Healing Beyond Medicine: Sarah Dawkins’ Insights on Emotional Health and Alcohol / EP 54

Welcome to the Feel Lit Alcohol Free Podcast!  In today's episode, we're thrilled to chat with Sarah Dawkins, the inspiring holistic health coach and author of "Heal Yourself." Once a nurse, Sarah's personal journey of overcoming chronic illness through lifestyle changes and quitting alcohol is nothing short of amazing. Are you curious about how interconnected our body systems truly are? Sarah reveals the flaws in conventional medicine and champions a holistic approach to healing. We'll dive deep into self-acknowledgement, personal responsibility, and the power of belief in one's ability to heal. Sarah shares incredible stories from her book and challenges societal myths about alcohol.

Plus, don't miss personal tales from your hosts, Ruby Williams and Susan Larkin, as they navigate their own paths to wellness. How can embracing a holistic lifestyle and reducing alcohol dependence transform your life? Tune in for this eye-opening conversation and find out!

Our guest, Sarah Dawkins, is a highly sought-after Holistic Health and Healing Coach, Keynote Speaker, and the Author of HEAL YOURSELF.
You can find out more about her on her website:  https://www.sarahdawkins.com
Listen to her podcast Heal Yourself with Sarah Dawkins on Apple or Spotify
Follow her on Instagram 
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahdawkins

We want to share something exciting with you—our upcoming Feel Lit 90 Alcohol Freedom Program!   Imagine making 2025 the year you finally feel lit from within!  Choose freedom. Join us now at Feel Lit 90 https://feellitpodcast.com/FeelLit90Feb

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and ask us any questions you have about breaking free from wine or living an alcohol-free lifestyle. Your question could be the highlight of a future episode!

Join our Feel Lit AF Facebook Community for amazing support and connection!

Watch Episode on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@FeelLitAlcoholFreePodcast/videos

Websites:
Susan Larkin Coaching https://www.susanlarkincoaching.com/
Ruby Williams at Freedom Renegade Coaching https://www.freedomrenegadecoaching.com/

Follow Susan: @drinklesswithsusan
Follow Ruby: @rubywilliamscoaching

It is strongly recommended that you seek professional advice regarding your health before attempting to take a break from alcohol. The creators, hosts, and producers of the The Feel Lit Alcohol Free podcast are not healthcare practitioners and therefore do not give medical, or psychological advice nor do they intend for the podcast, any resource or communication on behalf of the podcast or otherwise to be a substitute for such.

Transcript

Sick and tired of your love-hate relationship with wine?
Welcome to the feel it alcohol free podcast. Hi. I'm coach Ruby Williams. And I'm coach Susan Larkin. We are two former wine lovers turned alcohol freedom coaches exposing the lies about alcohol and giving you, our listeners, the tools to break free so you can feel lit. And when you're lit, you'll feel healthier, freer, and more in control of your life. So relax, kick back, and get ready to feel lit alcohol free. And don't forget, grab a copy of our wine free weekend guide after the show.

Ruby [00:00:34]:
Welcome back. Welcome to the Feel Lit Alcohol Free podcast, and I'm so excited today. We have a special guest. We have Sarah Dawkins, and I'm gonna go ahead and tell you a little bit about her. Sarah is a highly sought after holistic health and healing coach and the keynote speaker and author of the book Heal Yourself. As a former registered nurse with over 20 years of medical experience, Sarah brings a unique, integrative perspective to her work. She's also a multi award winning entrepreneur and host of the popular health focused podcast, Heal Yourself with Sarah Dawkins. So Sarah's expertise spans from self healing of multiple chronic health issues to supporting clients in uncovering and addressing the root causes of their symptoms, empowering them to achieve vibrant, lasting health and transformative wellness.

Ruby [00:01:34]:
So welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Dawkins [00:01:36]:
Thank you, Ruby. It's lovely to be here. Thank you, Susan, too.

Ruby [00:01:40]:
Yes. Welcome. Yeah. So let's kick off with the first question here. Like, can you just share a little bit about your personal journey of self healing and where and your background around being alcohol free? Like, if you wanna share it, start there. That's a great place. We wanna get to know you.

Sarah Dawkins [00:01:56]:
Thank you. So I wasn't always into self healing because my mom was a nurse. I was raised in the medical model. So I believe that when you're sick, you go to a doctor, you get a pill and a diagnosis, and that was it done. You know, that pill heals you in air quotes. So somebody challenged me one day at work, which led me down lots of rabbit holes, looking at how pharmaceuticals work, how our body works, how powerful we are in our own bodies. And that kick started my self healing. And to start off why I just healed eczema, psoriasis, and acid reflux in about a month just from tweaking my diet, destressing a bit, getting more sunshine.

Sarah Dawkins [00:02:38]:
But I went through many years of not really understanding what I'd done fully, but knowing that I'd done some healing. And it wasn't until I really was in a dark place with suicidal thoughts. My thyroid stopped working. My adrenal glands burnt out because of all the stress that was involved in it, and that's when I actually started drinking. I mean, I've always had social drinks, and I was brought up with, you know, you have this drink with that and that drink with that and and the drinks around mealtime. So I never thought anything of it because I was only drinking in the evening. I've had 2 maybe 2 large gin and tonics before dinner, 2 very large goblets of wine with dinner, and then a tumbler full or 2 tumblers full of Tamara after dinner. And in my mind, I'm like, well, it's just social drinking.

Sarah Dawkins [00:03:29]:
I don't have a drink problem because I'm not drinking all day, and that's all I'm drinking in air quotes. And never even realized the quantity because in that depressed state, I wasn't able to think logically and rationally. And it was my doctor that was keeping an eye on me because I was in an awful state that said to me one day, do you drink alcohol? And I yes. But only, you know, with my evening meal, just that around that sort of 2 hour time frame. That's it. And he asked me what I was drinking. So I told him because I didn't see it as a problem, 2 gin and tonics and 2 glasses of wine and 2 tumblerfuls of tamarillo. And he went, you do realize you're drinking 70 units a week.

Sarah Dawkins [00:04:15]:
Now I don't know how that relates in the US, but the guidelines in the UK are 14 units for women, 21 for men.

Ruby [00:04:24]:
So at

Sarah Dawkins [00:04:28]:
70, that was like, wow. Are you sure? Because I'm only drinking in this short time frame. So that was a massive wake up call, and I didn't stop drinking. I decided I'd cut down. So I reduced the amount I was drinking because I was so shocked. I didn't believe that I had become reliant on alcohol. So I slowed right down, but I didn't stop because I told myself I liked the taste. And, of course, I did, but I liked the way it numbed me as well, but I wasn't open to believing that.

Sarah Dawkins [00:05:05]:
And as I started to heal the depression with mindfulness, gratitude, and meditation, I started to feel better, so I cut the alcohol a little bit more. And I went on to heal the depression, and then I healed my thyroid, and I healed my burned out adrenal glands over the next few years. But I was still drinking, but not in any quantities like I was. And it was 5 years ago I decided, after all the healing work I've done, I just decided that I didn't like what alcohol was doing to my mind because it caused me brain fog. It caused me some confusion and I would lose memories, but it also made me crave carbohydrates. I wanted to eat sweet foods and potatoes and crisps or chips as you call them. So, I decided to stop drinking altogether for my own health benefit. So it wasn't about willpower.

Sarah Dawkins [00:06:02]:
My goal was for me to be as healthy as I could. So to aim and hit that goal, I needed to stop drinking, and I did. I just decided there and then to stop, and I just stopped drinking. Because for me, it was about what I wanted out of life having come through that awful depression. I didn't ever want to feel like that again. I didn't want to be reliant on alcohol, and I wanted to be the healthiest version of me, so I made that goal, and then I made it happen.

Susan [00:06:35]:
Wow. I love your story. Yeah.

Ruby [00:06:37]:
And we

Susan [00:06:38]:
did stop feeling good. Right? Yeah. Feeling lit. Feeling good. Yes. Alcohol doesn't help us feel good. It really doesn't. We think it does.

Susan [00:06:47]:
It does for 20 minutes, that euphoria, but it's really numbing, and it's really a false myth, right, that we've all kind of subscribed to because of society and our culture. And

Sarah Dawkins [00:06:58]:
just not

Ruby [00:06:59]:
And I just found that part of your story so interesting that you had no idea because you were only drinking, being a little bit before dinner to after dinner, for a certain amount of time, but you weren't doing the math or didn't even know. So if you're in that one of our listeners, if you're in that same place, it's just you can reduce self harm and yeah. So just even reducing it can have a huge impact on your health.

Susan [00:07:23]:
It's a start. Yeah. It's a start. I've had clients go, well, I only drink normally, like, only 3 glasses a night. And I'm like, that's a lot. That's not normal. But it is. That's the problem.

Susan [00:07:33]:
That has been normalized in our society, that that's normal. That is not normal.

Sarah Dawkins [00:07:38]:
Right? It absolutely is. And I think as well, it's about becoming conscious of what we're doing because we see it as normal because it's become our normal, but society says it's normal and okay to drink alcohol. So we become biased for ourselves thinking it's normal. And so it's about becoming more aware of how much we're drinking and keeping tabs on it because I just was not aware.

Ruby [00:08:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awareness is one of the first keys. Yeah. So tell us, how did you start this journey on writing a book? And is there any way that you wanna share maybe some success stories from your book, Abhika?

Sarah Dawkins [00:08:21]:
Sure. As I started to heal the depression and started to feel better about myself and started to integrate back into the world, because I've been raised in the medical model, this was, like, really mind blowing stuff for me that I'm here now healing my thyroid and the depression, and I've healed chronic pain on my journey as well. Bulimia nervosa, I'd I'd done a lot of healing, and I'm like, I need to tell the world. There must be other people doing this. I can't be the only one because it was just new information. I didn't know anything about it. So I started writing about my own story of healing and detailed what I'd healed and how I'd healed it. And I got to 10,000 words.

Sarah Dawkins [00:09:03]:
I'm like, well well, I'm done, but that's not really a book, 10,000 words. I can't really be done, and I didn't know what to do with it. And so I put it to sleep on my computer for 5 years because I simply did not know how to move it forward. And I was still healing, building back my comfort zone, finding out who I was authentically, and doing a lot of emotional healing. So I wasn't thinking about my book and how I'm going to get it out to the public. I was thinking about how I can continue my healing. So one day I woke up, and I'm like, this book has got to have other people in it. That's the key.

Sarah Dawkins [00:09:39]:
Not just about me. It needs other people and other health problems. So I reached out on social media, and several people came back to me. And then I started trawling through the Internet to find people with conditions that I hadn't got. And so I went, look. I went stalking people. Oh, I found you on the Internet. You said you feel this.

Sarah Dawkins [00:09:59]:
You know, would you like to share it in my book? So I went and found a few people, and a few people found me. And they all shared their own healing journeys in their own words, and they've all got a chapter each. And they're healing things like ALS, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune, cancer, Lyme, allergies, asthma, endometriosis, PCO, polycystic ovary syndrome. The things that we're told we can't heal, all these people are healing. And it's, I mean, it helped me learn more about healing and opened my eyes wider. Yeah. So, I mean, it was a really long journey. It took me 10 years from start to finish to publish it.

Sarah Dawkins [00:10:39]:
Amazing. I learned so much through all the people that I've come into contact with.

Ruby [00:10:44]:
That's so interesting. Because, you know, with alcohol, the journey, it is actually years of healing too. From being an even a normal what we might call a normal drinker to a heavy drinker, it can take 6 months to 2 years to heal or maybe even longer for some. So it is, like, a journey or a longer process. You said 2 years to heal some of your illnesses. Yeah.

Susan [00:11:09]:
Yeah. Well, tell me how I'm so curious how you went from the medical field to discovering ways to heal yourself, and what are some of those ways? Like, I'm just, like, so curious. Me too. Because I come from a medical field I used to work for or I just retired from Yale University School of Medicine. So I've worked in the medical training field. And so I'm so curious about alternative healing methods and your experience and how you even came upon those to to even try them out.

Sarah Dawkins [00:11:39]:
Well, we moved from the UK to America in 2004. I passed the NCLEX, and I came over so we moved to Florida forever, sold everything, and forever lasted just under 2 years because it wasn't quite what we thought it would be. Nursing was incredibly different to what it is in the UK. I had no autonomy at all, whereas in the UK, I had a lot of autonomy. So we moved back. But during those 2 years, in that first year that I was nursing, one of my nursing colleagues challenged my use of pharmaceuticals at home. And, you know, we like that took me back a bit because you're a nurse and I'm a nurse, and we use pharmaceuticals, and that's what healing in air quotes is all about. And that's all I knew at the time.

Sarah Dawkins [00:12:25]:
So that started my journey researching on how pharmaceuticals came about and how powerful our bodies are and how our mind and body are so interconnected, and our mind is actually in our body as well as in our head. So I learned so much about how to take back that responsibility to look after ourselves. So it wasn't just about healing per se. It was about being proactive as well rather than being reactive, waiting for something to happen and then going, okay. How do I heal? From what I've learned, I use four pillars of health. So there's the physical health, the mental health, the emotional health, and the spiritual health. And I learned this from writing my book and then training as a coach. And the first thing that people think of when they think healing is in the physical plane.

Sarah Dawkins [00:13:15]:
So nourish my body better, reduce the alcohol, sleep, get better quality sleep, walk, hydrate, and that's where I first thought healing was. And to be honest, that's how I healed, the acid reflux, the psoriasis, and the eczema. I stopped eating gluten and dairy, de-stressed, and started exercising, doing, you know, longer walking, and that healed those three conditions. But because that was because I was coming from a medical background, I was only looking at the physical plane because I didn't know anything else. It was like I didn't know that I didn't know, so I couldn't even go looking because I didn't know it was out there. And then slowly, as I started to learn more from my research and then write in my book and read other people's healing journey. I realized we need to look after our mental health. So that's about and that's meditation, mindfulness, and gratitude.

Sarah Dawkins [00:14:07]:
But it's also about challenging our mind, maybe learning new things, new languages, learning crafts. So we need to challenge our mind, but we also need to rest our mind as well so to look after our mind. And then the spiritual healing is about coming back inside and listening to our inner voice because most of us have disconnected from that. All sorts of people give it different names from inner wisdom, higher self, God, the angels, the universe, the divine. Whatever name you want to give it is irrelevant. The point is we need to come back in and listen to that inner voice and reconnect with it because it's there for us. You know, it speaks quietly, whereas our ego shouts. So if it's shouty, it's our ego because it doesn't like to be upset.

Ruby [00:14:54]:
I love that. And we say, like, that all the answers are within you. You know, this is an inside job, and I love that you have that peace. Yeah.

Sarah Dawkins [00:15:04]:
And we need to come back into that. So we can find that in quiet times, whether it's walking, whether it's sitting in meditation, but we can come back into that. Yeah. But the biggest piece of the jigsaw that I didn't understand until I did my training as a coach was the emotional healing. We have to heal our past, and anything that we don't heal sits within us as a heavy weight that we keep repressed. And all the time we repress it, it tries to speak to us. And that's why we have symptoms in our body because we either have deficits in our nutrition or we're missing what happened in the past. We've suppressed it to the point that we either don't know, don't remember.

Sarah Dawkins [00:15:46]:
And we choose addictions to keep us busy, to keep that suppressed. But if we can find the courage and the confidence to open up that box inside of us and deal with our past through the eyes of compassion and unconditional love, If we can heal our past, we can heal our addictions. We can heal our body. We can heal our mind, but we have to be able to look back at what happened, understand it from the adult we are now because we hold it as the child that we were Exactly. Look at it through the eyes of compassion and be able to let go, to forgive ourselves for whatever we need forgiving for, but the other people that were involved because at that time, everybody did what they did with the skills and knowledge they had at that time.

Susan [00:16:42]:
Exactly.

Ruby [00:16:43]:
You're speaking our language.

Susan [00:16:46]:
Susan and

Ruby [00:16:47]:
I am nodding my head… yep. Yep.

Susan [00:16:49]:
Yeah. That's where Ruby and I met doing RAIN meditation together, you know, recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture, and that's provided a ton of healing, at least for me, around shame that I was carrying. And, yeah, it's been a beautiful thing. And, you know, my mother-in-law too has been healed from MS. Fabulous. You know, she's a believer in god. She forgave some she had some unforgiveness towards her sister, and she'd been getting prayer and prayer and prayer for years from her prayer group. And then just one day, it came to her that she needed to forgive her sister.

Susan [00:17:23]:
And after she forgave her sister, everything was released, and she started healing. And she does not have any of the MS symptoms anymore. And, you know, doctors say she's in remission, etcetera, etcetera, but she used to be walking with a cane after she was healed. Yeah. She was walking up and down and swimming and just took it completely healed and praised god for it.

Ruby [00:17:44]:
So yeah.

Susan [00:17:45]:
That emotional feeling, though, of unforgiveness. Yeah. Yeah.

Ruby [00:17:50]:
So, yeah, we do some of that same work, like forgiveness letters to ourselves. We do a lot of coaching around this because, yeah, if you carry the shame, if you carry that in your body and the stress and the past that's in you know, that you're repressing can really come out in addictions. Actually, you're so you're so right. So what I'm hearing is that you have a concept of healing the whole person holistically. Holistically, and I love that.

Sarah Dawkins [00:18:20]:
Yeah. Because everything in our body is so connected. But, yeah, all our doctors are separated out, so you've got the cardiologist, the dermatologist, dermatologists, the pulmonologists, and they all look at their own systems, but each and every system in our body is connected to everything else. You cannot separate it out. So you need to look at the whole of our body and our mind and our soul and ask ourselves why we got sick. What is the underpinning root cause of the sickness? Just go into my heart. Go to the cardiologist. Why have I got AF or AFib, as you call

Susan [00:18:55]:
it, over there? Well, you

Sarah Dawkins [00:18:56]:
know, what's going on? Well, actually, it's all connected, so we need to look at everything else.

Susan [00:19:02]:
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So if somebody were to say, hey. Yeah. I wanna do this. Get your book. Heal yourself.

Susan [00:19:09]:
What is usually the first step that somebody would go through when they're reading your book? Would you start with the physical and, like, sunlight and walking? And these are some of the lit things that we talk about in our podcast lifestyle ways of just feeling better in our bodies that also promote healing or, like, where would somebody start? Obviously, get your book, but take it through the journey of, like, what a person who's reading your book.

Sarah Dawkins [00:19:35]:
So my book is all the healers have got their own chapters, and they all talk about what they did. And everybody's done a little bit of something different. Even 3 people who've healed MS have all done something different, and yet they've all healed. So it's about belief. People have to believe that they can heal, that they are worthy of healing before they can even start to heal. If there's that tiny element that they think that, you know, 1% they can't heal, it will grow. They will find reasons why they can't heal. So they have to believe that they can heal.

Sarah Dawkins [00:20:12]:
And my book is a great way to help them, and the internet for me all those years ago was a great way because I believed I needed doctors and pills as do a lot of people. Mhmm. So it was only through my own research and finding people who've healed different symptoms, different diagnoses, I started to believe that actually maybe there's something in this, that my belief system came from my parents because when we become conscious of our core beliefs, we realize that we've borrowed them from our parents. Yeah. And unless we become conscious, we will just run our whole lives on our core beliefs that aren't even ours. They're just running our lives. So we have to become conscious of what we believe. Now if you want to change a belief like I did from I need a pill and a doctor to my body can heal itself, you need evidence to support that.

Sarah Dawkins [00:21:05]:
So you need to speak to people. You need to read my book. You need to watch my podcast. You need to research the internet. You need to find people who've healed and read their stories to prove that it's possible.

Ruby [00:21:17]:
What I'm hearing is the concept that we use a lot, Susan and I, around you know, alcohol addiction is if I can get alcohol free, so can you. Like, if I can do it, you can do it. And that little bit of hope is so important. Yeah. To change that belief. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah.

Susan [00:21:35]:
There is a step. You have to believe that the time is now. You have to believe that it is possible. Yes. To heal yourself.

Ruby [00:21:43]:
And then you take responsibility for yourself instead of remaining a victim. Like, oh, I in our case, again, I'm gonna go back to alcohol, but I drink because of my husband or I drink because of my past or because everybody else does. You know? There's a lot of, like, kind of remaining stuck, right, in that, and same with healing some other chronic condition. I just need the right doctor, the right pill.

Sarah Dawkins [00:22:06]:
Yeah. And I think as well, because I've sat in that victim mode when I was in that depression, I was, look. What's happening to me? I'm a victim here. People are attacking me. It's not fair. And I sat in that for a long time and really fell into it, and it became who I was. I was a victim. But I think we do have to feel that victim.

Sarah Dawkins [00:22:27]:
If we feel the victim, we have to feel into it and and really acknowledge it, that we feel the victim and look at why we feel the victim and appreciate that these things happen that are out of our control, and that is why we feel the victim because we can't control it. But then I think we also have to look at what we can control, and there's only one thing we can control, and that's ourselves. So then we have to step out of that victim mode and say, okay. I can only control myself. I have no control over the situation, things, people. So what can I do for myself? And that is taking back the responsibility and helps us to step out of that victim mode. Yeah. But we have to acknowledge it and feel it.

Ruby [00:23:14]:
Yeah. I love that. Did you say you feel it? No. Feel it. Sorry. I'm making a joke. What were you gonna say, Susan?

Susan [00:23:21]:
Oh, I was just gonna say that's when I work with clients. Like, victim is an archetype, a resistance archetype, and the first step is to love the victim, to love yourself, to not love the victim, but to love yourself even in that energy, and to understand that, yes, you're doing the best you can with the tools you have. You have experienced all this, to lean into it, to understand it a little bit, and then take responsibility for changing it.

Sarah Dawkins [00:23:49]:
Yes.

Susan [00:23:50]:
And yeah. Yeah. That first step, though, of acknowledging it and loving it. Because if you tell people, oh, just fix it. No. You shouldn't feel this way. Just change it. It's like

Sarah Dawkins [00:23:57]:
Yes. And they can't. They can't. They have to acknowledge and and love themselves and feel into that victim mode

Susan [00:24:06]:
Yeah.

Sarah Dawkins [00:24:07]:
And acknowledge it's there because that's part of healing. We can't just say flip it around into a positive. It doesn't work. We have to feel it to heal it.

Susan [00:24:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like to say honor where you are. Honor Yes. I love that season. And then Yes. You can change it, but we have to recognize and honor it.

Susan [00:24:28]:
And it's okay and normalizes it too.

Ruby [00:24:31]:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, Sarah, what, like, what words of encouragement or wisdom could you offer someone that's struggling with alcohol addiction, you know, and seeking this kinda natural healing?

Sarah Dawkins [00:24:45]:
Yeah. So somebody who wants to heal themselves, they have to come from a place of really wanting to heal themselves and make the changes and take responsibility for that because there are people who want to change but don't feel able to change. So they have to actually want to be able to make those changes first. And then it's a case of understanding where they're at and meeting them where they're at, the place that they are at, rather than the place that they want to be. I and I work with people. I just have conversations, compassionate conversations to help them to pinpoint for themselves where their issues started. So our conversations will be along the lines of tell me about yourself, and I'll listen to them. And when they finish speaking, I might say, can you just give me more information about that scenario, or can you give me more information? What do you think happened there? And I take them back to where I see the red flags in my eyes and ask them to for more information.

Sarah Dawkins [00:25:47]:
And in doing so, they can then often relate, oh, wait a minute. Because that happened or because they said that or because that happened, they did that, That's made me think like this, and that's why I'm holding it. So it's great to be able to see them to make their own links.

Susan [00:26:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That sounds amazing.

Ruby [00:26:12]:
Do you have any other final questions, Susan, before we do the feel it portion? My favorite part?

Susan [00:26:18]:
Well, I mean, I've been having gut issues, and you had mentioned before we started that that's from stress, and I can tell that. Like, sometimes when I'll think something, I can just feel, like, the flip and in my stomach. And then that day, I have what I would call a bad gut day. And I'm navigating this with probiotics and natural remedies. So that's in the physical and walks and yoga and But

Sarah Dawkins [00:26:40]:
that isn't really the root cause, is it? You're not lacking the probiotics with the gut issues, are you?

Susan [00:26:47]:
Oh, well, that's helped a little. It's the stress. And so I quit something. I did, and it was really hard to do that or to choose to not continue an opportunity. I had to get some more time in my life and be able to, yeah, focus on my healing for sure and to lessen my stress. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Susan [00:27:10]:
Yes.

Ruby [00:27:10]:
It's so interesting that you are our guest about healing right when Susan's going through these gut I just thought it you know, the universe or whatever God you know? It's so interesting to me that Yeah. Stuff like that.

Susan [00:27:25]:
Yes. So I just met with my coach, and she recommended Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, that book about where in your body you feel these feelings. But I'm gonna get your book too because I wanna read all these stories. And, yeah. Very excited to go back to really dig into maybe some of the places where some of these things may have been emotional emotions that are stuck. Yeah.

Ruby [00:27:48]:
Yes. That's a big one. Yeah. That's gonna be my focus this year. Kinda every year, and I really do need more healing in that area. Like, the body stores the stress and the emotions from the past. So I'm gonna dig in there too. Well, Sarah, this is my favorite part.

Ruby [00:28:06]:
One of my favorite parts is we ask all of our guests or each other, Susan or I, what do you do to feel lit, Sarah, in your life?

Sarah Dawkins [00:28:15]:
I like to bring joy into my life in many ways. I walk my dog out in nature, and for me, that's tranquility and connecting with nature. It's very meditative, so that plays a big role in my life. I have days out with my husband, and we have a great relationship in that we can say anything to each other. We can laugh at ourselves. We can laugh at each other. But together we've been married now 32 years, so we've helped each other to unpack our own emotional baggage. So we have a great relationship.

Sarah Dawkins [00:28:50]:
We sing together sometimes. I like singing. I'm not very good at it, but, you know, we have fun and just sing upbeat, uplifting songs, and just generally live life to the fullest. Beautiful.

Susan [00:29:04]:
Amazing. I love singing too. And one of the gut things one of the things that's affected is my vocal cords, which has been so distressing to me as well because singing has been a huge release for me because I've been a singer in my life. And yes.

Ruby [00:29:17]:
I am cracking up because I shared a hotel room with Susan. Yeah. She sings, like, all the time. It's so true. She it's so cute. And I really resonate, Sarah, with the walking of the dog out in nature because I have my dog who's my best BFF, and it's just so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. You are so inspiring.

Ruby [00:29:39]:
I want you to know that. And where can people learn more about you and connect with you? And

Sarah Dawkins [00:29:46]:
Thank you. So everything is on my website. So it's www.sarahdawkins.com. That's sarahdawkins. Thanks to my book, my podcast, my socials, everything, my email.

Susan [00:30:01]:
Wonderful.

Ruby [00:30:02]:
Thank you so much. I know. It's so great to meet you, and thank you for coming on to our podcast with your inspiring stories about healing yourself. So important. Yes. And you guys are listening. Join the Feel It Alcohol Free community on Facebook, and you can always watch us if you wanna see our faces on our YouTube channel. Alright.

Ruby [00:30:23]:
Yeah.

Susan [00:30:24]:
Thanks again so much for being here. It was so timely for me. Yeah.

Ruby [00:30:28]:
Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. 

Thanks so much for listening to the Feel Lit Alcohol Free Podcast. Do you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show? All you need to do is head over to Apple Podcasts and do 2 simple things. Leave a rating and review telling us what you think of the show. And in that review, ask us any questions you have about breaking free from wine or living an alcohol free lifestyle. That's it. Then tune in to hear your question answered live. Don't forget to grab your copy of a wine free weekend at www.feellitpodcast.com
And remember, do something today that will help you feel lit. See you next time!