In this episode of The Sober Shaman Podcast, I’m excited and honored to share my conversation with.
Jane is an award-winning author, therapist, and educator. She champions and empowers multi-hyphen misfits and counter-cultural weirdos to explore, restore, and turbo-boost their creativity, magic, and mental health. She is the creator of Rebel Therapy, the recipient of the Northern Debut Award from New Writing North, and the author of a new novel, Dear Neighbour.
Our conversation centers the healing medicine of community—a medicine that we both found on the fringes, as part of alternative subcultures.
Many of us in recovery can look back on our first “family, or community, of choice,” as a collection of rebels who came together around a particular identity—perhaps attached to a cause and aimed at a common purpose.
As with Jane and myself, this community is often intertwined with and fueled by active addiction. More times than not, getting sober requires removing ourselves from that setting. In making this choice, we become an outsider within our community of outsiders.
Join us as we navigate this path of finding, losing, and ultimately reclaiming community.
Summary
* Introduction of the podcast: 0:07
* Jane is just over four years sober from alcohol. She shares her personal relationship with alcohol and sobriety and what that means for her.
* She shares her experience of being an outsider in an outsider culture, and how that has impacted her work with clients.
* Being an outsider among the outsiders as a therapist: 2:44
* Being an outsider among outsiders in alternative subcultures, and what that looks like today in a professional sense
* How sobriety and subculture have impacted her professional identity
* Shame is a poisonous thing, whether it is related to addiction or other elements of identity.
* Queerness is incredibly important to her and has been her pathway to a community. Being held by that community feels transformational.
* The power of taking baby steps and her book, Dear Neighbour. 10:00
* In Chinese Medicine, everything flows in cycles, and shame subverts the part of the cycle when it’s natural to let go and release.
* The medicine of community
* It has been a joy to hear people's responses to the book and its characters.
* The idea of imprints from people of the past who have been in that place and how we might interact with their energy
* The legacy of activism in a place like Arlington and Woodhouse.
* Pilgrimage to the past: 17:56
* Pilgrimage, identity, creativity, and community
* It was nostalgic and romantic to revisit memories of living in Leeds. It was a chaotic, shambolic, and anarchic time, but it forged beautiful connections that are still alive and present today.
* Writing the manuscript in the pandemic fulfilled a function for her in her imagination.
* The idea of connecting to community, whether from identity or passion, helps with the shame resilience piece.
* From community of family to a found family—a new chosen family
* How community can be a medicine against systems: 24:50
* Why failing within a community is a very different feeling than failing on one’s own
* The idea of queer failure
* The idea of permission to fail and permission to change, including permission to subvert what capitalism wants and expects of us in business
* Giving yourself permission to resist what might be expected, and what magic and medicine can emerge through following that thread
* The importance of making space for failure: 28:58
* Chinese Medicine and the digestion of emotions
* Creating a business focused on bringing joy, community, and serving non-capitalist purposes—then, when it no longer serves those ends, composting it to feed something new
* How to reconcile the split existence: 34:22
* Jane founded a nonprofit that was about championing marginalized writers. She handed it over to two community members who are now making it their own.
* Hiding behind the wounded healer archetype and not showing up for herself, burning out, being resentful, and not doing her own work
* How to reconcile identity and your music: 39:24
* How Randal reconciled his identity with the subculture and community aspect of music, and how that part of his identity lives on
* How he got sober and removed himself from the slippery people and things of music and the music industry
* The mysticism and spirituality of rock-and-roll:. 44:45
* How being raised in New York fed his spirituality, including mysticism and magic, and how being an all-or-nothing kind of guy worked
* The escapism and intoxicating that myth of rock-and-roll
* The beauty of returning to nature, spirituality, and being embodied
Listen in at the top of the page, and find episode links below:
The Sober Shaman is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Links
Get Jane’s book, Dear Neighbour, on the publishers website.
Jane Claire Bradley & Rebel Therapy website
“Queer Failure,” by Tara McMullin and Kate Tyson (Strathmann), from the What Works Substack
Get full access to The Sober Shaman at randallyons.substack.com/subscribe
Share this post