Elizabeth Wilson's Guide to An Alcohol-Free Existence, Authorship & Authenticity

Welcome to another episode of The Sober Living Stories Podcast.  Listen in to one of my favorite interviews yet!  Meet Elizabeth Wilson, a dedicated mom, accomplished writer, podcast host, and entrepreneur, who guides listeners on how to navigate an alcohol-free existence while fulfilling a dream of becoming an author.  In our conversation, Elizabeth fearlessly opens up about her past struggles, starting from college drinking to her pivotal moment of realization as a stay-at-home mom. Through her authentic storytelling, she converses about the challenges she faced and the inner strength she discovered along the way.

In a world where the early evening calls for relaxation by reaching for a glass of wine, Elizabeth decided to go in a different direction.  Her path wasn't just about breaking free from alcohol; it was a transformative journey of self-discovery and empowerment. By replacing her nightly 'reward' drink with healthier habits, Elizabeth found newfound creativity, deeper connections, and a stronger sense of self in her daily life.

Yet, Elizabeth's journey didn't stop there. Understanding the importance of community and support, she actively engaged with a sober community, finding comfort and resilience through shared experiences. Moreover, fueled by her passion for writing, Elizabeth co-founded the Inspired Writer Collective alongside fellow writer Stephanie Oswald, providing a nurturing environment for writers to flourish together. Through her memoir, podcasts, and collaborative projects, Elizabeth continues to inspire others with her unwavering dedication to personal growth, freedom from alcohol, and the pursuit of her dreams as an author.

Elizabeth is an entrepreneur, business owner, mom, and writer currently editing her memoir, Lonely Girl, about her journey to self-love and acceptance. She also is a co-founder of the Inspired Writer Collective, Inspired Writer Collective (mn. co) an online community for writers.

To further connect with Elizabeth Wilson on her personal IG  Elizabeth | Memoir writer, reader, & reviewer (@ewilsonwrites) • Instagram photos and videos or her writing community on Stephanie & Elizabeth | Writer Community Leaders (@inspiredwritercollective) • Instagram photos and videos  Click the links for her two shows: We Should Have Recorded That  https://www.youtube.com/@WeShouldHaveRecordedThat and the Inspired Writer Collective Podcast: https://inspiredwritercollectivepodcast.buzzsprout.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to the Sober Living Stories podcast. This podcast is dedicated to sharing stories of sobriety. We shine a spotlight on individuals who have faced the challenges of alcoholism and addiction and are today living out their best lives sober. Each guest has experienced incredible transformation and are here to share their story with you. I'm Jessica Stapanavik, your host. Join me each week as guests from all walks of life share their stories to inspire and provide hope to those who need it most. Welcome to another episode of the Sober Living Stories podcast. Today, my guest is Elizabeth, a divorced mom to a four and a half year old. She's currently editing her memoir Lonely Girl, detailing her journey to self-love and acceptance, including her recovery from problem drinking. She's also the co-founder of the Inspired Writer Collective, an online community for writers. Get ready to be inspired as Elizabeth shares her story with you. Welcome, elizabeth. So good to have you here.

Speaker 2: 1:30

I'm so happy to be here, Jessica. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Can you just start at the beginning and bring listeners to the point in your life where you made a choice to be alcohol free and how that has positively influenced you and any other parts of your story that you feel would inspire change for someone else?

Speaker 2: 1:51

I really wasn't exposed to alcohol in any great way until I went off to college. In my household growing up, nobody drank. My grandparents didn't drink. It wasn't a part of any of the dynamic that I grew up around. Some of that is because there is some family history, a couple of generations back, of alcoholism. But I kind of went into college with very little knowledge of drinking, drinking habits, anything like that. I would say I had a typical college experience as far as just binge drinking, heavier drinking on the weekends at parties and social gatherings and not really consuming anything during the week. I've definitely had some nights where I've blacked out or have a fuzzy memory, but for the most part my drinking, especially anything in excess, was of a social nature.

Speaker 2: 3:01

As I entered into the career field, I worked in a very stressful career of forensic science. There's definitely an embedded culture of drinking to help deal with the stress of the work, the sort of things you're exposed to as you report the crime scenes, and the decompression afterwards is usually heavily alcohol-laced. I continue to notice that trend in my life, usually again in a social way. It's interesting for me because at no point during any of that did I question my drinking. I felt like it was still very accepted by society. There are plenty of people who I socialized with who drank a lot more than I did and because I never had to face any major consequences such as injuries or DUIs or anything, that would be a super big red flag that I needed to stop, I didn't pay much attention to it.

Speaker 2: 4:09

What actually happened as far as a turning point for me was after I left my job, left my career and my family moved from Minnesota to Colorado and we were living in an RV.

Speaker 2: 4:24

At that point I had transitioned from a working mom to a full-time stay-at-home mom, to a two-year-old. What I noticed at that time was a craving for my nightly habitual drink, and it would be a singular drink. It would be a glass of wine or a beer or a mixed drink. But what was troublesome to me was that I would have that mental interruption, starting at noon, of looking at my watch and wondering oh, how much longer till I can have that drink? How much longer would it be reasonable to maybe start the drink before my then wife gets home, or should I wait until she gets back and have it with dinner and, depending on the stresses of the day, the feelings of stuckness by being confined in an RV with a toddler all day. I was using that nightly drink as a coping mechanism for my anxiety, for my lack of a social life all of a sudden and my general just feeling of being lost and uncertain of what I was going to do next.

Speaker 1: 5:50

You know, that's really interesting because they talk a lot about with the disease of alcoholism, whether you have that or not. But they talk about the phenomenon of craving and you defined it so well with like a mental interruption, because it becomes something that we can't get out of our mind and then we start to move things around or say, would it be okay if I move that up to two PM and, you know, until eventually? With a lot of people it takes over their entire life. You know so, you said that really well. And also, I think, not knowing or thinking, when you look around you know well that person's drinking more than me, so clearly I can't have a problem.

Speaker 2: 6:34

Yeah, and that craving piece is interesting. When I tried to explain to someone recently because they looked at you know, at least at the point that I quit drinking, you know, oh, that's, that's not that bad, you could drink again probably. And then I explained that mental piece and those cravings and they were like oh, I can relate to that from my own addiction. I recognize that as an addictive quality. I didn't join any sort of sober community At that point. I went about a year before I reached out for a sober community.

Speaker 2: 7:15

I was not super open to AA for religious reasons and I also was really concerned about going into one of those recovery meetings of any form, affiliated or not, and feeling like I wouldn't be accepted because I wasn't quote unquote bad enough. Right With this with these communities, welcome me in. If I was saying you know, I think I have a problem, I don't want to do this anymore, would I be kind of looked on negatively? Now I know after having been in these communities that I was very accepted. But that was my perception from the outside and that's one of the messages that I hope that you know someone listening today who may question their own drinking and wants that support system of a community. Please don't have that same fear that I had. I mean, it was unfounded.

Speaker 2: 8:15

I ultimately found a group and they were very supportive of where I was and the healthy changes I wanted to make to my life.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Yes, yeah, and that's great and thanks for clarifying that, because it is really important and I haven't found a larger community of such acceptance on all levels as, say, like a 12 step or a sober community. They just so are like, if you're wanting to be there, they're allowed to be there, and that's a good for people to know and to understand that.

Speaker 2: 8:50

I ended up seeking it out because I wanted the social engagement again in my life. Again, this was about a year into sobriety and a year into living in Colorado, and I was trying to expand my social world but do so in a way that would give me still some buffer from socializing around alcohol-centric environments. Sure, and I had also, at that point around the one-year mark, started to entertain ideas that I could moderate my drinking, that I had broken the habit, because I did recognize that, based on the quantities I was drinking, it really was more of a habit of drinking than maybe necessarily an addiction to the substance. But the habit was still toxic, and so I wondered. I found myself wondering well, could I moderate? Could I maybe only drink at? Like big social events? Am I really never going to drink again at my sibling's future weddings, you think, through the whole gamut of major social events where alcohol is prominent. And that questioning is what ultimately took me to go down the stairs of the basement of the local church to a recovery group.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Yeah, and did you find answers when you were there?

Speaker 2: 10:21

For sure, and even just that support system of other people in it for the long term helped quiet my questions about moderating and it helped me see that I could socialize without alcohol, because in that year gap I still didn't have much of a social life because we had been living in a new place and most of my socializing revolved around my kids, since I was a stay-at-home parent. So it was all play dates and hikes and other things that are generally alcohol removed. So it was very helpful to have that community. Not only did I attend the meetings but there was a group of us kind of at similar places in our lives and we ended up having some sober game nights, some sober pizza parties and went to like a show together and just expanded our social realm within that group or from that group. So it was very helpful for me to have that support and to have activities that were adult-centric but not alcohol involved.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Sure, yeah, and I think that's one of the biggest fears is like well one, can I do this without the alcohol? Will it be the same? Is it going to be boring? And then when you go ahead and ask those questions and people say, yeah here, go here. Or if you do, go somewhere where there's alcohol involved, like we talk about all those firsts, like the first wedding, the fear of being there and the toast, and what am I going to do? And the first time it seems so huge and you just like, how am I going to get around it? And once you walk through that the first Christmas, the first Thanksgiving, where there's just more of everything you walk through it and at times you can step outside or you can take a breath or you can make that phone call, get to the other side of it, and then you know that it's possible and you get to do it again and then you start having a really good time without it. Did you find that as well?

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yes, I did, and some of the impetus for giving up the alcohol was I had drastically changed so much of my life in association with that move. I had left my career, I was letting go of all kinds of unhealthy habits, and so I felt like to hold on to this last one, this other one that I knew was unhealthy. When I was trying to be more physically active and get outdoors more and read more and all sorts of things like that, it just seemed really out of place in my life. When I knew that my larger objective was to be healthier and I had made such drastic changes in so many other areas of my life, I really questioned why I was holding on to that last piece. You know, at the time, you know I would treat it as a reward for getting through my day or whatnot.

Speaker 2: 13:32

And I picked up a book Sober, curious, and as I was reading that book I didn't get too far into it before I felt like, well, if I can't quit, then that means I really do have a problem. So then I felt like I had to prove that I could stop drinking or else I had to accept that it was really an issue and addiction and it was. I didn't plan my you know sober date. It was literally just the day I read that particular part in the book and had that, that conviction in that sense. And from that day forward, october, over two years ago, I just didn't drink again. I had, because it was a habit. I ended up, you know, replacing that nightly fun drink with LaCroix or a hot chocolate with marshmallows and other you know decadent fun drinks in the first couple of months.

Speaker 2: 14:35

But by about I would say by about the fifth month, I really didn't have much interest in an alcohol or even needing some kind of special nightly beverage at that point. The habit of having a reward at the end of the day has subsided. I just had just more general satisfaction with my day. I had less anxiety, I had better sleep and those things I saw pretty early on with cutting out the alcohol. But as my anxiety decreased, that need for a reward, that anticipation of the relief at the end of the day wasn't as necessary.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Yeah, and that's a great point, because I know for myself early on, before I even knew I had a problem with alcohol, as I did, I thought it was helping my depression, I thought it was helping my anxiety. You know why would I give this up? This is the one thing that alleviates all that, when in fact it really doesn't and it just adds to it. And so for you to say, hey, I saw positive change immediately is really great, because and I love that you're sharing your story, because it just speaks so well to the fact that this is our decision, that's your decision. You know you can get off whenever you want to. We don't have to wait until we're full-blown alcoholics Like you can live an alcohol-free lifestyle immediately if you say so, you know, and if it's interrupting your normal functioning of your day even slightly, you know, and like you did, you replaced it with things that were positive with health, with different drinks that didn't have anything to do with it, and you saw immediate results, so good.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Yeah, and ultimately, my bigger motivation was because I really didn't like the messaging that I felt like was being put out to my daughter that I needed this drink at the end of the day to deal with her. I knew that that was toxic messaging, even if that's not what I intended by having my nightly beverage, but all of that ruminating and craving that would happen for the you know several hours leading up to you know the end of the day, to dinner time, when I would crack a beer open. I didn't want that for her. I didn't want her to ever think that I needed that in order to deal with her. That was not my experience as a child.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Like I said, alcohol was not present in my home growing up and I didn't want that for her. So it did give me a lot of peace knowing that at two years old, she will never remember a time in her life where I felt like I needed a drink in order to deal with my role as a mom or to deal with my frustrations at my lack of satisfaction in my life with my career trajectory or my social life or anything like that. Well, that's really powerful and good. Yeah, that's excellent.

Speaker 1: 17:38

She won't have that memory. Yeah, and that's a good, you know. Thinking ahead and wanting to give her that example, you know, maybe at two she wouldn't have noticed, but maybe at four she would have. So just lay that down and say, no, this is not going to be a part of my life in my family, in my house. That's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 18:05

I mean even at two. She would ask for a sip of whatever I had. She would eat off my plate, she would want a sip of my drink and to have to tell her no, that that's whatever code word you use. I've said mommy juice. I've said you know whatever else, right? No, that's an adult drink, you can't have any of that. Right, and that's just gone now. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even have that as a reference.

Speaker 1: 18:32

That's great. That's great Because you know parenting it's such a big joy and it's also so difficult Sometimes because you know like within the course of a day you're going from zero to 100 and different emotions. You know it's an emotional job, you know you're dealing with their emotions and yours and how you deal with it and high-roading and not reacting so they don't model that and it's just, it's a lot. And so to be able to, you know, say, hey, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to cope with parenting by with this, that's. That was an incredible choice to make for you and a really good one.

Speaker 2: 19:20

Yeah, there was a void left with the move. I didn't have a local support system and I was using alcohol as a filler for that. Yeah, and ultimately I had to get rid of that and then replace it with actual support.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Yeah, so can you speak a little bit about the community of support you found for sobriety but and then also some other forms of support that you now have around you and career-wise and stuff that's just helped you. Your life kind of fulfill itself without it.

Speaker 2: 20:01

So I joined a local all recovery meeting so it was not affiliated with a 12-step program of any sort. Everyone was able and free to define themselves with whatever words, titles, labels that they felt pertain to them at any moment of time, and it included people who were dealing with alcohol as well as various drugs. And I really resonated with just with the broader level of acceptance I felt within the group and they just created an environment where I knew that whatever I brought to the table whether it was frustrations with motherhood or uncertainty about some of these other local groups I was joining and not understanding that I didn't want to be around alcohol and things like that. I joined a roller derby league in an effort to step out of my role as mom for a couple of hours a week and while the group of women was phenomenal, there was definitely a lot of integrated drinking, you know, post-practice, post-games.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Is that something you always wanted to do? How did you choose that?

Speaker 2: 21:27

Yeah, I loved watching roller derby. A viewer, you know a person in the stands for roller derby. I thought the exercise would be helpful, but also that comradery piece, and so that's why I pursued that. But ultimately it was difficult at least at that point in my sobriety to navigate the alcohol dynamic and still feel like I was making any sort of meaningful connection.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I should observe from an outside perspective that this group was tight knit and they, you know, would hang out and socialize with each other outside of practice. But I found once I joined that all of that socializing was around like the bars or you know, going skiing and having drinks in the lodge and that sort of thing, and that just wasn't going to be a scene I could operate effectively in at that point.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Yes, okay, so you made different choices, yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Right. I also found a lot of support within the you know my fellow mom, stay-at-home mom community. Ultimately, I've taken a couple of those friendships and they've developed further. But I did reach a point in my social life where I just needed some socializing that was outside of my identity as a mom, and that's where the game nights with the sober group were really helpful as well.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Yeah, okay, that's a good point to kind of do things that aren't affiliated with being a mom and what you love and you do apart from that. So also your writer and you're editing a memoir called Lonely Girl, which I, when I heard your title, I just I thought how incredibly impactful is that to me. Like it was just, it just grabbed me and I think it's going to grab a lot of people. Can you speak a little bit about your writing and how maybe it was positively influenced by this decision as well? Cause I know in my own life, when I was drinking I was writing, but when I stopped drinking I really wrote, and that's when things started to get published or paid for or just advancement. You know, like just it just kind of came to you. So how about your experience with that? Could you share a little bit on that?

Speaker 2: 23:56

Absolutely, I'd be happy to. So the Lonely Girl title comes from this hike. I was on around the same time that I sought out that sober community. So this was one year into living in Colorado, one year into sobriety. I was doing a circular loop that I would tend to do while my daughter was at half day preschool and I just was struck with this feeling that I felt so alone. And a lot of that had to do with what I just spoke about, about how my identity seemed to have condensed to that as just mom and I, you know, was no longer this career woman and I didn't really have a community to express my, you know, sober side in, or my creative side or my writer part. And so I really was struggling with my identity, with where my life was going, with who I even was.

Speaker 2: 25:01

So I started writing the book I guess we're right out of year now and the story does go back even further into my childhood about community, about identity. I've got my coming out story and things like that, my experience with alcohol and then later sobriety and then some of my struggles in motherhood. And initially the focus of the book was about finding that community, especially after a move and these shifts in identity. And then life continued to happen as it does and over the course of the last six months I've got divorced.

Speaker 2: 25:48

I became a business owner by starting the inspired writer collective and I got more serious about my writing. I found a writing community. I had my sober community. I had much more diversity in my social outlets and expressions of various aspects of my identity. So I went through a lot of personal development and self growth and that meant that my memoir has also done that. So while I initially set out to write a memoir about finding community and those external supports, the ultimate message is about self love and value and self worth and my own journey to finding that, my struggles with that and ultimately the results and how it shows up. My life now and how I show up for myself, how I show up for my daughter and also the immense amount of support that I've garnered within my community because of those connections that I've built and because of the way that I can show up more authentically as myself when I'm not hiding behind labels or alcohol or expectations and those sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 27:03

Yeah well, let's talk about that a little bit, because to actually head out and enter a community takes a certain amount of courage, because, especially in a sober community, because you're having to be vulnerable, honest and show your real self so that you can get to a real solution.

Speaker 2: 27:22

So my first effort was to figure out what pieces of myself I didn't feel had an avenue for expression. That's what took me to the sober group, because I didn't have any way socially to express that sober side of myself. That's also what led me to things like the writers group, because as I got started writing the memoir, I needed some support. As a writer, I am more introverted, so I tend to. While I will force myself to show up in some groups of a medium-ish size, I ultimately end up picking out a handful of individuals that I feel like I really resonate with, and then I try to foster those relationships one-on-one. That's just what I found works for me. So my friend Stephanie, who you know and who I met through my writers group she was one of the first people that I really felt like I resonated with within the writers group, and so we went out for coffee and now we own a business together. She's the co-founder of the Inspired Writer Collective. So in taking the time to understand how you, as an individual, can show up as yourself and form those authentic connections, that's what's really important, right, and with each of the strong relationships that I have now, that started back around that same time frame. It required a step of vulnerability. Now, most of the time I did that once I was one-on-one with someone, because that was the only way that I really felt comfortable in doing that.

Speaker 2: 29:13

But it required me to be vulnerable and for me to be open to the other person's vulnerability and, for an example, one way that that looked was the RV we were living in flooded In the middle of winter. The pressure regulator got frozen open and all of a sudden water was gushing into the RV in the middle of January. It was a nightmare. It totaled it. It was a lost cause and that was our home and all of a sudden I was moving myself, my wife, my kid and two cats into a hotel room while we looked for a rental that we could move into, and I was really scared.

Speaker 2: 30:02

But I reached out for some support within a mom's group, a hiking group that I had joined, and the facilitator of that group offered her guest room and guest bathroom to us for two and a half weeks and I moved my family into her house and we sort of had this amazing co-parenting dynamic between her two kids and my kid, and her husband was out of town for this time period. So she was solo parenting, so it was a benefit to everyone to have extra adults on hand, but it required being really, really vulnerable and ultimately you just have to make those choices carefully about who deserved your vulnerability. But it did require me to be vulnerable in order to form those really close connections. Sure, right, and you have to foster them.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Yeah, going in your real self too. That's really gets you to the people you need to be next to.

Speaker 2: 31:08

Quickest Putting on that false front. Personally, receiving help is very hard. And not only is receiving help hard, but asking for help is a whole different level of vulnerability for me. So even being willing to accept this generous offer was hard and in all honesty, it's probably because my back was against the wall at the moment as far as options that I was willing to take it. But ultimately those connections have served me well.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Oh, that's great. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about the inspired writer, collect collective?

Speaker 2: 31:53

Sure. So Stephanie and I have really benefited from having an in-person writers group. So there's one that's hosted through our local library here in Colorado and then there's also a broader group that they're called the Central Colorado Writers Exchange and they offer some intermittent like trainings, a monthly collective writing session with prompts, or sometimes it's focused on a particular lesson, and then they have a critique group where you can submit, say, a chapter I think book cap is like 3,000 words for feedback and critique from other writers. And so we've really benefited in our own writing from having access to these groups.

Speaker 2: 32:42

As I was working on the actual writing portion of my memoir, my sister was also working on her. She wasn't actually the one who encouraged me to start writing because she was doing like this 30-day write a book challenge and asked if I wanted to join and I said, sure, send me the link. And she looked at her local community at the time, which was Modesto, california, a much larger area than my tiny little town in Colorado, and they kind of laughed at her at the library when she asked if there was a local writers group, because there wasn't one. And that's the thing is, stephanie and I realized just how blessed we are to have those in-person resources and how beneficial that's been to each of our writing. And so I think that's the thing is that we're not only talking about the in-person resources, but so many communities don't have those resources, or there are times, such as summer time, when I'm home doing child care, where even I can't attend the in-person opportunities, or Stephanie is going back and forth between Colorado and elsewhere. So we were both really inspired to create some sort of online community and we had kind of different focuses.

Speaker 2: 34:01

And one day we were catching up on a Zoom call and I said why don't we just do this together? And she was like, yeah, let's just do this together. She was like why don't we, like I don't know, launch it in December? And this was like October and I was like, okay, why not? So we've tried.

Speaker 2: 34:27

We're working to curate a space that has accountability for writing. We have right now, five hours a week that are Zoom calls where people can join us for a writing session. That is, you know, whatever your current writing project is, wherever you are in the process outlining, writing, editing we do a quick introduction of what we're working on, what our goal is for that time. We set a timer, everyone blacks out their screens, mutes, writes independently and we come back at the end for celebrating our wins, our successes and any feedback that we might want to ask the group for. We've got a book club that we've just launched, reading like a writer, looking at books and analyzing character development and plotting and dialogue and tension management, pacing of the story. That we're really excited about. But it just comes from a larger understanding that we have personally benefited. Our writing has benefited from having community and that accountability of the community, and we recognize that not everyone has access to it and we even don't always have access to it because of the nature of our schedules in our lives.

Speaker 1: 35:41

Sure, yeah, yeah, if anyone's listening, that is a writer or working on a book, and I can attest to the fact that writing sessions are the number one way to get words on a page. It's like that accountability, and the scheduled meeting times for me were that's how it got written, you know, on my own left to my own devices and my own schedule. That gets interrupted all the time, I mean. But when I had those sessions in place and showed up, they were like any other appointment that happened during the week, and so it allowed me to take my writing really seriously, and so I think it's incredible that you've created that space it's called the Inspired Writer Collective and I think it's incredible that you created that space for people and I hope it goes really well and for you as well, you know, in doing your editing and stuff. It's that. How long are the sessions that you offer?

Speaker 2: 36:49

They're essentially an hour total, but the actual writing time of each one is typically about 40 minutes, because we have a brief discussion at the beginning and then we come back together at the end, but it's usually 30 minutes of devoted writing time over the course of an hour.

Speaker 1: 37:04

Well, that's great, really great, and we'll, of course, put your information in the show notes so that people can Go there to look. It's called the inspired writer Collective. You're also on Instagram, correct?

Speaker 2: 37:17

Yeah, so the Instagram will give you to all of our other links. Our community is hosted on the mighty networks platform. We have a tick tock and a bunch of Free downloads and guides and quick tips and things as well.

Speaker 1: 37:31

Oh, Great, great. Do you want to talk a little bit about your podcast? Did you have a podcast? Do you want to? I think I know I'd seen you on YouTube a number of times. Do you have a podcast that you do on a weekly basis? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 37:50

Sure, so I actually have two podcasts because I don't think you know moderately, it seems Stephanie and I have a podcast associated with our writing group and it's under the same name, inspired writer collective, and we are now on Apple podcasts as well as Spotify and we release new Episodes every Monday.

Speaker 2: 38:13

If you prefer a video format, you'll see those video episodes on YouTube, on our YouTube channel. I also have a separate podcast that I record with my sister and that is exclusively on our YouTube channel Because it's not associated with any sort of business endeavors or anything like that, but it's called we should have recorded that and it is our own early entrepreneurial Journeys, because she has started a community herself in the health and wellness Field and then I've got my writer's community. So we talk often about the personal development involved, like the struggles with doubt that we have and putting ourselves out there, how to, how we've chosen to value our communities and our products and what we put out. We just released a episode on the art of the pivot Meaning those times when you suddenly have to make quick adjustments, and what that looks like and how to handle that, and We've been releasing episodes Every week and those have typically come out on Thursday or Friday of the week.

Speaker 1: 39:27

I will definitely check that out.

Speaker 2: 39:30

Lots of sister antics. We were having all of these amazing conversations on the phone because I talked to her for a couple of hours each Day, as we are both stay-at-home moms, full-time moms, trying to run businesses, and we just kept thinking, oh, this was great insight. We should have recorded that people need to hear this and and the own reflection we have that a lot of the resources you find online are people who make $10,000 a month. And here do this quick thing use your email list to you know, market XYZ. And here we were both averse to social media and no email list to be heard of starting these communities and trying to find a way, as the primary caregivers and our families in order to provide some additional income and support for our families. And so that was our motivation for taking our conversations that we were gonna have anyways and Recording them and posting them.

Speaker 1: 40:31

I love that. I think it's a great another great title. And is there anything else you'd like to add? We've talked about being alcohol-free, self-acceptance, writing, writing along with the narrative of your actual life, so is there anything else you would like to put out there to anyone who's choosing to make positive change in their life whether it be putting alcohol down or anything else down that's just not working for them and how they can do that?

Speaker 2: 41:07

Well, I'll leave them with this insight. I was just listening to atomic habits by James clear and in the chapter I listened to yesterday he said and I'll paraphrase, but I have some scribbled notes here that in order to build a better habit, you need to find a culture that one is exhibiting the desired behavior and that is a normal behavior for that community and, two, you already have something in common with the group. This is what I found to be so helpful in finding sober community. This is what I found to be helpful in finding the community of fellow moms, what I am seeking and connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and podcasters, and Truly the essence of what Stephanie and I have attempted to create with our inspired writer collective.

Speaker 1: 42:03

So good. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story, sharing your insights and sharing your whole writing journey and what you have out there for others to also join in on. Be sure to keep an eye out for Elizabeth's upcoming book, the lonely girl. Connect with Elizabeth on Instagram at E Wilson writes, or her writing community at inspired writer collective. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2: 42:32

Thank you, and thank you for this amazing space that you've created to allow for that sense of community Connection and for people to show up with vulnerability and authenticity.

Speaker 1: 42:47

Thank you for tuning into the sober living stories podcast. If you have been inspired, consider subscribing and sharing with anyone who could use hope in their lives. Remember to stay tuned for more inspiring stories in the episodes to come. To view our featured author of the month or to become a guest yourself, visit wwwjessicastapanavikcom.