I own it, I did that, not proud, but that was me, and when I face it, I take back a little dignity, not looking for excuses, I just want to be free from power. Weakness had 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 Gene McCarthy, recovery author, blogger and podcast host. I've been chronicling my

adventures in life after alcohol since my first day of sobriety in my blog Unpickled and in books

like the unpickled holiday survival guide in my poetry

collection, The Ember Ever There. I tell my stories there and I hold space for your stories here.

And today I'm holding space for Shelby John. Now Shelby is the perfect first guest of season

nine. There's something always feeling kind of fresh and new about January.

And wherever you're at in your recovery experience, I feel like January is a time where we start

to think about the year ahead. And if we're really where we want to be and what we can do

to get us closer to where we want to be. So I have lined up for you a guest who can help us do that.

She's going to begin by sharing her story because Shelby is a woman in recovery with a lot of

solid recovery. She's also a therapist and a coach. And so we're going to get to know her. And then

we're going to chat about some tools that we can all use going forward into the year ahead. So hi, Shelby. Welcome to the bubble hour.

Hi, Jean. Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure it is to be part of the bubble hour community. I have enjoyed your podcast for quite some time now. And as you know, and I know you feel the same way.

I love the recovery community of women and men who are sort of figuring this all out, right?

And I'm just grateful to be able to be here to share in that hope, like you mentioned,

and really offer maybe a glimmer to somebody who's maybe still out there or trying to figure it out

or those women who have been on the journey for a while and are ready to kind of step it up a notch.

Definitely. It still takes me back to think about what a breath of fresh air it was after holding the

secret of my drinking and my shame for so long

to realize that people that recover are helping each other and having these fascinating discussions

...