Reinvent Your Life: Gail Taylor Turns Addiction Into Music

In this powerful episode of the Confident Sober Women Podcast, Shelby welcomes Gail Taylor, a recovery advocate, keynote speaker, and musician who shares her inspiring journey from childhood addiction to successful reinvention.

Episode Highlights:

• Gail's early struggles: How losing her father at age 12 led to substance abuse and dropping out of school at 16
• The path to recovery: Gail's "high bottom" recovery journey and how she recognized her addiction through her son's similar struggles
• From finance to music: How Gail reinvented herself at age 61 by learning piano and pursuing music full-time
• The power of internal dialogue: Why changing your thoughts is the first step to reinventing yourself
• Recovery as reinvention: How sobriety is our first opportunity to transform our lives
• Creating community: The importance of building relationships both in and outside of recovery circles
• Message for loved ones: Tools for maintaining your own happiness while supporting someone with addiction

Key Takeaways:

1. Control your internal dialogue: Challenge negative thinking patterns with the mantra "garbage in, garbage out" and practice reframing negative thoughts
2. Reinvention is possible at any age: Gail went from addiction to managing $130 million in finance to becoming a musician and speaker
3. Your past doesn't define your future: "The fact that we missed a beat in life doesn't matter. It's about today and the future."
4. Recovery is just the beginning: Continue to layer on new interests, communities, and growth opportunities
5. Self-care isn't selfish: Maintaining your own wellbeing is essential, especially if you're supporting someone with addiction

Memorable Quotes:

"I come from a place of healed scars and not open wounds." - Gail Taylor

"Every person going into recovery has to reinvent themselves, because that's the whole nature of what recovery is - the starting point of you reinventing yourself." - Gail Taylor

"Self-care is not selfish, it's important." - Gail Taylor

Connect with Gail Taylor:

• Website: gailtaylormusic.com
• Book: "Curveballs: Unlocking Your Potential Through Personal Growth and Inspirational Music" (Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble)

Recovery Resources:

• For support with addiction recovery
• Tools for managing negative thinking patterns
• Resources for building community in recovery

Have you experienced reinvention in your recovery journey? Share

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Gail Taylor's Story
• 4:28 Childhood Trauma and Early Addiction
• 12:08 From Denial to Recognition of Addiction
• 19:27 Reinvention Through Music at Age 61
• 27:08 Controlling Your Internal Dialogue
• 36:12 Building Community Beyond Recovery
• 43:26 Self-Care for Loved Ones of Addicts

Transcript

Shelby: 0:00

Well, hey there, sober ladies, Thank you so much for joining me today for the Confident Sober Women podcast, and today I get to share with you my conversation with Gail Taylor. She is an incredible woman in long-term recovery with a wonderful story that is fraught with trauma and recovery and also this incredible career shift and really reinventing herself. That's her message for all of us today is that no matter kind of where we are in life, what age and stage we are, we always have the opportunity to change things, to discover new priorities, to transform our lives, and that's what she did. She went from a self-made millionaire in the financial industry to becoming a keynote speaker in discovering music, empowering other people to meet their goals, to prioritize mental health and wellbeing, and she just really is excited about personal growth and development, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to her. She also has a new book that's coming out. I'll link to that in the show notes below. But I want you guys to really listen up and enjoy this conversation and if you're someone who kind of feels maybe stuck in your in your space right now or you're confused about where to go, this might be just the conversation to help you kind of shake some of that loose. So grab that big glass of water or your favorite mocktail and listen in to this conversation with Gail Taylor.

Shelby: 1:33

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Shelby: 3:11

Hello and welcome to the Confident Sober Women podcast. I'm your guide, Shelby John. I'm the mother of three, wife to one and sober since July 1st 2002. As sober women, we have something huge in common, and when we share our lives and our stories with each other, we feel that sense of belonging and connection. So we know we are no longer alone. In this podcast, you will hear real life talk about building confidence and transforming your life beyond recovery. So come on, let's talk your life beyond recovery. So come on, let's talk. Well, hey there, Gail. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Confident Sober Women podcast. I am so excited that you're here today to share your story and your book and your work with our audience, so I'm going to turn the mic over to you now and let you share a little bit more about your story, and then we're going to chat okay, thanks, thanks, shelby, thanks for having me.

Gail: 4:10

Um, I'm actually going to start at the end of my yeah, I'm going to start my story kind of at the end of it and and share with you, um, why I'm actually here and how I ended up getting here. Because I went from being a. My addiction started when I was 12 years old, and so I went from being a child in active addiction I dropped out of school when I was 16 to being a very successful business person in finance, and I worked in that field for 25 years. And then, when I was 58 years old, I started taking piano lessons and I had no musical background at all and I just I fell in love with it, like I'm learning the scales right, and all of a sudden, music started to flood back in my life, and we know how healing music is. I didn't even know I had stopped listening to it because instead I was listening to books on economics, and so after a couple of years, I thought I'm going to retire earlier than I had planned and study music full time and study music full-time. And so I did that at age 61, and I studied music full-time private teachers, berkeley, berkeley School of Music in California because you don't have to audition. If you're doing it online, you could just pay.

Gail: 5:37

And so then I did that and after a couple of years I thought I'm going to reinvent myself as a musician. And when I shared that story with folks, I kept getting the same reaction Gail, that's so inspiring. I'm going to go do something they had put on the back burner. And I heard that so often Shelby that I thought whoa the heck with becoming a musician. I'm going to come out of retirement, start my business, gail Taylor Music, become a keynote speaker and share my stories and my music with folks to help them become their best selves. And so I decided I hired an entertainment lawyer and he said well, if that's the journey you're going to take, write a book. So that's what I did and that's how Curveballs started. And now a lot of my speaking is at recovery conferences. And, yeah, I'm just so, so fortunate to be able to share my story with people that have gone down a similar journey.

Shelby: 6:48

That is so cool. I love the, the idea of reinventing yourself at any stage. And you know, if you live long enough we'll have a lot of stages. You know, and they are definitely all they're all different. You know it's kind of like if you have children and you raise them like you know. You know that all the little stages are. They're different. You know they have some of them have their pros and cons to all of them and you maybe you like some better than others, but you know they're all just a little different and it doesn't really change, you know, for us as adults. So I love this idea. So how did your addiction sort of play into that? Like? Can you say a little bit more about your recovery process? How did you get sober?

Gail: 7:30

Yeah. So what happened when I was 12 is my dad died, and so when he died I mean talk about trauma I wasn't ready to lose this parent, and I actually pretended that he was still alive. For two years I kept him alive in my mind. I said he was a spy for the government and that they had to pretend that he died so he could go save the world. And so my mom, who's in her mid thirties and has six kids, moved us from a small town to a city, and that's what happened. We moved into the city, and she told me later later, many years later, that the reason she did that was to get work in the city, so that her, her main objective at the point was to keep us off of welfare and all together. And so so, yeah, the city pretty much chewed me up and spit me out. I was trying to figure out how to handle this situation, and she'd come home from work at the end of the day putting one foot in front of the other and have dinner with us and then go to bed and cry herself to sleep. She just lost her soul mate, and so I would, at 12 years old, I would sneak out of the house when she went to bed, hitchhike to a seedier part of the city, meet up with older kids, get stoned, hitchhike home at two o'clock in the morning and and in addition to this, you know the females listening to your call I was also engaged in reckless behavior, so you know what that means.

Gail: 9:06

And this was all before my 13th birthday. I was using mind-altering substances every single day and I I carried on this lifestyle. I lived at home until I was 18. When I was 16, I dropped out of school. When I was 18, I got married for five weeks no dysfunction, what can I say? And so so in my I hit my first bottom, kind of in my mid-20s.

Gail: 9:38

And when that happened, like I just I kind of woke up one morning and looked around at the mess I made, and not just in the room but in my soul, and decided there's gotta be more to life than this. There's got to be a way I can pull myself out of this rut. And that one little bit of hope started me on a new journey, a brand new journey of you know how to well, I have a type A personality. So I was like, okay, I got to get out of this. What am I going to do? I started with Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich. I'm sure some of your listeners have read it and some of them have definitely heard of it and that was, yeah, that was the first part. Yeah, that was the first part.

Gail: 10:25

That was the first part in my journey where I started to change things, and I still didn't even know I was an addict. I was still in denial. I just knew I wanted to get out of my rut, but I still didn't know that I was an addict. And so now I'm saying, okay, I'm gonna learn how to. I'm going to go back to school, get my high. Now I'm saying, okay, I'm going to learn how to. I'm going to go back to school, get my high school. I'm going to learn how to be successful. I'm reading about how people become financially independent. I mean, in that book. Anyone that read that book they know that riches wasn't money. But for me it was, because I was a dysfunctional 20-something-year-old and so, you know, I started to learn that real estate was a way to go. So I started to study real estate and uh, and that was my first sort of segue out of the addiction.

Shelby: 11:21

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your story and so vulnerable. Wow, thank you so much for sharing your story and so vulnerable. I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your dad and at such a young age and really just I don't know that there's ever a good time, but really formative time when you're 12, you know like that's such a you know tough, like middle school age time anyway, and it sounds like there was a super lot going on with in your family and then your brain just kind of internalize that trauma and sent you into that you know kind of addiction path, which I think it's a story for a lot of us. We know so much more now about from science, about where addiction comes from, and it's mostly from trauma, so thank you for sharing that. So when you were kind of coming around and you got sober and you were starting to deal with, you know, recovery and work and build your life through that, did music play a part in that for you then?

Gail: 12:15

No, well, other than I went to concerts and I don't even know, I can't even say this is part of the recovery because, you know, I, I, I, this. This was the 70s, and so it was like 60s, 70s, everybody was going to concerts, getting high, and it was. That was. That was the era. So, uh, classic rock and rock and roll as a listening person was a big part of this, the my life at that point. But I was always hired in a kite when I went to these concerts.

Gail: 12:48

But what happened next was, as I started to become, you know, a little bit more successful in business. I was again I'm still in denial here in this story right, so I was working 10 or 12 hours a day and then hitting the bars at night with my colleagues and the people I work with. But unfortunately, I had a son. I had a three-year-old son, and so what happened was, I thought, you know, as long as he's with good caregivers and they love him and and take care of him it's more about quality than quantity, so as long as he sees me for like a few hours on the weekend, for some, somehow I'm a good parent. Yeah, not, I mean, I didn't know any better at the time. But that's where I was at right.

Gail: 13:44

And then when my son turned 12 years old, I moved across the country. I brought a new man into his life. I put him in a new school. He had to make new friends. Guess what happened? You know, he went through the same. He went through down the exact same path I did. He became an addict at 12 and that was the first time in my life I I stopped using mind altering substances on a daily basis. And that's when I figured out I was an addict, even though I had shifted it a lot to alcohol. I mean, I moved across the country so I had to shift it a lot to alcohol because I didn't have any dealers and but the thought didn't cross my mind because again, I was. I was still in denial. So at that point I sort of got into just alcohol and smoking and weed and and and.

Gail: 14:35

So when my son started going down this journey, I thought, oh my god, I gotta be there for him, I gotta help him through this. And I started reading all these books on on addiction and what he was going through and it was like hey, that sounds like me. Oh my God, how stupid was I? But I was a functioning. I was a functioning addict, so I didn't really get it and so I even bought this book on are you an alcoholic? And Shelby?

Gail: 15:07

This was really interesting because the questionnaire in it, the questions, had nothing to do with how much you drink. It was questions like would you go to a social event that there's no alcohol? And I'm there, yeah, no, why would you do that, right? So I mean, the brain's just starting to click in here. And then my son got into opioids big time, really big time, and so I have his permission to share our story and he's also in recovery, recovery and he's one of my best friends. So you know, things turned out good for both of us. And actually, um, you know, when we talk about it, we both say if he was still in addiction, he wouldn't be alive. Like, there's no way that with the fentanyl, the way that it is. And and where are you, shelby? Where are you located?

Shelby: 16:07

I'm in Maryland.

Gail: 16:09

Okay, so I'm in Alberta, canada, and so you know, between our two countries, we both have a big and no, we're not supplying you with your fentanyl but we both have a big problem with opioid addiction, and so you know, for him to come out of it, oh my god, it was just, it was just so.

Gail: 16:31

So, thank, thank god. And then I, with all these books I was reading, and when he went into rehab, one time I asked the counselor how come I got through my addiction and into recovery without going to rehab, how come I I could just, you know, read books and I was able to work my way through it. And this counselor said to me because you did what we call hitting a high bottom. And that was interesting, because there's a lot of people out there that are like me, that are functional addicts or functional there, that are like me, that are functional addicts or functional alcoholics. And you know, we sort of think, well, I didn't lose my job, and so you know, I can still go to work every day. So you know, maybe I don't have a problem.

Shelby: 17:21

But, believe me, the word I use the word functional loosely. Well, what we know is is that even even um, people who would maybe consider themselves like binge drinkers, like they weren't like every day or they're just more binge like even I learned anyway earlier on when I was in treatment, that it wasn't really about like how much we drank, it was really about what happened. So, even if you weren't even drinking or using like that much, whatever, that is like, it's really about what happens to us. How, how's our thinking pattern? How are we coping with life Like are we like if we're using substances?

Shelby: 17:52

Everybody uses substances for a reason, you know, and it's mostly to, you know, to escape something, even even the normies or whatever. If you're just having fun, right, you're, you know, you're kind of escaping the work week or you're getting de-stressed or something. So we're using them as a tool for, for anxiety or stress relief or whatever we want to tell ourselves. But I mean, so that's, that's the thing, you know, like everybody is in a different space and sure, like the guy that's living under the bridge with his little brown paper bag might look like, you know, the worst one of all of us, but maybe he gets it really quickly because he's like, oh, I'm going to take what they're telling me to do and I just internalize that and I do what.

Shelby: 18:34

I do what I'm told. You know, I'm going to sort of do what I'm told because I want to change my life and somebody else is a chronic relapser, you know, cause they just like can't get it or they don't want to do what's necessary, you know, and I think that's why there's just all kinds of us, you know, but it really is about what happens to us when we are in active addiction. You know, what is that? What is that stinking thinking, what? What are? What are our? How are our reactions or responses? What are our relationships, like you know? What are our relationships, like you know?

Gail: 19:05

And one of the things that book had explained was that it actually broke addiction into four stages, right, and alcoholism particularly, that there's four stages. And yeah, that first the last stage, you're living underneath the bridge and you're homeless. But when I first did the test, it said that I was in. I don't know. I think it was somewhere around the second stage, maybe midway in the second stage. And then, two years later, I thought I think I'll do that test again because I haven't had a drink in two years, so I think I'm not an alcoholic anymore. I might as well start drinking again. And I did the test again and I scored higher. So instead of being mid second stage, I was in early third stage and what happened was the cloud had lifted. So I wasn't minimalizing anymore, right.

Gail: 20:06

And they say that what the end this is like? Just adding to what you just said, if you go six months without a mind altering substance, then the cloud starts to lift out of your brain and you start to think a lot more clear and understand your reality and and so you know whether you're self medicating or whether you're, you know, whatever reason. The longer that you go without it, the more you get to get control and and learn how to get those natural highs. I mean, that's what it was all about learning how to put the bounce in my step. I say I come from a place. I heard this on another podcast and I stole it because it's me to a T I come from a place of healed scars and not open wounds.

Shelby: 20:57

Wow, yeah, I love that.

Gail: 21:00

I know and that's me like that I have got to that point in my journey and that's why I love to share my story, because the fact that we missed a beat in life doesn't matter. It really doesn't. It doesn't matter at all. We're here where we are today and that's it right. It's about today and it's about the future. And yeah, I'm not saying pretend the past never happened.

Gail: 21:24

You know you, you use it. Use it to give you the strength to go forward and not to keep you in the spot. I mean, I literally went from that place. I told you where I was a high school dropout and an addict to being managing $130 million and earning in the top 5% of North Americans. So there's no limit. You don't. You set your limit, you decide your limit and you know I reinvented myself. I wanted to start the call with the fact that I reinvented myself even though I had no background in music, but I reinvented myself because I wanted to. A lot of folks reinvented themselves because they had to right Companies shut down with COVID. All different things have happened and every person not every person, but the majority of the people going into recovery have to reinvent themselves, because that's the whole nature of what recovery is the starting point of you reinventing yourself and, wow, what a positive place to be in.

Shelby: 22:35

You're right, and so that's a great jumping off place for us to kind of step into some of the work. And I mean, I think, if we look at that exactly the way you just said, that our kind of sobriety journey whatever that looks like for each of us is is our first reinvention, right, like when I wrote my memoir, I started it off by saying you know, everybody has a point in their life where there's like a before and an after, and if you live long enough, you might have multiple ones right. And so for me, when I got sober in 2002, like that, that but I have like the before that date, july 1st and I have the after that date, and so I had this whole life before and then I have this whole new life and, um, that's how I look at it, because I'm not the same person, thank god, I don't want. I don't want to be the same person. I mean, I'm still me, but it's a completely different. It's a complete transformation, like when we work it. And we work whether it's like through 12 step or smart recovery or whatever tools, therapy, whatever we use when we work it and we commit to saying like I don't actually want to be that bad anymore and, honestly, that's not always at the conscious level. You know, we don't always sit and be like I don't want to be myself and it's like it's something that happens and like, in the background, with a lot of guidance, you're committed to saying like I want to become something else.

Shelby: 23:55

And so then we did that right and so, like you said, yeah, once you stay sober for a long enough time you said six months, I always say one year like after that first year of sobriety, like a, you're as sober as you're ever going to get, first of all. Second of all, that fog is lifted, you start to get a lot of clarity and you kind of wake up. I've had this conversation with every woman I've ever interviewed pretty much, and we all have the same experience. There's an awakening that starts to happen after that first year. Well, in that one to five year range where you're like you know you want, you start to crave, like more.

Shelby: 24:28

You're like oh, wow, like I'm feeling like really good, like now I'm really wanting to get into you know, who am I now? Or what do I even like now? Or you know, do I want to start dating? Do I need to leave my husband, like whatever's going on, you start to think about these things, like that reinvention to creep in right and we're starting to say, oh, oh, what is that going to look like for me? And so I guess, when that starts to happen, when you start to get those sort of inflection points, you know, like you said, sometimes it's given to us, like COVID or maybe you, you know your husband leaves you or you have, you know you lose your job, whatever, like sometimes it's given to you and sometimes we get to decide. So what would you say is like some of the first steps in like managing, like how would, where would you even start?

Gail: 25:16

Yeah, so. So the very first step and this one worked for me beautifully was take control of your internal dialogue, because once when you're in addiction, your internal dialogues out of your control, the the addiction has control over it. Because once when you're in addiction, your internal dialogue's out of your control, the addiction has control over it. It's, like you said, the stinking thinking, right? So that's the first spot is take care of, take control of your internal dialogue, and whatever that looks like for you, I don't, you know, we can call it the power of positive thinking, we can call it whatever we want, but it's taking control of your internal dialogue. And so you know, an example that I would give you is if I didn't have control of my internal dialogue and I see a proposal to do I'm a keynote speaker, so I see a proposal to speak at a big conference, so I say say, oh well, there's no use me filling that proposal out, because look at how sophisticated the audience is.

Gail: 26:12

They probably already heard everything that I have to say. Or imagine how many other speakers are going to apply for that. Why would they want to pay my fee? Garbage in, garbage out, that's my mantra. Garbage in, garbage out. I scream it, I yell it, garbage in, garbage out, and then I reframe it. Oh my God, I'm so excited that I found this proposal. I'm a perfect fit for them.

Gail: 26:37

Yeah, they might have heard some of the messages that I'm having before, but you got to hear things over and over again before you jump into them and you take action. So you know, and my fee is completely reasonable, that's the reframing right and that doesn't happen overnight. You can't reframe over If you've been in the victim mode or the woezy woezy mode, then to teach your internal dialogue, to stand up for you, believe in you, go after your dreams, takes work. It's like training for a marathon, and so that's what I see. The starting point is this isn't a sprint, it's not a New Year's resolution. It's you training your internal dialogue. You can read books, you can watch, you know, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube training videos. There's a lot you can learn on how to do this, but to me, that's the key. That's the key get control of your internal dialogue.

Shelby: 27:40

You're so right and I agree with you. That's actually the first module of my program as well, like eliminating negative thinking patterns, because it all starts there. You know, it all starts with. What is that dialogue that's running in the background constantly? What are the negative beliefs that you have about yourself? What are you telling yourself? You know, I mean, what are the labels? Even that we've like take, that we've heard people say and so, like we've, we've layered onto ourselves, even unconsciously, you know, um, all of that stuff needs to be taken a look at and um, and you're right, it takes weeks, months, years, like this isn't a practice that takes a very, very long time. Um, you know, and, and the first, like how I teach it too, is like the first thing is really just to start to take an inventory of your thoughts. Just take an inventory, like, start to notice, to start to take an inventory of your thoughts.

Shelby: 28:26

Just take an inventory like start to notice, become aware, start to write that down All day long when you have that negative thought, well, oh my gosh, like I can't do that, like I'm not good enough, or man, I always make mistakes, you know, or she's going to be so mad at me because I did this Like you start to write those down, you really take an inventory of what are the negative thoughts you have about yourself that are running in the background all the time. And when you write things down, it becomes a little bit more real, right, so you can literally see it and start to work with that and you can start to think like is this thought irrational or is it rational? Like, is there any truth behind this? Do I have any evidence to support this thought about myself? Maybe you do Most likely, this thought about myself. Maybe you do most likely, you probably don't, but like, really tap into that.

Gail: 29:10

You know, is this rational or irrational? Yeah, yeah and all. And it comes with limited beliefs too. Well, you know, I tried that before and it didn't work. Well, that doesn't. That's not a fact. The fact you tried it before and it didn't work isn't doesn't mean it's not going to work this time. That's just something that happened. That's a fact. And so you can say because I tried it before and it didn't work, it's not going to work this time.

Gail: 29:32

And you know you mentioned your book. Like when I wrote my book, I've been studying personal growth and peak performance for 40 years, right? So I read a gazillion books. And here's what I could tell you.

Gail: 29:46

If you're just at the starting point on this journey, don't get overwhelmed by the amount of tools that are out there and what's. I didn't. I didn't reinvent anything. And and here's what I'll share with you and it doesn't even matter if the topic is, you know, personal growth or if it's computers. I don't care what the topic is. If you read a book and you highlight the 10 ideas that they're giving you, the 10 tools that you're giving you, then you read another one and you highlight their 10. So you read 10 books and you highlight all the guess what seven out of the 10 are going to be identical in every single book. They're not. They're all going to be the same. They're just going to be people approaching it from a different angle and saying it in a different way. And you know, they say you have to hear something three times or, in my case, seven times before you hear it right, we're all a little bit different, but but that's the point.

Gail: 30:47

You start with one thing and you work on it, and then you'll end up building and building um. In. In my book, I tell you a personal story, a curveball that life threw at me, and then what I do is I share with you the tools that I use to be able to work through that. And then this is the fun part there's a QR code so you can go and listen to a song that I wrote on YouTube and see the lyric video that was inspired by the story that I just shared with you. So I literally put a soundtrack in my book.

Shelby: 31:28

I love that and you're so right. Thank you so much for saying the fact that basically most people, most of the information that we're consuming, is the same. You know, I mean I love that you. Thank you for that, cause I yes, there are a lot of really good books. I've read a lot. I mostly read nonfiction anyway. There are a lot of really good books. I've read a lot. I mostly read nonfiction anyway. I've read a lot of really good books. I've read a lot of good information.

Shelby: 31:53

Some I resonate with a lot. Some I'm like, eh, I didn't relate to that as much, but a lot of that is a little bit more of like I feel like an energetic experience, meaning like a connection to the author, right, or their story. So if I don't have like a really deep connection to like you or like your story or whatever, then I may resonate with the book, but I might also just be like that's that was just like okay for me, but it doesn't mean that the material in there isn't any any less valuable, and so that's all that is. It's kind of like deciding like who your therapist is going to be or your coach or whatever. Like there's a million of them, right, and then some of them are good, some of them are not so good.

Shelby: 32:31

That's fine, but you're going to, you're like, even if you had 10 and they were all like just as qualified and they were just as vetted, like some of them, you're just not going to like, you know, even though they have the same clinical degree, the same clinical degree, the same skills, the same training, you're just not going to be energetically in line with them. And that's the same thing with, like, our personal development work. And so that's why it's I liked how you said that, because, you know, sometimes I feel like that whole that concept around. I already tried that. It didn't work for me. It's so. It is so powerful and you're right, it's a limiting belief and it can really keep us stuck in a rut or in a mindset or in a way of life for way longer than we need to.

Gail: 33:21

I know, I know, and even the book, your 12-Step Program, that in itself that's a book. I mean, that can give you some amazing strength. But if you can't resonate with the material, for whatever reason, you're not connecting with the author of it. It's their way of writing. I agree with you 100%. You're going to have to hear it another way and just keep going. And you know therapists and counselors.

Gail: 33:49

I always say to people you go to a doctor when you break your leg or you get diabetes, why wouldn't you go to a counselor or a psychologist when you're dealing with your emotional turmoil? It's the same thing and it's equally important. Well, I tried that. I went to a counselor and it was no good. Well, you had the wrong counselor. Maybe try a different one. You know, I'm sure lots of people went to doctors that they couldn't resonate with either. Right, it's about finding the right team. They say that you're the result of the five people you spend your most time with, and so I use my imagination sometimes and turn. I'm just coming out of recovery. I don't have the right network. Create it, imagine it.

Shelby: 34:52

You know you can point like another, another really really like kind of next step in a lot of that is is creating your own community, and and so we can't do this life alone. We weren't designed Our, our literal human nature was not designed to live in solidarity. We were designed to be in community, and that can look so many different ways depending on our personalities, our lifestyle, our interests, and recovery is no different from that, right. So if you are somebody who's that's why things like 12-step works, right For a lot of reasons. Right, because it builds you automatically have this fellowship around you that like is are people doing sober things? Right, which is not really like the world. It's hard to find that out there.

Shelby: 35:36

Or if you like really want to get interested in music or art or cooking or whatever, you start to join like facebook groups or whatever with other people in that community and you build it around you because groups or whatever with other people in that community and you build it around you because we can't expect that we are gonna our our thing if we're just stuck with our own thoughts all the time and we're working on our thinking patterns like how are we ever gonna be able to check ourselves like, how are we ever gonna have any like accountability really for anybody to be like, hey, like, maybe, like I know you said this, I heard you this, but like, maybe you could think of it like this Like, if we don't have other people in our life that we're sharing things with, then how will we ever know when we're off track?

Gail: 36:16

Yeah, and I think it's important too, too, and you brought this forward like the fellowship program is amazing, and it's a great group of people that have gone through the same challenges that you have. But it is really important to get out and do the, whether it's your cooking group or whether it's your like me. You know, bring yourself into the community, the, the non-recovery community that you know. Don't let that be your only community, and that's the message that I try to give is we're here today, we missed a beat, and and, and that's it, that's all, but it's it doesn't matter. We can go wherever it is that we want, and it's really important that we get comfortable with people that didn't miss the beats that we missed, and, and I mean that's just part of life and it's a and and it's a powerful like you know this, you can get your music, your exercise, you can get your dopamine in a lot of different ways out in the world, and and I just yeah, I have a.

Shelby: 37:32

I believe in you. Yeah, I agree, I totally agree, like I think in the beginning, for most people in the beginning of their recovery journey, you really do need to have like a sober community, because it's such a at least around in our, our area like it's, you know, we live in a world that's like obsessed with alcohol, so, like the regular world is not thinking that, like that, like most people. So you do need to find people who are doing sober things, because you need to have people that can help you along the way in early recovery. But you're right, like, as you go on, like that's why I always say, like, if you just start layering on other things and you're like, oh well, now I want to, I want to do the therapy, oh well, now I want to, um, I want to get into relationships. Or, oh wow, I want to work on my health Okay, so I'm going to start doing that so we just layer on the other parts and that thinking pattern is going to help us do that too, cause, as we build more confidence in ourselves and, uh, we can trust that we know how to make good decisions, then we can be like you know what?

Shelby: 38:26

Like I do want to. I do really want to take piano lessons. You know, I've always wanted to do that and I'm just going to try it and like maybe you grab a friend and like you're like, hey, let's take piano lessons or you just do it by yourself, but that is always available to us. You know, we really do limit ourselves when we, when we kind of put on those limiting beliefs of like, well, I can't do that because you know, my mom always said you'll never be good at music, or I can't do that because my husband doesn't like it when I'm out at night or whatever the thing is.

Shelby: 39:00

You know, like right yeah, limit ourselves by those thinking patterns that are really designed to kind of protect. We think that they're protection right To protect us from failure or getting hurt, but they're really limiting.

Gail: 39:14

Yeah, and if you're in the rooms and you're listening to the messages, you're hearing the stories of you know I've been five years clean, or 10 years clean or 15 years clean and and this is what's going on in my life right now and you're hearing all those. You know, listen to the story. You're hearing all those layered on things that you're talking about and how that you know we didn't yeah, we didn't have to stay in recovery and we didn't have to stop at the day we went into recovery.

Shelby: 39:48

Exactly.

Shelby: 39:49

And then, like you said, like we literally can reinvent ourselves at any time, you know, I mean, ages and stages are a real thing, like I had said to you before we started them facing kind of empty nest here coming up and it's, it's slowly but surely starting to happen, and like I am constantly thinking about that, like, what does this look like for me? Like, and and also I think we need to be careful, when we are in that sort of in that process, to be cautious about the stories that we're telling ourselves or the stories we choose to believe, which is like oh, emptiness, um is very sad, or I'm going to be really lonely, or I don't have any friends, like, if those are the stories that I'm constantly kind of telling myself or believing, I really need to check that, you know know, because are they true? Like, are those things really true? And kind of be careful about like, like who we're hanging out with. If I'm hanging out with a bunch of people who are super sad that they don't have any kids at home anymore, it's probably not going to be very like feel very good, right.

Gail: 40:47

Right, yeah, I mean, that just brings you back to that whole thing. If that's what you think, if you think that's going to be your situation, you're right. If you don't think that's going to be your situation, you're right.

Shelby: 41:01

And it does take a like. Just to reiterate, it takes a tremendous amount of practice to do this and sometimes you kind of have to fake it till you make it a little bit Like. Sometimes you have to say like, ooh, even though I'm feeling really anxious about this, um, this new thing, like I'm going to, I'm still going to do it anyway, or like we have to, we have to do it, we have to have the feeling about it or the thing, and then still do it anyway. Right, so that's a big part, I think, of that transformation.

Gail: 41:29

I know, and I talk about that fake it till you make it in the book, because you have to get yourself out of your comfort zone. There's no question, you have to be able to get yourself. But if you're doing that, if you're faking it till you make it and you're giving your subconscious a new message, you're telling your subconscious that you got this, and so, when it's time for it to happen, your subconscious is going to default. Oh, we know how to do this, even though it's the first time you've ever done it. You've been telling yourself that you have it, so you automatically have it. And so I mean there are so many tools that you can use to get yourself to your next level. And there's even there's a chapter.

Gail: 42:16

I have a soft spot in my heart for the loved ones of addicts big time, because so many people are dying. There's so much, there's so much of a challenge right now for the parents. It's what could I have done differently? Um, you know, even the siblings. Is there anything? Could I have been a better sister or better, or better brother?

Gail: 42:38

And so there's a chapter where I sort of talk about whether you're talking about, uh, codependency, or enabling or boundaries, or compartmentalizing all these tools to give yourself permission to be happy, even though you've got a loved one that's struggling. You're allowed to be happy. You're allowed to enjoy your life, to excel, to enjoy time with your other children, and then, when your loved one's ready to get help, you can be the advocate. You're strong, you can help them find a rehab. You can. You know you didn't let the, because your anxiety and depression and and and overwhelmness can can overtake your own strength and your own mental and physical health. And now a lot of people that are addicts, that have been in recovery for years, they're the loved ones of the addicts, because you're losing people in the rooms and so you find yourself in that situation. And so, yeah, I think it's so, so important for us to do our self-care. You know, self-care is not selfish, it's important.

Shelby: 44:04

You're so right. This has been such a good conversation, and I think that your book is obviously going to be even more in-depth around this concept of reinventing yourself at any stage, and I think that your book is obviously going to be even more in depth around this concept of reinventing yourself at any stage, and I love that for you. So, gail, where do you like people to reach out and get a hold of you if they want to.

Gail: 44:19

Yeah, so the easiest place to get a hold of me is my website, which is gailtaylormusiccom. If you want my book in the States Amazon, barnes, noble online you can have access to it in either of those places. Look, I'm going to show you the cover of my book. Look at the butterfly. I put a treble clap and a bass clap in it. So the book's called Curballs, unlocking your potential through personal growth and inspirational music, and the reason I repeated it with the subtotal is because there are a lot of books out there called curveballs.

Shelby: 45:00

This is the one that's not about baseball well, I'll make sure I link to those things in the show notes below. And again, I appreciate your time. I know everyone's really going to enjoy this and I hope our paths cross again soon, because this was really great.

Gail: 45:13

Oh, thanks, and thank you for having me. I really appreciated this. Yeah, happy Valentine's Day Bye Shelby.

Shelby: 45:26

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Confident Sober Women. If you enjoyed this conversation, hit the subscribe button above so you won't miss any upcoming episodes. And, hey, if you really loved it, leave me a review. You can learn more about the Sober Freedom Inner Circle membership at wwwshelbyjohncoachingcom. Forward slash inner circle. See you next time.