SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Recovery, recovers, women, drinking, retreats, day, alcohol, love, substances, talking, Dawn Nikel, Coach, Taryn, book, years, person, life, yoga, called, Coaching, reflect, reflecting, reflection, 12-Step Recovery, 1-on-1 Coaching, recovery is practice

SHE RECOVERS® She Recovers Every Day Daily Meditations For Women

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Dawn Nickel

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. I’m really excited for this episode because it is with a woman I really admire and someone that I’ve known for the last decade.

 

Dawn Nickel is the Founder of SHE RECOVERS® and the author of a new book of daily meditations, She Recovers Every Day. Dawn is a respected thought leader in women’s recovery. She, along with her daughter, Taryn Strong, who I also know well, are the founders of the SHE RECOVERS® Foundation, not for profit. Grassroots Organization that inspires hope reduces stigma and empowers women in or seeking recovery for substance use and or mental health challenges. Dawn is a Certified Professional Recovery Coach with a PhD and professional experience related to women and HealthCare policy. In her work as a Researcher and Consultant, Dawn has focused largely on exploring how best to support women who experience substance use disorders, mental health issues, and intimate partner violence. The 3 issues that prompted Dawn to start her own personal recovery journey in 1987. And I could read way more, but Dawn is here. And I can’t wait to talk.

 

So, Dawn, welcome.

 

02:49

Hi, Casey. It’s great to see you this morning.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:52

Yeah, it’s great to see you too. And I wanted to say that Dawn has actually been on the podcast before talking about pathways to recovery and patch works and adding different supports to your recovery journey. And her daughter Taryn, who also founded, SHE RECOVERS® with Dawn, has been on talking about yoga and essential oils for Recovery. So, I will link to both of those episodes in the show notes. But since many people will have not listened to those yet. Can you tell me about you about SHE RECOVERS®? You know, introduce yourself to the audience?

 

03:35

Sure. Thanks, Casey. Well, my name is Dawn, my pronouns are She/Her. And I’m a woman in long-term Recovery. I did. I got into recovery in 1987, I had a serious substance use issue. I was addicted to cocaine, and I had been addicted to cocaine benzos, marijuana, and alcohol for years and, but I had a couple of kids. So, once I started having my children in 1981, it was just a process of, I call it, my harm reduction period of trying to stop doing the drugs. So, I would most do quite well for a period of months, sometimes even a year or so. And then, I would binge and lose kind of any grounding that I’d got at that time. So, by 1987, I recognized that, you know, I was just one of those people. And we’re not all this this person, but I was one of those people that really needed in-patient treatment in order to really get a clean, kind of grounded 28 days’ worth of recovery, and guidance and education and all the things that you get in in-patient. And while I was in in-patient recovery treatment program, I realized I had to do something about an abusive marriage that I was in, or I wasn’t going to succeed in anything. So, I kind of left treatment, left my husband, took my kids, moved away, started recovery, continued to smoke pot for a couple of years, but now you know, I haven’t drank or done cocaine or benzos since and I’m pretty proud of that. And I think it’ll be 36 years this July. And it was just the beginning of my recovery, right. It was learning how to live alcohol-free, which, again, you know, for me, I had it by that point.

 

So, I really appreciate learning and getting to know so many women these days who are like, kind of intervening in their own life earlier in the process. And so, there’s this sense of maybe missing alcohol or wondering what your life is going to be like without it. And I really appreciate that. But for me, I was so done. I can honestly say that since I got into treatment, I’ve never craved alcohol. And I mean, that isn’t, that’s not because I’m a superpower or Superwoman. It’s because I was just that done. I was so done. So, my recovery pathway for the first 10 or so years was very, very much in 12-Step Recovery, in a program, not just for alcohol, but for all drugs. And it was life changing.

 

I mean, there, I found community, I had kind of a roadmap for introspection and self-reflection. I think that that’s what 12-Step Recovery really offers you right, as community and kind of a plan. Here’s what you want to do. You want to look at different things and work on different things. So, it was wonderful. But I started to supplement with therapy and lots of reading and, you know, yoga and meditation and breathwork and video kind of various levels of that I’m not a big yoga person, which it took me years to admit that to my daughter, after we kind of built a Foundation of SHE RECOVERS® on Yoga, and Trauma-Informed Yoga Retreats.

 

But yeah, over about 12 or 13 years, that was my pathway. And then I’ve gone back to University and just you know, life happened, I had young kids who turned into teenagers, and I did drift away from my program. I’ve never left my program of recovery. I still consider myself a member. But it’s not really a big part of my life these days. It hasn’t been for quite a few years. I’ve found other ways to do recovery. And part of what I did, after going to school for 13 years, I was a little bit addicted to going to school. I got out of school. My mom had passed away. I was in a lot of grief. She died of cancer. A few years later, I had cancer. And I felt at a certain point in my life that I was just really behind.

 

And I know that again, a lot of women in recovery do have that sense, I wasted all this time. Mine wasn’t that I wasted it. It was just more that, it was late, like time was running out. I experienced so much death and cancer that I knew, you know that, and I had cancer. So, I just wanted to make sure my life was full. Unfortunately, I decided to fill it with work. And you know, I kind of felt like I was behind financially and all those things. So, for about 5 or 6 years after I finished my PhD, I worked really hard, too hard. Ended up burnt out and losing kind of my footing in my recovery, kind of nearly demolishing my marriage, turned up my relationships, my kids upside down because I was so neglectful of them. I mean, they were young women at the time, but they still kids. Always need your Mom, sorry to tell you mom’s out there.

 

And so, I went on a leave for 4 months after I hit the ball with workaholism and started to reflect again on my life and started a new kind of version of my recovery. This time, focused on workaholism. And I used a lot of the same tools that I used. Earlier in my recovery from substance use, I did turn to a 12-Step Recovery Program called, Workaholics Anonymous, I never, I’ve never been to a meeting. But I just, you know, I love the literature. And I read it often and went back to therapy, did start doing, you know, pretty intensive kind of yoga, just kind of continued on for about, 4 months, figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up again, you know. And what I wanted to do was become a Recovery Coach, which I did the Recovery Coach Training in 2012. We started tearing and I decided we would host yoga retreats. I’ll tell you the yoga. The Recovery Coach Training I took was with Crossroads Recovery Coaching, I don’t think it’s actually in existence anymore. It was a great program. It was a yearlong. And towards the end of it, I realized I didn’t really want to be a Coach. I didn’t want to Coach people 1-on-1. I love all of you women who are doing coaching and I think it’s wonderful. But I’m such an introvert, which surprises people. And I just didn’t want to be 1-on-1 with people over and over again. So, I don’t think that that it was a waste of time. I learned so much about myself during the Recovery Coaching. I use it in my work. I use it in my family. I mean, I use it all over the place. But I knew that I did want to do something with women in Recovery, even if it was just off the side of my desk.

 

So, Taryn and I started the Retreat program, and SHE RECOVERS®  just kind of then evolved into us hosting conferences, us doing our own. SHE RECOVERS®  Coach designation for already certified coaches who wanted to align themselves with our principles and our philosophy. And yeah, the last that was 2011, 2012. We started the Retreat program. It’s 2023 now, so 11 years. So, we’ve been doing this thing called SHE RECOVERS® today I am the Chair of the Foundation. We’re now a nonprofit Taryn is Co-Chair. And neither of us work full-time for the Foundation. But we do. We do advise, you know, strategic, strategically. And of course, we just pitch in on all the projects that we’re interested in, and that if they, if they want to help, they get our help. But it’s really Taryn, who has a baby boy now and she has her own Coaching business. You know, she coaches around the trauma of money and money empowerment for women. And I went back to consulting, so I do consulting in mental health and addictions, and I love it, but I don’t do it full time so that I do have enough work, enough time left over to engage in my different passions. One is writing and the other issue recovers, I really work hard not to fall into the workaholic trap.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  10:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love hearing you talk about your journey. And I’m so impressed with everything you built. And I just wanted to say, or to share that the first time that Dawn and I met, I met her in a Facebook group, you actually reached out to me on the Facebook group.

 

It was 2013. My son Hank was 5, my daughter hadn’t been born yet. I was maybe 20 days alcohol-free. It was the first time I ever participated or known any people at all, who were in recovery, even if it was just online. And I was going to Victoria, where Dawn lives, on sort of a long weekend with my husband and son and was posting in the group about how scared I was and how I’d never been on a trip without drinking or never gone out to dinner without drinking. And I didn’t really talk to my husband about much. And Dawn replied to my post and said, I live in Victoria. Do you want to get together? And I was totally scared, which I’m sure people listening to this can get, just talking to someone in person, seeing someone in person who was in recovery meeting, you know, a “stranger”, which cracks me up now.

 

Somehow telling my husband that I was meeting someone in Victoria, that I’ve met online, that sounded really weird. And breaking away from that. And Dawn picked me up in our car, and we drove to a coffee shop, and we had coffee, and we went to the beach and sat on the beach on these logs and talked and it was amazing. You literally were the first person I’d ever met in person in Recovery.

 

12:51

That gives me chills and it, you know, that was the first time that I’d ever taken anybody to that particular beach. Oh, really. And it was such a nice experience that now, almost every time somebody comes to town, if we want to go and have a coffee on the beach, I go there. So, I think of you pretty well every time I walk down those stairs. I remember the first time that I was there. The island was fairly new to me. Uh, well, I guess by then I’d been here 8 years. I’ve been here almost 18 years now. But I just, I love that it’s the two things. I love sharing more than anything in my life are my recovery and where I live. So, kind of brings those two things together. And I love doing that.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  13:28

And I know we’re going to talk about all the things you do. But I was surprised when you said you didn’t want to do 1-on-1 Coaching. And I totally understand that because it’s a really intense experience. I think I’ve worked with like over 120 Women at this point, but it’s a really close experience where you go through all the emotions and all the hard stuff in the good stuff. The reason I was surprised is I’ve been Gosh, 2, 4 or 5 of the SHE RECOVERS® Retreats as well as your big conferences in Miami and Los Angeles over the last 7 years. You, your retreat, especially in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. So incredibly gorgeous. I think it was 30 women. I stayed in a yurt I did yoga with Taryn. I mean she smudged us we had a sound bath it was like the coolest thing ever, but you connect individually with all of those women.

 

14:38

Yeah, I mean, I love it. So, I love 1-on-1 connections. Absolutely. I guess for me. Well, honestly, I think that I’m not a good Coach because I’m just too bossy. I think because I’ve been around for as long as I have, and I I’ve seen so much, and I’ve experienced so much. I just always want to jump to the solution. Yeah. And so, I realized when I was doing it and my Coach in the Training, I was always the instructor was always saying, no, no, no. Let her figure it out. Let her figure it out, like interrupting me because I was getting like error. Yeah. And so, I think that that was part of it. Just the idea that, yeah, I just not that I think I know so much. But I just, I’m impatient. And I want people to get it. And so, I think that I’m I am impatient with myself, and I want to kind of move ahead, and that’s not Coaching. So, I recognize that, and the other thing is just, I feel like it’s such a big responsibility. Because it is. And although I said I’d love the one on one, I don’t want the pressure of you know, I just don’t want the pressure. I just want the I just want the engagement and I want the connection. I don’t want the pressure to help anybody necessarily. You know, if I’m not Coaching you, I’m just talking to you. Yeah, leave what I have to say.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:56

Well, I mean, I know you’ve helped so many people. I’ve seen it in huge groups in Miami and Los Angeles. I’ve seen it in intimate 1-on-1 groups. You certainly helped me a lot, even though I was sober for a year, and I went back to drinking and I was so scared to disappoint you. Even though I went quiet, you probably knew. But you’ve helped me a ton. So, I am so excited to have you on again. And let’s talk about your book.

 

16:29

Yeah, my book, I wrote a book. Well, I’ve always been writing books. I just don’t always publish them. I’m working on some other books now.

This book is called, She Recovers Every Day: Meditations For Women.

It’s published by Hazelden Publishing. And it’s, some people may be familiar with the idea of, kind of, a daily reader or a daily reflection or a daily meditation book. And that’s what this is. And reading daily readers has been a part of my recovery for the last 36 years. And the first one that I ever had was a Hazelden book, actually, by a woman named Karen Casey. It’s called, Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women (Hazelden Meditations). And that book just turned 40 years old this year. And I just love it. I love it, you know. And then the other one that I read all the time, I’m looking at them right here, they’re across the room. Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much is one that I picked, I think my daughters gave it to me for Christmas, the first year that I was in Recovery from workaholism.

 

And I love the practice. I think that recovery is a practice. So, you know, everything that I do now is kind of I have a writing practice in a daily reading practice and a little bit of a stretching, not yoga really practice in it, meditation practice, but I love the idea of just holding a little book in my hands and once a day reflecting on something. And so, when Hazelden invited me to write this book, I kind of went, Oh my gosh, that’s not actually the book that I’ve been planning on writing, or that I was even working on. I was writing on, you know, a book kind of about the practice of recovery at the time. But I agreed to do it. And I did it. And it was just a lovely experience. And I love that this book is out in the world. I love when somebody reaches out and says, he’s reading really resonated, or if I see a picture of somebody who just got the book. And I’ve seen I have pictures now on my phone of cats holding the book and babies holding the book and dogs holding the book. So, I really, yeah, I just love that it’s out in the world, and that people are the people that I know and love, and then a whole bunch that I don’t know, are kind of thinking about the same thing. On any given day. If they’re sitting with my book. It’s just a really special feeling.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  18:39

Yeah, it. It’s kind of amazing that you just said that the book he wanted to write was about the practice of recovery. And I say that because I have your book pulled up. And the reading that I was hoping you were going to read was September 28. That literally says recovery. It’s a practice. So, we’re next. We didn’t. I did not know you were going to do. I know we didn’t talk about it in advance. Dawn was laughing at me. I interviewed her in person at my friend in your friends Ingrid’s bookstore in Seattle, maybe a week and a half ago. And Dawn was saying that everyone else who interviewed her, asked her to pick the reviews. And she’s like, Casey, you are like, I’d like you to read this one and this one and talk about that. So, a lot. That’s amazing that we picked you were talking about the one I pulled out, but would you read us the one on September 28 about Recovery is a practice.

 

19:43

I’d love to recovery as a practice. I’m passionate about reminding people that recovery is something that we get to design for ourselves, and that includes defining how and at what pace it unfolds. Recovery can only be fairly and properly defined. And by the individuals seeking or living in it. The concept of having a recovery practice lends itself well to such ideas. When it comes to my recovery, what my recovery practices made up of, and for what purpose or outcome is up to me, your practice of recovery is up to you. Your loved one in or seeking recovery will have to determine their recovery practice. And we’ll need your support in that practice and how it might evolve over time. The concept of recovery as a practice works particularly well for women who have a history of feeling disempowered in their lives and or their recovery. This is especially true for women who have been impacted by abuse, systemic racism, and other traumas, the more opportunities we each have to exercise agency and choice in defining both the parameters and the patchwork pieces of our recovery, the better. And then each daily, roughly, each daily reading kind of ends with a reflection and the reflection for September 28, is we design our own practice for recovery. And then we commit to following it, imperfectly.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:04

I love that perspective. Because I know for many of us, myself included, recovery, you’re walking away from drinking, or whatever your substances or whatever is going on in your life, often is not a straight line. I know it wasn’t for me, you know, you think about it for a long time. And you know, just the steps of like, awareness and you know, contemplation, and then action. And it’s not you take action, you stopped drinking. And for some people, that’s it. For other people, it’s for me, I, you know, stopped drinking for four months, I immersed myself in the world. For the first time I met a lot of people online actually attended a performance. I went to a lot of big book studies, women’s meetings, and then I got pregnant, and I sort of inched myself away from recovery. I was like, Well, I’m not drinking. And you know, I was doing that slow shuffle away from everyone who knew I was thought I had a problem with alcohol. And when I had Lila, I sort of slowly went back to drinking, and I thought it was or I wanted to tell myself, my issue was situational, right? It wasn’t the alcohol, it was my stress my marriage, my kid my job, my job was a big one, I changed jobs. And I was like, I’m better now. Right? I’m, I’m not going to drink in that way again. And then, you know, of course, very quickly got back to drinking in that way again. And the problem with that was one, I felt like complete garbage. And my anxiety came back, and my depression came back, and my relationships got worse and all those things. But I also knew too much. I knew how I felt without alcohol in my life. I knew everything about I knew alcohol was a problem for me at that point, I wasn’t oblivious anymore. I knew I was going to have to stop drinking. At some point. I just was thinking I could play out the string for a little bit longer. I was like, I don’t want to just stop yet. Because it was hard. And so, I like that, you know, in many situations, you’re very much shamed. For an you know, we see this all the time, right, another day, one another day one another day one. And yet, sometimes you have to do that, in order to realize that it’s the substance, not you. Does that make sense?

 

24:03

It does. I’m sitting here thinking, wow, just everything I have to say about recovery these days. I can point to a page. Do it. Do it. No, I’m not going to. I won’t, but there’s a, you know, I wrote a reading I wrote something called there’s an entry. I don’t really know what day it is called recovery is not linear. And it’s that exact point. Right. And you spoke also, you know you were talking about the stages of change without identifying them as the Stages of Change. And we’re ready when we’re ready in the stages of change is kind of a sociological psychological theory that says, We anything anytime we’re going to change behavior, there’s a process that we go through. We start with pre contemplation and pre contemplation like, you know, we’re kind of some people call it denial. There’s actually there’s no issue we’re not even thinking about it. And then contemplation, we start to think, oh, maybe there’s some changes that are needed and I wonder what they would be and wonder if I could do them. Eventually we do move into action. And then once we you know, sometimes we stay an act and sometimes we move back to contemplation or contemplation, I have no problem or maybe you have a problem. And it’s just it’s this, it’s not linear. So, this is it’s a circle, it’s not linear at all. And then we move into maintenance. If we kind of once we get our kind of balance in it, we’re in maintenance. And one of the beautiful things that I love about a revised vision of this of the stages of change is Kathy Robins, a wonderful she recovers coach talks about the stage after maintenance, which if you look at it, like kind of the actual diagram, its maintenance, and then it goes up and it’s relapse, which is really a bummer. Like how it’s kind of depressing to think that after all this maintenance, the only thing I have to do is either stay in maintenance, my life or relapse. And so, Kathy draws in this next stage called, and it’s kind of takes you out of the circle, and it’s called celebration. And I just love that, you know that and as long as I’m celebrating my recovery, I’m not going to go back to relapse, but I’m not just hanging out in maintenance. I’m not just doing the deed, like I’m not, you know, I’m just not here, I’m like, this is cool stuff. And the day one thing, again, there’s another reading in there where I talk about gay ones. And when people in our in our community come in and say day one again, they say it like that right day. Like it’s just low self, you can feel the self-loathing and shame as you say. And like I just want to go well, you mean it’s day one again, like you’re doing it again, you’re trying again, you’re not giving up. This is amazing. Keep going try again today, and maybe Thursday will be day one again. And you can celebrate that too. Because the truth of the matter is the theory behind stages of change really is that we change when we’re ready. And we’re not always ready and or we’re not always as ready as we think we are. And even when we really truly are ready, that doesn’t mean that we figured out how to cope without the thing that has allowed us to continue to cope unhealthily or not, for as many years as so yeah. I just think self-compassion, you know, Kristin Neff’s work is just so foundational, and everybody in recovery should be familiar with it. We’ve got to give ourselves grace and, and self-compassion, because I do I talked about the unicorns that say, That’s it, I’m done. I’m never doing this drug, or I’m never drinking again. And they never do. And I just do not understand those people. That was not my story. I would love to understand, I would say it’s probably less than point 00000 1% of people when it comes to substances that says I’m done. That’s it. Because I know very few people in my own life. Yeah, and I know 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of people in recovery.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:45

One of the things when you’re talking about the circle, I’ve always thought of, and I’ve seen this unrelated to recovery in particular. As you know, we think that progress, any self-improvement, anything you’re doing should be this sort of straight, diagonal line. And the illustrations I’ve seen that I love are like, here’s what it actually looks like. And it’s sort of like a straight line and then a squiggle and a circle and but you’re moving in a direction where you want to go it’s just not a straight line. And I love Kathy and I you know, I hadn’t heard that about celebration, I met Kathy in person for the first time actually, down on a she recovers retreat in Mexico, which was incredible on the beach, and just so many women with so much wisdom. And when I think about that progress, you are learning and practicing and building muscles and gaining awareness every time you do sort of a loop on your path. I mean, that’s what happened to me. Like, I knew too much. I’d learned too much. I had that trial and error of like, yeah, I tried to moderate pretty quickly went back to a bottle and more a diet, obsessing about it worrying if it’s enough trying to hide it, whatever it is,

 

Note to self: It’s not two glasses of wine out, you know, at dinner with my husband, when you talked about celebration. My thought is I mean, I always think that because drinking was my thing, that the goal of doing all this work is not only to not drink again, to go through the left rest of your life not drinking that for me. It’s not the goal. Not drinking is the foundation of everything else I want to achieve in my life and can’t do when I’m stuck. And so, if my goal was just to navigate my life, alcohol Free. Yes, I wouldn’t have hangovers and, and all that good stuff. But it holds you back to such an extent to your potential one your imagination and what you think’s available to you that once you stop drinking or whatever it is, and the shame and the self-loathing and all the crap, you get to do all the other stuff. And when you’re talking about celebration, what Kathy talked about, that’s what I imagined.

 

30:29

Oh, entirely. I mean, it’s about it’s about finding joy in and not like, there’s the big joyful things, right? It’s like, hey, now I in recovery, or sober or whatever, whatever my situation is, and want to be able to dance at my daughter’s wedding and have this wonderful time. But I don’t know joy for me, like literally, I am joyful on a day like yesterday, when we’ve already done our family Easter celebration, which was we did on Friday, because Taryn was here with the baby. And so yesterday, we didn’t have any obligations. I didn’t know what day it was, as you know, I thought this, I panicked yesterday, because I thought it was, I was like, you thought it was Easter, but no idea what day it is on long weekends. But my joy yesterday was that I decided I was going to stay in my pajamas all day that I was going to change the furniture around in my living room. Because I hadn’t done that for a really long time. And since I was a kid, there’s something about actually want to write about it. Because I think there’s probably something really deeply important about this but change the living room around. And I want it just to watch the last season of the crown, which has been around forever, and I haven’t watched and all day yesterday, like I was enjoy, I was enjoy it not having to put my clothes on no bra and no bra person. If people know me, they know that about me. And like, that’s the kind of joy that I love in my life. Just the joy of a simple, beautiful life.

 

You know, I connected with a few people. And I wanted to say, going back, if I made the whole coaching thing, yes, part of the complication for me was, I love 1-on-1. I love messaging, people are responding to messages. I love emails, I love meeting people. And I didn’t know how I was going to create a boundary around. Okay, I’m talking to this person for half an hour through messenger. Because I care. But tomorrow, I’m going to be talking to somebody else. Would have to send them an invoice like, how am I going to navigate that? I’m going to have to stop talking for free, you know, just all these really silly things. So, that was one thing that I was thinking about afterwards. And the other around celebration. I mean, I love watching. Like you and other moms yesterday, you know, on Sunday and all this, I can see the moms that are putting in my daughter, Ashley, like the effort she puts in to those Easter egg hunts. It’s like, oh my gosh, I actually sent her a message. And I said, you must have been horrifically disappointed in your childhood. Because just the things that you moms do for your kids nowadays, but really showing up and being present. And, you know, I saw that your son was still into having helping her out or being involved in the Easter Egg Hunt.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:08

Oh, he was around and be they’d heard finding way too many eggs. And I was like, Dude, it’s so cute. So cute. Yeah, and my granddaughter you know, leaving a note saying Easter Bunny, please make sure you leave a couple of eggs somewhere obvious. So, my to my almost three year old brother confined. So, it’s just being present and aware for our families and for our kids and our grandkids. It’s that’s the joy. I mean, like, I don’t know that I’ll ever get back to the what I used to think was joy, like the excitement and the adrenaline of cocaine, and champagne, which was my life for, so I mean, that was a different type of excitement. I don’t want that anymore. But I don’t seek that anymore. either. I just I want to live a simple present life. Yeah. And we can do that. And with regard to the going back to the stages of change, I think, yeah, it’s just, we change, like, and I guess the thing for me is I don’t think we change much when we’re numbing out. Day after day after day. I think it’s just Same old, same old. Everything is predictable. And when we show up and we’re present for life, I mean, the excitement is we don’t know what’s going to happen and everything’s going to happen and some of it’s going to be great Some of it’s not but we’re going to be there for it and yeah, I you know, I got clean and sober for my children and then now I stay in recovery for myself. But anyway, all that just to say, I love just reflecting upon and witnessing moms showing up for their kids in a way that I did for my kids, you know, but I get to see my children doing it. And I didn’t show up for them. I just was not nearly as present and aware. Yeah, during the first years of their life. Yeah, well, me neither.

 

 

34:53

My son was five the first time I stopped drinking for year. And then I went back and stopped when he was eight. And my daughter was two was when I when I stopped drinking. And like you said, you show up for your kids like I did all the things, and there were lots of moments that were incredible. But that ticker tape in the back of my head, thinking about, Oh, is there a glass of wine, blah, blah, blah? Do I have enough at home? You know, is it too early to pour on the weekends? That was always in the back in my mind. With the stages of change, something I thought about was the idea that my hope in the work that you’re doing was she recovers with the work that this podcast is doing. And I love going on other podcasts that are not recovery podcast, ones like shameless mom academy or other podcasts about mental health, because a lot of those women either aren’t aware or aren’t in the pre contemplation phase, but they know that something isn’t right. And I think as sort of alcohol, free, Instagram and TikTok. And Facebook is growing more and all the news about alcohol and your body and your health. I mean, there was a huge New York Times study story just two days ago that you know, sorry, wine lovers, no amount is good for you version. I feel like we’re moving more people into that awareness and pre contemplation where I was pretty oblivious up until the age of 30. To 35.

 

36:46

Right? Well, I mean, I was 27 when it occurred to me that maybe it was the drugs. Like, so I totally get that in 1987. Nope. There was just no discussion about it. You know, I talked about even being a teenager who was on drugs and overdosing, and my parents in 1985, like they had no idea what to do with me. Nobody was talking about it, you know, they. So yeah, I think the information is there. And I think that there are still people who don’t hear it and don’t know it. Yeah. And don’t understand it. There’s another way to live. So, I think you’re right, it really is. We’re trying to redefine recovery as she recovers, we want it to be really primarily it’s about mental health, right? I think for me, I believe that it’s kind of our mental health that leads us to depend on substances, and also situational things in our life, but really mental health and trauma etc. So, the more we can recover out loud as you do, and I do and so many of us do, the more likely it is that somebody’s going to hear us and go, Oh, wow. It never occurred to me that, you know, drinking wine every single day of my life is not a solution, or that it’s holding me back. It’s, you know, that it’s actually or even just that it’s something I should think about for a minute.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:05

Yeah, yeah, completely. Or I was unaware for the longest time truly oblivious that my 3am wakeups were caused by the wine I was drinking, I thought it was caused by my anxiety at work or impostor syndrome or being worried about the next day or my boss’s email. That’s what I thought it was. And then you slowly get this awareness around it. Now I have to say that I’m sure some people are listening to this and being like, yeah, alcohol causes anxiety. I don’t care. The only reason I say that is because people I drink a lot of coffee. And people tell me all the time like, well, if you’re anxious, you should not drink two Yeti tumblers of coffee every day. And I’m sort of like, shut your mouth. I have nothing. I have nothing in my life.

 

38:59

I will tell you, I’m sorry. You can tell me to shut my mouth. But when I ended up hitting the ball with workaholism, going back into therapy. My therapist and I understand kind of uncovered the fact that anxiety had probably been what had been driving all of my dysfunctional behaviors for my entire life. And I gave up caffeine. And I drank decaf coffee. And yes, it was a hard transition. But I wouldn’t I know the difference. Now sometimes I’ll have a coffee because I want to get buzzed. Like it’s ridiculous, but I love decaf coffee and I you know, I have a beautiful latte machine and I make lattes in the morning with decaf coffee. It really has made a difference for me, but I would never ever tell somebody else to stop. All right, all right, I’ll

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  39:45

think about it. Well, but that’s it. So, like you’re at the contemplation stage, you’re not ready for action. So don’t even go there because you’re just going to drink coffee and then you’re going to go no day one again.

 

39:55

I just get to the point where I actually want to give it up right nice.

 

39:59

You will like this, and if you’re not willing, then don’t do it, then kind of don’t do it. And it’s, you know, I almost have the same advice for people who are contemplating giving up substances. Unless you’re unless your life is absolutely being destroyed by them, then you need to give them up. Like, there’s just no doubt about it. But if you’re like, really, really not for sure, thinking that you have a problem or want to stop drinking wine, you’re not going to stop drinking wine. You know, you’re probably not going to do it. Just because you read somewhere that it’s, it’s a healthy lifestyle change. Yeah. And like, just accept that. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t moderate. You can’t drink less or less often or, you know, wine and not like all those things. I mean, people talk about moderation in recovery circles, like it’s a bad thing. No, it’s not. It’s harm reduction, anything you do to reduce the harms of any substance that you’re taking is a good news story.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:50

Yeah. And what I always tell people, which is interesting, as I’m looking at my Yeti, is, you know, what your life looks like and feels like when you’re drinking, you know, what the next three months are going to look like the highs and the lows. And if you’re considering or starting to become aware that alcohol is bringing a lot of crap into your life, just do an experiment, you know, and you may need support with that, or guidance or whatever it is, but do an experiment to see how you feel alcohol free, and not four days, but 100 days. So, Dawn, when I do my caffeine free experiment for 100 days, I will tell you, but not promising it yet. So, to get back to your work, I know one thing that we wanted to touch on and talk about is gathering in person and how powerful that is. And I know you have your fourth a huge sort of she recovers conference coming up in Chicago, can you talk about that and what’s what it’s going to be like and your speakers and all that good stuff.

 

42:10

I’d love to I’d like to start off just by saying that we just got the she recovers, started off with in person events, retreats primarily and then conferences, but also sharing circles. So, our she recovers coaches all over the world before the pandemic we had close to 40 Sharing circles taking place 29 of them were in in the United States. So, we just really believe believed before the pandemic, the in person connections were really key, although we you know, we were meeting each other online as well. And I obviously I think that online recovery is been an absolute gift from the universe to women in in seeking recovery. But nowadays, we’re going back to in person posts kind of post pandemic, and we’re getting back into sharing circles. So, we do have I don’t even know how many right now I want to say like 16, sharing circles struck up mostly in the United States, a couple in Canada, maybe one in Sydney, Australia still. And those are free.

 

And as a foundation, we’re really committed to making sure that we have free offerings are all of our meetings online are free. We have educational, mental health Mondays, we have different things that are free. Our conferences are not free. And you know, they’re actually one of the ways that we raise money so that we can do all the free things that we do. And so, I just always want to start off by saying I recognize that not everybody’s going to be able to afford our conferences. What we’re doing in 2024, is moving back into offering retreats again. And we’re going to be offering retreats at various levels. So, we’ll have our usual kind of the retreats that you’re used to, not in Mexico, necessarily, but in other places that are higher end, nice retreats. And then we’re looking at having the mother like intensive theme focus kind of with clinicians, we’re looking at doing some identity based retreats, LGBTQ plus biwako health care and allied professionals, etc. But we’re also looking at having smaller localized retreats where our coaches will host in and around their communities and these will be affordable, more accessible cope retreat, so we’re looking forward to that. That said, She Recovers in Chicago is our fourth week.

 

We went to New York City in 2017. L.A. where you were at in 2018. And this past April, after much delay we did she recovers in Miami, so she recovers in Chicago. The focus of the weekend. Thursday is called our Professional Symposium and it’s for Coaches and Therapists and people in the Behavioral Health industry. It’s just a whole bunch of wonderful speakers there. 6 CEUs for people who collect CECs. So that’s kind of a separately ticketed event than Friday. she recovers in Chicago kicks off and we’re going to be doing some identity based kind of roundtables or organic based groups will gather and we’ll also be making You space for other communities. I don’t know if you have a Hello Someday community but people who have communities can kind of reach out to us and ask if we can kind of find them a little spot at the hotel, which is the Palmer Hotel in downtown Chicago. It’s incredibly beautiful. As I understand it, I haven’t been there yet.

 

So, Friday will be that and then Friday night, we’ll have wonderful stage program, it’s kind of going to be fun and musical. We have a solo travelers meet up on the first night for people who have traveled on their own and don’t know anybody. And so many people come to our conferences on their own. It’s incredible and many of them are like, just make connections there that they have kept to this day. Beautiful stories have come out of that. Saturday, we’ve got workshops and talks, the focus of the entire weekend is our stories, our strength. So, our workshop themes will be around telling stories, like learning how to tell our stories, telling it in art telling it was spoken word telling it in song telling it on writing, um, and Elsa Johnson is doing a workshop. We’ve got the author of that drink, drink, the novel, not novel, The Book, no drink. And I’ve had a memoir on the show.

 

46:11

Probably one of the very first books on women and alcohol other than, you know, drinking a love story. The memoir, right? Yes, really kind of helped kickstart I think what we see as the women’s modern recovery movement. Elizabeth Gilbert is our speaker on Saturday night at station dinner, right? No, that is incredible years in the making. Yeah. And we’ll have our famous signature, silent disco on Saturday night after Elizabeth Gilbert. Sunday. Our speaker is Valerie Core and amazingly beautiful Sikh woman who’s written a book called see no stranger. And she started she’s built a beautiful platform called Revolutionary Love. And she, she’s an anti-racist advocate and a woman in recovery from trauma herself. And we’re really delighted that she’s going to be joining us.

 

Yeah, we’re still kind of just filling in a few little pieces of the puzzle. But we’ll have a marketplace and lots of opportunities for connection and some meals, you know, lunches always great time on Saturday and Sunday. We’re really looking forward to it. Tickets are on sale. Now. We’re still looking for exhibitors and sponsors. And yeah, it’s you know, people who have never been to a celebration of women’s recovery. I can’t even describe. Maybe you can describe the energy conferences.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:31

Well, you know what’s interesting, so obviously, I’ve been to smaller retreats, and they were incredible in terms of like the especially in early sobriety, just actually meeting in person, lots of women in recovery. I went to the Los Angeles one, what year was that? Again? 2018. Okay, so I will never be Hilton. Yeah, maybe two years alcohol free. And that was amazing, as well. And I know a lot of women went before they were completely in recovery, right? They were trying and not trying and going to learn and make connections and feel that energy and sort of be inspired by all of the 500 women who were on this path with them. That was incredible to me, because I’d never been in this huge group. I had done various online groups. I did hip sobriety school, which then became Tempest by Holly Whitaker. And I actually got to meet in person, many of the women that I’d known for those two years, and I know when I went to Miami, there were groups of the supermom squad and the luckiest club and just different women from all over the country who were friends and supported each other but had never met in person. You know, it was just wonderful. And the speakers were incredible. I know, in Miami, Ashley Judd was a speaker. I can’t imagine Elizabeth Gilbert, but really, really inspiring and sort of you meet people, and then you take that back. And you always have just this connection with people you’ve met in person, even if you, you know, sort of see them online or via email or text after that.

 

49:25

Yeah. And I think it’s just it’s inspiring, because you get to see that, like, there are literally hundreds of people on this journey, and they are all dancing, and having fun and laughing and crying and doing different things. But it’s just I think you’re wrapped in this. I feel like the week the whole weekend. We’re wrapped in this sense of hope and possibility. Yeah, and I just, I’d invite anybody listening to register. I hope I’m sure we’ll still have some tickets left when this is live. You don’t usually sell out till just before and it’s not in remind us of the date of the sale. You. Yeah, The Symposium is on Thursday, September 28. Okay. And then the weekend is Friday, the 29th of September to Sunday, October 1. Okay.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  50:08

Very, very cool. Well, so as we wrap up, one of the things I like about your book of daily meditations, is, regardless of if you are at the beginning of your journey, or you’re a number of years along like I am, one thing I always make sure to talk to people about is recovery, not drinking, whatever it is, does not need to define your life for many years after I stopped drinking, I did not want to, quote unquote, be a woman in recovery. Like, I just didn’t like that term. But I was very clear that I was that I was someone who used to drink a lot and didn’t drink any more. That was part of my identity, because I felt better without it. And it was very important to me to make sure that on a daily basis, the fact that I didn’t drink anymore, was part of my identity was part of my consciousness was important to me, because I had not done that before and slept back. And so, part of that is the people I knew who also didn’t drink. Part of that was, you know, in recovery. Part of that was being accountable, like my husband, my friends, my whoever knew that I used to drink, and I didn’t anymore, but part of that is, is daily reminders, and just touching base with the fact that this is part of your life. And I feel like you’re she recovers every day book, the meditations for women, because it’s one page every day, and it’s sort of a grounding. Practice that doesn’t take a lot of time is one of those things that can just be like, oh, yeah, this is good. This is what I’m doing. This is important.

 

52:07

Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, for me, recovery is just life. Right? I mean, I guess I, I used to have a recovery identity, that was like, 12 Step. And that was my recovery. That was my identity. Now, I mean, I do a lot of recovery face things, obviously, with being the kind of having something called she recovers such a big part of my life, that I’m just want a healing journey. I’m just on a journey, you know, healing or not, but I figured that I am healing. And so, the daily meditation book is really about life. Yeah, it’s, it’s not a lot about substances, it’s not a lot about kind of the things, it’s, it’s about possibility. It’s about, just about ideas, you know, just kind of things that I hope that a lot of women can relate to. It’s about being a mom, or a friend or a partner or a person with a business or whatever it is. So yeah, I just, I hope that people are treating it like a touchstone. Honestly, just to give yourself a couple of minutes a day, where you’re focusing on a thought, that is a healthy, maybe inspiring, maybe thought provoking, self-reflective thought. And, you know, we don’t often give ourselves those moments throughout our busy days. So that’s how I hope people are using it just kind of as a check in, hey, I’m here, and I’m human. And I’m going to think about this for a minute.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:32

When it’s also sort of just taking care of yourself, right? It’s just, I’m reading something. I mean, I one of the things I love about SHE RECOVERS® and I’m also as SHE RECOVERS® Coach, so clearly very inspired and aligned with the work you’re doing is the idea that we’re all recovering from something not just an addiction, but whether it’s a mental health issue, like anxiety or depression, that difficult relationship, unavailable parents, I know on retreats I’ve met women who are recovering from breast cancer or an eating disorder or disordered eating, or whatever it is. So, I feel like there’s so many layers to just being human, that as we grow and start taking care of ourselves better. We start recovering from those as well.

 

54:33

Totally. That’s the plan.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  54:35

Yeah. Is there any reading you want to leave us with that you particularly if someone’s listening to this you think is a good one?

 

54:49

I would, you know, I always think that the most important message I have is for somebody who really is struggling. Though somebody who’s like, listening, maybe because they’re having a hell of a time. They don’t kind of know how to move out of the rut that they’re in. So, I wrote something on November 30, called one day. And it kind of exemplifies the journey, my journey. But I’m speaking, you know, I think it’s a lot of people’s journey. If you’ve struggled with substances, including alcohol, it’s called one day, one day, you will look in the mirror and see a woman you don’t recognize, it will be a very bad day, you will make the decision to go searching for who you were, you will look back over your past and contemplate where things went wrong. And acknowledge what you did right? You will identify the patterns that ruled and probably still rule your life, you will go back and forth on the decision to find yourself again and put various amounts of effort into doing it. But you will be proud of, even the smallest steps you take forward. You will dig a little deeper and try a little harder. And one day you will realize that you have changed a pattern that keeps you from being your highest self, and you buy yourself flowers, because damn right you are worthy. And then one day, you will share your story with another woman who has been where you have been through mutual acceptance and understanding. You will both remember that you are whole and worthy, and living examples of how we heal. That will be a very good day. Take each day as it comes. There are learnings in each one.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:26

That is beautiful. That’s perfect. So, let’s end on that. But please tell everyone how they can find your book. she recovers about the retreat, all the things.

 

56:41

Well, I’d love it if you would order my book from our friend, Ingrid’s Indie Bookstore. And you can do that at Three Trees Books online. And if you can’t, if you’re Canadian, or it’s difficult for you to get it through there, it’s available wherever new books are sold. So, anywhere online, and in quite a few bookstores these days.

 

You can find my website is www.dawnnikel.com.
SHE RECOVERS® is www.sherecovers.org. And if you want to know more about our retreats that the retreats at Taryn and I host, and on Salt Spring Island in particular, you can find out more at www.tarynstrong.com. And we at this moment, we have just a couple of spots left in our Salt Spring Retreats this August. But I think yeah, those are the kind of main websites to find out about me and us.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  57:30

Yeah, and I will I know that was a number of different ones. So, if you go to the show notes of this show, we’ll have all the links. So, you can just click through if you’re if you’re looking to find those as well. Well, Dawn, I love talking to you. You know that you were a huge part of my story for the last decade. And so, I really appreciate you coming on.

 

57:56

Well, thank you and I admire so much the work that you’re doing with women, and I appreciate you and it’s always lovely to speak with you. You have a wonderful, wonderful podcast interviewing style. I feel very comfortable every time we chat.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  58:09

Thank you.