A Clean Scan, a Parade, and Learning to Stay Grounded

"I was just lost before I really started this journey."

That's Peter, talking about who he was before recovery. We recorded this one in his home studio, the one with the hummingbird at the window and the plants Julie swears make it look like Snow White's cottage. He was tired that morning. The TMS study he's working on at Another Chance has him up at 7 a.m., and he is not a morning person. But he's nine years sober this Sunday, and his one-year cancer scan just came back clean.

"Over these past nine years, I've become found. I'm no longer lost."

We celebrated three promotions and three birthdays at one dinner the night before we recorded. Julie's sending in her expungement paperwork after 32 years, eight charges coming off her record. She found the documents while digging through a file cabinet looking for tax forms.

Two Years, No Filter, No Guests — Just the Truth

There's a moment in this episode where Julie goes quiet for just a second before she says it, and we want you to hear it the way she said it — not read it summarized here. Her sponsor picked her up for a meeting recently, and before they pulled away he looked at her and said: I just want you to know you're my favorite person. I love you more than anyone. Julie is an only child. Her mother once told her she never should have had a child. She spent six months to age eleven with nannies. And this man — her sponsor of nearly five years — said those words with nothing behind them, no conditions, no angle, nothing owed. Julie says she's not sure she'd ever had that in her whole life before recovery. You need to hear what that moment sounds like in her voice.

This is Episode 110, and it's just us — Julie and Peter, no guest, no script, no polish. We're two years in and we wanted to stop and actually talk about what those two years looked like, because if we're being honest, year two was not what we planned.