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Addiction, Horses and Healing: Transforming Recovery · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:05
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violence.
• 0:07
  Mary: I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner.
• 0:13
  Mary: I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives.
• 0:20
  Mary: We'll explore all realms of wellness what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms.
• 0:29
  Mary: It's time to own your space, trust your nature and flourish.
• 0:34
  Mary: Let's dive in.
• 0:35
  Mary: Hey, violets, welcome to the show.
• 0:40
  Mary: Unlike a lot of my friends, I didn't party in high school.
• 0:42
  Mary: My parents were pretty strict and, honestly, I didn't party in high school.
• 0:44
  Mary: My parents were pretty strict and, honestly, I never felt the need to.
• 0:48
  Mary: I was busy with other stuff.
• 0:50
  Mary: When I got to college, all that changed.
• 0:52
  Mary: First I attended one of the biggest party schools around and patrols were way more lax than they are now.
• 0:58
  Mary: There was actually one point where I went to a party every night for two weeks.
• 1:02
  Mary: I knew my dad worried about me because several people in my family were addicted to alcohol.
• 1:08
  Mary: If they were still living today, they would be diagnosed with alcohol use disorder, of which there are three levels.
• 1:13
  Mary: Many would meet the criteria for severe.
• 1:16
  Mary: My dad knew I drank, so I had an honest conversation with him.
• 1:20
  Mary: I told him that I went out a lot and also that I was fine.
• 1:23
  Mary: I honestly meant that and it was true.
• 1:26
  Mary: I can see you shaking your head thinking uh-huh, sure, but I was okay.
• 1:31
  Mary: I had a group of male and female friends and we went everywhere together.
• 1:35
  Mary: We took care of each other and I never wanted to lose control.
• 1:39
  Mary: I never missed a class and for the first year, I walked to mass every Sunday morning like a good Catholic girl.
• 1:44
  Mary: Did I sometimes make the stupid decisions of the young and fearless?
• 1:48
  Mary: Oh yeah, but weirdly, that happened more in everyday life than when I was at a party.
• 1:57
  Mary: How did I navigate the party scene when many others ended up getting sanctions from the college, getting arrested or worse?
• 2:00
  Mary: Well, having worked with college students for years, I've seen things go wrong quickly and I always worked with them on making good choices, knowing they were likely going to experiment like I did.
• 2:12
  Mary: But for me, when I was in college, alcohol was just there.
• 2:15
  Mary: I didn't go out to drink.
• 2:17
  Mary: I went to parties because they were fun and I love laughing with my friends.
• 2:21
  Mary: I set limits and later, when I went to bars, I had no more than two drinks over several hours.
• 2:27
  Mary: Maybe being a bit of a control freak was helpful, or maybe because I've seen the effects of it in my family that it helped me limit my own consumption.
• 2:35
  Mary: All right, I'll be honest.
• 2:38
  Mary: Even as a therapist I don't read research on addiction too much.
• 2:41
  Mary: Because of having relatives who were addicted to alcohol and one who was abusing me, I made a choice early on that I probably wasn't the best person to help clients address issues related solely to substance abuse.
• 2:54
  Mary: But now that I work with women, mostly in midlife, it comes up in a different way.
• 2:58
  Mary: They sometimes drift into it, kind of like a coping strategy or it's just part of their socializing, and sometimes it's hard to be the only one not drinking.
• 3:08
  Mary: And now it seems more and more that women want to stop using alcohol altogether, sometimes just for health reasons, as there are increasing research and evidence that shows it creates one of the biggest health risks.
• 3:20
  Mary: But sometimes because they recognize that they're using it to cope or it affects their ability to function optimally or they've started to drink a bit too much.
• 3:31
  Mary: My guest today has been in recovery from alcohol use disorder for over 16 years.
• 3:36
  Mary: She's also a cancer survivor.
• 3:38
  Mary: Nancy McKay is the founder of Women Empowered Recovery and the creator of BRAVE Recovery Method.
• 3:44
  Mary: Nancy combines lived experience with professional expertise as a coach.
• 3:48
  Mary: Her approach goes beyond traditional recovery methods helping women transform from surviving to thriving, through private coaching, group programs and equine-assisted retreats.
• 3:59
  Mary: Welcome to no Shrinking Violets, nancy.
• 4:02
  Mary: Thank you so much, mary.
• 4:04
  Mary: It's great to be here, so I'm looking forward to diving into this, because this is actually a topic I've not had on my podcast yet.
• 4:11
  Mary: So you describe yourself as both a recovery advocate and a cancer survivor, so could we start with having you share a little bit of your story and telling us how your journey has impacted the work that you do today?
• 4:24
  Mary: Sure.
• 4:25
  Nancy: Well, like you, I loved to party, but I had a little bit more of a liking the alcohol and the effects of it more than you did.
• 4:40
  Nancy: I felt like I fit in.
• 4:43
  Nancy: That's why I started drinking in high school was to fit in.
• 4:47
  Nancy: All my friends were drinking and so I just started to become a kind of a party girl not so much in high school but later in my 20s definitely and everyone was doing the same thing for the most part, and so, you know, I still had a good job and all the things, but it started sneaking up on me a little bit.
• 5:14
  Nancy: And then my father died by suicide when I was 50.
• 5:20
  Nancy: And that took my admittedly heavy drinking into a whole different category, in that I was drinking.
• 5:50
  Nancy: Now I was absolutely drinking to escape and to cope with the guilt that I felt over my father's suicide, and so that's what shifted for me, and it was two years that I drank more heavily and with that coping, and that's really important because, I was drinking for a different reason.
• 5:59
  Nancy: It wasn't just to have fun and to be sociable, it was to numb myself, and so it was about two years, almost to the day, when I attempted suicide myself, and so that was a huge wake-up call and I knew that I could no longer drink safely, and that was the last time I drank.
• 6:27
  Nancy: I haven't had a drink since, and so, for me, what started off, as you know, just having fun, then led to daily drinking, you know, four o'clock, five o'clock, sort of thing, and there was a level of seeking happiness during my 40s when, you know.
• 6:56
  Nancy: I mean, I remember this vividly, sitting on my patio with a glass of Chardonnay, reading the Four Agreements you know, so I was definitely seeking and wanting to improve myself, but I certainly didn't think that giving up alcohol was the way to do it.
• 7:15
  Nancy: And you know, I certainly wasn't going to stop drinking alcohol as a means to improve myself.
• 7:26
  Nancy: That was not on the table at all.
• 7:30
  Nancy: So it wasn't until I tried to kill myself that I realized that okay, well, maybe I need to rethink this.
• 7:36
  Nancy: So I stopped.
• 7:38
  Nancy: And then, six years later, I was diagnosed with cancer and it never occurred to me to drink when I was diagnosed with cancer and it never occurred to me to drink when I was diagnosed with cancer.
• 7:47
  Nancy: And it shifted my perspective on life.
• 7:50
  Nancy: I bet, and that's why I do what I do now is because I was in a.
• 7:56
  Nancy: I had a really, really good job, I was making really good money, great benefits, and I was miserable.
• 8:04
  Nancy: Really good money, great benefits, and I was miserable.
• 8:10
  Nancy: And so, you know, whenever you're diagnosed with cancer and I wasn't, I didn't have a terminal form, so it wasn't life-threatening at the time, right, but you hear that word and it kind of shifts things into perspective a bit and I thought I didn't get here to be miserable, I got here to live an inspired life and I want to do something that helps people and feeds my soul.
• 8:33
  Nancy: So I started training to become a life coach at the age of 61.
• 8:38
  Nancy: And here I am.
• 8:40
  Mary: That's awesome Seven years later, yeah, because so many people think, or I've heard people say, well, I would do this, but I'm already 50, whatever.
• 8:48
  Mary: And I'm like, well, you're going to be the same age if you finish it than if you don't do it in that same amount of time.
• 8:54
  Mary: So I love that part of it that it's never too late to reinvent the path that you're on.
• 9:01
  Nancy: Absolutely.
• 9:02
  Mary: So, yeah, we're going to certainly get into a little bit more of the specific work you do, but I think it's so interesting and I don't know if it's because of growing up with, growing up around people that abused alcohol and it's interesting because the word alcoholic really is sort of out now when we look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is what we use to diagnose in mental health areas.
• 9:26
  Mary: It's substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder.
• 9:31
  Mary: So, and you know it's different, there's specific criteria, but you know, working with college students, having had that in my life and as myself really never having the challenge, it's interesting, I think, to think about this thing that is legal but yet creates so many issues.
• 9:56
  Mary: And I think that you know, everywhere you look it's, you know someone's holding a glass of wine, or everything we do socially is built around having alcohol as part of that.
• 10:07
  Mary: Do you think that played into your situation?
• 10:10
  Nancy: Oh, absolutely Absolutely.
• 10:12
  Nancy: The fact that everybody drank, and I mean everyone that I hung around with drank.
• 10:22
  Nancy: And you know, the truth of the matter is alcohol is the only drug that you have to make an excuse not to take.
• 10:30
  Nancy: So you know, everybody questions why you're not drinking.
• 10:35
  Nancy: They don't question why you're not shooting up heroin, you know, they just ask why you don't have a cocktail in your hand.
• 10:43
  Nancy: And it's just so much a part of our culture which, fortunately, is starting to shift a bit.
• 10:52
  Nancy: It's not shifting as much as I'd like for it to and I also don't have the belief that, you know, nobody should ever drink anything ever, that nobody should ever drink anything ever.
• 11:09
  Nancy: But I do know that when you're drinking to cope with something, to numb yourself out, then you're not showing up 100%.
• 11:13
  Nancy: You're not showing up 100% for yourself or anyone else.
• 11:18
  Nancy: And I think about how many stories I've heard about if I had still been drinking when my mother was dying, or when when my father was dying, or you know so, on and so forth, I would not have been able to step up and and do the things that I was able to do for them.
• 11:35
  Nancy: And, and that's true, you know, I was drinking when both of my parents died, but not heavily, my dad a little bit more so than than my mom.
• 11:44
  Nancy: I, you know, but I was able to show up for them when they needed me, until my dad, until I found my dad, and then that, you know, all bets were off pretty much then, but, um, up until that point I showed up for him all the time, and so it's a shame that there's so much, you know.
• 12:10
  Nancy: There's the mommy wine culture, where women are taking either vodka or wine in their water bottles to the soccer game.
• 12:19
  Nancy: You know, that's not unusual, that's probably pretty common.
• 12:24
  Nancy: Yeah, and that's unfortunate, you know.
• 12:28
  Nancy: And it's it's not a judgment, it's just, you know, an acknowledgement that they're not fully present.
• 12:35
  Nancy: You can't be fully present if you're under the influence of anything you know, doesn't have to be alcohol anything you know doesn't have to be alcohol.
• 12:49
  Mary: Yeah, and I think we can fool ourselves because it is, first of all, it's dressed up, very, very fun and you can say, well, it's legal and you know, so are cigarettes.
• 12:55
  Mary: So I think it starts to dawn on us because, you know, as I shared before we started to record, hitting menopause totally changed how I was able to consume alcohol, and I never was a big drinker but I enjoyed it.
• 13:09
  Mary: And my husband makes craft beer.
• 13:12
  Mary: So going out and trying new craft beers that's just a fun thing.
• 13:16
  Mary: I wouldn't drink six of them, but even now I think our hormones change and I pay too big of a price, even if I have one 12-ounce beer, if I have it too late in the day, and I think that's something where our body starts to intervene and it's not worth it to have just a headache the next day, even when I was so moderate.
• 13:40
  Mary: So I think we do start to get those little sort of pokes, like life is saying wait a minute, do you want to examine what you're doing here?
• 13:48
  Mary: And I think we ignore it for quite a while.
• 13:51
  Nancy: Oh, definitely, definitely, Because you know, if we show up to the party and we're the only one that's not drinking, we start to get ostracized a little bit and people wonder why.
• 14:02
  Nancy: And the hormone thing is really important, and especially as all the women in our world hopefully, you know, we're kind of all aging at the same time, so everybody is experiencing some of those symptoms as they drink.
• 14:17
  Nancy: They're becoming aware that, oh, you know, the hangover is worse I get a horrible headache, all the things and it has an effect on how quickly we metabolize alcohol, so it hits us differently than it did when we were in our 20s and 30s, right.
• 14:36
  Nancy: And so there's a direct link to how we handle our alcohol and where we are in our life, the stage of life that we're in.
• 14:46
  Nancy: So, as we enter perimenopause and menopause and post-menopause, our circle of women were probably all experiencing.
• 14:56
  Nancy: The same thing, and that's a really good conversation to have with your friends is how is menopause affecting what you eat, what you drink?
• 15:06
  Nancy: You know what you feel like doing all the things, right, and so it's a good conversation to have with your friends, and I know that for me.
• 15:15
  Nancy: You know conversation to have with your friends and I know that for me.
• 15:19
  Nancy: You know, I quit drinking when I was 52.
• 15:20
  Nancy: I think I was in menopause, I, you know, and actually what I've learned is that perimenopause menopause lasts for about five minutes and then you're post menopause.
• 15:28
  Nancy: Yeah, menopause is.
• 15:30
  Nancy: It's a very brief blip in the timeline, but so I think I was postmenopausal by the time I.
• 15:37
  Nancy: But I, you know, and I didn't relate any of the symptoms that I had to being postmenopausal.
• 15:45
  Nancy: So it's just interesting how much has come to light in the last 16 years 20 years probably, but certainly since I've been sober, just so much more has been researched and become more aware, more apparent.
• 16:04
  Mary: Yeah, more common knowledge and there seems to be even celebrities now are speaking out about they've stopped drinking.
• 16:09
  Mary: And two things I think about with alcohol.
• 16:13
  Mary: One is it does affect our sleep and I think typically it affects our sleep because we wake up in the middle of the night.
• 16:20
  Mary: There's a half-life, just like caffeine it takes five hours for alcohol to be reduced by half in your bloodstream and then another five.
• 16:28
  Mary: So 10 hours after you drink you can still have some alcohol effects.
• 16:33
  Mary: You might not feel it, but it does impact your sleep, which is already an issue when you're moving towards menopause.
• 16:41
  Mary: And the other thing you and I both have had cancer.
• 16:43
  Mary: I had thyroid cancer and one thing that I learned recently which I feel like man, I should have known this, but we all have latent cancer cells in our body and they feed on sugar.
• 16:53
  Mary: And what is alcohol?
• 16:54
  Mary: It's sugar.
• 16:55
  Mary: So I think, as we start to learn the effects on our brain health and on our ability to kind of keep things like cancer cells in check, there's even a larger reason to make these shifts, I think, in our relationship with alcohol.
• 17:12
  Mary: So, when you think about not only your journey but the women you've helped, why is it important for women to kind of understand that relationship they have with alcohol and how, what role it plays in their lives.
• 17:24
  Nancy: Well, I think it's important because it really boils down to, for me, how you show up in your life and it initially takes the edge off, but then it can just numb you not only to the bad stuff but also to the good stuff.
• 17:43
  Nancy: It's kind of like having a gauzy veil between you and life.
• 17:48
  Nancy: You know, you can sort of see it, you can kind of feel it, but not really you know, and so it just comes in handy a lot with if you're suffering from something right and you don't want to feel it.
• 18:04
  Nancy: But it also does, unfortunately, the same thing when the good stuff is happening.
• 18:10
  Nancy: When you're on vacation or you're celebrating a birthday or a wedding or something, people get way out of control and can't enjoy celebrations because of course you're supposed to be drinking lots of champagne and so on and so forth.
• 18:26
  Nancy: And I do want to circle back to the cancer, in that there's a direct link between alcohol and breast cancer and I think women really need to be aware of that.
• 18:36
  Nancy: I had ovarian cancer and there's not a direct link between alcohol and ovarian cancer, but with the breast cancer it's close enough that I think that it may have contributed.
• 18:49
  Nancy: I don't know that for sure, but I think the breast cancer element is very important for every woman to and men too, I mean, for that matter.
• 18:59
  Nancy: Men get breast cancer as well.
• 19:01
  Nancy: So it's just important for us all to be aware of that and know that it's a problem.
• 19:07
  Nancy: And then to just get on my soapbox for a brief moment I won't stay there long, but it's toxic and it's like drinking jet fuel.
• 19:16
  Nancy: There's really no benefit other than it makes you feel happy.
• 19:21
  Mary: For a little bit, for a moment, yeah, for the moment it works until it doesn't, yeah, and it, you know, it crosses the blood-brain barrier.
• 19:28
  Mary: I mean it's that it goes right into our bloodstream.
• 19:30
  Mary: So there's a lot that I think we again, we dismiss because it's legal.
• 19:35
  Mary: But you know, you brought up something I think that's important initially, and this is what I would hear from my college students, that if they're shy or they are introverted, but they want to be where they don't know who they are, they don't know how to interact socially without that crutch.
• 20:02
  Nancy: And that's hard when you stop drinking later in life and you don't know who you are right.
• 20:10
  Nancy: Now you've got to figure that out on top of being menopausal.
• 20:15
  Nancy: Now you've got to figure that out on top of being menopausal, yeah, right, yeah.
• 20:20
  Nancy: So it can be a really difficult challenge and it's one that you can do.
• 20:26
  Nancy: You know it's not insurmountable, and I got sober in a 12-step program and you know they've got lots of cliches and one of them is you're probably going to have to change your playground and your sandbox sort of thing, your playmates and your playground.
• 20:47
  Nancy: Yes, and that's true, because some people just won't accept the fact that you don't drink.
• 20:53
  Nancy: They are afraid that because you don't drink, you're going to judge them for drinking, and that's a very common thing to have happen, and it's happened to me.
• 21:03
  Nancy: And to lose friendships because you're taking care of yourself is really unfortunate.
• 21:12
  Nancy: And it happened to us, my husband and I.
• 21:16
  Nancy: We were the.
• 21:17
  Nancy: You know, we were the fun couple and when I quit drinking, we stopped getting invited to the parties and that's really sad.
• 21:27
  Nancy: It's really sad because I'm still the same person.
• 21:30
  Nancy: I still like to have a good time, I'm still funny as hell, but they don't know that because they felt like I would judge them for drinking.
• 21:41
  Mary: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Nancy: And that's too bad because I wouldn't you know, but that's too bad and that's their loss.
• 21:50
  Mary: Yeah, anytime you make, I think, a hard choice to change your situation, there are things that you're going to lose, but they're not always.
• 21:59
  Mary: They're not in the in the long run.
• 22:01
  Mary: They're things that should fall away because they're not serving you anymore.
• 22:06
  Mary: Right, right, you.
• 22:08
  Mary: I think you bring up another fear that people are.
• 22:10
  Mary: Well, if I decide to go on this different path, what are my friends going to think?
• 22:15
  Mary: You know, do they?
• 22:16
  Mary: Are they going to think they have to change when they're around me and you know, kind of that stuff.
• 22:21
  Nancy: Well, and, and you know, to be honest, before I quit drinking I had, you know, my closest friends were like, okay, how do we tell her that she's drinking too much, you know?
• 22:33
  Nancy: And they were afraid that I'd tell them to go to hell and so on and so forth.
• 22:36
  Nancy: So they didn't say anything and you know, so they were delighted when I quit.
• 22:45
  Nancy: It's an interesting thing and it's so much easier if you have somebody to talk to, somebody that's gone through it.
• 22:50
  Nancy: I know.
• 22:52
  Nancy: One of the reasons why it was certainly not easy but simple was I had a neighbor who I knew was in recovery and in the program, and so the day after I pulled the stunt that I did, I called her and I said, will you take me to a meeting?
• 23:10
  Nancy: And so I knew I had support.
• 23:13
  Nancy: And so I knew I had support.
• 23:16
  Nancy: So even if you're not ready yet I mean she left me little breadcrumbs for a couple of years, you know, and so I knew who to reach out to.
• 23:26
  Nancy: You may not be ready today, but maybe next year or the year after you might be, and it would be good to have somebody that you know that you can call when that happens.
• 23:39
  Mary: Yeah, so I want to take the turn into one of the topics I was really looking forward to today and tell me about the equine therapy.
• 23:47
  Mary: And tell us first exactly what it is, and then, how do you use this to help women in recovery?
• 23:53
  Mary: Do you work with women mostly women, women and men, just women.
• 23:59
  Nancy: Okay, okay, I mean I could work with men, but why no?
• 24:05
  Mary: I hear that sister.
• 24:06
  Mary: No, I think it.
• 24:07
  Mary: No, I'm going to be honest, I think it's can be a very different process.
• 24:11
  Nancy: Yeah, it is, it is and I you know, I am such a diehard feminist that that's just where I want my energy to be.
• 24:19
  Nancy: So, yeah.
• 24:19
  Nancy: So horses, oh my God, one of my favorite subjects.
• 24:25
  Nancy: So I didn't.
• 24:26
  Nancy: First of all, I didn't grow up around horses.
• 24:28
  Nancy: I don't have my own horses.
• 24:30
  Nancy: I knew really virtually nothing about horses until I experienced a coaching session with a horse with horses, I should say and a miniature donkey.
• 24:43
  Nancy: And it changed.
• 24:44
  Nancy: Well, it changed my life.
• 24:45
  Nancy: I was still in my corporate job and I spent a half a day and a lot of money with this woman half a day and a lot of money with this woman and I looked into this horse's eyes, she looked into mine, I should actually say, and I could feel that look into my gut.
• 25:10
  Nancy: And what I got out of it was you're enough, just the way you are, which is, you know, the age old question right, am I enough?
• 25:17
  Nancy: Why isn't life the way I want it to be Right?
• 25:22
  Nancy: And so I felt that you know down to my toes.
• 25:28
  Nancy: And it wasn't too long after that that I went to a retreat that was with horses.
• 25:35
  Nancy: After that that, I went to a retreat that was with horses, and by this time I'm now in life coach training and I had the opportunity to work with some of my coaches in that with horses, and I made the decision.
• 25:46
  Nancy: I said do you think I can do this?
• 25:48
  Nancy: You know, am I too old right to learn how to do this work with these big animals?
• 25:54
  Nancy: And they said absolutely not.
• 25:56
  Nancy: If you have the desire to do this, you can do this.
• 25:59
  Nancy: The thing about horses?
• 26:00
  Nancy: So horses are great lie detectors.
• 26:04
  Nancy: They have incredible natural intuition because they are, they're herd animals and they're also prey animals.
• 26:14
  Nancy: They're herd animals and they're also prey animals, and so they have to be aware of their surroundings at all times, because you never know what might come out of the trees or something and jump on their back and try to kill them.
• 26:28
  Nancy: So they are always aware of their surroundings and because of that, they have this heightened sense that picks up on the energy that's around them.
• 26:39
  Nancy: So horses can feel our heartbeat from four feet away Wow, which I think is astounding.
• 26:46
  Mary: Yeah.
• 26:47
  Nancy: It's just amazing.
• 26:48
  Nancy: And they also know if you're full of shit.
• 26:53
  Nancy: No, if you're full of shit.
• 26:54
  Nancy: If you you know if I'm working with you in the presence of a horse and you're going through something difficult in your life but you're pretending that you're not, you know, you want to put on a good face, you don't want to admit that you're struggling, so on and so forth Well, the horse is probably over on the other side of the round pen, you know, just doing something else, because they're picking up on the fact that you're not being authentic.
• 27:25
  Nancy: So horses are really curious, they're really really curious.
• 27:29
  Nancy: But if they can tell that you're not being authentic, they can sense that incongruity in your energy, right, and they won't trust that.
• 27:40
  Nancy: So they don't want to have anything to do with you.
• 27:43
  Nancy: If they don't trust you, they won't approach you.
• 27:46
  Nancy: You know you're a threat to them as soon as you acknowledge that you're struggling.
• 27:52
  Nancy: This is really hard.
• 27:53
  Nancy: I don't want to talk about this, but it's really hard.
• 27:56
  Nancy: Something is really weighing on me.
• 27:58
  Nancy: The horses, you know they can sense that shift.
• 28:01
  Nancy: Now they're curious.
• 28:03
  Nancy: Now they know that there's something there that they want to investigate, right, they can feel the change in the energy.
• 28:13
  Nancy: Now they'll come up to you and you know, they'll start to approach and see can I trust this human?
• 28:20
  Nancy: Are they being real, or are they still trying to pretend that everything's okay, you know?
• 28:28
  Nancy: And so they start to come in closer and come in closer, and the more authentic you are, the closer they want to get, because they love their herd animals.
• 28:41
  Nancy: They want to be in the herd, whether it's a human herd or a horse herd, right, they want to be in the middle of it.
• 28:48
  Nancy: And so when they trust you, they will approach and they will connect with you.
• 28:55
  Nancy: And that's where the magic happens is because when you have a 1200 pound horse come up and nuzzle you because you're crying or acknowledging your suffering, and they're trying to comfort you it's amazing set boundaries.
• 29:26
  Nancy: They somehow they know that you need to learn how to set boundaries and they will nudge you and nudge you and nudge you, or maybe even try to, you know, do a little gentle, nippy sort of thing, or get lippy or swish their tail in your direction or something to where you are.
• 29:40
  Nancy: You are forced to say, okay, that's it, that's enough.
• 29:46
  Nancy: I get it Supposed to set a boundary here.
• 29:50
  Nancy: My favorite tagline is horses are magic and life is good t-shirts has a horses are magic t-shirt, and and I've got several of them because that's what I believe, that's how I feel is that they are going to help you get clarity on whatever it is in one way or another.
• 30:13
  Nancy: If they're ignoring you, you're going to get clear that you're not being authentic, and if you're suffering, you're going to get clear that that you are loved and that you deserve to be nudged and nuzzled you know, and if you need to set boundaries, they're going to make it really apparent that you need to set a boundary, and so they're just.
• 30:38
  Nancy: They're amazing creatures and you know, I'm just so lucky that I have learned this skill, and 20 years ago I would would have never thought that this would be something that I would be doing.
• 30:51
  Nancy: But here I am and it's just, it's the coolest thing.
• 30:56
  Mary: Well, I can still hear the all in your voice.
• 30:58
  Mary: Like you're, it's still like you're like I can't believe I get to do this.
• 31:01
  Mary: So tell us a little bit about the specifics.
• 31:04
  Mary: So when you start to work with a client that you're coaching through recovery, do you just have them sort of in the presence of the horse, or how does that work?
• 31:15
  Nancy: Well, my favorite way to to work is have the horse in the round pen, and a round pen is a large, probably 60 foot diameter sort of fenced in area.
• 31:31
  Nancy: The reason I like to work with the horses in a round pen is because if there's distraction, you know, like if there's hay in the vicinity or a bunch of other horses or a bunch of other people there, you know horses are really easily distracted and especially if it's food, you know food will win every, every time can have the horse at liberty, so they're not tied up, they're not restrained in any way, but they're in an enclosed space, then the chances of having a successful interaction are greatly increased.
• 32:14
  Nancy: So if I'm meeting the client and they have never worked with a horse, I give them a safety demonstration, I tell them what to expect from the horse do's and don'ts, all the things, and then, if they're comfortable, I have them go into the round pen with the horse alone and I'll stay on the outside and then we just start having conversation and I'm listening to the conversation and I'm keeping an eye on the horse and seeing what the horse is doing.
• 32:48
  Nancy: Pretty soon, you know, if they're being authentic, the horse will start approaching them and coming up to them and it usually happens at a very distinct time in the conversation where they may be saying I don't feel like I'm enough, or I'm too much, or nobody loves me, or whatever, and here will come the horse and look them in the eye and they just start crying because it's like, oh my God, how did this horse understand what I just said?
• 33:22
  Nancy: And it's they don't speak English.
• 33:25
  Nancy: They could feel the energy, and that's the extraordinary thing about them.
• 33:32
  Nancy: So you know, then we just continue the coaching conversation about you know, what do you think and how does that feel and what do you want to do differently.
• 33:42
  Nancy: And if you're showing up in a way that isn't serving you, the horse will help you find clarity about that.
• 33:51
  Nancy: And the other thing that is really beneficial is working with teams.
• 33:55
  Nancy: If you've got a work team or probably even your family, if you want to get clear on leadership skills, or it's really beneficial for corporate groups and and individuals, it's exquisite.
• 34:12
  Nancy: And usually then we're working for about an hour and it's like with the horses, things, things become clear quicker, you know, it just kind of speeds up the process.
• 34:22
  Nancy: Things become clear quicker, you know, it just kind of speeds up the process, the coaching process.
• 34:27
  Nancy: I had one client say I got more out of this hour than I have in three months of therapy.
• 34:32
  Nancy: Yeah, I believe it.
• 34:35
  Nancy: It's so different and it's so powerful that it impacts us in a completely different way than talk therapy or even talk coaching.
• 34:46
  Nancy: You know, virtual coaching it expedites the process and it's something that when you walk away from it you can feel the difference.
• 34:56
  Nancy: But then even two or three or four days later something, it's like things just start, you know, lining up differently and the thought process it's like, oh wow, but that happened four days ago.
• 35:10
  Nancy: How is it that I'm really becoming aware of it now?
• 35:13
  Nancy: And that happens a lot.
• 35:14
  Nancy: It's happened to me.
• 35:16
  Mary: Yeah, it's connection.
• 35:17
  Mary: It's a different connection than I think we typically would think about.
• 35:21
  Mary: That would affect us and I work with plants and so I help people recognize, like how their nature and you know so when I think, when we can connect to anything in nature, whether it's an animal or a plant or just being in the forest is has.
• 35:36
  Nancy: so many benefits.
• 35:38
  Mary: It's a different transformation, I believe.
• 35:40
  Mary: But we have become so divorced from that, so separated, that it probably feels even more powerful, because people don't expect to have that kind of connection.
• 35:53
  Nancy: Exactly, yeah, exactly, yeah.
• 35:55
  Nancy: I think you've hit the nail on the head.
• 35:57
  Nancy: There is that it's so unusual that it really is impactful.
• 36:02
  Mary: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:03
  Nancy: Yeah.
• 36:04
  Mary: Okay, so in the time we have left you, just, you have a new book.
• 36:08
  Nancy: I do.
• 36:08
  Mary: This is so exciting, the Brave Recovery Method.
• 36:11
  Mary: So first of all, can you give us a little quick snapshot?
• 36:14
  Mary: How is that different than what we might know about traditional recovery programs?
• 36:20
  Nancy: Well, it's different from traditional recovery because, you know, really, traditional recovery was created by men for men, and this really addresses how women deal with things right.
• 36:36
  Nancy: We usually don't believe in ourselves and chances are we've been knocked upside the head by life a time or two.
• 36:45
  Nancy: So that builds resilience being knocked around by life.
• 36:51
  Nancy: You know, I say that I've got an MBA from the School of Hard Knocks and that's a master's badass, and it's our challenges that give us resiliency.
• 37:04
  Nancy: But learning how to not be a victim and instead use those challenges to build our resiliency instead of our victimhood is really important.
• 37:17
  Nancy: Being authentic, trying not to put masks on with different you know, a different mask for every different scenario, is really important.
• 37:27
  Nancy: Loving yourself, developing your voice and being able to set boundaries and stand up for yourself and having your own back that's a real big problem for women, I think, is knowing how to have their own back and not being a shrill bitch in the process, but being an assertive, confident woman who knows what the hell she wants, is really really important.
• 37:51
  Nancy: All of that leads to empowerment and knowing that you can really do anything that your heart desires.
• 37:58
  Nancy: So all of that is something that we don't learn in traditional recovery environments.
• 38:06
  Nancy: Yeah, we don't learn how to stand up for ourselves.
• 38:10
  Nancy: We learn to accept the labels that are put upon us and believe that that's the only solution that actually works, when there's a lot of different solutions that work.
• 38:23
  Nancy: And I'm a SheRecovers coach.
• 38:26
  Nancy: Sherecovers is a fabulous nonprofit based in Canada and the US, and they believe that we're all recovering from something, which I wholeheartedly believe, and that everything that you do adds to the patchwork or the quilt of recovery, and that none of it is better than the other.
• 38:46
  Nancy: It's the culmination of all of these things that make recovery so beneficial and fulfilling.
• 38:54
  Nancy: Right, if you're just following one path, you're missing out on so much more, right, you're missing out on so much more right.
• 39:02
  Nancy: But the things that I address in the book are really things that I needed to hear before I got sober and in my early sobriety, and things that I think women in general need to hear.
• 39:13
  Nancy: And the book is not just about alcohol.
• 39:15
  Nancy: It's, you know, it's about all the things.
• 39:18
  Nancy: It's grief, it's drama.
• 39:19
  Mary: It's burnout.
• 39:20
  Nancy: It's how do we cope with life without having to numb ourselves in some way?
• 39:27
  Nancy: You know and it's not just alcohol, as I say in the book.
• 39:31
  Nancy: I'm not perfect at this shit either.
• 39:32
  Nancy: You know I still scroll on my phone too much and I, you know, I still like a little bit too much sugar, and you know all the things.
• 39:41
  Nancy: So, you know, we get through life.
• 39:43
  Nancy: And here's the biggest thing that I've learned is I'm human and we're all human and we get to make mistakes and be okay with it.
• 39:55
  Nancy: We don't have to numb ourselves in order to tolerate life.
• 40:00
  Nancy: We're kind of all surviving.
• 40:02
  Nancy: You know, how are you today?
• 40:04
  Nancy: Well, I'm hanging in there.
• 40:05
  Nancy: I don't want to just hang in there, I want to thrive, yeah, and I'm still working on that.
• 40:12
  Nancy: But I know that you know, some days I'm thriving and some days I'm surviving.
• 40:17
  Nancy: But if our thriving days can outnumber our surviving days and winning.
• 40:24
  Nancy: Yeah, that's a huge win and that's where I want to help women get is from thriving or from surviving to thriving and making that transformation really doable and simple.
• 40:38
  Nancy: And you know there's lots of exercises in the book.
• 40:42
  Nancy: I'm salty and sassy and the book I think is fun to read.
• 40:46
  Mary: Well, you brought up a lot of important things.
• 40:48
  Mary: One is what I say all the time on this show take up your space.
• 40:51
  Mary: And I think that's where we sometimes, as women, we worry how much space can I take up?
• 40:56
  Mary: Well, as much freaking space as you want to take up.
• 40:58
  Mary: And then we worry, like you use the word shrill like we worry about are we going to get that late?
• 41:03
  Mary: Were we going to be a bitch?
• 41:04
  Mary: Are we going to be so?
• 41:05
  Mary: I think that's important.
• 41:06
  Mary: And I think you brought up, as I was thinking it, you said it that we are all recovering from something or we all have a crutch.
• 41:13
  Mary: It might not be alcohol, it might be scrolling, it might be binge watching a show, it might be shopping or coffee.
• 41:21
  Mary: Whatever it is being able to say, okay, that's nice, but I don't want to use that in that way.
• 41:30
  Mary: And the final thing is there's nothing that's linear.
• 41:33
  Mary: So I think we sometimes have this idea that we recover period.
• 41:39
  Mary: No, like we get to a point and then we backslide, or we just have a bad day, or you know, for me it's like I am going to eat that second cupcake, even though I don't.
• 41:50
  Mary: I know it's not a good idea and then I get a migraine.
• 41:52
  Mary: So I think it's just you pick your battle that day and recognize that that when you have days where you don't feel like and I'll go back to my plant example, because I talk about thriving when you're not like leafing out and having these big flowers one day, that's okay.
• 42:07
  Mary: Like plants sometimes have days where they have to rest and oh, absolutely, and they're just getting through the day, so it's okay.
• 42:16
  Nancy: Well, the seasons change for a reason, and so much of my coaching training has been about how we cycle through the changes of seasons emotionally and productively.
• 42:29
  Nancy: And it's just a matter about we might be squarely in winter, so to speak, where we're hunkering down and we're hibernating and we're not being very productive and we're not firing on all cylinders, and then maybe we'll jump from that into summer, which is kind of really busy, you know, and we're doing all kinds of things, you know, and we've skipped spring, which is when we kind of come back to life and we start to bloom and and we start getting creative and really thinking about things.
• 43:06
  Nancy: And how do I want things to be, you know?
• 43:08
  Nancy: And then autumn is when we, you know, maybe we're harvesting and we're the fruits of our labor coming to pass and things are starting to line up, and but it doesn't, it doesn't always happen.
• 43:21
  Nancy: The way the seasons do doesn't have, it doesn't always happen the way the seasons do I mean, you know, you can go from winter to summer, to spring, to fall it doesn't, it's not linear.
• 43:30
  Nancy: And and if we learn to take cues from nature I was trained by Martha Beck, and so one of the things that she talks about is the infinity swirl, I want to call it, and rest until you feel like playing, and then play until you feel like resting and playing is different for everybody.
• 43:50
  Nancy: I love my work, so I want to play as much as I can until I really can't anymore, and then I rest, and then I want to play some more, and it's so fluid.
• 44:02
  Mary: Yeah.
• 44:03
  Nancy: And not linear at all.
• 44:05
  Nancy: Right, and I think that's where people get kind of mixed up.
• 44:09
  Nancy: Is that if I start here, then it's going to be a straight line to success?
• 44:15
  Nancy: Yeah, right, and it's not.
• 44:17
  Nancy: It's like a tangled ball of oh, yeah, you know.
• 44:22
  Mary: Yeah, it is A setback, isn't a failure.
• 44:23
  Mary: And if you didn't have setbacks, you know yeah, it is A setback, isn't a failure, and if you didn't have setbacks you wouldn't learn anything.
• 44:28
  Mary: So, yeah, I think that gentleness with yourself and just recognizing that too, what we see sometimes in other people is not really the full story.
• 44:38
  Mary: It's never the full story.
• 44:39
  Nancy: It's never the full story.
• 44:40
  Mary: So that's where we go.
• 44:42
  Mary: We come back to the horses where they know, you know, someone's not being their full self.
• 44:47
  Mary: So well, I love talking to you today, nancy.
• 44:50
  Mary: Can you tell us where to find you and what you review a little bit what you offer, and then I will put links in the show notes, please.
• 44:58
  Nancy: Yes, thank you.
• 44:58
  Nancy: You can find me on my website, which is womenempoweredrecoverycom, and I'm on all the socials you know Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn, and I just started Pinterest, so there's not much there, but I just started putting that up and I write a blog and a newsletter and all the things and they can connect with you if they want to explore coaching with you.
• 45:24
  Nancy: Absolutely yeah.
• 45:26
  Mary: And they'll find your book there, but it's probably on Amazon.
• 45:28
  Mary: It is on Amazon.
• 45:30
  Mary: Yes, okay, and I'm going to say it one more time it is the Brave Recovery Method.
• 45:36
  Mary: Yes, Okay, well, thank you again, nancy.
• 45:40
  Mary: It's been a great conversation.
• 45:42
  Mary: Thank you so much.
• 45:43
  Mary: I loved it and thanks everyone for listening.
• 45:46
  Mary: Please share this episode with anyone you might have been thinking about as you were listening and, until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.
• 45:57
  Mary: Thank you.