Intoxicating Lies: Meg Geisewite’s Journey to Freedom from Gray Area Drinking

Pod Meg Geisewite Deb: Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point Podcast. I am your host, Deb Masner. I'm a registered nurse and a health coach and an AFBS that stands for Alcohol Free Badass. And I have another AFBA on the show today. Her name is Meg Geisewhite, and she is a truthteller. And an author. She's got a new book out.It's called Intoxicating Lies One Woman's Journey to Freedom From Gray Area Drinking. So I wanna thank Meg for being on the show today. Meg: Welcome. Thank you for having me, Deb. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation from One Alcohol Free Badass to another . Deb: Freedom. Love it. Well, why don't you start off by just sharing a little intro about who you are and, and what you do, what your background is. Meg: Sure. So I live in Newark, Delaware. I am married with two kids. My daughter is 15 and my son is 13. I'm in pharmaceutical sales, have been for about 25 plus years, and. . Yeah. I love to be out in nature. Hiking or biking. Those are my two most favorite things to do. Although I do love to do watercolors. I'm getting back into things that brought me alive when I was a little girl, and, and reconnecting with that, that inner joy that we tend to lose as we get older and all the responsibility comes into our lives. So that's a little bit about. Yeah, well Deb: welcome. I have two teenagers also. I have a 16 year old and a 13 year old . So you're Meg: in that cringey phase where mom's cringey blow that lop Deb: it . But it's fun. It's fun. I'm, I'm glad that my oldest is driving now, like, Meg: thank God. I feel like I am a taxi cab service and an at t ATM Deb: Totally. So why don't we start, let's just start, like, what was your experience Meg: with drinking? . Sure. So my experience really started early on and I, and I go over this in my book, intoxicating Lies. , my parents ran in this country club circle and my parents were either going to a cocktail party or were, we were having a cocktail party at, at our house, and no fault of my parents. It's an old conditioned belief, but it really became very ingrained in need, a young age that this is how you let off steam after a hard week at work. Dad would travel all week. And so we would get off the airplane and either be going to this cocktail party or we would be hosting one. My mom had three kids by herself, so she was pretty frazzled by the time Friday ran came around. And so I saw them let off steam. I saw this was how they connected and had fun. And you know, my mom would dress me up in my best Jessica McClintock dress, have me serve a dvs, and I was, you know, kind of doing the people pleasing thing. You know, learning how to talk to lots of different people, which I think actually helped me with my sales. But then in the fifth grade the reason why I wanna mention this is it kind of ties into my drinking. I, we we moved a lot growing up with my dad's job and my birthday's at the beginning of the year and. , I was always having to make new friends. I never really felt fit, like, felt like I belonged. And it was, you know, going up to people after the only one week in school and saying, you know, will you be my friend and will you come to my birthday party? And so it forced me really to kind of be outgoing and. In the fifth grade, I had an, an incident where my mom took me to a psychiatrist and we had, all of us had our IQs tested, my brother, sister and I. And when she was ting up my score, she had me draw a picture and at the end of the test she said, it's a really good thing you can draw because you don't have much else going for you. Your score was low, and all I heard was you won't amount too much, right? Mm-hmm. , it was, You're not good enough. You're not gonna amount to much. Plus, I was in an all-girl school where I was recently ostracized kind of from the popular group, and now I didn't belong either, so I had all of this swirling in my head, these stories that I was telling myself. And in the eighth grade I went to a new school and of course, again, wanted to fit in and the popular girls came over for a sleepover and they asked if they could raid my parents' liquor cabinet. Well, fitting in was of utmost importance to me, so I said, sure. And we got into their peach schnapps. Got really drunk and it was my very first hangover and it was horrible. But from then on, really in high school it was this social drinking, social lubricant wherever I wasn't allowed to go to parties. So it was only when I. Could sneak out and lie to my parents and get off to a party that I would drink. Unfortunately my freshman year, I learned the hard, very hard lesson that I lost my best friend in a drinking and driving accident. I was supposed to be in a car with her and had fallen asleep on my bed at a thinking of a lie to tell my parents. Thankfully fell asleep, but woke up to the horrific news that her life was lost when this huge high school party became so big that the cops busted it. And then everybody ran through the woods, you know, trying to find a ride to, to escape the police. And I would've been with my group of friends who jumped in this car with this girl who, a senior who had been drinking way too much and unfortunately got into a car accident and we lost Carla. That day. But other than that lesson, which I've then vowed never to drink and drive, I didn't have really any lessons other than my mom telling me, you know, you kind of punish yourself when you drink or don't drink if you're. Pregnant and don't drink and drive. That was it, you know, and so went into college. Still with that swirling I'm not good enough. And freshman year, unfortunately, got into another situation with drinking, which was a, my freshman year, a on campus keg party where a young boy. , a rugby player who was charming and good looking, had asked me to go outside and I was unfortunately sexually assaulted that evening there. Thereafter, I really felt like I was not in control either. I started as a coping skill because I had no control over my body that evening went into and a state of having to control everything in my life. I joined every curr. Extracurricular activity in college. Graduated Kum Lati, kind of proving that psychiatrist wrong, like I had to prove and earn my worth. Postcollege, you would think I would've learned my lesson of, you know, drinking too much in the situation with, with being around that, that rugby player. But I actually got into a second situation where I had just recently started dating a guy and was date raped. And that thereafter that trauma, I really, really sunk into a. not good enough. Damaged goods, lack of control just really resonated in my body in a way that I didn't even realize at the time. I was young, just out of, just out of college in my first job, and I was in the sales industry. And the sales industry was very much pro drinking, especially when I got into pharmaceutical sales. It was. , kind of ironic, you know, we're talking about getting patients healthy and then in the evenings we're guzzling down poison and really it was frowned upon if you didn't go to the bar afterwards. It was like, you know, an expect. It was an expectation. . And I started to fall into what I call the hustle culture, where I felt like I was only as good as my sales, as good as my rankings. I am what I produce, and being in control and winning all these awards at work made me feel. . It was a coping mechanism for what I couldn't control earlier in my life. And then I fell into aesthetic sales. So now I was in the beauty culture where it was like, let's sell this belief to women that you need to look perfect while you're doing it all. and really got sucked up into all of that. So that external people pleasing in sales as well as look like, you know, you looking a certain way and, and that external approval based on appearances was really kind of at. , it's all time high for me at that point in my life. I then met my husband in the industry and we got married. We had two kids, as I mentioned earlier, and I fell into the mommy wine culture. I bought the TALs, the napkins, the t-shirts that said, you know, behind every great mom is a bottle of wine. And I believed it. I believed it so much that I would post the memes on social media, you know, if I go missing, put my face on a wine bottle. Friday vibes, you know, I just was guzzling it all down unknowingly and didn't even realize that I was making other women sick by promoting it, promoting the big alcohol industries very. Prayerful and damaging messages to mothers that this was the solution to my parenting challenges. And then when I was too tired to play with my kids because I was hungover from my. Rewarding glass of wine. I felt like a failure. I was not living up to what the teal said I would be, and I blamed myself. And much like the traumas that happened earlier in my life, I kept that shameful secret to myself. I didn't talk to anybody about it. I figured I was the problem. It was my fault. We know that those traumas were a complete violation and not my. but at the time, I could not logically kind of wrap my head around it. And so I blamed myself. And so when I wasn't the mom that the teal said I would be, I found myself blaming myself again. You know, why can't I get this together like everybody else around me? And so what ended up happening is I had three life, three back-to-back life incidences that happened two weeks apart. My husband lost his job. I became the primary and sole income maker for our family. My best friend. We lost her husband unexpectedly, and then a loved one. A friend had come forward and told me that she was sexually molested when she was younger and ready to get justice. . That third incident really brought all of my past sexual traumas to the forefront, and I didn't know how to deal with it. I, I was navigating these dark points with three of the most important people in my life, and I was overwhelmed by the situations, and so I was crying most nights, and so I would. to turn off the demons in my head and that chatter I would drink and I would say, gosh, I've earned this. You know, I've taken care of ev, all the kids, my job, these three people, you know. And so I really fell more and more into the bottle where I was having the, not just one glass of wine. Now it was becoming a nightly habit of several glasses of wine and everybody got their lives back together and. were got better, but me and I was stuck with this nightly wine habit, and when I finally got the courage to ask my therapist, , I think I have a drinking problem. She said to me, Nope, nope. I think you're thinking about it too much. Meg. Well, her ill advice kept my gray area of drinking in motion for two more years. until I finally listened to my inner knowing that small inner voice that was pleading with me saying, this is not serving us. This is something's wrong. This doesn't feel right. You know, as women, we really have that sixth in that sixth sense that intuition like something is off. And so. I, when I no longer wanted my kids to do sports in the evenings so that I could come home to my rewarding glass of wine, that scared me. I was like, I've always been in control of everything in my life and now this is in control of me. And I found myself, like at parties, I was always like, where's the bar? You know, like, gotta get my drink first. It was like, it was the thing that was dictating my mood, my my happiness. Everything. And I wasn't, I didn't have any external consequences. I was still winning awards at work. I w my marriage was intact, everything. My kids were fine, everything was fine. I wasn't hitting a rock bottom, but I guess you could say my rock bottom was that I no longer wanted my kids to do sports in the evenings. I mean, that is a true tale sign that, you know, I was addicted and. . It was confusing to me. I was, so, I felt, so this was in 2019, and I felt so alone because when I would talk to friends, they would be like, Meg, you drink just like I do. I would ask family, do you think I have a drinking problem? No. What do you think? You're addicted. No way. You know, and so I just was in this, I would go to workout classes and they would. Sweating out the toxins and you know that it was normal that we were drinking like this and just normalizing my gray area of drinking everywhere I turned. And so I finally listened to that small inner voice and clicked on and add for sober CES and decided, oh, I'll do this 21 day reset. Again, the instant gratification culture, you know, I'll just get a few tools and in 21 days I'll go back to being a so-called normal drinker. and I've always loved to journal, but really kind of had lost my way with it when I was drinking and when I gave it up. Or when I became sober, Carrie, I should say, I wasn't gonna give it up. I just was gonna explore with it. I started journaling and after 21 days, my eczema cleared up. I started sleeping better. The fog that I felt I was in every day, that slight shade of gray was like lifted and I had more energy. I was more present in my conversations with my physicians at work and more, had more energy to, to play with my kids. And I thought, what is, what's happening here, ? So I thought, you know what? Let's give this a little bit more time and. I did Annie Grace's This Naked Mind and read or, or the Alcohol experiment. I'm sorry. It was called the Alcohol Experiment, but Read This Naked Mind and being in pharmaceutical sales, I loved to sell on science and I was so intrigued by the science. So it was like the veil was starting to come down as I was reading all the truth of what Alco alcohol truly is. And I was asking, , why isn't anybody telling me this is a depressant? Why isn't it? Why aren't we warned on the bottle that it's a carcinogenic? Why am I using this to celebrate when it's increasing my anxiety and my depression? And I just started asking myself so many questions and journaling throughout the whole process. And then Jen was over, says, came out with an alcohol-free lifestyle course and I decided to give my body and mind spirit a hundred. And that is when things really started to shift for me. And the rest is in the book I re, I realized that I had come and fallen into the five most intoxicating lies about myself and alcohol. And I take you on that journey through my book. Deb: Oh, it's so, I'm, there's just so much in what you just shared. I thank you for sharing and being honest. Like, like you described yourself, you're a truth. Taylor Teller. Yes. Teller Taylor. And a tale you tell a tale. Yeah. So I just wanted to address The sexual assault and thank you for sharing that and because it is so common. Mm-hmm. , and I think I've read some stat, maybe you know, that like 80% of sexual assaults involve alcohol. Meg: Yes. Have you. . I actually have it in the book after the first chapter. And and it does, it's the, I can, I mean, I can read it here to you if you'd like. Yeah, that'd be great. Okay. Sorry, I'm just getting to that page. At least 50% of students sexual assaults involve alcohol. Approximately 90% of rapes perpetrated by an acquaintance of the victim involve. About 43% of sexual assault events involve alcohol use by the victim. 69% involve alcohol use by the perpetrator and one third of sexual assaults, the aggressor is intoxicated, and that comes from American Addiction Centers. . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and sadly it is true. And you know, I think that I had done years of talk therapy and thought that I had dealt with my sexual assaults, but when this individual came forward in my life, I realized that this trauma was stored in my body Still. and I had not really dealt with that, and I take you through that healing process in my book. But what I wanna encourage people to do is to find a trauma informed therapist. Because doing somatic therapy was what, what helped me? But there's E M D R, there's E F T, tapping, there's lots of different ways of actually getting it out of your body. I, for me, found that talking, I thought I had dealt with. , but I actually had not, it, it, it resurfaced in a way that I didn't realize it was stored in my body. Deb: Yeah. Thank you. Thank it was really important and thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Meg: Thank you for asking cuz It is, it's something that we don't talk a lot about, but that does, I think, happen to a lot of women, especially when alcohol. Is and Yes. Deb: Yeah. And then you mentioned that your therapist at the time really disregarded your, your issues with alcohol and, and your family and friends too. And I, I can share similar experience as well, and I, I think you're, I mean, it's, it keeps you stuck. This, it does the boxes that we try to put people in as. A normal drinker or an alcoholic, right? Like that really keeps people Meg: stuck. It really does. I think we wanna label people up and put them in boxes cuz it makes ourselves feel better about ourselves. You know, when we do that. But this black and white drinking box that we're, we're, we do as a society is really dangerous because gray area drinking is a large spectrum. It's fast. It's particularly becoming an epidemic for women. During the pandemic, drinking went up 42% in women and. You know, I think that when a wellness expert, maybe someone at the gym cuz that's, I would hear it there too, sweat out the toxins or a healthcare professional or a therapist are telling you that your nightly wine habit is just fine. I wanna say that it doesn't really matter who or what the degree is behind, who's telling you that? If you are questioning your relationship with alcohol or your inner knowing, that small quiet voice is questioning it or worried about it, that's all that matters. Get curious. Do something about it. Join a community where you can explore your relationship with alcohol and really see and ask yourself, what is it providing for you? Deb: Yeah. I th I just think like that is something I'm really passionate about is just smashing the stigma. You know? Like you don't have to have a drinking problem to have a problem with drinking. Right. You can just quit drinking because it's shit for your health. Meg: Right, right. Or shit for your mental health Deb: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, it, it is frustrating that. The professional community like physicians, some therapists are a little slower to catch on. Mm-hmm. , but I do see that the wave is starting to change. You know, we're starting to turn the ship around we're you're. . We're using new terminology. We're using alcohol use disorder. Right. On a spectrum from Yeah. And even if you're not on the spectrum, you Meg: can still quit drinking. Right? Right. I mean there's just, because everybody's doing it. And I know it's that old saying, but you know, you don't have to do it. It's, it is really like stepping outside of. the, the masses and going against the grain and just saying, you know, I, I didn't have any external consequences. I didn't have e ever really a, a terrible rock bottom, but it just wasn't serving me. I was, you know, people ask me and I say, you know, I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. Mm-hmm. , I like my life so much better without it, and I am stepping into my fullest potential. Without it, I couldn't find a reason to go back. You know, when I just stayed curious and realized that I had fallen prey and believed the five most intoxicating lies that I would be boring or that I deserved it. I mean, I think women really have fallen into the biggest light, which is the first one in my book, which is I deserve it. This has become, Consolation prize and it's a shitty consolation prize , you know, it compounds everything. It makes parenting harder, it makes work harder. It makes your marriage, you know, when would I have a fight with my husband when I had too many glasses of wine? So, It's just total BS that this is the solution and that we earned it. I mean, we do not. We did not earn a poison and a depressant and a carcinogenic. What we really need as women is community and connection and support. And most importantly, rest women are exhausted. And I think this is why drinking went through the roof during the pandemic because moms were taking care of, you know, the house cleaning 24 7, making food, juggling, homeschool, juggling work online. and then you're stuck inside all day with your people and it's maddening and you know, it, it really, we were sold this message during the pandemic to deal with all that stress with the quarantine. And we started normalizing day drinking. I mean, let the addiction just go through the roof. And it did sadly. And you know, I think we're. we're coming out of it, you know, now, and people are realizing, oh my God, I, I hear it all the time from my friends. I drank way too much during the pandemic. Or now I feel like I do have a nightly wine habit and I don't know what to do about it. And I have all this shame around it because why can't I get under and under control? And I'm like, stop beating yourself up. This is a highly addictive. , you know, it's more, it's up there with meth, , and heroin. As Annie Grace says in her her book that the harm score, you know, is higher for alcohol. Don't beat yourself up. You're just not told. The truth about it. And so I'm just ready to get out there and flip the script, you know, about all of this, because I think you're right. The movement is growing and the, the scientific studies are coming out and they're, I, I think the medical community is starting to wake up and you know that no amount is safe for the heart, that it shrinks the brain, you know? And so I think the more and more that this data comes out, I think the more and more physicians are like, , I've got to pay attention to this because the truth is in the science. Yeah, Deb: I, I, there was some article recently, it was more about like celebrities promoting their beverages. Like there's so many celebrity. Alcoholic beverages. Yeah. But anyway, it, one of the headlines was like, alcohol is 10% ethanol, 90% marketing. Oh, . That's good. And so true. It's so true. Like you said, like we've been told these intoxicating lies, and as you were mentioning when you were talking about your tea towels and all your paraphernalia, like. We've become the marketers. Yes. They don't even need to market it. Right. , Meg: we're doing it for them. Like we have, we have literally like sold it for them and we're making each other sick, and we don't even realize it when we, when we post a picture of it on social media, it can just be a glass of champagne. We're putting it on a pedestal When we put together a basket of bottles of wine and the, the napkins and all that. , really? That's your, that's your self-care package. It's just gonna make everything worse. But we're we've, we've just fallen prey to this and it's no one's fault, you know? It's just this cultural belief that has so deeply entrenched in our alcohol obsessed society. And I think the more and more women and and men too, that talk about this and come out and say, enough is enough. And really the sober community I know on social media has grown exponentially and it's such a supportive community. I just really encourage, you know, I felt like in my, in my journey, I needed to rewire and retrain my brain. So all that marketing and messages, and they're still coming in on a daily basis. I had to then feed my brain by following all these sober websites, the opposite message, that it is a depressant, that it is a carcinogenic, that it is poison, you know, I had to, it was like the rewiring that had to happen in my brain and. I just got to a place where it was like, why would I want to do this? Now, I, I take you through this in my book. I was in a deprivation mindset initially and I had a slip up and I actually called a sidestep in my book, and I, the reason why I wanna mention this is that it's progress over perfection. A lot of us think we need to wake. And abstain forever. And then if we don't, again, that shame and guilt and regret and be beating ourselves up comes flooding back in. And that's what keeps us trapped, is that shame and everything. And so if you have a sidestep and you journal about it, and you learn what it what, how did it make you feel? What. What did it provide for you? You know, is it, was it really a reward? Was it a crutch or did you just freeze your problems? And that's what I realized. I had frozen my problems and that when I woke up the next day, they were all gonna be there still for me to deal with. And what was I modeling to my children? More important. So I, I won't get into the whole story, but I had caught my daughter vaping, and here I was preaching to her to not do this highly addictive substance. And because I hadn't, I had found out, she lied to me about it. And I was fighting with my husband about politics, and I was trying to sell online over Zoom, and it was nearly impossible. And I was trying to keep my family safe with Covid. I hit what I call my book an f it. and these effort moments are gonna happen. And I went downstairs and I got a bottle of wine and I took three big sws and my daughter came down the stairs with tears in her eyes and she said, mommy, is this my fault? And it was like my why got slapped across my face and I thought, what am I doing here? I am telling her not to do this highly addictive substance. And here I. guzzling down this highly addictive substance. And so it was a really good learning for her. And I, I pulled her aside and I, I dumped it out, the wine and I said, you know what? I'm not perfect and neither are you. And we're both gonna make mistakes, but if we learn from them and we choose better the next time, it's okay. You know? And we grew from that. And I realized that I didn't need a substance, or I had no longer wanted a substance. To check out from those moments. And I wanted to model to my kids, life is going to be hard, it is going to be challenging, and here's how we navigate through it. It may not be pretty, but the beauty is in the mess, right? And so let's, let's, let's face this head on and let's talk about it. So I have had a lot of conversations with my daughter in particular about, let's just get curious about alcohol. You. , how's it making you feel when you drink it? Like how do you feel the next day? And you know, things like that. So I think instead of coming from a place of fear and all those stats we talked about earlier, when someone's, you know, trying to figure out their way with alcohol, it's more about getting curious on what is it providing for you? What are your beliefs around it? Do you believe it makes you more fun? Is that really. So, Deb: yeah. Yeah. And, and I saw that you had posted day one again, or is it a feedback day? Yeah. You said it's all feedback, not failure. We have to stop shaming ourselves for being trapped by an addictive drug. Becoming alcohol free is unlearning what we have Meg: learned. Yes. It's all feedback. It's not failure. Yeah, I like that. We don't give up and you know, it's like h Whitaker says in her book, quit like a woman. You don't just get up and run the New York Marathon, you have to train for it. This is you. You have to train and unwire and rewire and unlearn everything you have been taught for decades with this marketing and messaging from our society and big alcohol. And it takes. , you know, it takes time. I, I wish I could come on here and say in 21 days everything was fixed for me, but it wasn't. That's why I like to mention that it really was at a hundred days that it shifted for me. So be gentle with yourself. Take baby steps. You know, it just takes time to rewire your brain, but you can do it and it is there for you and there's so much beauty on the other side. Yeah. What, Deb: what would you say are some of your more practical tips for someone who's changing their drinking, and especially moms who are probably listening to Meg: this? Yeah. So I've, I really had to start putting myself first. I had learned in therapy that I had become dutiful yet dead. I was checking off everybody else's needs, and my therapist said to me, Meg, what are your needs? And I was like, . Hmm. I don't know. And so I had to slow down and put myself first. And so I started waking up earlier because I wasn't drinking and I started journaling. And then three things that are, and again, I'm gonna call them non-negotiables, but I wanna. . Put a little asterisk next to that. I do not believe in absolute perfectionism, so if there is a day that I don't do these things, it's okay. I don't beat myself up. I listen to my body. So movement, movement for me can be a walk, it can be a bike ride, but it's processing those emotions and feelings that are coming up. There were days on my Peloton where I was bawling or cussing, you know, getting it. For journaling about it. The other thing I love to do on my walks out in nature is find the beauty in the day. So it's a way of bringing in gratitude and it really does have an effect on the neuroplasticity in our brains where it's that attitude for gratitude. So when I go on my walks, I look for one thing. to me is beautiful. It can be, I collect heart rocks, so I'm always looking for heart rocks, but it could be a simple thing, like a sunset, a leaf a bird. And so I'm, I I, I get excited because it's almost like the awe and wonder that comes on the walk. I'm like, oh, I wonder what I'm gonna find today. And then I take a picture of it, and you've probably seen it on my social media. I, I call it find the beauty in the day. And it's a way of savor. it and really like, and I'm killing two birds at one time, right? I'm on a walk, I'm getting exercise, and I'm also bringing in gratitude. The last, the, the last thing that I do is, and I, and again, I know mamas are so busy and when they're working and they've got the kids, or even just at home with the kids, I like to spend five minutes at least sitting on my meditation pillow and. Letting, letting myself listen to myself. What is my body telling me it needs? What is my inner knowing? Guiding me back to the truth usually. What is she saying? What is coming up for me? And it's, we're so busy that we just don't slow down enough to listen to our own selves. And I feel like the alcohol-free journey is such a beautiful way to reconnect with yourself, but we have to slow down enough to do so. And at first, when I started doing it, I had the monkey mind. My brain was like, you know, all over the place with the different thoughts. And that's okay too. I just wanna say that's normal. , let it go from branch to branch thought to thought, and then just keep coming back to your breath and keep coming back to listening to what your inner knowing is telling you. And I promise you as you do it every day, the monkey mind will get quieter and quieter and you'll be able to hear more and more of your own inner voice, and that is so important. . Deb: Oh, I love those. So those three things you said were movement, finding beauty and, and five minutes of just listening. Yes. Meditating, whatever that looks like. Meg: And journaling. I would say journaling too. I can't not let, journaling is just so important to me and I have just like intention journals. So it's literally two minutes. So I may do that with right before my meditation. You can get those thoughts out on paper, right? If they're really raging in your head, get 'em. You can have days of just cussing in your journal too. . Okay. And then meditate. Cuz then it's kind of out, right? It's this way of getting it out of the body with the movement, the journaling, and the meditation. . Deb: Oh, I love it. Yeah, I, that's so funny. I was thinking, my daughter found one, I was doing some morning pages where you do like a brain dump in the morning, just free flow. And she's like, how can you even read this ? And then I was thinking, I'm glad you can't read it because like you said, what if it's just like, fuck, fuck, fuck this shit. . Meg: Like the mad scientist, like, oh Deb: yeah, yeah. Like when someone finds your journals, they'll be like, Okay, . Meg: And you know, I, it's funny because when I, when I first started in my reset group, a lot of the women were like, I've never journaled before, and I'm intimidated to do it, and I don't know what to do. I'm like, I don't care if you color in it, just do draw a picture. It doesn't, there's no rules. And the same thing with meditation. There's no rules. People are so intimidated to re meditate. I'm like, do a guided one then if, if it's that hard, you know, just, just start some. Start with baby steps and don't put so much pressure on yourself. Again, it's this constant beating ourselves up. I didn't do it perf perfectly, and I didn't do it for X amount of time. Five minutes is fine. , Deb: oh yeah. I, I, that perfection thing and letting go of it. I mean, I, my mantra now, especially now with business stuff, I'm like, okay, done is better than perfect. That's right. Meg: Right, that's right. And I Deb: have accomplished is better than, yeah. Yeah. And I have this mug someone gave me and it says, I'm proud to be a remarkably average parent. And for me it helps me let go of the perfection of parenting too. Yes. I'm just average. That's fine. You Meg: know, we are of that, we are inherently good enough and you know, if we take a few little baby steps each day and not try to do the whole big thing. Perfect. That is enough. We are enough. We need to allow ourselves to rest, especially as women. That I also talk about in the book, the seven Types of Rest from Dr. Dalton Smith's TED Talk sacred Rest, and we aren't modeled or shown. You know that, that it like, it, it's okay to just, like you said, just do a little bit and be okay with it. Right. It's like gotta show that I've done it all and done it perfectly and you know, it, it's just another lie that we buy into, we're another way of bringing shame and beating ourselves up. And when women like major sober influencers that I follow, say, I'm gonna take a month off of Instagram during dry January even, you know, or I'm gonna take this time off because of my, for my mental health. I'm like, bravo, Bravo. We need more role models saying it's okay to take a break, you know, and like walk away from the business for a little bit and tend to ourselves to find rest. We just. We're, I think we're starting to hear more about that, you know, but I think that's the next thing that women really need to embrace is like it's okay to just be enough and rest in that. Yeah. Deb: Yeah. That kind of reminds me, my word of the year is slow. Meg: Oh, Deb: nice. I like it. And cuz I'm just like, like you were saying before, like, okay, slow down. We are rushing through life and especially having kids who are teenagers, I'm like, oh, I need to slow down. I need them to slow down. We only have so much time together. Like I really wanna savor this time with them and savor my day to day. Meg: It's so easy. Swept up into it. I call it the machine in my book. It's like a vortex. You get like, like suck up into it, you know, because everybody around you is rushing and everything's kind of happening at a warp speed. And you really have to be very you know, diligent about it and saying, no, I'm gonna carve this time out. Just give yourself five minutes to take some deep breaths, even if it's in the car. right? You're dropping the kids off at sports. Just take five minutes. Slow down, like you said, and savor it because you're right. You know it is all going so quickly. It is, yeah. My word for 2023 is abundance, and I don't mean that in a financial way or anything like that. I mean it in a way that every year my words have been Improving myself some way, like mm-hmm. transformation. And, and, and it's like, why do I always feel like I have to improve myself? Right. It's like I'm good enough. And so let me just step into the abundance of that. Hmm. Let's just come in like, I'm ready to receive abundance, help other women and step into abundance and step into their voice, step into their worth. And that's the abundance, right? That's there for us. And I, that, that's my word, because I just, like, every year, my words have been some way of trying to improve or fix myself. , Deb: me too. That's why I chose slow. I'm like, I love it. I can be slow. Well that's a good segue for what are your plans for the future, Meg: Well, it is to, to rest, so, you know I've had some people say, oh, you should do this, you should do that. You should write another book. Again, I need to take some time to rest after this, this launch, which I plan on doing. But one of the things that I would luck like to do down the road with women is a writing community. And what I, it would be an online writing, private online writing community where we would slow. and do a grounding meditation to really kind of slow down all that anxiety, all that warp speed life coming at you, and then have some creative journal prompts to help us reconnect with that little girl within and our inner knowing and our worth. So that's what it would be focused on, is just this reconnection p portion to who we truly are and that we are enough. And so I can, I, I feel it brewing and I've been thinking about it, but. First rest . Deb: Well, that, that's wonderful. I, I really enjoyed your book. If you all wanna get it, it's called Intoxicating Lies One Woman's Journey to Freedom From Gray Area, drinking by Meg Geis White. That's spelled G E I S E. W i t e. And I heard it described perfectly as a one read sitting, and I was like, that's what I did. I was like, I'm just gonna start Meg's book. And I had it on my laptop cuz I had the electronic version and I was like, oh my gosh, I finished . Like, but it was, it's just, it's, it's It's well written and just like a good read and, and so helpful too. So thank you for sharing Meg: it with the world. Thank you so much. Yeah. I just wanted you to feel like you were a friend on my couch and we were having a cup of coffee and I, you're thinking about. We're moving alcohol from your life and we're sitting on the couch, and I take you on my sober carious journey, but we're really discussing also the truth of who we are, that we are inherently enough throughout it as well. And so, you know, I've, I've gotten a lot of feedback that it's very relatable, but that it's, you know, it's not a terribly long book, which is kind of nice. It's a, it's, you know, it, it has some tips and tools in there as well, but it just really takes you through that journey. , you know, in a way that I, I just want you to feel like you're a friend of mine and I'm holding your hand along the. Aw. Deb: Well, I feel like we're friends now. Mike . Meg: Me too. Deb. So good to connect with Deb: you. Me too. Well, where, where can someone find you? Meg: Sure. So everywhere books are sold intoxicating Lies releases January 17th. I'm currently selling personalized signed copies on my. Which is intoxicating lies.com. And if your viewers would like a free downloadable PDF on the five most intoxicating lies that we tell ourselves, I created a, a free pdf. If you go to intoxicating lies.com/common, you can print it out and what I encourage you to do is to journal with it like. See if these are the lies that you're telling yourself about alcohol, and ask yourself if it's really true. And I do have the truths in there as well. So I would love to connect with anybody if they would like to leave a review as well. I would greatly appreciate it wherever you get your book. But you can also find me on social media if you wanna reach out and DM me at Intoxicating Lies book on Instagram. And I have a Facebook page, which is intoxicating. Business Facebook page as well. Deb: Oh, that's fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the Meg: show. Oh, thank you so much, Deb. I really enjoyed our conversation. And then I'm looking forward to growing our friendship,