You're listening to this naked mind with Annie Grace.

Hi, this is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast.

And I'm here with Saraya. Hi, how are you?

Hi, Annie. I'm good. How are you doing?

Good. Good to see you.

I'm good.

Why don't you sort of take us back to the beginning in your journey with alcohol?

Where did it all start for you?

Oh, yeah. Where did it all start?

Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot and I feel like it's important to me, especially was like the work that I've done and been doing to like talk about my parents before I talk about me because it feels super important.

And so my parents met in the 70s in the Midwest in like a suburban of Chicago.

My father had moved his family had immigrated from Iraq and my mom was born in La Salle, Illinois, which is a very tiny town in Illinois and she's the oldest of five sisters and they landed a party in the 70s.

They fell in love all the things. My dad wanted to move to New York City.

My mom wanted to stay because all of her sisters were staying and building families in the Midwest, but he really wanted to go so she was the only sister that left and moved to New York City in like, it was probably the late 70s then.

And so I was born in the 80s. My sister was born in 1980. I was born in 1984 in New York and that kind of lays the context a little bit for like little me coming into the world.

And you know, my parents, my mom was a nurse, my dad was an elementary school teacher and they both were obviously, you know, getting used to the to life in New York.

And they both working class New York was a little different in the 80s than it is now and probably since you live there, Annie, but.

And it's probably changed a ton since you live there too, because it's just been changing like crazy of like it's unrecognizable to me now, honestly.

So they were working all the time we were growing up.

And I was super overwhelming like I remember being like five or six and going to kindergarten or first grade and having to take a test and just immediately kind of being aware of like people tracking me or like almost like what where like what are your parents do and you know how smart are you here and who is your family.

So there was like a status thing instantly that I that I was aware of and so I remember.

Feeling like I couldn't really talk about it because my parents weren't very emotionally available and that like my environment was was affecting me pretty intensely from that early on and and that feels important to mention because by the time.

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