073: Interview with Win Charles from the Ask Win Podcast073: Interview with Win Charles from the Ask Win Podcast
You're Sober! Now What?
Tamar Medford talks with Win Charles about living with cerebral palsy, choosing sobriety and turning painful experiences into a sense of purpose. Their conversation focuses on mindset, advocacy, creative work and the courage to build a life that feels worth staying sober for.
46:30•1 Feb 2021
Turning Cerebral Palsy and Sobriety into a Gift with Win Charles
Episode Overview
- Seeing disability and addiction as potential gifts can shift mindset from victimhood to purpose.
- Sobriety can be achieved without formal programmes when there is strong personal commitment and support.
- Emotional and physical abuse should be reported, especially for adults at risk with disabilities.
- Following genuine passions such as creative work or coaching can replace draining nine-to-five jobs.
- Positive attitude and clear intentions can help bring major life changes, like relocating for health and wellbeing.
“You can easily accept it as your gifts. Or you can easily crawl under the table and say, I don’t want to do this. I have accepted it as my gift.”
Curious about how others turn their struggles into something powerful? This conversation between Tamar Medford and Win Charles offers a mix of sobriety talk, disability advocacy and sheer determination that’ll speak to anyone rebuilding life after addiction. Win Charles, host of the Ask Win podcast, lives with cerebral palsy and jokes that she has "the strangest disability in the world" – "a.k.a.
the disability that won’t go away." She shares how long it took to stop seeing CP as a burden and start seeing it as a gift, explaining, "You can easily accept it as your gifts. Or you can easily crawl under the table and say, I don’t want to do this. I have accepted it as my gift." That mindset shift becomes a central theme for people in recovery too.
The episode walks through Win’s journey from emotional abuse and growing up in an alcoholic family to making a clear decision: she started her road to sobriety on 23 June 2019 after what she calls an awakening from God. She quit wine cold turkey, didn’t use AA or Al-Anon, and leant heavily on her support team and faith to stay dry.
Tamar relates, having used alcohol to numb feelings herself, and their shared honesty around pain, grief and coping gives the chat a very real, non-judgemental feel. You’ll also hear how Win built a life she actually wants to live: becoming an inspirational speaker, writing 11 books, hosting over 1,500 podcast episodes and now manifesting a move from snowy Colorado to the beach for health and family reasons.
She keeps the advice simple for anyone feeling stuck: "Just do it" – quit the job that’s draining you, follow what you’re passionate about and create work that fits the life you want. For anyone in recovery wondering how to turn hardship into purpose, this episode offers straight-talking stories, some laughs, and a nudge to ask: what gift might be hiding inside your own struggles?
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