E13 - Uncovering Hope: How Dr. Dawn Nickel Got Out of Addiction and Founded SHE RECOVERS

Good morning everyone. If you're listening on a Sunday morning at 8am when the episode drops, which hopefully you are because that means you're subscribed and yay, you're listening to Visible Panty Lines, AKA vpl, the pod. And these are transparent and intimate conversations of inspiration, encouragement and overcoming adversity. And if you've been following along the past seven or eight episodes, I don't even know where we're at now. More than that, possibly all of our guests really exemplify those things and everybody really has a story that has an inspirational element and has overcome some type of adversity and in turn can inspire others with that story. And I would say that my guest today, really, that really applies to her. I am talking to Dr. Dawn Nicol. She is the co founder and chair of the she Recovers foundation. And we're going to hear all about that. But essentially it's a not for profit grassroots organization that inspires hope, reduces stigma and empowers women who are seeking recovery for substance abuse and or mental health challenges. That has been definitely a theme in all of our episodes thus far. Really kind of a nod to the mental health crisis that's currently going on in this country. And that's, I feel like, evident in everything that's happening in current events and pretty much everything that's going on right now. So this is a very timely issue and excited to welcome Dr. Dawn to to. Did I just give you a new name?

I get that one. I get Mama Don a lot. For some reason I'm not sure why.

But I like that too.

Okay.

So mama. Dr. Dawn.

Welcome and thank you for joining us. So give us a little bit of background for listeners who may not be familiar with you. You have a book coming out, you do a lot of work, you're pretty much out there, but if someone might not have seen you before, just give us a brief background if you don't mind.

Sure. And I wouldn't expect that a lot of people have do know us outside of the women's recovery movement. I think within the women's recovery movement, she Recovers is pretty well known, but we're just starting to expand. We've been a nonprofit now for a couple of years, so our kind of mission is getting out there. But I describe myself as a lot of things, but I am a woman in long term recovery from substance use disorder as well as from mental health issues including depression and anxiety. And also a survivor of intimate partner violence. Some people call that domestic violence.

Wow.

And yeah. So in 1987. I kind of hit the wall with those three things. And I was in a very unhealthy marriage with an abuser. I had two little girls and I had at that time, my girls were 2 and 6 and I had been trying already for years to stop using substances. My substances of choice were cocaine and alcohol, benzos, so Ativan and Valium and Mandrix as well. I was smoking a lot of pot and since I had gotten pregnant with my first daughter, I'd really been on this journey to try and stop using and overusing. Misusing substances didn't really work. So I'd kind of gone from a single person daily user to a mom and a binge user. So even though the periods between when I used were.

Varying lengths, I still almost every time I used and drank ended up in some sort of trouble or got really sick. Wow. So I was 27 years old and I was just done. I was done. My kids were done. My 6 year old daughter was, was done more than anything. She, one morning she said something to me. I was asking her to take care of her sister and get her little sister something to drink out of the fridge and was telling her she needed to do that because mommy was sick. And she came up and just got right in my face. I was lying on the couch and they were watching the Care Bears and she got up right in my face and just said, you know what, mommy, you make me sick.

I was like, whoa.

Okay, let's see, let's go back to that doctor and talk about going to treatment. And so I went to treatment in July 1987, have not drank alcohol, done cocaine since I got out of treatment. And for a couple of years I did smoke a lot of pot. I call that my harm reduction period. I wasn't quite ready to deal with life on life's terms. I needed a little bit of a buffer. And then. So, yeah, so for the last 35 and some years I haven't used those drugs. I did in 2020. My mom passed away and I did. I don't say that I really abused or, you know, I wasn't trying to get high, but I did take drugs that were prescribed to my then dead mother in order to change the way I feel. So I do look at that, you know, 20 some years ago as the last time that I purposefully used a substance to try and change my feelings and kind of just got into life, left the abuser when I went into treatment, took my girls, moved away, went back to school, ended up in School for 13 years.

Wow.

Met a wonderful partner who was, you know, who is not the least bit abusive. I had a list of what I would accept going into my next relationship. And.

And he met that criteria. Right. The list is important. The list is important.

The list is important. For sure.

We celebrated 30 years last year, will be 31 years in a couple, about a month from now, I guess. Married. Yeah. I just kind of, you know, went along, went back to school, did work in healthcare policy. Was in a Recovery program, a 12 step recovery program for over a decade. I still consider myself a member of that program, although I don't. Not an active, engaged member.

I think you're always a member, right? Pretty much that's their thing.

The only requirement for membership in 12 Step Recovery is the desire to stop whatever it was that was killing you.

All right. Lifelong membership. How do you manage your anxiety and depression if you don't utilize any kind of prescription drugs? Because I know a lot of people can relate to that.

So I would say a lot of people do and should use prescription drugs.

Right, But I mean.

You personally are also recovering addict, so how do you, you know, manage that part of your.

Yeah, and again, I would say. So if somebody. If somebody is in recovery from substance use disorder and they have anxiety and depression, they should still utilize. They should. Absolutely. If it's clinically indicated, they should absolutely use whatever is prescribed for them.

Okay.

And I did. I have it in different periods of my life. I have used antidepressants.

Gotcha.

I don't think I.

So there's no fear of overusing that necessarily. Okay.

I guess it depends on the individual. But that shouldn't. It often actually does the opposite. It stabilizes you, so you're less likely to kind of go on binges on other things if you're interesting. Okay. I will say that I use CBD for anxiety.

I love cbd.

Yeah. Only when indicated, so I don't use it regularly. But if I, you know, I always say, like, if I look at my daytimer on any given day and there's like way too much going on, I automatically get anxious. And. And so I'll just take a little bit of a. Of a CBD tincture and that'll kind of level me out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, I just kind of went back to school, did all that stuff, and then was moving along. And then in 2011, I hit the ball with workaholism. So one of the things that happened for me after I got recovery was I went to school for 13 years, which is it's kind of a feeding ground for workaholism when you're a student. Especially when you're a student, there's no start and stop time. So you're just always go, go, go. So you get in that kind of rhythm. And then when I finished university, I had. My mom had passed away a few years previously, and I'd taken 16 months off of school to take care of her. Then I got cancer, and I had a year of chemotherapy. So here I was, 45 years old with a PhD and feeling like I'm so behind in my life. So I just started to go really, really fast at that time. Got a big job, then got another big job, then got another big job, had three careers going, and ran myself rugged right into the ground with workaholism. So in 2011, I hit the wall, and it was time for a new version of. And a new layer of recovery. And so I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and realized that what I was really passionate about was supporting women in recovery from the things that I had been in recovery from and other things as well. It would have been drugs and grief and all the things.

Yeah. I think often people who are addicted oftentimes trade one addiction for another. So I don't think it's at all surprising that you were addicted to substances and then, you know, addicted to school, basically. You know, kind of like pick your poison. I think that's really common. And also something that's really relatable for people, like, who have an addictive personality, so to speak. Like, you tend to just be addicted to a lot of different things. So how did you go about. From this and from getting these advanced degrees and working, how did you go about starting. Starting this foundation or Nonprofit?

Well, in 2011, I hit the wall, and I ended up going on a stress leave. So at the time, I was teaching at the university, doing consulting, and also working in government as the director of a large research unit. And I went off. I put all three careers to the side for four months and just went back to basics. You know, started doing yoga, started meditating, went back to therapy, started writing, started blogging. I started a blog called Recovering dawn and was just really trying to work out for myself, like, what's going on here. And that's when I thought, you know, like, I just want to do something that feels more meaningful for me. And the blog was called Recovering dawn, and I started having a conversation about how we're all in recovery from something. It doesn't matter what it is, everybody's got something and we deserve to heal and recover and we deserve to do that in the way that works best for us in an individualized way. So after four months, I did go back to work to my. I didn't go back to teaching and I put my consulting aside, but I did go back to my government job and I realized I couldn't work all day and then blog in the evening. For those of you who write, you know that a blog can take hours to develop. Right. So my daughter Taryn, also a woman in recovery, young woman in recovery, said, why don't you start a Facebook page? And this is 2011. Like I had a Facebook account. I didn't even use it back in 2011. I didn't know what at the time they were called. Fan pages.

Yes. Now, is this the same daughter that was your wake up call as a child?

No, this. No. Her older sister was a wake up call.

Okay.

Ashley. Ashley remains a normie in our family. She didn't ever become addicted. I mean, she's got some quirks. Aaron, my youngest daughter and. Right. My youngest daughter Taryn is also the co founder if she Recovers. And it was her idea to start the Facebook page. So instead of calling it Recovering dawn, we called it she Recovers and just continued the conversation. And it just really started to attract a lot of people who were looking for this new kind of modernized, individualized approach to women's healing and recovery.

Wow, interesting. So what is it? What can one find if they log on to the site and need help? Basically.

So if people go to ww.she recovers.org we were just at kind of a passion project and then a business for a few years. And then when the pandemic hit and all of our in person activities got put on hold, we switched over into the nonprofit model. So that was in 2020. Right now we offer online meetings twice a day. So that's like noon and 8pm Eastern.

And these are group meetings.

They're just online? Yeah, they're just like, go on meeting. There's like 60 to 80 to 100 people on each meeting. And everybody. People want to share, they can share for three minutes. They're facilitated by she recovers coaches. So in 2017, we started a coach designation program where we designate people who are already coaches. We certify them in our philosophy and our intentions and guiding principles. And then they become she Recovers coach designates. And they, they actually, they are our volunteer kind of workforce. They, they host meetings online. We're Just starting now, kind of coming out of COVID we're starting to host in person gatherings. So we have sharing circles hosted by coaches or another program that we started. She Recovers trauma informed yoga teachers. So if you're a yoga teacher or a coach and you're certified with us, you can host gatherings online or in person. Wow. We have specialty groups, so identity based groups. So we have a group for LGBTQ individuals, for black, indigenous, women of color, healthcare and allied professionals, legal professionals, mothers of high needs children, Spanish speaking women and veterans and first responders. So they all have their own online private groups as well. And some of them have weekly meetings or monthly meetings. You can actually find out how to become a coach on our website or you can find a coach. So we have a directory of all of our coaches. We have about 250 she recovers coaches right now serving.

That's great.

I know. And then we are, as I said, starting to get back to in person. So we've started chapters. Our first two chapters actually were just launched last month in person chapters, which are going to be kind of the hub of the organization going forward. And the first ones, the first two are ones in New England, so it covers all six states. And the other one is on Long Island. I expect probably to have 20 by the end of 2023. We also do in person conferences. So we've. Our first conference was she Recovers in New York City in 2017. And Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Vargas from 2020, Gabby Bernstein and Marianne Williamson were our keynote speakers, which was amazing, ludicrous. And then we went to she recovers in La Beverly Hilton in 2018. And Mackenzie Phillips and Cheryl Strayed and Janet Mock and some other amazing speakers. We were just in Miami in April and Ashley Judd was one of our keynote speakers. It was one week to the day before her mom died. It was. And it was really touching in retrospect. She spoke, she spoke about being in recovery and having developed such a close relationship with her mom. So it was just heartbreaking a week later. And we also had Nadia Holzweber. So next year we're going to Chicago. I was in Chicago at the end of September 2023, and Elizabeth Gilbert is one of our keynotes. And Valerie Corr, who's an anti racist speaker, very, very inspirational speaker and writer is.

Yeah. That's amazing. So you've been growing this essentially for how many years?

20 years? 11 years.

Wow, that's amazing. That's really amazing. And specifically, if someone were. I'm getting at like, can a man Essentially couldn't get help from. This is specifically for women, correct?

For women and non binary individuals who identify with women's communities. Okay.

Right. So, yeah, it's interesting, like all of our, all the guests that I've had so far, a lot of them have some kind of commonality or common theme. And I had. My second guest was Jiminika, the trauma queen. And I feel like you and her would really hit it off. And then another guest, which I believe her episode is airing this week, but Lisa McKenzie and she started a foundation for women who are suffering from cancer. But it's like basically they like put on a Broadway show and they do, they do like get their hair and makeup done. I mean, it's like a feel. Good.

Amazing.

Yeah. So it's really neat to talk to people like you who, you know, kind of have this niche carved out where as a woman might not necessarily feel comfortable going to an AA meeting or something, you know, with a bunch of men there or that sort of thing. So I think it's really important for women or those that identify as women to have an encouraging community kind of of their own. Because I do believe, you know, there are some different stressors on us and we have a different emotional makeup than a man. I mean, whether you like, say it or not, it's. It's true.

It is true.

I think it's important to have this sort of comfortable space, I guess, you know, this comforting, welcoming mom, like, and.

We are, we are trauma informed. So all of our volunteers who hold space, whether it's online or in person, are trained in holding trauma informed space. And trauma can be. Neglect in childhood is still.

I think everybody. Yes, I think you can probably trace addiction, for example, all addiction back to a trauma. But I think you can identify with a trauma in every single human being's life. Correct. Like, I really strongly believe there isn't a human being out there who doesn't. Isn't carrying unresolved trauma, hasn't had some sort of trauma. I mean, I'm definitely more in touch with what mine was and I've talked about it a little bit on previous podcasts with, you know, a lot of childhood stuff and then carrying over into adulthood stuff and that being triggering like divorce and that sort of thing and being abandoned, feeling abandoned as a child. And it's like, I could definitely see how it would be easy to get into the slippery slope of like, I mean, I joke, I'm a mom, we like our wine and I definitely drink wine every night. But you know, I wouldn't call myself an addict, but I definitely can see how you would turn to something like that and just have that be, you know, your crutch and your comfort. So it's really nice that you're offering people, I guess, at all stages of recovery.

Really. Yeah. We have a lot of women who come into our community who are questioning. Right. So there's this term called sober curious.

Not identifying as an addict who's just like, hey, maybe I need help before it gets to that level.

Yeah. So two things about that. First, I would say that in 12 step recovery and if I'm in a 12 step meeting, I would identify as an addict or an alcoholic in that setting. I don't use that terminology to refer to myself outside of those settings. I do it in those settings to respect the, in those rooms. We actually try. We don't, we don't ever call anybody else an addict or an alcoholic in the modern recovery movement because we think that that's a label that can be stigmatizing. And on the other hand, it can be empowering for people in a program who use that as their identity.

Right. For example, I have a friend who's a recovering addict. She started a business with that name, like as a pun, basically. So I think people do use it as a term of empowerment too, like recovering addiction. And that's okay. You know, it's both. Yeah.

But I would say that so that. So it used to. And it used to be in recovery and recovery used to. We're trying to rewrite and kind of redesign what recovery means to people. It used to be that recovery meant in substance use recovery.

Yeah.

And it doesn't mean that anymore. Now it's in recovery from trauma, in recovery from love addiction, from eating disorders, from all of the things interesting. We also are redefining it in that it doesn't mean. And again, because of a lot of the 12 step understanding of recovery was abstinence. So in our community we have people who as I say, are questioning or sober curious or marijuana sobriety curious or whatever. Or they're just really, they've just made a choice to become healthier and they're questioning. Right. I mean, we provide a lot of education, so we do provide a lot of education about the harms of alcohol and the research that's coming out saying how much it increases our, the odds that we could get cancer if we drink X amount of drinks per day, per week, whatever. So we do do a lot of that. And again, we're a non judgmental space. So we judge People come in and they'll say, hey, listen, I'm sober here tonight on this meeting, but I'm going to hang up here and I'm probably going to drink. You do you. Please don't drink when you're on our meetings. We appreciate that respect. But just keep coming back and listening, and you might hear something that changes your mind about what your relationship is to alcohol. And. And they do. And so we have people who, you know, I was thinking particular about a woman who was on a meeting yesterday morning. I was on a meeting. I don't go to a lot of our meetings because I'm so busy with other things. But, yeah, woman who's celebrating this week, one year of sobriety. And I. We've been around for three years in March, online, and literally the first year and a half, two years, this woman struggled, struggled, struggled, struggled. And she just kept coming back, and we just kept loving her and supporting her and saying, like, don't beat yourself up. Just do something different or not. You know, do something that's just keep coming back, keep questioning, keep working on this. And she did, and here she is. She's achieved what she has been seeking for so many years.

I think that's so nice, like, having that flexibility and it not being, like, a rigid thing, because I just. I have so many friends who are in recovery from substance abuse. And the thing that I think has really held them back is that I. For example, one of. He's a good friend of mine, a childhood friend, and he went into recovery in high school. So now imagine your rest of your life. You have a wife who drinks wine. You have, you know, a partner. Like, they do it in front of you. It's really hard for you. Like, it's this all or nothing. And he has really struggled, I. I feel. Because that just isn't a logical thing for someone's life. Like, I mean, his. His wife didn't not drink in front of him. You know what I mean? She would have a glass of wine, he would say, I'm fine with it. And I think that that really made it hard for him. And so, like, I been friends with him really for a long time, and I have seen him relapse and also then go into recovery again many times. And, you know, always talk to him about it. And it's like, I would say to him, like, there has to be a better way that, like, you can recover without it being all or nothing, you know, And I do understand, probably for a lot of people, if they do take that sip, then Forget it. It's a big slope and that's it. But maybe for other people, like you said, a little bit of pot or something, you know, to take the edge off, just something to get them through so they're not doing the thing that is really causing them to not be able to function in life.

It's always going to depend on the person's relationship to the substance, right? So substance use disorder is along a spectrum. There's kind of like, I use substances, I celebrate people at weddings. There's no harm whatsoever. You know, I use substances a little more than I should. Sometimes I feel sick in the morning. Then I use substances in a way that is beginning to be problematic. I'm missing work. And then it's, you know, now, you.

Know, then again, it's like essentially, yeah.

There'S so there's a spectrum and at the end of it, it's like, I'm dependent on this. So people who are dependent on a substance, the research shows, I mean, this isn't an opinion, this is research based. Shows that if you have a. If you do have. Your brain is wired so that you are dependent on a particular substance, the likelihood that you can just go back and manage or moderate that substance is very low. You know, you probably can't. If somebody is, you know, I look. So I use my daughter as an example. My daughter, my oldest daughter, who's not addictive. She had some crazy years of substance misuse in her young adult years. She was just out there binging with the rest of them, right? And I was concerned myself because of her father, my ex, and because of her sister, my youngest daughter. But honestly, she got married and she got pregnant and now, like, she just. She has no use for alcohol. She joked one day she had a bottle of cider that I got her last summer or something, and she said, oh, my God, it's like three quarters of the full. She might have a Bailey's in her coffee at Christmas and she might have. And then once a year she might go out with the girls and drink just a little bit too much and have a headache. She was never dependent on alcohol, right? She misused it. We tried another. Just another terminology, and the terminology is changing all the time. But we actually try not to say abused substances anymore because it's. There's a stigma attached to that. But. So she's more. She's a normie. And, you know, even, even a normie will, you know, drink too much on a given period, but they're not dependent and it's not an ongoing thing.

Well, I think also too, there are the people that have witnessed alcoholic, or what you call. I don't know what the terminology really is now, but an alcohol misusing parent, and it makes them use that substance. And then there are the people that witness that, and they never do. Yeah, right. And I have someone like that personally in my life, and so it's like, I would never know. We don't worry about him necessarily, because he's like, I'll never be like my father, you know, type of thing. So it doesn't surprise me that you have one daughter who sort of went down that path and one daughter who didn't because maybe that kind of, I guess inspired her, for lack of a better term. Like, listen, I don't want to end up like that. I'm sure she's really proud of you now, but I'm sure it definitely impacted her as a kid, which is challenging. But again, like, hey, as parents, none of us are perfect. We're just fighting through every day.

How old are your kids?

Well, we're a blended family with four children, so we have 13, 12, 10, and 6.

Wow. Kudos to you. I know blended family is a term that sounds a lot more smoother than it usually is. I had one myself. Yeah.

Yes, it is. Definitely. Comes with its unique set of challenges. And then just having like all of those kids with all those personalities. I mean, like, literally people will make jokes with me regarding, like, I can't believe you don't get up in the morning and start drinking. You know, it's like sometimes I feel like I might want to do that. You know, life is definitely hard right now, but I know that the point in time is going to come where I'm going to miss this crazy chaos.

Yeah. What do they say? The days are long, but the years are short.

Right, Exactly. Right. Right. And I. I'm a workaholic also, so I relate to that. I take a lot of flack from my family and my husband for that. So I would say if anything, that's my drug of choice.

That's currently mine as well. And it's, you know, I speak at conferences all over the place, mostly now about workaholism. I. I tie it back to the fact that it's a behavioral health disorder, like substance use disorder. Interesting.

We should do a whole episode on that.

It's my favorite. It's my favorite topic to talk about.

Because it just, interestingly enough that you brought that up and that's a big thing for you. And I had no Idea like this conversation, I thought was going to be about substances and something else. And that has definitely been a prevalent theme in my life lately of my husband saying, put down the phone and, you know, set some boundaries for yourself. Because it's not the other people that necessarily aren't respecting them. It's really. It's me.

Janae, that is brilliant for you to have that observation, and I'll tell you why. And we must have this conversation at some point. The difference between workaholism, like somebody who practiced this is a workaholic. And I don't. I use that term. I mean, I do describe myself as that and, and somebody who just works too much. Is that a workaholic? The drive is internal.

Yes.

It's an internal push to do and to overproduce and to be hyper productive and hyper competent and all that. It's not that the world around you, but you think you, you probably think that, oh, you know, I have to do this because nobody else can do it.

I'm missing out all that other stuff to somebody else.

But that's the key piece that distinguishes whether or not a person should be. Cons should be thinking about whether or not they overwork, if they want to use that terminology or be or they're a workaholic is it's internal pressure to produce. And why is that and getting it. Why. Why do I think I have to work 10 times as hard as anybody else in order to just be seen as good or okay or functioning?

Yeah. Bingo. I, I can tell you right now, I feel like I, I wasn't accepted as a child, really, in many circumstances. I always felt out of place. Yeah. So this is definitely. And, and trying to explain that to my husband, who was, like, very confident as a child, didn't have the circumstances that I had. And, yeah, you know, it's like, yes. Like, it's a gratification thing, but it's. It used to be the accolades of other people. Now, at 45 years old, I feel like I, you know, matured a little bit from that, and I don't need that as much anymore, but I still drive myself crazy, like, oh, I need to, you know, achieve this or do this, or like, now it's really me has nothing to do with anybody else. It's a great awareness.

You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. You have really great insights, and I think the next piece of work for you is just getting to that, you know, whatever it is, so that you are okay regardless of what you're producing and what you're accomplishing. And I mean, I'm 60 years old now, and I've literally been on this workaholism recovery path for 11 years. The exact same amount of time that she recovers is around, you know, I still. So now I struggle just a little bit with it, but it's. I'm so much better. I'm so much healthier. I really do recognize when it's happening. I have a felt sense that I'm in it. And it's like, there's this kind of like, you know, I gotta get out. I gotta get God, you know, And I just. My mind starts racing and I get this anxiety thing. And then I go, what's going on here? And I'm going, oh, yeah, you are really doing more than you really need to do. You need to write. Sit down and write a list. What can I stop doing right now, this week, today, this month, and take things off? I always have a not to do list. Things to take off of it. But I will tell you that what drove me into recovery was exactly what you're talking about. My husband basically stopped talking to me, like, and he wasn't like, I'm not talking to him anymore. It was just like, I realized when I hit the wall, I was like, I don't think we've really had a conversation for months. And he was like, I talk to you all the time. And, like, you just stare off into space or you're looking at your computer or your phone. So I stopped.

Yes, that's. I feel like that's kind of where we're at. And it's like, I am aware of the problem. Like you said. I love that idea of a not to do list. I'm definitely going to start doing that because maybe, like, same like you. I get overwhelmed, too, when I look at everything. And then I'm like, okay, I can do this. You know, roll up the sleeves. Rosie the Riveter. Like, it's like a challenge to us.

Right?

Right. And you feed off of that almost too. Like, I accomplished so much today. Meanwhile, like, you know, you're like, beat up on the inside. You didn't take care of yourself. That's another struggle, too. So I love this not to do list. I'm definitely going to start doing that. And I feel like we should revisit and do another whole episode just on people that are like us, basically, who are identifying with that, like, you know, workaholic tendency and getting to the root, I guess, basically of the problem of Why? I had a lot of therapy as a kid, not so much as an adult, but, like, I think pretty psychologically sensed in that way. So I'm, like, aware of why I'm doing it. A lot of the time. It's just. You don't know how to stop. Right. You don't have, like.

It's a practice.

Yeah.

Recovery is a practice regardless of what we're recovering from. And we are all recovering from something.

I love that so much. And I love that your organization helps people that are not just substance, because that's a big deal, too, but it goes really beyond that. So I really love that it's very unique and what you're doing. So you have a book that's coming out next year.

It's coming out February 21st. It's called she Recovers Every Day Meditations for Women. It's published by Hazelden Publishing. So Hazelden is, like, the largest recovery publishing organization in North America, maybe the world. And I have a couple of other books that I'm working on as well, but this one was the first one, because when I spoke with my editor and publisher, they talked about, like, you just have so many ideas about recovery. And I was like, yeah. And they said, like, can you narrow 66 of them down?

Right.

And I did. So I call this book my love letter to recovery. And it really is just all sorts of different ideas about how important it is that we get to identify for ourself what we're in recovery from. You know, whether we're overworking or over drinking or overspending or over, you know, over shopping or over caring for people. Those aren't really the. This is what I've Learned in my 35 years of recovery and 62 years on this planet is that those. It sounds like you have this awareness as well. Those aren't really our issues. Those are our strategies and our coping mechanisms to numb and not deal with or look at the underlying issues, which are almost always found in some sort of childhood neglect, totally emotional neglect. So. So we're all so much more like, it doesn't matter what we're in recovery from, because that's not really what the problem is. That's not really what the challenge is.

Such a good point. That is such a good point. And then having practices, maybe like mindfulness practices, like meditation or that sort of thing that you can implement into your daily life is super important, too. So I'm really excited for your book and for it to come out and everybody can follow you on Instagram at Recovering dawn on Facebook. Book at Dawn. Nickel. Nickel, like the coin, right? PhD. And then they can look for your book, which is called she recovers every day February 21, 2023. I'm sure there's probably a pre order.

Yeah, there is, and we love pre orders. Authors need pre orders.

You need pre orders to make that bestseller list or, trust me, very well versed. My first book came out in 2009, and I've learned a lot about the publishing industry.

I look forward to sharing your books and to sharing about this podcast. Well, because I hadn't. I hadn't really. I wasn't familiar with you until Kaylee kind of introduced us, and I'm thrilled to be connected. I love the work that you're doing, and I can. I can see by all the. All the various projects that you're involved in that you must be extremely. You know, there's a reason why you overwork, and that is, you know, it's the internal drive, but also, you have a lot going on.

A lot of, like you. A lot of what I do is to reach other people, reach other women, empower other women. That's always kind of been a mission for me, just to make a positive impact. Because I think, like, even if you reach one person, and I say this pretty much in every podcast so far, but even if you reach one person through your podcast, like, you've changed that one person's life, then you. It was worth your 45 minutes or whatever that you, you know, spend. Because I think it's really important that, especially in the day, this crazy day and age that we're in right now, that we really help each other and try to be positive influences for each other and, you know, not be divided, not hate each other, not judge each other. I feel like maybe that's a pipe dream. But, hey, we're two people that are out there that are doing that, so if there's just a few more people like us.

Yeah. And there's so many good people out there that are willing to help or be a listening, you know, ear. So thank you so much, Dawn. This has been awesome, Dr. Dawn. And I really. I love that. I love alliteration. So I really want to, in the new year, have you on again, revisit this whole workaholic thing and maybe dissect it a little bit more, too, because we really just mean.

I've got. Scratch the surface when I talk about it. I mean, I've got a whole slew of research that I draw on. I, you know, I'm Sure. Talk about my experience, but I try and kind of presented in a way that people can examine their own relationship to overworking. And it's not it isn't even just overworking. It's overdoing. Right. And it can be over caregiving. It can be over volunteering.

Yes. I think that's a good point, too. It's not just about your paying job. Sometimes you're like, you can I believe you can get addicted to people and to like, you know, it's about over scheduling. Yeah. Enabling or caring for another person, you take that on as your addiction, so to speak. So I definitely feel like a lot of women could relate to this. Well, thank you so much and enjoy the pleasure. Yes. We'll talk to you soon.

Thank you. Happy holiday.

You, too. Take care.