WEBVTT - This file has cues. 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:03.120 This story involves aspects of addiction and self-harm. 00:00:03.440 --> 00:00:10.440 Listen with care. Hey, how are you? And if you say you're fine, I'm gonna 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:14.760 assume you mean, like the acronym. Freaked out, insecure, 00:00:15.160 --> 00:00:19.680 neurotic and emotional. So, 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:23.880 have you heard the term life quake? Well, in this podcast, 00:00:23.880 --> 00:00:27.480 we talk about life quakes, those unpredictable seismic shifts that, 00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:31.720 in time, lead to profound personal growth and empowerment. 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:37.480 Here you can expect heartfelt stories that reveal both the joy and the 00:00:37.480 --> 00:00:43.800 discomfort of unexpected change. And I think you're gonna like it 00:00:43.800 --> 00:00:46.680 here. My name is Shawn, 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:56.680 and this is something shifted. Today's story belongs to SJ. 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:01.860 The shift for me was having to come face to face with my biggest fear. 00:01:02.540 --> 00:01:05.940 On my own. Two small kids facing a future as a 00:01:05.940 --> 00:01:11.980 single parent. That was my fear. Doing it alone. That's next. 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:22.540 I know you're busy and planning what your family will eat isn't 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:25.100 always top of mind. 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Do it today. 00:02:46.910 --> 00:02:52.510 This is a story about love. Although it's not a traditional love 00:02:52.510 --> 00:02:59.550 story, it's about love, addiction, the fear of not being loved, the kind 00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:03.370 of love that can keep you alive. It's about a mother's love, 00:03:03.410 --> 00:03:08.010 about facing your greatest fear and learning to love yourself 00:03:08.010 --> 00:03:11.210 through it all. I always think of healing as peeling 00:03:11.210 --> 00:03:16.050 the onion, and it was time to go to another layer of the onion. I had to. 00:03:16.210 --> 00:03:20.130 That's when I realized, stop worrying about I'm traumatizing my kids. 00:03:20.130 --> 00:03:23.330 I'm traumatizing my kids and peel them. Can I swear? 00:03:23.770 --> 00:03:28.490 Peel the fucking onion. If you're an avid radio listener, 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:32.490 you might recognize Sue's voice from a Cape Town talk radio station. 00:03:32.690 --> 00:03:36.890 And based on her accent alone, you'd be correct to assume that she 00:03:36.890 --> 00:03:41.210 grew up in the UK, but her accent doesn't reveal the affair her 00:03:41.210 --> 00:03:46.250 biological parents had in the 1980s under apartheid's Immorality Act. 00:03:46.970 --> 00:03:51.330 In her first book, Killing Caroline, S.J. reveals 00:03:51.330 --> 00:03:54.730 the shocking lie created to cover up her birth parents forbidden 00:03:54.730 --> 00:03:57.930 relationship and the hurried adoption of their illegitimate 00:03:57.930 --> 00:04:03.260 baby named Caroline at birth. She was renamed Sarah Jane after 00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:07.220 being abandoned by her birth parents and then adopted by a British couple. 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:14.580 SJ was only seven weeks old, and this history means her family 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:23.500 tree has many branches. Jeepers. Okay. Oh, gosh. So biological mother. 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:26.380 Biological father. Don't know. Biological mother. Do know. 00:04:26.380 --> 00:04:29.060 Biological father. And my siblings from him. 00:04:29.340 --> 00:04:32.100 I have a half sibling from my biological mother who I don't 00:04:32.100 --> 00:04:34.620 speak to. I have adopted an adoptive mother. 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:37.700 My adoptive father has died. My adoptive mum lives in the UK. 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:42.420 Um, I had an adoptive brother. He also died. Where do we get to now? 00:04:42.660 --> 00:04:48.020 My current setup is that I am a mom of two children. 00:04:48.300 --> 00:04:52.940 So depending on how you look at it, SJ is either one of two, 00:04:53.540 --> 00:04:59.300 one of 5 or 1 of eight children. And maybe all this complicated 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:04.200 Branching is why S.J. decided that if she ever had kids herself, 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:09.920 she would do anything to protect them, and also why she did not, 00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:14.520 under any circumstance, want to be a single parent. 00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:20.280 Let's be clear there are many people who are fantastic single parents who 00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:25.280 even seek it out as a life path. But SJ only wanted to parent 00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:29.840 with a dedicated partner, and part of that reasoning about 00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:35.080 parenting in partnership comes from Suga's original Kwek and not being 00:05:35.080 --> 00:05:41.160 raised by her biological parents. And that has had the most profound 00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:46.120 impact on me than any other thing in my life that that relinquishment. 00:05:47.080 --> 00:05:55.240 It has set up who I am. And why I became. 00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:58.200 Why I am the why the way I it's my why. 00:05:58.840 --> 00:06:01.220 Largely not that I'm in bondage by that. 00:06:01.220 --> 00:06:04.820 I don't feel held hostage these days by that, but it's set in 00:06:04.820 --> 00:06:09.900 motion an awful lot of things. Feelings of being less than. 00:06:09.940 --> 00:06:13.580 Feelings of not being good enough. My own addictions that spurred 00:06:13.580 --> 00:06:16.500 from that. My relationship with my adoptive 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:21.740 mother. So many things. Because it's such a pre-verbal 00:06:22.180 --> 00:06:28.180 trauma. There's no, um. You don't exist before trauma 00:06:28.180 --> 00:06:30.460 has come into your life. You're seven weeks old. 00:06:32.260 --> 00:06:37.020 This is the fundamental fracture, that irreversible quake in life. 00:06:37.580 --> 00:06:42.540 SJ has endured many things that would make most of us cower in a corner. 00:06:42.980 --> 00:06:46.420 But the one thing that she feared the most. 00:06:46.860 --> 00:06:51.420 Being a single parent happened in 2023. 00:06:51.700 --> 00:06:56.180 I made the decision when my son was about four months old that I 00:06:56.300 --> 00:07:02.270 told my partner, you have to leave. I told you this was a story 00:07:02.270 --> 00:07:05.150 about a mother's love. And that part of the story will 00:07:05.190 --> 00:07:09.670 become clear. But it's also a story about the kind 00:07:09.670 --> 00:07:16.230 of love that keeps us alive, love that wrecks us, and love addiction. 00:07:16.950 --> 00:07:20.910 So to appreciate the depth of JJ's decision to become a single parent, 00:07:21.350 --> 00:07:23.910 to hold her story in our hearts with empathy. 00:07:24.590 --> 00:07:32.910 We need to journey back to 2007, when SJ was 26 years old and in a 00:07:32.910 --> 00:07:38.790 rehab clinic. Um, I was in treatment. I was in rehab for various 00:07:39.150 --> 00:07:42.270 addictions and behavioral things, behavioral addictions. 00:07:42.270 --> 00:07:46.550 And I had I was in a different treatment center, 00:07:46.630 --> 00:07:49.110 and I'd started self-harming again in this treatment center. 00:07:49.110 --> 00:07:51.830 And that we can't hold you in this space. 00:07:51.830 --> 00:07:54.950 We are here for people who've got addictions we can't be dealing with. 00:07:54.990 --> 00:07:58.350 You need to go somewhere else for a bit and ended up in a clinic, 00:07:58.870 --> 00:08:02.210 um, at but kind of with clinic. And, um, one day there I was, 00:08:02.210 --> 00:08:05.850 and I used to have my arms, like, bandage from, from elbow to wrist. 00:08:05.850 --> 00:08:09.010 And I was walking down the hallway, and the most attractive man that I'd 00:08:09.010 --> 00:08:12.650 ever seen in my whole life walked down the hallway towards me and 00:08:12.690 --> 00:08:18.330 literally took my breath away and sparked some sort of hope or joy 00:08:18.650 --> 00:08:21.570 or something in me that I hadn't felt for a really long time, like I 00:08:21.570 --> 00:08:24.610 was on suicide watch at the time. I was trying to take myself out 00:08:24.610 --> 00:08:27.770 every day. It was a really bleak time, and down 00:08:28.050 --> 00:08:32.130 the hallway walked this person, and this person is now the father 00:08:32.130 --> 00:08:36.450 of my two beautiful children. Nearly 20 something years later. 00:08:37.050 --> 00:08:41.410 If you've ever watched a series or a movie where a character is battling 00:08:41.410 --> 00:08:45.170 addiction and is in treatment, you'll have seen a health care 00:08:45.170 --> 00:08:49.290 professional give that patient very strict instructions to not 00:08:49.290 --> 00:08:55.170 develop a romantic relationship, especially not with someone who 00:08:55.170 --> 00:09:00.790 is also battling addiction. He was in Kenilworth Clinic for a 00:09:00.790 --> 00:09:05.310 heroin detox. He was a heroin addict. You know, they say in these 00:09:05.310 --> 00:09:09.150 treatment facilities, you know, no fraternizing. For obvious reasons. 00:09:09.790 --> 00:09:12.190 Um, you know, and if you start getting a little bit too close 00:09:12.190 --> 00:09:15.310 to somebody, they come in. The nurses used to say, 00:09:15.350 --> 00:09:18.270 whatever you're doing, keep doing it. They'd say to him, keep talking 00:09:18.310 --> 00:09:20.870 to her. Keep talking to her. Keep talking to her. 00:09:24.510 --> 00:09:31.230 We're going to call this man Inva. This is not his real name. 00:09:32.590 --> 00:09:40.630 Enver would sit with S.J. every day, holding her hand, talking to her and 00:09:40.630 --> 00:09:46.870 giving her a reason to stay alive. That day. He literally saved my life. 00:09:48.470 --> 00:09:52.390 At that point, at the age of, what, 2627, when all I was 00:09:52.390 --> 00:09:57.830 trying to do at that point was find ways to avoid the nurse. 00:09:58.070 --> 00:10:05.080 Escape from the asylum and try and kill myself and that meeting. 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:10.480 At such a profound time of my life that's in there, that's embedded 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:14.440 in my limbic system somewhere. Then there was me and him. 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:21.040 And our relationship has been a very, very complex one. 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:26.000 But suffice to say, we've stayed around each other long 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:30.520 enough to conceive two children. If you've journeyed with addiction 00:10:30.520 --> 00:10:35.000 yourself or with someone you love, you'll understand this. 00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:41.760 The complexity, the messiness, the realness of a love that 00:10:41.760 --> 00:10:49.720 saves and a love that hurts. If you've not lived with or near 00:10:49.760 --> 00:10:54.280 addiction, we need you to suspend judgment here and to let 00:10:54.280 --> 00:10:58.900 go of any assumptions that you might have about addiction. 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:06.580 Addiction is something that starts as a very useful mechanism 00:11:07.300 --> 00:11:12.900 to prevent pain, you know, or might talks about a normal 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:18.500 reaction to an abnormal situation. It is an absolutely direct response 00:11:18.500 --> 00:11:21.660 to trauma, whatever that trauma might look like. I know people don't. 00:11:22.020 --> 00:11:25.100 People when people say trauma, but nothing ever happened to me. 00:11:25.140 --> 00:11:27.700 Trauma can be a pattern of behavior. It can be a dysfunction. 00:11:27.700 --> 00:11:30.060 It can be an event. It can be a number of things. 00:11:30.060 --> 00:11:33.740 It can be an abandonment, whatever it might be. But it is. 00:11:34.020 --> 00:11:37.900 The addiction begins as a as a protection mechanism to protect 00:11:37.900 --> 00:11:40.300 oneself from that which we want. We want to do that. 00:11:40.300 --> 00:11:46.540 We want we want for that to happen. But then because we are not, 00:11:46.540 --> 00:11:53.020 then as addicts, given the adequate tools to deal with the thing in a 00:11:53.020 --> 00:11:57.780 safe way, that becomes our safe way until it's no longer serving 00:11:57.780 --> 00:12:02.030 us in that way until that. That looks as if it's the problem. 00:12:02.590 --> 00:12:05.590 It's never the problem. It's the unresolved trauma for 00:12:05.590 --> 00:12:08.070 for all of us. People can get very hooked on. 00:12:08.110 --> 00:12:12.750 Why don't you just stop? Um. Because it's a disease of the mind, 00:12:12.750 --> 00:12:15.550 and it's a disease of the body. It's a it's a physical thing. 00:12:15.830 --> 00:12:20.590 And then it's also a, you know, the the mind is such a powerful thing. 00:12:21.470 --> 00:12:26.230 Ever since she started treatment, S.J. has been committed to healing. 00:12:26.630 --> 00:12:29.510 And part of healing is learning to understand the mechanisms 00:12:29.510 --> 00:12:34.790 that she'd been using to build a life around that original 00:12:34.790 --> 00:12:39.110 fracture of abandonment. As much I've been clean and sober for 00:12:39.230 --> 00:12:45.710 18 years, but my biggest addiction is codependence the love addiction 00:12:45.710 --> 00:12:50.950 stuff, the attachment essentially, which all kind of probably harps 00:12:50.950 --> 00:12:53.270 back to. I'm not probably. I know it does to being adopted 00:12:53.270 --> 00:12:55.910 at seven weeks old and all of that kind of stuff. 00:12:57.310 --> 00:13:01.410 SG has been committed to her healing journey and working on her sobriety 00:13:01.410 --> 00:13:05.930 since she left the rehab clinic, and Enver continued to be a very 00:13:05.930 --> 00:13:09.050 important person in her life. And in 2019, 00:13:09.050 --> 00:13:13.370 they decided to start a family. When the 12 week scan came around, 00:13:13.370 --> 00:13:16.130 the couple found out they were having a baby girl. 00:13:17.170 --> 00:13:22.690 It was also in that time that SG found out Enver had relapsed and 00:13:22.690 --> 00:13:26.730 was using heroin again. And then I didn't see him again 00:13:26.730 --> 00:13:30.410 until the day before I gave birth. So I went through an entire pregnancy 00:13:30.410 --> 00:13:36.650 essentially completely alone. It was horrendous and to the 00:13:36.650 --> 00:13:42.370 point where I'd called my brother in Jo'burg and said, 00:13:42.370 --> 00:13:45.690 I'm going to give birth on my own. Can you come? And he said, yeah. 00:13:45.730 --> 00:13:53.090 And he came down from Jo'burg, and we were at our mews and berg, and 00:13:53.210 --> 00:13:56.130 my arm and my ankles are so swollen. And I was and I was giving birth 00:13:56.130 --> 00:13:58.790 on the Wednesday. It was Tuesday evening and I said, 00:13:58.790 --> 00:14:00.310 I've got to go and put my feet in the water. 00:14:00.310 --> 00:14:05.910 And I had sent a message to to Envers mom, who had also completely 00:14:05.910 --> 00:14:08.910 ignored me throughout my pregnancy, his entire family. It was awful. 00:14:09.710 --> 00:14:12.670 And I sent a message and I said, tell your son his daughter's 00:14:12.670 --> 00:14:14.670 being born tomorrow. I hadn't heard a word from 00:14:14.670 --> 00:14:17.910 anybody for months, and I wasn't expecting anything to happen. 00:14:18.310 --> 00:14:21.830 And my phone rang and it was him. And I hadn't heard his voice for 00:14:21.830 --> 00:14:28.810 six months. And he said, hi, babe. And I said, I'm giving you a 48 00:14:28.810 --> 00:14:32.430 hour pass to come and watch your daughter being born for her sake, 00:14:32.430 --> 00:14:35.750 so that when she's older, I can say your father bore witness 00:14:35.750 --> 00:14:41.870 to your entry into the world. And so the next morning I got up at, 00:14:41.910 --> 00:14:46.190 you know, 6:30 in the morning, and I went to the house, his 00:14:46.190 --> 00:14:50.750 parents house, to go and fetch him. And he looked like you would probably 00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:53.630 imagine a heroin addict who'd been on the street for six months, 00:14:53.630 --> 00:15:00.160 looked ill fitting clothes, very, very thin. He looked shocking. 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:03.560 And we got in the car and we were driving to the hospital to 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:06.440 go and have a baby. And as we were, as I was driving, 00:15:06.440 --> 00:15:13.640 he said, we need to stop. You need to stop here. 00:15:14.120 --> 00:15:16.480 And about 50 minutes later, he came back on, came back into 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:20.200 the car without his shirt on, and he had literally sold the shirt 00:15:20.200 --> 00:15:23.760 off his back for heroin to use before because he wouldn't make it through. 00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:29.040 He wouldn't make it through the birth without having use XJS. 00:15:29.080 --> 00:15:32.760 Vision of parenthood was coming apart at the seams. 00:15:33.400 --> 00:15:37.280 She was alone, without any family in Cape Town 00:15:37.560 --> 00:15:42.640 with a baby and a partner in active addiction while the world was in 00:15:42.640 --> 00:15:48.760 the grips of a global pandemic. We had managed to claw back through 00:15:50.240 --> 00:15:57.120 the universe's grace, uh, a 12 step programs, an awful lot of therapy. 00:15:57.500 --> 00:16:02.060 We'd managed to start piecing together some semblance of of a life. 00:16:03.260 --> 00:16:07.140 We'd got to a point where he'd got clean and life started to look 00:16:07.140 --> 00:16:10.660 like things could be really good. At this point, 00:16:10.700 --> 00:16:15.900 Enver was two years sober, and that's still considered early recovery. 00:16:16.580 --> 00:16:21.540 SJ desperately wanted another baby, so they decided to add to their 00:16:21.540 --> 00:16:24.860 family of three. Their son was born in December 00:16:24.860 --> 00:16:30.820 of 2022, and although Enver was technically still sober, SJ had 00:16:30.820 --> 00:16:37.420 started noticing some warning signs. But I was noticing that the things 00:16:37.420 --> 00:16:42.780 that are required for somebody to do to stay clean and not just physically 00:16:42.780 --> 00:16:47.780 clean, but emotionally sober, which for people in recovery is 00:16:47.780 --> 00:16:51.300 very often 12 step meetings. It's a connection to we talk about 00:16:51.300 --> 00:16:54.660 a higher power. It's connection. You know, it's Johann Hari says 00:16:54.660 --> 00:16:58.510 the opposite of of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection. 00:16:58.510 --> 00:17:02.190 And I started to notice that he wasn't doing those things. 00:17:02.390 --> 00:17:08.230 And the fear that welled up in me of I can't be a single mom again. 00:17:08.870 --> 00:17:13.630 But because SJ had continued to do the inner work in her journey, 00:17:14.270 --> 00:17:19.030 she knew full well that the fear came from her own fractures and wounds. 00:17:20.150 --> 00:17:24.350 My core is to hang on is not. Don't be abandoned, don't be 00:17:24.350 --> 00:17:27.790 abandoned, don't be abandoned. So I'll hang on to things that I 00:17:27.790 --> 00:17:32.390 should be letting go of. And so there was. 00:17:32.390 --> 00:17:35.870 Yeah, there was the fear of, I can't do this on my own. 00:17:36.870 --> 00:17:39.830 Uh, I don't want to do this on my own. 00:17:41.150 --> 00:17:45.510 And it was like this monster that was just growing and growing and 00:17:45.510 --> 00:17:52.710 growing and growing. Um. And the fear was so multi-layered. 00:17:52.990 --> 00:17:56.190 It was. I alone am not enough for my kids, 00:17:56.630 --> 00:18:01.090 it was. I'm not going to be able to 00:18:01.130 --> 00:18:05.130 protect them from the trauma that I experienced as a child, 00:18:05.130 --> 00:18:08.690 that now, as a parent, I'm trying. I will do anything to protect 00:18:08.690 --> 00:18:13.650 them from being traumatized. And yet, this is the one thing 00:18:13.650 --> 00:18:17.810 that I don't know if I can do. This is the part of the story about a 00:18:17.810 --> 00:18:23.730 mother's love, the kind of love that gives you courage to step into fear. 00:18:24.530 --> 00:18:29.690 And then when my son was about four months old, I thought, 00:18:29.810 --> 00:18:35.610 if things carry on this way, he's going to relapse and I 00:18:35.690 --> 00:18:40.570 can't have my kids around that. I was still dealing with the trauma 00:18:40.570 --> 00:18:45.890 of of of his using, relapsing, getting clean, relapsing, 00:18:45.890 --> 00:18:50.170 getting clean of when our daughter was born and the first couple of 00:18:50.170 --> 00:18:53.810 years of her life, I was still processing that in therapy, like what 00:18:53.810 --> 00:19:00.110 that was and how crazy that was. And now it had happened again. 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.230 And I had not one, but two small children. 00:19:03.830 --> 00:19:08.830 And I was the main breadwinner. My biggest fear had just happened. 00:19:08.950 --> 00:19:13.550 And yet I was the one that had told him to go. I'd facilitated that. 00:19:14.110 --> 00:19:17.670 So that was the quake. The worst thing in the world that 00:19:17.670 --> 00:19:22.750 could happen to me as I exist is happening, which is that I am a 00:19:22.750 --> 00:19:29.710 single parent and it's all on me. SJ did the hardest thing and 00:19:29.710 --> 00:19:34.230 faced her biggest fear. And the wheels, they came off 00:19:34.230 --> 00:19:40.670 completely. I don't have family here. And the loneliness and aloneness 00:19:40.670 --> 00:19:46.550 of it was breathtaking. I was postpartum. 00:19:47.350 --> 00:19:50.870 I was trying to feed a child. You know, I had a kid on the boob. 00:19:50.870 --> 00:19:54.470 I had one who was just a little bit over three, whose dad had 00:19:54.470 --> 00:20:00.360 disappeared. The idol of her life. So this man who used to tuck her 00:20:00.360 --> 00:20:03.040 into bed at night, wake her up in the morning, bath her, 00:20:03.080 --> 00:20:09.440 do her hair. Her God had disappeared. And I was trying to deal with that. 00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:13.840 His abandonment of us and every abandonment issue in me just 00:20:13.840 --> 00:20:16.480 going up, up, up. The truly hard part about this 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:20.680 is that in so many ways, we've lost the essence of the village 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:26.200 that helps raise a child that step in when the parents need help. 00:20:26.520 --> 00:20:31.160 Nobody jumps up and down and says, let's come and help everyone just go. 00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:34.040 She just has to get on with it. She'll she'll cope because 00:20:34.040 --> 00:20:37.120 that's what we do. Except that very often we're not 00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:42.920 coping. Not only was S.j not coping. She was also doing a job that 00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:46.880 required for her to switch the microphone on and pretend that 00:20:46.880 --> 00:20:49.040 she was doing well for the sake of the listeners. 00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:54.760 That morning we came breakfast. You know, and do this whole thing 00:20:55.480 --> 00:21:00.580 and the mask was exhausting. If you press that button, 00:21:00.580 --> 00:21:05.060 the red light goes on and all the luck that you're going through it, 00:21:05.100 --> 00:21:09.220 it might as well not be happening. I would come off air and be drained 00:21:09.620 --> 00:21:14.660 and also feel like a fraud, because so much of my personality 00:21:14.660 --> 00:21:19.100 and so much of what I want to bring to my radio show is authenticity. 00:21:20.340 --> 00:21:26.100 But nobody knew what was going on. And how broken I was. 00:21:26.100 --> 00:21:30.540 I was just broken. I just used to cry myself to 00:21:30.540 --> 00:21:33.780 sleep and into my pillow because I didn't want to wake the kids. 00:21:34.500 --> 00:21:37.180 I got sick one day. I was at work. I was on air. 00:21:37.940 --> 00:21:40.860 By the time the show started at seven, by the time 10:00, 00:21:40.860 --> 00:21:44.820 dripping sweat barely drive home and. And the nanny who was looking 00:21:44.820 --> 00:21:48.060 after my kid. God bless the nanny. I mean, she needs a shout out because 00:21:48.060 --> 00:21:55.380 she put up with a whole load of shit. She was leaving and I had no one, 00:21:55.580 --> 00:21:58.670 and I literally put on Facebook, which I am not. 00:21:58.710 --> 00:22:01.510 You know, it's not my thing. I'm here with two kids and I'm 00:22:01.510 --> 00:22:04.910 ill and I need help. Strangers turned up to my house. 00:22:04.950 --> 00:22:08.470 A friend of mine in Durban called people they had in Milnerton who 00:22:08.470 --> 00:22:13.070 came through to the southern suburbs and helped me look after 00:22:13.070 --> 00:22:17.430 my kids because I was bedridden. It makes sense why doing 00:22:17.430 --> 00:22:20.990 parenting alone was the scariest thing I could imagine. 00:22:21.870 --> 00:22:25.350 Remember what she said earlier? That the opposite of addiction is 00:22:25.350 --> 00:22:30.990 not sobriety. It's connection. And as a recovering addict, 00:22:31.310 --> 00:22:34.990 SJ knew she was choosing to sever connections. 00:22:35.590 --> 00:22:39.670 She was signing up to be alone when she told Enver to leave. 00:22:40.590 --> 00:22:44.990 And the thing that feeds that loneliness is shame. 00:22:45.350 --> 00:22:51.910 An awful lot of people had walked the journey with Enver and I. 00:22:54.990 --> 00:22:58.010 And they'd been present for an awful lot of the relapses. 00:22:58.010 --> 00:23:00.490 And that he's clean again. And the relapses. 00:23:00.770 --> 00:23:05.450 And I felt embarrassed. I thought people would be like, well, 00:23:06.730 --> 00:23:11.410 you had a second baby with him. Particularly people who didn't 00:23:11.410 --> 00:23:17.650 understand addiction. I felt ashamed. Because most of us do not really 00:23:17.650 --> 00:23:21.650 understand addiction. We tend to approach it with 00:23:21.650 --> 00:23:27.090 rationality and rules, but it doesn't work like that. 00:23:27.650 --> 00:23:30.730 Addiction is such a is such a curious beast. 00:23:30.730 --> 00:23:34.570 We talk about it in the rooms as being cunning, baffling and powerful, 00:23:34.570 --> 00:23:44.010 in that one assumes if your partner and the father of your children is an 00:23:44.090 --> 00:23:50.650 active heroin user, of course you're not going to allow them to have 00:23:50.650 --> 00:23:55.090 contact with you and your children. The relapse happens in the mind long 00:23:55.110 --> 00:23:58.950 before somebody picks up the drug, whatever that might be. 00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:03.990 And we talk about the idea of a dry drunk, somebody not working a program 00:24:03.990 --> 00:24:11.710 of recovery, um, but still abstaining from the addictive behavior, 00:24:11.710 --> 00:24:16.030 the substance, but not doing the work that allows you to. 00:24:16.310 --> 00:24:18.470 You know, addiction is a manifestation of a thing. 00:24:18.470 --> 00:24:20.870 It's not the thing. The substance is not the thing. 00:24:23.750 --> 00:24:28.630 And you know it again all the time that somebody is not 00:24:28.990 --> 00:24:33.630 actively engaged in the behavior. And that switch hasn't gone off 00:24:33.630 --> 00:24:36.710 in the brain. I always say, even if, even if 00:24:36.710 --> 00:24:39.390 they're not working a program, and I'm saying they but I should 00:24:39.390 --> 00:24:41.790 speak for myself as a recovering addict as well. 00:24:43.350 --> 00:24:47.270 There's all this, you've still got to do this. 00:24:47.310 --> 00:24:51.150 And something in the game, you still you've still there's still hope. 00:24:51.990 --> 00:24:58.240 Once the once the addictive behavior that first hit the first. 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.120 Whatever it is, all bets are off then. 00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:07.800 So even though SJ knew this about addiction, it still felt personal, 00:25:08.560 --> 00:25:13.240 like a punch to the gut. I used to go into therapy and just 00:25:13.240 --> 00:25:18.320 say, but why? But why? But why? How does he do what I was trying to 00:25:18.320 --> 00:25:23.640 get rather than looking at myself? And I think this is where the growth 00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:28.320 factor then came for a long time, rather than looking at myself 00:25:28.320 --> 00:25:32.480 and what compelled me to stay in a situation in that way. 00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:38.280 By this point I was probably 13, 14, or 15 years sober myself. 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:40.960 Most of my friends are recovering addicts. 00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:44.640 I know the stuff, but when it's that close to home, 00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:49.280 it's almost like you can't. I was trying to make sense of it. 00:25:49.280 --> 00:25:54.920 I needed to make sense of it in a way that wasn't just. But you know why? 00:25:55.020 --> 00:25:58.940 Because it's addiction. There's nothing else outside of that. 00:25:59.220 --> 00:26:03.580 There's nothing. This isn't you. He's not doing this because it's you. 00:26:03.820 --> 00:26:08.020 He's not doing it. It's his own journey that he's on. 00:26:08.060 --> 00:26:11.140 You know this. But I couldn't. I could intellectualize it, 00:26:11.140 --> 00:26:14.660 but I couldn't feel that because it feels so personal. 00:26:14.740 --> 00:26:19.580 When somebody is in in addiction, their behavior towards you. 00:26:20.060 --> 00:26:23.420 You're so incredulous that somebody can feel that way and 00:26:23.420 --> 00:26:27.660 behave that way. You feel as if it must be personal, 00:26:27.780 --> 00:26:31.820 and it isn't. You can't. You can jump up and down. 00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:35.180 You can swear and shout at them. You can be loving to them. 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:38.500 If somebody's not ready to get well from addiction. 00:26:38.780 --> 00:26:42.780 There's nothing you can do. You know I am powerless over 00:26:42.780 --> 00:26:48.700 another person in their addiction. And what it forced me to do was 00:26:49.860 --> 00:26:52.420 really start doing the work on myself. 00:26:52.580 --> 00:26:57.160 It takes enormous courage to choose the path that you fear the most. 00:26:57.480 --> 00:27:05.040 Trying to heal when you are going through your own quake. 00:27:05.240 --> 00:27:11.360 Your own emotional emotional upheaval. Emotional catastrophe. 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:14.640 Trying to heal for the sake of two little people who are 00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:17.840 looking to you for everything. Is one of the hardest things. 00:27:17.840 --> 00:27:19.680 And I'm someone you know. I've always been committed to my 00:27:19.680 --> 00:27:21.080 recovery. I've always been committed to 00:27:21.080 --> 00:27:24.720 emotional growth. Always. So I would I would say to my 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:27.760 therapist every week, my therapist is brilliant. 00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:33.400 Thank God for her. Um, I would. Say I'm messing up my kids. 00:27:33.400 --> 00:27:38.960 And she would say, SJ, you are committed to doing the work. 00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:42.160 You keep showing up, you keep showing up. 00:27:42.160 --> 00:27:44.560 And at that time it fell on deaf ears. 00:27:44.560 --> 00:27:47.280 I felt like she was just it was lip service. 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:51.960 And I'm paying you to say that. I realize now that she wasn't. 00:27:52.320 --> 00:27:56.810 SJ made it through long, lonely nights, many cold Cape Town winters. 00:27:56.970 --> 00:27:59.730 Many of the things that she feared the most. 00:28:00.170 --> 00:28:04.410 And through it all, the fear of abandonment. Love, addiction. 00:28:04.410 --> 00:28:10.890 Love that breaks. Love that heals. SJ has learned to love herself 00:28:10.890 --> 00:28:13.330 through the journey. First of all, you can't stop 00:28:13.330 --> 00:28:17.250 your kids feeling pain. That's going to happen. 00:28:17.370 --> 00:28:20.610 Someone's going to break their heart. Um, this is going to happen. 00:28:20.730 --> 00:28:24.290 And the people that are causing the pain might even be you at some point. 00:28:24.490 --> 00:28:28.610 What you can do, though, is continue to heal so that when 00:28:28.610 --> 00:28:32.050 they come to you and say, this thing you did hurt me, 00:28:32.530 --> 00:28:35.370 rather than come from a point of defensiveness and say, well, 00:28:35.810 --> 00:28:38.290 I can hold them in that and engage with them in that which is 00:28:38.290 --> 00:28:43.530 a gift I was never given, ever. The bond that I have with my kids 00:28:43.530 --> 00:28:47.450 now also is just extraordinary. It allows me to keep doing the 00:28:47.450 --> 00:28:50.810 healing work, whatever is coming up for me at any given moment. 00:28:51.690 --> 00:28:58.950 And that all feeds into being able to just keep doing it a day at a time. 00:28:59.110 --> 00:29:02.190 My kids will be okay. I think that's my biggest thing. 00:29:02.310 --> 00:29:05.950 Recovery is possible. Recovery is entirely possible. 00:29:05.950 --> 00:29:08.870 And I know that because I experience it for myself. 00:29:08.870 --> 00:29:12.110 And I know that because I surround myself every day by 00:29:12.150 --> 00:29:15.630 hundreds and hundreds of people, probably thousands in my lifetime, 00:29:15.630 --> 00:29:18.230 who a day at a time. I live in clean and sober lives. 00:29:18.390 --> 00:29:22.350 It is possible. I've seen people come from the 00:29:22.350 --> 00:29:30.150 streets. To being happy, present fathers 00:29:31.070 --> 00:29:39.030 of their beautiful children. The quake was the biggest gift 00:29:39.150 --> 00:29:44.950 that could have ever happened. Today, S.J. lives with her two 00:29:44.950 --> 00:29:47.950 beautiful children in the southern suburbs of Cape Town 00:29:48.230 --> 00:29:54.230 and has authored two books, Killing Caroline and Mad Bad Love. 00:30:00.800 --> 00:30:03.880 Thank you so much for listening to this season of Something Shifted. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:06.720 We make the show as a labor of love, and because we believe stories 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:09.440 about possibility is just what the world needs to hear. 00:30:09.600 --> 00:30:12.760 We'd really love it if you would share something shifted with 00:30:12.760 --> 00:30:15.640 others and be part of the shift for someone else too. 00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:18.440 And if you really love the show, go ahead and leave it a five star 00:30:18.440 --> 00:30:22.800 review and follow something shifted on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. 00:30:23.520 --> 00:30:27.240 Don't forget to use my code shift 50 at checkout when you place your first 00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:32.080 order on you, and you'll get 50% off. All of the links to all of the 00:30:32.080 --> 00:30:34.400 things that I've mentioned are in the show notes. 00:30:35.040 --> 00:30:38.640 A big thank you to my wife and Executive Producer, Rwanda for 00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:42.400 additional writing, and of course, to you for believing in possibility. 00:30:42.920 --> 00:30:45.680 We'll be back with more stories later this year. 00:30:46.360 --> 00:30:50.800 My name is Shawn, and this is something shifted by.