Sober Not Somber Hour: Freedom In Connection

Hello Cadresphere. Welcome. Welcome to Sober Not Summer Hour. I'm your host Jen Varale and I have some cool stuff to share with you today around the topic of freedom. So if you've been paying attention, all the contributors and the shares, many of us are talking this month all about freedom. Welcome. As we come in, I'm going to share, as I usually do, my favorite non alcoholic beverages of choice. Today I am consuming a sauna water. So this is actually a botanical, carbonated botanical that has juniper and a little bit of lemon and grapefruit and it is exactly what I want after a sauna session.

I don't know if you guys all know. Hi Kelly. Hi Amar. I am a co founder of Sauna and Sobriety. So Sauna and Sobriety for two years has been hosting sauna gatherings and we come together and drop in in community and we share like one word that brought us to the community and I love it. This is a beverage we serve at our events and interestingly enough it was created and brewed originally by Portage Brewing. So it was a alcohol forward company that decided to take a chance on something that wasn't alcohol.

And you know what, sales were so surprising to them and this was such a great product that they spun off completely. And now you'll find Sauna Water on Instagram as drink Sauna water. So follow their account. Yeah, I love it. There's also spruce and cardamom in here in addition to juniper. So here we are, another happy hour. And today the sub kind of context that I want to share is around freedom in connection. So I, I want to think, I want to prompt your thoughts around connections that you've had in your life, maybe think about some that you've had this month have connections to you felt free or forced.

And what I mean by that is connecting with someone in a way that feels authentic and you are free to kind of come and go out of the conversation. You feel at ease in the relationship. There is such a freedom and value in that as opposed to forced connection which I find happens all the time in business and in corporate spaces. I was just thinking about like corporate happy hours where you're sort of obligated maybe to join your co workers or be at a business co like an event together. And it might feel a little forced.

And we wonder why there's alcohol to ply us with inspiration to connect to others. But what I will say, and one of the most surprising things is I'm coming up on 11 years of sobriety is that when I have done completely non alcoholic happy hours. And I've hosted those and done a bar at a corporate event within 15 to 20 minutes. You see people just naturally unauthentically connecting without alcohol. And the myth is, you know, that we've. All society tells us and everyone talks about is that alcohol is the social lubricant.

It's the thing you want to ply people with so they can have a good time at your event. And of course all my work in the space challenges that notion because we're human, we want to connect and we want to be free to come in and out of connections and conversations. Yeah. So as you're thinking about how you've been connecting, I would say say, you know, with people in this, during this July, has anything felt particularly free or particularly forced? Yeah. And I think about like the, the days when I was in active addiction, connections felt a little forced.

Hi Nikki. And there's no joy in that. There's no joy in that. And no wonder. I felt like I needed maybe some alcohol to ply myself with in order to be. Amar says he feels free in connection. That's amazing. That's amazing. And yeah. Do you feel free in your, you know, work experiences, your personal life in relationships and also add that layer to it. And one other topic I wanted to dive a little deeper in today into today is that relationship piece of it. So freedom in connection in a relationship.

And I personally, these topics are always crazy because they just pop up and they're kind of suggested topics. But there's always something that feels relatable. And in a current relationship that I'm in, I have been sort of, I feel like compromising my own freedom in a connection to accommodate for someone else's needs. Anyone else do that? That is the, it's called the prison of people pleasing. And you guys, I, I thought and I still believe this connection, I'm talking about this relationship to be a valued one.

But things were revealed in conversation about my behavior in the relationship that really forced me to look at my people pleasing and my unwillingness to have my needs met and ask for my needs to be met. 53. Still learning new skills, coming off of a, you know, 22 year marriage, not ever really figuring out how to ask in like a really intentional way for what I need. So here it is again. And this is the beauty of, you know, all these things that continue to pop up throughout our lives in, in any given day is that in order to be free in a mutual, mutually beneficial, productive relationship, you need to be in A place where you can be free to share what your desires are for it, how, how you want your needs met.

And there's so much nuance in that. So much nuance. And I will add again, as we go deeper and deeper, another layer to that is if one a person is drinking alcohol or numbing our own needs, it's incredibly hard to share what those might be with someone else in a relationship. And I would say, you know, in the experience of having, you know, a husband for 20 some years and being in active addiction for many, many of those years, I have really sort of, I need to train myself out of that because I just didn't know how to ask.

I wasn't like free to be in a very mutual beneficial connection. How's that landing with anyone? Does that feel like resonates? Are there times in relationships when you have felt like, not free to be yourself? Maybe. And then I would say the biggest piece of that for me in this particular situation I'm talking about has been awareness. Like just the shocking awareness that here I thought I was like really free and open in this connection. Yet things were revealed to me as I started with some therapy, diving into that, that they weren't.

And I was not practicing self care. So freedom and connection is also self care, self love, like understanding what you need in a relationship. So important. Who's got it all figured out? Yes. No. Nikki, Amar, Kelly. Anyone know the secret? No, there's. I just. It's just work. It takes work. Yeah. And I think the idea of kind of this illusion that alcohol gives us all these courage, the courage to do all these things and be connected is a misnomer, a complete myth that I had in my head as an introverted, you know, woman in my 20s.

And I have to wonder, you know, how much that impacted my ability to be in true connection with people. Because in the back of my mind was always like, when is my next drink? How can I drink more? How can I continue to stay out? You know, all of these things that cloud true and authentic connection. So really working toward that this month, it's a struggle. It's a struggle. And it's hard to be shown things when you feel like you've done a lot of the work on yourself. And yet these, you know, aha.

Moments that another person reflects to you and ha. And forces you to look at some deep, hard truths is not fun. It's not great. It can feel like a huge disconnect. Like I thought I knew myself. So I would encourage everyone to kind of explore where you're finding, if you are, that freedom and connection, is it in a relationship? Is it in an environment? I talk about again, sauna all the time. And that environment to me, and when I say sauna experiences, I mean larger saunas that can hold up to eight people so that you can be in community with people in that space.

And I also love the freedom of leaving, exiting or entering the sauna whenever you want, like mid conversation because you're, you know, too hot, whatever, you can literally just exit the conversation and it's fine. You know, the long Minnesota networking conversations that are hard to get out of doesn't happen in the sauna. Another reason I love it. So that is a space that's an environment that has enhanced freedom and connection. And also people in those spaces tend to understand more connected and authentic relationships.

So in your search for freedom and connection, be thinking about your environment and the people that you surround yourself with and asking the question if you really are showing up in an authentic way and you feel like an ease in that connection. I wish that for you all on this Tuesday, July 15, 2025. Have a great evening. Drink NA beverages. There's so many to choose from and we will catch you next week. Cadre Sphere.