What does it mean to build a meaningful life when the story you thought you were writing doesn’t turn out the way you expected? Bestselling author Laura McKowen joins Nadine for a deeply honest conversation about sobriety, emotional sobriety, relationships, writing, longing, and the messy work of becoming more fully ourselves. Laura shares the questions she now uses to recognize when she’s hiding from herself and how sobriety has taught her to trust her own intuition. They talk about the breakup that forced Laura to choose the clean pain of leaving over the slow erosion of staying—and how, years into alcohol sobriety, she discovered that emotional sobriety has no finish line. The conversation also moves into Laura’s work-in-progress, a book that began as a story about relationships and has evolved into something much bigger: a meditation on midlife, longing, and what makes a life a love story. They talk about writing when you no longer feel certain, the courage to put bad pages on the page, the complicated ethics of writing about people we love, and why sometimes the most important stories are the ones that help us finally offer ourselves compassion. This is a conversation about so many things: recovery, relationships, writing, grief, sisterhood, self-trust, and the possibility that a life can be a love story even when it looks nothing like the one you imagined. --- Publish the Personal starts Oct 14 and is almost full. About Laura Laura McKowen is a leading voice in the modern recovery movement and the bestselling author of We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life, and Push Off from Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and Everything Else). Her work explores purpose, the potential of a human life, and the ways pain becomes growth. She has written for The New York Times and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The TODAY Show, and more. After getting sober in 2014, Laura left her corporate career to build a life around writing, speaking, teaching, and community. Since then, she has led sold-out retreats and workshops on recovery, transformation, and purpose. In 2020, she founded The Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support community, and she writes Love Story, a popular Substack newsletter about sobriety and writing. About Nadine: Nadine Kenney Johnstone is an award-winning author, podcast host, and writing coach. After fifteen years as a writing professor, she founded WriteWELL workshops and retreats for women writers. She interviews today’s top female authors on her podcast, Heart of the Story. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, was named book of the year by the Chicago Writer's Association. Her latest book, Come Home to Your Heart, is an essay collection and guided journal. She has been featured in Cosmo, Authority, MindBodyGreen, Natural Awakenings,Chicago Magazine, and more. She writes a regular column about mid-life reclamation on Substack.
