#73 – Episode 73 – We Are The Luckiest with Laura McKowen

VeronicaValli

How does a mother overcome her shame and guilt? In this week’s episode, Veronica interviews Laura McKowen about her new book ‘We Are The Luckiest.’ Laura talks frankly about how her drinking affected her daughter, the shocking incident that left her crushed with shame and how she overcame her guilt to finally get sober.

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What This Episode Is About

Sobriety is the starting point for achieving your true potential. The sober journey you take within yourself is such a gift that once you’ve gone through you it, you’ll be so grateful that you took the leap because your new reality is nothing you could have ever dreamed of. And that’s a journey only we can take – we are the lucky ones.

Who better to share more than the one who wrote the book? Laura McKowen is a teacher, speaker, author and friend and she’s here on this week’s episode sharing the biggest lessons from her journey moving from drunk mom to leading voice in the sobriety community.

Laura led a successful Mad Men-esque career in advertising that came with all the parties and the booze you’d expect. But behind the curtains of her success, there was turmoil – a drinking problem that she didn’t want to acknowledge which ran so deep it put her daughter in danger. Despite the strong love she felt for her daughter, she fought and reasoned and bargained for years to keep up her addiction, feeling sorry for herself because “Everyone else is so lucky that they get to drink and have fun without the downside.” Eventually, after scraping rock bottom one too many times, she decided to give sobriety a real chance.

“I always thought my love for my daughter would override my drinking, but it didn’t. It’s THAT strong.” – Laura McKowen

I met Laura when she was 6 months sober and there are so many parallels in our stories. I’m happy I got to know her and now she’s a powerful ally in the fight for normalizing sobriety. She believes that WE are the lucky ones because “regular” folks will never understand the depths of pain we had to fight through and will never have the motivation we have built to see us through. We’re unstoppable.

“Pain is the great motivator, however, it’s completely in your power how long you allow it to last.” – Veronica Valli

Laura is now a fresh, shining voice in the recovery community helping people “say yes to a better life” through the retreats she leads and speaking openly and irreverently about her journey with sobriety on her blog. Laura is also about to release her book, We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life in January 2020.

“Nothing anybody did was ever personal.” – Veronica Valli

In this episode, hold on to your seat because we go into painful detail about one of the most harrowing drunk mom moments of her life, how she finally came to sobriety, how does a mother overcome shame and guilt, what she sees as the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to therapy and self-healing and so much more.

  1. Time heals all wounds. It’s a cliche because it’s true. Time gives you space away from the pain and shame and room to change your perspective. You may think that you’ve hit rock bottom and there’s no way you can recover from it in front of your family, your job, your spouse. But leave it to time and everything is possible. As Lauren proves, you can recover, and you will succeed.
  2. Sharing your experience shines a light in the dark corners. When we live in the dark, the incongruence drives us further into shame and guilt. But when we let the light in, open ourselves up to help others by speaking our truth, the dark spots will fade away. We’ll step into integrity, into self-respect and take a path towards self-love and acceptance. Stand up and tell your story with the world, or at the very least, your next AA meeting.
  3. Release responsibility for what’s not yours anymore. Take full responsibility for what’s yours right now. The person you were before you became sober is not the person you are right now. Forgive yourself and release the negativity of the person you used to be. Separate yourself from the things you used to do and the people you used to hang around. Because you’re walking a new path and all your energy needs to be focused on looking forward, and not dealing with the pain in your neck from looking back.
  4. Work with your body to heal your traumas. Laura shared with handling recovery in the West is that we’re too focused on the mental, emotional and spiritual, but not enough focus is spent on the physical. It’s becoming more popular now with things like yoga and EFT, but while talk therapy is good and those non-physical treatments, without physical treatment, we still embody the traumas and they can come back at any time because they’re still a part of us. If you’re doing the mindset work, but not getting the help you need to release the traumas physically, seek out help and begin working on it asap.
  5. Mind your relationships. Dealing with relationships is a massive stumbling block in sobriety. Laura compares her time with it as equal to stopping drinking. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough tools for that as there are for becoming sober and it triggers all your past traumas. letting go of the obsession of self is key to that.

Resources Mentioned

Connect with Laura McKowen

Other Resources

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