Both Can Be True

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan and I have a cold.

Mike: About a year ago we talked to our guest today, Jessica Guerrieri, about her recovery and her award-winning debut book club fiction novel, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Mike: Jessica has written a new novel titled Both Can Be True. I love the title.

Jessica: Thank you.

Mike: The book explores a wide variety of recovery topics we'll touch on. As a reminder, Jessica is a writer and novelist who lives in Northern California with her husband, who does not surf, as I recall, and her three daughters.

Mike: With a background in special ed, Jessica left the field to pursue a career in writing and raise her children. With over a decade of sobriety, she's a fierce advocate for addiction recovery. Her new novel, Both Can Be True, is available for pre-order and of course the link is in the podcast blurb.

Mike: Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica: Thank you so much for having me back. I'm so happy to see you again.

Mike: Yeah, you too. We're at the tail end of winter here, and you're in California, so I don't wanna hear about what it's like there today.

Jessica: I, yeah, I won't tell you.

Mike: All right. That's...

Jessica: Yeah, I won't tell you. (laughs)

Mike: That's good. We're gonna talk in a couple minutes about your novel. But it's always good to start with a refresher, even though I'll put a link to your first podcast in the blurb also. You're recovering for over a decade now.

Jessica: I am. Yeah. So, um, I have, I'm coming up on my 13th year in May.

Jessica: Hopefully, God willing, I'll have 13 years of continued sobriety from alcohol. I shared on the podcast last time, and I always share it as part of my journey. I actually break up my sobriety and my recovery from drugs as something totally separate from one another. So I give myself a recovery from drugs date as well.

Jessica: And that was during the pandemic in August 6th, 2021. The reason I break those up is because, I like to acknowledge the fact that I continued my sobriety and of alcohol. But in the pandemic, when I was raising three young daughters, I was looking for sort of a eject button and instead of reaching for alcohol, I reached for other substances.

Jessica: And in doing that, I explored the way that my addict brain wants to, and I learned that I'm also a drug addict. And it started really small and seemingly harmless. Like you said, I'm in California, so California sober is...

Mike: Yeah, that's...

Jessica: Allowing to have THC gummies.

Jessica: And so I thought, why don't I give that a try and see what happens. And since we are, in the end of days here, maybe it won't all matter. And it turns out, an addictive substance is an addictive substance.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessica: So it was a slippery slope. And I got my hands on prescription pills.

Jessica: Thankfully I didn't go too far down that rabbit hole and was able to realize that addiction got me again. And so I stay away from all substances and have been clean and sober now for going on 13 and going on five years.

Mike: Congratulations. I've worked with a lot of people over the years and I just shake my head at California sober.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: Because I had a woman one time I was working with Jessica, who switched to Sharp's beer. She liked beer. Sharp's has got very little alcohol in it.

Jessica: Yeah, .01, which is not nothing.

Mike: But, within weeks, she stopped talking to people, her mood changed, she stopped going to meetings, didn't answer calls from her sponsor.

Mike: Bing bing. When you have the disease, you have the disease.

Jessica: Yeah, and I've heard that in meetings so many times where it's oh, I had 20 non-alcoholic beers. And it's yep, 20. If you do the math, you probably got, a little bit of a buzz going on.

Jessica: It's not my place to tell anyone else how to do a program. All I know for me is that the second that I get, I give myself a little inkling of that coughs are up. Technically has, I have to card for it. So why do they have to card for it? Oh, because it actually has something in it that I need to look at.

Jessica: Do I need to tell my doctor, do I need to tell my sponsor I have a cold? Yes, I do. I need to be held accountable, because the only one I'm really fooling in the end is myself. 'Cause I'm the one that has to suffer the consequence.

Mike: Absolutely. And this will tie, I think this part of the conversation will tie in later when we talk about conversations you have with your own brain.

Mike: But before we get into your book, which I loved, I wanna talk about your writing. 'Cause I'm curious, how do you write, do you structure yourself and how does your writing. Does it, how does it help your recovery? Do you sit down, structure yourself two hours a day, or do you just wait till the creative juices flow?

Jessica: Yeah, so I, in, in another life, I'm gonna be a much more organized person. I'm actually in the process right now of being newly diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. I've, I cannot organize to save my own life. But I have fantasies of being organized and I realize it's just not how my brain is put together.

Jessica: And so I give myself grace when it comes to. Oh, are you gonna sit down? Are you gonna be regimented? I have all the planners, I have all the calendars, all the apps set in my phone, and I see a squirrel and it's time to go. It's time to go feed the bunnies because bunnies and squirrels are similar and all of a sudden I have six things going on at the same time.

Mike: That's great.

Jessica: And so what I've learned is to lean into where I am in the moment and not force it. So obviously if I had a deadline, I have a deadline. Right now. I'm working on my third book. I have a deadline of this week. So that needs to get done, but I found if I'm in the creative space, the editing space, if I'm in that mode, don't jinx it.

Jessica: So if it means I need to call a babysitter to have somebody else pick up the kids because I'm six hours in and I need to go for another four hours, that's what I'm gonna do. If it means that the flow is not happening and I'm forcing it and it sounds like hot garbage, I must, I need to use my time differently.

Jessica: One of the tricks that I tell all writers that this works for me, it's like another language. Anytimes I feel out of the flow of creativity, I pop on Audible. I pop on an audio book. I find my favorite narrator. Usually it's one that's gonna be reading from my books 'cause I have some amazing narrators that are reading Both Can Be True. And I sink into their rhythm, and I find my favorite authors, the ones that inspire me the most. I love their cadence. I love the way that they dissect language and they put words together. It's like a masterpiece. And then I just close my eyes and I listen to the way that they, they put the sentences together and my brain switches back on to that creative mode and I can almost mimic it. Not in a way that's copying.

Mike: Sure.

Jessica: But in a way that is artistic. And so I've just leaned into that. Because I'll tell you the truth, for my first novel when I wrote Between the Devil, there was part of it that I was in active addiction.

Jessica: So I was writing when I was on THC. And I found that creativity was really tempting. It was really like alluring. I really got into the like flow state of creative writing. And, but it was all fake, right? It wasn't an authentic experience to myself. It was contrived. And so all things, what was I seeking?

Jessica: I was seeking inspiration. I was seeking, and I was like we can do this. It's I can find it other places, I can find it in a way that's healthy. And what's a better way than being inspired by somebody else that you admire? And so that's been my, like changeover. Anytime I work with somebody who's an author and they're like it's easier to do it under the influence of something.

Jessica: I'm like, no it's not. It's not an authentic experience, there's all the, the famous, poets and everybody, Hemingway and they all, drank themselves. Raymond Carver, they all drank themselves to death. There's gotta be a better way (laughs).

Mike: One, and we don't pay attention to the ones that don't do that.

Mike: The ones that do that get all the the press.

Jessica: Right.

Mike: This also will come back up when we talk about your book. And speaking of your book, Both Can Be True. You start out saying remarkable line: "There's more than one way for a woman to disappear, because sometimes the body stays, but the woman is already gone."

Mike: I think that's true of men too. But what do you mean?

Jessica: Yeah. So that's the tagline that we have actually on the cover of the book. And I mean it in so many literal senses, I mean it in the sense of our identity as either in motherhood, you lose your, this is a theme that I explored in Between the Devil often where you don't know your identity. Once you become a mom and you lose yourself as a person, but not just that in, in marriage in addiction, surely. There's even parts in this book that I go into dissociation, as it relates to trauma. So you physically are no longer in your body. And so like with Between the Devil, there's a way that no matter what you relate to, you can identify with that in some capacity, whether it be motherhood, womanhood, partnership, trauma. There's always a way in which we lose ourselves.

Mike: Yeah. The characters in your books have a lot of inner conversations that you let us be a part of, right? So you tell us what they're thinking a lot and we get a picture that what they're thinking is.

Mike: Many times different than what they present to the world. And as I'm reading it, I'm thinking, that makes relationships complicated.

Jessica: And one of the things that was really, I wanted to point out in this book that has come up so much for me in my relationships with other people, especially with my girlfriends as we get into being married later and later, right?

Jessica: So like my husband and I are celebrating 15 years married. That's different than being married for two years. Obviously you learn and you grow together. And one of the things that keeps coming up within my friend group is us as women identifying our own neurodivergence and then not diagnosing, but identifying our husband's neurodivergence that maybe we didn't see before, but now we see in our children, and it's a reflection of who we are. And this all in like a celebratory way. As a former special education teacher, I am a champion of neurodivergence. I think it brings something special to the world no matter what it is.

Jessica: And while it can be challenging for things like communication, I think it really opens the door for looking at marriages in a different way. There's the old school, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Like we don't communicate in the same way. And it's like, I look at my relationship with my husband and I was an English major with creative writing.

Jessica: He's a civil engineer, and so the way in which he structures his workday looks entirely different in the way...

Mike: No squirrels.

Jessica: Right. There's no squirrels and he's very, he's not a social person. I'm a social person. And when you've been married for a while, you don't look at these things as something you're trying to fix in one another.

Jessica: You look at how do you adjust the way you see the world and you can accommodate each other in both of your worlds. And that's how I've learned to navigate. And he's had to learn the most, being married to an addict and an alcoholic, right? So he's had to adjust his world and the way he sees it.

Jessica: And so that's really what opened my eyes to this idea of, I bet you there's more people in the world that are experiencing these same types of communication styles that are becoming more and more challenging. But they're so common and people aren't talking about them in the same way.

Mike: And then add to that recovery where you're told, be brutally honest, right?

Mike: Take that inventory, share stuff, and it's not a smile and nod and pretend everything okay. While you have that inner dialogue in your head.

Jessica: Exactly. Exactly. And that's just the nature of communication in all relationships, but especially in marriage and in partnership. And so what I explore in this book often is.

Jessica: There are these things where we're in the head of Mere and Frankie, and we're seeing that what they're playing out, be it like a repetitive, intrusive thought and then what they're projecting out to either their friends or their partners, is different. And the greatest compliment that I receive as a writer is when somebody like reaches out to me and says, "In recovery, not in recovery, just a human being."

Jessica: And they say, you've translated and put into words something that I've wanted to say and I can't say, I don't have the words for it. But you've put it into words and therefore I feel less alone in my either in your darkest of thoughts, in your hardest of thoughts, in addiction, in your most ugly of moments.

Jessica: And then that's the bridge that I'm trying to create where it's like I am the Rosetta Stone and the translation of that. And that's the gift that I hope to impart on the world.

Mike: Yeah. There's several places where I'm reading and go, and I just went, bingo. And it triggered something. But speaking of Mere and Frankie... They're sisters.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: And sibling relationships are complicated.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: There's a lot of arrows in the quiver that we save sometimes for years and you don't see them coming.

Jessica: Yeah. What's really fun about this is last year, the Avid Reader, which is our local bookstore here in Davis, they put on my book launch and it was with Lara Love Hardin, who is Oprah's Book Club Pick, and she wrote the Many Lives of Mama Love.

Jessica: And she flew out from Hawaii, was my conversation partner. I had 200 people in the audience. It was this beautiful event and Avid Reader offered to do it again for Both Can Be True.

Mike: Awesome.

Jessica: And I was sitting there and thinking about who do I want my conversation partner to be? And then it just hit me.

Jessica: I was like, oh, my sister. My sister is a surfer, she is also a writer and a Berkeley grad and was an English major. And I was like, oh. Who knows me better than me, like better than her and the dynamic of that. And is the book based on her and I's sibling dynamic? Not entirely, obviously it's auto fiction in a lot of the sense, but what it truly is there's a relationship in siblings that's so special and unique. And your lived experience is not the same lived experience as your sibling, even though you lived in the same home.

Jessica: And I find that fascinating. My dad is one of seven and they couldn't be more different and they were raised in the same households by the same parents. And I love, as my sister and I have gotten older, and this is the reflection in the book.

Jessica: We've sat down and been like, wait, do you remember it this way? And she's oh no, it was this way. And I'm like, no it was this way. And then you are learning more about yourself through the other person, which I think is a tool that you can use in a healing journey, right? Because I think we're all children trying to be healed, right?

Jessica: And who better to utilize than someone else who lived through it with you, right?

Mike: If you're both open to that.

Jessica: Exactly.

Mike: Otherwise...

Jessica: ... I am. Otherwise it's a disaster. (laughs)

Mike: Yeah. It makes Thanksgiving's what they, are arguments about no, you're full of stuffing, right?

Jessica: You're full of stuffing.

Mike: Exactly. It's amazing. There, there's a scene Frankie is married to, or Mere is married, who's married to Dale again.

Jessica: Mere is married to Dale.

Mike: Okay. Sorry.

Jessica: Yep.

Mike: So he comes home. From camping and Mere tells him exactly what she's "feeling and needing" and that seemed relatively healthy.

Mike: (laughs) And I, this is okay. There will be no spoilers, but this is cute. I just had a visual 'cause he didn't respond at all. And just, and I thought there you go. Relationship communication is difficult even when you are saying, here's what I feel, here's what I need. And that causes resentment sometimes, too.

Mike: It's like walks away, right? That was, that's that was so real.

Jessica: And who hasn't lived that in a family, in a marriage, however it is. And what I wanted to show with these two sisters is their relationship dynamic within their partnership and their marriages, are totally different.

Jessica: And what's interesting about sisters specifically is, I know with my own sister, I thought when she became a mother, 'cause I became a mother before her, even though I'm the younger sister and I thought when she became a mom, we are gonna reconnect. Cause we had branched off and lost, not lost touch in the sense that these sisters do, but lost touch in the sense of life patterns.

Jessica: And I was like, okay, so she's a mom now, she's gonna get it, in the way that I get it. And that didn't happen. So she actually has a son who's neurodivergent and she only, she has one son. And she's no longer married to the husband. And it's a completely different experience in life. And what I found is that experience, it didn't actually bring us together.

Jessica: It made us go further apart because it was like, oh, I have three kids and they, none of them are on the spectrum. And how do we relate to one another? And it turns out we relate to one another best when it is her and I as sisters and individuals. So we celebrate that in the ways that we've learned to do, right?

Jessica: Like we our stepsister got married in Australia and we went and did an Australia trip, just her and I without the kids. And it was the greatest week of both of our lives of that particular year because it was just like, this is her and I at our core. And that's what I explore in the book of you don't always bring out the best versions of yourself through your sibling in those different facets, those different places that you disappear in motherhood and marriage. But you can celebrate like the sisterhood piece and I think that's something that is super interesting and beautiful.

Mike: Hopefully someday evolve into adults rather than replaying age 12.

Jessica: Exactly.

Mike: One of the other relationships that, and again, no spoilers, but this is part of the book and I think a really interesting part. I think recovering people will like this. There's sponsor and sponsee relationship.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: And I like that. As you say, there's more than I'll quote you... actually, "There's more than one way to be a sponsor. It's a balancing act, support without control, compassion without ownership."

Jessica: So I was very careful with my first novel I called it "the program". I did not name AA at all. In writing the second one I was actually deep in reading The Rivers Waiting by Wally Lamb and that book is essentially a love letter to AA.

Jessica: It's very much talks about the program and talks about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I realized one of the things that I do very vocally is I recover out loud and I hold no shame about it. And I think while I respect one of the pillars, which is anonymity and at the level of press and radio, and here I am talking about AA and here I am publishing about AA.

Jessica: I'm not speaking as the platform as a whole. I'm saying this was my experience and I want people to know what is available? It shouldn't be like a hidden in church basement. What voodoo are you doing and chanting? And so I really wanted to show the thing that was the most beneficial for me, which was the sponsee/sponsor relationship. Because all it is it's someone selflessly giving themselves completely to another person to guide them through recovery because they've lived their experience and this is what worked for them. And they had someone else holding their hand and guiding them through, calling them at four in the morning saying this is really hard. I don't know if I can keep doing this. Okay, let me just sit with you. Let me just, let's sit in it together. And so I wanted to honor that for what it truly was and name it for what it truly was. And I think there's something very maternal about it. Like you can, I, my particular sponsor was like a mother figure to me in a lot of ways because she understood me in a way that my own mother never would because my mother is not an alcoholic.

Jessica: And so if you lean into that and you lean into that trust with another person. There's something really wonderful that happens and I wanted to explore that. As my message is of hope that my books always end in.

Mike: Frankie's sponsor, Pearl, is a woman I've met hundreds of times over the years.

Jessica: We love Pearl.

Mike: Yeah. And she has a line that I, this is one of the lines where I went, yep! She says to Frankie, "Don't you ever get tired up there in your mind?" That is so good!

Jessica: And it's so true. I know it's true of all women. It's true of all women, especially in recovery.

Jessica: Our sickness is in between our ears, right? It's not the alcohol it's the, it's a disease of the mind. So I will find a way to resent somebody to the point of wanting to drink about it. I will find a way to blame someone. I will overthink something and you say there's more than one way for a woman to disappear.

Jessica: We disappear in our mind every moment of every day. (laughs) I'll ask my husband, I'll be like, is there ever a time that you're just like not thinking about something? He's oh, if I'm like working on a task, I'm working on a task. And I was like, what's that like I'm up here, I'm thinking this, I'm thinking this.

Jessica: And is there's, there's many things happening at one time, and so it is exhausting. That's the thing. It's exhausting. And one of the messages of the book and of recovery is to learn to be here.

Mike: Yes.

Jessica: To be present, to stay in it. And I think that's just a good lesson in general, right? Like we should all just be present.

Jessica: 'Cause the worry, the future tripping is there. We're gonna obsess about what we did in the past, all the mistakes, we did, the humiliation. But if we're here, I'm sober here right now, and this moment is good. And I can do this moment. So that's one of the messages of the book.

Mike: And part of the recovery journey is rediscovering yourself.

Mike: I thought you identified the disease progression really well, when you said you wanted to bring back all the things inside Frankie, that drinking had stolen from her.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: All the things that made her glow.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: And you don't see that coming. And then you look in the mirror one day and go, I'm no longer there.

Jessica: The difference in this, the first book and the second book is I really wanted to explore relapse as part of recovery. This is not a spoiler in the back of the book. And it's, so the first book is very much about the journey of the descent into addiction. What happens when you have long-term recovery like I did and I do. And something else comes in and wants to derail you, and what does that look like? And so that's Frankie's exploration, obviously very similar to mine. And how does that sort of pop into life?

Jessica: Because, I remember my grandfather passing away. I was really close with him. He was a mentor to me and just a wonderful man. And he died about three years into my sobriety journey. And at that point I had two kids under three. And I just remember being like, oh. This is the way in which people relapse because it's oh, it's so hard. Life is gonna keep lifeing at you.

Jessica: Like my sponsor used to say. People are gonna die, there's gonna be tragedy, and you have to be sober on top of all of that. And actually that wasn't at all the hard part, like him, it was like there was no part of me that was like, oh, I think if I drink at his wake, I'll feel better. I had enough recovery in me to know this actually will make everything worse.

Jessica: I 'll lose all of the things that I've made in these three years. It was the very strange elements of life that came at you that were the most unexpected. And that's what happens with Frankie, where it's like an event that triggered her that's identical to event that happened in my life. It, it comes outta nowhere.

Jessica: And then you have to say did I really heal the way that I needed to? That's where addiction comes back in and wants to be so sneaky and wants to say, "No, not only did you not heal from it, but I have a solution for you over here." That's gonna be easier than if you go down into that rabbit hole again.

Mike: And that's all out there, right? And there's a lot that is out there. And the key is to be reflective. I remember our first conversation, you cracked me up, when you said that you really cared a lot about how you looked at your first AA meeting, and you're putting on lipstick and fixing your hair before you went in the church basement.

Mike: And you have a line in your book says, "The sooner you stop caring about what other people think, the happier you'll be. That couldn't be more true.

Jessica: Right and that's why people say that. It isn't until you really start to live it. Right now I have, a 12-year-old daughter and I have a 10-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old daughter.

Jessica: And my 12-year-old is the most in her head. She's the most, in that season of life, of caring what other people think. And that's not unique to her in any capacity. I was also a 12-year-old girl, and that's what we care about, right? There is a freedom that happens once... if you are ever able to break out of that.

Mike: Yes.

Jessica: I think it's one of the gifts of sobriety because you've already been in hell, right? I've already died a thousand deaths. And now it's like the idea of somebody else, their opinion of me being the thing that takes me out. (laughs) No, it will not. That will not be the thing that takes me out because at the end of the day you live in your own truth. And I'm proud of my truth specifically. On my bad days, if I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll go in Good Reads and I'll be like, ugh, one star review, like for my book. Oh, cool. Thank you. And then it's just that is what it is. It's their interpretation of your art and they're allowed to have their opinion on it.

Jessica: And that's not gonna be the thing that takes me out in the end.

Mike: Oh goodness. Years ago, and this happened to me years and years ago, I used to be sent all the evaluations from when I speak...

Jessica: Of course.

Mike: And of course you'd read 'em all and...

Jessica: yeah.

Mike: Then one day I read one that was like a one star, 'cause the room was too cold and the food was bad.

Mike: I'm like. I said I can't read these anymore. So now when I speak, I tell people, don't send me the evals.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: I'll know whether you liked me, whether you hire me again.

Jessica: Sure.

Mike: And that's all it matters.

Mike: I'll let you out with this, but there's a lot of, again, I love your title.

Mike: There's a lot of both can be trues in the book as well as life.

Jessica: S o my dedication is actually, I'm really proud of my dedication. It is "For all of us who carry contradictions." And so the reason that I made that my dedication is because I learned through the very nature of recovery that essentially every day I exist, I'm a walking contradiction.

Jessica: I have something, I have a disease that wants me dead every day. And I wanna live. And so every single moment of my life is a contradiction. So the idea that both things can be true... Once I came to a, like an acceptance piece of that and recognize oh, okay, I can live with that. I can live knowing that this is always gonna be true.

Jessica: I'm always gonna have this thing that's, the monkey on your back. But that's not going to be it, right? That's not gonna be how my story goes. Instead, I'm actually gonna take all of this and I'm gonna turn it into books and I'm gonna try and connect with other people, because I believe the opposite of addiction is connection and this is what I'm going to do with it.

Jessica: So yes, that can be true, that I do have this, but it can also be true that I can do something with it. And there are themes of both can be true riddled throughout the book, but it's also riddled throughout our life. I love that expression, because people are so black and white in their thinking and they don't realize that sometimes the answer is that both of those things can be true.

Mike: Yeah, I can, love my siblings at the same time that they irritate the heck out of me.

Jessica: Absolutely. And what I wanted to convey is that's okay, right? Like those things can be true and also that can be okay.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessica: And I've learned through, therapy and through different work and being a mom, I've just learned that piece where it's like.

Jessica: You used to think that it needed to be this one way, and then all of a sudden you learned that things can coexist at the same time. And that's okay.

Mike: Awesome. I look forward to talking to you again since you're in the middle of a third book.

Jessica: That's right.

Mike: For those of you listening, you know how this goes.

Mike: If you're watching, listening, and by the way, if you're watching, Jessica looks a lot better than I do today.

Jessica: Thanks. I match, I always match my books

Mike: Oh my God.

Jessica: To, so I match. My cover to my last time I was in blue. This time I'm in green. That's very specific.

Mike: And would I have noticed that? No.

Jessica: (Laughs)

Mike: So there you go.

Mike: There are links to Jessica's work, including her wonderful new novel, Both Can Be True, attached to podcast.

Mike: Jess, thanks you so much for being with us, for your ongoing work, your reflection, and your inspiration, it does make you think.

Mike: We invite you all to listen in next time. Until next time, stay safe and stay connected.