Episode 45: Milestones

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Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 45th episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. So as you can see by the title, today’s episode is about milestones. Milestones are amazing to hit, you feel accomplished, and it’s rewarding. And I’m only speaking about milestones today, because I’m hitting quite a few at the same time. So what are those milestones about a year ago, and I’ve talked about this. In other episodes, I went through a somewhat traumatic experience with a family member, someone I love dearly, at the time that I went through it, I didn’t have what I call the coping skills, or the skill set to really deal with whatever it was that I was going through. So what I did was I removed myself from the situation, I put down some boundaries. And then I came home from where I was, and I did a lot of crying. And I didn’t like the way I felt because I had felt prior to this incident happening, that I had made all this great progress in my life based on you know, the recovery. And I’ll talk about the milestone of recovery in a second. But for whatever reason, things were not changing for me. And this was just not okay. And I realized that I had to figure out a way to channel much of what I was going through. Now, at the same time, I was already involved inside of clubhouse. And I was running with several people and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, the gratitude room, gratitude journal 365 on clubhouse, and it was actually being held in somebody else’s space. But by June of of last year, it started to be a room that was being run in maybe it was July in my club, which was a silly club, to be honest with you. It’s just a marketing for Dummies club that I don’t ever run a marketing room. Anyway, the gratitude journal took on a life of its own based on the commitment that I had made to show up every morning at first started at 830 in the morning, then it was eight o’clock. And I said I’m going to do this for 365 days. And you know how sometimes people, they have these goals, and I’ve talked about goals, they have these goals to do 30 days of gratitude. Well, 30 days didn’t feel I don’t I don’t know if I was conscious of this. But it just didn’t feel like it was enough. I feel like a commitment of 365 days, which is what you learn in recovery. When you’re going through recovery in a wait a year before you get involved with somebody. So a year, a year is a long time, it’s 365 days. But when you look back on the year, and you say wow, that was a fast year, a lot happens within the year. And don’t get me wrong. There are definite times during the year that I wanted to give up and only because maybe I didn’t feel like showing up. And I don’t want to really say that that’s true all the time. I think that’s true for anybody at any time, you know, but it was only a 30 minute room. And I knew that showing up was important for myself, I knew that showing up was even more important for other other people and those that wanted to share gratitude that want to make a difference. They want to actually hit the same kind of milestones. And I can’t speak for these people, I can only say that they show up just like I show up. And there are times maybe they don’t show up because they can or maybe they just don’t want to and there is simply nothing wrong with that. But when I made the commitment for 365 days of gratitude, I’m down to my last 30 days of this year as I record this particular episode of milestones, you know, I could record another episode in four weeks time and say okay, I hit that milestone but I want to speak about milestones both from a place of I’m about to hit it and also a place of I already hit it. Okay, so for 365 days of gratitude, I’m 30 days from that milestone on. And I feel remarkable. It’s not like anything spectacular is going to happen at 365 days or even 366 days, except at 366, there may be a decision to continue for another year. But there is never going to be a time where I get to hit the first year ever again, what I can tell you by creating this particular goal of gratitude, and let me be clear, it wasn’t always and we say this cupcakes and rainbows and lollipops and unicorns every single day. In fact, a lot of times people would express such brutal truth about how they felt, including for me, I’m scared, I, I, I don’t feel happy about something. And we all kind of support and lean on one another and help one another. So that’s way more than gratitude, which is why it’s such a remarkable thing. But it’s not like after this milestone gets hit something remarkable happens. Except internally, we all know that, hey, we did this for a year. And I have 30 days to say I did it every day for a year, which is not bad that they didn’t because I don’t think anybody else has hit this but me or will hit this but me every day for a year consecutive days, never missing a beat. I even went to the west coast this past week. And I woke up at 430 in the morning, and I opened the room at 5am. And I did that for the eight days that I was there on the day that I was leaving, because I had to get in the Uber at 730. I did the room from the route from the Uber. You know, I’m super proud of that. Okay, so that’s my wonderful story about gratitude and hitting that milestone and what it’s doing for me is making me feel super accomplished different than if I let’s say have a goal of completing somebody’s website or, or helping a client achieve something, I hit the milestone of, okay, your website is delivered, that kind of finished, it’s never really finished, as we know, but finished enough. And that’s another milestone. And that’s a great feeling of accomplishment. But it’s different than the way I feel about gratitude journal 365. And yet, nobody’s compensating me for being in gratitude journal. And I feel very fulfilled. And I feel hugely compensated by the people who share the same space as I share with the same prompt and the same story and everything that we feel we just feel different things at different times. The other milestone is this podcast. So I’m about to hit. This is episode 45. And I’m about to hit 52. Don’t ask me where the number 52 came to came from. I mean, I know that a lot of people I talked to say I just want to hit 100 episodes. And I get that I think that’s a great number. But for some reason, 52 also feels like a year, because it’s 52 weeks. Now, I didn’t record every week for 52 straight weeks, I record I’ve so far recorded 45. And I will eventually hit the milestone of 52 episodes. But for the first many of them even I guess the first 18 I did them through August and September of last year, and they they launched in September. And then I guess I was good until Thanksgiving and I’m talking to myself in the future

It got really weird for me. And then I don’t know, sometimes I didn’t feel like recording. Like I didn’t really feel like recording today. But I went out for a walk. And I’ll get to that in a minute. And I thought it just have to get this thing done. And talk about what you want to talk about. Because a lot of the times I just don’t even feel like talking. I know that that might sound odd for somebody who has a podcast, but the podcast is a little like my memoir, you know, and I like that I like that I can share how I feel in the moment that I’m feeling it especially as I share the things that have already happened to me in hindsight, because I feel like I’m at my best you know, I just I feel like Don’t Don’t ruin anything. anybody around me Do not ruin anything, don’t die, don’t get get sick. Everybody’s good. I’m good. So just let’s keep things the way they are. That’s not going to be the case forever. And I know that but the podcasts and my desire to do 52 episodes, and air. The first three, as my coach had suggested the first three all at one time, and then one a week for the next you know, I don’t know 49 weeks and I’m doing that and I’m about to hit that milestone but like the gratitude journal Oh, once I hit this milestone of 52, it’s not like something magical is going to happen. I’m going to be finished, and I and I’m going to be finished. And I’m going to be finished with Season One. Season One encompasses 52 episodes, I’ve been interviewed with somebody else on their podcast, and I interviewed somebody for the first time on my podcast, and I haven’t had any guests since or before her. And she just launched her own podcasts, which I’m so excited about, because she’s, she’s a natural, she’s a natural when it comes to YouTube. And she’s unnatural when it comes to her podcast. And her name is Kayla Nelson. And you can go back and listen to the episode with me that she recorded with me here on this one, but also go listen to her podcast called The Girl on the internet. I don’t, I don’t normally, you know, promote people. But I am promoting her remarkable young woman for somebody in her 20s. Anyway, so my podcast is about to hit 52 episodes in season one. And my gratitude journal is about to hit 365 Because today was 335. So those are two very big milestones that I can tell you happen within the course of one year. It’s so amazing to me that when a year goes by, we always look at it in hindsight as Wow, that was a fast year. I mean, I’m sitting here speaking to everybody. And I can’t even believe how much I’ve accomplished in the, you know, in 2021, to 2022, even in 2020, just being home and quarantine like everybody else and loving it. I don’t know if they loved it, I loved it. If anybody asks, who’s the only person you know who loved quarantine, you can say it was me. But what I learned in quarantine was second to none, I learned how to be a better creative, I learned how to be a much better listener, because I spent a lot of time on clubhouse. I created this podcast, and I had to listen to myself and listen to my ugly truths about myself. And the things that I did back in the day, you know, when I realized that I was very deeply into the addiction of Vikon. I was probably two years in, I knew Boy, you’ve got a problem. And you’ve got to get help. But I wasn’t quite ready to let the drugs go. And I wasn’t obviously at 50 pills a day at that point I was I was probably half that I knew I could never not take this drug without withdrawal. So I was sort of stuck. And I was really stuck in my aloneness because I couldn’t tell anybody, hey, I’ve got a problem with this drug, can you help me, you know, I didn’t ask for help. Because I didn’t want to let it go. I just didn’t want to let it go. I needed the drug to feel empowered, I felt great. And then I didn’t feel great. I knew I was going to head to rehab. And when I eventually got to rehab, I knew the climb back to this balance was going to be a very long time. And I think that that might be what happens for a lot of people who have addiction problems or a problem with addiction. They know that it’s not like they’re going to leave rehab after 30 days and be better. They’re not. It could be a year, it could be 10 years, it could be 20 years, it could be a lifetime. But these little milestones that we hit, you know, for people who go to AAA, I didn’t, I didn’t really go to AAA, it didn’t quite work well, for me, it didn’t feel right. For me, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go it’s just it didn’t work for me. But they get you know, chips and for these milestones, you know, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, one year, two years, and you see people on Instagram, who are sober, who celebrate you know, two years, and I’m going to be it’s going to be on the on June 30, which is coming up. It’ll be two and a half years for me. When I stopped drinking in 2019. It was December 30. And, you know, the fact is, I feel a million times better because I remember how good every day feels sober. And I also remember how horrible withdrawal and the pain of withdrawal and even just the sluggishness of a hangover or Oh, I wish I didn’t have that extra glass of wine or whatever, or even drinking during the day. I remember what that was like. And even though I think my personality may have changed, being sober. It was probably just as an ugly personality when I wasn’t sober. Even if I only had one or two glasses of wine. I’m still not sober with one or two glass CES of wine, I might have been happier, I might have been more gregarious, I might have even been more fun to be with. But the truth of the matter is, it didn’t feel right. It felt right I guess at the time. But in hindsight, as I look back, after these two and a half years, this milestone that I’m about to hit, you know, not drinking my livers better, my body is better, I sleep better, I think better, I communicate better, I listen, better. These are the milestones that we should celebrate the goals that we set for ourself. These are the milestones that we hit when we achieve those goals. So as I look back, and I think, well, you managed to get off, I couldn’t. And then 10 years after your Vikatan addiction ended, you managed to get off Suboxone, which is the medication that absolutely keeps you out of withdrawal from Vikon and prevents the cravings. But as equally difficult to get off of from a withdrawal perspective, which nobody ever told me, I did not know that you would have to wean from that medication, which as I’ve mentioned before, took me four months to do it. But that was one hell of a milestone. And I also want to say that I went to culinary school when I was 50 years old. And I had a goal of getting out of there in 18 months, and I was working full time, but I really wanted to graduate. And then the last semester I had that chemistry class and God that chemistry class nearly destroyed me. But I put a very important goal in front of myself, I said, You’re not quitting on this thing. And if you have to learn organic chemistry, as if you’re a nurse, going into the medical field, you’re going to do it even though you’ll never use anything that you learn. But anything I put my mind to, I’m pretty, I’m pretty good at at achieving. So I did it and the milestone of graduating culinary school within the window of 18 months I accomplished and that felt great. I think when you give significance to these incredible milestones of yours, some are going to be greater than others, they help you celebrate life, they’re helping me celebrate life, you know, I can reflect on these milestones when things are not going well. And let me be clear, things are going superbly well right now. So I’m celebrating the milestones in the podcasts because I think they’re very important to talk about, but I know that life does have its ups and downs. And one day I may not be as as good as I am right now. Not that I’m gonna go back to alcohol or even drugs or anything. But it’s just life thing. Life has this ebbs and flows, right. But having this podcast to listen back on and listening back on this milestone episode is going to be very important. Because if I can get through Vikon, diction, if I can stop drinking permanently, if I can learn how to stand on my own, if I can create a podcast for one year, if I can go to gratitude, journal 365 for 365 straight days, I don’t think there’s really anything that I cannot do, as long as I’m committed. And that’s the big part of it, the commitment, but celebrating these wins, even if they’re tiny wins every day that I went to gratitude every day that I recorded in other podcasts is a small achievement, but then you put them all together, and you’ve got something, you’ve got something to celebrate. And I want to celebrate these wins. I want to celebrate these milestones and say, You know what, I used my creativity to heal last year, when I was hurting, and I had a client talk to me just the other day yesterday, we were discussing, you know, is it hard for me to be away from my daughter and the baby? And I said, No, it’s not I get to enjoy them now, now that I’ve managed to go out there and and be with her in a way that changed. You know, that narrative, I keep wanting to change, it changed. It was different. And I feel very grateful for that. And I recognize that you never actually stopped being a mom, right? But she is a mother of her own now. And she has a life of her own. And she’s going to have to figure out all the things that she’s going to have to figure out as I continue to move forward with my life and I don’t know what that looks like. But I know that by achieving these milestones by shifting the narrative, changing the narrative, celebrating the wins, accomplishing These remarkable goals and milestones again, I, I’m going to be fine. And do I do I miss her? Of course. But is it difficult? It’s not. I don’t know how else to put this. I want my I want my children to be independent. And why would I want them to be independent because I, I’m independent, you know, I don’t have a husband and I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t have a partner. So everything that I do I do independently of anybody else, helping me make a decision. If I want to buy something, I’m going to buy it. If I want to sleep in I’m going to sleep in, I have only myself in my business to answer to because my business is such a big part of who I am in being independent. And I don’t want to say I don’t answer to anybody, because I certainly answered the people who, you know, write me a paycheck when they when they pay their bills. But the truth of the matter is, this is the first time that I’ve really ever learned to stand on my own. And I talked about that. And I, you know, I didn’t ask anybody’s permission when I wanted to create this podcast. I didn’t say, you know, is it okay with you? What I did ask in clubhouse was, Is it okay to share my feelings and my story, and one person said, as long as you share from a scar and not a wound, and the other person said, as long as you share your story, from your perspective, and not somebody else’s story, they’re more than welcome to share their story, but you share your own story. So I use all this creativity to help me heal my emotional pain that was a year ago. Extraordinarily devastating. And when I look back on the year, and I’m hitting a milestone of almost 52 episodes, and 365 days of gratitude, I’m gonna say if anybody who’s listening is feeling disconnected in pain, unsure, find a creative outlet. I’m not saying you have to go start a podcast or go feel gratitude for 365 days. But these are two very creative things that helped me hit a milestone or many milestones for which I’m eternally grateful for because I feel amazing. I don’t want to say it from a place where I’m not feeling genuine about this. I really truly am feeling good. And it’s because I feel balance. And that’s what this is all about. And I hope for anybody who’s listening that they can figure out a way to get there, too. So that’s all I’ve got. Okay, well, if you like this or any other episode, don’t lose your balance. You can share it you can download it, you can even write me a review, that would be great. I also have a website which is Don’t lose your balance calm, and I have two accounts on Instagram. One is Mallory underscore Durrick. And the other is Don’t lose your balance. M S D That’s Mary, Sam and David. I hope today and tomorrow and always you don’t lose your balance. And I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey. And we’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.