Dr. Marry and Me,  Personal Writing

Daily Dose celebrates 100 episodes!

On July 5, 2020, Dr Marry and I made a bold decision to start a daily livestream conversation on Facebook. Our “strategy” was to create more content but to stay focused on one topic at a time versus the rambling ones that we had done periodically and the podcast episodes we had recorded during our nine-week reveal of Dr Marry’s fall into alcoholism and our journey back together to sobriety earlier in the year.

We also committed to keeping them short and unscripted. That’s not to say that we don’t go in with a basic idea of what we are going to talk about, but that we haven’t written a script beforehand.

And today we are celebrating and live-streaming our 100th episode at 8:30am! I can’t believe we’ve been doing this for 20 straight weeks. As with all things time-related in the time of COVID, these weeks have both crawled and flown by.

Dr Marry and I want to take the time to thank the loyal people who have been consistent watchers and commenters of Daily Dose (I’m not going to name you here in case you don’t want that, but we believe you know who you are, and we hope you know how grateful we are for you!). By the way, I guess the name stuck since we are launching a new logo today to celebrate—thank you very much Jeff Knight!

We also want to thank those who have gamely and bravely joined us as guests on our recent addition of Guest Thursdays:

These conversations have quickly become some of my favorite content each week because it’s so powerful to hear the individual stories of people who have a connection to addiction. They’ve truly helped me have a much better understanding of the universal disease aspects of alcoholism that were impossible for me to comprehend when Dr Marry was going through it and even difficult for me to grasp after he got sober and was able to start talking about some of it.

I’ve learned so much about Dr Marry from these quick, daily conversations. He’s revealed things to the camera that, for whatever reason, he’s never shared with me personally. My deep respect for his willingness to be vulnerable, honest and unflinching about this dark period in his and our life together has only grown in these 20 weeks.

And I’ve learned a lot about myself as well. I’ve more deeply explored the roles I played in the years leading up to February 1, 2017, Dr Marry’s sober anniversary. I’ve confronted some of my ongoing fears and anger over various aspects of our lives together while Mazz was drinking. My empathy has grown for those who live with or around this disease because so many people have reached out to tell us that some piece of one conversation or another resonated for them, too.

And finally, perhaps the greatest lesson we’ve learned and shared to date is that alcoholism is just the starting theme of these conversations. Remove that word and fill in almost any other life struggle that has some kind of shame attached to it: debt; infidelity; depression or other mental health diagnoses; secretive shopping, gambling, pornography; excessive weight or control of weight; physical, mental or sexual abuse; disappointment in our careers; failed relationships with our spouse, our children, our parents, etc. All of these have the potential to keep us from fully engaging in our lives and being present. But the sooner we can address them and bring them to light (note: not everyone needs to livestream their deepest, darkest secrets to bring about healing), the sooner we can start to have a more joyful, fulfilled life.

Starting today, we’re moving Daily Dose to its own Facebook page. It’s time for it to have a new life of its own, separated from my work with extraordinary. We hope you’ll tune in, like the page and start sharing it with your network. At its core, Daily Dose is about exploring the things that are holding us back and finding ways to move forward into our best, most joyful life.

Please also sign up for the Saturday weekly recap email with the five conversations as well as other content related to it. That’s a great way to make sure you don’t miss a conversation or to share it with people who aren’t active on social media.

Comment on this post and we’ll send you a fun little thank you note and gift to celebrate.

I’m so grateful to Dr Marry for saying yes to this journey—both getting sober and taking it public. I’m grateful to our viewers and guests. I’m grateful to the universe for gifting me with this marriage, this opportunity and the work that is coming up around it.

Thanks for being part of this journey with us!

Dr Marry & DD

Nothing says happy 100th episode like a deep crust apple pie!

Dayna Del Val is on a mission to help others (re)discover the spark they were born with through her blog and newsletter, her professional talks and the (re)Discover Your Spark retreats she leads. Dayna works with people to help them not just identify and articulate their dreams but to develop a framework to get going on the pursuit of those dreams—today, in the next few months and for the years ahead. She's at the intersection of remarkable and so, so ordinary, but she knows that pretty much everyone else is, too. She's excited to be sharing this extraordinary journey with you.

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