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 dark 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
Love and Addiction: Anna's Journey Through Her Husband's Hard-Won Victory Over Alcoholism
Can love survive the storm of addiction?
Join us as we uncover the powerful story of Anna Kingsley, a psychotherapist from London, who opens up about the ups and downs of being married to an active alcoholic who turned 20 months alcohol-free. Discover how the COVID-19 lockdown intensified her husband's alcohol dependence and strained their marriage, and how Anna's expertise in addiction therapy guided her through this challenging time. Anna shares the emotional rollercoaster of constant vigilance over a loved one's behavior and the liberating peace in letting go of control.
We explore the importance of staying connected, featuring Anna's supportive community, Anna's Recovery Village at https://annakingsley.substack.com/ on Substack. Her Recovery Village is packed with helpful resources and connections. If you need support, you must check this out!
This episode is a heartfelt testament to the enduring strength of community support and the compassionate journey of family recovery. Tune in for an insightful conversation filled with personal anecdotes, professional wisdom, and a message of hope for all those affected by addiction.
Couples in Recovery Course 50% OFF by clicking here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WSUE9OgJIUlWijCHmr9dZ__IWGVlTyUcKw9tRneXtxQ/edit#heading=h.rrrb3wp9sive
Connect with Anna here:
Substack: Anna's recovery village | Anna Kingsley | Substack
LinkedIn: (28) Anna Kingsley | LinkedIn
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Your story matters.
If you or someone you know is married to an active alcoholic, perhaps you're in recovery yourself and partnered with someone who's in recovery and your relationships are struggling and you want to reconnect in different ways, then my next episode is for you. Her name is Anna. She's coming from London. She's a psychotherapist. She's also the wife of an active alcoholic who now has two years sober. She takes us inside her house during the pandemic, kind of shows us what that look and look like and felt like to be sitting next to someone who was struggling and didn't know how to get well until he did. She has a growing community of those affected by addiction called Anna's Recovery Village in Substack, which is loaded with articles and resources, along with her website. She herself is an addiction therapist. She's also helping couples find ways to stay connected in recovery. So tune in.
Speaker 1: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 Stepanovic, your host. Join me each week as guests from all walks of life share their story with you. I'm Jessica Stepanovic, 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. Meet Anna Kingsley as she shares her personal story as the wife of an alcoholic who is, after quite a few relapses, 20 months sober. Today, she's going to share her personal and professional experience and she's going to talk about how couples can find ways to stay connected in recovery. She has a growing community for those affected by addiction called Anna's Recovery Village, which you can find on Substack and a website packed with resources. Welcome to the show, anna.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 1:You're coming here from London and it's so good to have you. So, yeah, please share as far back on your personal story and your personal experience being able to give listeners the perspective of being in relation with someone who is an active alcoholism or addiction and then following them through into recovery, Because we do have some listeners who are also partnered and they're both in recovery. So I know that you are a therapist who has experience in all of these areas, so we're excited to hear you today.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. So let me think where I need to start, probably actually before I met my husband. So the relationship I was in in my 20s was with a very charismatic man, very, quite seductive, very friendly, very outgoing, very dynamic. And it wasn't until the very end of our relationship, where everything rather imploded, that I found out that he actually had a gambling addiction and it had become so much he couldn't deal with it and the relationship ended. There was some money that went missing. It was very, very destructive at the end and clearly there was a lot of shame around his difficulties. He hid it from everybody. So that relationship ended very messily and he struggled to find a way to deal with his addiction, and it carried on. Find a way to deal with his addiction, and it carried on. And so when I met my husband I thought this guy's fantastic, he's solid, he's secure, he's got great stable family, he can write in full sentences, he's got a secure job, his sister loves him, everything's going to be great and everything was great. We got together, we had a lot of fun, we went traveling, we settled down, we had kids, and then it really wasn't until lockdown that my husband really struggled, and I don't know what your experience was in the US. From what I remember, it was pretty tough.
Speaker 2:Here in London, england, where I live, we were suddenly in lockdown and my husband, who had really relied on his job as part of his social network, absolutely fell apart at the concept of having to be stuck in our attic room, you know, just with a computer screen, and he really couldn't manage the isolation and he couldn't manage the lack of contact he had with his family. He struggled, it was really hard and inevitably, without me realizing, he turned more and more to alcohol to a point where it became incredibly problematic In short time yeah, in quite a short time. I look back and think, well, he probably did over rely on drink at various points, but nothing that was one would ever say was particularly really problematic. And then so it was really in lockdown. We had young kids. They were, I think they were six and eight or eight and 10, maybe eight and 10. So they were still in school, both in primary school here. So we were having to home educate our kids whilst also trying to hold down jobs, and he couldn't manage the stress. We couldn't go to the gym because the gyms were closed. It was very difficult. So increasingly he started drinking.
Speaker 2:I didn't notice the magic of vodka means you can't smell it on his breath. He was saying initially he was depressed, so he's on antidepressants and maybe that's why he was falling asleep, because the antidepressants were making him sleepy. He had all sorts of excuses. And so I look back and think I did not see, I didn't see it coming, I didn't see the signs until really had become quite unmanageable. He was drinking in secret. He would take my daughter to school and then buy vodka on the way home and then he'd go and sit in the park and he'd drink. And I thought he would be upstairs working, but he'd slipped out and gone to the park to have a drink. Then he'd be asleep and he was constantly uh sort of either hiding away somewhere or asleep. Well, now I look back and realize clearly he wasn't asleep. He was passed out because of all the alcohol, um, but eventually it got to the point where he couldn't hide it anymore and thankfully, through his work we got him into a rehab. But the rehab and the rehab helped him for the 28 days that he was in rehab.
Speaker 2:But of course you come out and life is really difficult to readjust. Suddenly, everybody knows that you've got this difficulty, you're battling a lot of shame, you're still very, very early doors in your recovery. You know it's four weeks in and inevitably it all became too much. He came out just before Christmas 2020. And it was incredibly tough. We were still in lockdown. We couldn't see anybody. It was a really miserable time. We couldn't see anybody. It was, it was. It was really miserable time.
Speaker 2:Um and I was probably not always the most supportive wife uh, I can be. If I look back um, I was angry, I was exhausted, I was fed up having to hold down everything with the kids and protect the kids. I was. The mama bear in me came out. You know it's all well and good you're doing this to yourself and it's all well and good you're doing it to me, but you can't do it to the kids. This is not okay. You know I, I would, I, you know I can't promise that I was always calm and collected. I absolutely wasn't.
Speaker 2:And I think, as he, as I, thought we were over the worst because he'd he'd acknowledged he had a problem, he'd been to rehab, he was trying to deal with it. He was now in therapy. I thought I could just stop worrying about it. And the minute I stopped worrying about it, I became incredibly angry. Incredibly angry, you know, like, oh my gosh, we've been doing this for a year. You know there were other things going on in my life that were problematic as well, that that my husband's drinking had totally, you know, overwhelmed and I was. I was so cross I mean, the anger was really anger, it was upset and fear sadness, sure, yeah yeah, but it came out as rage.
Speaker 2:So I just became incredibly angry in a in a very unhelpful way, which I think then meant it was even harder for he and I to work together. Because, sure, why would he want to come to me? Because I was just going to be cross at him. Oh, I was clearly cross, because I was often cross. Um, and then we started a helpful cycle of him relapsing, hiding it, uh, promising he'd do better not, you know, and that dabbling with the fellowship, deciding he could do it by himself, slipping up all sorts of messes, and that continued for the best part of two years, until in summer 2022, we sort of hit the wall. We sort of hit the wall.
Speaker 2:We had a relapse in the July, just before we were about to go on holiday. So, and if the car hire had not been in my husband's name, the car rental? When I got, you knew I was, we were flying to France and it was the night before. And if I hadn't thought, oh my gosh, how am I going to sort out the car rental Because it's in his name and I've no idea where it was, I would have probably blown with the kids and left him passed out in bed. But I thought to myself, come on, don't do this to the kids. And left him passed out in bed. But I thought to myself, come on, don't do this to the kids, they don't know this has happened, we'll be all right, let's all go. But I was so upset that he'd done this because I was desperate for a holiday and you know so. We did that in the July.
Speaker 2:In the August, I had my cousins, who live in New York, flying over to stay and literally the evening that they arrived, he started drinking again and I just thought, oh, my goodness, you know, there is no space for my life for us to do anything without your drinking getting in the way and dominating. And literally in the September, just before our wedding anniversary, again he relapsed. And that three relapses in three months finally made him realize he'd had enough, which was good, because I I having dabbled with, shall I leave him? Is this the end? Do we call time? I'd always bounce back to thinking no, let's give him a bit more space. It's really tough on the kids. But after that third relapse in three months, I was, I was very clear I can't do this anymore and I really did step back and I think that in part really helped my husband, because I was not interfering, I was not nagging.
Speaker 1:Was that the turning point for him where he now has almost two years sobriety? Yeah, yeah. Well, you touched on a lot of things because you know, yes, the pandemic, you know, is very isolating and it happened here as well, obviously, but in the same respect, and when your, you know, maybe addictions and stuff increased in that time. But getting sober in that time when it's such a, it involves so much community to really be successful. Most of the time, um, it's difficult. And then you know, so you can, you can see the increase of stress and then see the increase of drinking. But then how difficult would it be to to really sustain that if you weren't already established in recovery?
Speaker 1:I often thought about those people who were not established already. So, yeah, you really trudged through this these couple of years. You know that, like, you've really had a time with it, as so many listeners can probably relate to. You've identified so many things that happen with the hiding, the drinking, and you know it's just part of it, right, and so so what happens next when he gets um, how did he seek help and how did that change you all?
Speaker 2:He, he went back into the fellowship and this time he did it properly and he committed to doing it. And he, um he, at the beginning he went to six meetings each week. So I think there was one day a week that he didn't go to a meeting, or sometimes he'd go to a meeting every day. Uh, he committed to taking on a role at a meeting, so he had reasons to go. He he'd had enough. He'd spent ages trying to live in a state of denial and ignore his shame and just try and pretend it wasn't really happening. And he finally had had enough because he was exhausted it wasn't just me exhausted after all this time it was everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was fully aware that he wasn't functioning and, yes, he had a drink problem, but he's not a bad person and he hadn't lost every aspect of himself and he's always loved our kids and you know it's, I think it's. I think people are quite quick to demonize. You know people who have substance abuse issues. They're not bad people, they're just struggling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, and I yeah, you've said that before with the shame and of the shame of getting being in rehab Not just the shame of getting being in rehab, not just the shame of drinking, you know, because oftentimes we don't really have a name on it until we know and then the shame of getting better is not shame at all, like I had that and I experienced that myself. But now that I don't carry shame every time, I hear that it's kind of like gosh, the disease of alcoholism is real right and so, just like you said, it's not a bad person trying to get good right, it's a sick person trying to get well. That's what was told to me and it helped me because I thought, wow, okay, because oftentimes we feel so terrible about ourselves, like how can I not get this right? Why am I ruining my relationships and, you know, not only hurting myself but other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's really speaks to the disease of alcoholism itself, which not everybody has that wants to quit, but some people do and they need the help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually you know, you emphasize you, you emphasize the word shame. I felt shame. There was a lot of shame. I felt when my as a wife, as a wife, that my husband was drinking, so in his active addiction, I didn't want to tell people, I didn't always want to ask for help, I was trying to protect him. I didn't, you know, I made excuses for him, I didn't want to expose him. And then in recovery, you know he'd had this opportunity that many people don't have to go to rehab because it's I'm sure it's the same way you are. It's incredibly expensive here. He'd had this opportunity and he'd blown it. You could say, you know he's back to the beginning. He was drinking again and I didn't want people to think even more badly of him. So I didn't initially tell people when he he had relapsed, because I didn't. Again, I was back into this habit of wanting to protect him, wanting the best for him. And then I very quickly realized that, anna, you are shooting yourself in the foot here. You can't do this by yourself. You have got to let people in to help you, to help our children and to help my husband. There's no shame here. This is difficult.
Speaker 2:Relapse is unfortunately a reality. It happens, it's going to happen because you know the rehab system over here it's pretty much 28 days and you're out. You don't have long periods normally and there's so little that they can do in 28 days. You're bound to continue to struggle. The work is still. You know, there's still a lot of work to do and I think, unfortunately for my husband being in lockdown there, he was briefly for 28 days in a little bubble in his rehab centre with these people who were around him all the time new people to be excited by, to care for him, and a community within this rehab center. And then suddenly he's back out into the real world. But it's not the real world, it's lockdown and now he's back up into his attic room all by himself. So he'd had 28 days of having a community around him to help him and then he was back in this isolated lockdown state that we were all in. So I look back and think well, of course he was going to relapse, but at the time it was just.
Speaker 2:We were just trying to survive and I think the thing that helped me as well as helped him was bringing people in. So he so that that awful July, august, september of 2022, each time that happened, I told people, I told my sister, I told my parents, I told my friends, and they all love him. They're not going to make him feel worse, but I needed them to know. I couldn't carry the secret by myself.
Speaker 1:So how did that help you? Like, just being honest.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Just being honest, having an outlet. I didn't want to talk about it all the time, but I just needed people to know because the not knowing felt well, felt not true and felt quite suffocating. So I just needed people to know what was really happening. And, yes, my mom checked in on me and my sister, you know, dropped around with a cake and my friends, you know, invited me out a bit more and people stepped up. But really I just needed them to know because I don't want a secret. You know. I think the secrets around addiction is so punitive.
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Speaker 2:So I don't feel ashamed now in saying that my husband is in recovery and I don't feel ashamed around telling his story. I feel a little bad because it's his story to tell, but in a sense it's our story and our kids that that daddy goes to meetings and that daddy doesn't drink, um, and, and, hopefully, as time goes on, our family, you know, and each time we sit down to eat we have a little gratitude conversation about what are we grateful for. Because what I've realized is and I'm through my work but also through my husband's recovery is there's so much within that recovery, the recovery world and the recovery program that really we all should be doing. This is like healthy living um, whether you have a substance difficulty or not, uh, there's so much richness in having a much healthier way of living, a more open way of living, a more service-based way of living, like I'll help you, you'll help me, and and and we grow together. And that's definitely something I see in my personal, private, professional.
Speaker 1:I agree with you a hundred percent. You know, I remember being this was probably 18, 19 years ago but there was a meeting and it was inside a small school room and there was just signs all around the top of the you know the, the walls and it said like share, say thank you, keep your promises, like and that's really what recovery is, on the daily it, it you're continually trying to be that better version of yourself, like it's just continual, because life becomes more peaceful. It's easy. You respect yourself, your behaviors are in line, so you're not apt to go off and do something. You're respecting the people that you love.
Speaker 1:You know it's just a very basic practice and you know I love the perspective of you as the wife of an alcoholic because your feelings and your emotions, they were really it was a lot. You felt all the sadness. Then it turned to anger and rage. Your mama bear protection came out over your kids and normalizing your house. It's a lot to manage. I would imagine it affects the whole entire family system, right? Can you speak about that a little bit, about how you kind of handled yourself and how you got better along the way?
Speaker 2:And well, I have to say I hold my hands up. I haven't always handled myself well, but I think we all, you know, you, you, you learn as you go, I think, where I am now. Well, first of all, I made the mistakes lots of people make, so in as much as they come out and you can't help but fall into the trap of monitoring.
Speaker 1:What are some of the mistakes that you made so people can learn from them?
Speaker 2:Oh, so I made a massive. So one of the things I look back and think thank goodness I've stopped doing that. I would track my husband on our phones, you know, if he said he'd gone to work or if he said he was going for a walk, was he really going for a walk or was he going to the supermarket to buy alcohol? Where was he? Has he gone to a meeting? Is he in the meeting? Has he left the meeting? Has he walked out of the meeting? So I will be constantly checking on my phone. Where is he? Where is he? And that was exhausting. Like I have better things to be doing than monitoring my husband.
Speaker 1:So how'd you put that down? When did you identify that that was not what you were supposed to be doing and what you do now?
Speaker 2:now I don't bother, look, looking, except if he's running late and I need to know, you know, whether he's five minutes away or still stuck in the office. So I've stopped doing that now and the freedom it gives me is incredible. I don't, and the time I get back and the time in my brain I get back and I've stopped. I've stopped. Accident. I used to accidentally, on purpose, kick his bag to see if there was a bottle of vodka hidden in it and I would check through his bag to find out. I've stopped monitoring. And the minute you, when you realize that that there is no point in monitoring, I realized I can't control this. It's not my fault. I didn't cause it. I have no control over whether he's going to drink and I also had to learn that whether he drinks or not, it's not a reflection on me or how he feels about me, or how he feels about our family, or how how much he loves his children. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, so true, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not about that at all. It's his unhealthy coping strategies and his difficulty. So me trying to assess or trying to one-up him by trying to find out whether he's secretly drinking or not, it's going to make no difference at all, because what am I going to do with that?
Speaker 1:that's such great advice because it's such a heartbreak sometimes for people watching. You know somebody suffer like that. They think what did I do? You know, what did I do? Why don't they want to be here? Why don't they want to be in part of our family or next to us? Right, and it's like it's not they do. They're struggling, they do, but it's so hard to see sometimes through the, the anger and the judgment and like what you know.
Speaker 2:But you're it, the truth is they do, they do, they absolutely do, and it's no surprise to me that that my husband's sobriety is down to the community he's found in, the fellowship. And the fellowship may not be everybody's thing, but there are other communities that you can fall back on and and you need a community around you. You can't do this alone. You absolutely can't.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree. So you know you had you created a community called Anna's Recovery Village on Substack and I'm really really encourage listeners to go to your website and I'm really really encourage listeners to go to your website, which you can let them know at the end, because there's just a lot of information there and resources and you've created this village, which I love the name. Can you share a little bit about that and why you did it and how people can find that?
Speaker 2:So so years ago I used to be a journalist, so I love writing. When I was a kid, my father made me write a diary every day for about 10 years of my childhood. So writing is a part of my well. It's just probably the best thing, the thing I'm best at. So when I needed some kind of outlet and I wanted to do something and I'd studied and I'd only you get part of the picture, but not the whole picture and I just thought let me try and note down what I have learned along the way, like what are the things? And I'm continuing to learn, like I continue to learn from my husband, like you continue to learn, like I continue to learn from my husband, like you continue to learn. Well, um, and I learn from my clients that I work with.
Speaker 2:So I just wanted to start building a resource and a place where people could just come. You know, I'm not a yes, I'm an addiction therapist, but I'm not a medically trained doctor. I I don't. Um, I'm also writing from my experience as the spouse of somebody and somebody who lives this. So I just wanted to write in a very friendly, non-academic, non-medical type way.
Speaker 2:This is happening to me. This is relevant because this is in my mind this week and hopefully over, and that's it's still new and it's very new and it's just growing. But my hope is that people will just join and then they'll contribute their articles and then we'll really have a little community. And I called it Anna's recovery village because I am very, very much aware like, just like you know, it takes a village to raise a child. It's going to take villages to help me. It's going to. I need a village around me to do this. I can't do this by myself. I can't recover and my relationship can't recover and my family can't recover. If we're going to think we can do it all by ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so true.
Speaker 2:We need to true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so helpful when you get next to people who understand what you're going through. It's just. The support system is everything. It just. It changes your perspective. You can laugh at things that are not laughable. Just on and on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I. I found a local group nearby where I live and I go once a week and I was telling one of I was talking about the story of how my husband used to be obsessed with going to the supermarket and I thought he was being really helpful um, but of course going to buy alcohol. And afterwards another of my clients, another woman in the group, came up and said my husband used to do exactly the same and now I can't walk past that supermarket without feeling rage. So just really silly little anecdotes about what addiction, how the addiction has played out in your life. When you are able to connect with somebody else who has their own little version of how addiction has played out, it's so healing, I think, and so rewarding and really really beneficial.
Speaker 1:So what is life like now at home?
Speaker 2:Very calm my kids. I can't my daughter. So my daughter is now 13, going on 14, and my son is 11, going on 12. My son was, as the youngest one was, probably the most affected. He was upset. He missed his dad. He didn't understand why daddy was still asleep. He had become over-reliant on me as the functioning parent, as the present one. So over the last couple of years he has started to really bond a lot more again with his father, which is lovely to see. It also takes the pressure off me that I don't have to be the one he always instinctively turns to. He can trust his dad again.
Speaker 2:My daughter luckily had a huge group of friends who protected her. I think through a lot of it, but we have, we're quite an open family. There's no secrets. My kids instinctively ask their dads oh, if you got a meeting today, you had a meeting and they know why he's going to the meetings. So I think we're a lot calmer and really one high point for me um, this year was that my son got two, three offers to three fantastic schools and two scholarships and I just thought this isn't because my kid's smart, it's also because he's emotionally smart and emotionally resilient and I would not have imagined that we could. My husband and I could have helped him, nurture him, support him. My husband was the one who was taking him to sports things and sports events and my son's got this incredible sports scholarship to a great school and we've done that together and that's that's great, great, yeah you brought it.
Speaker 1:You brought up such a good point, you know, as as a mom, right. So I have three children as well, similar ages, and you know we often say like, you know, how are they doing, like? But we see, you know, you can look to the evidence of um, how they're doing socially with their friends and also in their sports and also academically, you know, and if those things are excelling, I mean those are the things that drop when kids aren't feeling well or doing well.
Speaker 2:You know, but I think, yeah, that's the, that's the gift of having a home that is functioning you know, if not just functioning again, you know, for some, and along the way we've been, we've all been forced to not to learn how to have the emotional conversations. So if my son that he can tell me he's upset. And he tells me he's upset and we we work with that and my daughter tells me that she's upset and they know they can be crossed with me and it will be okay. So we've all. I think we're doing pretty well on the emotional intelligence scale.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know you're a therapist, psychotherapist and addictionist therapist and a psychosexual therapist Yep and your husband's in recovery. So the communication in your home must be wonderful and your kids not always. Well, you know, like I mean you have the tools to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know how to out. Yes, yeah, we know how to apologize and repair things when we're wrong, and I think that's probably the greatest life skill I've teacheded my kids that if they mess up, they can apologize and it will be okay. They have to fess up and then we'll deal with it. So, yes, our communication is a lot better than it was, you know, three, four years ago. It's not brilliant, but we're all working at it and we're a pretty tight little group now.
Speaker 1:So if there's something that you could tell someone who's listening, who is in a relationship with someone who has active alcoholism, what would you say?
Speaker 2:I would say please look after yourself, please put some boundaries in place, please recognize what is their stuff and what is your stuff. Please do not do what I did and tip into trying to manage the situation, because this is not something that you can manage by yourself. It is not something that you can manage by yourself. Please don't take it personally.
Speaker 1:Please don't try and take control of it.
Speaker 2:Please love them, but from a distance, you know but from a distance. Yeah. You know, is there any resources that you would direct them to in order to do that? Well, they can come find me on Substack and come and share their experiences. Well, I have found lots of people have found Al-Anon to be really helpful, but there are other kind of groups similar to that. We have Smart Recovery here in the UK. There will be other resources. Please tell people. That's probably the number one thing I would say. Please don't keep it a secret.
Speaker 1:Tell a friend. It sounds like from your conversation before that honesty. Once you got honest with the people around you about what was happening inside your home, that's when you found a lot of freedom.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Look after yourselves, be honest, lean on other people. Try not to do this by yourself. Be mindful that they are on their own journey. It's not your journey, and please don't tip into trying to do it for them, because they have to do it by themselves.
Speaker 1:A lot of great insights. Thank you so much. So could you let listeners know where they can find you during the week and also where you're located on the internets?
Speaker 2:So, geographically, I'm in London and that's where I work and live and see my clients. Uh, I have a website, kingsleycounselingcom, where I work with, with individuals and couples who have relationship difficulties or whose lives have been affected by addiction, and I'm hoping to set up a group program to help couples recover together rather than to be doing it separately. So that's my big project for 2024. And I'm on Substack as well, so come and check out Anna's Recovery Village. I'd love to see you there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm going to put all of that in the show notes. If you have or would like resources, check out Anna's website. Also, I encourage you to head over to, if you're on Substack, go to Anna's Recovery Village to read articles and also to submit your own.
Speaker 2:Please do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate all the insight. It was a great perspective.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, perspective.
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