165 Lift Yourself Up During The Holiday Season165 Lift Yourself Up During The Holiday Season
You're Sober! Now What?
Tamar Medford talks about her past holiday struggles with loneliness and mental health in sobriety and shares practical tools that help her feel lifted. The conversation focuses on gratitude, spiritual practice, affirmations and connection as ways to ease the holiday season in recovery.
12:03•23 Dec 2021
Lifting Yourself Up in Sobriety During the Holiday Season
Episode Overview
- Holidays can feel especially hard in recovery, but sobriety and support networks mean you are never truly alone.
- Leaning into spiritual practices like prayer and meditation can bring comfort and a sense of being cared for.
- Daily journaling with simple intentions and gratitude helps shift focus from lack to what is working in your life.
- Positive affirmations are grounded in science and can help rewire your thinking when repeated and genuinely felt.
- Reaching out to someone in your recovery community is not a burden; it can help both of you and lead to real solutions.
“It's okay to not be okay, but it's also okay to reach out to someone and tell them that.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This holiday-themed episode of "You're Sober! Now What?" looks at that question through Tamar Medford’s experience of early recovery, loneliness, and learning to lift herself up during a notoriously tricky time of year. Speaking candidly, Tamar talks about how her holidays used to be fuelled by alcohol and codependent relationships, and how getting sober left her feeling "very alone" after divorce and major life changes.
That uncomfortable moment became a turning point: she realised she had "never learned to love" herself and had actually never been truly alone, thanks to recovery support and fellowship. Today, Tamar focuses on gratitude and connection.
She shares that she’s thankful for having "a roof over my head," sobriety, and "a higher power in my life that takes care of my needs," adding, "I don't always get what I want, but I always get what I need." For anyone struggling over the holidays, she reminds you that recovery communities mean "we're never really alone" and that reaching out is not selfish, but a gift to both people.
You’ll hear practical tools Tamar leans on during the festive season: leaning into spiritual practice through prayer and meditation, daily gratitude journaling with simple intentions, using positive affirmations backed by mind science, and actively contacting someone in her support network instead of isolating. She also urges people to "appreciate how far you've come," especially if you’re clean and sober.
The tone stays warm and down-to-earth, mixing honest admissions about depression and anxiety with encouragement to seek solutions rather than just vent. It’s aimed squarely at people in recovery who find the holidays heavy, and at anyone who needs a reminder that it’s okay to not be okay—and to say so out loud. Feeling wobbly this season? This episode might be the nudge you need to reach out, reflect, and remember how much you’ve already changed.
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