do better than I did yesterday, right? And I’m not too prideful, too, you know, this or that.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): to admit when my faults, you know, have… when I’ve… when my faults have hurt somebody, especially my children, right? And this has been something that, for me, has been so critical, because I have a parent still to this day that I’m no contact with, because he cannot, to this day, admit his wrongs, admit that he hurt me, admit that, like, anything. Take responsibility for anything, you know? And I know how deeply wounding that is.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And I would never want to pass that down to my kids, right? So I’m intentional about
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, so how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna learn to, like, not repeat these things, right? And then I summon in all and every and all supports, resources, tools that I can, so that it can help me navigate this in a better, safer way, so that I can do a little better for them, and then they will do a little better for their children, right? And then that’s how the lineages start really healing, you know, passing that on. Because even, like, you know, talking about sobriety journey.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, something that I’m super proud of is…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): My parents… my children have never seen me drink. You know, obviously, I have… my oldest is 7, I have 11 years sobriety.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they haven’t even been around a drunk person, you know, to this day. Like, they’ve never… I wouldn’t even know how to explain to them what a drunk person looks like, you know? And that is so different from, like, what I grew up with, right? By their age, I was already experiencing abuse.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, had a lot of trauma, my dad, you know, witnessing him drink all the time, you know, like, yeah, like, it was just a completely different reality. And, you know, and so it’s like, I look to those examples of what I don’t want to do, and then I figure out how I can, support that decision that I’m not gonna do that, you know, and pass that down.
Jessica Dueñas: I’m so curious to dive into a little bit about, the decision to go no contact. A little bit about my story. So, I wouldn’t say that I experienced… I have mixed feelings, lots of mixed feelings, especially the longer I’m sober and the more that I navigate my childhood. You know, I would say that the biggest thing that I struggled with was, like, yes.
Jessica Dueñas: We had the classic.
Jessica Dueñas: I feel like the classic Latino first-generation home where, yes, you don’t talk about anything, you’re in survival mode, you know, the family’s just working, working, working, things like that. And I dealt with a lot of body shaming, again, because, like I mentioned, I was in a larger body, so I just got the brunt, like, everything that I did with regard to food was, like, like, picked apart, etc. So I would, you know, but I… I always hesitate if I want to say that that
Jessica Dueñas: was, like, my own childhood trauma, but it was. I mean, I would say that that was probably the foundation to my drinking later on, but that’s a whole separate story. I have a family member that I would say never directly traumatized me. However, in my adulthood, I actually chose to go no contact, almost because of their level of entitlement to access to me when they were actually just not present. So it was someone who was not present, and
Jessica Dueñas: So they didn’t hurt me, but they just weren’t there, and now they wanted to be in my life. And I was like, oh, no, I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. However, I hear so many different people having so many different responses to the idea of no contact. Like, I’ve seen some people who I highly respect saying that, you know, no contact is this…
Jessica Dueñas: just, it’s the easy way out, supposedly.
Jessica Dueñas: for me, it is the easier way out, because I simply don’t want to deal with this individual, so yes, spot on. I don’t feel like working things out to make it work with this person, but in your case, this was a parent, this was your caregiver, who did cause harm. And so, for anyone who might be listening and kind of, like, debating, do I go no contact with this person from my childhood, or do I try to make it work.
Jessica Dueñas: How do you… Come to that decision.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I love that you’re asking this question, because this is something that I have started to really, really speak out more about, because exactly what you just shared, it’s so nuanced, it’s so layered, and it’s probably one of the most misunderstood, kind of judged-upon concepts that are out there in the healing space.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, what I can share is from my own personal lived experience, and kind of the journey to that.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, we don’t become, like, as survivors, we don’t suddenly one day wake up and say, I’m not gonna speak to my dad ever again. You know, like, that’s just not the way it works. This was a decision that came after years upon years upon years of holding onto hope that this person was gonna change.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that this person was going to not even necessarily change, at least own up and take responsibility for the harm that they had caused. And in my case, that day never came. And in fact, he continued to do even more harm.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, as I continued, as I… as I journeyed through my recovery and healing, and in my heart of hearts, when I entered into my, my journey.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I had full-on… not just hopes, I had expectations that by me taking this step, me getting better, me, quitting drinking, all of that kind of stuff, because, you know, in my chaos, I know, I know that I had harmed my sisters, I had harmed my family, you know, I was wild, you know? Like, I… from 15 to 29, like, you know, alcohol ruled my life, and when you’re… when that is your number one thing.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): every day, nothing else matters, right? It is a very selfish disease, right? Like, which is all about me numbing myself, not dealing, all of that kind of stuff. And so I knew that I had caused… I had caused harm, you know, from the… my way of coping with the… with the trauma and all of that kind of stuff. And so when I entered into recovery, I was committed, and I also, expected that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they would, then follow suit, right? That they would then start looking at themselves, and that they would then, you know, get inspired and start, like, healing themselves, because when you start going into this journey, and you start seeing the benefits in your life.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You want the people that you love the most to have that, too, right? You want them to have peace, you want them to have, you know, the sobriety, you want them to have the connections, you know, the relationships, all of that kind of stuff, all the beautiful things that start to unfold when you do the work and you start to heal. I wanted them so desperately to have that, too.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But unfortunately, in my case, that wasn’t the case with them. What it actually did was, I was a full-on mirror to them.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And they were not ready to look at themselves, right? They were not ready to face, because by them facing and taking responsibility, that means… that meant they had to take ownership of their own stuff.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? And as you know, many of us, you know, culturally, we come from those families where you don’t talk about the family stuff, you know, you don’t share about it publicly, you don’t speak on it, you know, what happened in the past, days in the past, leave it in the past, right? We don’t speak about those things. We, especially publicly. Are you kidding me? Like, that is a big no-no in our
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? And all of that was very… it was very detrimental, because I started healing out loud very early on in my journey. I started writing. Writing is super therapeutic for me. I started posting on social media, I started speaking publicly, like, it just really… one thing kind of led to the other, and the thing that kept me going was that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): every time that I would speak up on these things, I would have people come to me and share their Me Too stories, right? They’re like, oh my goodness, you just put words into, like, my experience, I thought I was the only one. Oh, like, all these kind of things, right? And I so really discovered that it was bigger than me. This whole healing out loud thing was even bigger than me. It was a bigger mission that was actually having ripple effects that were just… that were beyond me, right? And so…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Anyway, so I, you know, continued on my journey and stuff like that, and I made several attempts.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): to try to repair my relationship with my dad, because at the end of the day, and this is what hurts the most, is that, when there’s… when… when I made that decision, there was a deep grief, deep grief, that… that hole in me will never, ever be filled. Like, I can tell you that now, because it’s been several years, and I’ve come to accept that this is something that I’m going to live with. I just learned to manage it, right? And the reason why there is grief
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): There is because there was such deep love.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? Because ultimately, even though, you know, my dad was my primary abuser, even though, you know, he’s the one who caused me the most harm in the world, I still loved him. You know, I still wanted to be his little girl. I still wanted to have, you know, this… I held on to hope that one day we would have, you know, this healed relationship.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, and I didn’t ask for much, I just wanted him to acknowledge. You know, to say, like, hey, like, I’m sorry that I, like, I did this to you, I’m sorry, or just even acknowledge that he did stuff, right? But…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, my dad’s also narcissistic, too, so very difficult, you know, when you’re dealing with a narcissist that, you know, can never see his wrong, and everything gets turned on you.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? And so, you know, for me, it ended up happening where there was a breaking point. I’m not gonna get into super big details, but, basically, I expected him to really own up. He had done something that was really hurtful to our entire family, and I held the expectation that he was finally going to own up, he was finally going to take responsibility, and he did the exact opposite. And that’s when I had to really draw a line, and I was like, enough.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I can’t anymore. And so that’s when I made that decision that it just no longer was safe for me. You know, now that I had my own family, it was no longer safe for me to continue holding on to this hope that he was going to become this person, that he was just clearly not becoming. And he had no intention. No intentions of, you know, rectifying the situation or anything like that, right? So, you know, for my own safety, for my own continued healing.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I made the difficult choice and decision to, just, you know, kind of cut him from my life, right? And, it is still something that is so… it’s deeply painful.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But I have no regrets, to be honest, because the sense of peace that I now have, you know, is, yeah, like, I just… I’ve finally kind of… that deep wound is healing. There’s a scab there, you know, and one day the scab will peel off, and there’ll be, you know, a scar there that will always remind me of that wound.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But it doesn’t… it wasn’t something that, you know, I just woke up one day and I was like, oh, I’m not gonna speak to him, because I don’t want to deal with him. No, this was, like, a consistent
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): year after year, trying, trying, holding onto hope, all of that kind of stuff, right? And he just continued to cause not only my self-harm, but my entire family, and continues to do so. Like, to this day. You know, he has lost everything in his life, and he still chooses to walk the path that he’s always walked, where he’s the victim, you know, everyone else is against him, all of that kind of, like, mentality and mindset, right?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, it’s a very nuanced, very difficult, very misunderstood,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): kind of topic, but I’ve actually been speaking out a lot more about it, and again, the conversations I have with others that can really relate have been, like, so validating.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): and also, reminds me how important it is to kind of speak out about these things, right? Because on the outside, if you just hear it and you don’t know the context, it could sound, like, harsh, or, like, people will judge you, like, oh, but you hear all the things, but he’s your dad! Oh, but, like, forgive and forget, oh, like, all these things, right? And it’s like, you, like, you… yes, I’ve… and, you know, I’ve also done, you know, so much to try to, like, salvage this, and it just… there comes a point when you’re the only one
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that’s paddling the boat, and the other person is just, like, you know, not helping at all. You know, so…
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and I mean, you know, I feel like you speak to a couple truths, right? Like, number one, we cannot control other people’s journeys, and if your father has been on whatever journey he’s in, and that’s hurtful to you all.
Jessica Dueñas: you can’t stop him from that. I think the second thing that you said that really jumped out at me was that you didn’t, like, wake up… this wasn’t your dream, right? And I think about, you know, several books that I have, like, recently… well, one book that I’ve recently read, and then another one that I’ve been diving into. I think it was Kelly McDaniel’s Mother Hunger, and then right now I started listening to Ingrid Clayton’s Fawning.
Jessica Dueñas: Both of them talk about the fact that when parents… I mean, you know, mother hunger’s about moms, but when parents are causing harm to their children, their child will literally do everything possible to still justify holding onto a relationship, that it is never this natural instinct for a child. Like, a child will almost choose the harm first for the sake of keeping that relationship with the parent.
Jessica Dueñas: before they end it. So, to get to the point that you said, that you had to let go, you know, it’s like people need to also believe people when they say, like, I made this decision, and you need to trust me in my decision, as opposed to re-traumatizing me by asking me to go into detail about all the things to justify it. You know, it’s like, if people aren’t in your position, they don’t understand it. But I think that it’s so important to validate, and so I do
Jessica Dueñas: appreciate you speaking to that. The other thing I wanted to ask you about that had jumped out from hearing you speak, you talked about the breaking cycles part, and I love how you talked at one point about tag-teaming with your husband when you’re like, you’re like, hey, kids, I’m overwhelmed, mama’s overwhelmed, I need a moment.
Jessica Dueñas: How has your dynamic with your significant other played into this cycle breaking? Like, is he on a similar healing journey, or is he just supportive? I’m so curious how that dynamic works.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, great question. Again, so good. So, on the outside looking in, you know, my husband and I come from totally different backgrounds. He came from, you know, a very healthy family.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): hardworking parents, immigrants from Portugal, you know, very, very… worked very hard all their lives.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But on the extreme on his end, was that growing up, he actually only remembers his parents ever arguing, like, one or two times. That’s it. And, you know, so that brought this other spectrum to him, where he didn’t know how to have healthy conflict.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): He didn’t know how to navigate emotions, because same thing, his parents, all they did was work really hard, and when he was struggling, like, you know, he had a…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): a time in his life when he was being bullied at school, and he told me how painful it was for him to experience that, and he would come home, and he would cry to his mom, and his mom couldn’t comfort him. She didn’t know what to do, right? Because she also came from this lineage of, like, you know, you work hard, you provide for your kids, your kids are everything, right? But emotionals, emotions and, you know, affection? We don’t do that, you know? Like, we give you a roof over your head, food, you know, on the table, clothes.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): all that kind of stuff, right? But, like, that deep connection part?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): was kind of missing, and so, you know, when we got together and, you know, we… I went on my journey and all of that kind of stuff, because him and I have been together for 16 years now, and so he has seen every version of me, and every version, you know, and we’ve worked through a ton of things together. We’ve gone through… we were together for 10 years before we became parents, so we definitely had a very solid, stable foundation in our relationship.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Before we became parents.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, and then… but of course, when you get into the journey, it’s totally different, right? Because everything you thought you were going to do suddenly gets challenged, right? Because it’s like, this is real life here. And, he started to also feel triggered when he would experience, you know, the toddler ages is when we both remember that something clicked, that things were starting to become challenging, right? Because it’s these big feelings, and we didn’t know how to hold those feelings.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so, how do we teach them? You know, we were taught to just, like, it gets smacked out of you, right? If you’re, like, if you’re gonna, like, react that way, all that kind of stuff. And we both knew that that was not what we wanted to do. And so, we both were on… very much on the same page that we were gonna do whatever we could so that we wouldn’t have these same patterns, right? And so, for him, he had to go on his own journey. He’s still on that, like, journey of learning how to,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, hold his own emotions, process them, you know, especially men, you know, like, European men, like, you know, it’s, like, tough, strong, you know, like, you never see them cry, like, all this kind of stuff, right? And he’s really learned to challenge that in himself, because he also doesn’t want to pass that down, right? Like, the other day, he was playing soccer, he was passing the ball back and forth with our two older boys.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And that night, because we always, like, you know, kind of come together afterwards, and he was telling me, he’s like, you know, I was thinking today, when I was, like, playing soccer with the boys, how my dad never played with me. He’s like, never. You know, he’s like, I was… and he was, like, an only child for the first 7 years of his life, and then his brother came, and then, you know, another 7 years after his little sister came.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, you know, he said, like, he remembers, like, how lonely it felt, and how he wanted, like, that, you know, kind of fatherly love, and like, you know, we grow up in North America, we see.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): on TV, these, like, perfect TV families, and, like, all this stuff, and we’re like, wait a minute, like, that’s not my family, you know? Like, and you start wanting, craving what you see, but you’re not getting that, right? And so, you know, so things like that started to really, like, he became aware of, that he was like, no, I want to be able to, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): give my kids what I was never given, right? And so he’s cycle breaking in his own way, right? Even though it’s not from, like, abuse, addiction, things like that I experienced in my life.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, he has his own things that he’s working through, and we’re a team. We are a complete team when it comes to our parenting and in life. Like, we truly have, you know, and again, this didn’t come easy. This is not, you know, that, like, natural for us. We have help. We have resources, we have supports that we lean on to be able to help us, you know, as a couple, individually, and as parents, so that we can
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): do better for our kids, right? And we are both breaking cycles in different ways, in different ways, and we still, you know, we have deep talks sometimes. At the end of the day, after, like, an intense day, because, like I said, now my kids are… there’s four of them, my baby, he’s almost two now, he’s walking, he’s, like, getting into things, right? They have lots of, like… and they feel so incredibly safe at home.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that they just lose their marbles. You know, like, they are just in high energy and tense.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): all the feelings, because they feel safe. They know that they can be that way, right, around us. And, you know, at the end of the day, sometimes, like, we debrief with each other, and we have these really beautiful, long discussions about, like, you know, our struggles and things that, like, the shame that comes, and all that kind of stuff, and we, like, help each other out, right? And, like, and remind each other how good we’re both doing, and highlight the things that we’re actually noticing of each other, all of that kind of stuff, right?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): and it really is a partnership, and in order for it to be that way. We do have slight parenting, like, different styles, but, you know, it kind of complements it, right? Like, I’m more of, like, you know.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): like, more, like, like, more structured, more like, you know, I, like, I’m very, like, you know, kind of, in a sense, disciplined.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, where dad is, like, you know, kind of fun dad, he’s like, you know, like, it’s just different dynamics, right? But it complements it well, right? Yeah, it’s a really beautiful journey, and it’s something that is very humbling. Very humbling.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, well, I love that you mentioned, kind of, like, pushing back against shame when you’re debriefing, because I am curious, you know, since you are both obviously part of Greater Family Systems, do you ever deal with any, say, either family members or just people in general being judgy towards you for your choice in parenting style? Because, you know, for example, you’ve never used the term gentle parenting, and I’m not saying that what you are
Jessica Dueñas: doing is quote-unquote gentle parenting, but, you know, I see the jokes on social media when you have
Jessica Dueñas: old-school parents who are criticizing people who are doing things differently. So I’m curious how you deal with that if it comes up in your lives.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): All the time. All the time. And I love that you brought up gentle parenting. It is kind of like this, like, trendy term, you know, and I consider what we’re doing, rather than gentle parenting, it’s conscious parenting, right?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): The difference is, is that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): we are very conscious, we are very present and aware of, like, what we are doing, right? And we have to be that way in order for us to be able to then repair, right? When we mess up and all of that kind of stuff, right? When we’re unconscious, and we are just operating from a way of, kind of automatic, you know, autopilot, all of that kind of stuff, or disconnection, you know, like dissociation, a lot of parents who, you know, come from trauma.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they’re very dissociated most of our child, like, the childhood, right? They don’t even remember when you ask them, like, well, what was this like when we were kids? They’re like, I don’t know. And it’s because they were in survival mode. You know, like, that’s when, you know, you’re repeating the cycles. You’re repeating, like, the reactions, all of that kind of stuff. So rather than
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, gentle parenting, and I see the memes too, like, like, you know, like, people talk about gentle parenting, but my kids aren’t gentle, like, those kind of things.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, yeah.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But, yeah, it is definitely a conversation that we have, and we have to have firm boundaries with our families, because they love to come and tell us, you know, like, oh, you know, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): like, their opinions of how we should be parenting our children, right? And sometimes I have to be brave on my end, and I have to stand up for my kids, because, you know, certain family members will talk to them in ways that are not okay. You know, like, it’s like that, we don’t talk to our kids that way, like, you know, please don’t speak to them that way, right? And then they come with backlash, oh, you’re spoiling them, that’s why this and this and that. I’m like, no, like, for me, this is abuse, and…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): abuse is not tolerated in our home. We’re learning ways, you know, of navigating, you know, our parenting with them, and it’s different, right? It’s different, and we’ve had to have many, many, many, many conversations. You know, like my in-laws, there are,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): some of our primary caregivers, and we love that. We love the relationship that they have with our kids. It’s so close. They love them. They’re there, like, twice a week, you know, and they’re… and they’re… they’ve semi-raised them, in a sense, right? But there have been things that we notice
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): That we need to nip in the butt right away, right? Like, certain things that, I can’t think of, like, a specific example, but certain things that we just, like, we’re like, no, we don’t like that, you know, and so we have to… we have to, like, stand up to them in a gentle way, and express to them that, you know, hey, like, this is not okay, like, this is not how we’re raising them, right? And then you just have to kind of put up with, you know, the comments that you’re gonna get, right? Like, oh, you’re… you’re spoiling them, oh, you know, at their age.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Or, oh, like, this, this, and that, and like, it’s like, okay, that’s fine. You know, and one of the things is that,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): and this is something I had to overcome, I personally had to overcome this, is getting upset with kids for kids being kids. You know, children are children. You know, they’re loud, they’re rambunctious, they have energy, you know, they love to, like, run and play and jump and do all these things, right? They’re… they’re kids, and, like, one of the modalities that I’m deeply, like, passionate about is human design, and when we learn about the human design of our children, it makes so much sense.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so, without going into full-on details about that, because that could be a whole other podcast.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Many of my children are, energy, like, they’re energy beings, and so, they are, from the moment they wake up, their batteries are full, to the end of the day when their batteries are drained, and they go to bed immediately. Their head hits the pillow, and they are drained, right? And I’m also an energy being, so is Nelson.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And my husband. And for them, they need a lot of movement and stimulation and, like, you know, and things like that. And so learning about that with them has been a big game changer, and I don’t want to shut that down in them, because that’s how they are designed.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Right? And so, for our families, it may look like they’re just out of control and wild, but it’s like, they’re just being kids.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, like, they’re just being kids, and I’m not gonna shut them down for being kids, because I was shut down for being a kid.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, I was shut down for, like, having this, like, energy burst, and, like, doing all these crazy things, and, like, you know, bouncing off the walls, all of that kind of stuff, right? It’s like, no, like, I had to really decondition myself from getting upset at them for being kids.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, like, a common example is.
Jessica Dueñas: You know, and this is, like, a big test, is, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, when you’re at the dinner table, and one of them, you know, this always happens, the minute that we bring out an open cup, there’s gonna be a spill, you know? And so, like, one of them will, like, have, like, you know, water in their cup, and then they spill it, right? Because they’re just, like, flailing, and this and that. And that’s a true test of, like, you know, growing up, I would, like… it was a big deal if I made a mess. It was, like, yelling, you know.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): what did you do? Look what you did, blah blah blah blah blah, you know? And, like, this, like, reaction, right? And, like, the amount of restraint it takes for me to, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): It’s like, okay, they’re a kid, it was an accident, you know, they didn’t mean to, like, do that because, like, you know, they’re just being kids, right? And so really restraining and being like, okay, like, it was an accident, buddy, let’s clean it up together, you know, let’s grab a cloth and, like, those kind of things, right? They’re just being kids, you know, where it’s like, they don’t need discipline over that, like, it was an accident, you know, like, and so things like that is just, like, it’s so much…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): like I said, conscious parenting. We’re conscious of it, right? We’re aware, we’re present with them, and we know that this is just, like, you know, like, we can’t be upset with them for being kids, you know, this is… because what happens is that when you…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): when you’re… when you kind of shut them down, they shut down, and then that’s when the conditioning and the programming starts happening, where, you know, they start to silence themselves, they start to self-censor, they start to… they can’t be safe to be who they are, and then that’s what leads to a whole slew of things in adulthood, right? People-pleasing, depression, anxiety, all of these things, because they were never allowed to be who they are, right? It was not okay, they would get in trouble.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, and so things like that are definitely a journey that both of us are very mindful of, very conscious of, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah. You know, the cup thing, too, going back to the good old social media, like, I’ve seen these reels that joke about that same moment, right? That the cup is spilled, and, like, let’s say if it was me spilling the cup, and how would my mom respond versus to, like, the baby, and, like, how now if they spill it, it’s like, oh, it’s okay, but then, you know, back in the day, spilling the cup was, like, the end of it all, right? But, I mean, you speak of real truth, and I think about…
Jessica Dueñas: How even in adulthood, if I’ve done anything like that, like accidentally knock something over, and even me, myself, bracing as if, like, other grown adults are going to get just so angry with me over something so innocent, but it is, you get conditioned over time to, like.
Jessica Dueñas: to not make mistakes, and if you make a mistake, that it’s really not okay, and it really… I mean, it’s rooted deep in. And so, I’m so glad that you brought that up.
Jessica Dueñas: So, speaking of your kids, I feel like, kind of like a last big question I kind of have is, what have your children taught you about healing?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Or the reclamation process, that you didn’t.
Jessica Dueñas: actually expect.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Hmm.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, I mean, the whole… the whole journey has taught me everything, like, really how they are just, like, a reflection of little me, you know? Like…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Anytime that I have a really big reaction, I almost, like.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I depersonalize it in the sense that it’s, like, it’s not really grown-up me having that reaction, it’s actually little me having that reaction, you know, inside, because of, like, you know, it wasn’t safe at one time, and all of that kind of stuff. They truly are my mirrors, every single day, you know, and the other thing is that…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): just like many of us, we were told so many things growing up, right? We were, like, preached upon, we were, like, you know, like, told ad nauseam certain things.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But then the actions were so different, right? There was this cognitive dissonance growing up, where, like, for example, my dad had this thing about us, like, swearing, but meanwhile, every other word that he spoke was a swear word, you know? Like, these, like, kind of, like, weird things like that, right? And, like, for us, time and time again, it’s proven that we can tell them anything.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): But they are not gonna listen, they are gonna watch us. They’re gonna watch what we’re doing, they’re gonna watch how we’re handling life, they’re gonna watch how, you know, even in our interactions, like, with each other, me and Nelson.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): if we have disagreements with each other, you know, like, they see it, right? And they come, they’re like, you know, they’re, like, very, like,
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they get very nervous about that, because they don’t see that. Like, me and Nelson, we do not, like, scream at each other, like, it’s just… that’s… we have a mutual deep love and respect towards each other that we don’t, like, argue that way, right? But, you know, we’re human, and sometimes, you know, we’re gonna have bad days and things like that.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And we allow for them to kind of witness, you know, kind of a little bit of a…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): of a fracture happen, and then the repair happened, right? And we open the questions up, right? And so, really, really knowing that
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): they are watching us, right? And they’re watching what we’re doing every day, and that’s what’s the blueprint that’s gonna be for them, of how they’re gonna treat, you know, their significant others when they’re older, right? It’s not what we’re telling them every day, it’s really the example that we’re giving them, and that, for me, was…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): a really big wake-up call, right? Because I could say all the right things, you know, but if I’m doing, like, a totally different thing, they’re gonna pick up on the things, you know, that they’re actually witnessing, right? And so, yeah, they are my greatest teachers, my biggest mirrors, you know, and also my biggest why. It’s the reason why I do what I do.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): you know, I just have to look at them, you know, like, for a second, and I get tears in my eyes, so I’m just like, oh my gosh, these are my babies. Like, even last night, they all crawled into our bed, you know, and I just, like, turn and look, and there they are with me, you know, and safe, and sleeping, and I’m just, like, I get so emotional, you know, because it’s, like, little simple things like that, that I know that they’re just so tender, and that they feel safe.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And that, we’re able to, you know, provide them a healthy, happy, real home. You know, it’s not perfect.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, but it’s real. It’s real, and it’s tender, and, you know, we’re doing it together, and they’re healing alongside me, you know, the generations. It’s something that they’re picking up on, too, right? Because these are the things that they’re going to pass down to their kids, right? So, how important that is.
Jessica Dueñas: I love that, Abby. It’s just, like, it makes my heart all warm and fuzzy. It’s seriously so beautiful to hear, and it makes me excited to continue my journey with my daughter, since, you know, I’ve only been doing this for 9 months, so it’s really exciting just hearing you and your experience speak to this. So, Abby, I guess anything that you would say to anybody who is looking to start? I think about, you know.
Jessica Dueñas: You had mentioned earlier that you’d been in this journey, right? You’d been sober for about 4 years before you became a mother, so you kind of had some background in some of this work before stepping into parenthood.
Jessica Dueñas: What would you say to maybe the mother who is already a mother, and maybe she’s just now stepping into, like, day one of sobriety, and who’s, like, feeling overwhelmed, might be feeling some shame about the fact that, like, her child has seen her drink, right? Or anything like that. Where… where does she go from here?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): I will say what I say to all my clients, you know, to, you know, friends, support, support, support. You cannot do this by yourself. You cannot…
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, and you don’t have to. You know, number one, you’re not alone.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): You know, that you’re… there’s nothing wrong… fundamentally wrong with you, you know, that… that you’re not the only one in the world that is experiencing this, and… and all that… that shame that comes, you know, from feeling like I’m the only one, no one gets it, you know, if only they knew, all those kind of things, right? You’re not alone, you’re not the only one, and that support and help is available, you know? And it sometimes is a bit of a journey to find that support and resources, that’s why I do what I do.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): because I became my, like, a resource.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): that I so desperately needed in my early days that I had to hunt and look for and all of that kind of stuff, but it really is a community. It is really leaning in on resources and supports as much as you can, because you cannot do this by yourself. And you won’t, you know? It will just lead to shame and isolation, and you don’t need to. You don’t need to suffer in silence, right? And that’s my biggest message, is that you’re not alone, and that you can… you can
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): will heal. We do recover, you know, and there is hope, but not by yourself.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and also what I always think about, too, like, when I’m facilitating sobriety support meetings, and there are, say, the parents stepping in who… their children have seen them at their worst.
Jessica Dueñas: you know, I’m always like, well, this is an opportunity for your children to also witness what healing looks like, and that we can turn things around, right? And so, yes, they’ve seen you in all your phases, and they can also see you make the decision to be the one that changes things. And so, I think that that’s incredibly powerful, too, for anyone who already has had kids before getting sober, you know, because that’s a lot of people. You know, for me, it’s a gift. I’m so grateful that I got sober
Jessica Dueñas: first, but, you know, I know that that is not the reality for many, many people in sobriety spaces. So, I mean, Abby, thank you so, so, so much for your time today. Again, this has been beautiful, and I could speak to you for hours, but if anybody who was listening did want to follow you, or did want to maybe take part of some of the work that you offer, what are the best ways for people to find you?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): Yeah, so Instagram is my jam, that’s where I’m mainly present on, and my handle is mavi, so it’s at V-E-E.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And, that’s just what… how you say, Abby in Spanish, abi, that’s, like, it’s kind of a play to my inner child, you know, growing up, because people always ask, like, what does that mean? Like, you know? And then the other thing, yeah, if somebody wants to explore what it would look like to potentially, you know, have me as their support, as their guide, as their mentor, I do offer a complimentary 60-minute call, where we kind of dive into kind of your leadership style.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): in human design, so there’s a mini analysis that I do in there, and I really discover what your unique blueprint is in leading, whether it’s in your home, your communities, in your business.
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): And so I love those kind of sessions, they’re free, and then if it makes sense, then we have an opportunity to explore what it would look like to work deeper in one of my coaching containers.
Jessica Dueñas: Awesome. Well, Abby, thank you again so much. I so appreciate you being here with me. Any last note that you’d like to say to anybody before we jump off?
Abigail Teixeira (she/her/ella): No, thank you so much for your time. You are such a gem, and I’m so honored to be on this path with you, you know, as a recovering, healing Latina woman and a mother. You know, this work is so important, and so I’m really, really honored that, you know, we had this important conversation together, and I look forward to many more connections!
