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Podcast Episode 68. I Didn’t Get an Apology—But I Got Something Better

Posted on by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Sobriety helped me stop blaming my mom and start healing. This episode is about grief, generational pain, and the peace I found—without ever getting an apology.

Resources:

The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz

Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

Hey y’all, welcome back to Bottomless to Sober, where we talk about recovery, healing—and in today’s episode—what it really means to grow into love. I’m Jessica Dueñas, and today’s episode is definitely a tender one. It’s about grief, it’s about love… and it’s about my mom.

May is coming up quickly, and here in the U.S., that means Mother’s Day is near. But also, it would have been my mother’s 86th birthday. Her memory has become this quiet, constant companion. It shows up in how I care for my daughter, in how I challenge old beliefs about beauty, and in all the ways love and loss blur together. I don’t know if it’s because her birthday is around the corner or because the grief is still so fresh—but she’s been on my mind nonstop.

One thing that’s struck me since she passed in January is this:
I loved her. Truly. Unconditionally.

And that kind of love wasn’t always there. It’s something I had to grow into—and something that sobriety made possible.

One of my favorite authors, Don Miguel Ruiz—best known for The Four Agreements—also wrote a book called The Mastery of Love. In it, he says, “Love has no obligations.” He talks about how real love doesn’t try to control or change. It simply accepts.

That was not always the case with my mom. I carried a lot of resentment toward her—for the shame I felt about my body, for my disordered eating, and eventually, for my drinking. She was proud of my accomplishments, yes—but I never felt fully accepted.

I remember one middle school picture day. I had picked out a dress I was excited to wear. My mom looked at me and said it was too tight—and then added, “You don’t want to look like una vaca.” A cow.

I bit my cheek to hold back tears, changed into a sweater, and posed for the photo—expressionless. I wasn’t just trying to shrink my body—I was shrinking my spirit.

That sense of “not enough” stayed with me for years. First, I tried to manage it through food. Then, I numbed myself with alcohol. And I blamed my mom for a long time.

But then I got sober. And sobriety gave me the space to reflect—and with reflection came clarity.

I was reading Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel, and one line hit me like a mic drop:
“Many women who fail to nurture their daughters were never nurtured themselves.”

That was it. My mom didn’t carry my wounds because she didn’t know another way. The beliefs she held were inherited. She brought them with her when she immigrated to the U.S.

And here’s the thing: my mom didn’t have the luxury of therapy or journaling. She had to survive—raise kids, keep going. Healing was not in her vocabulary.

Her words still hurt. They caused real damage. But with recovery, I saw that she was doing the best she could. And no, that doesn’t excuse the harm—but it helps explain it.

That understanding helped soften my resentment. I let go of the blame. Because blame was never going to heal me. Healing came from recognizing that I wasn’t broken—I had been shaped. And she had been shaped, too.

Eventually, I stopped trying to change her. I stopped needing her to apologize. I started to accept her.

And listen—before I go any further, I want to say this:

What I’m sharing is my story. This was my path to peace. Acceptance worked for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

You might not be in a place where acceptance of a parent—or anyone who’s harmed you—is possible or safe. And that’s okay. This isn’t a prescription. You don’t owe anyone acceptance if it comes at the cost of your peace or safety.

I’ve cut off other family members completely. So I get it. Sometimes no contact is what keeps us safe. Boundaries are necessary. You are allowed to be exactly where you are.

But for me—accepting my mom helped me put down what wasn’t mine to carry. It helped me grieve with a full heart.

One of the last times I visited her in Costa Rica, we were having coffee and she made a typical comment about a woman passing by—something like, “She really takes care of herself.” The old me would’ve launched into a speech about body positivity.

This time, I sipped my coffee, rolled my eyes gently, and changed the subject.

Because it’s not my job to educate or fix her. I just needed to love her. And that was freeing.

When she passed this January, the grief was sharp. But also—there was gratitude. Because I had learned to love her as she was, while she was still here.

That was a gift. And now, the love continues.

With my daughter Amara, I hope to pass on something different. I hope she never feels like she has to earn my love by shrinking, overachieving, or performing. I hope she knows she’s enough, just by being her.

I hope she sees me love myself—not because I’m perfect, but because I’m enough.

That, to me, is what true love looks like.

Reflection Questions

If you want to sit with this topic a little longer, here are a few reflection questions for you:

  1. What kinds of love have you had to grow into over time?
  2. Can you remember a moment that shaped how you saw yourself—and are you still carrying it?
  3. What beliefs or behaviors have been passed down in your family that you’re ready to question—or break?
  4. Where in your life could letting go of the need to “fix” someone lead to more peace?
  5. What kind of love do you want to pass on—to your children, your community, or even to your younger self?

Thanks for being here with me today. If this episode moved something in you, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a review, share the episode, or just take a moment to reflect.

Until next time, stay grounded, stay loving, and remember:
You are enough.

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Podcast Episode 67. You Might Be the 1 in 10—and You’re Not Alone

Posted on by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Whether you’re raising kids, teaching, or questioning your own drinking—this one’s for you.

Addiction isn’t about being bad. It’s about being human—and healing is possible. I share some powerful stats from author Jessica Lahey, and reframe the shame with truth and compassion.

Resources:

My Interview With Jessica Lahey in 2024

Jessica Lahey’s Site

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning back into Bottomless to Sober. If you’re new to the podcast—welcome. If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you know that this space is all about telling the truth—whether it’s about addiction, recovery, healing, or simply holding on to hope.

Today, I want to talk about something I believe every educator, parent—really, every human—should know. It’s this important reminder:
Addiction is not a moral failing.

It’s not about being weak.
It’s not about making bad choices.
It’s not about lacking willpower.

Addiction is complex. It’s biological. It’s psychological. And it’s so deeply misunderstood.

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear bestselling author Jessica Lahey speak here in Tampa. I’ve been following her for a few years, and let me just say—not only is she brilliant, but she also gives the best hugs. It was so nice meeting her in person. I’ve actually interviewed her on this podcast before, and I’ll link that episode in the show notes.

Jessica wrote two incredible books that I wish had been required reading back when I was still in the classroom—or even in college studying to become an educator.
The first is The Gift of Failure, and the second is The Addiction Inoculation.

One of the facts she shared during her talk absolutely knocked the wind out of me—again. I’ve heard it before, but it still hits hard every time:

If an 8th grader tries alcohol or drugs, they have a 50% chance—a coin toss—of developing substance use disorder in their lifetime.

That 50% chance is real. And it’s a powerful argument against the idea that, “Well, I’m okay with my kid drinking as long as it’s at home and I take away the car keys.”
No. That risk is significant.

But here’s the hopeful part:
If they wait until 10th grade, that 50% chance drops in half—to 25%.
If they wait until 12th grade, the risk drops again—to about 10%.
And that 10%? That’s the same as the general adult population.

In The Addiction Inoculation, Jessica offers scripts and practical advice for talking to your kids—especially teens—about alcohol and drugs. Her approach is all about transparency. Like saying:

“Hey, your brain isn’t fully developed yet. When alcohol or drugs enter your body, they affect your brain differently than they do for adults. I highly recommend waiting. And when you’re an adult, you can make your own decisions.”

Having real, honest conversations like that can make a big difference. When young people understand that they could become addicted, it might help dissuade them from trying it in the first place.

Let’s come back to that 10% number—the adult addiction rate.
That means 1 in 10 adults is living with substance use disorder.

Think about that. One in ten. That could be a teacher.
A parent.
A doctor.
A neighbor.
A youth pastor.
A coach.

It was me—struggling with alcohol behind closed doors while publicly being celebrated as Kentucky’s State Teacher of the Year.

And yet I carried shame—like my drinking was proof that I was broken, or reckless, or bad.

But here’s the truth:
Addiction says nothing about your character.
It’s about how you’ve been coping.
It’s about trauma.
It’s about how our brains learn to survive pain.

When we really understand that, we stop asking people, “What’s wrong with you?” and instead we start asking, “What happened to you?”

Jessica Lahey made another powerful point during her talk. She explained addiction through a gun analogy I hadn’t heard before.

She said that genetics are like a loaded gun. That’s your predisposition—your family history.
But trauma? Trauma is what pulls the trigger.

In other words, even if you’re genetically predisposed, it often takes life experience—stress, loss, pain—for addiction to surface.

So again, instead of judging people, we ask: What happened to you?

Now, if you’re listening and thinking, “Could I be that one in 10?”—I get it. I was there too. I asked myself that question a lot. And yep, I Googled it a lot.

You can search “Am I an alcoholic?” and take all the quizzes. But when you start digging, you’re going to see terms like “heavy drinking,” “alcohol use disorder,” and others. And it can get confusing fast. So let’s break it down.

According to the CDC:

  • For women, heavy drinking means 8 or more drinks per week.
  • For men, it’s 15 or more drinks per week.

And yeah, that probably doesn’t sound like a lot—especially if you compare it to how alcohol is normalized in our culture. But science isn’t measuring social norms.
It’s measuring risk.

When we talk about alcohol use disorder—also known as alcohol addiction—we’re talking about a medical condition. It might look like:

  • Needing more alcohol to get the same effect
  • Trying to cut back but not being able to
  • Continuing to drink even when it causes problems at work, in relationships, or with your health

Regardless of the label you use, if your relationship with alcohol is hurting you, it matters.

Here’s the thing: drinking in a problematic way increases your risk for over 200 health conditions.
That includes liver disease, certain cancers, heart issues, depression, and anxiety.

And that’s just the physical stuff. It doesn’t even touch the emotional toll—
The isolation.
The shame.
The broken promises to yourself.
The loss of trust in your own word.

But here’s the wild part:
You don’t need to hit a “rock bottom” for your drinking to be a problem.
You don’t need a diagnosis.
You don’t need to wreck your car.
You don’t need to go to rehab or have liver disease or get a DUI.

You don’t need any dramatic moment to deserve a better life.

That’s why I love this quote from author Laura McKowen—who also founded The Luckiest Club, where I’m a meeting leader.

She says:

“The typical question is,
‘Is this bad enough for me to have to change?’

The question we should be asking is,
‘Is this good enough for me to stay the same?’

And the real question underneath it all is,
**‘Am I free?’”

Whew. That last one hits, right?
Am I free?

Free from hiding?
Free from shame?
Free from anxiety spirals and broken promises to yourself?

Because that’s what recovery is. It’s not punishment.
It’s not exile.
It’s a path toward freedom.

So whether you’re a parent, an educator, in recovery, or still figuring it all out—just know this:

You are not alone.
You are not broken.
And you are absolutely not beyond hope.

You are worthy of support.
You are worthy of information.
You are worthy of connection.
You are worthy of freedom.

Thanks so much for spending time with me today.
If this episode moved you or made you think of someone you love, please share it. Word of mouth is the best compliment.

Let’s keep breaking the stigma and replacing it with compassion and understanding—for ourselves and for one another.

Thanks, y’all. I’ll see you next time.

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Podcast Episode 66. “You are not a before and after photo.”

Posted on by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

In this episode, I reflect on how sobriety reshaped my relationship with my body, and why I now lean on neutral affirmations to speak to myself with honesty and care.

Resources:

Just Eat It by Laura Thomas – The book I got the quote from in the episode

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, it’s Jessica Dueñas, and thanks again for tuning in to Bottomless is Sober. So today’s episode is all about the bodies that we live in, right, these same bodies that we have spent years numbing, judging, trying to fix, trying to shrink, and how sobriety invites us to really come home to our bodies. Right, not to change our bodies, but literally gives us the opportunity to just meet our bodies Honestly, maybe for the first time. There’s a book that I love called Eat it, and it was written by Laura Thomas, and here’s a line that I love from Laura. She writes you are not a before and after photo. You are a human being with a rich and complex life and you deserve to be heard and seen and respected in whatever body you’re in. I love that, right.

01:00
I think about how, when I first got sober, you know, I would have folks asking me questions like so have you lost weight now that you’re not drinking? Or you must feel amazing, right, like glowing skin, more energy, and some of those things can sometimes be true for some people. Right, let me say that again, some of those things can sometimes be true for some people. I actually gained weight because in my addiction, I started to lose weight as a result of my alcoholic liver disease, and I was hardly eating. So for me, a sign of health was the fact that I was gaining weight right. And then, as I started to exercise and lift weights, I actually started to add muscle onto my body. So I have been heavier since getting sober, but regardless, right, getting on that sobriety journey, my body did start to feel different. But the thing is, when someone asks you eagerly, right, like, oh so have you started to lose weight now that you’re drinking, or now that you’re not drinking, or you must feel so amazing, right, when you start to get questions like that, there’s definitely something loaded in those questions, right, there’s almost like an unspoken expectation and unspoken assumption about sobriety, as though we’re supposed to look a certain way to prove that we’re healing, as, like you know, if our body doesn’t show a visual evidence of change, that maybe our recovery doesn’t count. Right. But the truth is, is that sobriety forced me to just be in my body again? It forced me to feel the anxiety, to feel the shame, to feel the exhaustion, but also, eventually, right came the strength and sobriety enabled me to feel that it was like I don’t know, meeting this part of myself that I had abandoned for years, and, honestly, when I met my strength, I didn’t know what to do. You know, growing up for me, my body, it just was never mine, right? So this whole like meeting our body for the first time thing it was definitely brand new to me.

03:22
Growing up, my body was constantly commented on. It was constantly controlled, constantly compared to others. You know, though, my mother had the best of intentions, it didn’t work out that way. So I still remember, you know, mommy saying I don’t eat that You’re going to get fat. Or you know, when I did actually put on weight, you know the constant like. You know, that’s why you are as big as you are, and so and then.

03:52
The funny thing, though, was that she’d still pile my plate super high with food, because that was also how love showed up, right, and she grew up so poor that to have like a full plate was a blessing. And so, here, eat all of this. And if you don’t eat like this food, where’s all this food going to go? Right, you know she definitely didn’t mean harm, but she was definitely passing down messages that she got from society, you know, from survival and from her own mother, which weren’t helpful messages, right, there was one time I was sitting on the couch with her and we were watching one of those, you know, like diet commercials that we always see, with the before and after. You know, like the before is this like sad, slouched woman, and then suddenly, like the woman after, she’s just like glowing and she’s loved and she’s like happy. And you know, and my mom like literally had pointed the screen, I was like, oh well, that’s what you want to aim for, right? Así es como debe estar. And that’s the thing, like I did aim for that.

04:49
I spent years aiming to me to be like the smaller, quieter, prettier woman and if I could maybe just shrink myself enough that maybe I’d finally feel like I was enough. But that was never the case. And then thankfully jokingly I’m not seriously saying thankfully, but you know my experience with alcohol was that alcohol did make it easier to not feel at all Right, so if I couldn’t shrink my body, well, at least I couldn’t feel anything. It’s just that over time my body became something to escape and I escaped over and over and over again until getting into recovery finally brought me back to her. You know, getting sober it cracked me open, and so it wasn’t just about the quitting drinking piece, but it was about facing what I had been trying so hard not to feel. And in my journey, a lot of it was decades of body shame, of perfectionism and, just you know, making myself worth being conditional on whatever number was on the scale or what size clothes I was fitting into. Worth being conditional on whatever number was on the scale or what size clothes I was fitting into.

05:56
And now, you know, as I approach my fifth year, sobriety. You know, now, after becoming a mother, I’m definitely looking at my body through a new lens. You know. It’s not that I’m looking at my body with constant praise, you know, but I’m looking at my body with permission. Right, I’m giving my body permission to just be. I’m not going to pretend that I always love what I see, but what I do have for my body is a huge amount of respect. I respect my body. Today, my body is a home. My body carried me through trauma, heartbreak and healing. My body grew and delivered my daughter Amara, and my body is still showing up for me every single day. So how dare I tear this body down? I won’t do it. I absolutely won’t. So today I want to invite you into a space of curiosity, right? Definitely not judgment. And so let’s wrap up the episode with a couple of neutral affirmations Now.

07:05
I love neutral affirmations because they are not as phony sounding as positive affirmations. Sometimes positive affirmations are great if we are in the head space to receive them and practice them and we’re feeling really good. So a positive affirmation lands well. But sometimes, like when I coach my own coaching clients, I teach them about using neutral affirmations because sometimes the positive stuff it feels too phony and if it feels phony it’s not going to click and land on your body, right, and it’s not going to do its job in helping you with the healing process. So sometimes we’ve got to go neutral, right. Oftentimes neutral affirmations are based more so on facts, right, undeniable facts that help negate the negative self-talk that we might’ve had otherwise about our bodies. So they don’t hype you up unrealistically, but they’re basically almost like a peace offering and they’re just a nice small shift in how we speak to ourselves.

08:03
So here’s a couple of neutral affirmations that you can take with you, right, take what you need, leave the rest. Feel free to grab a journal, right, and maybe list out your own that might resonate with you better, but here are a few that I know have helped me a lot. With you better, but here are a few that I know have helped me a lot. My body is allowed to exist without explanation. I am learning to relate to my body in a new way. I don’t have to love my body to respect it. I can feel discomfort and still be kind to myself. My body tells me the truth and I am listening. And so, again, I invite you to take some of these neutral affirmations and adjust them to yourself Again. Whatever might land for you, great. If you need to do something different, go ahead and do something different. And then, lastly, just to wrap up, I always like to.

09:03
I’m switching into trying to offer people reflection questions. Whether I’m working with you in a sobriety support meeting, whether you are one of my one-on-one coaching clients or here on the podcast, I love, love, love the idea of just taking questions and sitting with them and journaling them or just thinking about them, right? And so here’s a couple of questions for you to go home with. So, number one since getting sober, how has your relationship with your body changed, physically, emotionally or spiritually? Number two have you noticed any ways that body image pressures show up in recovery. What’s one way you respond to or want to respond differently. And then number three if your body could speak right now, what would it say? And if you could respond with compassion, what would you say back? And so just a reminder, right Again, thanks so much for listening today.

10:07
But you’re not this project, you are not some product, you are not a before and after picture. Right, we are constantly evolving, always. You’re a person and this journey that you’re on you’re never going to reach a perfect after. Let me just keep it real with you. So it’s about learning to live fully in your now, learning to live fully in your now. So, thanks so much for spending time with me today. If the episode resonated, please feel free to send it to someone else. Right Again, someone can always benefit to have a nice little reminder that they are enough in whatever body they are, in whatever body they are occupying. Until next time, take care, I will see you all next week. Bye.

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Podcast Episode 65. Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight

Posted on by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Imagine being at the pinnacle of your career, celebrated as Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, while secretly battling severe addiction. That’s the reality I faced, living a double life until a car accident shattered my illusions and forced me to confront my need for recovery. Inspired by Paulo Coelho’s wisdom, “The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight,” I share my tumultuous journey through multiple treatment stints over 14 months, debunking the myth that recovery is a simple, linear path. Join me as I open up about the painful truths and the resilience needed to continually rise after each fall.

Resources:

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, welcome back to Bottomless is Sober. I’m Jessica, and I’m so grateful to have you here. So, whether this is your first episode or your 60 something episode, this is our space where we continue to get honest about what it means to recover, not just from addiction, but from shame, perfectionism, grief and, honestly, just life. So today, I want to anchor our conversation in a quote by author Paulo Coelho You’ve probably heard it before, but if you haven’t, I invite you to really feel it today and he wrote the secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight. It’s so easy to throw that around like a motivational slogan. I’m not going to lie, but when you have a history of having relapsed, right when you’ve fallen in a way that shakes your whole sense of self, it’s actually. It’s not just a quote, it’s a hundred percent, it’s a lifeline.

01:03
I want to share a story that I haven’t told in a while, but you know it came to mind when I read this line recently, um, back when I had won, you know, the Kentucky state teacher of the year award in 2019, this was a few months after winning that award, and you know like, on the outside, um, my life did look like everything was on track, right, you know, being an award-winning educator, considered a community leader, back in Louisville, kentucky, you know, someone that people legitimately looked up to, but the thing was that on the inside I was completely unraveling, you know. So I felt like every celebration that I came across it, really it just felt more like this really heavy pressure, and every compliment that I would ever receive honestly just felt like this huge reminder that I was living a double life. Right, I was deep in addiction, drinking every single night. You know, by the end of my drinking days, I was drinking a fifth of liquor a night, and that was numbing the fear that I was going to disappoint everyone. Right, I did not want to get caught, and so I literally lived my entire life in a way where I could drink heavily and yet appear really functional and successful on the outside. My liver was shot, I had been diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease and the thing was eventually trying to navigate all these different things at once that were completely opposing forces. It all came crashing down, and so there was one morning where I had actually flipped my car in Louisville and this street called Bardstown road after drinking, and I remember coming to hanging upside down in that car and realizing that I could have died right. I mean, honestly, I probably should have given the impact of that accident, but somehow I walked away physically unharmed, emotionally though, I was shattered.

02:56
So after that, that same night, I actually after I went to the emergency room, I went straight into a treatment facility where I stayed for five weeks, and while in treatment, you know, I started to put the pieces back together. I found a sense of community. I have a friend there that I’m still friends with today and, you know, I started to find hope and I started to start to connect with myself again. But let me tell you something that I wish more people talked about, and that is that assumption that just because you go to treatment, that you’re good, right, that the work is done, that if you go to treatment once you’re one and done no, no, no, I went to treatment like seven or eight times in the span of 14 months, so that’s already not true. I wanted to put that out there. Just because you go to treatment does not mean the work is done. Healing definitely not linear. If I would have been put in charge of creating healing and how it worked as a construct. Yes, I would have loved to have made it a linear process for all of us, but it’s not. In recovery, it’s not a straight line either.

04:02
So a few weeks after I left the facility, I had a relapse. I was completely overwhelmed. I was still dealing with so much grief after having lost my then boyfriend, ian, to his own addiction right. And so I just felt completely isolated. I felt tired of trying so hard and I slipped and I had the one drink. But of course the one drink turned into two, and then it turned into more, and eventually I had that old voice in my head whispering you know, you’re never going to change. Who are you kidding, jessica Right? And when you have that voice in your head, it becomes so easy to just want to say I’m done, I don’t care, why bother trying? If I can’t get this done perfectly, then I might as well not try at all.

04:46
And so that night I remember sitting on the floor of my bathroom, you know, crying, with the empty bottle having had thrown up. And I wasn’t just disappointed in myself, I was just in this place of feeling completely devastated. You know I had already promised myself and the few people who were aware of everything that was going on, especially my sister, that, like I, was done right. But here I was drunk on the bathroom floor again. But something shifted right. Things start to shift over time. The more that we practice our sobriety, the more that things start to click. And this time I didn’t ghost anyone. I didn’t disappear. I didn’t hide. For weeks, I didn’t try to pretend that it didn’t happen. In fact, I reached out to my sister. I had texted her and I said I messed up and I need help, which is a huge leap. Huge leap for me. I thought she would have been upset with me, I thought that she would have been disappointed, but all she said was I love you, come, come visit me and try again, right? How simple was that? How simple was that? And so that was the moment that I started to understand what getting up again really means.

06:00
It’s not flashy. It’s not always about heroically turning your life around in one grand gesture. Sometimes it’s literally about reaching out instead of retreating. Sometimes it’s sitting in a meeting that next day, even if you’re hungover and ashamed, but still showing up. Sometimes it’s saying I fell, but I’m here. And here’s the thing right In this work, because some of you may have been, maybe sober for a while. It’s not just relapse that makes us question ourselves. So I want to recognize that the fall here is not always directly tied to alcohol. Sometimes the fall that we go through in life can be subtle, way more subtle than taking a drink, but it can be just as discouraging.

06:45
So maybe you snapped at your kids or you snapped at your partner and then, damn, you’re like instantly I just undid months of inner work. Or maybe you had recently committed to a morning routine whether it’s like meditation or journaling or moving your body and then you fell off for a week and now there’s a shame kind of looming over your head of not following through which makes you feel like you just want to give up altogether. Or maybe you shared something vulnerable right With a friend or in a group and someone gave you a response that was really uncomfortable, like maybe they sounded judgy or they didn’t respond at all. So you feel like whatever you said landed on like deaf ears. Now you’re questioning if you should have even said anything or if you should even bother going back to them and opening back up, and I just want to say whatever else it could be for you, whatever that fall could look like that these moments count too. They’re the quiet heartbreaks, right? They’re the mini falls and, just like with a relapse, they still offer us the same invitation, which is get up again, try again, stay in it, right? And as you’re looking at these invitations to recommit, maybe ask yourself what can I do differently? Right? What tool do I need to use that maybe I haven’t explored yet In sobriety, right?

08:10
That’s why I love this quote the secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight, because, in sobriety, falling does not mean that you failed. It simply means that you’re a human and standing back up. That’s where the magic is, that is where the healing happens. So today, right, whether you’re celebrating getting through another 24 hours sober, or whether you are in the middle of picking yourself back up, in general, I want you to know, I want you to understand that you are not alone and you don’t have to get up, gracefully, right, this doesn’t have to look magical and beautiful, you just have to get up. And so take a moment, let’s reflect, right? Whether you’re journaling or you’re out on a walk or you’re listening to the podcast, just kind of, you know, with your heart open.

08:58
Here’s a couple of questions for you to sit with. When was a time that you got back up after a setback in your sobriety? How do you talk to yourself in those moments when you feel like you’ve fallen short? And, lastly, what support or reminder helps you to stand back up again? And as I close out, I just want to remind you for this week, right, that you deserve grace, you deserve support and you deserve to keep going.

09:26
Okay, thanks so much for being here with me this week. A reminder again that the reason we rise, it’s not because we never fall, it’s not because we never fail, it’s not because we never fail, it’s not because we’re perfect, but the reason we get up and we keep going is because, no matter what, we can always rise again. Right, as long as you’ve got breath in you, as long as you are still here and alive with us, you can absolutely do something to get back up again. We don’t need to stay down that perfectionist narrative, that black or white thinking. It gets us nowhere really, really fast. So, thanks so much for hanging out this week. I will catch you next time.

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Podcast Episode 64. Breaking Free from the ‘Good Girl’ Mask

Posted on by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Jessica explores the emotional cost of people-pleasing and the liberation found in breaking the “good girl” script. Reflecting on her own experiences before and after sobriety, she shares how unlearning the need to be liked led to deeper self-worth and authentic healing. This episode speaks directly to women in recovery who are learning to say no, set boundaries, and reclaim their truth—without apology. Jessica leaves listeners with heartfelt reflection questions and a bold reminder: you are still good, even when you’re no longer the “good girl.”

Resources:

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless is Sober. I’m your host, jessica Duenas, and so glad to have you here this week. So, whether this is your first time listening or, you know, reaching out to your support system or simply just breathing through a tough day, that is a victory, right? That is recovery in action. So I just want to take a moment and recognize that Now, today’s episode is, for all my recovering people pleasers, especially if you have been socialized as a woman, right, and you were taught, directly or indirectly, that being nice is the same thing as being lovable, right? I think for so many of us, that was definitely a message that we were taught, and essentially, we’re talking about something that I’m calling breaking the good girl script, because that internalized role that so many of us were handed early in life right To be agreeable, to be helpful, be easy to be around. Don’t rock the boat, don’t say no. Smile, and especially smiling at family members that creep you out, right, even when you’re dying inside, right. Smile no matter what. Being in recovery means breaking from those things, and so I want to open with a quote that I absolutely love, and I’m even using it in sobriety support meetings that I lead, and it’s from Nedra Glover Tawwab, the author of Set Boundaries, find Peace, and she wrote this line. She wrote when you consistently prioritize yourself over others, you diminish your self-worth. People-pleasing is not kindness, it’s self-neglect in disguise. So take a deep breath and let that quote sink in.

02:04
I don’t know about you, but I spent years confusing people-pleasing with kindness. You know, I thought that I was being a good friend, a good daughter, a good employee, a good partner, right Like the desperate, clinging girlfriend. But really I was abandoning myself over and over again and I wore the good girl mask so well that most people could not see how much I was suffering. And I’ll be honest with you, I wore that mask so well. There were times I couldn’t see it either. I remember there was a time back when I drank where I was just constantly saying yes to everything, you know, whether it was a social gathering, whether it was a work commitment or favors for people you know who rarely return the energy. I was just always in this yes mode, and one weekend I had three different events lined up back to back and I was just always in a space of burnout. Right, I was emotionally raw and I knew deep down that I needed just some time alone. But I didn’t want to seem flaky, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I pushed through. But what did I do? I smiled when I didn’t want to smile. I drank, I drank heavily, I charmed other people, I made other people laugh, and then I went home and got really, really wasted and probably cried and, just you know, woke up on my couch hung over. I wish that I could say that that was rare for me. I wish that I could say that that’s a rare experience period. But you know, it’s not. It’s not rare, and I’m sure some of you listening can be like oh yeah, I’ve been there before.

03:43
What I’ve learned in sobriety, and what I’m still learning, is that practicing kindness, the practice of real kindness, absolutely includes yourself. You have to be the first one who you’re being kind to. Being liked by others is nice and all, but it means nothing if you are rejecting your own truth in the process. Sometimes the most loving thing that you can do is say no, not just to others, but also to that part of you that still believes that your worth is tied to your usefulness, letting go of that good girl script, you all. It has not been easy and it still is not easy, it’s still a struggle for me. But what I realize is that every time I choose myself that, every time I say actually I can’t make it or I need time to think, or this doesn’t feel good to me, what I start to find is that I feel stronger on the inside, I become freer and I get closer to the woman that I’m becoming in recovery. And this is someone who’s been sober almost five years, right. And here’s the thing recovery. And this is someone who’s been sober almost five years, right. And here’s the thing for women in sobriety, this kind of work can feel especially radical, right, like especially badass.

05:02
You know, we were so often praised for being selfless, for putting everyone else before ourselves. We’re told that we’re strong when we stay quiet, when we carry the load and when we don’t ask for help. But sobriety actually flips that upside down. It tells us you matter too. You and your needs are valid. Your peace is not a luxury, it’s a requirement. And so when we do these things, when we believe these things, that is when we’re actually practicing strength.

05:37
But I also want to recognize that that’s where some grief can come into our process, right, once we choose to break the script. We do often have to let go of certain identities, certain relationships or certain expectations that we’ve had. We’re going to disappoint some people, we may lose some friends, we might see family dynamics more clearly, which might mean that we start to see family dynamics more painfully, and we may feel like we’re walking away from a version of ourselves that we’ve tried so hard to perfect and in many ways we are. But at the end of the day, we’re also walking toward something better. Right, we’re walking away from an old version of ourselves and we’re walking toward authenticity. We are walking toward boundaries, toward peace, presence, wholeness.

06:31
So if you are in a season, right, where you’re unlearning people pleasing, where you’re trying to say no more often, or where you’re realizing that being nice has just caught you or not caught you, cost you too much, you know, please stop and understand this. You are not selfish, you are not broken. You are not broken. You are becoming free, you are allowed to take up space and you’re absolutely allowed to be misunderstood. You are allowed to say no without having to do like a whole 10 paragraph text explanation. Right, no itself is a complete sentence and you are still good. Right, you are still a good person even when you’re not. The quote unquote good girl, right.

07:19
And so just some reflection questions for you to take with you. Um, these can be great journal prompts or just something to sit with throughout the day. But first question to think about what messages were you given growing up? You know directly or indirectly, about being a good girl or being liked. How has people pleasing shown up in your life, especially in your journey towards sobriety? What does it look like for you today to choose yourself over others’ expectations?

07:52
And I want to recognize that this episode I’ve mostly talked toward women, but I also want to recognize that you know men, there have absolutely been expectations placed on you that sobriety flips upside down, right, and so feel free to take this and adapt it to your experience as a man. I’m just obviously speaking from my perspective as a woman, but you know the same expectations placed on people based off, you know, gender happens to men as well, and so, anyway, if this episode resonated with you, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving a review. Right and again, if no one’s told you today, you are doing an amazing job, even when the work is messy, even when the healing feels slow or incredibly painful and you want to throw up. You know you’re here, you’re showing up and you’re doing it, so keep on keeping on. So thanks so much for spending this time with me. Until next time, be absolutely gentle with yourself. Being bottomless is not a part of your story anymore. Thanks y’all.

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Podcast Episode 63. Shame Is a Liar: Reclaiming Your Worth and Breaking Free

Posted on by Jessica Dueñas in Podcast

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Shame is sneaky—it twists our thoughts and keeps us stuck. In this episode, Jessica gets real about how shame shaped her struggles with addiction, relapse, and self-worth. She shares personal stories, unpacks common shame traps, and offers powerful questions to help you shift your narrative.

Ready to rewrite your story? Tune in for a raw, honest conversation and take your first step toward self-compassion. You are not defined by your past—you define you.

Resources:

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, welcome back. Today we are talking about something that I know far too well, which is shame. I recently saw a loved one struggling a lot with personal shame and it just moved me to put together this episode just to talk about it a little bit, because it really does impact so many of us, right, if not all of us. And here’s the thing about shame shame, it is so sneaky, you know, it doesn’t show up very blatantly like fear or anger does right, like I feel like fear, anger. Those are emotions that when they come up for us, when they rise up in our bodies, it’s pretty easy for us to pinpoint and say, oh, I’m feeling fearful or oh, I’m so pissed off, right. But when we’re feeling shame, it’s so much more subtle, you know, it kind of just comes in when you might be alone with your thoughts. It might come in and start twisting up memories. It might come up for you when you start doubting yourself or questioning things, especially when it comes down to if you start questioning your worth right, like whether you question that you are worthy of love or worthy of forgiveness or worthy of a fresh start, right. Anytime that you start doubting whether you are worthy of something. Chances are that is shame speaking through you in code. And so you know and I know this right, because I carried shame for many, many years. I mean, I was ashamed because of my drinking. Then, when I got sober, I was ashamed that I didn’t stop sooner. You know, I was then ashamed for the things that I did while I was deep in my alcohol abuse. And the thing is it’s like, just because you get sober, shame doesn’t necessarily go away, right, it can easily find brand new ways to sink its claws in, right. I mean, I just remember, with love and relationships, like, one of the biggest things that shame would tell me is that nobody who is healthy, right, nobody who has like a solid, healthy, stable mental health history, is going to be interested in me. That I would only have to find other people who are recovering from addiction, right, who’ve been to the bottoms and depths of hell, that those are the only people who would be good for me. That’s what shame told me.

02:18
But one of the other biggest speaking of loving relationships, right, like one of the biggest sources of shame for me, especially once I got sober, was really reflecting on the people that I would often go back to, who I knew weren’t good for me, and this would even happen in sobriety, until I got my stride, until I got confident. You know, it’s just like I would go back to people who didn’t respect me. I would go back to people who didn’t show up for me. I would go back to people who made me feel like I would have to prove that I was worthy of their love, or people who I knew at the core, fundamentally, that we were not a match, but yet my, my need for company, my need to not be alone, would always push that to the side. And so, you know, I would always be caught up saying like never again, I’m not talking to that person, I’m blocked, I’m done. And before you knew it, I was just answering the text, giving them another chance, you know, convincing myself that maybe this time things would be different. Right, there’s one moment that really sticks with me, and it was after I started to work on my sobriety. So for those of you who don’t know my story, maybe you’re just jumping on today. I’ve had many day ones, and I’ve had many starts and stops. Currently, I am four and a half years sober at the time of the recording of this podcast, or about four and a half. But when I started to work on my sobriety was in 2019, september, and I didn’t get sober till November of 2020. So just to give you a sense of that was a solid what 14 months of me kind of going in and out. So in September 2019, I’ll use a name Thomas. I never dated a Thomas, but we’re going to call him Thomas.

04:04
I was dating him and while in this relationship with him was when I kind of had that epiphany of like holy shit, I think I’m an alcoholic, right, and again, I don’t identify as an alcoholic at this time, but back then that is the language that I use. So those were my thoughts back then. And I remember we were flying back from New York City one time and the airport was closed or not the airport, but the airport bars were closed and I was going into withdrawals and I started crying in the airport and I told him I was like, oh my gosh, I really need a drink. I think I have a problem. And you know his behind was like no, you don’t have a problem. I mean, look at all the different things you do. I had already won teacher of the year. So he was like you don’t have a problem, people like you don’t have alcohol problems. And, of course, I would just listen to whatever he would say because it would make me feel better, even though, fundamentally, I knew right Our, our intuition is always right and I knew that there was a problem. I just kept, you know, drowning it out. So, anyway, when I went to rehab the first time, I came out of there making the decision to break up with him because I knew you know, I don’t diagnose other people, but I struggled a lot with my drinking around him because he did consume a lot of alcohol too, and so I just knew that that relationship was not good for my sobriety goal.

05:29
But lo and behold, you know, a couple of months passed. It was the holiday season. I had flown to Tampa to visit my sister for Christmas and I lost my mind at a holiday party that she was hosting. So I come to, apparently, on the floor. My niece found me unconscious and my sister at that point saw what was up in terms of my relationship with alcohol, relationship with alcohol and she was just like Jess, what are you going to do? And I was like I promise I’m going to go get help as soon as I get back to Louisville, I’ll go back into that treatment facility that I had gone to originally. And you know what happened, y’all. Like as soon as I got to the damn airport, I decided to text this bozo Thomas, right, so-called Thomas and see if he’d pick me up from the airport. And before you knew it, I landed in Louisville, kentucky, and I was over at his place shooting back bourbon, right, and I mean like I was out. It was all a blur. I can’t even remember how many missed calls I had from my sister checking up on me and things like that. So, again, she’s an angel because of everything she’s tolerated with me.

06:33
But once I got out of there and I did eventually go to treatment, I was really embarrassed, right, and I just wanted to bury my head in the sand like dang Jess. You said you would never go back to this person. You’re working on your sobriety. And then you had this huge relapse and you went back to this guy who was pretty awful and I really, really poo-pooed all over myself after that and that was the thing I just I carried the shame of that relapse along with all the other relapses that I had.

07:07
You know, I carried that like this huge weight on my chest, and it doesn’t help that society tells us, right that we should be ashamed of things like that, that we should quote unquote know better. You know that self-worth is supposed to be this like very easy, logical thing. I’m only gonna do things that serve me. I’m gonna like move away from people who don’t serve me, move away from situations that don’t serve me. That all sounds really nice in practice and it sounds so elevated, right, but it’s really hard to do Sometimes. The familiar is what’s not best for us, and yet it’s the most comforting at the same time.

07:52
So, anyway, for so long I let that shame eat me up and again just asking myself these questions why am I like this? Why do I keep doing this to myself? I just a hundred percent let my shame convince me that I was broken, weak and incapable of healthy love. But thankfully, I get to look back at that now, right, and and I do see it differently I can reframe moments like that in my past. You know not that it was proof that I was unworthy, right, but it was proof that I was still learning, right, that I was on a search for something that I just couldn’t figure out how the hell to give it to myself.

08:23
It’s not a human weakness to want love. We are social creatures by nature and to be accompanied is oftentimes a sign of safety. We don’t thrive in isolation. So why am I calling myself weak for wanting love, for wanting companionship? The problem just was that at that time I hadn’t yet realized, right, that I deserved better. And that was the thing, right. Once we know better, then we have the opportunity to do better. But that is the thing about shame it simply, it just isolates us and it convinces us that we’re the only ones who’ve ever struggled like this, we’re the only ones with this problem, and that we are unfixable. But shame is a liar. And how do we take back our power? We bring our stories into the light. We stop letting shame write the narrative and we start owning our truth instead.

09:22
So let’s look at a couple situations, because obviously, maybe you didn’t like hop off a plane and run straight into someone’s apartment and just get drunk and stay there for a couple of days, right. But maybe you’ve had a couple other situations, so let’s talk through them, right. So again, relapsing after a period of sobriety right, maybe you’ve been sober for months, maybe even years. And then one day, boom, you have a slip, you drink, and immediately the voice in your head is like ah, you see, you’re a failure, you’ll never get this right. You might as well go back and get some more. You might as well go back down to the bar. Forget it, forget your day count, you know. Whatever it is that you might use to kind of help motivate you. Here’s the truth. Having a relapse does not erase your progress, right? It is absolutely a symptom of something deeper that needs your attention, but it’s not a sign that you’re broken.

10:13
We’re talking about addiction, you all. If it was easy to quit drinking, if it was easy to stop doing drugs, we wouldn’t have treatment facilities all over the place, we wouldn’t have a million and one different programs to quit alcohol, right? So if it were so simple, we wouldn’t have people struggling. But it’s hard. And so, again, when there is a relapse, when there is a slip, whatever you wanna call it, instead of beating yourself up, ask yourself what was I struggling with before I went and picked up? Right, what was going on? What do I need to do to adjust, to support myself better? What tools did I use? What tools did I not use? What tools do I need to potentially add to my toolbox? You’ve got to look at the bigger picture here. You’re not flawed because you’re struggling with addiction to a substance that is pretty much shoved down our throats from the beginning of time.

11:14
Another scenario maybe you are feeling, if you are a parent, maybe you feel like a bad parent. Or maybe, if you are in a romantic partnership, you’re feeling like a bad partner or insert bad whatever connection you have to other humans. Maybe you feel like a bad teacher because you’re an educator. Maybe you feel like a bad daughter because your mom is aging and you’re getting increasingly frustrated at the demands of taking care of her needs as she’s getting older, right, and so shame is going to whisper to you. You’re a shitty daughter, right. Shame is going to whisper to you. You’re a bad girlfriend, a bad wife. You’re a bad partner, right, and shame might even dare to whisper even darker things to you, like someone would be better off without you, right. So here’s the actual truth though You’re a human, humans make mistakes. Repair is possible, right. I’m not saying it’s guaranteed.

12:11
If we did wrong somebody, it’s on them if they want us back in their lives or not, right, but we can always be living amends, right, and what I mean by living amends in 12-step programs, right? Step nine involves making amends to other people for the wrongs that we’ve done. Now, in my opinion, I think you know running around and telling everybody I’m sober now and I want to apologize. I think that that can sometimes create its own issues with the people that we wronged in the past. But regardless, what we have the opportunity to do that definitely does not increase the harm that we’ve already done is living amends, which means that whatever hurt that we caused onto other people in the past, we take that, we learn from the situation and we make sure that in our behaviors we don’t repeat those patterns or those behaviors to anyone who we encounter. From that point, moving forward, right.

13:01
So humans are going to make mistakes, but you can always live from your learned knowledge, from your lived experiences where you may have caused harm. And so, instead of letting that shame make you shut down and convince you that that’s it. You’re hopeless, acknowledge what happened, take responsibility and ask yourself what can I do differently next time? Right? How can I treat other people better? What can I do differently next time? Right? How can I treat other people better, right? If it’s, maybe someone who has chosen to end their relationship with you, or if it’s someone that you still have the privilege to keep in your life, because maybe this is a child of yours or a significant other who’s still there, right Again, what can I do differently next time? How can I improve?

13:44
And then the last scenario just to think about right, this one is a big one that I struggle with on occasion is the whole being ashamed of where you are in life. Like you all, I used to have a house and I had to sell the house and move into my sister’s guest room with my dog. Right, I just had a baby at age 39, when I could have had children. Like from my twenties or thirties right, or earlier thirties. I am basically starting over in a new version of my career because I had to leave my old career that I was, like, exceptionally good at. So these are all things where I could be, in theory, ashamed of where I am in life. Oh, not to mention I have a baby and I’m not married, right, like these are all the ways in which I basically don’t measure up according to society’s like measuring stick, and so it becomes very easy for any of us to be ashamed of where we are in life, because maybe you are not where you thought you would be by now.

14:39
Maybe you fell behind in your career. Maybe you’re drinking. Your addiction has negatively impacted your ability to, you know, get promotions. Whatever the case may be, maybe it has ruined some relationships that you have. Who knows? Right, we’re all in different places, but we might be like dang, I should be doing better.

15:00
And that’s shame, right? That’s shame saying that you should have it quote, unquote together by now that everyone else does Like number one first of all. Everybody else does not have it together, right, that’s shame saying that you should have it, quote unquote together by now that everyone else does Like number one first of all. Everybody else does not have it together, right. Again, if we’re looking at everyone else through the lens of, say, social media, that’s, people just put whatever looks cute on social media, right, like I show all the cute pictures of my daughter, amara, I’m not going to show the picture of when she’s like screaming her head off, because, because I’m not right. And so remember that your timeline is your timeline and comparison is what? Like a thief, I always butcher sayings, but that comparison is a thief of joy, or whatever that saying is.

15:41
You just need to focus on what small step you can take to move forward. If you have specific goals that you’re trying to accomplish, if there’s a specific lifestyle that you are wanting to live, a solid resource I would recommend James Clear’s book Atomic Habits great way to look at breaking things down into tiny minute steps that can eventually lead to bigger gains. But at the end of the day, right, you’re exactly where you need to be and you have the power to move that needle. So you know when shame tells you that you should have together. No, you’re where you’re supposed to be and you have the opportunity to change it. So if any of this is hitting home for you, right, take a moment and sit with these questions, cause again, I’m we.

16:27
We all have shame stories and I’m sure that yours could all be totally different than what I mentioned now. But take a moment and sit with these questions. One, what is a moment from your past that shame has told you to hide? Two, if you looked at that moment with compassion instead of judgment, how would the story change? Three, what is one belief about yourself that shame has made you hold on to and is it actually true? Right, like, what else could be true here? And number four, what is a small step that you can take today to rewrite your story on your terms? And again, these are heavier questions. Feel free to pause or grab a journal and reflect on these, but let yourself be honest because, again, shame wants to keep you silent. But the healing process it happens when we give ourselves permission to tell the truth without the weight of judgment.

17:26
If this is something you want to dive deeper into, I invite you to work with me in two ways Either explore my Writing for Healing program right, I just started my last six-week round, but I have the wait list going for whenever I open up the next six-week round. I also am now offering a workbook where you can work on this on your own, or get work with me through coaching. I do offer coaching for people in recovery, right, who are ready to rewrite their story and step into that next chapter of their lives, right, like, let’s get some clarity, let’s get some confidence in you. So if that sounds like something you need, let’s talk about that. The show notes will have both links to my six-week writing for healing program as well as coaching.

18:08
So I’ll leave you just with that last thought. Right Again, the past, your past. It doesn’t define you. You define your own past. I’m sorry, not you define your past, you define you right, point blank period. And so hopefully you wrap your mind around the fact that you deserve to step into your next chapter with confidence and some self-compassion. So, sending you all lots of love, I’m glad you all are here and listening with me. Take care.

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Podcast Episode 62. The Hidden Reason Tough Conversations Set You Off – And How to Fix It

Posted on by Jessica Dueñas in Podcast

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

You ever have a conversation that immediately sets you off? Like, your whole body tenses up, your heart starts racing, and suddenly, you’re 10 years old again? Yeah, same. In this episode, I’m sharing a personal story about my late mother, a comment about my body that sent me, and what I wish I had realized in the moment.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Values Assessment

Transcript:

00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome back. Today we are diving into a topic that honestly affects all of us, whether we realize it or not, and that is the fact that we all have values and they all impact us. Have you ever had one of those conversations that, just a hundred percent like set you off? Like you feel the heat rising in your body, you feel your heart racing, you feel your breath picking up speed. Those types of conversations can often be set off because of our values. I mean, I have 100% been there, so I’ll share a moment with you.

00:34
Actually, one of them that had me completely heated, and it was a conversation with my dearly departed mother. At the time, you know, we were talking about body image or, honestly, we were more so arguing about it, right, you know she had looked at me it was one of my last visits to Costa Rica and you know, she, just out of nowhere, was just like oh, you know, like you would look better if you lost a little weight and despite all the work I’ve done, y’all, like the second, she said that you know my whole body tense, my heart started to pound and you know I just felt anger like boiling up inside of me. Right, it’s like, despite the fact that I was in my late thirties, you know, boom, that comment gets said and in my body I feel like I’m 10 years old again. You know hiding food from her. You know the way that I eventually did with alcohol. And I definitely snapped back at her and I was like, why do you care? Why is this so important? I was just so frustrated. I had spent the last year or so again just unlearning all the toxic messages about weight and beauty that society and my own family and my own mom had ingrained in me. I’d worked so hard to kind of push back against those standards, but still when I hear those words I’m just transported right back to age 10.

01:51
But here’s the thing, what I didn’t consider in that conversation, right, that for my mom, beauty and thinness it wasn’t just about looks, right, for her it was about respectability in her world. Right, in her world it was about self-worth. My mom, she grew up in Costa Rica and in that country and in so many other westernized places, right, a women’s value was very much tied to how she looked, and my mother was born in 1939. So think about the decades that she was like an adolescent, and we’re talking about the 1950s, right, and so she was taught that to be beautiful, to be thin, was a way to achieve success. It was a way to secure a husband. It was a way basically all the different pathways to success came from how you looked what.

02:46
What I needed to recognize right is I did not need to agree with her, and though she wasn’t trying to hurt me, she was essentially just passing down what she was taught, wasn’t trying to hurt me, she was essentially just passing down what she was taught, and so I can recognize okay, that’s what she’s been programmed with. I don’t have to accept it, I don’t have to agree with her, but if I had taken at least a second to recognize that that was what she valued and the why behind it, I might’ve been able to respond with more understanding with my mom, instead of just being purely frustrated. Because the second she said those words, right, I became the 10-year-old. I was the one who was pissed off. I immediately made it all about me right, instead of looking at it from the bigger picture. Again, I’m not saying that that thought process is right or that it’s okay or that I agree with it, but I probably could have saved my body from some stress. So you know, this got me thinking.

03:41
How often are we clashing with people because we just don’t understand the values that are behind their words? Right, I am back to coaching one-on-one, and when I coach my clients, one of the first things that I have them do is a values assessment. It’s a simple but super powerful exercise to get clear on what matters to them, because our values, they shape everything. They shape how we see the world, the assumptions that we make about other people and also how we show up in tough conversations. Again, imagine being in a tough conversation and thinking why the hell don’t they understand where I’m coming from? That is probably because your values are playing a big role in the conversation. So, for example, if independence is one of your top values, you might assume that people should handle their struggles on their own, but if community is something that is more important to you, you might assume that asking for help is just what you do. Here’s the thing Neither one of these is right or wrong, but these assumptions do impact how we engage with other people, and I see this all the time, especially in sobriety coaching.

04:48
So I’ll give you a couple of examples. So let’s say that a family member offers you a drink, right, they do it repeatedly. If you value respect, you might assume that they are pushing your boundaries on purpose. But if you are someone who values traditions, you might look at their insistence on you offering drinks as someone who is just trying to connect with you based off traditions that have been passed on in families. Or another example might be that your friends you got sober and now your friends have stopped inviting you out. If you value connection, you might assume that they have abandoned you, right, Like, oh my gosh, the world is ending, my friends hate me, et cetera. But if you value responsibility, you might assume that your friends are respecting your sobriety and so they’re not going to invite you out to drink with them. Or you might recognize that it falls on you to reach out to them and set the tone for how you will or won’t hang out with them.

05:46
The last example that I have here is maybe you’re feeling judged when you share about your sobriety, right? If you are a person who values vulnerability, you might assume, like everyone should just openly like, receive your sobriety story with you, know, big smile, open arms and the same level of openness back to you. But if you’re a person who values privacy, you might assume that they’re uncomfortable with you being so vulnerable, right? Or if you’re someone who really values privacy, you might not be the one who’s actually openly talking about your sobriety. You might just say I don’t drink or I’m not drinking right now. You might be one of those folks, right?

06:27
So what happens when we do challenge these assumptions? What if that family member who was offering you a drink wasn’t trying to disrespect you, but they just didn’t know how to connect in a different way with you? What if your friends weren’t abandoning you? Right, but they were just waiting for a signal from you that you still want to hang out even though you quit drinking? What if the judgment you think you’re feeling is actually just their own discomfort with something they don’t understand when you’re talking about your sobriety story, right?

06:58
So one of the biggest things that I’ve learned, both in my recovery and again through coaching other people, is that being flexible with our assumptions can change everything your values. They don’t have to change, not necessarily, but even then recognize that your values can change as you go through different life experiences. Right, we are humans. We don’t stay in one stuck format. So your values can change, but they don’t have to. But when you do pause, when you do question the assumptions that you are making as a result of your values, and when you get curious instead of defensive because I got defensive with my mother Right you create space for better conversations and deeper relationships. You create space for better conversations and deeper relationships.

07:43
So, the next time that you are in a tough conversation, try asking yourself these questions. One what values are influencing how I see this situation? And if you need a values assessment, check the show notes. I will link a values assessment there. Number two what assumptions am I making about the other person’s intentions? Number three how can I reframe my perspective to create more understanding? So using these questions can help you in terms of just reducing your stress in terms of engaging with other people. Right, it can help strengthen your relationships and make some of these tough conversations so much easier to navigate.

08:28
So if this hit home for you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please don’t hesitate to reach out through socials. Send me an email about what resonated with you the most. Also, if you’re interested in diving deeper into this work, I am currently accepting new coaching clients. I’m open to new coaching clients. So, um, whether you’re navigating through tough conversations or building your confidence and sobriety, or just redefining your life on your, your life’s terms, right, I would love to support you. I will post a link to coaching consultations in the show notes as well, um, but yeah, that is it for today. Thanks for listening and I will catch you.

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Podcast Episode 61. Teaching People How to Treat Us

Posted on by Jessica Dueñas in Podcast

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

I dive into the powerful quote by Nedra Glover Tawwab: “We teach people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves,” reflecting on a moment at work when I had to assert my boundaries with a student and contrasting it with my past struggles as a teacher battling alcohol addiction and self-doubt.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, welcome back to Bottomless, to Sober and for today’s episode I wanted to talk about this Nedra Glover Tawwab quote we teach people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves. I’ll read it again, because it’s super short we teach people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves. So before we get into it, I want to be very clear about something, and that is that this idea does not apply in cases of abuse. So if you have ever experienced emotional, physical, psychological abuse, please know that you did not teach that person to harm you. Right? Abuse is never the victim’s fault. There is no boundary strong enough to control someone else’s harmful choices in the cases of abuse. So I just wanted to make that clear before I even start talking, right, all right, so now let’s go ahead and get into it. So we teach people how to treat us.

01:04
If you have been following me for a while, you know that I currently work with college students, but before that I was a middle school teacher and, honestly, I never thought that I would have to remove someone from a space under my authority at this stage in my career. Middle schoolers a hundred percent right, like absolutely middle schoolers they’re still learning emotional regulation. Sometimes they need to step out of the class to reset. But honestly, I forgot that even college students, who are adults on paper, are honestly still learning how to handle themselves right. Developmentally their brains are not done developing and sometimes they make bad calls. And when they do, it’s up to me to teach them how I accept being treated. So I’ll tell you a little bit in vague terms about a recent situation that I had. But basically, a student came to my office and they were heated about how I had handled a specific incident. You know they were sitting down kind of like fingers up in the air, you know, their energy was just sharp and they basically said that I owe them an apology. Now, In that moment I understood why they were frustrated, but I also knew that I had made the right call. So I stayed calm and I told them I’m not apologizing. And y’all. They did not like that answer. You know their voice got louder, their body language shifted and suddenly what was funny was that on my part I felt that old discomfort creeping in. You know, it was that old, familiar guilt from my classroom days, the kind that used to literally just sit on my shoulders when I was still drinking, still doubting myself and still unsure if I was doing anything right. You know it was a flashback to the old version of me. You know that moment.

03:03
It took me back to when I was a teacher and I was standing in my middle school classroom back in Louisville and I was just trying to push through, you know, the lesson, because I had a hangover, of course, and you know my head was pounding, my stomach was turning and my voice was. It was steady enough just to get through the lesson, but I was struggling, right, I was in the fog after having drank so heavily the night before, which was my daily pattern at this time, and I had a student I’ll call him Zavion. You know he looked up at me and he was just like Ms Duenas, you smell like alcohol, and I mean he was just grinning. He had no idea of the sheer panic that he had gripped me with by saying that, right, and so, you know, I just turned away and I pretended that I didn’t hear him and I was praying to the universe to like let that moment pass. Like let this kid get distracted by his peers. Right, let someone knock something over, anything to like distract the student and transition from that moment and thankfully he did move on right. So I felt safe for now, so to speak. But that comment that that student made Zavion, that middle school student, it stuck right Because, even though he wasn’t judging me, his words to me a hundred percent, were like a mirror. They absolutely forced me to see the truth that I was just trying to avoid, like I was not trying to be exposed. I was terrified of it and that was a fear that was following me everywhere back then.

04:32
And so, you know, let’s come back to the present, back in my current office, here on my campus job, with the student getting more, you know, verbally aggressive, I completely froze, even if it was for a split second, I just froze. And you know that old me, the one that you know used to drown in self-doubt and in alcohol, you know, would have a hundred percent crumbled under the under the pressure. You know I would have second guessed everything, I would have wondered if I had actually messed up and I probably would have even apologized just to like, make that tension disappear, right, and just please the other person and move on with my life. But thankfully, because I’m sober and because I do respect myself and because I do have a much higher self-worth than I ever had in my life. I had my voice, my true voice, ring loudly in my head and that voice said Jess, you’ve done nothing wrong.

05:32
And just like that I snapped back into the present, back into my body, and that old guilt went away. So I took a deep breath and I looked the student in the eye and I interrupted them and I was like listen, well, here’s the thing. I started to interrupt them. They definitely did not like that either. Like I said, they were not having a good day. And so then I had to say like I am interrupting you because this conversation is over and I need you to leave my office.

06:00
And that was it right. I didn’t sit there and just continue to take a verbal lashing just because I felt bad. Right, I know exactly what I am okay with accepting and not accepting from others, and a huge part of that is from my sobriety. Y’all, the version of me who drank would have just sat there, spiraling 100%, trying to fix the situation, trying to make everyone comfortable, fearful of the consequences, right, doing all of this at the expense of my own peace. But the version of me who is sober, who is clear.

06:37
She stood her ground, and that is how I now treat myself today, with self-respect. I won’t tolerate being treated otherwise, and so that moment brings me back to the quote, which is that we really do teach people how to treat us right. It’s not just with our words, but it’s definitely with our energy, with our actions, what we allow and, honestly, what we straight up refuse to entertain. And so I want to leave you with this right Reflect for yourself In what ways do you teach others how to treat you?

07:16
Think about your words, think about your actions, think about even what you tolerate. Do you stand up for yourself? Do you let things slide when they shouldn’t? And you know how do you model the kind of respect that you expect right? Let that sit with you. And, again, if you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear from you. Right, find me on social, send me a message, send me an email, jessica, at bottomlessandsobercom, or, again, just reflect on it in your journal, right? So thanks so much for listening today. Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Podcast Episode 60. You Can’t Save Them

Posted on by Jessica Dueñas in Podcast

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

In this episode, I shares my personal journey with addiction and the painful realization that no amount of love or intervention can save someone struggling with addiction—only the individual can choose to change. Drawing on my own experiences and a listener’s inquiry, I explain that while setting healthy boundaries is essential for those who support someone in recovery, self-care must come first. Ultimately, recovery is an inside job and that while support is available, the decision to heal must come from within.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Atomic Habits Book Study With The Luckiest Club⁠ – Starts February 6

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript:

00:04 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey all, today I want to talk about the idea of trying to save the person you love who is struggling with their addiction, because I’ve got news for you you cannot save them right. Here’s the thing earlier last week I think it was I received a message from a woman whose significant other is struggling with his own addiction and essentially the core of her message and inquiry was how could she get him to stop? We can’t right, and it hurts to just say that back to her, but essentially that is what my message back to her said. Right, they’re like. I get it.

00:40
It is so painful to watch someone struggle with their own battle. I remember in 2020 when I was with Ian and he was struggling with his addiction and he started to relapse on opiates, which were his drug of choice. I remember it was like grasping at straws. I had called his mom, I called his then sponsor, I hid stuff from him, I threatened with leaving him, I threatened with kicking him out of the house. Right, there were all these different things that I thought that I could do to somehow control the outcome, to somehow get the addicted person to drop their addiction. For me, as if I was so powerful and I learned very quickly upon his departure from this earth that there was nothing, nothing that I could have done. It was on him and unfortunately he was not in a place to stop. So I told this woman who reached out to me that that she can’t make her significant other stop drinking, that that choice has to come from within, from him, right? And so what do we do in these situations? How do we support those loved ones? How do we support ourselves? Right? Because here’s the thing.

01:55
The truth that I have learned in my journey is this we cannot love people into sobriety. We cannot love people into doing anything that we want them to do, right? I wish that love could have saved me from addiction. I wish that my sister, who practically raised me, could have loved me sober. Ignore that, sorry, that alarm that popped off. You know, I wish that. The people who had cried over me and begged me to stop drinking, you know, especially in 2020, when I was struggling so much, I wish that they could have protected me from myself. But their love, it wasn’t enough, right? Their calls, their concerns. None of that was going to change anything. It had to come from me, and that’s the truth.

02:44
The only person who can save someone who is struggling with addiction is the person with the addiction. I had to learn that the hard way right. I really thought that I could have saved Ian, and I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t, and even with my own sobriety, like I said, my sister tried so hard, but she couldn’t save me. My friends couldn’t save me. No one in my family, no one outside of me was going to be able to come and stop me from drinking. If love alone was enough to fix addiction, I would not have needed to go into treatment, because I’ve always been loved by others. You know, if willpower was enough to get me sober, I wouldn’t have again gone to treatment, I wouldn’t have spent years drowning in alcohol.

03:35
But recovery doesn’t work like that. It is absolutely an inside job, and so, yes, if you’re the one who is struggling with the addiction, you’re not going to be able to get out of it. You’re not going to be able to get out of it. You are the one who is empowered to change your life. The moment that you decide to take that step towards recovery, what you will find, however, is a community of people who are willing to walk beside you. There’s so many different places that you can go to for support, where someone, without knowing you, will a hundred percent have your back, simply because they understand exactly what it is like to walk in your shoes and struggle with a dependence to a substance. So there is 100% a life waiting for you on the other side. You are absolutely worthy of it.

04:17
But again, you need to understand no one is coming to save you. No one else can save you but yourself. But once you get started on that journey, do you need other people? Absolutely, doing it alone is incredibly hard. However, if you’re listening to this and you happen to be someone who loves someone that is struggling, you have to understand that you cannot save them. Your situation. You can absolutely set boundaries that protect your own peace. You can absolutely love this individual without enabling them no contact with the person who is struggling with their addiction so that they then can spiral even further and feel like they have even fewer things to live for. Right, definitely not saying that.

05:16
Are there cases where you’re going to have to go no contact because the person with the addiction is a risk to you or your family or your loved ones? Absolutely, there are times when that is the case, but if that isn’t the specific situation that you are in, then you don’t need to go to that extreme. But what you can do is set boundaries right, because what a boundary is? A boundary is a limit that teaches other people how they may stay in your life right. So, instead of going no contact, you can let the person know, with the addiction, what is okay or not okay for them to do around you and then, if they’re able to uphold that and stick to that, then that’s how you can show love, that is how you protect your peace, that is how you practice and protect what your limits are. But again, you can go no contact if you need to. If it’s a matter of protecting your peace, protecting your safety, protecting, say, your family, your home, your property, your career, do what you need to do. But you can offer them support as long as you’re not sacrificing yourself.

06:23
And the biggest thing that you always want to remember when you’re dealing with someone who struggles with addiction is that reminder, offering it to them that when they are ready, that help is out there, right. That when they are ready, you are willing to offer certain supports right. At the end of the day, they don’t have to go through the recovery journey by themselves, but you do have to protect yourself and your limits. So, at the end of the day, whether you are the one who loves someone who is struggling or whether you are the one who is struggling with the addiction, you’re not alone. Right? Addiction touches so many families in one way, shape or another, and so please remember that recovery is possible. There absolutely is hope. But while you’re holding out with the hope, right Like while you’re waiting for that miracle, remember that you are number one and remember to protect yourself, because if you aren’t taking care of you, there’s absolutely no way that you can be there for your loved one who is currently struggling.

07:32
So that is all I wanted to share with you all today, Food for thought. If you have any thoughts, any feedback, any tips that have worked for you and you want to reach out and share those, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email or on socials. I would love, love, love to engage more on this topic. It is definitely a difficult one. It’s a heartbreaker, for sure, when we wish that we could just love someone into doing the best thing for themselves and, the end of the day, they’ve got to save themselves. Thanks y’all, until next time.

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Podcast Episode 59. Love, Lies, and Liquor: How Sobriety Helped Me See Red Flags Clearly

Posted on by Jessica Dueñas in Podcast

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Valentine’s Day once amplified my feelings of lack and low self-worth, fueling my drinking and poor relationship choices. In this episode, I share how alcohol blurred red flags in dating and the moment I first admitted, “I think I might be an alcoholic.” Sobriety gave me clarity—red flags stay red now. Let’s reframe this season as a reminder of what we do have: self-worth, clarity, and choice.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. So this weekend, at the time of this recording, it is Valentine’s Day weekend and if you are anything like how I used to be, this time, this day, or Valentine’s Day weekend, et cetera, it might not bring up the warm, fuzzy feelings of love and connection you know. Instead, it might bring up painful reminders. It might bring up feelings of lack, feelings of lack of worth, and if you are in that space, I get it because I have totally been there For years. I let Valentine’s Day reinforce this idea that I was missing something and that that I wasn’t enough. Um, you know, I kind of carried that feeling anyway, but Valentine’s day kind of really put it, put a bright spotlight on it, right, like you go on social media, you see all these messages of love. Um, I have always worked with students, whether K through 12 or higher ed. So you know, everywhere I go, you know I see all these like balloons and flowers, and you know I see all the works happening Right and so convinced that I wasn’t enough. You know, even when I would have like these accolades and these external wins, so to speak, like winning teacher of the year, that still didn’t do anything for my, for my sense of self-worth, right Winning teacher of the year while drinking a fifth of alcohol a day, it just it didn’t help me any with my self-worth, especially when it came to dating and romance. I remember shortly after winning my teacher of the year award, I did what so many of us do who struggle with addiction, and that was still rushing into things and doing anything that I could to fill the void. When I went one teacher of the year, I had just gotten out of a relationship where there was a big betrayal that happened and I was left heartbroken and devastated and instead of taking that time right to work on myself to heal, I was just jumping into anything that I could to fill the void. And so alcohol filled the void, but so did romance, right. So did men. And so you know, it was just like, man after man, with dating, one disappointment after another.

02:22
What I noticed that would happen with alcohol is that alcohol would really help me ignore the red flags that would come up while dating these people. Alcohol would not just help me ignore the flags, but alcohol would actually almost erase them for me entirely, or just totally change their color, right, so that I could tell myself a brand new story, and I could convince myself that whoever I was seeing that it was okay. So the red flags they suddenly became pink, maybe even beige on occasion, and that was the impact of alcohol on my dating experience when I lived with low self-worth, right, I mean, I was so embarrassed y’all. I was so embarrassed by the men that I would let into my life. I was embarrassed about what it would say about me, and so I drank. I drank alone, I drank with them. It really didn’t matter. I would just drink to avoid facing the reality of who I was giving my time to, who I was giving my body to, who I was giving my energy to. There was one person in particular. We’ll call him Thomas.

03:35
After dating for a few months, we took a weekend trip to New York and we actually stayed at his brother’s house or apartment, because most people in New York really have apartments, and this brother of his actually was not a drinker, so there was no alcohol in the house. And so that weekend my drinking was suddenly limited. At this point I was already drinking a fifth a day, just for context as to how much I was drinking. So when my alcohol consumption was suddenly limited by the day of like not having alcohol, my body completely revolted. Right, I was telling myself that I had a stomach bug because I spent. You know, I was basically attached to the toilet, either stuck sitting on the toilet or stuck facing and looking down into the toilet. But deep down, you all, I knew what was really happening. I knew the truth. I was in withdrawal and the only cure was more alcohol. When I finally got my hands on some, I felt a million times better, until the buzz wore off and that sickness it just came back. It returned by the end of that trip.

04:48
You know we, we went back to the airport and we were going to fly back to Louisville this is when I live in Louisville, kentucky. And you know I had, finally, you know, whispered something to this. You know, quote, unquote Thomas, that I had really never said out loud before. You know this was in the months leading to my, the beginning of my recovery journey. And you know, quote, unquote Thomas, that I had really never said out loud before. You know, this was in the months leading to my, the beginning of my recovery journey. And you know, I, I whispered and I said I think I might be an alcoholic Right. And here’s the thing. The reason why was because we get to the airport right and again.

05:22
What I was starting to connect this weekend that I was in New York was that, when my buzz was starting to fade, I was starting to get violently sick, and so the only thing that helped me feel better was alcohol. We get to this airport I forget if it was LaGuardia or Kennedy and I go straight to the bar to buy a drink, but it was an early morning flight and none of the bars in the airport were open yet. They weren’t serving anything. When I tell you that I was driven to tears to see that the bar was closed because I was horrified at how sick I was about to feel, knowing that I had to get on a plane and fly, that was the moment when I uttered those words, right when I could suddenly just whisper, like I think I might be an alcoholic. To be fair, just FYI, at the time of this recording, 2025, I don’t use the term alcoholic to describe myself. I prefer alcohol use disorder or a person with an addiction. I like people first language. But you know, back in 2019, when this was happening, I wasn’t informed and I just use the term alcoholic just for context, but anyway. So I finally whispered and like, admitted, like I think I might be one, I think I might be an alcoholic. But here’s what happened with this guy Again, going back to these red flags turning beige or pink, right, this guy, you know, fake Thomas, because his real name was not Thomas, but we’ll use that name.

06:44
He like barely looked up at me and he was just, you know, he was on some. No, babe, like if you were really an alcoholic, you wouldn’t be doing all the amazing things you do, because, of course, at this time I had become the teacher of the year, I had been doing all these big things. So, of course, on the outside I looked amazing. And why would anyone believe that I struggled with an addiction? Right? So, you know, when I brought it up to him, he totally dismissed it, not to mention the fact that he also drank like a fish. But he pretty much was just like no, you can’t possibly be an alcoholic. Look at everything that you’re doing, look at your resume, look at, look at all that you offer to others. So he was just like yeah, we’re going to relax and get a drink as soon as we get back to Louisville and you’ll feel better.

07:27
And again, going back to those red flags turning beige and pink, I was like, yeah, sure, you’re right, you know. I let that logic of his soothe me, I let that logic of his erase the truth that I didn’t want to admit. This truth was bubbling up a little bit, just a little bit, and him saying, no, you can’t be an alcoholic, because look at all that you do. That was enough to pop those little bubbles surfacing, coming to the surface. And so you know, for the rest of that flight, I just rested my head on his shoulder.

08:01
I did my best to ignore those knots that were so painfully twisting inside of me and I just kept telling myself I just have to get through the flight, I just have to get through the flight, then we will stop, go to the liquor store on the way home and I will be fine. And so this is what I was settling for, you all in terms of relationships. I was settling for someone who ignored the fact that I raised a major concern about my health and my well-being. I think I’m addicted to alcohol was like, well, you’re fine, we’ll get you some more. What if they had been a different substance? What if I had said I think I’m addicted to crack cocaine, or I think I’m addicted to heroin? Would he have said okay, well, we’ll just go get some on the way home, you’ll be fine. Remove the alcohol and put in some other substances, and you can see how wild it is that this person took my concern and just wanted to offer me more. It makes no sense. So, anyway, I really was willing to settle for anyone, because my self-worth was so low that, no matter what I was accomplishing in the world, I was settling for anyone, as long as I didn’t have to be alone, okay.

09:21
But here’s the thing about sobriety it doesn’t just take away the alcohol, right, it doesn’t just take away the drinking, but it gives you back your clarity, right. So now, today, for me, my red flags, they stay red, right. When I see that in another person, I see it and there’s nothing suddenly fading it away, there’s nothing suddenly making it pink or beige. They stay the same. And for the first time, thanks to sobriety, I just see people for who they are. And so I started to realize that my self-worth, it couldn’t come from relationships, that my self-worth can’t come from achievements anymore, and it can’t come from the next big title. It has to come from me, it has to come from within.

10:15
The other thing that sobriety granted me, right, was learning that love, real love it’s not going to be found in the bottom of a bottle, and it’s not going to be found in someone who doesn a bottle, and it’s not going to be found in someone who doesn’t truly respect me or care for my health and wellbeing, right. It’s not going to come from someone who’s going to offer me a poisonous substance. That’s it period. So if today, if this season, if this weekend, if it feels like a reminder of what you don’t have, if it feels like a reminder of a low sense of worth or lack, let me offer you a different perspective.

10:54
Okay, this time, sobriety, let it be a reminder of what you do have, because you do have your worth, you do have your clarity and you do have the power of choice, right. For as long as you are alive, for as long as you are breathing, you are empowered to make better decisions every single day, even if it’s small, little decisions. And so you have your choice to no longer settle for anything less than what you deserve. And so, before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a question to reflect on, and that is what is one red flag, whether it’s in relationships, friendships or even in yourself, that you once ignored but now you can see clearly, especially if you are sober.

11:42
So take a moment, sit with that, reflect on it and if you feel like sharing, find my email, send me an email, tag me on social media. I would love, love, love to hear from you. But with that, friends, thanks for listening. Happy Valentine’s day and remember to choose yourself, even in your partnership, even if as a part of a community. Again, we don’t live in isolation. But remember to choose and prioritize yourself first, and everything else falls, falls in line. Thanks y’all. Take care, catch you on the next one.

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