Loving and Leaving Alcohol with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

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Description

In the season two finale of The Happily Never After, host Heather McG welcomes bestselling author Stefanie Wilder-Taylor to discuss her journey with alcohol and sobriety. Stefanie candidly shares her experiences, from the role alcohol played in her life to the pivotal moment that led her to getting sober. The conversation delves into self-awareness, acceptance, and how to change the things in our life that aren't serving us. 

About Stefanie WIlder-Taylor

Stefanie is the author of six books including the bestseller Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and her latest, Drunk-ish. She’s been seen on NickMom hosting her humorous talk show Parental Discretion with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, she’s also the host of four podcasts: For Crying Out Loud, Bored AF, Rose Pricks – a Bachelor Roast, and Drunk-ish. 

About Heather McG

Heather is an Emmy and Cannes Lion Grand Prix-winning producer, author, and founder of McG Media. She is the creator of the happily never after, a 360-degree project that explores how life’s endings can lead to a new beginning. A twin mom, endurance athlete, and devoted Trekkie, sitting still has never been her forté.

Transcript

Heather McG (00:20)

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Happily Never After, a podcast where we explore how life's endings can lead to a new beginning. If you enjoy the show, don't forget to rate, review, and follow us wherever you are listening or watching the show today.

My guest today is Stephanie Wilder Taylor. Stephanie is the author of six books, including the bestseller Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and her latest Drunkish, which is, it's a box set, I feel like. She's been seen on Nick Mom hosting her talk show Parental Discretion. And she's also the host of three podcasts for Crying Out Loud, Bored AF and Rose Pricks, a bachelor roast. Stephanie, you are incredibly busy and I am so pleased to welcome you to the show.

Stefanie (01:00)

Thank you so much. And I just want to say that ⁓ I guess I forgot to put on my bio, but I also have my newest podcast is drunkish kind of based on the book.

Heather McG (01:11)

Yeah, yeah. that's awesome. I will make sure to link that in the show notes so you all can find that, because I feel like if you're listening to this episode today, that's something you're going to be interested in for sure. Yeah, and go deeper. Now Stephanie, one of your most recent memoirs is titled Drunkish, Loving and Leaving Alcohol, which I love that title. What role did alcohol play in your life before you stopped drinking?

Stefanie (01:18)

We're going to want to listen to the podcast of other people's junkie stories.

a starring role, would say, a big, fat, all-encompassing ⁓ role that took up a lot of my attention. ⁓ I think alcohol for me started maybe in high school as just a fun social lubricant, be like everybody else. And I did notice early on that it didn't always agree with me. I feel like I was...

having horrible hangovers. I was always like, how come my friends don't get sick from morning until night and non-functional? How come they're out doing stuff the next day and I'm in bed all day? But I didn't let that stop me. And then, know,

As the years went on, alcohol was very helpful to me, like medicine for a lot of different things. I thought in my mind that I was just using it to, like everybody else, to celebrate. I liked wine. ⁓ I didn't think I drank that much, but then I noticed once I had a baby that one thing that I knew helped me was drinking to sort of take the edge off, to ease anxiety, to feel better.

⁓ and eventually alcohol just was something that I couldn't rely on anymore and was made me really unpredictable. And that's when I made the decision to stop drinking.

Heather McG (03:01)

Something about your story that I think is really interesting and probably very relatable to a lot of people is while alcohol was playing a starring role and it was creating some problems with you in terms of, like you told one story about going trick or treating with your kids and this is in your book and the next day you realize you kind of missed it from drinking too much the night while the trick or treating was going on.

Something I think is really interesting about your story, it's not that your life was out of control, it's not that it was this horror show of being wildly, things were happening that were way off the beaten path. You're a mom, just like any other mom, and I think a lot of women out there especially could relate to your story in that way. Was drinking simple enjoyment for you, or did it come from a deeper place?

Stefanie (03:47)

I mean, I would have told you the whole time I was drinking that it came from simple that I just like to drink. In fact, well, I want to also address sort of what you said, which is that, yeah, my life definitely from the outside did not look like what you would imagine an alcoholic. I don't think anybody in my life saw it as like, my god, Stephanie needs to go to rehab. think people like my sister-in-law,

Heather McG (03:52)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stefanie (04:14)

who I wrote about in the book kind of did a very light intervention. I think it concerned people that I seemed to like to check out and drink every night. But it wasn't like I was getting hammered and leaving my kids in the car while I went to a bar. I wasn't engaged in what I think people would think of as risky behavior. But ⁓ something, like I said, that I want to address is that

part of being, there's so much guilt in being a mom anyway that I would feel really guilt. Like maybe another person or maybe if you weren't a parent, you wouldn't care if you went out trick or treating and got drunk and didn't quite remember everything. But there's such high expectation of yourself when you're a parent that it just made me so guilty and sick that like, who does that? And also,

I have a lot of anxiety. So I think that there was always that voice going like, that's not right. Like, that's not normal to do that, to get so drunk that you don't really remember the night when you have kids. So it's kind of a double edged sword, right? Because it's the mom guilt also helped me change my life for the better, which I might not have done if it was just me.

Heather McG (05:30)

you were talking about checking out. There are, you know, I feel like it's kind of a big conversation in being a mom because it is a lot. It's so much work. You know, I have two, I'm a mom too. I have two kids that are young and I will say straight out, you know, it'll be bedtime, like 11 o'clock at night. Everyone should be asleep in bed and I am like, really, I have to have that time alone in bed with my best friend, the phone and watching my show, even though really I should be sleeping in like.

That's my version of checking out. need to, I feel like I need to do that. And I think there is a thing around mom wine culture a little bit. Like I want to have a glass of wine. Like I think a lot of women and moms feel that anxiety and need to have a little treat. And sometimes that little treat is a glass of wine. It's, you know, it's trying to relax. And so I can really see how the lines were blurred for you in terms of how do you navigate that? And then pulling the trigger on, I think this has gone maybe too far in my life.

now you did not have a huge rock bottom moment, but you did pull the trigger on before anything really bad happened. Can you tell us what happened that was like, this is it, I have to make a change.

Stefanie (06:35)

Well, let me go back and tell you leading up to that moment, there was a lot of navigating trying to be a drinker for me. So there was a lot of rationalizing and like, well,

Heather McG (06:47)

now.

Stefanie (06:53)

I was having more and more times in the evening where I was starting to realize, I drink every single night. And even when I tell myself I'm going to have two glasses, I end up having three. Or my husband and I finish a bottle of wine, and I'm the one going, let's open another one. ⁓ And he would be like, no, I'm good. We're just going to bed soon. I'd be like, exactly.

Heather McG (07:16)

Let's get it all in.

Stefanie (07:21)

Right. So leading up to that, I would say there was a lot of like, I really want to be able to have this. So let me make more rules. Let me say, okay, I'm only going to have drinks on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or I'm only going to drink on just on the weekends. Okay, well, Friday is kind of the weekend and Sunday is definitely the weekend. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then I'd be like, Thursday night feels

it's leading into the weekend. So it's kind of unreasonable to not drink more nights a week than I'm drinking. it was always this thing of like... And then eventually, I would just break all of those rules. So there came a point where I was like, what I'm going to do is I'm going to just be easier on myself because it's so hard to have all these rules and to like...

Heather McG (07:54)

Yeah, let's warm up.

Stefanie (08:17)

tried to remember, oh, I'm not supposed to drink on Tuesdays. So eventually I was just like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to drink every night of the week, but I'm going to be somebody who only has like one or two glasses of wine. And then quickly, I went over that. So then it was like, okay, well, I'm going to be somebody who drinks like two and a half, you know, I, and then it became, you know what, I'm just going to drink what I want, as long as it's at home by myself.

not by my, you know, at home with my husband and the kids are in bed and it's not affecting anything else. will not drive drunk though. I will not go out and get drunk. You know, that was my rule. So when I broke that rule and it was such a, that was my final line in the sand. That was, if I can't do that, I didn't even think in my mind, to be honest, and I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I didn't even think.

this is the final line in the sand. just thought, okay, this is how I'm going to make it work. And I knew that wasn't great thinking. I knew that drinking several glasses of I always felt a little guilty about it. Lying at the doctor's office saying that I only have one glass of wine a night, seven drinks a week, when it was really more like 21 drinks a week. It didn't sound good. The point is,

Heather McG (09:39)

Yeah.

Stefanie (09:43)

I made that final line in the sand. And then it was only a couple months later that I broke that. And I drank too much. And I drove home with my kids in the car. And I did not think I was drunk is the main thing. And trust me when I say that I cried for the first four years admitting that to anybody. So my lack of emotion is just because it's been over 16 years since that happened. ⁓

Heather McG (09:57)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stefanie (10:11)

I woke up the next day. My husband was really mad and he was not somebody who ever got mad at me. He made a lot of excuses for me. So, but when I got out of the car that night and had two of the kids and he'd been trying to call me all night. The story is in my book. He'd been, he'd been trying to call me. I'd ignored him because in my mind I was like, leave me alone. Like I have two of the kids with me. I have three kids.

So have twins and then one that's a little bit older. So my husband was home with one of the twins and in my mind complaining about it where I was like, dude, I've got one of the twins and the four-year-old with me. You're on easy street right now. Like stop asking where I am. Well, he was concerned because I was just not responding to him and I was drinking.

Heather McG (10:56)

Leave me alone.

Stefanie (11:04)

I was out drinking and I think he probably knew Then it got to the point where he had to call my friend who I was with to go, why isn't Stephanie calling me back? Like what's going on? And then she came to me and was like, hey, your husband is like trying to find you. And I was then annoyed at her. Like, why are you up my ass about this? Like what everybody needs to leave me alone. I'm moming it up here. I got two kids with me. We're having a good time, you know. So then

I drove home, my husband was waiting for me in the driveway. He says I was staggering up the driveway. I was belligerent. I was mad at him for micromanaging me and for having any opinion on my behavior. When I woke up in the morning though, I was really hungover. And I had what I continue to call a moment of clarity where I was like, it's...

It's like I would imagine having a near-death experience where all the flashes, I literally just felt all of the excuses and I saw it all really clearly like, my God, how long have I been doing this? How long have I been saying, I'm never gonna drink like that again? How long have I been making these excuses even now since I've had kids in the last four years? This has to stop. I'm obviously somebody who's not safe.

If I can't manage to just keep one promise, which is to not drive drunk, then I shouldn't be drinking. And I still didn't think I was an alcoholic though.

Heather McG (12:46)

I had a question because you had these little signals that were popping up, your husband expressing, not too much, but expressing a little bit of concern. And then you had a few friends at particular times bring this up to you in many soft interventions. And it bothered you. I don't know if you would say you got angry about it, but you were not happy that that was happening. Where do you think that frustration was coming from in them calling out these things?

Stefanie (13:00)

Mm-hmm.

Well, obviously I didn't want to not drink and it was embarrassing to think that it was something that other people were picking up on. Cause anytime you have a secret, it's going to make you mad when you feel like people are judging you. Also in my mind at the time, I was like, it's, I had a lot of excuses. Like it's not that bad.

Also, the first person who had like a little intervention on me was already somebody in recovery. And I had a thing where I was like, who is she to tell me anything? Like she was worse than me. you know, just because she's cleaned up her act now everybody suddenly everybody has a problem. Like, you know, mind your own business. That was my opinion about her. In my mind, honestly, I was like, she's in a cult now.

Heather McG (13:48)

Right.

Stefanie (14:02)

of people who don't drink. And she just wants everybody to be part of that. Yeah, she's just like these people that, they get sober. And then they're so like, that person has a problem. That person has a problem. It's like mind your own business. That's how I felt with her. Later, she was the one I called and said, I think I need help. So I'm just telling you what I felt like at the time. With my sister-in-law, who also ⁓ said something to me,

Heather McG (14:06)

She just wants a friend to go with her to meetings.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Stefanie (14:30)

My feeling about her was like, she doesn't even have kids. You know, she's maybe at the stage of like trying to have a kid, but like she has no idea what it's like. Who is she to judge what I need to do in the evening to check out? I've got three kids at the time that this happened. My twins were babies and they were colicky. So my feeling was like, I cannot believe she's judging what I need to do to like feel calm.

in evening. This is my coping mechanism. How dare you call me out for that? I just thought, what a bitch.

Heather McG (15:00)

Yeah.

Well, and two, so I have twins too. Having twins is so hard. It is so hard. So on top of that, you're dealing with that. And I know you were also dealing with some medically complex issues as well with your kids. So you were going through it as well. And sometimes, like it does, it feels like you need something that's for you. I can, like as a mom and reading your book, I could connect all the dots on how this was happening for sure. For you, now you've been sober for quite a while now. I think over 10 years, if that's right.

Stefanie (15:14)

It's really hard.

16 yeah

Heather McG (15:38)

wow, okay, so

with the benefit of all that hindsight, were you an alcoholic or is there a difference between being an alcoholic and having an alcohol problem? Like is there a difference there?

Stefanie (15:50)

I'm so glad that you asked me that question. That is a really good question. ⁓ Yeah, I definitely, I like using the word alcoholic now because it's, and a lot of people don't. For me, it's really helpful because it seems very black and white in the best way. I'm an alcoholic, therefore I can't drink, which is.

so much easier for my brain to take in than to do all the dances of like, maybe I just have a substance use disorder. Look, no, I think a lot of people for whatever their own reasons feel like saying alcoholic is a very like judgment. It's a label, right? And like, I don't want to have that label. But for me, the label is helpful because it's just very final. It's like you either have this thing or you don't.

And it took me a long time to stop debating in my head, like, am I an alcoholic? Well, there's no real way to determine that. There's no blood test. Do I think that some people go through a period of time where they are abusing alcohol and they're not somebody that needs to quit drinking for the rest of their lives? Of course. I ⁓ don't know. The answer is something that everybody has to decide for themselves.

For me, once I stopped being so in the feeling of like, I don't want to be an alcoholic. I don't like that label. I don't relate to these people in these meetings who like what their version of being an alcoholic seems so much worse than like what I did. You know, I spent time going, I'm not that. I'm not that thing, that alcoholic, that A word. I'm not it. I'm not.

I didn't do any of those things. I didn't hurt my kids. didn't, you know, it took me so long to just go like, what difference does it make? The problem for me is that when I drink, I am unpredictable. That goes all the way back to the first time I drank and it never got better. I never got more predictable. I was never able to, for a long period of time, moderate my drinking.

There was never a time between the age of 14 and 42 where at some point I didn't drink way too much and not mean to. So for me, coming to the conclusion, coming to the acceptance that like, why does it matter what I call it? I need to call it something that tells me that it doesn't agree with me. I have an allergy to alcohol. I make some bad decisions.

Not all the time. Like, yeah. Am I not an alcoholic during the days where I just had successfully had like two glasses of wine? Sure. But do you know what I'm saying? OK, let me put it this way. My husband went through a period in college where he really drank too much. He knows that. It's one of the things that made me fall in love with him. I was like, he was kind of fucked up.

Heather McG (18:50)

You

shared hobby.

Stefanie (18:55)

I was like, there's a little darkness there. He told me some really crazy stories. Well, guess what? Not an alcoholic because he made a decision. ⁓ There was an accident that happened and he was like, you know what? That kind of drinking, I don't want to do that anymore. And he just didn't for years. And guess what? I've never seen my husband trashed ever. Not one time. We've been together over 25 years. Never seen him get

Heather McG (19:16)

Hmm.

Stefanie (19:25)

drunk to the point that I was not sure about his behavior. The couple times I ever saw him drink too much, he was silly. And then he was hung over the next day. I honestly can count those times on one hand. And he's never not been, he's never not drank. So I think there's such a clear, I do think that people can go through a period where they drink too much. And if they can get a handle on it, great.

Heather McG (19:54)

in you telling the story, I have to imagine that this impacted your marriage in a negative way. Or did it?

Stefanie (19:54)

So, okay.

I don't think it did. mean, my husband is really supportive. He I mean, I don't want to say that I hit it well, because it's not I mean, there's a lot of people that, you know, keep wine in the boots in their closet, and, you know, hide it in a drawer and then sneak in there and drink it. I never really felt like I had to do that because I never drank in a like large amounts. So I was and I was not like a hard

alcohol drinker, so it wasn't like I was sneaking and taking sips of vodka. I was a wine drinker. I was a wine mom. So it always looked kind of normal to him because even though I would try to like pregame before he got home from work and I would open, there were things I was doing. Don't get me wrong. I was trying to get my party started early so that it didn't seem like I was drinking quite so much.

Heather McG (20:51)

Yeah.

Stefanie (20:58)

But I was never drinking. I hear about people drinking two or three bottles of wine a night. wasn't bragging. It's just I couldn't handle it. I would get tired and pass out. And also, I would just have horrendous hangovers, even over a few glasses of wine. So my husband was very surprised. his thinking was, you just have trouble when people are pouring you wine.

Heather McG (21:25)

Mm.

Stefanie (21:26)

Like you don't have a good off switch. So I will help you. He was really supportive. He was like, I'll try to tell you when you've had too much to drink. And obviously, you know that that didn't go well.

Heather McG (21:36)

Yeah, I'd be like, no thank you.

Stefanie (21:38)

Yeah.

You worry about you. You do you boo. I'll do me. But my husband is really non-judgmental. He's very easygoing. So when I told him, I think I'm an alcoholic and I think I need help, he was just like, OK. And then he didn't drink for weeks. And then he was always very open to like, how can I help you? And then he never kept.

Heather McG (21:42)

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Stefanie (22:08)

like trigger stuff in the house. To this day, he won't open a bottle of white wine in our house.

I think at the beginning,

My husband was worried that I was joining a cult because I started going to 12 step meetings and worried that I wouldn't be as fun. but I've brought it up to him, especially early on. I was like, do you still think, are you still sad that I don't drink, that I'm sober? And he said, honestly, there's no difference in you. You're the same exact person. You're still fun.

Heather McG (22:25)

Yeah.

Stefanie (22:44)

And also, I feel safer when you go out with your... I didn't realize that this would be an added benefit as I never have to worry that you're driving drunk or how much you've had to drink or where you are or what you're doing. I don't have to think about that anymore, especially at the time our kids were really young. So I'm sure big added benefit.

Heather McG (22:53)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Now for you, once you decided to get sober, what did your recovery journey look like? was it up and down? Was it like you made the decision that was just it? How did that work out for you?

Stefanie (23:18)

I made the decision and I didn't know what else, like, first of all, I wasn't going to go to rehab and I didn't have a physical dependency on alcohol. So I didn't have any kind of like detox. It was all mental. I made the decision. was like, look, I'm going to do whatever it takes to not drink again. So I'm not 100 % sure what that looks like. I

Heather McG (23:34)

Yeah.

Stefanie (23:45)

The only thing I knew that I could do was go to a 12 step meeting. So I called my friend, the one who I was mad at before. To her credit.

Heather McG (23:53)

I like I thought about

it and maybe I will go.

Stefanie (23:56)

Well, it was like, I think it might, it must have been at least like a year, at least a year and a half to two years after she'd said something to me. So it had been a while and she'd never brought it up again. Like after my reaction to her credit, she'd never been like, have you thought about what I said? Like she never, she just never brought it up again. So when I called her, she was just like, I got you. Like, I'm going to pick you up on Tuesday. And I was like, okay.

Heather McG (24:12)

Yeah.

Stefanie (24:24)

This was on a Saturday morning because the incident happened on a Friday night. Saturday morning, you know, I called her. I don't want to drink again. I don't know how to do it. I need help. So so I had to kind of white knuckle it until that Tuesday. But I was so full of shame about that incident, about the drinking and driving that like obviously I wasn't going to drink then. But I knew that if I didn't do something.

I was going to start rationalizing again. I know my brain. So was like, I've got to do something. The 12-step route felt very extreme. And I was like, I don't think I'm on board with all of that God stuff, with all these, seems like a lot of rules. But I also didn't think I had a better idea. I was like, well, I can't, I'm not going to go to rehab. I've got three young kids. I can't just leave my life for 30 days. Also, I was also like, it's

Heather McG (25:17)

Yeah.

Stefanie (25:19)

Probably not that bad that I need 30 days of like, listen, I wish I could have gone to rehab. Trust me, it seems great. I

Heather McG (25:25)

I feel like some

moms would be like, maybe, I need to go home.

Stefanie (25:30)

Oh, I was

jealous of all the rehab people when I would see them in meetings. But yeah, so for me, there was a lot of mental block about, but I did, here's what my journey was like. The want to be sober, the want to not drink again was a little bit stronger than my resistance to not drinking. Do you know what I mean? So I was in a vulnerable enough

place, we say in 12 step, I wish you desperation. I was desperate enough to try things that I felt would normally feel uncomfortable to me. In 12 step work, it's work. There's a little bit of writing down. The first thing they tell you to do is write down all the ways that alcohol has made your life unmanageable. For me, seeing it in black and white, on paper,

Heather McG (26:04)

Hmm.

Stefanie (26:27)

was like, ⁓ I guess all of this, like, I'm not that bad. Well, when you look at, when you just write it all down and you're crying and you're in a vulnerable place and you're being honest with yourself, it's like, ⁓ it wasn't like that great. Like, my drinking wasn't as classy as I thought it was, you know?

Heather McG (26:44)

Yeah.

Yeah. You you tell a story in your book about, you know, years into your recovery, you had a friend that came up to you, and I don't remember exactly who it was, but it someone that came up to you and said, you know how I told you I was an alcoholic? I think maybe I'm not, and it's not that bad. And you had a conversation with her where you said, well, do you remember when this happened? And when that happened, she was like, yeah, that was pretty bad. Did that conversation give you any clarity about your own journey, or did you see yourself differently in having that convo?

Stefanie (27:16)

mean, for sure, there's been one of the things that 12 Step has really given me is constant clarity. It's like, but this is like what we do for each other. And I can come back to that, but you just reminded me of something where I would say in meetings a lot, I would, and this is not in the book, ⁓ special treat for you. But I would say a lot at the beginning.

Heather McG (27:40)

Bonus!

Stefanie (27:45)

Like I was not somebody in 12 step that was just like, I'm an alcoholic. And like, I was like, ⁓ I'm not so sure. And then I would, I would tell a room full of alcoholics that like, maybe I'm not that bad. I had a whole thing where I'd be like, I think for me, I was a very like high bottom alcoholic. Like I was very functional. ⁓ and then one day this woman came up to me after a meeting and she was like, you know, you share a lot about being like,

high bottom alcoholic, very functional. She was like, I don't know, driving drunk with your kids in the car, it's not that fancy. And I was like, wow. It stung when she said it. And then it was actually really freeing because I was like, why am I so... What is that? It's like judgmental of other people's drinking. Why do I think... Do I think I'm better than people?

Heather McG (28:24)

She was calling you out.

Stefanie (28:44)

Like somehow sharing about like, I was really high functioning. It is a weird way to go like, yeah, I'm not like you. But if you, if, and the whole point of that is that when we look at exactly what our behavior was like and the whole thing about 12 step, that's all it is. It's just like, it's learning to look at your own behavior. So they talk about like a fourth step, fourth step in the 12 step, like lingo.

Heather McG (28:52)

Right.

Stefanie (29:12)

is basically taking an inventory of yourself, all of your... And in writing down all the things that you get frustrated with, all of the resentments that you have about other people, all the reasons like you're mad at your mom or you're mad at your boss or all that, when you look at that with the help of somebody else who's in the program a little bit ahead of you, literally all it is is going, well, what's your part? What is your part in the patterns in your life?

Which if you look at all that is like, why do you drink? You drink over, you know, wanting to feel better, right? You drink over wanting to lessen your anxiety. Well, where does all that anxiety come from? A lot of times it comes from our relationships with other people and like the expectations that we have of other people's behavior, right? So like, my husband's mean to me. Okay. Well, something that you can do when you're kind of doing this work.

is look at like, well, I think my husband's mean to me. Well, what's my part? Maybe your part is just you have really high expectations of other people and their behavior, unrealistic expectations. Maybe you're just really judgmental.

Heather McG (30:19)

Yeah.

Right. When I...

Stefanie (30:24)

Maybe you have a

big ego. Maybe you think you're really more important than the other people in your family, and your needs should come first. When you look at that with somebody who's not judging you and who's just helping you go, I don't know, this could be true. Maybe it's not true. Does this feel true to you? Here's a way that you might be getting in your own way. You're like, and here's another time I do this. And here's another way that I do this.

Heather McG (30:44)

the

Stefanie (30:54)

And I find that to be really helpful. And bringing that back to when I pointed out to that friend of mine who said, maybe I'm not an alcoholic. It's like when another alcoholic points out to you like, OK, but you did tell me that you went to like a kid's birthday party and had so much to drink that another mom had to drive you home at 11 a.m. But now your brain has told you like, I don't think that was that bad.

That's not just like your husband pointing that out to you. That's a friend of yours who's also sick like you going like, I know, but like, here's what we do when we drink. And then that's so much easier to kind of laugh and go like, shit, yeah, I did do that.

Heather McG (31:38)

Yeah, it, yeah, you know, a lot of people, everyone that has come on the show has gone through it in some way. You know, they have a story of being in the trenches in some big way. And a theme that has popped up is like, sometimes we live in fantasy land, you know, it's like, we have a really, we're really attached to the narrative that we've designed because we know there's going to be a cost when we accept what the truth is. Whenever we, I really love the idea of acceptance because to me it is like,

Helped me my entire life once I got that down and acceptance is not saying it's okay But what it does do is it means you know the truth about yourself. You know the truth about reality and Something I love about you sharing your story is you share the the rough parts, you know go dark or go home

you share those things because really that is the only way to make a change or to make life better is if you try to sanitize it or create this narrative that wasn't actually what happened, you're not gonna get anywhere. You're not gonna be able to get through the shame, you're not gonna be able to make a healthy change because you're still living in fantasy land that's not what actually happened.

Stefanie (32:46)

It's so true. And I think that the trick is that you can recognize right away when you read somebody's memoir or you talk to them is how do you get out of the victim space and into the reality of like into your part. one of the reasons why I didn't feel ready to write about like

Heather McG (33:03)

Yeah.

Stefanie (33:08)

in a publishing kind of way about sobriety until I had a lot of years is because sometimes I read and like no judgment on people who have a couple years of sobriety and then write a book about sobriety. But there's a place you get to, which is acceptance, where you stop judging yourself so harshly and you go like, ⁓

What did that teach me? I spent a lot of years blaming it on everybody else. Whether it was subtle, I wasn't ⁓ a person who was constantly fighting with people and you're an asshole, it's all your fault. But it was subtle, it was in me to go, well, if that's true about me, then I'm going to have to change. And it's very scary to change. So I feel safer just having my drinks and thinking other people are the problem. And I'm pretty perfect.

Heather McG (33:52)

Yeah.

You are.

Stefanie (34:02)

Pretty. Pretty

special. Pretty much better than other people. It took a long time. I mean, I still have that. I still have same character defects, as they say. I'm always working on it. But usually, when I'm really judging somebody else, it's about something that's going on with me. It's about my own insecurity. But yeah, if you're going to...

If you're going to write about yourself, it doesn't serve anyone to like give other people those excuses. You you just got to get in there and like write the truth. But in order to do that, you got to know what the truth is.

Heather McG (34:41)

Did you, after you got sober, and I don't know the answer to this, this is very real question. When you got sober, earlier you had talked about how you were missing some moments of your kid's life because you'd been drinking or, you know, checked out at times with drinking. Once you got sober, was that uncomfortable to be essentially there all the time? You know, you had no place to go. What was that like for you? You're like, I want to leave right now.

Stefanie (35:05)

Still is!

Last night, I spent like three hours watching Love is Blind Sweden, season one on my phone. So like, yes, I still like to check out. I don't know who these people are that are just like, no, no sweets, no TV. Like you got to do. I don't know. I got to have something to take the edge off. Yeah, it was really hard. It was really hard. ⁓ And then it was really rewarding. You know, I am very proud of the fact that having

work through a lot of those uncomfortable moments of being there for every second of my kids. I know that I am very codependent. I over-parent. I definitely am over-involved. I'm a little helicopter-y. Not too much because I'm too self-interested to be too much controlling their lives. But you know.

When you do that, you tend to then feel all their feelings. when one kid says they're feeling sad because they're not popular, then that ruins your whole day. And you're like, how do I fix it? It's hard. And I have to work at that. yeah, but I can say now that my kids are like, my younger twins are turning 18. I got sober when they were 18 months. And my older daughter's turning 21.

Heather McG (36:12)

Yeah.

Wow.

Stefanie (36:26)

guess what? I have such a good relationship with all three of my kids. I do credit being present and reliable. Yeah, it was uncomfortable a lot of times.

Heather McG (36:38)

Now something you just mentioned having a, you know, how your life as a mom has evolved, you know, and kind of how you approach motherhood. Now something that you have talked about in a few previous interviews are you've gotten no contact with your parents. At a certain point you went no contact with your parents. And I know for me, I had a difficult childhood, which Stephanie and I have talked about this off camera a little bit.

And I know when I became a mom, I saw my whole childhood like flying in front of my eyes, you know, and I saw the whole thing differently. When you became a mom, did you see, how did that clarify your childhood for you and how did this all then die?

Stefanie (37:13)

I think that I've always been really hard on myself I think that for me, having kids clarified that it wasn't all my fault.

some of the tumultuous times with my relationship with my mother and stepfather, ⁓ I think I took on the label of like, I was difficult. I know why they treat me this way because I was a really tough kid. And then you have kids and you're like, that's just not really a thing. That wasn't a thing. And I'm not saying that some kids aren't very difficult and there's challenges. I'm not saying that.

But I'm saying, like, looking back at who I was, I wasn't that. I didn't have, like, oppositional defiance disorder. Like, I was a pretty normal kid, you know? And we're talking about back when I was, like, six, seven years old. And I was able to see that there were things going on in their lives that maybe prevented them from being the best for me.

Heather McG (38:09)

Yeah.

Stefanie (38:24)

And normally you'd be able to just go like, okay, well, wow, that gives me some perspective and I can forgive that. The problem is when you start seeing that no changes, they're not willing to change and all the changing and all the forgiving and all the has to come from me. And then at a certain point you just go like, now that I have kids, like I'm actually going to be better able to make boundaries.

And when you make boundaries and other people like don't agree with you making boundaries, then you have to make a decision on like, who are you going to have in your life?

Heather McG (38:59)

Now as we are, we're getting close to wrapping up here, but I do want to ask you, know, alcohol is one of the endings you've had in your life, and I'm sure there have been others throughout your existence. We all have a few, I think. What have some of the big endings in your life? What have been the big lessons that you've taken away from them?

Stefanie (39:00)

See you.

I can think of a, I can think of like a really painful breakup that I had when I was in my late twenties. And it was like the first time I'd really been in love, you know, and it was, that breakup was so painful. Like I was like, I will never, I don't, I don't know if I'll ever stop like pining for this person and I'll never, and that love.

was very chaotic. And it was a lot of pining for the person. It was a lot of like, maybe I don't deserve this person, like having to work hard for it. And I did. Yeah, right. And I tried so many things to get over it. I remember going to like church with a friend of mine who was like, come to our agape church. And I was holding hands with people like a church.

Heather McG (39:52)

Yeah, we've all been there.

Stefanie (40:06)

singing church songs. I was very desperate to feel only thing that eventually made me feel better was time. I remember going on some first dates and crying on dates because they're never going to be this person. I'm so happy in retrospect that that person ended it with me.

Heather McG (40:08)

Ha!

Stefanie (40:29)

Well, they forced me to end it with them. And then they said, no, that was the best. When I tried to go back on that, they're like, no, no, no, that's perfect.

Heather McG (40:37)

I hate it when people do that. That's the coward's way out. If you want to break up with me, break

up with me yourself. Don't trick me into doing it myself.

Stefanie (40:43)

Yes, yes, yes.

But like, what a great ending because and it taught me that even though it took a hell of long time, like I didn't meet my husband for another six years, or really have a boyfriend boyfriend for all that time. And I'm so happy like things work out, I think the way they're supposed to work out. And I don't mean that in an everything happens for a reason, like, you know, it's the best thing, it was very painful. But

I know that I can get through hard stuff. Is that like Glenn and Doyle? I didn't even week the hard thing. I didn't mean to like invoke that. But like, that was a big, that was an ending for me that was, I thought something that I wasn't gonna like survive. And I did.

Heather McG (41:18)

No.

Now this is a Stephanie Wilder

that's how it feels.

That's how it feels at the time. You feel like you're gonna die. You're like laying on the bathroom, like whatever it is. And what I think is interesting on this show is we talk about these things that like stuck with us, these huge endings that really made such an impact at the time. And then now we're talking about years later and it's like, I'm so glad that happened. Like, and we're even laughing about it, you know? And it's just, it is interesting ⁓ how that changes over time. And I think for me, the big lesson I've taken away from feeling like that, like what you're describing is,

This is how I feel today and no toxic positivity. sucks. It feels awful. But just that little hope that you're not always going to feel that way, I think matters. Like that's what you need to like keep going and just move forward the best you can that you are not always going to feel like this on the bathroom floor.

Stefanie (42:19)

Yeah.

Heather McG (42:20)

They're going to get over it or through it. should say through it. You don't always get over it, but you do get through it most of the time. Now for people that are listening that are on the other side of this, you know, maybe they have someone in their life. They're like, well, I really feel like they have a alcohol problem or there are things going on here. I don't know how to get through to them. I'm really concerned and worried. And maybe they're back where you were describing that you were like, it's not that bad, but the people around them are like, it is that bad. What are, what can they do? Is there anything they can do when they're on that side of it?

Stefanie (42:25)

Yeah.

I I think it's hard because people have to be ready to quit, but I don't think that you should not say something. I don't think that people should just be like, that's their... Especially if you're married to somebody like that, if it's your kid, ⁓ you have to. You have to intervene. I think it's a responsible thing to do. I don't think we can sit back and just go, well, they're on their own path. think, and especially if somebody's behavior is hurting you.

Heather McG (43:10)

Yeah.

Stefanie (43:18)

But I recommend going to like Al-Anon and learning to make boundaries and learning like what is your responsibility and what's not your responsibility. But it's hard, I feel, for people because it's really hard to convince people, especially addicts. It's real hard. They spend years building up all the defenses for why they should be allowed to engage in this behavior. And it's very difficult for them to see

Heather McG (43:44)

right.

Stefanie (43:47)

their own side of the street and how they're hurting people.

Heather McG (43:51)

think you just get so scared. You're so scared that if you say something to them, they're gonna like run away from you and never talk to you again.

I think it's just like, is so hard and so scary because you don't know what to say, you don't know what to do. And I think a lot of people do understand that person has to be in a place where they want to change and where they're ready to change. But it's just, I just think it is so challenging and hard because you don't know what to say. And I know for me, I was always worried that what if I say something, they get mad at me and they just cut off the relationship and then I can't even like.

be the phone call if they end up at the police station or something, you know, where they're just gone.

Stefanie (44:24)

Right. Add in the risk.

Heather McG (44:26)

Yeah, it's sad or difficult. Difficult is it the word I would say? would say.

Stephanie, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story today. Where can people find you if they wanna work with you or hear more from you, get to know your work better?

Stefanie (44:38)

Well, I teach memoir writing, you know that, ⁓ and they can find me just go to my website, Stephanie Wilder Taylor.com and it's Stephanie with an F. All my stuff is there on my classes. ⁓ My podcast drunkish I'm really like pushing that that I have people on every week.

with a different sobriety story, with a different message, twice a week. It airs Tuesdays and Thursdays. ⁓ Yeah. And I also do a, which I don't know how much of interest it'll be to people, but I do a bachelor. I recap The Bachelor on rose pricks. And I also have a podcast called For Crying Out Loud, which ostensibly was about parenting, but it's morphed into just life. Yeah.

Heather McG (45:24)

You are busy. And I will say,

I'm in Stephanie's ⁓ memoir writing group and it is really good. It's very helpful. It's a very supportive group while also like telling the truth about things you need to work on and maybe consider ⁓ adjusting. It's a really great class. And I'll link everything in the show notes. So everyone out there, the many things that Stephanie is doing, it'll be easy for you to find it all.

Stefanie (45:39)

Thank you.

⁓

Heather McG (45:46)

Thank you so much for being here and thank you to everyone who's listening to the show today, especially those of you who are on your own journey. And this is the season finale. So we will catch you next season. We hope you all have a great holiday break and we will see you next year.

Stefanie (46:01)

Thank you, Heather.