How do we begin to heal the damage that addiction can cause in our relationships? In this episode, I speak with Janice Johnson Dowd — a Licensed Master Social Worker, recovering alcoholic, mother of four, and author of Rebuilding Relationships in Recovery.

Together we explore the challenges of rebuilding trust, making amends, and navigating grief, guilt, and the deep longing for connection. Janice offers compassionate, practical insights — not just for people in recovery, but for anyone seeking to repair and strengthen important relationships.

Whether you’re on a recovery path yourself or supporting someone who is, may this conversation offer reflection, hope, and encouragement for your own journey.

In this episode I speak with author and Dharma teacher Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara) about her groundbreaking book Eight Step Recovery: Using the Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction, coauthored with psychiatrist Dr. Paramabandhu Groves.

This conversation offers a rich and powerful exploration of addiction—not only in its traditional forms, but in the everyday ways we avoid pain and disconnect from ourselves.

We talk about the Buddhist path of recovery, the role of the body in healing, and how habitual behaviors like overthinking can be just as binding as substances. Valerie’s perspective is both practical and compassionate, offering tools and teachings that are relevant whether you’re in recovery, walking alongside someone who is, or simply navigating your own inner challenges.

We also touch on the importance of service, somatic awareness, and the very human task of turning toward what we most want to avoid.

Resources Mentioned:

Eight Step Recovery by Valerie Mason-John & Dr. Paramabandhu Groves

A First Aid Kit for the Mind by Valerie Mason-John

Valerie’s Website

May these teachings and practices support you in turning toward yourself—and in finding peace and freedom.

Journalist Maggie Jones has spent her career exploring the tender, often taboo experiences that define us—from grief and death to sex, aging, and desire. In this deeply personal conversation, we talk about the home funeral my family held for my mother in 2019, which Maggie witnessed and later wrote about in her powerful feature, The Movement to Bring Death Closer.

Together, we explore what it means to stay present with the dying, what we gain from tending to the bodies of our loved ones, and the deeper questions her work continues to raise: How do we reclaim what our culture tells us to turn away from? What does it mean to be fully alive—even in the face of loss?

Maggie Jones is a journalist and longtime writer for The New York Times Magazine. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and The Guardian. She has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a senior Ochberg Fellow at Columbia’s Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. She currently teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

In this episode, I talk with Lisa Marchiano about her powerful book The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. It's a rich and inspiring resource—especially for women in midlife—offering a path to reconnect with lost parts of ourselves and reclaim our wholeness.

Lisa is a Jungian analyst, author, and co-host of the popular podcast This Jungian Life. Her books include Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself, The Vital Spark, and Dream Wise, co-authored with her podcast collaborators Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee. She teaches widely and is on the faculty of the C. G. Jung Institute of Philadelphia.

Introduction to The Deepening: Conversations that lead you deeper into Self and Soul. If you're drawn to deeper conversations, I invite you to subscribe, tune in, and take the next step on your own unfolding journey.