Today, I am thrilled to continue my conversation with Tom Farley, a man in recovery and sibling to the late Chris Farley, the author of The Chris Farley Show and community relations coordinator at Rosecrance.
In this episode, we continue to discuss self-acceptance, the benefits of being yourself, and how this allows Tom to find genuine connection with others. Tom shares his recovery journey and discusses the one thing that helped him navigate the pandemic – connection. Tom openly discusses the loss of his brother Chris, but also how Chris has impacted his recovery and is still a big part of his life today.
#recovery #addiction #tomfarley #author #thechrisfarleyshow #addictionrecovery #rosecrance #addictionawareness #addictiontreatment #addictions #familyrecovery #familyrecoverycoach #familyrecoverycoaching #familyaddiction #familyaddictionrecovery #recoverysupport #recoverysupportgroup #recoverysupportservices #womenpodcaster #embracefamilyrecovery #podcast #addictionpodcast #recoverypodcast #recoverystories #recoverycommunity
00:01
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Welcome back on today’s episode of Embrace Family Recovery Podcast I continue my conversation with Tom Farley. In this second episode with Tom we continue to discuss self acceptance and the benefits of being yourself and how recovery has helped him find that. He also discusses the pandemic and the key to navigating that for himself was through connection Tom shares openly how his baby brother Chris has influenced his own recovery.
Let’s get back to Tom
01:10
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret 01:26
I mean, the tragedy obviously, as we know those of us on the periphery, that you lost Chris, and you’ve mentioned it already today, that he passed. Do those moments that you saw the authentic, maybe less troubled, hurting Chris, linger for you? You know what I mean? Cuz you’ve lost him. And that’s just obviously the worst-case scenario for anyone in this family illness. We don’t want that outcome.
Tom Farley 01:50
But I got to see that. Yeah, that’s the gift was brief. But to be honest, now, when I’m out speaking to groups and talking about my journey. When I go to my meetings, and I’ve worked my recovery program, he’s there. He’s part of my recovery. He’s part of my story. I get to talk about me now. He is absolutely, as you say, right there with me. And it’s not like before where he was taking up space, and attention. He’s just now part of it is my support.
Margaret: Yeah
Tom Farley: I’m doing this for us.
Margaret: I love that.
Tom Farley: And boy, does that feel great.
Margaret 02:33
I bet. Fabric of your recovery. He’s part of that fabric.
Tom Farley 02:38
Yeah, people will see Chris as this, you know, celebrity actor I got him in a completely different way. And it’s, you know, in a very personal way, and
Margaret: Sacred.
Tom Farley: it really is. And you know, it’s funny, even that, I do have so many talks to people I meet so many families have lost somebody. And I’m in the treatment field now working for Rosecrance, I felt after COVID I needed to get people into treatment, it was kind of the last piece of my journey was to stop just advocating but actually getting people, which I love.
But I go to a lot of awareness, I do public forums on the current epidemic and all that kind of stuff. And I don’t know if it’s sometimes I talk about it. But a lot of times I just kind of feel it. It’s like, I feel very blessed in that. I don’t talk about Chris’s death, and his overdose and his disease so much I talk about it in terms of gosh, we all love this guy. And that’s what we’re losing people. We’re losing people to this disease. And it’s not the disease. It’s not the drugs. And I know there’s a lot of hate and all this effort to like, yeah, we got to do that too. But I prefer to kind of dwell more on the human level of the loss. Look at the loss and everyone has value, but to define people on how they died. And that addictive person that is gone, like, yeah, that addictive person is gone. But you know what, with them, that addictive person took this amazing person,
Margaret 04:19
you bet!
Tom Farley: With them.
Margaret: And that happens long before someone dies.
Tom Farley 04:24
And it takes a family with them sometimes.
Margaret 04:27
Correct. And to the point of kind of how we started, your mother led the charge to change the trajectory of the impact of the disease taking you all hostage, though, all of you’ve had your journey of getting to recovery, finding your path, losing the journey, because the disease took people. That is the hope of the story. The hope of the story is we don’t have to go down that way. But we have to work hard to change the trajectory we’re on. And though Chris couldn’t stay here on earth with you what I hear is, he helped you find your way into your long-term recovery, which is now giving back life and recovery to others through the work you’re doing. What a lineage started by your mom going to AA.
Tom Farley 05:15
Yep. Yeah, literally
Margaret 05:16
Gives me chills.
Tom Farley 05:19
And again. It’s amazing to me how this disease is just like it’s so big and tentacles and all that kind of stuff. And, and yet I connect to so many different aspects. It’s just, it’s so much more than me in my recovery. It’s my family, it’s my kids, it’s my siblings, and I’m learning. That’s kind of the neat thing about recovery is I’m learning all the time, you know, somebody will say something in a meeting about some family function, and they just left I’m like, Okay, I was mad about that something that happened 20 years ago at some function, and I haven’t let that go. I’m like, I need to hear these things. So I can add so much. I’ve spent so many years, burying a lot of those traumas, and they bubble up and they come out and you’re like, what’s this? Why am I angry about this? It’s not this that you’re angry about, but all the stuff that just kind of bubbles up. And so, piecing through that the ability to go back and like, address some of these long-term kinds of things that have festered has, you know, it’s wonderful.
Margaret 06:28
So, I think for the listeners, who are families and people with the illness, I want to just take that apart a little bit. What age did you engage in recovery, where you’ve had sustainable recovery? How old were you? If you don’t mind me asking?
Tom Farley 06:41
Oh, geez, it was probably 55.
Margaret 06:46
Okay so, for 55 years, let’s give you a little grace through those early years, and also through the times you’re trying to get sober. You may be spent 45 of those years using one emotion. Yeah, yeah, to cope with everything that probably went down in a family filled with the disease on different levels, trauma, loss, resentment.
Tom Farley 07:10
But we did develop another secondary emotion in the fact that when somebody in my family fell and hurt themselves, and we were being funny, because we didn’t like their pain, and yet, after all this laughter and stuff, and they’re still in pain, because they fell and hurt themselves, then we would get, because that’s not the reaction we wanted, we get frustrated, if not angry, and we ping pong between these two emotions, how many emotions without developing any sort of anything in between.
Margaret 07:42
And the alcohol either enhanced that or buffered that right? And so you get sober. You stop using the buffer, you stop being numbed with that. And then all these other feelings start coming up that you don’t even know how to name possibly know how to express other than using the old ways.
Tom Farley 08:03
I’ll give you one of my favorite examples. The first time I was in recovery, and somebody said, well, you should have a gratitude journal, you know, just get a piece of paper, write gratitude and start listing things down. And I’d be like, okay, I can do that I got my paper or gratitude along the top, and then the next 45 minutes, I’m staring at this blank paper going. Nothing. You haven’t, you’re not grateful for anything, likeyou can’t come up with a single thing. And it’s not that I wasn’t grateful. I didn’t understand gratitude. But I was always focusing on these big things. Like I’m grateful for my kids, I’m grateful for they live in this wonderful town, right. But I was missing every single day. These little things. I didn’t understand gratitude, and its relationship to my every second minute of the day. And I still struggle with that. But recovery is part of my, I look for it. I’m like, oh, wow, this is stupid is dumbest little thing, but boy, am I grateful for that. And the effect has been dramatic.
Margaret 09:04
Yes. You and I share a similarity. I think it was about my second sponsor, maybe she’s like, you need to start a gratitude journal. And like, please, you know, I was not fun to sponsor. I am not fun to sponsor. And so, I was like, please, she’s like five things each day. I’m like, are you freaking kidding me? I can’t come up with five gravities. I was definitely a glass half empty kind of gal. So, I can relate in the journey. And I think that blows me away today. I don’t see myself as half empty. I have my days. But I am way more full than I ever thought and change that’s brought that abstinence, recovery community, and taking those humble suggestions that are given to me and actually following through to see what the benefit can be.
Tom Farley: Yeah.
09:52
This podcast is made possible by listeners like you.
Bumper: As we enter the New Year, I’m offering something new. I’m offering a sibling group. In my time in working in the field of addiction I am struck by families being given less support than they deserve, as a whole. I’m aware that children have now got some resources, parents have resources, partners have resources and the one relationship that I keep hearing people say, I need more is the siblings of someone with the disease of addiction.
So I am thrilled to be offering exactly that I will be offering a Sibling Coaching Group it’s an 8 week series I’d ask you to enroll for the whole 8 weeks you can come with your own siblings or on your own and it is a journey into the basics of understanding the impact of the disease some education some coaching and definitely a lot of connecting with other siblings impacted by this disease.
Please find more information in my show notes below and consider this as a gift to your adult children if you are a parent who know that there has been impacts on the siblings of the one in your life who has the disease and/or if you are out there as an adult sibling and would like more resources and education this is a great place to start.
10:51
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. Can you relate to what you’re hearing? Never missed a show by hitting the subscribe button. Now back to the show.
Margaret 11:02
When you move forward through this journey of your recovery as a first, I want to touch on that sibling part and then now as a partner and a father, because it’s a different journey, per se. Did you feel as a sibling that your job was also to keep the burden light for your parents? Because they had so much on their plate? Like, do you think that’s part of why you were so responsible? Did you have that awareness of like, oh, my gosh, they’re dealing with all that. I can’t tell them. Maybe I had a tough breakup or school struggle, like were you able to go to your parents? Or did you feel their bandwidth was just too full with?
Tom Farley 11:39
Five of it was just Yeah. And the thing is, I kind of think my dad really loved the fact that he had these five kids, and he’d whip us into a frenzy. And he would just sit back and say, like, hey, I created all this. And it just does craziness. He loved it. My mom just hated it. But you know, my dad loved it. But that’s again, we just kind of kept it to that surface level stuff. I used to love because my dad was just so intelligent, smart. He gave me my love of books that I’ve just definitely, you know, ever to this day, and a big reader. And we only yet still had a few kind of really deep conversations. I miss that.
But no, I think we were all more, we thought our parents were just so amazing. And they provided us with just this such a wonderful life, that we were pleasers. We just want to please people. We didn’t want to disappoint. So why would we come to my dad with some problem? We didn’t want him to see that we’re failing. Like our family dynamic. We had every dinner together, every dinner together, and my dad would sit at the head of the table. And he would go like, okay, around the room like news, you know, tell us what you did today. And we would like, Dad, I did this. And we were just, he just wanted to hear what our day was. And we were like, we wanted to tell him like this greatest thing. And when we saw that pleased him, we were just over the moon. And yeah, so that was the dynamic is just pleasing dad because he gave us this just such.
Margaret 13:20
Such a great feeling. And I think that it’s interesting, because I just heard an interview with the author of dopamine nation. Have you read that yet? I haven’t. No, I’ll be fully transparent. I haven’t either. But listening to this interview, man, I want to dive into it. Because I’m fascinated, I loved her approach. And the way she taught and spoke about it. Talks about our dopamine hits come from different places, obviously. And for those of us who are pleasers, that’s our dopamine hit. So, it’s interesting that the dopamine hit was maybe started in that arena in the family, not because anybody did anything wrong. It was just the nature of the dynamic. And then it sounds like for your story that kind of carried out into the universe. Like I want to be seen as successful. I want to be a pleaser. It sounds like it carried out to Chris too, because I would assume, I’m not a comedian, nor do I ever want to be. That the best feeling would be my work makes someone happy.
Tom Farley: Yeah.
Margaret: So, in recovery, is it finding for you a way to balance that? Because you’re not drinking? Awesome, you’re in recovery. But these are parts still that dopamine hit that you work on? Like, are you aware of that for yourself?
Tom Farley 14:32
Yeah, I was early on. I noticed this when I went, and people noticed this too.
Margaret 14:38
Isn’t that great when others notice it instead of us.
Tom Farley 14:42
But I would be in the circle sharing and my initial shares were all based in that like getting people to like me in a meeting and how they go just the opposite way. You know, whatever the topic is I’d really internalize reflected in I don’t know talk about like how like, oh, I’m so sorry you’re going through? I don’t care about that. And that’s your only my really, how was your problem? Like, how was that affect me, and how was I dealt with it. And I talked about really personal like what it means to me. I’m not trying to please anyone, I’m trying to be honest, and as authentic as I can be.
Margaret 15:20
And that’s the thing that I had so turned around in my own journey, because really what you just described, when you hear something and you say, I don’t care about you, it’s up to you. That’s actually not true. What you’re sharing is feedback of how it impacted you to have the same thing and what you’ve done to assist yourself. So, in turn, you’re giving them wonderful a. acknowledgement, they’re not alone. And b, that this is how I’ve coped. And this has helped me, and they can take it or leave it, but it’s actually the most respectful and beautiful way to experience connection with one another.
Tom Farley 15:51
Well and let me rephrase that, like, because I live in Wisconsin, and it’s kind of one of the things that we do. And maybe it’s a Midwestern thing as well, but it’s definitely here is everyone says, are everyone’s so nice.
Margaret: Oh, yeah.
Tom Farley: In Wisconsin, I’m like, yeah, you know what, that’s this deep. And in fact, I kind of expect you to be nice to me. But the real work is below that. And I really, it’s not that I don’t care. It’s like, I don’t care about that surface level, like false empathy. It’s the real true, caring and empathy. It’s way deeper. And I tried to go there every time I tried to get out of that surface level, kind of that’s easy.
Margaret: The BS?
Tom Farley: Yeah, the real work is deeper.
Margaret 16:31
I agree. And it’s a hard thing to change if you’re a pleaser.
Tom Farley 16:35
Absolutely. But I know I need to go there. I can’t help if no one else wants to go there. But it’s like, that’s where I go every time.
Margaret 16:42
So, I’m curious, this is actually more for me than maybe my listeners. But if they value it great. I find that really tricky to flip from that type of connection and a meeting, that does happen to then go into some sort of social event and play the game versus what we do in those meetings. Do you find that a struggle at times too?
Tom Farley 17:04
Yeah. But the thing is, what’s interesting, I’ve noticed that and I’ve talked about this is like, I’m a very social person, I work a room. That’s another kind of family trait that I learned. But now, I used to work a room, it wasn’t authentic. And so, I would be this extremely social, outgoing everyone, you know, I it all crowd around me. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more isolated in my life.
Margaret: Right
Tom Farley: In those moments. But to everyone else’s view, it’s like, oh, my gosh, he’s got all this connection. Like, I’m not connecting with anyone I’m entertaining, or whatever it is. Now I go through, and I don’t need to talk to everybody. But the people I talk to, I’m just my authentic self. And I walked away, like, feeling much better and connected to maybe a few people, than having no connection to a lot of people.
Margaret 17:58
Great observation and awareness. And I love that and value that and I will take that with me personally. And remember that when I’m next in these rooms go ugh and do the connection on the real level. Because at the end of the day, if I don’t do that, I’m selling out my soul. I’m not being filled with integrity. And I’ll probably walk away depleted because I think what you’re saying is true. You show up authentic and people don’t want to be, don’t take it personal that’s on them. But be yourself. Right?
Tom Farley 18:27
It’s funny, I go into schools, and I tell that specifically to adolescents and teens and young adults is like, you don’t have to please everyone. Your barometer isn’t how many friends do I have? Or how many people do I connect with. Your barometer is like, how was my ensemble of people around me, make me feel? Do I feel trusted and accepted? And if I don’t have that feeling, and it’s a feeling that I’ve learned in recovery, these aren’t my best friends in the world the people I want to hang out with in the world. But boy, do I feel trusted and accepted when I walk into a meeting. So now when I go out into a big party room, I don’t feel that. I just tell myself, you have two choices, you can leave, or you can stay and just not give people more than they deserve.
Margaret: Yeah. conserve your energy.
Tom Farley: Yeah, oh, I love yeah. It’s not your ensemble, you don’t owe them anything. But be nice. You know, whatever.
Margaret 19:24
Right. Well, it comes back to what you saw in Chris, that you wanted, the message you think he wanted you to know, which was to be authentic. You don’t have to be anybody else. So, one of the things I do appreciate about this is your journey of recovery has been as you said, 50s. So, it was like a slow journey. Like you watched others around who are worse. You got periods of sobriety without recovery, and then you turn yourself full into recovery and have gained value in that, more than you ever dreamed. Right? Like they say in the big book.
Tom Farley: Yeah,
Margaret: beyond our wildest dreams. So, what was your catalyst to have a moment where you went, I surrender, I am going to embrace recovery fully I’m diving in.
Tom Farley 20:10
I honestly, I think one of the, I call it one of the blessings of COVID is I was probably a year into recovery when COVID hit. And I just saw the rest of the world just struggle with connection and isolation. And I’m like, God I don’t feel so bad. And I realized this because I could log into it, I can go to a meeting. I mean, I could connect with an important connection anytime of the day, anyplace in the world whenever I wanted to. I got through COVID beautifully, because I never lost that connection, at least, even if it was just a small piece of you know, I’m just talking about this one little aspect of this commonality that we share. But it got me like, I’ve never struggled through COVID because I was totally connected.
Margaret 21:00
What’s interesting, Tom is, I remember when COVID started, and I wish to God, I could find the clip. It was someone on the news. And again, I don’t know what network I don’t know anything. But they said, if we want to survive COVID, we need to take a page out of 12 step recovery, because that is how we’re going to do it.
Tom Farley 21:17
Yeah. Wow.
Margaret 21:21
I was like what? We have not ever heard mainstream media talk about us as the example even though I’ve heard from 1000s of family members coming through an education program going Oh, my God, why don’t we teach this in high school? Yeah, this way of living is so wonderful.
Tom Farley: Yeah.
Margaret: But I remember that I was like, oh, so that’s really speaks to me and came back to me right now because of your share. Because the reality is, that’s what got you through you are embracing a program that works for connection. Yeah.
Tom Farley 21:52
Yeah, and I never want to lose it.
Margaret: Yeah.
Tom Farley: Yeah. So, I’ll never forget how wonderful they felt. Especially with such a vivid, watching the rest of the world, getting fights in Walmart and getting thrown off airplanes.
Margaret: Right.
Tom Farley: I so far removed from where I’m at.
Margaret 22:10
Yeah, I think that you hear a lot of discussion in the world of this disease. And in families asking, how do I get my person to reach bottom? How do I know when they’re going to actually do the work? Where do you stand on that for your own journey, through watching Chris’s journey? You know?
Tom Farley 22:29
Some people will never hit rock bottom. Chris was never, he was successful enough, even a guy I don’t know what your how do you define rock bottom? For me, the rock bottom is me. And I think what and the real focus should be is, how isolated do you want to be? Or how isolated? Can you think, do you think this person needs to be? Or do they have room to be more isolated, that’s really the essence of it. And this lack of connection, it’s like, it’s not about the drugs people are taking or the alcohol was, it’s like, we are as love to say, as humans hardwired for connections, we exist for no other reason. And the reason why we deal with our emotions in such unhealthy and unsafe ways and, and turn to some of these, these drugs, because it just feels horrible to be isolated, and feel alone. And so that’s why I asked people, like, in terms of isolation, do you want to go much worse? I mean, is this as far as you want to go? Because it can start to get better?
Margaret 23:33
Yeah. So, let’s look at that from the family lens. Because obviously, that’s always what I want to try to do. I believe in the parallel process. And I believe isolation is absolutely a major part of the family side of the journey. And I think the same is true, you know, I don’t think that I was willing to change until I was to a point where I saw the pain and suffering, I was conscious enough to see the pain and suffering in the eyes of my children, and my partner, right? Then it was like, Holy crap, how much further do I want to go down this hole and hurt the people I love most in the world? What am I willing to do different?
As a family member? I think the same is true. I think family members will hold the same line of isolates, secrets, control, whatever, until they feel, I just can’t do this more. It’s like, I’m tired. I’m hurting, I want different. And that’s when I think family members reach out and find their journey too.
Tom Farley: Right.
Margaret: Sounds like that’s exactly what your mom did.
Tom Farley 24:38
Right. Well, yeah. I mean, she started to, I take a page from my brothers. And this is when I started going, like how am I going to talk to people? What am I going to talk about? This whole notion of connection. I looked at all my brothers who went through Second City in Chicago and learn this art of improv is improv ovation, which is creating these ensembles. It’s not like they were horrible stand up comedians, to stand up there alone and tell jokes. My brothers were really, Chris particularly, was a master at connecting on the ensemble, or, you know, taking everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. And that’s when I studied it and like, well, what are you trying to achieve on stage here with this ensemble. And universally, it was building trust, and building acceptance. And then actually, when I got out of the prevention going out of schools and got into actual recovery groups, and we go to these teen group sessions, I go to the clinicians, what are you trying to do here, it’s like, oh, trying to build trust and acceptance. I’m like, ah, if I got the thing for you, I’m like how you doing that without this kind of like teaching them in a really fun way. But the build this ensemble, but so many families struggle with that. They want to be this one thing, this, this is who we are. For us. It was like this is the Farley’s and yet there were all these different pieces. And we were just not an ensemble. And then I became a parent, and I talked about ensemble all the time that I would walk in the door, and we’d all go out the door. You know, it’s hard, it’s hard work.
Margaret: It is.
Tom Farley: To build that ensemble where everyone has a different voice and a different style in everyone matters in their own way. And so how do you put those pieces together? And because it’s so hard and to allow people to kind of be themselves, we default to this is who we are, this is what we’re going to show the public and we’re just going to bear up and bury everything else. And this is it. And that’s why you see family struggle, because they haven’t built that trust and acceptance and ensembleness.
Margaret 26:51
I think there’s also the piece I curious of your opinion on this. But there’s also the piece that many families are running in base survival mode.
Tom Farley: Oh, God, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Margaret: When we’re in base survival mode, acceptance and trusting seem like a luxury.
Tom Farley: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Margaret: And recovery again, gift to recovery brings those things back.
So, in your family of marriage and children you’ve mentioned your recoveries having a transformative and restorative approach can you talk about any differences you’ve noticed in your engagement of that ensemble now that you’re in recovery?
Tom Farley: Well two things a couple of stories
Margaret: Yeah, one of the stories I’d love to talk about is in the middle of COVID like 2020 there was kind of a break you know restaurants started opening up and we thought ohh it’s over; wasn’t apparently so my oldest daughter came back to Wisconsin. She’s in New York and she came back to visit and we went out to lunch and we went to this outdoor cafe and this guy met us at the door and said like OK well we don’t have menus you order everything on the phone and we don’t have wait staff so you know somebody you’ll order it somebody will bring your food out and that’s it, and I’m like I got all kind of like well I got a question like if I’m on my phone ordering and my daughter’s on her phone ordering her meal but I want to pay for both how does that work?
Then he got really nice like well if you really need a paper menu it’s like that’s not what I asked you and I got really kind of frustrated and I caught myself and I said alright you know what we’ll figure it out. We got it and it was really overly nice to him and I turned back and looked at my daughter and said I apologize I wanted to be present here with you and I just you know let’s just move on. And she kind of paused and she looked at me and she’s like you know, dad when we were growing up you would have those moments all the time and we just knew to stay away from you the rest of the day, there’s some little thing that happened you would carry it the rest of the day and we’d all pay for it, and I was like no way, that that’s not true at all. It was totally true and she said so to see you catch yourself like that that was amazing I saw that, but then to turn to me and apologize
Margaret: ohh
Tom Farley: you never did that. And what I was seeing in just trying to work in my recovery my authentic self and being control things that I can control not only did this relationship that I hold dearest, my oldest daughter saw it. I was like this is what a relationship being repaired looks like I was like wow I was just trying to be myself and people were coming back like and the thing is it wasn’t probably the relationship that I wanted envisioned thought that I would have but it’s the relationship that I have and it’s a relationship that’s a result of my work just doing what I can do that’s the way somebody got that’s what makes it just that much more special and authentic that’s the real thing, and that was amazing.
I’ve also had a couple of podcasts where people talk about what are recovery versus long term recovery? I’m like I don’t know I said I don’t know if there’s a difference, but I can try my journey in this way in terms of my ex-wife I say when I when we first got divorced 10 years ago, 12 I don’t know, I don’t do math
Margaret: me neither, you’re in good company
Tom Farley: yeah, so people would ask why‘d you get divorced, I’d answer y wife didn’t respect me and support me and when we had divorced and that was because there’s some tough years because I believed that and then I got into recovery and people would ask me why did you get divorced and I’m like well if I’m going to be honest I didn’t support and respect my wife either, and then for a few years after that people ask me why to get divorced I’m like oh you know if I’m going to be honest I wasn’t very respective of my wife and didn’t support her and and that’s that. Her piece has nothing to do with me it’s all about me and my responsibility to my actions and being truthful about that and really believing that now my relationship with my ex-wife it’s fantastic. It’s wonderful because I’m not a threat or it’s just so much better yeah is it the relationship that I envisioned when we got married, no but it is what it is and it’s authentic and my kids ohh my gosh they appreciate it so much and they see it and they just
Margaret: restorative
Tom Farley: yeah, those are the two things I reflect on
Margaret: those are beautiful things.
Tom Farley: so much in my recovery and if I can build on those two things and I’m sure I am with other relationships I guess that’s why I feel the way I do in my recovery.
Margaret: Well, the other thing that’s evident is that in your recovery the disease isn’t in between you and the people you love.
Tom Farley: Yeah
Margaret: and it isn’t manipulating you constantly and trying to manipulate them at the same time.
Tom Farley: you know it’s funny you said that because again when I got into recovery, I started to in those early shares that I mentioned not only was I trying to please, but I was also using my story to kind of control and manipulate how people like me and think. I was using my story in the that same way and again I just kept going meetings and I got myself through that. I learned but even early in recovery I was using my shares and my story as a kind of controlling, kind of attention getting, all that stuff.
Margaret: Yeah, we don’t change overnight, do we?
Tom Farley: No but boy that seems so long ago it hasn’t been that long, but it just seems like I’m such a different place.
Margaret: that’s awesome.
Tom Farley: It’s feels wonderful.
Margaret: I bet, I bet.
Tom Farley: yeah
Margaret: I want to use a little of that Farley humor too in this podcast because I do think it’s something quite beautiful that yes, it’s tragic to think that was one of the few emotions but it’s also one of the gifts you gave the world your family. Members of your family have given many people such joy and laughter.
Outro: It was wonderful today to hear how Tom shares his own recovery journey and discusses the different things that have helped him find his connection with others and himself. Join me again next week as I conclude my conversation with Tom and he shares some wonderful stories about his brother Chris.
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website
This is Margaret Swift Thompson. Until next time, take care of you!
