I dreamt that you were twisting through seven sons of gold and the gypsy was insisting

that story must be told I came two in the morning but I took it as a warning that you might be a treasure I could touch but never hold.

Hi, everyone. This is Veronica Valley. Hi, this is Chip Summers. Welcome to the Soberful podcast. We are both in long-term recovery and have worked with thousands of people as therapists and coaches.

On this podcast, we discuss what it's like having an alcohol-free life and any issues to do

with recovery.

You can find us in the Soberful Facebook group.

It's a closed Facebook group where we offer some free support and advice for people.

And we also both teach in the Soberful program, which you can find details about on the Facebook group as well or through our website

soberful.com. So we've done a few episodes and all the stuff we've talked about, we've talked about

bits of our story. And I know I must have heard your story at some point, Chip. I know I know it. I would be amazed if you haven't, yeah. I mean, I know I know it generally, but it's been a long time. And we were talking about kind of different things. And I thought, you know, it might be good for people listening just to kind of hear your story because it's pretty flipping hardcore.

So I was just thinking one bit that really struck me is I wanted to kind of start in your childhood.

There was something you said on our last recording about loneliness, which was about your mother didn't want to touch her children.

And I just thought, wow, what was that like?

Okay. Well, yeah, that was very difficult. And I just thought, wow, what was that like? Okay, well, yeah,

that was very difficult. And I suppose if you want me to start there, I think there was a time when I would have told you that I came from a very privileged background, which in one aspect I did do.

You know, I lived in a big house in the middle of nowhere. We had servants. We had two maids. We had a gardener.

We had a woman who came in every day to do the cleaning. And we were very high-end family.

My father worked very hard. He worked in the family of business. But it was without any doubt at all, a

privileged experience. And we were

told that over and over again. However, as a child, I suppose it's, you know, you only notice

these things in retrospect. But as a child, without any doubt now, my abiding memory is one

of being on my own all the time. I had an eldest brother who was

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