Blog

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Can joy and grief coexist? In this episode, I reflect on welcoming my daughter, Amara, while mourning my mother, Amable Rojas Vargas. From her journey from Costa Rica to Brooklyn to the complexities of our relationship, I explore the beauty in duality through the lens of sobriety and recovery.

I also dive into the grip of fear—how it shapes our choices, from plane crashes to everyday risks—and the dangers of isolation. Let’s navigate these emotions together, finding strength in connection and shared experiences.

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:

00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, happy February. Well, I mean, I hope it’s a happier month than last month, but we’ll see. Right, we don’t control the future. So there’s two things I wanted to talk about in today’s episode. First, I wanted to talk about fear. I do have baby. I’m wearing the baby, so if you hear little sounds, that’s what you’re hearing in the background. But I wanted to talk about fear and I wanted to talk about my mom my mom. I’ll talk about her a little bit first and then I’ll talk about fear. So, just in a personal announcement, I think if you’ve been listening, you know that I delivered my baby girl on Saturday December 21st. Amara was born. Saturday December 21st.

00:44
Amara was born and five weeks later, on January 25th, my mother, amalia Rojas Vargas, passed away. She was 85 years old. She had been living, had gone back to live in Costa Rica since 2016. She was that’s where she was born and raised and she immigrated to the United States when she was about 30, maybe 31 years old and she had moved to Brooklyn in the early 1970s where she met my dad and then she eventually had my sister and then, way down the line, 1985 had me. I was totally unexpected.

01:20
She always tells me this funny story where she was 45 when she was pregnant with me and she was not trying, and so I guess when she was pregnant and her period didn’t come and then she was having all these symptoms, she wasn’t feeling good. So she goes to the doctor in Brooklyn and the doctor was a Cuban doctor, so he spoke Spanish also, and she apparently had told the doctor like I think I’ve la menopausia, like I think I’ve got menopause or I’m premenopausal, et cetera, and I guess the doctor probably did a urine test, right. And then essentially he comes back in and he’s like señora esa menopausa tiene patitas, you know, saying like ma’am, that menopause that you think you have has little feet. And she always, especially in her last years, you all, she loved telling me that story over and over and over again, right, as her like memory declined, that story like really anchored her whenever she saw me and she loved telling that story to other people. She just loved, loved telling people how she thought she was going through menopause.

02:26
And then, surprise, there came little Jessica, right, little Jessica who grew to be like five foot nine, over 200 pounds, you know, and my mom is tiny, my mom was tiny, she was barely five feet tall, so you know we had a sizable size difference, but anyway. So the thing with her right is that she was such a complex human being she was. I promise you, she was the most complex human being that I ever loved, ever, ever loved. And what I’m so grateful for in terms of recovery and the work that it takes to stay sober over the period of years, is that we can really recognize the beauty of the duality in things. Right, I often say and in many recovery spaces you hear people say two things can be true at once. A hundred percent the case here, right, because for me in this postpartum period, not only have I gotten to experience the immense joy of having this beautiful little girl that’s like latched onto me all the time, right, and I’ve also lost my own mother, and so there’s that joy and that grief that get to coexist and remind me that being a human is complex period. But then my mom herself was such a complex human being, right, I have so many beautiful memories with her and it breaks my heart. I will never hear her crack another joke. I will never hear her say that story again, y’all. I will never hear her imitate that Cuban doctor telling her that her menopause has little feet, never will get to hear that through my ears again. I have very curly hair. I have ringlets, tiny little ringlets, and my mom has pretty much like wavy, straight hair and she used to love just touching my curls, right, because it’s just such a different texture compared to her hair. I will never have a human being touch my hair with that same affection that she touched my hair with. Now I will get to do that to my daughter. You know I will get to tell her little stories. I will get to touch her hair. You know I will get to do all those things, but I will never get that done to me again and that hurts so much. On the flip side, right, I have these beautiful memories with her and I have some difficult memories with her.

04:56
If you’ve listened to my story, we I’ve been honest about how you know my mom had. You know my mom accepted societal norms, which many people do. Right, most people live in a space of accepting societal norms because most of us we don’t sit there and analyze if something really is like in alignment with us or if it’s not right. Your average person is just kind of going through the motions, like they’re told that this looks good and they’re like, yeah, that is beautiful, okay, I’m going to go for it. And you know, my mom was one of those people. My mom accepted European beauty standards.

05:28
So growing up there were comments made about my skin tone. Sometimes I needed to stay out the sun If my hair was doing a little too much. We had to go to the Dominicans I get it straightened out with some major heat and like relaxer and all that. And then especially body size, right Again, my mom was five feet. She was petite, tiny, tiny, slim woman. I am five foot nine and I weigh 200 pounds now Right.

05:52
And when I was younger I was even bigger and so that was not okay with my mom. She was worried for me in her mind that you know a, I mean, you know the narrative that you can’t be healthy at every size. But then to this idea that I wasn’t beautiful because my body wasn’t small and I was taking up too much space, and so I dealt with a lot of fat chaining from her. And again, am I pissed at her for it anymore? No, because I’ve done the work to realize that again she was operating out of like what was the best that she could do, and I can now do better, right. So I know what not to do with my daughter, for example. But again, my mom was complex and at the time when I was young, yeah, all that hurt. And so, yes, eventually, right, I ate to feel better and then, eventually, when I had access to alcohol, the alcohol made me feel a lot better too, until, surprise, the alcohol didn’t. I became addicted to it, and here we are right in recovery now, years later. Here we are right in recovery now, years later.

07:00
So I say that to hold space for the fact that there is this duality in so many of us too, right, and when we can see the beauty in it as opposed to just blatantly harshly judging the negative, there can be a lot of growth there. Right, again, the negative side of my mom. I see exactly where it came from and I’m not faulting her for it. I’m not knocking her for it, right, she didn’t have an opportunity because she was too busy working and trying to survive, being an immigrant in a country that can’t stand her right To really do much reflection and personal growth. So I can’t knock her for that. But you know what I have the privilege to do that personal growth and to do that work and that reflective piece so that I don’t have to, you know, put my daughter through some of those same things. But that’s the gift that I have from my mom, having worked so hard that I got to have some privileges. What I also do want to recognize, though, is that there are some people where there is no duality to be seen, and so I just want to have that kind of like as a sidebar for anybody who maybe has had a parent that was abusive, right, or completely like, only caused harm. I want to recognize that someone like that, there, there is no duality, there’s no duality to them, right, and so if you are hearing this and you’re like, no, there’s no way I can see a positive to my parent because of X, y, z, totally fine, right? I’m just offering my reflections on my mother and my experience with her as a parent, so I just wanted to really share that about her.

08:46
I encourage you to reflect on in terms of just dealing with grief if you have dealt with any loss right. First, I want to recognize grief is not always just after the death of a person. You can experience grief in just simply the change of a lifestyle right. There may be pain in letting go of alcohol, for example. There may be pain in letting go of certain habits or certain people that did not serve you while you’re doing this work of growing yourself. So, in a time of grief, how do you show your strength right and what can you learn about yourself in this process of shedding? So definitely, think about your own resilience and, you know, recognize the tools that you might already be having. You know you might you probably have some tools to help you navigate.

09:38
The other quick thing that I just wanted to mention before jumping off today is I wanted to talk a little bit about fear. So again, 2025 has been wild. It is only at the time of this recording, it’s only February 1st, and things have been incredibly heavy, incredibly difficult, and the headlines this week, especially with travel, with air travel, are terrifying. Right, there have been two plane crashes in the last few days and for some of you, you may have a trip coming up and you’re thinking like man, I really need to go ahead and just cancel this trip because it’s not safe to fly. I’m always going to say you need to do whatever you need to do to feel safe in your body, because if you are not feeling safe in your body, a lot of things are not going to be working in your favor. Right, it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re feeling terrified. When you are in fight or flight mode, or even fawning mode. You are not making the healthiest or best decision. So if deciding to not travel is the mood for you, go for it. Is the mood for you, go for it.

10:39
What I do want to offer is just that reminder, though, that when, when the news gets scary, when the world is falling apart, right, what can we do to protect ourselves mentally as well? Because the first thing that happens for some of us, for many of us, when these headlines pop up, is that we automatically insert ourselves into that headline. So if there was again, for example, the Washington DC incident with that plane collision with the helicopter, we’re automatically putting ourselves in that situation and we’re assuming that it’s going to happen to us next. I’m not saying it’s impossible, right, anything is possible, but what are the actual chances that it will also happen to you? And I think that that’s an important thing to reflect on, right, because here’s the thing for so many of us.

11:32
The reality is is that traveling in a car is way more dangerous than actually setting foot on a plane and flying. And yet so many of us, on a daily basis, we get into our vehicles and we drive somewhere. And I’ll even add that maybe you yourself are not the one driving, because maybe you do have some anxiety and you don’t like driving right, or maybe you have a DUI and your license got taken away so you can’t drive, so you’re not the one driving the vehicle. But even then you might be setting foot in a vehicle that someone else is driving, and so that’s even less control that you have over the situation, because now you’re trusting someone else with your safety and your life, getting into a car where, statistically, driving is more dangerous than flying. I point that out to say that we still trust the process and we still get into these cars and we still go right, despite the fact that driving is more dangerous than flying. Why? Because we can’t stop our entire lives and stay locked up in our homes and not go to work or not go to school or not go to the grocery store or not go to our appointments, right, we can’t just suddenly not do these things for the most part. So we just trust and we get into these vehicles and we basically put our lives on the line on a regular basis, but we still do it and we don’t even think about it. Or maybe we do, maybe we do think about it a little bit.

12:54
So my offering there is that, the same way that you have that energy to get into the car and keep going is go, continue your trips. Don’t cancel. Don’t cancel living your life because of the news headlines, because the only person that that is hurting is you. Right, it’s almost like when I have told people in the past you know when the world is falling apart, and sometimes the instinct to drink kicks in. The reality is that doing that drinking does not fix the world’s problems. It doesn’t make anything better for you. If anything, it’s hurting you. That’s the same thing when you remove yourself from things that you’re looking forward to, when you lock yourself up in your home right, you are only hurting yourself.

13:40
And what works for me? But it only works based off, you know, belief systems, right, and if you have a different belief system, this might not work for you, but I’m of the belief system that I I’m confident that when it’s my time, it’s my time and there’s literally nothing that I can do to push off whenever that time is going to be, to push off whenever that time is going to be, and I’m pretty confident that whenever my time comes, it’s not determined by a power on this earth, and I’m pretty confident that it’s determined by something much greater than me or you or anything else that’s going on systems, the government, et cetera. And I share that with you if it helps you, because that is how I help, that’s how my nervous system stays regulated, when I trust that whatever’s going on is beyond my control and that I stand to not gain anything from removing myself from the human experience. It isolation is a really difficult thing to deal with you all, and isolation hurts us incredibly, incredibly. So the next time that you are thinking of isolating yourself, removing yourself from the world’s experiences, you can right. If again, if it’s going to help regulate your nervous system, do what you need to do, but also just remember at what cost are you doing this? And is it like? Do you stand to gain anything from removing yourself from living life at this point? Because in a sense, it’s almost like you’re you’re. It hurts, it really hurts, to isolate yourself and be removed from the world. So, anyway, I’m about to just go off into a ramble, so I’m going to use that as a hint to just stop.

15:29
I offer you this affirmation and hopefully it lands with some of you, and Amara does too. She’s starting to grumble here on my chest. But the affirmation is I allow myself to feel the full depth of my emotions. I do not walk alone. I am supported, loved and strong.

15:51
Even if you don’t have an immediate personal connection right now that you feel like you can turn to and go to, I want you to understand that someone else on this planet is feeling whatever you are feeling, and if you close your eyes and just remind yourself of that, that someone else has the same or similar experience to you, that can really help. And the best way to find someone else who’s having a similar experience to you is to open your mouth and and share with someone, just one other person. Even if they don’t know exactly what you’re going through, they can say I hear you. They can say that sounds hard and maybe help point you in a direction for support. So with that, you all, I will catch you in the next episode. Sending you so much love. Take good care of yourselves.

---

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Motherhood, success, and relationships often come with rigid societal expectations, but I’ve chosen a different route—one that prioritizes authenticity and personal growth over conventional norms. Living with 650 college students while navigating parenthood and sobriety was never on my life plan, yet here I am, embracing this unconventional journey. Listen in as I’ve learned to redefine societal norms and confront the often paralyzing feeling of shame.

Resources:

⁠Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Atomic Habits Book Study With The Luckiest Club⁠

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript:

00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, for today’s episode, I want to talk about the idea of breaking societal norms, but also battling the shame that can come along with battling and fighting societal norms. So, for some context, right those of you who may not know this my day job. Right, because you can be a coach, you can be teaching classes, you can be doing all the things. But in this day and age, a lot of folks who are entrepreneurs still have day jobs, and so I am one of them. And so for work, I work at a university, in the office of residence life, and I run a residence hall. So my first career in education, I was a middle school public school teacher, special education. I taught for 13 years.

00:47
When I got sober, which was in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, I needed to step away from the K through 12 setting because I needed to get my life together and get sober. In the transition from that job to working in higher ed, I was working with a private tutoring company, and then I decided to get back into education in the thick of it, and you don’t get much more in the thick of it than running a residence hall. I feel like I can compare it to almost being like a dorm mom, so to speak. Right Like fun fact. When I went to college and I lived in residence halls myself, I had no idea that every college has basically a professional staff member who lives in these dorms with students. Right, like who would have thought, but fun fact, they exist and pretty much every college has them and you have a team of live on professionals who they get staff housing and that is a part of their compensation for the work that they do. Right, because it’s really important to have some sort of professional available to live with these college students. And you have some on duty capacity. So, no, I don’t work 24 hours a day when I’m at work in my professional role, but sometimes I am available or I have to be made available if I’m on duty.

02:07
So anyway, just fun facts, right Like that, that’s the day work that I do because, obviously, like as much as I love being a life coach for people in recovery and things like that, at this time I need to make sure that the bills are paid. So you know a regular day job is required. So anyway, to give you some context about the specific community that I live in, I like I have this really beautiful apartment and it’s nestled in a building that houses 650 college students, most of them are sophomores, so I’m thinking about 19 to 20 years old. And when you think about, like you take a minute and flashback to when you were 19 or 20, right, your decision-making was probably not the best. Your brain was not fully developed, that’s for sure, and a lot of times you’re just figuring yourself out too. And this is your first time having roommates, right, your first time. All the firsts are happening at this age for a lot of the students that I live among and work with and help, guide and support and nurture when they need it, and all of that good stuff.

03:16
But the funniest thing happened the other day. Right, I gave birth to Amara, my daughter, on December 21st and the residence halls had been empty because it was winter break, so there weren’t really any students around, maybe a few who were taking like a winter class, but mostly everyone was gone and they all came back last week. The resident assistants came back two weeks ago and, again, for context, I run a team of resident assistants of RAs, right, I’m their supervisor, so, yeah, so they opened the building. Again. I’m still on maternity leave, so I’m around but not really working. But yeah, I’m obviously around. So I leave my apartment to go throughout the trash or you know, run an errand, et cetera, and my baby is here, right. So there is this little infant newborn, living among 615, 15, 19 year olds, which is wild and fun fact, because I felt at first like no one would ever have a baby. In a residence hall for people who work in this position, it’s really common for them to have spouses, children, et cetera. Again, who would have thought that entire families are raised on college campuses Did not know that. But now here I am doing the thing, right. So, anyway, the other day I had Amara wrapped up to my body using one of those really amazing wraps that I would die without, because it’s so great to be able to wear your baby and do things. So I was wearing her and I was taking out some trash to go to the trash room.

04:53
And as soon as I walk out of my apartment and I make eye contact with a student, I felt this hot shame just overwhelm my body and in my mind I’m like I only feel that way when I’ve done something wrong, but I’m not really doing anything wrong right now. So what the hell is going on, right? The thing with being sober and the thing about being in recovery the longer that you’re in it, those really uncomfortable feelings such as feeling hot with shame, where you want to like hide under a rock and disconnect from everyone and you think that, like you’re not worthy of connection and you know how dare you even exist on the planet. You can have those feelings and instead of just a hundred percent trusting those feelings and 100% believing that those feelings are accurate and the truth, you can stop and just get curious about those feelings and do a little bit of a deeper dive to figure out what is going on here, right? What else can be true? True?

06:08
So the old me, the Jessica, who was addicted to alcohol, would have felt hot with shame and would have immediately taken that shame at face value and been like you know what? There is something wrong with me, right? What’s wrong with me? Something’s wrong with me and I’m just going to jump and lean into this feeling that feels awful and believe it. And this feeling is a fact and I can’t handle it. And so I’m now going to go drink and go down this whole spiral. Right, that would have been the old Jessica’s behaviors. But Jessica, who has not been sober for years, felt this really uncomfortable feeling, recognized it, and I asked myself what else could be true, right Like what do I need to learn about myself, given this really uncomfortable feeling that I’m having? That’s so familiar, but I don’t know why it’s coming up. And so I had to slow down and dig in. And so here’s what came up for me, and hopefully you can go through this process for yourself and it can help you.

07:05
So, once I started thinking about what am I feeling ashamed about? The first thing is that I realized that it’s not coming from the students, right Like, at the end of the day, I am not worried about the opinions of children, essentially 19 year olds, who, like I said earlier, their brains haven’t developed. They’re figuring themselves out right, they are operating off the narratives that their parents offered them or that their homes or their communities offered them. So they don’t really know what they’re doing themselves. So clearly their opinions are not that important. But in the moment of that shame I really know what they’re doing themselves. So clearly their opinions are not that important, but in the moment of that shame I really felt that they were. So the shame really is not coming from them.

07:48
But the thing with the shame that I was experiencing was that it was rooted in societal norms that I hadn’t yet really been confronting, hadn’t yet really been confronting right. And I’m not a stranger to confronting societal norms right and challenging them. Because to get sober, I sold a house that I had in Louisville, kentucky, a nice house, a house with a yard, right, something that externally and in society would have been a marker of success. And I had to get rid of the house and move into my sister’s guest room with my dog. So from the outside that looks like a big L right, that looks like a huge loss. But the reality was when I confronted that norm that I recognized that I was better in my sister’s guest room with my dog because I was sober than if I would have stayed in Louisville, kentucky, in the nice house right, because I would have been drunk in that nice house slowly killing myself because I had alcoholic liver disease. So there was one example of a society, societal norm that I have confronted and challenged and understand that like I don’t live in shame because of that.

08:54
Another example of societal norm that for many years I challenged it was choosing to be childless. I’m 39 years old and I just had my daughter. She will be the only child that I have. I don’t plan on having more, but before her, before she came in the picture, I intentionally did not want to get pregnant, which goes way against societal norms for women, especially of childbearing age. Imagine I went through my entire twenties and essentially my entire thirties not wanting to have children. Even when I was in serious relationships, I opted to not get pregnant. And why did I go against that societal norm? Because it was in the best interest for myself, and it was in the best interest for myself and it was in the best interest for that child.

09:42
I was not going to rush to get pregnant by anybody, just so that I can say that I’m a mom, just so I can say that I have given birth to a human being, right? I refused to enter into the category of motherhood until I felt that I was in a place to be ready to do so. So what happened? At 39 years old, here comes my geriatric pregnancy, where I finally felt that I was safe enough as a person to be a home base and a rock and a foundation for a little vulnerable human being and I’m so glad that I challenged that societal norm of trying to have a kid when I was younger, et cetera, not to mention special mention to the fact that I once was married when I was younger right, a marker of success in this society and then got divorced by the time I was 31 or 32. Right, that was a technical failure right Again, based on society’s expectations. However, I was much better off being single than being with the person who I was married to. That’s a whole other story.

10:52
I’m not getting into it right now but, again, right, we can take any situation, any rule that we’re breaking, and slow down and ask ourselves like is this societal norm true for us? Is living by the societal norm serving us? Or am I just, you know, trying to regurgitate something that has been shoved down my throat? And if not, I can ask myself what is my truth? So now, moving into today, in January 2025, I’m looking at a couple of societal norms that I realized I had not really been confronting, because they’re all brand new to me, so to speak, because I only have been a mom for what a month.

11:33
So it’s this messaging that I’ve been kind of grappling with you should be married before having children. You should own a house to raise a child. Both parents should live under the same roof. So, for context, I am not married. I already just said that I live in, though it’s a very nice apartment. It’s a nice apartment, you know, bundled, you know, in the middle of a residence hall, right, and my partner and I, we actually we work together. We literally are right across the street from one another, but we’re not physically under the exact same roof. So we’re a non-traditional setup, primarily because of the work that we do, essentially. So it’s always funky to explain it, but essentially, like, think of us as being next door neighbors, essentially, but we’re just not in the same, under the same roof. So, with that being said, those are three societal norms right there that I am breaking by the walking out into that hallway and I’m feeling that shame, what others are seeing me. It’s that I just I hadn’t done the work to unpack these societal norms and decide am I fitting this or am I not fitting this, or does this serve me or am I choosing to make it my own definition? And so, as I broke down each belief, that was the clarity that came up for me, right, that none of these things. At the end of the day, none of them define the kind of mother that I want to be for my daughter, amara.

13:16
If you have not read the book Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel, I highly highly recommend it. The book Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel I highly highly recommend it. Kelly McDaniel in Mother Hunger defines what an ideal mother can be. Essentially that if a mother does not do the following three things, that her daughter will have some sort of a wound from her childhood experience which will then come up in her relationships with others, et cetera. So it’s these three things that a mother should be a nurturer, provide guidance and protect her child. Right, if there’s a lack of any of those three areas, that’s where you’ll experience some sort of a gap, and then the daughter experiences mother hunger. When and to put it out there, that’s the type of mother that I aspire to be. I want to be a nurturer, I want to provide guidance and I want to protect my daughter.

14:10
So when I think about motherhood in that regard, when I define ideal motherhood as that, I realize I don’t need a marriage certificate, I don’t need an actual house and I don’t need a traditional living arrangement to do that. I don’t need anyone but myself and, more importantly, I don’t need anyone but myself as a sober woman in order to accomplish these things. Now let me clarify before it sounds like I’m being miss, like hyper-independent I don’t mean that I don’t need anyone, period. I do need community, I do need support, I do need everyone in my life. I need my partner, I need my daughter’s father like a hundred percent. I need him and my family and everybody who’s involved in the childcare process. I’m not saying I don’t need them, but what I’m saying is that I don’t need my relationships with them to look a certain way in order for me to successfully nurture, guide and protect my daughter.

15:15
And so once I had this aha moment, right that I sat down and I broke down these beliefs and I realized that these beliefs don’t apply to me, it was like a breath of fresh air. I was like, okay, and so what I want to offer you, right, is that the next time that you might be experiencing shame, when it starts to creep in, just take a moment and pause. Right, there’s a reason why you’re feeling shame, but it doesn’t mean that whatever it’s telling you is true. It doesn’t mean that it’s a fact. Our feelings are not facts. So ask yourself, is this feeling coming up for me because of something I’ve done right, like, have I actually done something wrong or am I just buying into a narrative that doesn’t truly serve me?

16:10
Once you give yourself the opportunity to let go of these narratives, it really gives you the space to become who you need to be right, and so, in my case, letting go of these narratives has allowed me to show up for Amara and work on continuing to show up for Amara as she develops as the mother that I have wanted to be right, and so I couldn’t do that if I was still holding on to these requirements that were determined and put out there by society. I have to define what’s right for me, and then I have to move forward with what I’m defining for myself. But again, we’re humans we get busy, we forget to slow down, we forget to reflect, we forget to journal, and then it can be so quickly or we can just so quickly get caught up in thinking that really isn’t genuine to us. So that was all I just wanted to share, those thoughts for today’s episode. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll catch you in the next one.

---

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

In this episode, I share how my once-social relationship with alcohol turned into a hidden struggle during my early years as a teacher. We’ll explore the intense pressures of the classroom, the risks of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the urgent warning from the U.S. Surgeon General about alcohol. Drawing comparisons to the historical shift in tobacco awareness, I highlight the importance of informed choices and self-care in the education profession. Featuring insights from my Education Week interview, this episode is a vital conversation for educators facing stress and its hidden challenges.

Resources:

U.S. Surgeon General Issues New Advisory on Link Between Alcohol and Cancer Risk

Education Week – Why Stressed-Out Teachers Should Heed New Health Warnings About Alcohol

⁠Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Atomic Habits Book Study With The Luckiest Club⁠

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all. So last week I had the opportunity to interview with Education Week to essentially discuss the Surgeon General’s new advisory on alcohol and the risks associated with alcohol, but also talk about it with regard to my teaching background and my experience as a classroom teacher, who was also addicted to alcohol. Background and my experience as a classroom teacher who was also addicted to alcohol. Now, in case you missed it, right, recently, very recently, the US Surgeon General came out with an advisory with regard to alcohol and specifically in this advisory, what was outlined was the direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk, specifically the fact that alcohol consumption right, drinking alcohol it is literally the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Right, the first two being tobacco and, apparently, obesity. And that alcohol increases your risks for at least seven types of cancer. And that, at this point, the recommended amount of alcohol to drink is not a drink. Right To not drink that’s actually the best outcome for anybody. Right, the best drink to have is to not have a drink with alcohol in it. Now, this is a big deal, obviously, for a person in recovery like myself, where having one is not an option. I don’t want to have one, because for me, to have one means that I can never have enough. This is huge because, if you think about, if any of you have read Holly Whitaker’s book Quit Like a Woman, I highly recommend it. But one of the big things that she talks about with regard to alcohol companies, in terms of big alcohol, is she draws the parallels between big alcohol and, in the past, big tobacco. Now, when we’re talking about big tobacco, right, if you think about I’m not sure which decade I’m throwing it out my butt right here maybe 1950s, 1960s but there was a time period, essentially right, when there were no cancer warnings for tobacco use and tobacco was heavily marketed, right, like you would have the cigarettes, for I think they were called Virginia Slims and those were targeted specifically toward women, right, and because they were delicate, long slender cigarettes, that that was supposed to be something that women just wanted to smoke. But lots of people smoked back then because there was no awareness of the risk of cancer that was tied to tobacco consumption. Then, once the surgeon general put that advisory out there and the warnings actually came out on tobacco items, tobacco products, we did see a decrease in the use of tobacco. Now, has tobacco been outlawed? Absolutely not. Do people still have the free choice to consume or smoke tobacco if they want to? Yes, they can, but people have the opportunity to be informed about the risks associated with tobacco use.

02:58
Now, fast forward to now, 2025, right at the time of this recording. Now this advisory has gone out about alcohol and the risks associated with alcohol. Now do I personally think that suddenly all the alcohol is going to have warning labels associated with it? I don’t know, probably not.

03:19
I’m not really optimistic about a lot of things going on in the world outside of my control and I don’t necessarily think that big alcohol companies and that legislation is going to pass where these labels will go out on these bottles, right and cans and such. However, what I think is a big win is that we do have an authority voice, like the surgeon general, stating what the risks are in terms of drinking alcohol, because I believe everyone should have free choice. If you want to drink, that is your business. I choose not to drink because I love my life without alcohol. If you want to drink, that is your business. However, what I do believe that the public deserves and especially educators I do believe that the public deserves to know what the risks are involved in the choices that they are making, right. So if you want to have your drinks, please by all means have them. Just be fully aware of what you’re putting in your body and what you are exposing yourself to in terms of risks for your health later on.

04:19
Because one thing that I did not have when I was first exposed to alcohol I did not have the understanding that alcohol was or increased your risk for cancer. Right when I was growing up, the only story that I had about alcohol being bad was that there were these people called alcoholics quote unquote and that they couldn’t handle their liquor. And then I eventually became one of those people that couldn’t handle liquor and I thought there was something wrong with me. My entire life I didn’t realize that the problem itself was alcohol. Holly Whitaker, again in Quit, like a Woman, does an excellent job of pointing this out and writing this out in a beautiful manner. Highly recommend her book. But in the meantime, I’m glad that we have finally moved from it being said in her book to having someone like the US Surgeon General stating this.

05:08
Anyway, all that is to say is that Education Week, which is a news source for educators, typically in the K through 12 setting. They reached out to me to have a conversation about my relationship with alcohol as a teacher. A conversation about my relationship with alcohol as a teacher. The reason why is because, with this advisory coming out there, we know that educators, especially K through 12 educators, they like to have their drinks right. One of the surprising not really surprising facts. I had an intuitive feeling that this was accurate, but educators do rank among the top 10 professions who are most likely to abuse alcohol. This is data collected from SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. So we wanted to have this conversation and we wanted to have this conversation now, early on in the year, to talk about the stresses that educators go through.

06:05
In my interview I interviewed specifically with journalist Elizabeth Hubeck. She asked me Did I know how stressful teaching would be? And here’s the thing Going into the classroom, I had no idea how difficult public school teaching would be. And the thing was that I went into teaching directly after college, so I had had no real professional exposure to any other kind of work outside of classroom teaching. So, yes, I knew that it was stressful. Yes, my body was always on high alert because anything at any time could go wrong in my classroom, especially that first year. But I didn’t know, I had no frame of reference for what other work would look like, right, and so the daily stress of being in the classroom was absolutely overwhelming.

06:59
And this episode, in a sense, is just validating. If you are an educator or if you know an educator, pass this on to them, because I want to validate that, if you are a classroom teacher, that you are 100% not alone in terms of feeling absolute overwhelm. Right, I was hired on. I’m going back to my first year teaching in Brooklyn. I’ll tell you this quick story. Maybe it’s not so quick, but my first year teaching in Brooklyn, I was in the New York city teaching fellows program and, coming straight out of college, I was hired on to teach at this small public school with about 10 other first year teachers who were also recent college graduates.

07:39
Most of us were New York City teaching fellows too, which means that we did not have education degrees. We were pulled from whatever kind of major that we had and we were given a classroom and were told go, go teach. And we really we knew we were in the thick of the chaos, but again, we were all young professionals. So we didn’t know how chaotic our world was in comparison to other people, but essentially we would get to the end of every work day, right, and there was almost like this desperate need to lock eyes with one another and, you know, just almost silently, confirm and communicate to one another telepathically, almost that, yes, we’re going to happy hour, right, because that’s the thing with educators. It’s almost like if you have a good day in the classroom, you want to drink to celebrate it, but more likely than not, you’re probably having really rough days and you’re coping by drinking. And especially when you have a happy hour kind of setting, you have that opportunity to almost commiserate with one another.

08:40
So the thing with my classroom experience too, especially that first year, was that I had classroom brawls that were almost a daily occurrence, had, again, no training, no skills to deescalate these really highly volatile middle school kiddos who didn’t even know how to be comfortable in their own bodies, right. And so I feel like I just the sound of desks like screeching across the floor and chairs being knocked over, like that sound is permanently ingrained in my head. It’s like a soundtrack that I’ll never forget. And, speaking of people, I’ll never forget I had a student, I’ll say their name was Tyson. Their name was not Tyson, but I’m just making it up and I remember again, this was a sixth grade student back in 2008 or so, so way back, and Tyson adored Nicki Minaj, before I even knew who Nicki Minaj was. Like, this kid just like, knew who she was and like if you as a teacher had a misstep in your lesson plan and there was like a minute of idle time, just any moment where things were not happening actively in the classroom, this kid would jump out of their seat and just start twerking to whatever Nicki Minaj song was like playing in his head silently.

10:05
And the thing is that you know Tyson was a sixth grader and at that time I do know Tyson now as an adult and Tyson since has now come out but back then Tyson hadn’t openly shared that they were a part of the LGBTQIA community, right, but they’ve still have become a target for their classmates. Cruelty, right, because you know, for someone who was identifying as male or perceived as a male by their peers, rather loving Nicki Minaj, wanting to twerk and dance, nicki, that made the student a target. And the problem with my other students was, again, they’re, they’re so young too. They were just parroting the ignorance that they were learning at home, right? So they would throw slurs at Tyson and all sorts of hateful labels at the student Tyson. But Tyson also did not play around and would not let any of that slide either. So I admired how much fire Tyson carried as a sixth grader.

11:08
And you know Tyson would straight up, challenge anybody who tried to call, call them any names, right? So Tyson would be like, oh, you want to call me this? All right, well then, come say it to my face. You know they would just straight up, snap, and you know they would just like stand tall, like even as their voice is cracking, right, and before I could even intervene, y’all, this room, this classroom would erupt. And again I was a first year teacher, I was like 22 years old, and the desks were flipping, the desks, the chairs were sliding across the floor. You had a circle of students, you know, forming and yelling, fight, fight, fight, and security would bust into the classroom to break it up. And then you know suddenly like my whole classroom was destroyed right, furniture everywhere, and having to put it back together.

11:56
But the thing was, scenes like this were very common, not just in my classroom, but in the classrooms of the other first year teachers that we were in, right, we were literally drowning in this sea of chaos and that shared stress was absolutely creating a strong bond for us. But we were bonding at happy hour over glasses, over bottles, and so what for me was becoming what I thought was just simple socializing, right, it very quickly was becoming a habit and then eventually it became a crutch. And then eventually, you know, it was a trap that I was in, that I didn’t even realize that I was basically setting for myself. You know, from this happy hour pattern as a teacher is where I first started to hide my alcohol consumption. Right, so we would be, you know, at our usual happy hour spot, and there was one time that I had had a couple of drinks, probably too quickly, and so my words were literally tumbling out of my mouth. Right, my words were too fast and they were getting too slurred, you know, because I was venting about a surprise classroom observation that day, and I remember that day, my observation went so badly that, in a moment of complete frustration, I literally stopped trying to teach altogether in the middle of that observation, with the principal in the back of the room and I said to my students do you want me to get fired? Because my boss is right there in the back of the room and the way this is going it’s looking like I can’t teach y’all. And I remember I pointed straight to the principal in the back who was just like hunched over her laptop, you know, taking notes. And um, you know, back at the bar like I was just downing my drinks and talking about that and how I was just like man. I thought this principal was going to like send my behind pack in and had to go.

13:56
And I was getting up to go get another drink when one of my coworkers at that time just abruptly stopped me and was like whoa, jess, I totally was drinking too fast. But when they called me out, you know those words they didn’t just land on me, like they literally sliced through me. It was like in that moment I was taken back to being a kid and being called out for, say, eating too much, when I used to get in trouble for overeating, for example, with my mom. So I mean that humiliation was just. It was just a lot, it was a lot. My cheeks were flush with shame and all I could say to myself is what is wrong with you, right? And I used to ask myself that all the time since I was a kid what is wrong with you? So I didn’t drink anymore there at happy hour.

14:49
But on my way home this was New York city, so I was riding the subway. When I got off the train and I was walking out of the train station, I saw that there was a liquor store and you know, I had the thought like, ah, like I could keep this going at home and no one’s going to say anything to me there, right? So I went in, I got a little bottle, slipped it into a brown paper bag, put that bag inside of my work bag and you know, I walked home feeling a little bit cocky, feeling a little bit good about myself and just thinking like y’all ain’t catching me drinking more than you, right? That was, that was the logic that I had, and from that point forward I always made it a point to never be seen drinking more than whoever I was with. So if somebody I was with was drinking like six drinks, I would have six.

15:38
But if I was in the company of someone who slowly nursed one drink, I was slowly nursing one drink and you know, just like that, just like that you all, my secret of drinking started, and it started from some of the stress of being a classroom teacher. Right, I’m not saying that that was the start of my addiction to alcohol. If you’ve listened to my story before I talk about more of the deeper roots, go back to my relationship with food, and I also think that one’s complicated descent into addiction goes through many layers, and this is just one of the layers. Right, because I have a whole college time story too. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about the teacher part because, again, if you are an educator, if you are a teacher, and you are struggling right now, I promise you that you are not alone. I promise, you, promise, you, promise you. Again, teaching is one of the 10 professions, according to the statistic cited in the article that I’m a part of, where the stress drives people to drink, and so you don’t have to spend the rest of the year attached to the bottle.

16:51
Don’t hesitate to reach out for support. Again, I will start coaching people again, starting in March of this year. So if you are interested in one-to-one coaching, check that out. If you’re looking for a community online communities like the Luckiest Club are great, great, great places. If you need free support, there’s always Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s not my preferred support, but it works for a lot of people right. So whatever you need to take care of yourself at this time, go do it. You deserve to free yourself. So thanks. I’ll catch y’all in the next episode.

---

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

In this episode of Bottomless to Sober, I return after a long (super long) hiatus to share life updates, including the birth of my daughter, Amara, and my journey into motherhood. I reflect on how sobriety has equipped her to navigate the fear and uncertainty of major life changes, from her early delivery due to health concerns to the sleepless nights of newborn care. I also revisit into the importance of setting and honoring boundaries in 2025, encouraging you to stay committed to your limits and prioritize self-care amid life’s challenges.

Resources:

⁠Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

⁠Atomic Habits Book Study With The Luckiest Club⁠

⁠Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts March 3⁠

Transcript

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hello, and I would want to say happy 2025, but we’re about two weeks into this to take care of yourself and to cope and to manage with everything that the world throws at us, because it seems like we live in forever unprecedented times and I don’t think that we will ever live in precedented times ever again. So a couple of quick updates. It’s been a long time since I have recorded a single podcast episode, a single podcast episode, and the funny thing is I was moved to record today because a family member who I had had a disagreement with and who I’ve mentioned before on this podcast, decided to, I guess, listen to enough episodes of the podcast to hear something about themselves that they did not like and call me out on it, which they already knew. And I was like you know what? Like, that was the fire that I needed to start recording again. Like, yeah, like, let me, let me go ahead and start recording again. So, y’all, I am back and I cannot promise you with any consistency that I’m going to be back, but I’m going to record when I can and when I feel fired up, and I do feel fired up today. So, fun fact, I’m a mom. I had my daughter, amara on December 21st.

01:34
I did not talk about my pregnancy at all on the podcast last year because I didn’t want to. I really just wanted to savor and enjoy this pregnancy on my own, and it was great. It was great I came out publicly about my pregnancy towards the end. I shared in late October, early November, and then I had the baby in December. So I really gave myself and my family a lot of time to enjoy my pregnancy on my own, trying to think of what else I was going to say.

02:02
Sorry for the random pause. It’s been a long time since I’ve recorded anything, so it’s just like Ooh, my brain is, my brain is a little bit mushy. Another thing I will say is that my daughter, amara, is currently strapped to my chest, sleeping as we speak, and so if you hear any random baby noises, that’s just going to be a part of my background noise, I assume, moving forward, as I don’t plan on editing her out. You know I’m recording as my life is and I’m a mom now, so there’s a little human on me. Fun facts, right, but anyway, um, so yeah, I I’ll share a little bit about actually having Amara, right.

02:40
So she was originally due January 6th. That would have been when I hit 40 weeks of pregnancy. However, because my pregnancy was determined high risk due to my quote unquote advanced maternal age of being 39 years old and pregnant, the doctors from early on told me we would deliver week 39, which would have been around December 29th. Me we would deliver week 39, which would have been around December 29th. However, on Thursday, december 19th, when I was going in for one of my routine checkups, uh, things changed quickly. My blood pressure was starting to spike for about a week and they were worried. The medical team was worried that I was developing preeclampsia, which can be a deadly blood pressure spike that can impact your liver and all sorts of other things, and so they were looking out for that. And around this time, my mother had also had a fall where she broke her hip, and that was a very solid health scare where we didn’t know at certain times if my mom was going to make it. So my blood pressure, in my opinion, was justifiably elevated, right, because my mom was not doing well. However, the doctors didn’t care about that. They just cared about the fact that my blood pressure was elevated and I was pregnant. So, regardless of the cause, right, my risk for preeclampsia was significant enough where, as soon as I hit 37 weeks, they said hey, it’s time for us to go ahead and deliver this baby. She’s full term and we need you to be healthy, we need your baby to be healthy.

04:20
And so what I will say is that, as as soon as the doctors told me that I had to deliver, like a few weeks early, my eyes just completely welled up with tears. Like, yes, I wanted to meet my daughter. Of course I did, but I was holding on to that December 29th y’all. Like that was my lifeline, um, you know. And it wasn’t because I wasn’t prepared. I’m a type A person so you better believe that I had that nursery put together for her in September. There were so many people including, I’m sure, some of you as listeners who contributed um to the registry, right. So I had all the things ready for her.

04:59
But mentally I didn’t feel like I was ready. Yes, I, I wanted to get pregnant and I was already nine months pregnant, so you would think that I would have been ready, but there was just something in me that was was just not ready for the official, the formal transition, right. Like I was terrified of going into labor and of stepping into motherhood. And so when the doctor said we’re probably going to need to deliver, we’ll call you and confirm in a couple hours I left that doctor’s office and I ran to the grocery store and I filled my cart with anything I could think of. I was just in this panic, almost frenzied phase of oh my goodness, like I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready. But here’s the thing Even though I was experiencing that panic in that moment, the reality was that I was ready. Right, sobriety had always prepared me for navigating fear and uncertainty, right? Yes, this was a new test, but deep down, there isn’t anything that I cannot face, that I won’t emerge stronger for facing.

06:14
There is a Brianna Weiss entry of the pivot year that I love and I adore, and it’s entry 170 of the pivot year, and this is what Brianna Weiss wrote how do you finally stop worrying? You realize that the version of yourself that will be able to handle every situation that might arise in your life will be born in the precise moment that situation comes to be. No matter where your path might take you or where you go, the version of yourself that you will need in those moments will emerge right as you need it and not a second before. You cannot call upon all the parts of yourself to exist at once. Different versions of you are needed for various aspects of your life. Find peace in knowing that you are more than one thing than one thing, and within the layers of who you are, both visible and invisible, exists a strength that is equal to or more powerful than anything you may come to face. Right, I love that.

07:21
And at the end of the day, when the doctor did call me back and said hey, jess, it’s time to report, we need you at 9 pm in the hospital for induction, yes, I let out some heavy sobs oh, my gosh. And I was like holy crap, this is it, isn’t it? But you know what, two days later, 36 hours of labor later, when that baby girl, amara, was born and I crossed that threshold into motherhood, I realized that I would be good. Even if this is all brand new to me, even if it’s also confusing sometimes and exhausting, sobriety has taught me that I can face anything and all things and still be just absolutely fine. And you know, the funny thing is that now you know my baby. She’s been here for a couple of weeks. She’s about three, three and a half weeks old and there’s certain principles about sobriety that just sort of translate. And and that’s what I love about this recovery work that we do is that once we get the handle of staying sober, we can take those basic principles and apply them to everything else. Right.

08:38
And so with sobriety being patient right, not giving up no matter how tempting it is to and that’s the same thing with this baby thing. Right, it’s only been a few weeks and the first week especially was so, so challenging, just kind of navigating the hospital issues and figuring out things with, like, her nutrition and some health scares that we had. There was a lot there and there were a few moments where I was like I don’t know how I’m getting through this, but I did, but I did. I’ve gotten through 100% of the worst days of my life. There’s absolutely no reason why I can’t get through motherhood. Right. And the same thing with sobriety Also, just the value of showing up every day.

09:28
Even when it’s hard, eventually things start to get easier. Again, it was a harsh reality to wake up every two to three hours in like the first week and a half, two weeks. Now there’s more flexibility there in terms of it still hurts like hell don’t get me wrong to wake up every two to three hours, but oh, and you hear her making her little cue noises. But we get through it and I’m getting more comfortable with the schedule of being a mom, right? And so, again, you go through the heart adjustment and you start to slowly get through it, and that that’s what I’m learning, and from what I hear from all the mothers with more experience than me is that it continues to just get better, right? So, with that being said, I wanted to also just talk a little bit about today the power of boundaries and just those reminders of how powerful boundary setting is and continues to be in 2025.

10:35
Now, I had completed a book study with the luckiest club for the book of boundaries back in October, and it has been very important to continue to set the boundaries that are necessary. Like I said, um earlier, there, I had had an interaction with a family member who was insisting that you know we should, you know, be in touch and that you know I had to have this daughter so that they should be, you know, receiving pictures and like having the opportunity to celebrate her, and you know all these different things, except that, at the end of the day, right, that’s not happening because it’s a decision that I made and it’s a decision that I’m I’m sticking with Right. And so if any of you in this time of the year, now that the holidays have passed and now that we’re slowly getting into January, right and quitting day passed the other day quitting day for those of you who don’t know is I want to say it’s the second Friday in January where people set resolutions and then, by then, they decide to quit them. And what I’m encouraging you to do is to stick to whatever you, whatever your limits are, continue to honor them. Right, the the hard work is continuing to stay true to whatever you said that you were going to do, because it’s very easy to get wrapped up in what other people have to say.

11:59
It is very easy to start to feel guilty and to start to feel uncomfortable. And what I always say to other people, when you start to feel guilt about setting boundaries and limits for yourself, is what Dr Pooja Lakshman says in Real Self-Care about guilt, and that is that she reminds us that guilt is always going to be there. It’s just a default feeling that we’re going to feel, and we can treat it like those check engine lights that we have on cars right, if you’re driving on a highway and you see that check engine light, it doesn’t mean that suddenly you abruptly stop driving, you pull over and that’s it. You’re not getting to your destination. No, you continue to get to your destination, you continue driving, you’re aware of that light going on and maybe you’ll check it later but you’re not letting that light completely derail what you’re doing.

12:49
And so when I started to feel slight guilt, when I started to question myself and my boundaries earlier today, I had to stop and remind myself that, no, I made this decision for a good reason, and the people who I allow in my life, they earned their spot in my life. People don’t earn their spot in my life simply because we’re related. They have to actually earn their spot in my life. And so same thing for you. If you are in a situation where you are questioning things, where you are doubting the limits that you put on yourself, remind yourself of your why, remind yourself of why you made the decision that you made and go with it. The other thing worth noting is that if you are exploring your why and that why is no longer relevant, is no longer powerful and you are giving yourself, you’re questioning it. You can also give yourself permission and that flexibility to change your mind right. We don’t have to. The boundaries that we set don’t have to stay boundaries forever. It’s good to reevaluate and when you reevaluate you can decide if you want to keep that boundary as it is or if you want to change it or adjust it.

14:11
So with that, really, I’m just going to kind of end up just rambling on if I stay on here, but I just wanted to get back on and I wanted to use my voice and I wanted to say hello. There’s so much that has happened, I suppose, and this is just the beginning of catching up. But thank you for listening, thank you for following my randomness on today’s episode and I look forward to getting getting back on here with y’all and talking more. So thanks so much for listening and I hope to catch you all soon on the next episode. Bye.

---

Return to Podcast Directory