075: Building a solid foundation in recovery075: Building a solid foundation in recovery
You're Sober! Now What?
Tamar Medford shares how she built a strong recovery foundation through surrender, support, faith, and taking responsibility for her past. She explains how using her addiction and adversity as "training" helped her create a purpose-driven life she doesn’t want to escape from.
31:14•15 Feb 2021
Building a Recovery Foundation So Solid You Don’t Want to Go Back
Episode Overview
- Recognise and admit there is a problem, and see your "bottom" as the moment you choose to stop digging.
- Write out your life story to identify patterns, triggers, and areas that keep repeating, then share it with someone you trust.
- Build a support network so you’re not trying to handle recovery and life changes on your own.
- Develop a personal idea of a higher power that feels like love and support, especially when life gets hard.
- Own your part in resentments and difficult situations to release anger, find closure, and move forward more freely.
“"Your bottom is when you decide to stop digging."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? For host Tamar Medford, it was hitting an emotional rock bottom on her kitchen floor and realising she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired." In this solo episode of *You're Sober! Now What?*, she talks about what it really means to build a solid foundation in recovery and why that groundwork still shapes her life years later.
Speaking directly to people in recovery who feel stuck, complacent, or "meant for more", Tamar shares how years of addiction, trauma, food issues and codependency eventually became the raw material for her success. She explains how writing out her full life story – from those early insecure years to chaotic drinking and drug use – helped her finally see her patterns clearly. Reading that story out loud made it obvious that life wasn’t "normal" at all.
Tamar breaks foundation-building into three honest, practical pillars. First is surrender: admitting there’s a real problem and stopping the endless digging. As she puts it, "your bottom is when you decide to stop digging." Second is accepting that you don’t have to do it alone – building a support network and developing a personal concept of a higher power that feels like love and compassion rather than fear.
Third is the uncomfortable bit: "owning your shit" by looking at your part in resentments, letting go of blame, and clearing the emotional clutter that keeps you stuck. Along the way, she weaves in her shift from health-focused podcasting to helping people in recovery step into entrepreneurship and purpose-driven lives. If you’ve ever thought, "Who am I to do this?" or found yourself halfway through a pizza while on a diet, you’ll feel seen here.
Tamar’s message is simple: use your past as training, build a solid base, and create a life so good that going back just doesn’t appeal anymore. So what might your own foundation look like if you actually stopped digging and started building?
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