I own it, a distant, not proud that was me, and when I face it, a little dignity, not looking for excuse me, I just want to be free from power, weakness head on me, free, free, free, free, free.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the bubble hour where real people tell real stories of addiction and recovery.

I'm your host, Gene McCarthy.

You may know me from the blog Unpickled where I've been telling stories of my life after alcohol for the last six plus years.

I tell my story there, and I invite you to share your stories here.

And today our guest is Onika O'Melia of Mother Recovering, a blog and a podcast about life

after alcohol from the perspective of a young mom. Anika, welcome to the bubble hour.

Hello, Jean. Thank you so much for having me on the bubble hour.

I have been loving your podcast. You know, it's always great to hear new things, new voices,

and perspectives. And I think you have seven or eight episodes up already. And gosh,

you're doing a great job. Are you enjoying it? I am, yeah. I kind of impulsively started doing it.

You know, I'm an impulsive person. So I'm finding my way through it as I'm making the episodes like, you know, the little things like intro music and stuff like that.

I'm still kind of working out, but it's been really

fun. Sounds great. Well, before we talk about the podcast, first, I'd like our listeners to get

to know you a little bit. So let's start by hearing your story. Tell us about Onika and how

this trajectory has unfolded in your life.

Yeah, and I don't know if I've ever really told my full story kind of going back to the

very beginning, but I'm the third of four kids and grew up in the Midwest and have really

lovely parents and siblings.

But I actually got drunk the first time when I was about five years old, which is kind of strange.

I was a flower girl in my aunt's wedding, and they had a reception at our house, and people were drinking, you know, alcohol and little styrofoam

cups or like plastic wine glasses or champagne flutes. And I just kind of went around the party

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