Embracing Powerlessness: Kay Hanley's Journey to Sobriety and Self-Transformation

Kay Hanley, the remarkable Emmy and Peabody award-winning songwriter, joins us for a candid conversation on embracing powerlessness and its profound impact on her life and career. From her pivotal decision to get sober in 2011, Kay opens up about how letting go of control has shaped her journey, particularly in her relationships. She shares the deeply transformative experience of surrendering in the face of personal challenges, leading to a more authentic and fulfilling way of living. Listen as Kay recounts the powerful shift that occurred when she stopped trying to manage everything around her, ultimately strengthening her bond with her daughter, who now follows her own path as a social worker.

Navigating the complexities of relinquishing control, especially in the context of recovery, is no small feat. Kay delves into the emotional hurdles of allowing loved ones to carve their own paths and the universal struggle with uncertainty. Through heartfelt anecdotes, she offers insight into the creative process of shaping one's understanding of higher powers and embracing a power greater than oneself. This conversation encourages listeners to consider what the most loving version of themselves would do in moments of doubt, emphasizing the transformative power of patience, love, and kindness in decision-making.

In the chaotic world of the music industry, maintaining emotional sobriety is both a challenge and a gift. Kay discusses the importance of physical sobriety in enhancing her performance and work ethic, enabling her to deliver high-energy shows while prioritizing her well-being. By breaking free from negative patterns and silencing the inner critic, she illustrates the journey towards self-compassion and growth. This episode is a thoughtful exploration of how embracing change and faking confidence, until it becomes genuine, can create a life truly worth living. Kay's insights offer a compassionate framework for overcoming personal struggles and forging a path towards self-acceptance and transformation.

Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing Powerlessness
• 7:21 Navigating Surrender and Transformation
• 16:20 Maintaining Emotional Sobriety in Work
• 21:02 Breaking the Circuit

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, everybody, I'm going to start the introduction to this next guest who I'm going to sit down with and interview. The next woman coming onto the stage is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning songwriter. Ooh, that got people's attention. Say it again. The woman coming on the stage next is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning songwriter, so sit your ass down. She's also the lead singer of a Boston-based rock band that you might have heard of, called Letters to Cleo, and she is now an executive producer of a show called Kindergarten, the Musical which you can see on Disney Junior and Disney Plus.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Kay Hanley come to the stage. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:09

Sick and tired of the voice inside my head Never good enough. It's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern. Find a new reprieve Break it in the Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:29

so first of all this place that we're sitting in is hard to find, and there's good reason for that One of the owners of this space happens to be married to this amazing woman and he has been here on a few of these events and he's like I think my wife would really like what you're doing and so I finally got you on the phone. Yeah, and you were like okay yeah let's go.

Speaker 1: 2:00

So when I talk about powerlessness, lack of control and trying to double down on what we can change what comes to mind, I mean so many things.

Speaker 4: 2:19

I mean this is the story of my. The third act of my life is embracing powerlessness and um and I really liked what you were saying about um, trying to change people or and I think dan was saying that too trying to change people, places, things, situations is, uh, a fool's errand that I do not participate in anymore. That powerlessness is actually my superpower.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Was there a defining moment when you were trying, in fact, to control something that you couldn't?

Speaker 4: 3:00

Oh, I mean do you?

Speaker 4: 3:03

have all night, right. I mean the thing that sort of. The real turning point was getting sober in 2011. And when, you know, people just stopped cosigning my bullshit and I had kind of run out of chances and my children were afraid of me and my marriage was ending and my um, you know, I was losing my career and uh which I mean, by the way to like almost lose your career in the music business from drinking and using drugs, it's like you gotta try really hard. It's like it's it's not, it's not easy. It's not easy to like screw up your way out of the music business.

Speaker 4: 3:55

So, um, so when I, when I got sober and um and you know before that I was very, very um, and you know before that I was very, very, very good at like talking my way out of a jackpot. I was very good at just blah, blah, blah and you know I had good words to use and great excuses for things and I was a good salesperson and all that stopped working and I had to like, for the first time in my life, I had to shut the fuck up. Sorry for the swearing, there's an infant here. I'm really sorry. I had to shut the F up for the first time in my life and let my actions speak for me and stop talking and stop talking.

Speaker 1: 4:51

So in my experience, as you heard, it's one thing to lose control of something as serious as drugs and alcohol or whatever your kryptonite is, when it really starts to present as a problem in your life. That's one thing. For me, that was the beginning of my sober journey, but I wasn't emotionally sober.

Speaker 1: 5:06

I had no spiritual canvas to operate the uncertainty of life. So you get sober in 2011, but then life is in session. How are you then surrendering to a person, place or thing that becomes out of your control and navigating that with any kind of peace or serenity?

Speaker 4: 5:31

Well, I mean, the bad news is that I did end up losing all like all of my worst fears came true. I lost my marriage, I lost my company. True, I lost my marriage. I lost my company, I, um, I my.

Speaker 4: 5:51

There was a period of time when, um, I was able to see my um, you know, spend more time with my kids, and my daughter, uh, opted when she was 13, opted not to sleep over at my house and um, and I had to let her to sleep over at my house and um, and I had to let her, I had to let her go and um, and that was that like a year and a half of sobriety.

Speaker 4: 6:16

I had to let her say she didn't want to be with me and um, I mean the good, the, the amazing news is that the healing that has taken place since then is that she's now in grad school to be a social worker and she's she's an incredible person. We have an extraordinary relationship. But I could not control that, like, every part of me wanted to control that and say like, no, you can be the mom and you cause I said so, you have to stay here, it's your night, to stay with me, you have to and I something, something told me not to do that. So the first, the first time I started kind of like letting things unfold before, like just instinctually reaching out to just like control them or, you know, bend things to my will, I started getting the most extraordinary results, and the first of which was this incredible relationship with my daughter.

Speaker 1: 7:21

What was some of the hardest stuff that came up for you when you had to relinquish that control and before the relationship was on the path of mending?

Speaker 4: 7:36

I had no idea I was going to be talking about this. By the way, gotcha, samantha, you are just, you are very, very wily getting me to talk about these things. What were so wait? What was the question? She conveniently forgot.

Speaker 1: 7:54

I only ask questions based on my own experience. Yeah, because I'm so interested in how people navigate it Right. Right, so you have a bottom. Yes, in recovery. You cannot control the fact that your daughter doesn't want to stay with you.

Speaker 4: 8:08

Right Devastating.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Now you have mended the relationship. Take me to that in-between place. How did you navigate what was coming up for you?

Speaker 4: 8:20

Well, sober, I mean when anybody. Well, a couple of ways to answer that. The first is that, like I had been self-medicating for so long, I mean I grew up in, you know, an Irish Catholic kid from Boston, so it's like, you know, being a drunk was my birthright, you know it's like you're just like like everybody was.

Speaker 4: 8:45

You know it's like what is your own name? You know you're going to be a drunk and so I had been self-medicating for so long that I didn't. I was surprised to find out that I had PMS when I got sober, like I didn't know that I I heard people talking about PMS. I had no idea that I had it because I had never felt the sensation of falling asleep, like I remember when I was in the first rehab that I was in in 2010. And and I remember the sensation of like falling asleep and it was like the most beautiful feeling, but I had been passing out, I guess, for so long that I just didn't. So I was having all of these epiphanies about, you know, things that seem really pedestrian and normal to other people, but they were like a revelation to me at 43 years old.

Speaker 4: 9:45

And um, and with Zoe, with Zoe Mabel, my daughter um, you know that shit's primal.

Speaker 4: 9:53

You know, like mother, that mother daughter thing, like the mom thing, where it's like there is nothing that feels more desperately hard than letting a child find themselves and figure out who they are, when it hurts inside, because I don't think that we're ever prepared for that kind of wound and, like I said, it was against everything I ever thought of, as you know, being confident or strong to like surrender that to her and give her the dignity of her own experience at the expense of my hurt feelings.

Speaker 4: 10:49

But it was, oh my God, it was worth it and it's. And doing things like that, you know, taking that contrary action, doing the thing that feels like death, um, or not doing the thing, that I have that hot feeling in my gut like I have to do it, I have to say it, I have to eat it, I have to, you know, and not doing it, that pause button that I believe Dan was talking about, um, that that pause, the moment when you don't do the thing, you don't say the thing, um, that's where I mean I, I'm, I consider myself an atheist, but but if I, but there's god with a small g and like if there is that, that's god, is in that pause that's perfect, because I was literally just about to ask you your relationship with a power greater than yourself.

Speaker 4: 11:45

Pause, whatever my, I mean in the in, and I do. I am in a 12 step program, for I am in recovery, and a 12-step program it's not for everyone, you know, um and I thought it wasn't for me because, you know, in the second step it talks about made a decision to, or no, that's the third stuff um came to believe that a power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity and then, you know, turn your will and your life over the care of God. And I was just like no, no, I'm not doing that, I cannot do that. The thing is is that when I looked at the people who were actually getting sober and having, like, happy, full, beautiful lives, they almost exclusively talked about having that relationship with the power greater than themselves. And I, I think, just out of desperation, I was like well, I'll believe that they believe and just see what happens.

Speaker 4: 12:52

And since then, like I haven't, you know, I haven't felt the need to change. I mean, I'm a songwriter, so what I do, and like I wake up in the morning and I create stuff that doesn't exist, you know, like it doesn't exist until I create it. And so why can't I be as creative about, you know, this power greater than myself, and it's different every day. It's like what if I have to make a decision and I don't know what to do? It's like what would love do? What would patience do? Like usually I'm very impatient, I'm very impulsive by nature, it's like what would patience do? What would, what would, what would kindness do?

Speaker 1: 13:39

I think that's so powerful for anybody who is struggling with uncertainty, because that's really what we're talking about. It doesn't matter if you have an addiction problem. If you're addicted to productivity or thinness or martyrdom or cocaine, it doesn't matter, something's going to.

Speaker 4: 13:57

Motorcycles, clearly.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Everybody got their something. Something is gonna happen that stops you in your tracks and there's gonna be no clear pathway forward. And so what are you gonna do? And you have so many options, but what a beautiful way to frame that without any sort of religious intonation whatsoever. Right? What would love do? What would the most loving version of myself do?

Speaker 2: 14:26

in this moment.

Speaker 4: 14:27

Yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah, that's really powerful.

Speaker 4: 14:30

Thanks, you're welcome. I listen really well, I learn things and you know experience is is. You know I'm 56 now and um, and you know I you were talking about, you know there's been like such an not emphasis, but you know death has come up a lot and my father died a year ago, january, and um, I got to my sisters and my mom and I were gathered around him as he died and I, I, we got to like walk him home and it really changed me. I was just and I realized at that moment and this, I just got this very keen sense of like, okay, I have, you know, if, if, if, if the law of averages works in my life, I have like 25 awesome years left. I work out, I eat great, you know I'm, I take good care of myself.

Speaker 4: 15:33

25 killer years. With that time. Am I going to watch the news 24 hours a day and am I going to get mad at people and traffic? Am I gonna control, try and control people, places, things, situations to bend to my will? Am I gonna try and change people? Am I gonna try? Am I going to try and change people? Am I going to try or am I just going to try and like just shine a light in the path of others and just help, be of maximum love and service where I can, and just where I can't, just don't do any harm.

Speaker 3: 16:16

Hmm.

Speaker 1: 16:19

That's so beautiful. I have one final question, which is I think most people think of the music industry and they think chaos, deceit, drugs, sex, rock and roll right, true. What is the most valuable lesson about living an emotionally sober life that you take with you into your work?

Speaker 4: 16:47

emotionally sober. You know, I always think of it in terms of my physical sobriety because, um, you know, when I I still tour with my band and like my body is so strong now and my voice is so strong and like, and I had a hangover, every single perform I was, you know, had a hangover. I had already, you know, smack, smoked half-packed cigarettes and you know, a couple of shots of Jack Daniels be every time we got on stage. So it's like playing now is like a piece of cake, like I'm doing like kicks, and you know it's and and like I just feel great and and I did not. That was not the way I felt at 30, you know. So I always think about it in terms of my physical and in also showing up for work. You know I'm I am reliable, like when I say I'm, you know I am reliable, like when I say I'm going to be there, I am Usually five minutes late, but no more than that. And I don't like if I say I'm going to be somewhere, like no one wonders if I'm going to show up or not, like I am a show-er-upper, I'm a worker among workers, I love collaborating, I'm a team, I'm a rah-rah teammate and I guess that is where my, like, my emotional taking, my, if I think about the reality of that, that I am pretty much the same person when I, you know person, when I, you know like I bring, like my people that I work with know who's coming, you know, and even if I am having a hard day or like I don't, I I really don't um, I'm able to act better than I feel a lot of the time, you know like, if I'm able to act better than I feel a lot of the time, you know like if I'm feeling I don't bring, I don't make other people pay for my, you know, whatever's going on in my life, I bring the same person to work when I'm in a good mood, when I'm in a bad mood and because, like you were saying, I can make choices now, like I have when I am saying, I can make choices now, like I have when I am drinking, when I'm, or even when I'm sort of, you know, not taking care of my business and recovery, I can very easily kind of slide into.

Speaker 4: 19:25

Well, the first thing that happens is that I start noticing what other people are doing Like what are you? What are you doing? Why are you doing it like that? What is it? You know, yeah, why are you? Why? Yeah, you know, and I know I'm like. I'm like paying attention to other people's side of the street, whereas if I'm sort of like cranking on all cylinders with you know and taking care of my mind, body and spirit, I have all the choices in the world available to me, and if I'm not, I don't. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 20:03

Thank you, samantha, thank you.

Speaker 4: 20:04

Amazing, this is so great. Do it up for Kate. Thank you so much. Thank you, samantha. Thank you. Amazing, this is so great. Give it up for Kay Hanley. I want to come to these all the time and have a dance party. I mean, can we talk Kindergarten? I'm on my way. Don't forget to watch this on Disney.

Speaker 2: 20:21

Watch it on Disney and Disney Plus.

Speaker 4: 20:25

Oh, you want me to put down my advertisement for my show.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Is this the photo? Kindergarten, the Musical One two three Thanks, sam, you're amazing.

Speaker 4: 20:35

Thank you so much Thanks everybody.

Speaker 3: 21:00

Thank you. I'm whipping my mistakes to jump over the grief. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, sick and tired of the voice inside my head Never good enough. It's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Find a new reprieve Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside.

Speaker 3: 21:57

I got left alive. I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassion. Compassion starts to calm my mind, taking tiny steps to loving all of me. Just the process, cause it's gonna set me free, breaking the circuit.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change, making it worth it all. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the the life. I gotta gotta gotta break it. I'ma fake it till we make it. Gotta gotta gotta break it. Come on, woo, two, three. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's an omen deep inside. I got the the life.