S1 E12 Name It To Tame It: Cindy's Story Of Healing From Grief In Sobriety

Welcome to the mindful sobriety podcast with your hosts, Jane and Amanda. I'm Jane, a licensed psychotherapist and alcohol free retreat host.

And I'm Amanda, alcohol free lifestyle coach and yoga instructor. We're so glad you're here.

Our guest today is Cindy Payne. Cindy is a licensed professional counselor and owner of Rooted Counseling in Frisco, Texas. She's also a yoga instructor and a dear friend of Amanda's and mine that we met through Sober in Dallas. Cindy is a wife, a mom of 3, and she's actually in India as we speak on a yoga and yoga retreat. But we had the wonderful opportunity to get to hear a little bit of her story as well as some of her professional expertise and guidance on healing and recovering from grief, especially unnamed grief.

I think that you will really identify with some of the parts of her story that are so relatable as well as learn something new that can help you on your own your own healing journey. So enjoy. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited and honored to be asked to do this today. Yes.

Yes. So a little bit about our context, Cindy, we met, I wanna say it was last May or June, right, at a sober in Dallas event?

Yes. Yoga at Clydes Warren Park.

At Clyde Warren Park. And, you know, the funny thing is is I had heard of you before I met you because when I was on my retreat in April and I met Alex from mindful life practice, she was like, oh, yeah. I know someone from the Dallas area, and she was like, but she's in this area. And I'm like, yeah, that's kinda far away. I probably wouldn't know her.

And then I ended up meeting you not too much longer, and, and I met Amanda right before I met you, and you and Amanda were friends. So it's funny how the alcohol free path just kind of brings people together in a unique, beautiful way.

It really does. It really does. And, Amanda, you and I met through sober in Dallas, a sober in Dallas event that I had hosted. I believe it was, like, the first one that I had hosted, in 2022. So, yeah, just the world's all kind of collided perfectly there.

Yeah. I can't believe it's been that long. But I was, like, 30 days sober or something when I first met you.

Mhmm.

I remember That was awesome. Wild.

Yeah. Yeah.

So in a way, we all met through Sober in Dallas and through the mindful life practice.

Yes. Yeah. So exciting.

Bali and Dallas worlds collide.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Cindy, could you share a little bit about your sober story and your path to to getting where you are today?

Sure. Yeah. So let's see. I'll start kinda way back when, and, I'll give you the shortened version. But, basically, I was born in Houston, Texas in the late seventies to really young parents.

My mother from the time that I was born and on struggled with mental illness greatly. And as a result of that, I was raised primarily by my grandparents, so her mom and dad. My parents divorced when I was 2. My mom remarried shortly after that. So I would kind of spend a lot of time with grandparents and then with mom and then back with grandparents.

But all of that kind of came to a head when I was 5, and my grandparents were awarded full custody of my sister. So right from the get go, you know, it it was kind of a situation where I was different. And I was raised in a community where I was probably the only one being raised by grandparents. So I was really aware of that from a really early age that I was not like the other kids, really primarily elementary and middle school. And so my experimentation with alcohol really started early.

I think I was about 14 when I had my first drink. My grandparents were really conservative, so there was not a lot of alcohol in the home, But I found my way to experimenting with it with some friends, and I liked the way it felt. I remember early on thinking, oh, I don't have to feel different. I don't have to feel anything. And so from an early age, you know, kind of just having these blackout moments, with alcohol.

So that really was my introduction to it. And in college, it's it's really interesting because I kinda took a a turn where I really buckled down in my college years. I kind of almost became perfectionistic in a lot of ways, really performative. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things differently, to keep a 4.0, to just do all the things to not disappoint, my grandparents, myself. But I would still have moments of just, binge drinking like a lot of college students do, and I would black out.

And, it was scary, but I didn't really think much of it. We good? Sorry about that. I got a little

I think it maybe went out for just a second, but that's okay.

We'll just

we'll just edit this part out.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So so I I didn't think much of it. I kinda just wrote it off to, like, this is normal college experimentation.

Mhmm. I got married right out of college to my high school sweetheart, and we moved out of state pretty early on. We got married at 22. I was a mom by 26. And yeah, so a lot of really fast life experiences, and I didn't have a lot of support, you know, looking back.

I was in another state. My grandparents were but still back in Texas, and I just really, I was lonely. I was really lonely. I joined a mom's group for stay at home moms because I'd quit my job at that time. I was a teacher, and I can remember days where we would just all go to the park and our kids would run around and we were just a community really as a support system for one another.

And so, yeah, there would be wine occasionally at the park, but it still wasn't like a big center of my life at that point. So, yeah, fast forward.

So do you feel like those were was that, like, mommy wine culture era, or do you think that was kind of pre mommy wine culture?

Yeah. So this would have been, like, 2,005 to 2010. So I feel like we were just getting introduced to mommy wine culture. And that's probably why it wasn't such a center of our group. I mean, we definitely drank when we got together with couples and definitely drank sometimes when the days were long and we were just up to our eyeballs and my legs.

Surviving, Yeah. Absolutely. But it wasn't problematic. I never really had a memory of going, oh, this is kind of a little out of control at this point. Yeah.

So yeah. Yeah. My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's during this time, and I felt this pull to get back home to Texas, and be with her. And so we made the move back to Texas from we were living in Las Vegas at the time, in 2011. And my oldest was just starting kindergarten.

My younger boys, I have twin boys, that are 2 years younger than him, and they were still in preschool. So we moved back to Texas. I had to kinda reorient myself to being back in my home state and being lonely again and that whole theme of not having friends, not having a support system really So I went back to work as a teacher, and really just grieved I really grieved the loss of my friends. And I grieved my grandmother. She passed shortly after we'd moved back home.

And, yeah, so it took about maybe 4 or 5 years to really get settled back in Texas again. It

must be so hard after you you had gone through that in Las Vegas of feeling lonely and, you know, longing for friends and a community, and you found that friend group and then left and kind of had to start over back in Texas. Sure. And it's home, but it's not home.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So during that time, I was teaching elementary school, and I had always had this pull to go back and get my master's in counseling. And it's been just a very dream of mine, from college.

And so I thought, you know what? I'm gonna do this. And I went back to school, and I graduated, with my master's in counseling when my oldest was in 5th grade and the twins were in 3rd grade. So that was a huge accomplishment for me. It was like I was fulfilling this, like, lifelong dream, But, you know, I I still was just kinda wavering.

I still felt a little untethered, a little unsettled, but I kept on, I just moved forward like I knew no to do. And so I was in 1

3 Yeah. School age kids and graduate school at the same time.

Absolutely. And, you know, I look back at that now, and in the moment, I was just doing what I had been trained to do my whole life, which is to just keep moving forward. You know? Don't stop and process anything. What are you gonna do with it anyway?

So you just kind of sweep it, bury it, and and keep soldiering on. And that's really how I have probably functioned most of my adult life, childhood and adult life. And so, yeah, I I became an elementary school counselor. I transitioned from that into a student support person for the district, in which I the city which I live in. So I was a crisis counselor for a while, and I was just accruing my hours just waiting for my licensed professional counselor certification to be finished.

So Okay. Yeah. All this time, you know, I would say when my when my oldest hit middle school was really when drinking kind of came back on the scene as a way to connect with other people, meet couple friends, go out with couple friends. It was just kind of ever present. But about, I would say, 2019, right before COVID hit, is when it really kind of ringed up for me.

Yeah. Yeah. And I look back at that timing. I was transitioning out of a really high stress job for the district that worked for, and I thought I'm gonna start my private practice. You know?

Now is a is a great time to do it, So I resigned, with my full time job with the district, and then COVID hit, like, a couple of months later.

As you're trying to open up a business? Yeah.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. COVID hit, and I just thought, oh my gosh. What did I do?

Like, I've I've made a mistake. This is this is really bad timing, and it was really stressful trying to figure all of that out. But little did we know that we would all be experiencing, like, a collective mental health crisis with COVID. So I once again soldiered forward and set up my practice and left. I was really thriving professionally.

I was finally in my element and getting to call my own shots and connect with people the way that I wanted to connect with people. And so it was this weird dichotomy of like, I'm doing all these things and I'm really on fire in my professional life. But personally, there was just this pull that I just could not get out from under. And later on, I discovered it was a ton of unprocessed grief and fear for the future. We were raising at that time 3 teenage boys with no support.

My husband and I both, you know, come from really small families. And so I would go and I would sit with clients all day, and I would do the work that I feel like I was called to do. But then when it came time to apply it to my own life, I was there was a real disconnect there. Okay.

Almost like you you knew what to do and you knew how to guide others through it, but you hadn't made the space to implement it in your own life.

Exactly. Exactly. So at that point, you know, I would say from about 2020 to 2022, it just it just kinda got dark for a while. You know? I was finding that when we were going out, I would try to set up these parameters around my alcohol intake.

You know? Like, I'll only have 2 glasses of wine and will only drink on from the end. But what I was finding is that the more I tried to put parameters around it, the more it just became a mistake. And then I was almost kind of like failing at it, like I couldn't get it right, I couldn't do it right. And then I would wake up on Monday morning with regret and shame for the way that the weekend had gone down, and I was anxious.

I mean, I can just I can close my eyes and still remember the waves of anxiety. My sleep was so poor. I was starting to have a lot of a lot of joint pain and just, like, depression. And I I knew in the back of my head, like, that it was probably related to alcohol. But I guess I just didn't want to say it because then I would have to own it and would have to do something about it.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Almost like this hope that there's some other explanation that would be easier to address.

Exactly. And the other thing is I would see clients, you know, and they would be talking about similar situations. And so I'm like, oh, yeah. That's this thing. That's this thing that we've all been kind of told is going to make us feel great and take the edge off and help us deal with life, and it's causing this vicious cycle.

Yes. And so, yeah, 2022, April 4th. I don't have a rock bottom story, really. I just got really tired of not really being able to practice what I was preaching and have tools for self regulation, and it was really affecting relationships with my family. And, you know, like I said, we're a close knit family.

It's really just the 5 of us. And so I thought, I have to stop. Like, this is not bringing me anything good. And so I woke up on April 4, 2022, and I said, I'm done. And I don't know.

I remember writing in my journal, like, I'm stopping. I can't ever do this again. And I remember feeling like it's over. Things are just never gonna stop. I'm never gonna have fun again, and how are we gonna do this?

You know? My husband at the time was like, really? Like, never never? And I'm like, yeah. Like, I'm done.

You know? And when I say something, when I commit to to something, I I tend to kinda go all the way. That is my personality. So Yes.

Yeah. Enneagram 1. Right?

I am an enneagram 1. Yeah. I'm I'm a I'm a a rule follower and I'll do it by the book. Yeah.

Well, how did you get to that place? Was it like the spontaneous you just woke up and you're like, I'm doing it or had you been contemplating for a little while?

I had been contemplating for a while. So for about a month prior to that, I had again, you know, set some parameters around it. We're only gonna do this on Fridays Saturdays with our friends, and then Thursdays turned into Fridays. And also at the same time, I'm raising 3 teenage boys who are highly impressionable and who are surrounded by it. And I just thought, like, this is so incongruent.

You know? I'm trying to raise these kids to see how to, you know, live their life without numbing. And yet I'm over here doing the exact thing that I'm trying to teach them not to do.

Yes. And the cognitive dissonance got too heavy.

Yeah. Yeah. I've just I I felt like a hypocrite, and I you know, the relationship piece of it, like I said, was just so strained. It was just so difficult to have regulated conversations without just getting so activated inside. And and so, you know, I from April to July, my life just completely changed.

I, you know, kinda we stopped going out a lot. We would go places, but then I would be like, hey. This isn't this isn't fun. I'm really not engaged. I'm not doing the things that I really enjoy doing.

And so I need I need some friends. I need some friends, and I need to start learning how to live a life without running. And so I googled, sober yoga retreats, and I told my husband I found Alex from the mindful life practice in Bali, Indonesia. And I was like, uh-huh. I'm gonna do that.

Yeah. So I went to my husband and I said, I think, I think this is what I'm going to do. And he was like, okay. You know, I said, I support you. Yeah.

I support you. Not really sure about this, but I also support you. And and I did it. I booked the trip. And then the following January, I flew to Indonesia.

And that, 5 or 6 other women that, were also, you know, from different parts of of the world, and we just clicked instantly. I I can't even really describe, like, the bond. In fact, we're all going back. We're we're going to India in 2 weeks for another sober sober yoga retreat. So really excited.

So all the people who were on the original Bali retreat are going as well.

Yes. Except for one because she's in the middle of a move right now, but we're all returning, to be together, and we're gonna be traveling through India for 2 weeks. And it's gonna be focused again on yoga and sobriety, and I just and Alex is leading it. So it'll be a much different retreat and that we're traveling around to different locations in India. But, as of right now, it's gonna be my yearly thing.

It is, like, my gift to myself for learning to meet myself forever, you know, and just learning yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We

need we need to reward ourselves. Even adults need rewards. And

Yes.

And what a beautiful reward where you can go and take care of yourself and learn about a new culture and have new experiences and expand your view of life.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And I I think back to that day in April of 2022 often. Often.

I'm about to hit 2 years here pretty soon, and I I went back and reread that journal entry. And just the despair of, like, my life is over. I am not gonna be able to ever have fun, how am I gonna learn how to do this thing, how to do this life, how to feel all these feelings? And I can tell you that in the last 2 years, I have felt human again, maybe for the first time in a long time. You know?

Like, oh, this is what it means to feel a feeling and be able to sit with and follow it all the way through. And I'm okay. You know? And and I never really could experience the fullness of joy when I was drinking because there was always this fear of, oh my gosh, but what if something horrible happens? And so I couldn't I could never be all in with anything.

So it's like this foreboding joy that Brene Brown talked about. Almost like there's this joy, but you gotta hold yourself back from fully experiencing it because something bad is bound to happen. It's

just another time. Yes. Absolutely. And I I look back at my patterns over my lifetime of just being introduced to alcohol to becoming a really, high achieving person and feeling like I had to check all the boxes and follow all the rules and do all the things the right way. And what I have uncovered through a lot of personal work with my own therapist is I've had this unnamed grief my whole life that's really kind of followed me around that I've never really felt confident enough to sit with it, to really understand it, to name it, to know it up close.

Yeah. And I really even as a therapist, it sounds silly that I really needed somebody else to name that for me before I could go, oh, yeah. That's what it is.

Yeah. Well and That's

what it is.

You know, it's kind of like if you're a fish in water, like, what is water? That's just it's just what it is. And if you were born or from an early early age, all you could remember was this grief,

then then it

is gonna be hard to name. It just is. But to have somebody else from the outside look in, say, yeah. I see this, and this would be so hard. Let's let's look at this.

That can be really powerful. Mhmm. And I think it's also scary. It takes a lot of courage to be like, okay. I'm willing to do this work.

I'm willing to look at this painful thing and sort through it because I trust that it will bring healing.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I'll go back and say being raised by grandparents from the depression era. I mean, they were they're fantastic people.

My grandfather's 98 and and still still rocking it, but, like That's amazing. We are just they are a tough generation, and, there's they didn't they did the best they could, and I absolutely have the utmost respect for them for doing what they did for for us. And yet there was also this big emotional component that I never really learned how to experience. And so, you know, I was the feeler of the family growing up. I mean, and and the only way that I knew how to express that was through anger or like, hey, this is unjust.

What's happening around us? Is anybody gonna pay attention to this? And so kind of being taught that, you know, anger was not necessarily a nice becoming emotion.

Yeah.

So I avoided it for a really long time, but underneath that was a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, tell us a little bit about grief work, you know, in your own experience and as a therapist, and how doing that hard work and experiencing that kind of healing can change lives.

Yeah. Absolutely. So it's funny because in in graduate school, I remember a professor saying, like, you get the clients that you need, not the clients that you want necessarily. And I just thought, you know? But then when

I sat at home, it's like, oh,

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I kept having a lot of clients show up with just this tremendous amount of grief.

And at first, it scared me a little bit. If I'm being honest, I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know how to help, you know, and so I would consult with other therapists, like, oh, what what do you do? You know? How do you walk clients through this?

And a lot of times, that answer was like, just being a mirror, just being a contender for it, just being a presence for it, teaching them that grief elicits a fear response in the brain. So like physiologically, the research shows that when we're in grief, our body will react with a fight, flight, freeze, or fix response because our nervous system is activated and we feel we are under threat. And when I learned that, I thought, oh, that makes so much sense. So I've maybe been feeling like I'm in a threat, you know, like, under threat, like, my whole entire existence, and there's something to be fixed. There's something to be stopped with this.

But if we can teach our clients and ourselves that we're safe, you know, this feeling of safety, like, I'm safe right now, I'm safe in this moment. And what that does is it creates more of a wider bandwidth for us to be able to invite grief to sit with us. And at first, it might be on the other side of the room. Right? But, like, eventually, it can kind of inch a little bit closer, and I can learn from it.

You know? I can almost extend it, kind of like an olive branch and be like, hey, this grief is really just a testament to to your deep love and how much you've loved and how much love you have to give. And so it's it's really, it's changed my perspective a lot on how I approach it with clients and myself.

It's fascinating that it evokes this fear response in the nervous system. However, when you look at, like, most models of grief, like Elizabeth Kubler Ross and the cycle of grief, there's

Yes.

You know, shock, denial, sadness, anger, guilt, bargaining, acceptance, and there's the 6th stage now, meaning making. But I've always thought it was kind of curious that fear was missing from that cycle, but maybe fear is just intertwined with all of it. You know, it's just Yes. It's, it's, it's mixed in there and woven through each cycle or stage or whatever that you go back and forth through in that process of healing.

Absolutely. I'm so glad you pointed that out because, you know, I think with a lot of these models, models were created, right, to give us, like, an a sense of And, I'm a big fan of nice. I'm a big fan of wrapping it up and being able to, like, point to it and go, here's where I'm at in this stage. But from what I've experienced over the course of my life so far, I can think that I'm in a latter stage and then something comes along and I'm right back where I started. And so I think that's why we resist it so much.

You know? It's because we think, gosh. Well, what am I doing all this work for? But, really, it's not linear. It's not linear at all, it's just asking you to pay attention and to be present in your life so that whatever stage shows up that day, you can meet it where it's at.

Yeah.

So that's been that's been my big takeaway from that. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that.

I like to think

of it as waves. You know, it comes and goes and through time and working with a therapist and honoring what your body needs and your mind needs, eventually, the frequency, the intensity, and the duration of those waves gradually wanes.

Yeah.

But it it's it's unpredictable. There's no timeline. It's different for everyone and every type of loss. Yeah. And so I think you're right.

Like, as humans, we wanna have some sort of plan or model, or we wanna know what to expect.

And Mhmm.

Maybe part of the beauty of it is is that it forces us to stay in the present moment and just take take what comes our way and just kinda trust that

we can get through it. Absolutely. Mhmm. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And, you know, it's it's interesting with with grief. I've learned over the last couple of years as well that there are different types of grief, right? And one of the types of grief is complicated grief, which really stems from a sense of kind of unresolved grief from the past, and so we would call that carried grief, like not just grieving the loss of a person, but grieving life stages. You know, I'm about to send one off to college next year, and I would say that I'm in grief. Sure.

You know? And so, but I can hold grief and I can hold joy at the same time, and that's the paradox, right? It's like learning to just straddle the tension between those two emotions and doing it from a sober place where I can feel empowered and not as afraid. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that you're calling it unnamed grief. I can so relate to that. And I I Yeah. In a lifetime of unnamed grief because we were both raised by our grandparents, and our stories are are different and have some similarities. But for me, as a kid, I always I do remember I felt very loved.

My grandma was amazing, but I also remember feeling really, really sad.

Mhmm.

And just hearing you say unnamed grief is bringing up for me, like, I think maybe as a kid, I was grieving, you know, like, this relationship with

Mhmm.

With a family, like an actual family, a biological family. And I didn't, of course, at the time know that or maybe even up until now, I wouldn't have called it unnamed grief or grief at all.

Sure.

But that makes perfect sense that, you know, a kid would be sad over that.

Yeah. Yeah. And just having somebody, again, put language to it. And I think that's the power of doing the work through therapy or just, you know, if you're not into therapy, like, having having, like, a friend that you can trust that can name the emotions that maybe you weren't even sure you were experiencing. I mean, I think what is it?

We're we're we can only know, like, 3 or 4 emotions Yes. At a time. Right? Like, so having my therapist say, you've been in such grief. Thank you.

Yeah. Yes.

I

didn't I didn't come to that conclusion again.

Yeah. And if you really think about it, like, I know we try to stay away from labels in a lot of ways Mhmm. These days in in this, alcohol free lifestyle. But when it comes to naming emotions and feelings like grief, what I what comes up for me also is that, like, there was a lot of labeling of feelings and emotions, but it wasn't positive in a it wasn't used in a positive way. Like

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Like, I remember someone saying you're jealous. And, like, I clicked that label on, and I was like, oh, I'm jealous. Like, I am a jealous person. And, like, looking back, I'm like, I just you know, as a mom, I I try to stay away from placing any kind of label like that on my kid. Like, you might be feeling a certain way right now, but that is not who you are.

Mhmm. Just a temporary emotion or feeling.

Sure.

We we all experience jealousy at times throughout our lives.

Yeah.

Natural. Overgeneralization and then taking on that label as part of your identity that then does more harm than good.

Mhmm. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But, Amanda, it could have been really powerful for you as a kid just for somebody to name what the loss is. You know, it's probably hard for you to name. Mhmm. And so if they've been able to say, you know what? You're grieving the loss of a family that looks like the families of all your friends at school.

And you can love your grandmother and feel so grateful for her and feel sad that your family looks different and wonder what could have been had your family been altogether.

Right.

Like Cindy said, I was, also, you know, the what it felt like the only kid in the neighborhood that was was growing up with her grandma. Mhmm. And and it felt like something was wrong with me, and I felt lonely a lot. And I had a lot of girlfriends in elementary school, but I always felt different.

Yeah. So And you look back to you, and I think, like, developmentally isn't that appropriate, right, that all we're trying to do is to fit in

and

make ourselves not stand out, you know, for for for that reason. Right? So, like, I'm gonna go ahead and use this, you know, alcohol, for example, like, as as an armor, you know, as a guard for me. But, like, oh, if I can just, you know, assimilate into this environment, like, then everybody will forget about it. You know?

And I'll forget about

it. Yeah. You won't care as

much anymore in that moment. Right. Right. Yeah. Sure.

Yeah. And, like, no matter how much you were loved or I was loved by my grandma

Mhmm.

You know, on the outside, it's like all these other kids have families, and it's clear that they're loved by their family, but there was an absence of that for me. And so it was like, it must be obvious that, you know, they are they have families that love them, and I don't.

Mhmm. And,

so, you know, I guess we can experience all the love in the world in our home, but still, if there's something missing, then there's something missing.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know? And one other thing I'll say too just about, the grief work that that I've done is also discovering the shame that I carried with the way that I was trying to manage something that I couldn't name.

Right? And so when I was given that word of grief, I could kind of almost go back and with a self compassionate lens go like, oh, you know, like you were just hurting so much and didn't know what to do with all of that. And so you were doing kind of the best that you could in the moment, just anesthetizing this pain. And so, really, it becomes this this freedom. You know?

Like, at at least from my experience with sobriety, it is me being able to take responsibility for a lot of the the ways that I've tried to handle hard stuff and go, Oh my gosh, okay, I'm doing it this way now. And this feels freeing to me. Like, so it almost uncomplicated so many things in my life that just I couldn't seem to figure out. It was puzzling to me.

Yeah. I gave you a a, like, a sense of, oh, this there's some simplicity here. Of course, I've been, you know, managing my pain in this way. That is what humans do. I was grieving, and I was doing the best I could with the resources I have at the moment.

And Sure. And now I can make choices that actually bring me peace. Yeah.

Yeah. Simplicity and emotional safety. When I first quit drinking, I walked around all day long with the affirmation of I am safe. And I share that with coaching clients sometimes now. And it maybe it doesn't line up for everyone because maybe that's not what they're necessarily needing in the moment.

But for me, it was never physical safety. It was all emotional safety. Like, I had to remind myself, especially if I was going into a situation with someone that, there was a traumatic family history with. I I would walk into this situation with a very clear intention with myself of, like, I want to show up and be present and have peaceful conversation. And then I would also remind myself, like, I am safe.

And Yeah. I am peaceful. I am at ease. And then just remembering that throughout the entire encounter and whenever things started to veer off into a a different direction, like, being very present with myself and being able to rein it back in very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Keeping yourself into the keeping yourself in the parasympathetic rest and digest mode of your nervous system

when you feel kind

of heightening and

Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, another thing too with we haven't really talked much about yoga, but, you know, I've I've practiced yoga off and on since, like, 2003. And I just now, within the last, like, few years, started to learn how to incorporate the practices more of, like, a, like, a body like, a whole body experience, if that makes sense. I think in the past, I was doing it for exercise purposes, and I would kinda go in.

I'm, like, yeah. Yeah. I'm not really into the whole, you know, like, I don't know, chakra talk and all of that. But, Bali changed that for me. Sobriety changed that for me.

Bali changed that for me, understanding how to tune in and listen to what's happening inside of my body. That was something that even as a therapist, I never understood anything somatically about what was going on. When a therapist would ask me, where do I feel that in my body? I would look at them, like, what are you even talking about? Because I've been so cognitive my whole life.

Yeah. So it's just kind of amazing that, like, now at 45, I'm like, oh, yeah. There's tension in my chest. There's a fluttering in my stomach. That's that's kind of giving them signals that, like, I'm either on the right track or on the right track right now.

Yeah. Yeah. They're, like, messages and clues that you can get curious about and then Mhmm. Respond to and attend to.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

It's so interesting, like, the different personality types and

Yeah.

Like, what you just said about not really knowing where something is landing in your body. Like, I can I probably all of my life could have told you, like, right here? Like, it's it's all right here.

Mhmm.

Like, I feel it right here every single time. And so I've just been able to always identify where things are landing in my body, but never really, like, having being being able to put words to it for sure.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Being able to connect that body sensation to what's happening, like, what thoughts are coming up? What

Mhmm. What

were you thinking right before you noticed that? And then finding the connection there.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's really powerful for us to, like, remove ourselves from or find out where we're feeling it in our body, but also just kind of remove ourselves from the situation, take ourselves out of our body, and just watch what's going on. And whatever is coming up today, you know, say say today is a hard day or I'm really stressed or anxious or sad or whatever. You know, to take a a good look at the past couple of days without judgment. And, and that can be really hard to do, but it you know, with a lot of practice, you know, it becomes much easier.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So, Cindy, if you could go back and talk to that version of yourself in 2021, early 2022, what advice would you give to her? What would you say to her?

That's such a good question. Gosh. I I would say keep listening. Like, keep listening. Keep listening to these little whispers that you're getting.

Keep following your instinct, your intuition, trusting this this path, you know, this nudging that was starting to happen. And, also, like, just with the from a self compassion standpoint. You know? Like, I I look back at that 2021 version of myself, and I just have so much so much love for her, you know, so much love for her. Not not not any criticism, really.

You know? Like, I I can really look back now and confidently say, like, that I just needed I needed understanding. I needed time. I needed space. I needed to hold on to the hope that things were going to be wildly better than I could have ever imagined.

I mean, if you would have told my 2021 self that, like, I would be in Indonesia several months later and then making these new friends and these new connections. Like, I would have thought you were crazy. I absolutely would have thought that you were crazy. So, like, but keep listening. Mhmm.

You know? Keep trusting.

Yes. Like, listen to that little nudge that keeps coming back.

Yeah. Absolutely. And what

he thought was going to be deprivation and boredom turned out to be the opposite of that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I I don't know if it's, like, a combination of hitting 45 and almost 2 years now of sobriety, but I I can tell you, like, the mornings never get old for me. I really like, I don't mean to be annoying when I'm, like, popping out of bed where I'm just like, what are we gonna do? You know?

I have my coffee. I have my clear head. I don't have to go back and question, what did I say? What did I do? What did I text?

Oh my gosh. Did my kids see me? I don't have to make a lot of apologies these days. I mean, I still do. Right?

Because I'm human. But, like, I don't I don't carry that shame of, like, I can't get out from underneath this thing. Right? Like, it makes repair so much easier in life. And so, gosh, I I love that.

You know? And I'm not here to I'll just be clear because because I do have friends that that dream and, you know, I I I I'm not here to tell anybody to go get sober or whatever, but all I know is my story and my truth that if if you have a lot of, like, hidden trauma or untouched pain in your past, it's worth pausing and taking a break and exploring some of that stuff with without any numbing agents, like, just to be able to kind of take a clear inventory and go, okay. What do I wanna leave behind, and what do I

take with me moving forward? That reminds me of Laura McCowen. We are the luckiest if you really think about it. We are the luckiest because there's people out there that aren't drinking or doing drugs, but

Mhmm.

Have a

lot of trauma and a lot of stuff that they need to work through. But this journey really this path of recovery or sobriety or whatever we wanna call it really puts us in a good place to do the work that a lot of people don't realize could be helpful.

Sure.

There is so much hope, and there's so much just treatment out there that that works, that does bring relief and healing.

Yeah, absolutely. And try it all, You know? Be open to trying all the things. Open.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. Absolutely. I love that.

Yeah. Keep trying until something sticks and

How how can our listeners find you if they wanna keep in touch with you on social media?

Yeah.

Yeah, tell us about mine. Sure.

Yeah. So I am on Instagram mainly, and it's Rooted Counseling Services. And, also, my website is Rooted Counseling Rooted Counseling Services Frisco. So I'm in Frisco, Texas. My practice is my, my practice is, there, and I'm getting ready to also start intuitive coaching training.

Some of them are really exciting as well, so there will be more to come on that as well.

That's awesome. I can't wait to hear how that goes. We'll have to have you on again and learn all about it.

I would love that. This has been such a a joy.

Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you.

So great. Appreciate this journey with you guys. Mhmm. For sure. Yes.

Thanks for having me, ladies.

Yes.

Alright.

Thank you so much for listening. We truly value each one of you. And support the podcast. Please follow or subscribe to the mindful sobriety podcast.

We'd love to connect with you via Instagram at jane w baller and or DFW yoga girl. Sending you love and life.