Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
Sherry Hoppen's Journey from Addiction to Redemption
Welcome back Sherry Hoppen, as she shares her ongoing journey in "Sober Cycle: Pedaling Through Recovery One Day at a Time." Sherry shares her story about her past experience with experiencing and eventually overcoming alcohol addiction. Her honest memoir helps everyone understand the challenges of dealing with addiction as an individual and as a family. Her redemptive story encourages her readers to persevere, trust, and to give themselves grace as they face their illness.
Her story is one of resilience and a stark reminder of how addiction can insidiously take over our lives, often normalized by society's acceptance of alcohol. Her redemptive story demonstrates God's faithfulness, and the power of love and support of family and friends.
Today, Sherry and her husband Craig are helping others by opening a specialized recovery facility for women. It is a testament of their renewed purpose and service, and the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. It's an exploration of the profound impact that grace, community, and faith can have on healing, not just for the individual, but for families and the wider community. Sherry's message is clear: recovery is a path best walked together.
Connect with Sherry, order her book and listen to her podcast for more insight and encouragement.
https://www.shesurrenders.com/
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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I'd like to welcome Sherry Hoppen to the Pivotal People podcast, and if you're saying well, that's a familiar name, it's because she was on the podcast two years ago, episode 14. I looked it up and she's now like episode 80 something, so she was brave enough to come back. I am so grateful because I so loved her episode. She wrote a book. We're going to talk about the second edition of that book today, but she wrote a book called Sober Cycle Pedaling Through Recovery One Day at a Time, and I read it when she first came on and it was such a beautifully honest, vulnerable, authentic, super helpful book for any of us, whether you're dealing with addiction or if you know someone who is. And then when she had a second edition come out, I guess technically I didn't have to read it because I probably got what up. No, I read the whole thing.
Speaker 1:This is such a beautiful book and such a beautiful story. But more importantly, Sherry is such an impressive and relatable person. So today we're going to talk about her book, but what I really want is for people to get to know Sherry. So let's start with that. Sherry, Welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, who you do life with what your daily life looks like right now.
Speaker 2:Hey there, stephanie, I'm so thrilled to be back. Wow, episode 14, and here you are on 80. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I love thinking about how we met back at the Oaks with Bob Goff. Seems like a lifetime ago, but yeah. So first edition, second edition and I know we'll get into that in a minute. But for me, I'm from West Michigan, near the Holland side, as we just talked about, and I've lived here my whole life and I am married to my high school sweetheart, meaning I was in high school, he was really not, but I was very young. We got married very young and I've been with him ever since. In fact, we're going to have 40 years early next year, I know right.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. I know we're so excited about that, so we're making plans to celebrate that. And we have three grown children, all married, love our in-law kids, and we have four grandchildren and another one on the way this fall. So our family's growing. It's just an exciting season of life and we're busy. We seem to get busier as we get older instead of slowing down. I never expected to be this busy this season of life, but it's all by choice and I like to say by assignment, because they're God's assignments, but I wouldn't want to do it any other way. So I keep busy with a lot of recovery stuff, book related and ministry and some other projects that we have in place that we're going to talk about here too, and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:Well, sherry has a website. She has a program that she's had for a number of years called she Surrenders, and Sherry's story is about her own journey with alcohol addiction, and what I appreciated about her book is that she really shared the details of it, and I found it highly relatable, because, even if alcohol isn't an issue for you, we all have some sort of addiction, and I kind of think of addiction as, whatever that idol is in our life, whatever it is, sherry, what's the first step of the 12-step program? Whatever it is that has mastered us, whatever it is that has become us, whatever it is that has become unmanageable, whether we admit it or not, whatever it is that has interfered with the rest of our life.
Speaker 2:You have to admit you're powerless.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to admit you're powerless over whatever this is. Yeah, alcohol addiction is so common and, more importantly, alcohol is such a regular part of our society and our daily life, whether you're an addict or not. I would love for you to share as much as you can here your story. This doesn't replace reading the book, by the way. Everyone's on an order sober cycle because it is so beautiful and helpful. But could you share a little bit of your story? As a woman of faith, I would like to say I related to your story like how difficult is it, for we all have something right, we all have an issue, we all have a struggle, whether it's addiction or not. But when you're a person of faith, sometimes you can get trapped in the lie that you can't let anyone know about this weakness, because wouldn't that mean you're not a real believer, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of things that feed into that. When you're all the way in the pit, I would say, when you're already so far gone, that you know this is an issue and you're hiding, but as you're, I guess the best way to say it would be easing into the addiction. I didn't have a problem with alcohol in my formative years, in high school or, you know, like when we were first married. I talk about in the book the tragic loss of my brother. That didn't you know. I didn't reach for the bottle after that. It was kind of a slow fade. I did love to have fun, I did love to. I would drink on the weekend, you know, at a party or something. But it never got out of hand.
Speaker 2:And I was in my thirties when I gradually found myself looking forward to drinking on the weekend and I remember saying to my husband do you ever think about drinking during the week? Like I just cannot wait to drink on the weekend? And he said no. And I said that was kind of my first little light bulb moment, like I guess not everybody thinks this way, but I wasn't smart enough, I guess I should say, to realize that that should be a huge red flag and there was a little voice saying you got to watch it. I knew my drinks were always stronger. I knew I always drank a little more. I knew I always wanted to stay out. The latest stay by the campfire, the longest start drinking, the earliest Thursday night, turned into a weekend night, started claiming that you know things like that. There was just so many little signs, as I look back, that I made okay and you bend the rules and you make them fit your life and you make them. You make them be okay and you're having this argument with yourself to justify every drink, every move, and you find yourself planning around your drinks, whether you're going to be the one to. You want to bring the kids to the event so you don't have to pick them up, because you want to pour a drink when you're at home and you don't want to be the one driving to pick them up. You want to agree, or you know?
Speaker 2:I remember Craig saying later that he never planned on me driving home, like when we went to like a wedding or something. He automatically knew that he was going to drive home and that went on for years and I didn't know it. He told me years later that he watered down the alcohol in the we call it the Dutch bar, above the refrigerator. That's where we keep alcohol, you know in when you don't have a formal bar. You know laying out or whatever. But all these things that he was aware of even, but he wasn't saying them out loud either. So it's kind of like, as long as you don't say it out loud, especially as a Christian, maybe it's not really happening and that also means you don't have to face it.
Speaker 2:But I used to sit in church and I would look around and I would think am I the only one that is struggling with something like this? And if I were to pass out a Sharpie and I wrote, I would write A on my head for alcohol. Would anybody else write anything on their head like a P for porn or G for gambling or D for drugs? And I was pretty sure no one else would write anything else. Because that's what we do as Christians we keep everything so close that we can put on such a persona of everything's fine that not only do we convince ourselves of that, we convince everybody else.
Speaker 2:So, along with the addiction, when you're a Jesus girl, you work even harder to hide it. So now you've got this extra shame and guilt of? Shouldn't I have known better? And if anybody finds out, what does that say about my faith? And it wasn't that. I believe that God loved me any less because I was an alcoholic. But I was angry with him for letting me get to that point Because in my mind I was doing everything right.
Speaker 2:I worked in a nonprofit ministry, I was active in our church, I was trying to do everything right for my kids. I was, you know, tried to go on all the field trips and you know, I was the football mom and the, you know, took the girls to dance. I mean, I did everything. My husband was an elder. To the outside world there was no way. We were, you know, had a successful business in our community and but inside, inside our house, everything was crumbling and my husband and I kept that very secret for a very long time. So the secrecy of it is just as damaging as the addiction itself, I think.
Speaker 1:In your story as you related it. What struck me was this is and I think we can all relate to this on some level every day you tried, it was never like, oh well, I'm an alcoholic who cares. Every day you struggled with it. You talked about getting up in the morning and doing your quiet time and writing in your journal and praying. You know, this is my first day of sobriety, and how talk about that kind of like. What would happen in your mind over the course of a day?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, when somebody would say to me, how many times did you relapse? I'm like, well, define relapse because more than one day, or you know there were so many days that you just described. I know that I wasn't completely giving it to God. I would make you know, I would try. You know I would feel very close to God in those moments in the morning. But I read something lately that really relates to that and it said you can highlight and underline all you want, but if you don't live it, it's not going to make any difference. So you know, when you have those moments when you're reading something or doing your devotions and you're like, oh yeah, that if I don't write it out on something and put it on my fridge or on my computer, I'm not going to remember it and I'm not going to live it. You know, and that's what, that's what I should have been doing, and I think sometimes actually I did.
Speaker 2:But the difference was is I would put my Bible in my journal you know, in my little bag that I kept all that in and terrified of anybody finding it too and opening it and I would bury it, and that's literally. I wasn't only physically putting it away, I was emotionally putting it away and then I had my list of how I was going to stay sober. But usually a lot of times it would go back to if I do this, I'll stay sober. It could be a diet, you know, like if, if I'm trying to lose weight or trying to achieve an exercise goal or something like that, then I won't drink, like drinking was going to come along with something else. But the priority was never first to please God and stay close to God with it. It was always going to be my terms, like even I would say things like you know God, if I could just make it to the weekend and just, you know, have a drink here and there, so nobody will be suspicious because if I just quit drinking altogether, everybody's going to know something's up. Or if I can just drink beer I didn't even like beer, but if I could just drink beer, then I promise I'll just be happy with that. So I was always going to God with it with conditions and I know that was a big downfall.
Speaker 2:I was never completely ready to say goodbye to it completely, or I would, you know, quit and I would, you know, be like I'm sure that 90 days is and I would do that. I would get three, 60, 90 days, six months, nine months, a couple of times that I would be like you know, I think I'm okay now, and there was times that I talked Craig into that I was okay. You know, like I think I'm okay, I think I'm okay to have a drink, and he'd be like okay, you know, if you really think so and I think of that now and the irony of it, like why would anybody work so hard to have a drink, to have something that's just destroying your life and destroying your family? Why is that such an idol? Why is that so important when it should be more important to just be able to be free of it? But when you're in it, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:I mean addict's brain, right, the rationalization. But you talked about and I think this is just so important how you didn't feel like things could be fun. I mean, come on, I mean we have weddings, you know, wait, I have to be able to drink at a wedding. I'm talking about all of us, not just you. Wait a minute. It's a birthday. Wait a minute. I don't want to be the only one. We're going out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I don't get to have one drink. I can have one drink, or this one really hit it. I have met Sherry. I've spent time with Sherry. I said to her before we started I wish she lived down the street. She's a few states away. She is funny, she's quick-witted, she is pretty, she is just nice to be around. I've only ever been around her since she's been sober. She's been sober for many, many years. But in your mind you thought you were funny and entertaining and people liked you because you were drinking.
Speaker 2:I thought that was the only way. It was the only way my personality would shine. And I think too, it's because I grew up thinking that I always had to be in performance mode. I think back now, you know I was just that kid that you know. I just I wanted a stage and I loved to talk and I love to. You know, I see that, and if you know me you'll know what grandson I'm talking about. But I see that in him and I see my daughter encourage him in that and I just love seeing that. But as I got older, you know that's not always appropriate, you're not, you're not a kid anymore. But I love to.
Speaker 2:I love to be funny, I love to be the life of the party, but the life of the party has to be in a positive light. You know, one drink is maybe funny, but I remember my friends telling me later, you know, when I was crying one time and said I just don't think I'll be any fun anymore. And they're like sure, you weren't fun when you were drinking. That was no fun anymore. Those last four or five years where I was the sloppy drunk or the drunk that got you in the corner and sobbed your story out. There was nothing fun about me in the end. I wasn't the fun party girl that I thought I was, and I don't know if I ever was fun when I was drinking. But what drinking did was give you the self-confidence that I needed to be at the party or to be at the wedding or, you know, to feel good about myself, because I think, especially with women, we've got a lot of self-esteem. That could be a lot higher and I would have a drink bowl. We were getting ready to go out, whether it be with another couple or to an event, and I would be getting ready and I would just dread it. I dread picking out something to wear, I would dread doing my hair, but two glasses of wine in it wasn't a major decision anymore. I looked just fine who knows what I looked like when I left. But it was much easier. You could blur all the lines with alcohol. You could blur what people thought about you, you could blur just about anything and everything hurt a lot less.
Speaker 2:Nothing got in quite as sharp when you were drinking, and that's the hard part about sobriety. That nobody realizes is that when you quit, especially those first few days, if you don't know what you're up against. That's why you start drinking right away again. It's because you're not ready for any of that. You know you're on a day one and your kid comes home and you're like I made lasagna for dinner. And they're like I hate lasagna. And you're like well, I'm pouring a drink. You know it's not your kid's fault by any means. You know, or your husband's had a bad day and or he's going to be late. And you know you're stuck doing homework with everybody all night. You know it's like well, I'm going to need a drink to get through that. Well, you don't. Not everybody needs a drink to do life with your kids alone at night. But you tell yourself you do. And again, it's nobody's fault but yours. But you have made that a decision in your head, you've made that a lifestyle and you don't know how to do without it.
Speaker 1:Well, and's talk about this. You talk about numbing emotions. We all have different ways of numbing and nobody likes the discomfort of negative emotions. None of us like that. So you can react with drinking. You can react with scrolling on your phone. You can respond with eating. You know, I find myself in my pantry eating wheat thins. I I'm like what am I doing in here? Like, pay attention to what are you upset about, Stephanie? Oh, okay, you're upset about this.
Speaker 1:All right, I would be happy if it was wheat thins I went for in the pantry. Come on, and not to make light of your addiction story, but to simply point out that we all have to figure out a way to catch the emotions. We have to look at it's an emotion and emotions aren't necessarily real. I mean they're real but they're not necessarily true. So we kind of have to catch ourselves. When you are first coming off substance abuse and I have seen this with people I love the hardest part in the first few days is how do I deal with those emotions? I'm feeling I'm not used to dealing with those emotions, I'm used to numbing them. So how do I deal with that? Can you do that on your own? Does it make sense to get support? You talked about going to AA. You are opening a recovery facility. People see so much shame in going to recovery but the reality is we wouldn't be ashamed of going to a doctor if we were sick when you need the support of that.
Speaker 2:Right. So what I've learned, and mostly through my own story, is kind of a what I wish I had. It wouldn't have been so hard and maybe it wouldn't have taken so long. I was alone in recovery. I did. I tried AA, you know. I went for a little while but I didn't feel at home there and I know AA is a wonderful program. I'm not saying, you know, don't try AA. I always encourage everyone to try whatever program they find works for them.
Speaker 2:But I wasn't finding it, at least the one that was local to me here that last day and I talk about it in the book, but I love being able to talk about it at least with my voice and talking to you, because it is so hard to get across what happened. But it was really a moment between God and me where he's like that's enough, that is enough. And when I surrendered and I was flat on my face on the floor, that is the first time I did not give him a condition of my surrender, and you know there's a lot more around it that was happening and that's in the book. But I said to him I'll do whatever you want, I'll do whatever you ask. And I didn't realize how loaded that statement was, which is why I do what I do now because he obviously was asking me to do something with it. But I just after that I knew I was never going to drink again. And it wasn't like I was just free and happy about it, I just was. I was sad, I was grieving the loss of a, of a friend. I felt like, yeah, I still wanted to, but it wasn't an option. So the number one thing I learned and what I tell other women is once you make that decision, close the door. That's the number one thing, because the decision is the first choice and the biggest choice. And that's half the battle right there. It's the drama that goes with the back and forth that will keep you stuck.
Speaker 2:But then I stayed home and quiet for quite a while. We didn't go anywhere, we didn't do anything. We kind of cut ourselves off from friends and groups. Just, my husband was a huge supporter, even though I didn't like him very much at the time. I don't think he liked me, even though I didn't like him very much at the time. I don't think he liked me either. I wasn't that much fun to be around. But we did it. But I know there were.
Speaker 2:I knew there was a better way and eventually I started looking for other women. You know not getting on the rooftops and shouting you know where are you, but it's kind of like poking around going. There's got to be other Christian women and I was specifically looking for Christian women because I wanted to talk about my faith in recovery, cause I knew that God was the only way that I got to where I was when I got to that one year point and nobody was talking about it. So eventually, that's when I started the community and it was online of she Surrenders, you know and started talking and, you know, wrote a little blog that I hope no one would ever read. And I started a little group called Joyful Surrender and there was one woman signed up and then another and for the longest time there was only two or three of us. But it was the best thing that ever happened because I felt like God was saying to me you're going to have to go get them, you're going to have to find them and as hard as what that was, it's been the best thing. And that community now has grown and it's joyful surrender. It's on my website, it's private, you have to apply and I say that in quotation marks to get in, but it's not one that you can just.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of recovery groups on Facebook and most of them are secular, but this one is we're using our faith, but the biggest part of it with your faith is community, and that's what's missing. You need community. Faith is community and that's what's missing. You need community and so that when you're going to fall, when you feel weak, you reach out, we have a forum.
Speaker 2:We meet once a week via Zoom and during the week we have a forum. It's not on Facebook, it's through my website, but it looks like kind of a Facebook thing and we talk. You know we talk all week long. Someone's struggling talk. You know we talk all week long. Someone's struggling. They reach out and they are surrounded immediately with encouragement and that's what I wished I had. And hey, there's days I'm struggling. It might not be that I want to drink, but I got a lot going on and I'm sorry. The devil likes to attack on a daily basis and these women support me like no one else and they know exactly where those targets are that he's after and when I can't be there for someone, which is a lot. Right now. They are in there and they're lifting each other up, whether it's a long-term sobriety or a day one, and it's the most wonderful thing and that's what we're basing our recovery house on community.
Speaker 1:And the interesting thing is, isn't the cornerstone of our faith grace, grace, and it's so easy. You're describing a community with no judgment, because everyone can relate to it, and wouldn't it be so beautiful if, as a greater community of believers, we could be that way, with each other recognizing we each have our different strongholds, but we each have one. Everyone has one, whether it's substance, addiction or gossip or envy. We all have something. And if we can't really see grace for what it is I just had a podcast guest who wrote a book on grace, and so I'm all about grace upon grace upon grace it's like how sad that and, by the way, it shouldn't be our Christian community. As Christians, we should have grace for everyone in the entire world, not just the holy huddle.
Speaker 1:But if we can start by understanding and the reason I love Sherry's book is because I truly believe that if we could each see the world through each other's lens, I always say everyone needs to write their book, their personal book, and we need to read each other's books, because we would understand each other so much better. People don't see the world as it is. They see the world as they are. So if I can see the world through Sherry's eyes as they are. So if I can see the world through Sherry's eyes, I'm going to have so much more compassion, understanding, grace and mercy for people who have experienced what Sherry's experienced, and vice versa.
Speaker 1:And how much more loving would we be? I mean, sherry and I met each other at a Bob Goff workshop. Bob personifies love and grace. That was almost three years ago and that was, I would say, that changed the trajectory of my life, and so, when you think about really understanding other people's situations, that's how we're going to become more loving, genuinely loving Christians.
Speaker 1:And that's what our purpose is. We had said earlier, before we started the call, the difficulty that you've gone through with this. You went through difficulty with your addiction. You went through difficulty with your brother's death. Generally, by the time you get to be our age, we've all gone through some sort of traumatic event that we wish hadn't happened some sort of loss or grief. But I think what Sherry and I talked about was the whole idea of being a new creation through that awful experience. Like you, wouldn't want that experience to happen, but you also wouldn't want to be the person you would have been had that experience never happened. Sherry, can you talk to us about that, because you said it so much more eloquently in your book?
Speaker 2:I say, well, I think back to what we talked about before that all through my life, up till November 6, 2013, I didn't really know where I was going.
Speaker 1:I, and that was the day you surrendered, so November, so 11 years ago, about 10 and a half.
Speaker 2:Yep, so I, I mean I, I was. You know, my eyes were always dotted, dotted, my T's were always crossed to the outside world. Things looked really good and that, to me, was purpose. And I mean I'm, I always worked. I mean I worked, you know, outside the home, mostly part-time, raised my kids, made sure my kids looked good school. You know, I did all the things, but it was also about things and it was about getting keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker 2:And anybody who's listening that knows me is probably nodding their head and I'm like, yeah, I know, I know, but if you want a true example of what God can do with somebody, it's me, and I can say it till I'm blue in the face, but you have to be able to show it and I'm 57. And I thought by now I'd probably be thinking about. You know, we're going to start going to Florida, for, you know, long stretches and, granted, we go south, but for very short stretches, probably not so much this coming year. But I'm busier than I've ever been in my life. I don't get a paycheck yeah, I've never gotten a paycheck for anything I do. And there's times where my husband comes home and I can't. He'll come upstairs and he'll say I'm in my office and he'll be like, are you going to come down? And I'll be like I have to finish this, someone's waiting and he'll make dinner and he'll bring it to me and he'll say it's okay, my turn to serve you and that's who we are, and that was not Craig and Sherry before.
Speaker 2:And that alone that we get the second chance at our marriage and our life. That's what God can do. But we were not headed down that road before Our marriage was about done and our marriage before that was. Don't get me wrong. We had a lot of great years with our great experiences, great memories with our kids and our family, but we had no idea how much more there could have been compared to what there is now. But where I was going probably would have been pretty shallow and I don't like to think about her and what she would have used the blessings that God's given us, both in our family and her business my time. They wouldn't be used for all these things now. They would probably be used just for things that absolutely nothing you can take with you.
Speaker 1:Put it that way so you're doing all these beautiful things now for other people because you have this compassion and you have this grace and you can completely understand. I would love for you to talk about your recovery facility. That's opening, and is it still opening? The fall, yes, lord willing.
Speaker 2:I say Okay, yeah, yeah. So over the past couple of years I'd say about three years ago a place came on our radar. We had never even talked about it, craig and I, about opening a place and someone said to us I remember it was a New Year's Eve day, so this was probably four years ago. I remember it was a New Year's Eve day, so this was probably four years ago I said you should go look at this place. And it was. Actually. It was an old camp, like a summer camp place, and we weren't doing anything that day. And I said someone's all set to go walk around this place. And I said I have no idea why, and just for the fun of it, we love to take drives and do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So we did, and we're there and in my heart and head I'm thinking I would so want to open a rehab place here. I could just. I could just see the beauty of it there. But it was a lot. It was a big place with a lot of work, and I didn't even dare say it out loud. I mean, craig's used to me coming up with big ideas and big plans, but I looked at him and he was just kind of looking out the window with his hands on the steering wheel and I said what do you think we're doing here? And he said I said what would you do? And he goes I think I would make it a rehab facility. Our hearts were right there together.
Speaker 2:That didn't end up being the place. Right there together. That didn't end up being the place and we didn't go searching. But we did say and pray together that, god, if you show us where or show us how, we're completely open to it. Well then he dropped this house in our lap, like two miles away and right in the little town I grew up in, and it sits on. It's a house that it looks like an old house, but it's only. It's less than 10 years old. But it was built on the property in a church that I grew up. I didn't grow up in this church, I grew up in the church next to it, but it had burned and sat. This piece of property sat empty for years until this person built this house and I believe it was going to be a bed and breakfast at some point, but it never became that. Instead, it became perfect for what we were going to use it for.
Speaker 1:So I've seen the picture. It is beautiful and the town, the part of Michigan you're in, is just absolutely picturesque. I've been there so beautiful.
Speaker 2:It couldn't serve better. It couldn't have been more perfect for what we wanted to serve. So, you know, still lots of remodeling and getting it up to code, but it's um when I talk about community. It's got some really unique aspects to our program and the number one thing that I think is really unique we haven't found another program like this is um and it's this is my baby. This is all based on what I think works and um.
Speaker 2:We're licensed to have 12 women and, lord willing, it's a cohort program. So 12 women come in together and 12 women leave together and 12 women will stay a community and they will have a leader that they can have meetings with for as long as they want after they leave. As long women will stay a community and they will have a leader that they can have meetings with for as long as they want after they leave, as long as they want a leader. So the hope and prayer is that they have a bond when they leave in a support system, because so often when you leave a recovery facility, you're kind of just on your own and the woman goes back to the home and the whole family just wants to know is mom fixed? Yeah, mom is fixed, but nobody else has done any of the work. So we anticipate having a family program, some family education, family aftercare and whole family's going to know what's going on so mom doesn't walk back into the same mess that she left.
Speaker 1:Wow and yeah so that is beautiful and so, yeah, god has a greater purpose, and we had talked before on the call. I mean, yeah, this, these are hard things, but you are impacting so many lives, and it's not just the lives of the women who are on your she surrenders community or just the lives of the people who will be in this rehab program, as the lives of all the people they love, all the people who love them, all the people who have, you know, had heartbreak for years watching this addiction that none of us can control someone else's addiction.
Speaker 2:We can't.
Speaker 1:In fact, you had some. Do you have any advice for someone who's listening to this saying well, you know, this isn't me. I don't have an issue with alcohol, but this loved one I have does. What can they do? Can they do anything?
Speaker 2:Yes, they can, and this has come up a lot lately. The first thing that I tell anybody to do and I've done this for probably two years is to stop helping them, to stop taking it down themselves, and I will. The first thing they need to do, I say I'll talk to you. Call me back after you read Melanie Beattie's book codependent no more. Then we'll talk, because as long as you keep helping them and helping them to, I mean pretty much, aid them through their addiction it's not going to get any better.
Speaker 2:Especially, you know, Craig and I talk often about he was loving me through it. He was doing the best he could. He was protecting the kids from knowing the truth, protecting my parents, our friends. It didn't get me sober any quicker, though, friends. It didn't get me sober any quicker, though, and it kept him in the same web of deceit that I was in. And years later, when I read this book, I was just like oh my goodness, it is. I mean it was written in like 1986 and it's been one of the number one bestsellers in addiction since, and it tells you it's. It's the codependent thing, it's still. I mean it's hard to relate to that title, but it's the number one thing you need to do for yourself, and I think you're going to know what to do from there and thank you, thank you, that is, um, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Well, amazon will be selling a few of those books today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I have kept you longer than I told you, but I have treasured every word and so no way was I going to cut this short as long as you were so willing to share with us. But I want to let people know how they can find you, how they can find your book, how they can learn more if they'd like to, because, by the way, sherry also has a podcast that is really good. I've listened to it and she is a speaker. So she's an author, she's a speaker, she has a podcast, she has a website, she'll have a recovery center Lots of and I understand she is going to have another book coming out, which means she'll be on the podcast again. So tell us how people can find you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, stephanie. She surrenderscom is my website and there's a contact button there. That's the easiest way to find me, and all my social media links are on there as well. Sober cycle peddling through recovery.
Speaker 2:The new edition is on Amazon, and one of the things about the new book that I'm excited about is this time they had me record the audible version and I got to do that myself and Stephanie's grinning because she knows me. It's like I love. I was not intimidated by that at all. I had a riot. It was the most exciting thing I've done in the whole world of starting and finishing a book and publishing, because I just it was so fun. It was so fun and I get emotional.
Speaker 2:There were times where the producer, when I was doing it, was like I can't believe you did that and I'm like I know right, like this is. I can't believe I'm talking about me, but I love the audible version. I've not listened to its entirety by myself yet because I don't want to, but if you the audible version, I've not listened to its entirety by myself yet because I don't want to, but if you're a listener, I would highly encourage you to get that version. But yeah, so it's available Kindle, hardcover and audible now. But lots of ways to find me. Salehouse recoveryorg is where you can find information about the recovery house and the number one thing I like to say about that is all proceeds, not even proceeds all sales of the book in any of its forms, go to the ministry of sale house recovery now.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of special.
Speaker 1:That is great. We'll put that at the top. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time, not just for your time. I want to thank you for your commitment to helping people and really making a difference in so many people's lives, when you actually could be in Florida all the time if you felt like it. So you could probably do this from Florida too, by the way, but anyway, I'll get there.
Speaker 2:I'll get there. Thank you, Stephanie.
Speaker 1:Good to see you're welcome. Thanks for coming on.
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