Sober Not Somber Hour: Freedom To Evolve

Hi all. Happy summer. Tuesday, July 8th. This is your host of Sober Not Somber Hour, Jen Barale. Welcome, everyone. And by everyone, I mean Rick. Thank you for being on time. It's awesome to see you in here. Ah, yay. Yeah. So just coming off of a week of the 4th and getting into like post holiday week. Hope everyone's doing well. Hi, Andy. Hi, Amar. Yeah, we are talking in the Cadresphere all July around the topic of freedom. And I have the freedom to choose to drink non alcoholic beverages. So if you noticed by the title Sober not Somber Hour, if you've been following, I'm always highlighting hi Amar.

I'm always highlighting a non alcoholic beverage of choice. So today I have a beverage called Tilden. It's a non alcoholic distilled spirit. So I talk about and introduce a lot of different categories of na. This one in particular, they have four different varieties. This is called Lacewing. And then it is, it has cucumber, basil, lychee and juniper. And y', all, I just drink this straight up. You can add a little bit of sparkling water if you like. Mmm. That's just so good. Oh, yeah. That is a great way to start off a summer happy hour in a non alcoholic way.

So thank you all for joining today's topic around freedom is freedom to evolve. And as always, I'm always looking up words. I'm a writer and it seemed like I knew what the, the word evolve meant, but it is to develop gradually, especially from a simple to a more complex form. So I thought that was interesting. As we're thinking about how we have the freedom to evolve and I'll just put that idea out there, whatever that stirs up for you. Do you feel like you're evolving this month? Do you feel like you are developing in a way that is kind of leading you to a higher version of yourself?

So I would make that distinction. When I was thinking about the word revolve, I was thinking, thinking about. So I have like 11 years almost coming up on alcohol free lifestyle, completely alcohol free. And I was thinking about the word revolve and I kept going around and around without the freedom to really get out of this spiral or a downward spiral. So I was not evolving when I was in active addiction. And what I've noticed over the last 11 years is that, yeah, I have evolved so much and it's tiny increments.

Like change is like 1%. And what that adds up to. Oh, hi y'. All. I'm just loving these comments. Leading the higher version of myself. Very calm and nicotine free Amar. Yes. So when I left alcohol, I was into nicotine for quite a while, and then also into sugar. And what I learned through the process of evolving is that through sobriety and through really just being with myself and my thoughts, I could apply those same tools to every aspect of my life. Yeah. So one thing I'd love to ask everyone, in terms of evolving, have you been evolving this month?

Do you have visions of yourself becoming a higher self this month? Or maybe this is the month of sort of staying the course. Where's everyone at? Chime in, please. And then I also want to prompt, you know, based on that, the question of the freedom to evolve. So that could be, are you allowing yourself freedom to evolve? Are others keeping you set in a pattern that maybe feels stifling? Or they're not contributing to your evolution. And part of what we're doing here as Cadre contributors is sharing our authentic story.

So when I was thinking about this and when I was trying to evolve 11 years ago from drinking heavily and being completely burned out to this idea of, I'm gonna evolve, I'm gonna change my patterns in my life, and I'm going to be a higher version of myself. I have to be. Yeah, I love that. Amara says this month is a month of working to getting, getting to know new communities. So in sobriety, I, early sobriety, had to ditch my friend group who liked to drink, and we drank together. We were college friends.

That's all we knew. And I remember telling them, you know, I need to just not drink. And they. One of my friends kind of laughed, and she's like, oh, Jen, you're not an alcoholic. And with that response, speak, wonder, stay in the course right now. Yes. With that response from her, it was very apparent to me that if I were going to evolve to my higher self, I needed to leave others doubts or hesitations about what to do with me or how to support or not support my evolution. I needed to leave those behind.

So I want to recognize that evolution, you know, starts from within, but oftentimes exterior forces. Others who don't understand what you're evolving to, they haven't seen this new vision or version of you. So it feels uncertain. They don't know necessarily how to support. And so you have to prove it. You have to prove it to yourself. You have to prove that, you know, you're. You're evolving and you can do that. You can change, you can be a higher version. And to be free enough from the perceptions of others and even your own self Doubt to allow that evolution to rise within you.

Yeah, Amar, being the whistleblower was challenging. I know a little bit of your story from the peer group sessions. Overthinking. Working for a company that had bad mental health, for me, I had to leave those behind. Yes. The things we need to do to evolve. I love that you brought that up. Because I had to leave the corporate workplace I was in when I decided to evolve and get sober because that environment did not support my next higher version. So are you free to evolve? Are there things in your life that the environment, your workplace relationships that you're in that may sort of need to go by the wayside in order to be this next higher version of yourself and that may feel uncertain?

I know for me I had no, no vision, no identity of who I was without daily alcohol use. I didn't know. And so to see like sparks of that evolution and trust in yourself, that to me, you know, became, became a freedom in that process. Like I am actually free to make these choices and, and no one else but me is going to champion that evolution. Ooh, yeah, Thinking about that this July and there's all sorts of things, if you follow astrology, happening right now with Uranus and Gemini coming into a seven year cycle and Gemini is social and communications and technology and things are going to be moving fast.

So it is a time, if you follow astrology, to use that momentum, use that energy in the universe and evolve yourself. Yeah, I think it's a really powerful time. I myself have been feeling it and yeah. Wanting to evolve towards more self care. The deep kind. Ooh, that's good, that's good. Oh, I'd be curious to see how that's happening. Stepping away says speak Wonder. Stepping away from people is very painful for chronic people pleasers. Oh gosh, yes. I mean isn't it interesting? I had people in my life, like I was saying, friends, like, didn't want to see me evolve, wanted to see me keep drinking and being able to hang out and do the things we used to do and that, that's a people pleaser thing.

I was like, I don't want to disappoint people. I don't want people to look at me as not fun Jen. And that's hard. I think evolution sometimes requires that stepping away. Oo, good stuff today on a Tuesday. All right. On a lighter note, I'm going to leave you with this amazing NA beverage and the encouragement to try some new things to evolve to a higher, let's say spirited palette. com or that's their Instagram super refreshing beverage. Cucumber basil. Basil with lychee and juniper. So really great for summer indulging without the hangover, without the alcohol.

So let's, let's all keep evolving. I am thinking about all of you who joined in, anyone who watches this and sometimes it's that 1%. So keep evolving, keep focusing on a higher version of yourself and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. Happy Tuesday and na. Cheers.