Shanon helps create new healthy habits, soothe fears, truly love yourself, feel confident, deepen your spiritual connections, release depression or anxiety. In this episode, she talks about hypnosis-based healing.

Listen in to Shanon’s Episode

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lane Kennedy: I’m excited that you’re with me. Thanks for hanging out. What is Hypnosis-Based Healing? Make sure to jump into the next monthly column circle. You can find that information at recoverlikeamother.com forward slash reset. Join me. I’ll see you there. Let’s get into the show. Hello friend. Welcome back here we are another episode. Where we get to talk to another fantastic woman in recovery today, a woman in recovery, my guest is Shanon and I met Shanon and the clubhouse.

What is Hypnosis-Based Healing?

The world of the clubhouse is wild. I’m really excited about this. She’s a hypnotherapist, which I absolutely love. I almost went down that path on. But I didn’t, I ended up going down the mindfulness and meditation path instead. So I’m really excited to have you on the show. Welcome, Shanon.

Shanon Chaiken: Thank you. I am very happy to be here.

Pleasure.

Lane Kennedy: So I like my guests to just dig in to a breaking point in recovery. I know that you have some sobriety under your belt, so what’s your sobriety?

Shanon Chaiken: So my sobriety date is June 20th, 2009. Took me a second to remember,

Lane Kennedy: right. So, I mean, you’ve got some time you’ve you’ve you’ve changed. Life has given you new challenges.

Totally different, right? Yeah. That’s what happens. So did you expect to get.

Shanon Chaiken: No. I was very proud of my alcoholism. It runs in my family. I would proudly announce that I was an alcoholic. I drank, I was a party girl, wherever I went, the party followed me. I’m very proud of it until I really, really got to the point where it just made me very sad.

Very lonely and I would go home and drink, but myself and hope that I did not wake up in the morning.

Lane Kennedy: Oh yes. It works and works and works and then it just doesn’t work anymore. And that’s how it works. That is how it works. And it’s like, everyone else. Knows that it’s not working. And you’re like the last one to the party to understand that it’s not working.

And so I want to just bring, like, let’s go to that one moment where you’re like this isn’t working and then we’ll move on.

Shanon Chaiken: Yes. So I had this just drama, drama, drama, and of course, it involved a gentleman caller, and I was, I went to a girlfriend’s house. I drank a. Almost a case of beer by myself woke up that morning. What is Hypnosis-Based Healing?

She actually still has one beer left from that case in her refrigerator holding onto it. It’s like, it’s, it’s kind of funny that she still has the one beer. And I woke up at like five o’clock in the morning and I said, I need help. And I need to get to a meeting. I had never. Been an AA. I’d never been in recovery.

I had never tried that window just opened as they say. And that thought just came into my mind and I looked it up online, found it, and went. It’s

Lane Kennedy: so interesting that this is such a common theme. I hear, I never heard of it. I didn’t know what it was. And then boom, it was there. That was my exact yes.

Completely the same.

Shanon Chaiken: I actually had been, been surrounded by a lot of sober AA people growing up, people were always coming in and out of my lives, who are recovering, but I never really did it. Like I didn’t get it right. It wasn’t me. Was it? Yeah. What is Hypnosis-Based Healing? No, I wasn’t

Lane Kennedy: curious. Not at all. No, because the drinking was worse.

Yeah,

Shanon Chaiken: they can yoga, like come over after the night and Williamsburg.

Lane Kennedy: Yeah. Wedding it out on the mat. Good times. So you end up in mutual aid meetings. Okay.

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah. I was in Brooklyn and walked into a very old school clubhouse and all old, old gangster, Brooklyn guy was telling his story and I sat down and just cried.

Lane Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s kinda the, the show. That is that’s good. Yeah. I had a similar experience. Just connected. Just drank it up. Yeah. And so you go along your store and you just like dove into it. Right. You haven’t had the opportunity to pick up again. You haven’t had a need to, right. You’ve been continuous with your recovery.

Shanon Chaiken: So incredibly lucky. I’m so incredibly lucky. None of that is part of my story yet. As they say, but yeah.

Lane Kennedy: Oh, so good. So as we grow in our sobriety, what I. See happen time and time again are these peaks and valleys, right? Life is going to happen. And so what I want you to share a little bit of, you know, like the path, I always say it gets narrow and then wide.

So let’s hear some things that have happened to you, through your recovery. Some of the good, some of the challenging, and like what’s helped you get through it to your next awakening.

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah. So I specifically remember just getting sober and hearing people. I have 30 days, I have 90 days, I have six months and I was like, wow, never going to get there.

And about seven months into my sobriety, I also kept on hearing. People say, like, I lost my job. I lost my wife. I lost my things. And I was like, that’s not part of my story. I’m doing great. Yeah. So that’s seven months in doing really well and feeling great pink cloud all the way. Wake up one day. Not feeling well, go to work.

Still not feeling well. Something’s wrong. Go home. Start to take the subway home. Get off in Brooklyn and go into a store and realize I can not speak. Yeah. I can’t speak, can’t get words out of my mouth. What is Hypnosis-Based Healing? Can’t think of the words that I want to come out of my mouth. Very scary. It was in a blockbuster video for you that remember renting movies.

And of course I knew the blockbuster guy and he was like, are you okay? And I’m like, can’t speak. So I walk across the street to my bodega thinking like, oh, maybe I need a dragon. Yeah. So get there, can’t speak tears, rolling down my face. Haleigh cab fast forward, large cyst on my brain, Jesus, by myself in the emergency room.

And they’re like, yeah, you have a large cyst on your brain. We’re checking you into the neurology floor. Okay. So,

Lane Kennedy: okay. Let me, let me just get some clarification real quick. Are you married or single? I divorced at that time. Okay. Okay. It’s just so kids or no kids, no children. Okay. So you’re, you’re flying solo with this awakening and you’re only seven months over.

Is that we said seven. Yeah. Holy Jesus. Okay. Yeah.

Shanon Chaiken: So I’m in the hospital. They tell me this, my life flashes before my eyes and I think, well, I might as well start drinking and my ex. Slash I like to refer to him as my bottom comes in newly sober. And I was like, well, I was like, I might as well start drinking.

And he said, are you crazy? And I was like, you’re right. My sobriety got me through everything. Fast forward that recovery of, you know, the speech and the body movement and the seizures that I was happening. Oh, blah, blah, blah. Still have the brain cyst doing fine. My life is great. Lose my job, my career very dramatic, very traumatic.

Never thought that that would happen. And all of a sudden I’m like, what am I doing with my life? My sober friend looks at me and says, well, congratulations. You are about to start the new journey. It’s like, I want to tell you to go fuck yourself, but, okay.

Lane Kennedy: Yeah.

Shanon Chaiken: But he was right too. And yeah, so I did, I have that story where like, you get sick and you lose stuff and you yeah. You know? Yeah. And

Lane Kennedy: this is an early recovery.

Shanon Chaiken: This is like, not even a year in, right? Oh my seven months. And then maybe like 10 months, 11 months in,

Lane Kennedy: this is what I love about recovery stories and recovery mothers is that we there’s a perseverance that happens in recovery.

I don’t know where it comes from. But women have this ability to just dig in like, yeah, it’s really incredible. So after that first year, Does your life start to get some momentum? Do you start seeking a spiritual solution? What, what happens? Uncover it?

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah. I had, I had that spiritual awakening early on in my, in my sobriety and it was like, I saw a flower growing in the concrete kind of thing and the sun was setting and like, I was like, wow, this isn’t me.

You know? So there’s something bigger and it, for me, it was the universe. So it really was that spiritual awakening that was given to me by joining AA at the time. That was my foundation that helps me through all of this, because I knew that there was something more, I knew that had, I, I was able to stop drinking.

I was able to like, get, get this life that I never knew. Cause I started drinking when I was 13. And I was 36. So, I didn’t know anything else. So I knew that it was going to get better. And I just had my parents, my parents gave me the middle name of faith, which I think is really funny because neither one of them are like anywhere in that realm of anything.

And I just feel like I have this really strong faith within me that there is something bigger. And so I just kept on going. And as I kept going, I kept on seeing all my friends come in, come in, come in. My phone was always blowing up and all the people I partied with and everybody that he knew was calling and saying like, can I go to a meeting with you?

Yeah,

Lane Kennedy: yeah. That’s the best right when you’re sitting there and then they, they show up and you’re like, oh,

Shanon Chaiken: I saw somebody that I worked for. When I was 18, I worked for I’ll just put it this way. A very, very, very world famous rock band. And I sat down in a meeting about four or five years in my sobriety, and I looked at.

And the one of the guys from the band was in it and we just looked at each other. We’re like, yeah.

Lane Kennedy: So good. So, so good. Yeah. I got sober in Los Angeles, right. So for me, my whole world was wrapped around that lifestyle. And there was a comfort in that for me because I was living in it. So then seeing.

Celebrities I’m air quoting. Right. It brought me comfort, but I can imagine, like, if you’re a football player, if you’re a runner and you’ve suddenly you see somebody, you know, you identify with them, there’s like magic in that. And I think that’s one of the things about like being a mom. I identify with other moms who share about recovery and there’s, that’s just so powerful when I can identify with another person.

It’s so good for

Shanon Chaiken: me. Like my, my, the things that I always identify really, really strongly with is I used to go to these meetings in neighborhoods that like, We’re not my neighborhood. And it would have all different types of people like African-American dudes and like a bunch of like Hasidic men. And like they would show up at this meeting and I’d be the only woman there.

And I love those meetings because I have nothing in common with any of these people. And you get there and you’re like, yeah, I do. And this dude that just got out of prison told my story. And the same thing happened with me. When I lived in Detroit, I used to go down, I lived downtown Detroit and it was like hardcore dudes that just got out of jail and me, and like, those guys would always come up to me and they would be crying afterwards.

And they’re like, you told my story and I’m like, I grew up in Beverly Hills.

Lane Kennedy: Okay. And so this is a podcast, so I just want to, this is a podcast and Shanon has like this beautiful blonde straight hair. She has this beautiful, like blouse on, and I could just see what, like the gangsters, right. And ex prison mates, like.

That is the beauty of those meetings, right? Yeah. There is no,

Shanon Chaiken: like we’re all the same. We’re all the same. It doesn’t matter. Like we all have the same crap. We all feel the same feelings. We all hurt. We all have pain and like there’s somebody else there and who will reach out and be like, I got you. Like it’s cool.

Yeah.

Lane Kennedy: Sound good. So let’s move through your, your sobriety, the peaks and the valleys and the awakenings. And have you had to the cyst on your brain? Has this been a reoccurring situation I’m just popping in here to take a moment to think. Can you imagine getting sober and then getting a brain tumor? I mean, this is life-changing stuff.

I love Shanon story wanted to just remind you my friend to pop on over to recover like a mother.com reset and sign up for the next column.

Shanon Chaiken: It’s been there. They haven’t done any surgery because it takes up a third of my brain cavity. It’s very large. Wow. They, yeah, they didn’t do surgery because it’s not doing anything that’s harming.

Per se. So it’s, you don’t want to do brain surgery unless it’s necessary. So I’m doing, I’m doing well. You know, I don’t even think about it most of the time and I get checkups and do all that other stuff. So I mean, peaks and valleys have to say the first five years of sobriety, my head was way up my butt.

I had no idea what was going on. I’m so lucky that I had a sponsor who was. Just so I’m still friendly with her. She’s she lives in New York. I’m in Austin. She’s amazing. Like she was just so gentle and kind with me. And and I also felt like I heard a lot of stuff that I needed to, like, I needed more, I needed to understand more and I was really into yoga.

So I went and did a yoga teacher training after I lost my job. I got more into like, what is this about, why are we here? What are we doing? Like trying to find the commonality between all of our religions and our spirituality and, and you know what it is. And I studied a lot and I kept on finding that every time I found a teacher.

The teacher happened to be a sober woman, you know, until they’d be like, yeah. And then I’m sober and I’d be like, yeah, of course you are. And that’s why I’m sitting here. And and so I’ve had, I’ve been so blessed because I’ve had incredible teachers, whether they’ve been coaches or therapists or hypnotherapists or whatever, Way that they came into my life, yoga teachers and meditation teachers, so many different avenues.

And you just hear all of the same things about who we are. And, and the 12 steps that I learned coming in definitely are part of my foundation of staying sober. Although I don’t neatly connect within that tribe as much anymore. I have a lot of friends that are in there. I just find that places like clubhouse, like walking down the street, you never know where you’re going to meet people.

And like, we just, we have this connection and they show up and it’s beautiful.

Lane Kennedy: So you just said something really interesting it’s it’s or what I’m hearing is like this openness, this openness to change your path. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Do you. So with that openness, right. Do you have you left that foundational program?

Shanon Chaiken: I still consider myself. Part of the AA. I just maybe go to a meeting once a year. I feel like my I, the thing that I got from bill and Bob who are the founders was it’s a conversation between two people that keep us sober. And what I’ve found in my sobriety is that. When you’re living this high vibrational life, when you are really in where you’re supposed to be, and you’re walking the walk and talking the talk and living the life, people just show up.

No, my life is people just show up and I have these conversations all day long, every single day of my life. Whether it’s someone I meet on Instagram, somebody, I used to have a radio show with two sober guys a while ago. I was the only woman on it. This is like probably five or six years ago. I mean so many different avenues.

I do a lot of stuff online. I have a women’s group of 500 plus. That’s private on Facebook. And I do a lot of things in there and people just come. Yeah. And so these conversations and this, this is my purpose. This is why I’m here to help people get to live their authentic truth and, and be happy because we’re supposed to be happy.

We’re not supposed to be miserable and angry and resentful anymore.

Lane Kennedy: Right. They’re bitter angry. Okay. So let’s, let’s, let’s get into that because I feel like the longer we’re sober people forget that we’re supposed to be happy, joyous, and free. Right. And there’s like, I’ve noticed that people like forget to do the spiritual work.

Yeah, perhaps, or they forget that there is a process or there is a, like, we’re not supposed to just stay in one, one place. Right? So what, what are you doing to keep that awakening?

Shanon Chaiken: So I do my hypnosis myself hypnosis everyday. Okay. Wait,

Lane Kennedy: okay. Stop. Yeah. So what does that look like for you? I’m super interested in just your practice.

Shanon Chaiken: Very similar to meditation. I am bad at meditation. I tried 25 years. Horrible meditator. Horrible. Finally found something that speaks. So it’s more of a guided meditation on guiding it in my mind. And I focus in on like what it is that I want. So it’s like a meditation. My teacher says with a goal. So I’m finding that goal, whether it’s getting through the day, finding that peace within myself, showing up in the world the way I want to show.

Finding that quiet in that calm, empathy, compassion. These are the things that are part of the base of who I am. And I need to remind myself every single day are you be that person? Are you

Lane Kennedy: aware when you go see. Fuck. Yeah, totally. Right. So this is the thing, this is, again, this is a thing with like longer-term sobriety where, and I see it where women get in this groove and they just go and they just keep doing that same thing.

And then they hit this wall. Right. So when you get in that groove, so you have your hypnotherapy, what else do you do? Like when you get in that groove and you’re like, oh, I’m stuck. What, what do you reach for

Shanon Chaiken: friends? Friends, friends. Like I talked to my friends and 90% of my friends are sober. They may have not been sober originally, but they’re also by now.

So, you know, so we just get on the phone and talk, you know, like just life. I am also one of those people that am constantly doing something. There’s always something that I’m working on or working towards. And you know, that thing that when is the work done, like, oh, you’re dead. That’s when you die. Like, that’s it like, that’s where we are.

So, you know, and I love telling my clients that they’re like, oh, I know me to get there. And I’m like, he hadn’t ever, because I’m like, it gets easier. It gets more fun. You get to work on things you want. As opposed to the stuff that you have to work on, but you know,

Lane Kennedy: what are you working on

Shanon Chaiken: now? Well, I am obsessed with death and have been my entire life.

So I have been doing a lot of research on past life and lives that happen in between life. And I’m about to go with my teacher, Grace Smith and study pathway progression in lives between lives regression with a hypnosis. Have you done,

Lane Kennedy: have you done a hit by.

Shanon Chaiken: I have not done that kind of session for myself or for somebody else.

I often have clients that naturally go back into both, which is so cool, but luckily I’ve read enough that I kind of know. I can tell when somewhere somebody is based on the information, but now I’m so excited and I’ve had a problem with past life regression. I did pass it for crashing with Mira.

Kelly. I don’t know if you know her, but she did like Wayne Dyer and stuff. I can’t get in there. I can’t get in there. I’m starting to think that I may be like a star seed and maybe I don’t have a past life. Maybe I’m an alien. And I was sitting here with another. Nice. You never know. You never know. Right.

But I just love it. I love the idea that there’s something else that there’s something bigger that we’re here for a reason. I just, you know, and when it happens in my sessions with my clients, it’s just like, wow. And then you read that the staff there’s books, tons of books over here. And like, it’s just like so beautiful.

And then like, I don’t know about you, but like, Being sober. You’re able to show up to things that you never thought it would ever. So I was able to be there when my grandmother passed and we were very close and I was holding her, like holding her hand where was with her. I was with her through the whole process.

And it’s such an honor, it’s such an honor to be able to be there and witness that and be a part of that. And like, I just,

Lane Kennedy: you know, Right. Yeah. I know being present for the family, big family members. I just, now that I’m here, I can’t imagine any other way. Yeah. Like being able to be present for my son.

Drinking a fifth of vodka every day would work.

Shanon Chaiken: No. Right. Isn’t it amazing? I would’ve never called anybody back. I’d have been under the bed with covers, no cigarettes and like, you

Lane Kennedy: know, burn the house down. Right. So when you’re in, you know, the peaks and the valleys, do you have anything. Do you have any like inspirational pep talk that you use when you’re in the valley?

Shanon Chaiken: So I don’t go in valleys very often anymore, which I’m very happy to say. Yeah, that’s not, it’s just doesn’t happen very often, but when it does come up for me, I know that I’ve been through much worse. And if I could survive everything that I have survived, I can survive. Whatever comes up. Right. And it may hurt and it may be hard, but like I’ve been through so much.

Yeah. Been through so much, you know, people

Lane Kennedy: ask me, you know, to share my story, to talk to them. And sometimes I just, you know, I don’t know where to start. Right. Cause there’s so much in the sober life. Yeah, because we’re able to do so much, right. There’s like year one through five, maybe there’s just your five that I want to focus on.

Maybe there’s just your 10, right? Like there’s just so like, and I think in sobriety we get to keep reinventing ourselves. That’s what I’m hearing you do. That’s what you’ve done a lot. And that’s like a gift that I wasn’t looking for. Yeah.

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah. Even like my last relationship, when it, when it ended, it was so like, it hurt, it sucks when someone tells you that they don’t feel that way about you anymore, but.

I got so much out of that relationship. We had a very healthy relationship. Like it was really healthy. There was a lot of communication. There was a lot of like a lot of support. We still are friends. I’m really good. Really good. You know, like not super close, but we, we, you know, Send each other funny texts in here and there, or like, hell, reach out and to add, like ask me a question or, you know, share something that he thinks that is that I would enjoy.

But, you know, he said to me, I feel like I’m keeping you from moving forward. And I don’t like. He’s like you, you know, he’s like, I just feel like I like I’m on a block for you and that you’re doing this and you’re here and there’s more and you know what? I am so grateful. He did that. It didn’t feel good.

It totally fucking sucked, but I am so grateful that I could have somebody that cared that much about me. And he was totally right.

Lane Kennedy: Grown-up conversations. That’s what that’s called a grownup conversation where you can’t have grown-up conversations when you’re drinking and using. And you can have grown-up conversations when, when you’re in recovery, not really working your program and whatever program that is, whatever, you know, like, I, I am pro just get sober, right?

Like, so I’m not stuck on one methodology. It’s just, you gotta be working on yourself.

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah. And the thing that like, I like that there’s all of these new methods on getting sober and like sober, sober, Kira curious, and all this stuff. There’s that I don’t know. Do you knew Ruby Worthington out of the UK?

She wrote that book sober, curious. Yes. And came out a few years ago, but like, I love that there’s all these different things, but now, now that you’ve put it down, What do you do? That’s the key. And I want to say that was the thing about the 12 steps. That really, really, really helped me. And I didn’t know.

I thought you just put it down. I didn’t realize all this other shit came with it, but thank God. Right? Cause you clean your house.

Lane Kennedy: Shanon. You are speaking my language. So I love the sober, curious movement. Right. But you just nailed it on the head. Like P yes, go ahead. Put down the drink. But there has to be some more action there.

Right. There has to be like the way that I see things is that it’s through a spiritual lens. And so when we stopped drinking, we’re still of, there’s still some craziness happening. Right. So what are those, what are the sober, curious community doing? Like, I don’t know. I mean, I like I’ve interacted with them and it doesn’t feel.

It’s not it’s, it’s kind of like prickly, like it’s a little,

Shanon Chaiken: yeah. Yeah. There’s definitely. And you know, it’s funny because especially in clubhouse, that’s where I’ve been interacting with them. And I just listen, you know, cause I want to support people, but I’m not hearing healthy. I’m hearing. Crazy. Yeah.

It’s a little interesting. And it’s like, for me, I’m like, okay, so what happens next? What are you doing next? Because you can stop treating. But you’re going to go to yoga the rest of your life. Like that’s not going to figure out why you are drinking, not drinking. Cause you gotta, you gotta figure out what’s wrong.

What’s going on here. You really need to, to stop and, and do that work in some way, whatever it is. That’s

Lane Kennedy: what I was just going to say. And I think that’s where like, you know, a hypnotherapist can come in to say cognitive behavioral therapy comes into play, working in a ministry ministry help. Right? Like there’s, there’s gotta be something.

Yeah, the kind of untangle the reasons why. You started drinking and I’m not like I wanna, I want to just repeat, like, go backwards a little bit, because I don’t want that sober, curious comment that I said to be

Shanon Chaiken: lanes get out of contests contact. Yeah.

Lane Kennedy: It’s not that at all because I am absolutely pro just put down the drink and then find your way.

Shanon Chaiken: Well, I think it’s really sad that, you know, AE gets the rap when you walk in, like yeah, because they freak me out such a bad rap, like. Trust me when they do. Oh. So when I go places and there’s the oh father, like I’m uncomfortable. Cause I’m a Jew. You know, that’s not my, that’s not, my that’s not part of AA.

AA is not a religious program. It is spiritual program. It’s about spirituality. It’s about cleaning up that shit in your life and living a better life and being of service to others. And. The true spirit of those two men came through the way that it really wasn’t intended without other people’s egos getting in the way people would.

Everyone in the world, whether you want to be sober or not, you should be doing these 12 steps because they’re fucking brilliant. They are brilliant.

Lane Kennedy: There are principles, right? They’re spiritual principles. At the end of the day, the 12 steps are 12 spiritual principles

Shanon Chaiken: sitting down and writing those represent resentments and getting all that junk out and like the lightness you feel.

Oh, my God. And it’s free somebody volunteers, their time to listen to your crazy bullshit for eight hours or however long that was mine was like eight hours. You know, like, I mean, I wish that people didn’t get. Didn’t have that experience. It’s me sad.

Lane Kennedy: It makes me sad too. I had a conversation with somebody who was sober, curious recently and they kind of were like, no, I’m not going to that.

I’m not doing that. And it just really, it kind of hurt me because my experience was so clear and so precious and genuine. And it, it was nothing like what she was describing. Right. And I recently, w w what does that Hollywood. Wrote a book quit like a woman. I think that’s what it’s called. Okay. And I don’t want to say she bashes AA, but if you listened to the foreword of her book or the is, or the opening of her book, it feels like it.

And it’s again, AA is not about these two men are the first 100 and that started it right there is, there’s so much more to it. And it is such a spiritual, deeply spiritual program. If you really just take the principles of it, right. The first 164 pages of it and dissect it, it, isn’t just a spiritual, like I’m looking at my, you know Pema Chodron’s right.

It’s just as spiritual as what’s my Buddhism book that I read every day. Like, Yeah, right.

Shanon Chaiken: It’s you can, you can look at the principles of AA and then apply it to any other spiritual program. Absolutely. And the interesting thing is about those guys, which trips me out is that they were like, not even a year sober when they wrote that, right?

Oh my God. They weren’t even a year sober. And when you read their stories, Messed up, you know, a year sober. And they wrote this book that is so brilliant. These steps, they put them together. I mean, it makes perfect sense. It’s literally like, it was like, they just got fed the information and they wrote it down.

Like it just.

Lane Kennedy: Yeah, it, it, it hurts me when women have these strong opinions about this program. Because again, it’s, if you just take the program and take it out of like just the program, not everything else, it is such a beautiful experience. Just a, such a, a pure, like a pure message. Yeah, of hope and recovery.

And I don’t, I want to rewind again about Holly. Like I’m not, poo-pooing her, I’m just saying, you know, if you go, if you read that and listen to it in context, it’s really powerful. She has a really powerful message and she is connecting. What I love about her is that she’s connecting to a population of women who need.

Right. Yeah. Like it’s like, there’s a, I’ve really, you know, like she has a lot of really great things to say in that book. So again, I’m not poo-pooing her

Shanon Chaiken: and there’s something, you know, everyone’s got just like our, but like everyone’s got an opinion. Everybody’s got a thing everybody’s got away. I just hope no matter how anybody chooses to put down whatever it is that they realize that that is not the end all be all.

Yeah. It’s really finding that spiritual foundation, finding the work, really finding the things that brought you to that place and healing them really healing them because that’s when everything happens and that’s when the magic happens. And that’s when you get that life beyond your wildest dreams, they say, yeah,

Lane Kennedy: you’re my people.

What’s on your bookshelf. Well, what are you reading right now?

Shanon Chaiken: What am I reading right now? I am reading. To to, to, so I’m in the middle of my I’m in the middle of my getting ready for my class. So I am reading, dying to be me. Oh, wow. Okay.

Lane Kennedy: Oh my God. This is so

Shanon Chaiken: unbelievable. And then I’m actually reading lives in between lives.

I’ve already read the book, but I haven’t read this one yet. It’s excellent. Got in there. Knock those out. And then every day, like, honestly, I have a huge bookshelf right here. Like this one, Louise hay. Yeah, you can heal your life as a big one for me. And I have to tell you, this book changed my life, which is the judgment detox by Gabby Bernstein.

Lane Kennedy: You like that one? Huh?

Shanon Chaiken: I love it because you know what? I was the most judgmental, horrific person. And I really, this one really, really changed by sinking. It really changed it. And I’m so grateful because. Nah, I didn’t, I didn’t

Lane Kennedy: like the hat. Well, you know, what’s so interesting. So Gabby, you know, in recovery a too now and within my needing, so I just it’s, it’s this thing that we, that we go through in recovery.

So this book coming out for her, right. It’s like exactly where she needs exactly what she needs to share. Right. Is that because in that part of her recovery is when all that judgment stuff starts to come up. Right. So it’s like in between 10 to 15, like, like there’s a judgment monster that starts to like rare.

Shanon Chaiken: Yeah, and I love that because it really does give you that empathy to like look at someone and understand them a little bit better. Also a book that changed my life and I studied with her. Was this woman named Julie Santiago? She’s owned she’s up near you.

Lane Kennedy: I think I’ve heard of her actually.

Shanon Chaiken: She’s incredible.

And this is a book called awaken and this she is Jocelyn. The one of the most beautiful human beings I’ve ever had the honor of, of knowing and like life change and she’s part of the tribe and love

Lane Kennedy: her. Fantastic. Do you think that, is there a book in you?

Shanon Chaiken: No. No,

Lane Kennedy: not interested. Not yet.

Shanon Chaiken: I think that by like, honestly, I love talking to people. I love meeting people. I love helping people on their journey. You know, I don’t really like attention. I have to tell you, like, I like doing this because you get to connect and you get to share. And maybe somebody hears that maybe it helps somebody else.

But like, I, I just don’t like. I just would like to just, I, I love the pandemic because I get to stay in my house. You know, like I’m not, I have no, like, if, like, if somebody comes into my life and they’re there on my journey and I get to leave my thumbprint on them, like what an honor. But beyond that, like, I’m good, really happy.

Lane Kennedy: I love it. So we have gone over our time because I’ve just loved our conversation and everything about the peaks and the valleys you know, changing your recovery and just being a part of this incredible time right now, this incredible movement of strong, sober women. How can our ladies find you and the work that.

Shanon Chaiken: So, how can you find me? Oh, I have a website. It’s not that great, but it’s there. And it’s my name? Shanon shaken wellness. And the S H a N O N C H a I K E N. wellness.com. Beautiful. You can find me on Instagram. Nice and well, you can send me a letter, send me an email. I love talking to people.

Thank you.

Lane Kennedy: Oh my  goodness. Well, thank you for sharing this path of recovery and for being so open and sharing your story to.

Shanon Chaiken: It was really an honor. It was so much fun to connect with you. Beautiful. All right.

Lane Kennedy: May you find something bright, something light and something so delicious that fills you up? So you may be the best you can be until next time.

Take good care. I have loved hanging out with you too. Thanks so much for listening into Shanon and I talk about recovery, make sure to review the show over on iTunes always means a lot to me and to all the other women who find the show. Also don’t forget. Sign up for the next column. Reset over@recoverlikeamother.com forward slash reset.

Have a great one. Bye.

Listen in to Shanon’s Episode

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