Sober Living Stories
Welcome to the "Sober Living Stories" podcast, a platform built on the power of personal stories. Each Tuesday, Jessica Stipanovic, your host, shines a spotlight on individuals who have undergone remarkable life transformations to inspire hope in listeners worldwide.
Each guest shares their story giving examples of bold beginnings disguised as endings and life lessons that teach how the darkest moments often hold the key to unlocking the brightest light.
This podcast inspires positive life changes. Whether you're sober curious, living an alcohol-free lifestyle, have overcome a challenge and lived to tell about it, or support someone who wants to shed a habit in light of a new one, our episodes promise to leave you feeling understood, hopeful, and motivated to create meaningful transformations in your life.
Join us for powerful new episodes every Tuesday where the most difficult life experiences serve to uplift and inspire. Regardless of your background or belief system, the "Sober Living Stories" podcast is your ultimate destination for uplifting narratives where hope shines from the most unexpected places.
In addition to featuring our weekly guests, each month on the "Sober Living Stories" podcast, we have the privilege of sitting down with a new author, delving into their story and the wisdom they've shared in their book.
Here's the exciting part: their book becomes the giveaway for that month.
Tune in every Tuesday for brand-new episodes and your chance to win the gift of a transformed life.
Sober Living Stories
Helping Individuals Repair Relationships in Recovery: Janice Johnson Dowd's Story
Meet Janice Johnson Dowd, a mother of four, and a Licensed Master Social Worker with over 20 years of experience working with families and addiction. Janice is dedicated to helping individuals in recovery repair relationships with their family and friends. You are not just meeting a professional, you're meeting a woman who has walked through the fire of alcoholism and had to do it all herself first.
Janice begins her story by accepting that she had the disease of alcoholism at the age of 40, despite a professional life dedicated to helping others and a personal vow to avoid the pitfalls she witnessed growing up. Her transformation is hopeful to anyone struggling with similar challenges, showcasing the resilience required to heal oneself and one's family from the wounds of addiction.
The heart of our conversation dives into the essence of communication—a cornerstone of recovery. Janice shares the importance of conveying the language of recovery to our loved ones, the wisdom in promises made for today, and the complexities of family dynamics when one is on the path to sobriety. We explore what it means to be a 'dry drunk' and the continuous effort needed to maintain recovery for good.
This episode isn't just about the struggle; it's a testament to the power of honest dialogue in mending relationships and the profound impact our journey can have on those we love, especially our children.
Janice discusses her upcoming book, a resource she hopes will light the way for others seeking to reestablish relationships with loved ones in sobriety. This episode is for you whether you're touched by addiction or simply seeking to improve relationships.
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Your story matters.
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 Stapanovic, 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.
Speaker 1:Hi and welcome to another episode of the Sober Living Stories podcast. My guest today is Janice Johnson Dowd. Janice is not only the mother of four beautiful children, but she's also a recovering alcoholic on a mission to share her story and insights with the world. With over two decades of experience as a licensed master social worker, janice blends her personal and professional life in her upcoming book, which is filled with insights about rebuilding relationships and recovery. In today's episode, we will hear about the struggles she faced and how today she lives out her best life sober. Welcome, janice. Welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm very happy to be here. Can you just take us back to the beginning of your life, as far back as you want to go up, and until where alcohol began to shape your story differently and what your life looks like today without it.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, Well, I was a latent life drinker. I really didn't start drinking regularly until I was 40. That was primarily because I grew up in an alcoholic home and vowed I would never become an alcoholic or put my kids through what I went through. And so I became a social worker and I worked in this field early in my career. I worked with families. I worked inpatient and outpatient treatment centers, working on the family side, which fueled my denial later on when I did start drinking. So in my 20s I was working on a career. I did some Alenon and some other 12-step groups to help support my personal growth. And then I met and married my now ex-husband and we had four children.
Speaker 2:So I spent my 20s, career, 30s being a mom and trying to balance career and parenthood, and the self-care started to slip away during that time. So I had, at age 40, I had, four children under the age of eight. And it's easy to put yourself last as a mother, don't you think? Yes, so true, absolutely yeah, because you think your children come first. So I found the easy fix of having a couple of glasses of wine while you're cooking dinner or at lunch with your girlfriends and I told myself oh, I haven't drank. I haven't had a drinking problem in the last 20 years. I'm good. I probably have skipped the gene. I believe in the disease concept and the genetic what's the word tendency, genetic predisposition, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I hung on to that denial until it was, like, painfully obvious that I was both emotionally and spiritually a wreck. I tried counseling, antidepressants, anti-anxiety and sleeping medication and therapy again, and ultimate lay it ended up in AA. And, yeah, I went to AA. I loved it. At first I was hugely ashamed and embarrassed because I had worked in this field. I still had a whole lot of denial about how much damage I had done to my kids and my family because I hadn't gotten, like a DUI or none of the like painfully embarrassing public experiences I did. I mean, I hate saying it, but I was verbally abusive to my kids at night because I did most of my drinking at home and I'm really ashamed of that and I had to make amends for it, but anyhow.
Speaker 2:So I didn't stay sober with AA alone. I went to treatment and treatment changed everything. And I went to treatment thinking, okay, I'll be here for four weeks, I will get some family therapy in, I'll go home and all I have to do is get sober and make an effort. And I was so, so wrong. So I avoided dealing with my issues at home with my kids. At first it was just denial how much I'd harmed them. And then it was fear of their rejection. And then my old, natural, like childhood, instinct of being sweet and cheerful. My role in my family was the mascot. I was the only daughter and so I was. My role in that family was to distract, to be pretty cute all of that, and I fell back on that, which sounds crazy that a 50 year old woman would be talking to her children like she was 12, just like them. It's crazy, but I did. That's what I did. I did while I was in treatment embrace it, and I embraced it so much that I went from four weeks of treatment to 12 weeks of treatment.
Speaker 1:And I'm based. Recovery is that when you embrace.
Speaker 2:I embrace recovery and really working on myself on myself, but not so much on the family situation and on my roles with that and the part I was playing in the family dysfunction because you know it's a family disease. Everyone's impacted in one form or another. And by the time I hit 12 weeks, my relationships with my family, that divide there, had grown to a bigger divide. Part of that was because they were. I was in treatment 200 miles away from where they were and they're all involved in sports and college and my husband at the time was doing his best to juggle everything and his job. So they didn't make it up to the treatment facility very often and when they did, I just bombed it. You know I did not take use of that time. So towards the end of treatment they're like we think you need to go to a halfway house, we don't think you'll stay sober at home, that that there's too many triggers there, and so I did. I mean at that point it was like, whatever you tell me, I know I'm a mess and I opened up some childhood wounds and some traumatic experiences that I had and I knew I needed more help, more support. So I went to a halfway house and during that time I did nothing.
Speaker 2:The first three or four months of my recovery outside of treatment didn't very little to repair the relationships with my kids and then so I had a bottom, an alcoholic bottom, before I went to treatment. And then I had and I want to say that this bottom, I mean sometimes I say it was worse than my alcoholic bottom because it was more spiritually and emotionally pulling, but it's, it's different. It was an so it's an adult child with alcoholic bottom and what happened was I got kicked out of my halfway house for something I didn't do, but it was definitely I. You know, it ended up being definitely one of the best things that ever happened to me because it made me open my eyes. I realized at the time I couldn't go home because they didn't, they weren't ready for me, they didn't want me. There was a lot of anger and hostility and um, and then I lost my second home of the halfway house that, if you can imagine, it was all women and the women were either professionals trying to maintain their nursing medical licenses or they were 20 somethings who I started to incorporate them as, like I mean they were substitutes for my family. I mean I treated a lot of those girls like they were my kids, so they had become my second family.
Speaker 2:And when I got kicked out of the halfway house, I lost that family too. So I found myself, you know, figuratively homeless. My sponsor let me stay with her for seven days and told me I had to figure it out. So I found another sober living home, after being rejected a couple of times, which was hard, I mean, but it's all part of the process.
Speaker 2:All this negative experience actually forced me to look at what was going wrong. So, um, but I and I wish I'd said that I had an aha moment then, but I didn't I uh, I slipped into a really deep depression and, um, I just saw my situation is hopeless because I had been like the perfect 12 step recovery individual. I was doing everything right, working on my fourth and fifth steps, going to meetings, leading meetings, you know, doing everything that was asked of me, and it still wasn't working Like and I still had lost everything. And I want to step back for a minute. I remember when I first went to treatment. This is one of the things that helped me get through that period, because it was dark.
Speaker 2:I remember that we had had a young man come and, you know, tell his story while we were in treatment and part of his story was, you know, I was like, okay, my life's okay now. But I want you to know that you're you know, once that big pink cloud dissipates, you may get struck in the face with, you know, hard situations. And he talked about how it him himself, at six months, went through this and his story was incredible. He found himself back in jail and he was desperately depressed. And then he talked about what he did to get through it, which was work the program one day at a time. He told on himself. I didn't tell him myself, he told people that he, you know, just didn't want to live and he got help and started working.
Speaker 2:But just knowing, knowing that this young man had gone through it helped me tremendously at that point and although I was feeling really hopeless, I I remembered him and him saying that he, he got through it and if you just stay sober, do the work, that you'll get through it too.
Speaker 2:So I took for and it was a month or two months that I was deeply depressed and I really worked the program one day at a time, get up in the morning and I would tell myself I'm not going to kill myself today. When I got into those dark moments I would remind myself that probably the most painful thing I could do to my kids would be to kill myself. So that was a huge motivation to start doing some of the deeper work that I had to. And so to get out of that I began to look closely at my part in my family of origin, my part in what I was doing presently, and my therapist and I decided that we would actively look at that the just, you know, my character traits from my dysfunctional family of origin, my ACA traits and we worked on those and examined how those traits impact, still linger and impact in in my relationships with them. Now, does that make sense? It sure?
Speaker 1:does. Yeah, absolutely yeah, and you're, you know. Thank you for sharing what you just did. I know that's difficult to say out loud, you know, but it really speaks to alcoholism as a disease and so, if not treated and left untreated, could be as deadly as if you were still drinking, you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I've seen, because I'm still very active in the 12 step program, still go to a lot of meetings. There are a lot of suicides and early recovery and a lot of, and I think people who aren't addicts don't understand, like I think there's a lot of misconception about it and there should be more study about the struggles that we take through, that we experience in early sobriety, which is part of what I wanted to talk about today, and so I'll switch to a more positive point in the terms of the tools that I used, if that works for you yes sure, the most important tool and this is definitely an experience that do as I say, not as I do, but is to tell yourself.
Speaker 2:I would have told on myself quicker.
Speaker 1:But if I could just interject for a moment, you know, when you were speaking about that before and you said you had listened to his story and he got through it and he had shared his secret, but you hadn't and I thought, wow, you know, like someone had told me once hey, you know there's millions of people getting this and you're not, so what are you not doing? Because this works. And I had to really say hey, I'm carrying, I'm carrying this around, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. But I had to identify what it was I wasn't doing.
Speaker 1:And there was certainly something you know and that's really great because you're just so aware of that and you're sharing that, like yes, this is the first thing that you're identifying.
Speaker 2:You didn't share everything.
Speaker 2:That's huge and that's kind of why I share it now, because, I mean, life has its ups and downs and because I've outed myself with it, it's never going to be a alternative for me in the future. Does that make sense? Sure, yeah, I. I, when I was suicidal, I was desperately trying to find a way to kill myself. That would look like an accident. But now that I've shared this, my God, if I actually ended up dying in a car accident or something, I think there'd be some suspicion. But yeah, so telling on yourself is huge.
Speaker 2:I got help from the old timers in the program. I reached out to the woman that I went to treatment with, to their kids, who were willing to talk to me, Because not everyone has a family who's resistant to welcoming you back. So I would speak to their kids and say you know, what is it that you wanted? What is that you needed? What do you think I could do? And that was really helpful and, if nothing else, that was helpful, that it gave me hope, that I could see that. You know, one of my friends and their children were, you know, working through exactly what I had gone through.
Speaker 2:But some of the key things that I did with my family is I began to get real.
Speaker 2:I stopped being superficial. I asked them about their feelings and I think one of the most important tools that I talk about in the book and that I use for them in general is to honor their feelings, to accept that their feelings are valid, no matter what their opinions of certain situations are valid, no matter what I mean. I have instances that still come up where a child will go you're triggering me, mom, because that reminds me of the time that you did this and, of course, my natural instinct is to be like oh no, I didn't mean it that way, but I've learned to pause and go. You know you're probably right. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about how you felt and what happened. And sometimes it can be really painful, but most of the time it's very healing because for the first time in maybe and I'm 10 years sober the first time we resolved an issue, no matter how big or small. It's just one more issue that we put behind us. That helps us to be stronger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by you doing that, you're essentially saying to them that what they have to say matters and you're willing to listen. It's not just about me, it's about you.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that's so, so important. One of the concrete tools that I started to do was just to make them more aware of the language and culture of AA, the 12 step program size participating in, because, like there'd be some confusion, I'd be like, oh, I got to drop everything, I've got to return this phone call to one of my friends and they'd be like what, we're in the middle of dinner and I would. So I had to take time to explain like this person's in a crisis, it helps me to help them and it I had to explain that, not taking away from them. So good communication in general is key, sure, and being honest. That, and in terms of being honest, one of the things that I think is really important and I think almost every parent gets asked this is is you get asked Promise me you'll never drink again. You know, or promise me that you'll never embarrass me in front of my friends again. And in my 12 step experience you know we live in the present, we live in the day, and so I would be lying to them and to myself if I said I'll never drink again.
Speaker 2:But so what I try to do in response is two things. One, ask them where this is coming from. What is your concern? And it may be something they make up. Oh, because you did this behavior which reminds me of this, so it helps me understand their feelings. And then I respond with listen. Here's what I've done today and what I'm doing daily to stay sober, and I'm going to do that again tomorrow. I feel pretty confident that I'll be sober today and tomorrow. I cannot promise you anything because I don't want to ever mislead you again.
Speaker 2:And if you do relax or whether it's behavioral because a lot of us experience dry drunks I think it's important to be honest. You know, I was at a meeting recently and there's a man still early in sobriety and he was talking about how his last drunk like he'd been maintaining some periods of sobriety and then don't know why went out with a friend, drank, came home and he was scared to death of his wife and all she did was look at him and say promise me you're going to get to a meeting tomorrow. She had grabbed enough of the program to understand that relaxes happen and he said he did not feel any desire to lie, to fake it or any of those things. So yeah, so they made it through it.
Speaker 2:So I think honesty is important, honoring your kids' feelings. I had to honor the anonymity. I went through a pink cloud for a while where I wanted to show everyone my key tags and that made them uncomfortable, so I had to honor their feelings about that. I mean, there's a whole slew of things. I think probably the most important thing is that I maintain my sobriety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned dry drunk.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I'm familiar with that term, but perhaps listeners may not be, so can you explain what you meant by that?
Speaker 2:So a dry drunk is essentially where you're not drinking, but you experience a lot of the characteristics of being drunk, of the behavior, whether it's like small little lies, being irritable, short tempered, feeling very triggered over small things. I mean, it's basically your life in chaos, without the alcohol being the problem.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:So, which is why I feel so strongly about continuing to work Some type of program. I mean I said this recently too, that I mean I got sober through a 12 step program. I recognize and acknowledge there's other ways to do it. Maintain sobriety for you might be something different, Might be through your church, might be through some other type of meditation, spiritual program. This is just what worked for me.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. There are so many different ways that people have. Some woman just was on and she said I'm not a recovered alcoholic, I'm not a recovered alcoholic, I'm a delivered alcoholic. And the spiritual backgrounds have all been so vast and different and I'd like this place, this space, this podcast, to honor all of them, because your story is your story and each guest has their own. So, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:Great, I think. The last point I'd like to make that's really important is to have some compassion for yourself and to understand it's going to be two steps forward, one step back there's, you know, just like your sobriety, because up and down there's good days, bad days. That happens in relationships as well as, especially once, the closer the relationship, the more sensitive you are going to be to the ups and downs of it. So I think forgiving yourself is important. Oh, making amends. I'm all about making amends and I have a very detailed description in my book about how to make a good amends, because I feel strongly about that. I don't know what are some other things that you that you can think of, that I might admit.
Speaker 1:How much sobriety time do you have now, and I'm curious to see how your relationships within your home have changed since the very beginning of your recovery process to present day.
Speaker 2:That's a great question. So I am over 10 years, approaching 11 years sober, and I want to back up and say you know, I grew up in a home that it wasn't horrific, it was dysfunctional and but I didn't learn good, healthy skills on how to be a parent in that home. So that's where some of the self compassion comes in. But so my bar for what's a healthy relationship is nice and low. I'm happy to say that I have amazing relationships. I will say this, though it took over a year and a half before I made a report.
Speaker 2:I could see any conscious headway with any of my four children, and that was the child who's most actively involved in confronting me about my drinking. So I went to think that helped because he got some of his anger out early. And then, and then the other relationships, because each child's different, each one has different ones. I didn't drink hardly at all for the older two children because I was pregnant with the younger two, so they had a different early childhood than the younger two did.
Speaker 2:But I also really want to point out that it took I mean it was four years and I Cried a lot about this, about not being able to reach out to one of my kids. It was hard and it was painful and and this is where it's important to have a sponsor or a therapist or someone who can give you that support and understanding and keep you on track and, like, never give up. So yeah I, going back to my family origin, I never dreamt I could have relationships as good with my kids. I thought my role was to be an authoritarian and to guide them right and you know well, that's great, so I completely flipped it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have great relationships with my kids. I'm a little codependent, and that you know. My daughter is one of my best friends and my favorite travel or leisure time companions are my kids. And I probably should Well, kids are people in the program. You know, I probably should widen my expenses and part of that is because you know I want to make up for that time that I missed. But the relationships are great and and I want to give hope to anyone who's still struggling, because it is possible, it just takes work and time To restore everything you know, do you?
Speaker 1:find you know that saying it says the people closest to us are usually the last to see us change. Is there any truth to that in your work?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because you know, like your peers in the recovery program, they get it. They speak your sign language. They can see it. Your sponsor can see the growth, but your family members are the most guarded and the most reluctant to look at it because they're still waiting for the other shoe to drop. They've got their boundaries up higher and that's okay. I mean they've got the most to lose.
Speaker 1:If I drink again, yeah, they have the most to lose. I never thought of it that way, but sure don't they.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it is possible, it is possible. So how did you come to the point where you said, hey, I want to put this down on paper so that other people can benefit from my experience. Can you talk a little bit about the book you have coming out?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So that evolved kind of naturally. I mean, I at first I was asking for help from other people and then, you know, at meetings I started to begin to share my positive experience. And then my one of my home groups does regular visits at one of the treatment centers in our town and so every time I had the opportunity to speak there, that would be my topic. I'd be like, okay, how many people of you have kids? How many people, how many of you people have good relationships? Here are some things that I did. I want to give you hope. So it evolved naturally like that.
Speaker 2:And then my nature also is I love reading and researching. I started that in undergrad and graduate school. I worked as a teaching assistant or research assistant and my sponsor being a teacher, I mean I had a binder of paperwork that she had given or I had printed out and it, you know, then COVID hit and I was like, okay, I'm going to put this together in a concise way and it became a book. I mean, people kept giving me feedback. I've spoken in a number of different conferences and they're like we love a book. So that's what I've done and it's not published yet. I hope that will be by the end of 2024. But we're getting there and I have a publisher seriously looking at it now and I think they'll give me a go by the end of the month. If not, well, my agent and I will publish it independently.
Speaker 1:Very good, excellent. I can't wait to see it and I can't wait to have you back on so that you can talk a little bit more about the book and then we can offer it out to listeners on one of our monthly giveaways. That'd be so incredible. I don't know if you've ever seen this part or heard this part in the 12 step recovery about how women alcoholics are often far gone with less alcohol and less time, and I feel like that applies here because you didn't start drinking until you were 40 years old, and I have. I have another friend that I do know who didn't start drinking until then. The effects on her were so quick that in, I mean in less than a year, she was, you know, knew she had a problem and just traveling, you know, on subways and just you know. It was incredible, but that is stated. Do you see any truth to that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I definitely think that is women and most of us are smaller and, just by the nature of our body size and everything we're going to, it's going to take less alcohol to give us a buzz or a drunk. I can't tell you exactly where I went from social drinking to alcoholic drinking, but I know at the end my liver was affected. Your body gets to a point, when you do liver damage, that alcohol will take less alcohol to get the same impact. Does that make sense? Sure, I think as women, we have to be careful.
Speaker 2:I really I started drinking out of that, like the mommy wine culture and you know like it's normal to go out for lunch and have a couple of glasses of wine, etc. You know, and or we watch the bachelor and have a couple of glasses of wine, and I got caught up in that. I did. I went through this period where I was like, hey, my kids. I'm no longer pregnant, breastfeeding, my life has evolved around my kids. I want to go have some fun. You know it's kind of a knee jerk reaction and I did some. You know girls, weekend trips and things like that. That was all about the drinking. I wish I hadn't gone that route, but you know, I think it's, I think we need to spread that word. And the nice thing you probably have seen this too. I think there's a culture now that's very accepting of giving up drinking without falling yourself in alcohol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a different language than I'm used to in the last 20 years, for sure, and which I wasn't. When I first heard it I thought, oh well, that's not how I did it and since being around a virtual community, which I think was an with was an offset of COVID, you know, we all got introduced to the zoom meetings when.
Speaker 1:COVID was here and yes, they were using different language and but when you get to it and when you speak to them, it's all the same. It's just different language and some of that language keeps people away or some of it, you know, causes judgment. Everybody's going toward the same ends and that's to live a life free of alcohol and live well, you know.
Speaker 2:That was beautiful how you summed that up. That was very nice and true.
Speaker 1:It's just true. It's just been very true and refreshing to me because I've been silent for 18 years about my recovery, because that's how I was brought up to be and when I took, it was very hard to step over that line for a number of reasons, you know. I didn't want to violate anything or I didn't want to, and ultimately it's difficult to put yourself out there. But when I did it, I've never looked back.
Speaker 2:I absolutely agree with you, and timing is important too. I think COVID and all of that has made this much more acceptable For me. I couldn't have come out and talked like this five years ago. My kids weren't ready for me to share what I share, so that has an impact too.
Speaker 1:And to honor everybody's choices to do it or to not do it. You know, I don't. I couldn't do this less than a year ago. It's just how things change, you know. Never saying never.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, the podcast. I mean I think that offshoot came out of COVID as well, that people were at home and trying to be creative and this has just opened up so much more information. You know, I listened to podcasts for a long time and they just get better and the information gets better and the resources. I'm just thrilled that your podcast I've listened to so far Just great. Listen to the first four.
Speaker 1:Thank you Thank you so much, yeah, thank you. And two, as we're fellow writers together, part of getting your message to reach who you want to reach it to. It's important, as you know, to create that platform for it to kind of get out into the world. As a writer, you don't think you have to do that part, right, but then you find out, no, you do, and if you really believe in your message, then you'll go through the technicalities and the learning curve to get to where you need to be in order to get your message to where you want it to reach. So absolutely.
Speaker 2:I so identify with that because I've spoken in front of groups forever for my job and then, you know, with 12 step meetings and at conferences. But the concept of being on a podcast at first was very intimidating and I, you know, I'm still an adult child of alcoholic and very self critical of myself. I think that avenue to reach more people is just huge.
Speaker 1:What do you think about just lastly? Or you know if you had anything else on, because you grew up in an alcoholic home where you had your parents who were alcoholics. Where do you? And you began drinking at 40. So do you, where do you land with that genetic predisposition as being a big factor?
Speaker 2:I absolutely believe in the genetic predisposition. I mean, and my parents my mom was not an alcoholic, that her father had been Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Well, no, it's fine. It was rampant through her family and my dad was an alcoholic. He was, you know, what you would call functional alcoholic, and it was. It's hard to say how far back in his family because his family's really spread out, but I know that he had an uncle who died on the streets of Minneapolis because he was drunk and fell asleep, passed out. So I know it's through his family too and I warn my kids all the time. You know, you have to be aware, you at least have my genes and I say we'll skip that generation.
Speaker 1:We're just going to skip right over it. Hope, let's hope. And it being it being one of the most difficult things that I I would imagine you can agree it being one of the most difficult things that I ever went through, but also the best thing that ever happened to me, because of everything.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I would have never developed this kind of close relationships with my kids if I hadn't become alcoholic. I probably would have still had that. I'm the parent, you're the child. You must listen to me. Mentality and the things that I've experienced since the varieties just mind blowing actually. So I have done everything, from try out for the amazing race with my daughter to traveling about 20 different countries with my kids to, you know, writing this book and talking on podcast. My life is. I'm so blessed, I'm so glad.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. That's really so. You've been to 20 different countries with your kids and sobriety in the last 10 years. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean yes, countries. One of my, my oldest son. He wanted to visit the micro nations of Europe, which is like the Vatican city and Monaco, and we did that. So just with him alone, we hit like six different countries Switzerland.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh great, go and see and do it all because you can. You just have such like an appreciation to. I think when you get sober you have such a deep appreciation for life because, as you had shared earlier that you almost did not want to be here. And I remember hearing somebody speak once and she was talking about a conversation she had with her niece and she said her niece had come to her to share something with her and she was so touched that she would come to her. But it wasn't the content of the conversation that floored her, it was the fact that, as her aunt and as an active alcoholic for the majority of her life, that she was actually there to have it.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's what took your breath away, you know.
Speaker 1:So there's something to it like that, that when you come out of that that you have such a deep meaning and appreciation for life's moments. You know that would have otherwise been lost. I think on most people yes.
Speaker 2:So that's an advantage. It is Well, I'm plus Okay, so I don't want people to get me wrong, I am the queen of budget traveling, so I think also in sobriety, you appreciate the simple things as much, like we are not staying at five star hotels sometimes are staying in hostels with other you know 20 something traveling your experience. I appreciate experience so much more than things now.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, that's great. Yeah, I can, yeah, I can. I can relate with that. I think that's wonderful and good point too, because you know when people come in, if they're listening, they say, well, I'll never be able to do that, I don't have any money because we don't come. We don't come in and get sober and we have everything in place. You know everything's on the ground and broken apart, but the rebuild is so, is so real and you know the meaning is so deep that you don't need much and you can go far. You know so there's so much, there's so much out there for everyone that stays on and just doesn't give up on themselves. You know, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you coming on. Did you have anything else that you wanted to share?
Speaker 2:I just want to just hope you know you can do this. It's hard that you can do this and the relationships you develop are so worth it. Don't give up.
Speaker 1:That's great. Thank you so much for being here and I really look forward to having you on. Would you come back when your book is published? Absolutely, I'd love to. We'd like to learn more about Janice Johnson Dowd and her up and coming book. Be sure to follow her on Instagram at parenting underscore in underscore recovery. Visit her website, wwwjanicejohnsondowdcom for updates on the books release and information about any upcoming speaking engagements. 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 wwwJesicaStapanoviccom.