The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast

Diving Deep with Seana Smith: The Story Behind Going Under

• Isabella Ferguson and Meg Webb

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On the eve of celebrating five years of sobriety, Seana Smith joins Bella for a powerful and deeply personal conversation about recovery, resilience, and rewriting her story. In this riveting episode, Seana opens up about the profound impact of her father’s alcoholism on her childhood and how it shaped her journey toward healing. She shares how embracing emotional sobriety, building a strong support network, and writing her memoir, Going Under, became transformative steps in reclaiming her life. Seana also reflects on her move from Scotland to Australia, her path to self-forgiveness, and the joy that comes with emotional sobriety. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to redefine our relationships with addiction, embrace self-discovery, and find strength in the lessons our past offers.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SEANA

https://seanasmith.com/

https://soberjourneys.com/

https://www.instagram.com/seanasmith/

https://www.instagram.com/sober_journeys

In Australia: Going Under is available in bookshops and online stores in Australia and on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com.au/Going-Under-memoir-secrets-addiction/dp/0645497231/

In the USA: https://www.amazon.com/Going-Under-memoir-secrets-addiction/dp/0645497231/

In the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Going-Under-memoir-secrets-addiction/dp/0645497231/

Going Under Audiobook: Going Under on Audible, narrated by Seana Smith, click here.


MEG

Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
Facebook UpsideAF: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1168716054214678
Small group coaching: https://www.elizaparkinson.com/groupcoaching


BELLA

Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholcounsellorisabella
Bi-Yearly 6-Week Small Group Challenges: Learn more: https://www.isabellaferguson.com.au/feb-2025-challenge
Free Do I Have A Drinking Problem 3 x Video Series: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/JTFFgjJL/checkout
Free HOW DO I STOP DRINKING SO MUCH Masterclass: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/7fvkb3FF/checkout
Online Alcohol Self-Paced Course: ...

Speaker 1:

Today we're welcoming Shauna Smith, author of Going Under a memoir of family addiction and escape, and it's about Shauna's move, also from Scotland to gorgeous Orange in Australia. And on top of that, shauna just advised me by email a little while ago that she's celebrating five years alcohol free. So welcome and congratulations.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you very much. It's lovely to do this podcast. It's like a way of celebrating the fifth year anniversary. What a new life I've had. I'm so happy.

Speaker 1:

And I can't wait to get into all of that. And five years is a brilliant, beautiful milestone. You know there's six weeks, three months a year, but five years is solid, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Solid, very solid, and I'm never going back, like never going back, ever, ever. So I haven't often counted a lot, because I've always been looking forward rather than looking back. And I'm always looking forward, thinking I'm never going back there, I'm just going on and everything's new now and everything's better. But when the fire, when it hits the year, it does feel really significant and you do feel proud yeah, you do.

Speaker 1:

Well, there's a lot of sober firsts that you've encountered in a year, let alone five years, so it'd be hard for something in life to throw you off course, we can be blindsided, can't we? But after five years you've kind of done it all. I want to just kick off first of all by saying thank you. Thank you, shauna, for writing this book. It's personal, but it's also funny and familiar with some I mean awesome childhood adventures, but also some hardships as well. And you know this is the story of alcohol in the world, that it is a slow descent into a problematic drinking relationship. You don't just suddenly wake up, do we, and say here we are, I've got a problem with alcohol. It often starts with childhood experiences, well before we've had our first drink. Do you think this is where it all started with you?

Speaker 2:

I think so, definitely, definitely, definitely. Because I was brought up in this Scottish family, which was quite typical in lots of ways, but also not typical in others. So I would say half my childhood was really great. We had a boat, we went sailing, I ran around the Hebrides, we sailed around Skye. It was beautiful and the holidays were marvellous.

Speaker 2:

But at home you just never knew what was going to happen next, because my dad was a massive drinker, which is one thing, but he was also aggressive and violent at times. So he was as I write about in the book. He was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and you just never knew who was coming next. And when he was fun, he was fantastic fun. He was an extremely capable, intelligent man. He played musical instruments, ran a building business, was very kind in lots of ways and generous, but when he drank and became nasty, he was awful. So we endured domestic violence and I will not be the only person at all. There'll be lots of people listening to this who had that experience as well either of physical violence or emotional violence as well. We had a bit of everything, and the difficult thing was we just didn't know what was going to happen next. It was really distressing.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so there's sort of a picture there of tiptoeing around him uncertainty which can really create, can really impact a child, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, and watching him be really awful to our mother, who we thought was the most gorgeous, beautiful princess. You know, it was in the 70s. She wore long cloaks and she had beautiful dresses and she was very young, she had her children very young, and we wanted to help her, um, but we couldn't. You know, you just can't, and always there's that feeling of helplessness, you know, and if something's wrong, this is all wrong. This shouldn't be happening, um, and and we couldn't rescue her. We tried and and tried, but we just couldn't. I always was trying to get her to leave him and she never left him.

Speaker 1:

It's complicated, Very complicated, yeah. How do you now reconcile your father's behaviour and his exposure to you and your siblings to not just his anger but I guess his drinking which drove and fuelled the?

Speaker 2:

anger now? Yes, it certainly did.

Speaker 1:

With that benefit of hindsight, looking back, perhaps thinking of his own upbringing. How do you?

Speaker 2:

I've actually got really mixed feelings about it, you know, because we don't know enough about his interior life to know what it was that drove him into heavy, heavy drinking and then to addictive behaviours. But I've also been very angry looking back. You know there are a lot of people who drink a lot and have a massive drink problem who are never aggressive or angry.

Speaker 2:

So it's almost like two different things. Absolutely, the drinking really made it worse and for many years I thought, oh, if he'd never drunk that would never have happened. But now I think I understand better that there's other things going on. I think he took on too much. He had four children by the time he was 30 and he really wanted to make a success and to show my mother's parents that he was good enough for her. So there was definitely a big chip on the shoulder there about them getting married and he pushed and, pushed and pushed and life was just too much for him. But he was a Scottish man born before the war. He certainly wasn't in tune with his emotions and able to talk about things and he used to, you know, rant about people who would talk about their emotions, but he was using alcohol as a massive crutch.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it didn't work for him and the poor fellow. So all in my many mixed emotions, I also feel terribly sorry for him because he had dementia of some type, never properly diagnosed.

Speaker 1:

By the time he was 65 yes, pretty young yeah, it was really interesting to read about or hear about it in your beautiful storytelling voice, which I just loved. It drew me into the Audible book. The way that your mother one aspect that she coped was going to AA that supported partners of alcoholics.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, al-anon. So she started off by phoning AA and begging them to remove my father and to fix him. The person that mum was talking to in AA said we cannot help your husband, mrs Smith, unless he wants help, but we can help you, and mum went to Al-Anon, which is a worldwide organisation but an anonymous one, and that really helped her. So I also wanted to tell the story of this unpredictable Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde father and childhood, but also the story of my mum, who never left him, but she became emancipated during their marriage and she started to have some detachment from him and to live her own life, stay in her own house, keep gardening her own garden, grow her bonsai trees and have a very happy life within herself. Yes, and at some remove at times from what was happening with my dad and then with my brother as well, who's had, you know, a lot of difficulties in his life. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

It was an amazing story. I mean, she just sounded like she was able to see her life for what it was. Reach out to resources when and how she could and make the best of it of a hard situation.

Speaker 2:

She did, and all her children had left, because she had us all by the time she was 28. By the time she was 50, I think we'd all left home, and although my brother, who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia which is very severe, and now has terrible cognitive impairment, although he came and went and she did have to look after him.

Speaker 2:

I do also think that once we'd all grown up, she was able to do much more of what she wanted to. She went travelling on her own. She went to Iceland. She used to come to visit us in Australia and be quite hands-on with the grandchildren and leave Dad behind. Yes, although I do, I really love the story I put into the book of when they came to visit us in Pakistan.

Speaker 2:

When I lived in Pakistan when my son was a baby, it was a dry country and we had a lovely holiday because Dad wasn't drinking at all. Yeah, so that actually was a really happy memory. And just to be fair to dad, you know he was a wonderful provider for his family. He worked extremely hard and he did take us on adventures and I wanted to put that in. I didn't want this black and white image because I was trying to reconcile in my own mind what had happened and sort of put it all to bed. So I had to write the good and the bad and then look at how that affected me and what I'm trying to take now, what I'm trying to focus on now, which is the good from my childhood, not the bad.

Speaker 1:

That's right and that's the beauty of your memoir, shauna, I think, because you can't just readily take sides. It is complex, there's love, there's hate, there's confusion, and that's what makes it so hard. There are two lovely, poignant moments in the book. There was in the prologue when you're building the shelves in.

Speaker 1:

Orange in your garage and you're just contemplating what it would look like if you put the gumboots on the shelf and I wonder if I could put some bottles and hide my bottles in there to when you had gone back to Scotland and your father had passed away and you had cleaned out that liquor cabinet. Yes, it was so significant.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it really was a really, really important moment in my life. He'd been buried, this cabinet which had been the centre of the house, lots of partying in that room, but which had become a mausoleum it had only the drinks that he kept drinking. Nobody visited him anymore, there was no fun in that room anymore, and I just wanted to clean it and put it to bed. And that happened. And I was always thinking after it happened, I thought I really want to write about that, I really want to write about that. And then when I finally did, I could remember every moment of cleaning that cupboard, you know, and I wrote and wrote and wrote about it.

Speaker 2:

But there were so many moments from my life that I had really wanted to put on paper, get them out of my head onto the page, which is part of me growing older, but it's a big. Also, it's a big part of me being sober and wanting to look at my whole drinking story. Yeah, put an end to it, that's the thing, so it's. I really only felt when I stopped drinking that that was the end of my father's drinking story too and the massive influence that had on me. Um, I really lots of people who've got a, an alcoholic parent or a difficult parent. They never drink, and I so wish that had been me. That would make life a lot easier. But I think many, many, many people have a disrupted childhood and then they carry this pain with them and they try to drink it away, but it doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

No, it doesn't work and it is one of those criteria in the ACEs school the adverse childhood experiences school. If you've got a parent that is drunk, it's just one of the big factors that will lead to then your likelihood of drinking or not. But so there's that thought in the shed with the gumboots, and again I want to thank you for mentioning that, because those are the stories that really resonate with many women, many of our listeners that have also hidden bottles or stashed them and had such shame around them.

Speaker 1:

Was that well, I'd love to hear how did it get to that point for you?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it got to that point slowly and with me trying not to get to that point, and I never did hide the bottles in the garage, but just the thought that I was thinking of it made me think I felt so terrible. I thought, oh my God, you can't do that. Anyway, I mean I had hidden my drinking, but I hadn't actually hidden bottles before. But I think as soon as I left school I started drinking a lot and I was a massive binge drinker through my 20s and I was always still shifting around. I was always on the move. I was never quite comfortable, but I luckily worked in television, where you always have short contracts, so I could always be on the move, so I was doing lots of geographics. I did stop drinking when I was 30 and met my husband when I had stopped after a year of counselling, which was very helpful for me, and when my four children were little I wasn't drinking a huge amount. I was living in the suburbs in Sydney after we arrived from Pakistan and I was always having to drive and I'm sure I often drove, you know, having had too much, but I wasn't falling about drum corps in a bad state when they were little. But it was almost as soon as life got a bit easier when my twins started going to school and I could feel myself ramping up the drinking I also.

Speaker 2:

The year they went to school, I started to take more exercise and of course I wanted to be healthy. I had these. My twins were born when I was 42. And I really feel that it is a duty and I must look after myself because these children need me and it was my choice to have them. Well, I planned to have one, but I ended up having twins.

Speaker 2:

So I had this strong urge to be healthy and yet I was writing myself off with alcohol. And the first time I stopped for a year was when they were the year they turned seven, I think. And it was because I knew it was just getting out of hand and I was panicking and I thought I would stop for a year. I went to AA that year. Stop for a year, Stop for a year, Be really healthy, because at the end of that year I'll be different, Everything will change.

Speaker 2:

But it didn't. You know. I'm sure you would have clients like that. I look back and think you, big dope, what were you thinking? And then it took me another six years before I actually bit the bullet and realized that I was not a human being who was going to ever be able to be a moderate drinker or a light drinker. And you know, I know lots of people who never drink very much at all loads of them and it's just not an issue for them. But I've never been like that, you know, and I had just decades of wishful thinking.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I think it's really common to try and keep that foot in the door of moderation. It's an elusive door. There isn't a door for many of us, many of us, but you're right, there are many that can. Yeah, they say that giving up alcohol is, I think it's, 10% to 20% physically stopping, and then 80% to 20% physically stopping, and then 80% to 90%. Emotional resilience, emotional sobriety yes, well, we have to kind of let go of people pleasing, avoiding our life, trying to control outcomes, all those avoidant behaviours of which alcohol firmly sits in there, the easiest, quickest one perhaps. What does that mean for you? Emotional sobriety?

Speaker 2:

Well, it means for me dealing with life, with real life as it's happening, and not just trying to opt out of life, which isn't to say that there aren't times when you are very stressed, and I might. If I'm feeling absolutely shocking now, I might take myself off to bed and watch something on Netflix for a couple of hours, because I just need to opt out for a bit. So it's not that one never does that or you don't need to, but it's just having a lot more awareness that you can solve most issues in life. I was avoiding many, many issues in life, things between my husband and me, the many ups and downs I'd had with mothering and domesticity, which I really loved, but it's also been exceptionally boring sometimes and then exceptionally difficult. But I wasn't facing the world straight on, I was just sliding off to the side.

Speaker 2:

The biggest thing as well, I think, was that I always, having left home when I was 16 and then left the country and left again, and even that move to Orange we'd lived in Sydney for many years and we moved to Orange the year mum died, and that was just too much for me. I love to have community, I want to feel as if I belong, and I think that also kept me drinking, because I wanted to be there with everybody else who was having fun. I wanted to be one of the party people. I wanted everybody to like me. Yes, how exhausting.

Speaker 1:

So exhausting.

Speaker 2:

But I think the reason, one of the reasons I stopped meaning to just stop for a month but stayed stopped was the wonderful community that there had, that had grown up. I could not find that in 2013. I went to AA, but I didn't listen to podcasts and I didn't read quick lit books. I actually did read one or two, but not the amount that there were, and I didn't relate to them as much because they weren't written by grey area drinkers and mothers like me. They were written by people who had amazing stories that made me feel I was a lightweight drinker because they were taking loads of drugs.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, that's a problem in itself as well Interesting To read things by people that I could really relate to and go on Zooms and be in groups. I mean, I don't. I'm not proud of the fact that I've been such a people pleaser and I'm so needy, you know, in lots of ways, but it certainly was who I was. I feel more resilient now and I don't mind so much if people don't like me. I don't know whether that's a postmenopausal thing, getting older thing, but or or just becoming, because I am more my authentic, true self now, you know, whereas I was always dodging around trying to keep everybody happy.

Speaker 1:

Trying to work it out. Oh, I can completely relate and I know so many women that can relate. We, we, um, I had a great discussion with a group of women in one of the challenges that I run about this topic. So then suddenly there's a moment in our life the light bulb, as you said, and you just think, oh, something has to change. What has kept you in this wonderful sobriety? What keeps you going on a daily basis? What's the daily routine that works for you, shauna?

Speaker 2:

I think getting outdoors swimming, yeah. And then two years into sobriety I bought a little dog and I'd never had a dog before and my two big boys had left and my twins were teenagers and didn't quite love me as much as I needed.

Speaker 1:

No, they don't do they. That's putting it mildly in my head.

Speaker 2:

I got this delightful little hound and now she and I. She's a wee poodle and she and I go for walks every day. Getting outside is my mental health, you know that's what I do. But swimming at the there's a fantastic pool in Orange and then we will get. We will move back to the coast, I think, because I think for my old age I'd like to be swimming in the sea, so that keeps me going. But also I have met marvellous people in the sober communities and I have lovely, lovely friends in and out of sober communities, but without them, you know, I'm not a person, I think, without my family and my friends.

Speaker 2:

But writing the book was also has really helped me come to terms with the past and I do feel really strongly that it's worth doing. You know whether you write it and if you are writing it, you definitely need emotional support 100%. But learning to write creative non-fiction like that, putting all these things down, including some really meaningful times there's a whole chapter that's a lot about when my mum had dementia and how we managed to look after her as adults when we couldn't as children. I cannot tell you how healing that is. So just trying to have a look at the big picture of your life, where are you, and it really helps with looking forward and, yeah, where am I going one day at a time, you know? Um, yeah, so it's really. The last five years have been fantastic for me, and I'm sure I'm a better parent as well, and now my children are about to fly off into the world, but they've got a stable parent to come home to, or two parents um, you've most certainly broken that generational tie that alcohol often has between generations.

Speaker 1:

I am curious what was it like, I guess, exposing this story? You know this. Maybe it is getting easier these days, I don't know than around alcohol in a small country town.

Speaker 2:

Yeah well, I actually especially Orange because it's got 30 vineyards around it. I was quite open about it. I think I am a chatterbox and I've always been quite an oversharer, but I'm amazed at how many people say to me oh, I didn't know all of that, shauna, like people have known me for a really long time because I'd never told everybody everything before, if you know what I mean in a one-er. Um, but I I don't feel it was particularly brave. I think I did have a reaction to the fact that we weren't really allowed to talk about it as children, and I very specifically waited until both my parents had passed away, because I don't think I would have felt free to write emotionally free to write whilst they were still alive, but all the words had been waiting to pour out. And so I'm quite comfortable about it. And there are some.

Speaker 2:

Well, there are many things in that book that I'm not proud of. There's quite a small percentage of what I'm not proud of in my life, and there's quite a small percentage of what I'm not proud of in my life, but I thought it was important to put things in there that showed me up in a bad light, because I was in a bad spot. You know I was in a bad place and I did loads of things that I hope my daughter will never do, that I hope my children will never do. But I really wanted to be out there and, amazingly, none of the kids are really interested in reading it. And my daughter says couldn't you put it all on TikTok? I was going to know what to do.

Speaker 1:

What dance?

Speaker 2:

it Dance the memoir. So I was concerned about relatives in Scotland who've been lovely about it. You know people who knew a bit of the story but not all of it, and I was concerned about people being upset. But you see, people knew and it's just that it wasn't talked about. And I found it incredibly freeing to be to tell the truth yeah, you know and to be honest about so that you know, I've written a lot of things that um, dad would definitely not want me to know about.

Speaker 1:

Well, tell people about mom, I'm sure as well, but they did happen and it's my story, so it's very liberating to write it actually and I'm sure there have been so well so many other people out there that have lived with a very similar circumstance Absolutely the father that drank a lot that got angry?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but who wasn't a complete monster? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

But you didn't know who you were getting.

Speaker 2:

It's so difficult to live with you know, yeah it is so difficult.

Speaker 1:

I really loved at the oh some part in the book where you mentioned a quote from oh. Somebody might have been from AA, you can tell me, but it's never. You're never too old to start living your childhood.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you what it is. I went to an Al-Anon meeting myself, so I've been to Al-Anon meetings and it was in Edinburgh many years ago. And this young guy said oh, he said you're never too old to enjoy your happy childhood. That has had a big impact on me. How so? Well, for many years I was thinking well. When I had my own children I thought, oh, this is a good laugh, and now I'm having. It was stable. My children's childhood was more or less stable and I was able to go to the park and run around and go to the beach and it was all quite calm. More I think now that the children are not needing me so much. I am going to go and do what I loved doing as a child. So I loved horse riding when I was a child. I've got great hopes of doing some of that. It's not even the riding, it's the smell of the horse's noses.

Speaker 1:

Oh yes.

Speaker 2:

And we used to lie making daisy chains and we just used to wander about. So I'm aiming to have a bit of just wandering around, you know, with my wee dog and my husband will come where. You don't care particularly where you're going or what you're doing and you're noticing all the plants. So all that I mean being brought up in the countryside in Scotland and then moving out to the countryside in orange, not being in the city really also helped make me feel that I was tapping back into that, you know, but with more colourful birds and snakes, um so, but I think that is a wonderful thing to remember. You know that, that you can have fun and you can have your childlike self in the world at any age.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I just got the goosebumps. It is beautiful, and particularly when you might be drinking to mask Some pain, pain and memories from your childhood. And often our development gets held in abeyance when we're starting our big drinking career, which is often in our 20s, so you kind of want to tap back into that feeling that you may not have had for a long time. But I mean, there's often a stage when people are giving up alcohol where they want to have that adventure, that fun, that playful, spontaneous feeling, tap back into it. But we've sort of forgotten how to do that without alcohol. You've got all of that around you.

Speaker 2:

I've got that because I have got that around me in the country. And when I go down to Sydney and I swim in the sea and I swim in the winter I love the hit, you know. So I love the burst of adrenaline and the dopamine afterwards and don't feel as if that's something anybody needs to apologise for, because we love excitement. So I'm never going to jump out of a plane, but I can imagine why people do it and there are many healthy ways to give yourself a big buzz if you're a person who likes a big buzz. And so any time I swim in the sea I am really quite nervous.

Speaker 2:

Even if I'm surrounded by lots of other people and if I ever go out in the sea I'll be in a group with other people I'm still quite terrified and I quite like it. So it's actually much more adventurous, a bit of a thrill, yeah, and I know people say, oh, it's boring if you don't drink, but there is nothing more boring than a hangover. So one person might be in their bed on a Sunday morning having a hangover and I might be plunging into Bilgula rock pool, you know, and hearing up and down. I think my I don't know what they are neurotransmitters, hormones whatever they are, I'm totally buzzing, I'm buzzing and I like it.

Speaker 1:

Yes, so do I. It's helping. I had my perfect day yesterday, which was a run and a jump in the ocean, and it sets you up for the day.

Speaker 2:

It does and it gives you a big, big buzz, and that's fine.

Speaker 1:

Look, this book, I think, is a wonderful gift for yourself or for anybody else out there, and it's a book not just about alcohol. It's about grief, growing up and just discovering yourself later in life. Who are you writing it for, yeah, yeah, and who can you see reading it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think when one starts writing and I have, I feel as if I've um, I haven't done a master's of creative writing, but I've done plenty of courses and I've had mentors and I feel that I have grown with my writing so you start off getting it out of your head and out of your chest and onto the page. So I was started off with childhood memories which are in the book which I just went Now that is for me, so that's quite selfish. It's just me getting out of my head onto the page and that's your messy first draft and it's probably your messy second, third draft as well. But after that, if you want to write a story that people will enjoy reading, they have to trust you to tell them a proper story. So then you have to make sure that you have got a beginning, a middle and an end and that you're laying it out and holding the hand of the reader as they go through. And I wanted the reader to relate to the stories, or I mean, rather, they didn't have the same experience as I had, but if they had, I knew how much benefit I get from reading Everything I read. You know most some things more than others, but a lot of that quick lit that I read.

Speaker 2:

At the beginning I was so grateful to the people for telling me their story and helping me stay sober. Very crucial to my sobriety was relating and thinking these cool, groovy women can do it, and I want to be in that gang. You know that's my cool gang. So then I mean, when I started talking to a publisher, then there was more polishing to be done and she asked me to take some bits out that she thought were going off on a tangent and bolster up some other bits. That was lovely when you start working with other people having I wrote on my own for quite a long time, sustained by doing memoir groups on a Sunday morning with Jenny Valentich, which were super helpful for me, but it's quite a lonely job and then you're working with other people so that by the end of it you've got something that's polished and that is going to work for the reader yeah but it starts off not working for the reader.

Speaker 2:

and I love working with people who want to write because I think now I know how to guide people through that getting on the page and then helping use the craft and then you want to hold the hand of the reader. The reader has to trust you to take them through the story, Because when somebody reads a book or listens to it, they're giving you 10 hours of their life. It's a big responsibility, you know, and you want them to. You can't be all doom and gloom. You also have to have the lighter bits as well. So it is a craft.

Speaker 1:

It is a craft. Just as a final question for you, shauna, and I think you're perfectly placed to answer it, as part of some of the recovery or alcohol-free challenges I run, one of the exercises we do that's really impactful is rewriting your own alcohol narrative, and people do it by way of a breakup story with alcohol. You know that alcohol promised all these things, didn't deliver, or they do it from the perspective of you know this is what you did to my life, but this is how I'm reframing it going forward. How has this whole memoir writing experience, I guess, allowed you to reframe your narrative of your childhood and your story experience with alcohol?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it has allowed me, with the childhood stuff, to look at it and to see all the good parts, because emotionally we respond and we're traumatized by the bad parts, but the good parts have an impact to a positive impact, and what I've tried to do is write out the bad parts so I can take the good parts into my mature years and with my own story. It's part of the self-forgiveness. Yeah, I think it's also part of looking at it really bluntly and saying this is what happened. I wish this hadn't happened.

Speaker 2:

I was stupid here, and there's a lot in the book, as you know, of me berating myself. Yes, but I was always looking for freedom. So I think I understand myself and I'm so lucky that as my children got older, when I might have got into some really bad habits and maybe started hiding the booze, and when the twins were young teenagers, I stopped and stayed, stopped through the wonderful sober community and then wrote this story, which has helped me stay stopped as well, undoubtedly. But it's also helped me forgive myself and see that big picture and just think it's almost like I've written it down. That was then and this is me now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know yeah, what's in the pipeline for you now? So?

Speaker 2:

I have written the worst messy first draft. I'm sure it's the worst. I mean, everybody says their first drafts are terrible, but this one's really terrible. It's a novel and it's about swimming and older age. Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2:

Yes love it. My massive ambition is to write something set in Scotland that is about drinking, but I think I have to practice first and I'm really, really keen to work with people who want to write, because I think that it's I do it already and I um, and it's I'd love to do more of that because it's so rewarding. You know, as you will know, that from coaching, you know rewarding yeah so rewarding um and help people um. I think when you're writing as well, you need a lot of emotional support.

Speaker 1:

I think, with these big moments in your life that have really impacted your nervous system, the way your belief systems, you're untangling yourself a little. That support is needed Now. Dear listeners, this book is just a beautiful read. It's moving, inspiring, and there's a bit of laughter, a few tears, but it really is one of those life-changing books. It would just I'd put it up there on that quit lit list, but also as a gift, or for yourself if you wanted a summer read Shauna, where's the place that people can go to to listen on Audible, that's one spot or just to buy it.

Speaker 2:

Well, it should be anywhere. I mean, with a book that's not like a huge bestseller. It might not be in every bookshop. It should be in Big W, though, and I have to say it's better to buy it. It's cheaper in Big W or on Amazon, because Amazon seems to constantly have it at a cheaper rate. But of course, your local bookshop can. If they don't actually have copies in stock, they can order in. Bigger shops like Demyx will have it. Then it's available on audiobook. It's also at your library, so a lot of libraries have got it and library apps have got it. And then people are loving the audible. I think Australians just love a Scottish accent you know, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1:

I'm a Ferguson, there's some. There's a Scottish heritage. I love the. Your voice, yeah, and the stories, yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's how I listen in the car yeah, well, I love, I love Audible too, and I. It was a big deal reading it out, like it was quite emotional, oh yeah, and have a cry, but I felt very proud of it. So I know people have enjoyed that and I think it's also available to listen to on library apps as well Fantastic, so it should be available to everybody.

Speaker 1:

And you might give me some links as well, shauna, that I can honk in the show notes. Thank you, it was such a delight meeting you. It's lovely to meet you face-to-face as well.

Speaker 2:

I know Really cool, you're welcome.

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Isabella Ferguson

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Meg Webb

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