Some conversations land not just in your mind, but in your body. When you think you are diving into an interview to spread awareness for your community, but somewhere mid-gab, you realize – this is the universe answering my call. My chat with Nadinie Machkovech for our podcast was one of those for me.

When I sat down with Nadine, I knew we would be talking about recovery, leadership, and the realities of living visibly in this work. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how much of our conversation would keep coming back to a radical truth that society has conditioned us to keep it all together when we have more emotional labour as women than any other demographic in modern history. We can be mothers, partners, friends, mentors, leaders, and caregivers. We might be entrepreneurs or business owners. Some of us are navigating a late diagnosis of neurodivergence or living with autoimmune conditions. And on top of it, we encounter hormone shifts from periods to peri and post menopause that make us feel like an entirely different person. We are women in recovery facing unbelievable pressure to hold it all together, even when we might feel like we’re unraveling inside. All the while, the threat to us as women (particularly for women of color and LGBTQ+ individuals) and to all of humanity, is very real in the world today. And how excruciatingly lonely that can feel.

This is something I have been reckoning with, especially since the start of the new year. As a woman in my early forties living on a remote island and raising a high-needs toddler, I realized how much I am missing what I call analog or in-real-life connection with like-hearted people. I’ve bought books on how to find friends as an introverted, neurodivergent elder millennial (okay, so that’s not a real book, but someone should write it), and the message is always the same:

We have to get uncomfortable and courageously vulnerable to find authentic connection.

Makes sense, but if I knew how to do that, I would be writing a very different blog.

This is exactly what Nadine and I explored in her episode of the SHE RECOVERS Podcast, Enough Already: From Hiding to Healing.

This breakthrough disguised as a breakdown didn’t arrive like a rock bottom.

And there was no pivotal moment when I gave up and lay on the bathroom floor, praying to the Goddess for a sign (okay, so this actually happens from time to time, but it’s just me trying to be human with a little help from the divine). It started with sleepless nights and a brain that couldn’t turn off, but at the same time could barely remember my own name. I had decision fatigue. I became increasingly irritable. I lost my passion for doing the things I love. I developed an autoimmune disorder and started to disconnect from myself slowly, the people I love, and the natural world. Eventually, I had to take three months off work because the anxiety and chronic stress (which I now know has a name: patriarchal stress disorder and moral injury) simply became too much to bear.

What kept me in that state longer than I needed to be there wasn’t a lack of awareness; it was a firm belief that I should be able to handle it on my own, and conditioning that led me to think my own intuition was inherently broken. Tending to myself was something I thought I needed to earn, and because I was functional, I didn’t get to ask for more support.

For a long time, I didn’t think I deserved recovery for myself at all. I feel that there can be an unspoken hierarchy in our culture where the depth of crisis becomes a measure of our worthiness for support. I have come to understand myself as an early exiter, someone able to interrupt patterns before they escalate further. And, I want to acknowledge the privilege in that. Access to resources, support, awareness, and the conditions that made it possible for me to listen sooner are not equally available to everyone. Early intervention can be misunderstood or even judged, but at the same time, it can be life-saving. For me, recovery has become less about proving how bad things were and more about honoring that something didn’t feel right. By allowing that to be enough, I was able to find my own path of recovery.

When I took time away to focus on my own healing, I did a lot of things right. I focused on my self-care. I prioritized rest, sleep, and joy. I wrote about how I felt to process my emotions. I meditated. I nourished myself. I practiced embodied movement. But I did most of it alone. I realize now that I was missing an essential piece of recovery – connection.

What I’ve come to understand, is that connection is not about being everything to everyone. It’s about being real with someone…even if just for a moment. Connection is not quantity. It’s quality. It’s about being witnessed without having to edit yourself. It’s listening to someone with presence and care.

This is something Nadine speaks to so powerfully.

In this episode, she shares her journey of entering recovery in her early twenties, spending more time in recovery than she did misusing substances, living through the profound loss of her teenage son to overdose, navigating the expectations of being a visible voice in the recovery space, all while keeping her truth inside. She speaks with a kind of honesty that doesn’t try to tidy up the complexities of grief and being human, or make it more palatable. She shows us that leading with an undefended heart and vulnerability is the highest form of courage.

There is a moment in the conversation where we talk about intuition, and what it means to listen inward. For me, this intuition was a whisper I kept ignoring, so eventually, the universe knocked me unsteady. Nadine reminds us, it doesn’t have to be this way.
We don’t have to wait until things fall apart to begin tending to ourselves.

Throughout our conversation, Nadine’s book, Enough Already: A Journey from Hiding to Healing, serves as both a reflection of her lived experience and an offering to others. It speaks to the cost of hiding, and the freedom that can come when we begin to tell the truth about our lives.

May this episode serve as an invitation to loosen your grip on perfection. To challenge the belief that you have to hold it all together. To consider that tending to yourself is a radical act of self-love. One that you deserve, just for being.

And perhaps most importantly, a reminder that you do not have to navigate any of this alone.