Transform Yourself
I got pregnant on New Years Eve, 1998. I was drunk.I still remember cheering NINETEEN NINETY-NINE like a madwoman outside the bar as fireworks went off at midnight.My full bladder didn't like all the jumping and screaming, so I made the drunken decision to keep celebrating and empty my bladder at the same time.I brought …
Four days before Christmas 2020, my job of almost 13 years gave me shocking news: that if I did not move back to the US from overseas where I’d been working and living for 8 years, that I would no longer have a job I considered the proposal for about 10 seconds. Everything in me …
Continue reading "My Nightmare before Xmas that turned into a Miracle"
My heart hurts. 💔 It’s an agonizing feeling that is so familiar, yet still so uncomfortable. It comes from loss of connection with another person- usually romantic, but also friendship, or loss through death. This feeling has followed me from youth. When I was 11 years old, my family moved from Texas to South Carolina, …
HOPE IS HERE. Prayers do get answered. If you need hope that you can recover – please read my “Diary of a Dry Drunk” below, written in 2008 at almost 10 years sober. It is sad and unsettling for me to read how I was suffering and in self-pity that I couldn’t see. I was …
It was my senior year of high school, two Thursdays before Thanksgiving. I was slouched in the rear bucket seat of my mother’s red Camaro, headed to my second rehab in two months. Nine hours and an entire pack of cigarettes got me to Nashville, to Last Chance. I had just finished thirty days in …
Lately I've been talking with people about their primary addiction - the one that precedes alcohol or drugs. Of course, in my work with helping people overcome sugar and food addiction, I have heard many say food is primary. But it wasn't food for me. It was boys. At five years old, I was called …
1 YEAR NO SUGAR, 20 YEARS NO CIGARETTES This month marks 20 years no smokes, and 1 year no sugar for me🤩 My foto was taken last weekend and shows how I feel living in freedom🎉 I've had numerous substitutes for beer since I gave it up in 1999 at 22 years old. Cigarettes, though …
6 months ago I met a guy from Tinder who gave me some back-handed compliments about my looks and my age. (See Tinder Part 1 here - https://nataliemspeakman.com/2021/07/29/tinder-date/) As a result, I made a declaration to embrace myself as a 44-year-old woman. I shared an authentic-not-airbrushed selfie. (See above.) I got a lot of wonderful …
Continue reading "TINDER DATE Part 2 – The rest of the story"
I'm taking a few days away from screens. Here's why. I had a moment of clarity last week when I tried to read a book. A book I'm really interested in, that when I saw it on my friend's shelf, I immediately got it down from the shelf and wanted to start it. I sat …
July 15, 1998, is twenty-three years ago today. Almost half my life has gone by since then. Still, I remember it every year. Here’s why. In late 1997 when I was twenty-one, I hatched a cowardly suicide scheme. I was too afraid to take direct action to kill myself, so I came up with an …
Natalie Speakman 