Renowned photographer, creator of the Embody Project, and Cecily’s dear friend, Erica Scott, joins the podcast this week for an intimate conversation among dear friends who have been exploring their relationships with dimmers, primarily alcohol, since they first connected decades ago. In this heartfelt conversation, they cover three primary chapters of their friendship: (1) the years in which they both drank as galavanting single women and later as more settled adults, (2) the years during which Cecily had opted out on her own, resulting in a newfound tension and opportunity for growth to explore between them, and (3) finally, how things are now that they are both living alcohol free. This unfiltered episode also touches on the challenges of being in relationships with others during major life changes, acknowledging judgment, and exploring new ways of relating without trusted dimmers. This episode is an intimate conversation you won’t want to miss.
About Erica Scott
In her 20+ year career as a photographer, Erica’s work has been published in Vanity Fair, InStyle, W, People, and Us Weekly, and her commercial client list includes Warner Bros, Fox, Sony, Universal, Paramount, the Golden Globes, Wisdom 2.0, Gap Inc, and Airbnb.
As creator and photographer of the Embody Project, which she conducted from 2010 to 2018, Erica invites us all to stand fully in the truth of who we are as diverse yet equally beautiful beings united in our human journey through life. Since its inception, the Embody Project has been seen in more than 25 countries worldwide, and the website has over 500,000 views.
Forever a passionate world traveler, for now, Erica's lens is most often focused on her wedding and portrait clients in the Blue Ridge mountains of Asheville, NC, where she lives in constant awe of the stunning long-range views and with deep gratitude for the magic and mystery of life.
Follow Erica:
Website: https://ericamueller.com
Instagram: @ericamuellerphotography
Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @clearlifejourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.
Credits:
Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer / Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Audio Engineer: Mateo Schimpf
Key Points
00:00 A Special Reunion: Reflecting on Decades of Friendship
00:33 The Magic of First Meetings
02:08 The Evolution of Friendship: From San Francisco to ClearLife
03:30 The Journey Away from Alcohol
05:07 The Early Partying Days
05:49 The Transition Back to Drinking
12:14 Navigating Friendship and Living a ClearLife
21:10 The ClearLife Path: Understanding and Acceptance
26:10 Grace in the Journey: Embracing the Messy and the Beautiful
30:28 Facing Life's Storms Without Alcohol
32:19 The Harsh Reality of Infidelity and Divorce
34:44 Finding Solitude and Strength in Living Clear
35:35 The Benefits of Life Without Alcohol
36:51 Navigating Social Dynamics Alcohol-Free
41:26 Exploring the Freedom of Choice
50:37 The Embody Project: A Journey of Self-Acceptance
59:17 Reflecting on the Path to Freedom and Self-Love
Transcript
This transcript is autogenerated.
Erica Scott 00:00
I remember thinking to myself, I'm screwed, like I will always be a drinker. I will always want to drink. I will always like, at the four o'clock, five o'clock time be like Pavlov's dog, like, time for the glass of wine. And I loved it. I loved everything about it, and yet it was not healthy or good for me, and I knew that too, but I was caught, and so to be free from feeling caught by it was tremendous.
Cecily Mak 00:30
You're listening to Undimmed, and I'm Cecily Mack. This is a podcast about living a clear life without dimmers. In today's episode, you're going to meet my closest friend, Erica Scott. You'll listen in on our intimate conversation about the journey of our friendship, our ins and outs with alcohol and other dimmers. And Erica also turns the tables around and gets me to talk about some pretty personal aspects of my own Clear Life journey.
Hi, thank you so much for being here.
Erica Scott: Hi.
Cecily Mak: So this is a really special hour, because Erica and I go back decades. I probably spent more hours talking to Erica in person, on the phone, through voice memos in the occasional zoom than any other friend I've ever had, and it just feels very special and potent to be here today. So thank you.
Erica Scott: Lucky me. Thank you, such a treat to be here.
Cecily Mak: I want to hear your version of how we first met, and I would love to hear what you remember, and then I'll share what I remember.
Erica Scott 01:46
Oh, cool. I don't think I've heard your version of this. So this is great, yeah. So my memories are a little bit like snapshots I have like, like visual snapshots, and then like feeling snapshots of meeting you. So it was like, maybe 2000 or 2001 and a dear mutual friend of ours invited us to a Pen and Teller show,
Cecily Mak
Magic show!
Erica Scott
Magic show, like an epic, amazing magic show. And I was new in town. I was new in San Francisco. I just moved there, and I remember it was chilly, because I remember you in a hat and a coat, and I think we were all kind of bundled up, and we met, and it was dark outside, and I'm in San Francisco. I'm in this new city, and I didn't know anybody except for her, and I saw you amongst you, know, I was just kind of like checking out all the people, like, Oh, who's here? And then I saw you, and I went that one, that one, that's my friend. I want to be friends with that one. And it was something about your vibe and your energy, which is really kind of how I operate in the world in general, that just struck me. And I just knew something clicked, and I knew I wanted to sit next to you inside the theater, and I arranged it that way, like I just made sure that that was going to happen. So cool. And I just like, yeah, it was a knowing. And that's kind of all I remember. I don't remember what we did after the show, and I just know that we became fast friends.
Cecily Mak 03:08
I love that, and one of the reasons I love it is that it's very similar to my memory. I think I was an early friend of our mutual friend, Charlie, and I remember that kind of spontaneous invitation to go to the show. And I remember meeting you, and we were both very quickly like, Yes, oh my gosh, yes, hi, you Hi. We are totally gonna be friends. I think we kind of looked alike and dressed alike, and there was just this familiarity. And I remember following that evening. I think we very quickly had a lunch or a dinner or coffee or something, and we haven't spent a whole ton of years living in the same city since then,
Erica Scott 03:46
no, because I moved away from San Francisco within a few years, and that was a long time ago,
Cecily Mak 03:50
long time ago, like several relationships ago and lifestyles ago, and big career and life chapters and all the ways. And one of the things I treasure the most about our friendship is that whatever it is that has run deep between us from that very beginning has not changed in any way other than I think it's grown deeper
Erica Scott
Absolutely
Cecily Mak
and we actually have very little in common, right?
Erica Scott
I know it's wild, and yet you are my closest friend, and we have gotten closer in later years. We don't get farther away. We get closer, which is amazing. It is amazing.
Cecily Mak
And we go so deep on all this awesome stuff. And one of my kind of treasured areas of exploration for us is some of the really kind of subtle and deeper stuff of what we are now both experiencing and what I refer to as we refer to as living clear or clear life. And so Eric and I were both living alcohol free, or largely alcohol free, or, I think maybe better said, we both feel free from alcohol.
Erica Scott
Yes, okay, yes, I have an experience of freedom from alcohol. I don't, I don't consider myself sober, but I am also not drinking,
Cecily Mak
Yes, and I'm very similar that way, like Big ups and respect for sobriety and the the honor and privilege of being able to self define a sober for people for whom that's very important. But I think our journeys have been a little bit more about this notion of freedom and kind of being liberated, and this, these feelings of choice that define what we do or don't do every day. And it's, it's, I think, really, actually deepened our friendship, absolutely, but it wasn't always like that for either one of us, yeah.
Erica Scott
And certainly not in our friendship. It wasn't always like that, yeah, we've gone through all the iterations of clear and not clear, yeah, yeah.
Cecily Mak
And as you put really well earlier, there really had been kind of three chapters in this arena. So there was the the beginning of our friendship when we were both in our 20s. Yeah, damn, yeah. Okay, we look like we're in our 20s in this picture, that's for sure. And I think a couple of times, you know, snapshots of us in bars, whoops, sparingly, wearing the exact same outfit.
Erica Scott
Yes, we would show up in the same thing, yeah, I have a few of those pictures. And yeah, the clue there in bars, right? Or nightclub always, or live music concert, yeah, or a party, yeah, that was what we did. That was that era for us, for sure, and and
Cecily Mak 06:44
I think, if my memory serves, you, kind of already been on your own alcohol journey by the time you moved to San Francisco. And when we met those years ago, I was on an alcohol free journey until I moved to San Francisco. And actually it was, I was sober, I think, when I very first moved to San Francisco, and then I decided I wanted to be quote, unquote normal,
Erica Scott 07:07
because everybody around me now in my new town, San Francisco, was drinking socially, and that was what was normal. And I think there's been a lot for me around drinking that had to do with fitting in. So I have had a tendency to want to be in the realm that everybody's in and on the plane that everybody's on. So when I was not drinking for it was 11 years from 20 to 31 that I wasn't drinking, the people around me were also not drinking. So I had that as my social circle. And then when I moved to San Francisco, this was a drinking crowd, and I thought, I can do that. I can drink socially. It's not a thing.
Cecily Mak
And which you did, which we did for years, for years, I mean, many years. And it wasn't weird. No, it was normal.
Erica Scott
It was normal. We were doing what everybody was doing. And it didn't feel, it didn't like impact my life. It didn't impact my next day. I did not have what I considered to be a drinking problem. Yeah, I was a very normal social drinker. Yeah, in my opinion,
Cecily Mak 08:37
what was that like for you, coming out of years of not drinking, and not only not drinking, but being supported by an AA community you actually had some identity around not drinking.
Erica Scott
I originally I was in the AA community in my early days of not drinking in my early 20s, but I pretty quickly felt like that was a limiting context for me rather than an expansive and deepening context. So I then left that community, the AA community. I didn't need it to be to stay sober. I wasn't, you know, jonesing for drinks. So I think I originally stepped into that world for social support, and it was helpful.
Cecily Mak
So common, yeah, so common, and so awesome that it's there, right?
Erica Scott
And, and then I just kind of felt like this doesn't fit me anymore. I don't fit in here anymore. So I continued my own exploration of depth in my own like, sort of spiritual explorations in many, many ways outside of that. But I still wasn't drinking, and I was still hanging out with the people that weren't drinking. So I think for me to answer your question, I considered very carefully starting to drink again. I took a lot of time with that. It wasn't a moment decision, it was an overtime decision, because it did matter to me, and I had built a life that was not dependent on alcohol, and there was a specific reason why I had stopped drinking in the first place, and I knew enough in my AA meeting days to know that it's progressive and it can come right back and be the same or worse when you start drinking again. And I just didn't want to step back into the darkness of alcohol, and yet, I didn't want to be that person who wasn't drinking with all the other people who were so I just thought about it, and I thought, like, I've had enough time. I understand myself, enough. I understand the substance, enough. I think I can, I can do this. I can be fine. And it was for a while. It really was like, I mean, it was, but it wasn't, of course, but it felt like it was at the time. So, yeah. So I think that's an important thing for me to note that it was a careful consideration and a conscious choice to step back into something that I had let go very, also very consciously.
Cecily Mak
yeah, yeah. And what I would love to rewind the tape back a little bit. What can you tell us what it was that had you enter AA or or start your exploration of AA in the first place?
Erica Scott
Yeah, I mean, so I was, I think, 20 when I quit drinking the first time, and I was just out of college, and I was really running with a crowd who drank a lot, and we spent all of our time in bars, and that's just what we did. And I knew that I was drinking more than I wanted to, and it didn't feel good, and I didn't like that I was so checked out. Was so checked out, and I was stepping way outside of myself to show up in this group of people who were heavy partiers in a fast crowd, basically, and really, the line of demarcation for me was that one night, I was being walked home by a dear friend at the time's boyfriend. They were living together. He maybe he just walked me to my car. See, I don't really remember, and we ended up kissing each other, and that was such a breach of my code with a friend that I was like, Who am I not? Okay, and I knew that night and the next day I had to immediately stop, and I had to immediately change my friend group, because all of my friends hung out in bars, and that was all I knew. I didn't have other people in my life that were doing healthy things, and that was why AA was really helpful to step to step right into. But it was like getting so far away from the truth of who I am and how I how I walk through the world, especially in my friendships, was like a huge, scary, awful wake up call.
Cecily Mak 12:25
Yeah, I relate to that. I relate to that. And I think a lot of people in this community do as well, and that it's usually not some big, rock bottom crisis?
Erica Scott
Right. And it wasn't like I was drinking bottles and bottles of wine every night. It wasn't like an excess like that. It seemed also, to me, like a again, I was just doing what everybody else was doing. I wasn't drinking more than anybody else, but it was that self-abandonment thing,
Cecily Mak
yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, that's in some ways worse than some of the other stuff, yeah, yeah.
Erica Scott
And it damages people and people that you care about, you know, that's just not that's just not cool, yeah, totally, yeah.
Cecily Mak
So when I met you, you'd kind of been through that part of your journey, yeah, a long time ago, yeah, you'd had this low moment. You entered a community, you found some people, you kind of rewrote your social scene, and that's pretty amazing, by the way. I just want to acknowledge to do that on your early 20s. I don't know a lot of people who've been able to pull that off in their early 20s. Most of us are physically and mentally immature and physically resilient enough to just kind of keep doing what we're doing and blow off red flags. And it sounds like you actually listened to a red flag and made a pretty hard shift.
Erica Scott
But it also felt like luck. You know? I just felt lucky to be able to step away like that and then to lose my desire. It wasn't like I was fighting, like I really want to drink. I really want to drink. I never had that either, yeah, which was also lucky,
Cecily Mak
And then you were able to make this conscious choice. Okay, well, let's see what it's like to actually be social and drink again. New city, new friends, new scene. And that was certainly our world for a while, definitely. I mean, we we hit it hard in San Francisco in our 20s. I know we were both working. We were dating fun people. We had fun friends. We had big parties to go to. We hosted some big parties. Everyone got hammered. God, it was a delightful fun, debaucherous mess, yes, right, all of that. And then what happened after the kind of wild 20s days, I think we actually both kind of settled into a similar thing, where it was sort of like more mature, regular drinking.
Erica Scott 15:00
Yeah, because we also settled into relationships, right? Like, more kind of grown up relationships when we're just dating people that we met at parties or bars that were actual living with partners, and, I mean, you ended up having children and went down the family route, and a lot of our friends in that group that we were hanging out with were doing the same thing. I was not doing that, but, but everybody was. And so I do think there was, like a more grown up, shall we say, version of maybe drinking less often, in that way, that party kind of way. And I will say that I certainly kept drinking, you know, wine on my own, at my own house, like at, you know, to mark the end of the day and begin the like relaxing part of the day. And that became something that I really looked forward to and really didn't want to not do. So I did it. I kept doing it.
Cecily Mak 15:44
Yeah, same here, and it's interesting. I wouldn't even say I was necessarily drinking less, per se, it just became more sort of sophisticated and socially suited to the circumstances,
Erica Scott
yeah? And I might even say it was more in the background than the foreground.
Cecily Mak
Yeah, it wasn't, let's go out and have drinks. It was, let's be home and have friends over for dinner and drink while we're doing it from beginning to end. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Erica Scott
And I'm no longer living in San Francisco, so we're long distance friends now, but we're still, you know, doing the same things in our respective places, yeah, and visiting each other when we could.
Cecily Mak
And so I'd come visit you, of course, we would open a bottle of wine and have a glass of wine and maybe have another one or two at dinner, and whatever it was, or you with me, so it was just kind of normal, and then I did something so uncool. I don't remember my version of communicating with you about this, per se, but I remember my kind of self-absorbed version of that chapter of my life, because it was so intense for me. I was in my own little bubble of experience, but you had a friend kind of peel off on that
Erica Scott 17:00
you definitely went in a different direction there. And I will say just the first thing I want to say is that I really admired you for that I really like honored and respected your choice to take a radically different road in your life. And I also simultaneously remember thinking, I can't do that. I couldn't do that now. I'm like, I basically remember thinking I'm screwed.
Cecily Mak
And just so we're talking about the same thing. This was me making the choice to take a break from drinking.
Erica Scott
Yes, really, yeah. And so, yeah, I respected it. I honored it. I was inspired by it. I was like, I remember that we talked a lot about it. I don't remember the moment that you told me, but I do remember we explored it and it confronted me, because now we couldn't share that thing that we always shared, and I didn't really know how to relate when, because I was at that time, also in a relationship that had very much alcohol involved in it as that normal, quote, unquote, normal way that it had been for years and years. So I, it felt wobbly for me, and it made me look at my own habits and patterns and attachment to drinking because you removed it, and that was one of the ways that we connected. And now, who are we? Who am I in relation to you, and who are you in relation to me? And you were very generous about it. You never expected your friends to make the same choice that you were making. So it wasn't like it came from you at all, but there was a voice inside of me that was like, Uh oh, we have a problem here. It was a tiny little voice. And I was like, be quiet. Let's have another glass of wine, you know. So I wasn't able or willing to look look at it. I mean, I looked at it, I just wasn't able or willing to do anything about it at the time, so it felt like a little discord in our relationship. Yeah. Can I ask a hard question? Of course, those are the best ones. Did it? Did you feel ever like I was judging you or being condescending about being over here not drinking while you were still drinking. It's a great question. I think there were probably moments where I felt you were not to my face, saying things that were judgmental, but the things that you were saying about your journey and like where you were in that place, and how you now viewed people who were drinking, which you included yourself in, as a past version of yourself. I got like a like a subtext that felt like judgment, but I'm not actually sure that it was. It might have been my own self judgment. Uh, being projected onto what you were saying. So it's, I don't think it's, like, clearly delineated, but, yeah, I mean, I think there was a part of me that was like, I know you're saying that you don't judge me, but are you really not judging me? Yeah, yeah. Is it really okay that I'm that I'm drinking and you're not, because you're saying so many things about alcohol that I understand and it makes so much sense, you know, that are not healthy about alcohol and patterns of alcohol. But, yeah, are you judging me? Yeah. What was your experience of that? Do you remember feeling a little judgy or not at all feeling judgy toward me or your other friends?
Cecily Mak 20:35
You know, I had to examine this a bit, because it's it's been years, and I've had the full spectrum of reactions to my choices to not drink. I mean, as you know, you've talked about this a lot, but wild love and encouragement and real disdain and disapproval and everything in the middle. And I think, honestly, there was a period of time when part of my process involved being judgmental of others who were, and note my language here still drinking, as if, yeah, they're on a path toward not drinking anymore, but they actually weren't. Yeah, exactly, and that that was the way to go. And if I then kind of keep going and try to be compassionate with myself and not get too shame filled about that judginess, I actually think that righteousness was one of the kind of strengths of or a pillar of strength for me, rather in my path like it was something that I could hold on to. This choice is the right choice. I'm making a difficult choice, but it's the right thing to do.And I I feel less that way now. It feels much more like an exploration and an offering than a like a dictatorship, for me, the right word, but there's, there's some feeling now today that is more along the lines of my job is just to be who I am and and I really do believe this, this notion of do you in the eight awarenesses. And I, I had this super humbling moment, which I write about. Actually, I was driving my then, I think, nine or 10 year old son, through our little town in northern California, and we passed somebody on a street corner lighting a cigarette, and he said, Mom, if I were the president of the United States, I would make a what's it called, What's the thing that the President can do when they can just make a law? I said, an executive order, honey. He said, I would make an executive order and ban cigarettes. Wow. And I said, why? And he said, Well, they're unhealthy and it's gross for the people around them who don't smoke, and I think they should be illegal. Nobody should be allowed to smoke. And I got him to where I was going and dropped him off, and then I had a pretty massive oh moment like that is coming from me. I am his mama, and when he got back in the car after his practice an hour or so later, I talked him about a little bit more, and I asked him about candy. I said, Would you like it if there was an executive order to make candy illegal? And we had this great kind of mom to kiddo conversation about letting people make their own choices. And you know what's right for somebody who's not right for others? And isn't it amazing that we live in a world where people can choose what they want to do, and it's kind of no one else's business, right? And we have no way of knowing what motivates other people to do or not do what they do. And it was really the teaching that I needed to hear. He was this awesome, little like mirror. And so when I look back, you know, this is kind of around that time, probably when you were feeling some of those undertones of my explorations. And I was doing a lot of Instagram posting then too, yeah, so I was able to say behind this clear life journey. IG, handle things that I wasn't comfortable necessarily saying to friends and family, right? They were pretty pointed about my perspectives on alcohol and drinking, and I've had a number of people tell me that they felt like that was really in some ways harsh and directed towards them, like, alienating, yeah, and it's been an interesting experience for me to explore the truth in that, as opposed to just defend myself. No, I wasn't being judgmental. This was just my journey. Well, you know, not really. I think, I think part of it was being kind of righteous. There was a yes and there Yeah, which I can really.
Erica Scott 25:00
Lead to now that I'm on the other side, and we haven't even talked about much about that chapter yet, but I'm in my journey of being clear again from alcohol. I also am going through that as a phase, like, it's a maybe a part of the healing journey, or the clear journey, where what it feels like for me is an important rejection of, like an in like, a personal rejection of a behavior that was very unhealthy for me, that I wasn't willing to see then, but I can see really clearly now, and I don't wish that for the people that I love. You know, it's a hard thing to really put words to, but I think maybe it's just a part of the journey. And the important thing is not to bring it along the whole way, but move beyond it. Yeah, go through it, yeah? Because there's something definitely bigger than that that allows everybody to live in their own way, whatever that is for them, without any judgment from us. For sure, I think that that that time for me,
Cecily Mak 26:01
of learning how to navigate my own path without that kind of righteousness or condescension, your own clear life path like yeah, was actually really humbling. It wasn't it wasn't easy to admit that I had been a version of myself that maybe I had grown past. And we we have that all now kind of documented, and I'm able to have communications with people in my life about how they felt in the face of my choices, or how I communicated about it. And I think what we can do all of us as we're figuring this out, because this is not an easy thing to do, whether you're on the friend who has a friend who decides to stop drinking, or whatever your dimmer is with you, or if you're the friend who's opting out of a behavior that's been kind of a glue for years, just to extend a lot of grace to ourselves and each other, yeah,
Erica Scott 27:12
well, and I'll even extend that to say kind of what I needed too was also grace to be not graceful like Grace for me, often in my life, looks like allowing the messy, messy and the ugly, ugly and the scary, Scary, to be there too, and to gracefully allow that, which is super duper hard, Grace doesn't look like Grace when, often, when it's happening, you know, it looks like terrified, or it looks like I can't do this, or it looks like I don't have any friends anymore, or I can't make it, You know. And then allowing that to be there in the human experience, like the fullness of the human experience, I feel like in my world, that has been the grace is the allowing of the things that don't feel like Grace, but they actually are when you look back on them.
Cecily Mak
Can you give us an example, like a real, live life example? What do you mean?
Erica Scott
Okay, I can give you an example that's like outside of the realm of alcohol in particular, but related to another facet of me that's part of my clear life journey, but also very it's like a different kind of dimmer, which one of my dimmers is food. In fact, my dimmer of choice has been food since I was a teenager. Alcohol came later and was always secondary, which might be somewhat why I've been able to quit with relative ease a couple of times. The food thing has been deeper and harder to deal with and more pervasive, because you can't just quit eating. You can't quit your relationship with food, and it's fraught in the culture that we live in, how food is connected to our appearance, and that's like a conversation for another podcast on a deep dive there. But as I continue to get older and throughout our lives, our bodies are changing and our relationship with ourselves is changing, and our relationship with our dimmers is changing and relationship with food is changing, and it's like, you don't accept or learn to love yourself and then move on. Yeah, it doesn't happen that way. And a lot of people's probably a lot of people's relationship with alcohol. It's not like you let it go and then you just move on. It happens that way for some people, maybe, or it's easier for some than for others, but it's in everything there are threads that run through and so to continually find the threads, be willing to look at the threads, pull the threads out, see what else they're connected to. Being willing to see yourself in those places where you're like, I thought I was done with this, and I'm not Dang it, like, what? That's just brutal and yet human. And we're probably all going through that on some level, at least at some point, more than we realize. And I think it's been really helpful for me to remember that others have all of their own things that they're dealing with around the realm of. Dimmers and threads that run through their behaviors that feel unhealthy, and things in their lives that are difficult and scary, and we just don't think of other people that way. And it's really helpful to do that. It's so human, and it makes me love people more to remember that they're dealing with all kinds of stuff, like the guy that cuts you off in the grocery store in his car, like he may be dealing with something. I have no idea what he's dealing with. It's not me, yeah, right, and I do that too, like I act, I can act carelessly with people with the best of intentions, but it's, it's me. It's something that's going on in me. It's not actually about them. That's like a broad stroke, yeah? Way of starting that conversation,
Cecily Mak 30:42
and it's both of the people outside of us and also ourselves, for sure. I mean, it's always that, right?
Erica Scott 30:52
Yeah, yeah, always, yeah. So can I ask you a question? I'm really curious to know more about your experience when you began your experiment of not drinking, which in the beginning was an experiment, what was your experience of our friendship, specifically, and also some of the other friendships in your life, like, what happened there? How was that for you?
Cecily Mak 31:21
Well, I started my my experiment of not drinking in a storm of difficulty and deeply complex change in my life. So it wasn't one of those examples of you kind of wake up and you decide to do sober October or sober January, or you have these reasons to cut back on drinking, and so you're going to take a month off to feel better. In my world, everything was falling apart at the same time, I was leaving my husband. I was needing to find a place to live. I was at the lowest of my confidence and self esteem in many, many years, but had been faking it. So I was also deeply entangled in a cloak of inauthenticity, which was also just deeply painful. And when I took that 30 day break, September of 2017 not drinking, was almost like a footnote on all the other dramatic shifts that were happening that month, and yet still a very bold choice. It was simple, radical choice in your life, but it was, it really wasn't the most significant thing happening either. So interesting, I think, is why I have a little bit of a unfair story, like it was peculiarly easy for me to not drink that month because I was doing several other things that were much harder.
Erica Scott
But that's the time when most people would even double down on drinking, because, therefore,
Cecily Mak
maybe I should back up a little bit, give a little bit of context on that. I mean, I I had, I had learned of infidelity in my marriage a year prior.
Erica Scott
Shattering.
Cecily Mak
And I had to find ways to handle that. While we tried to figure out what to do next, we spent an entire year trying to not get a divorce, as you remember, I mean, that was we were really trying to, like, tape all the little, tiny pieces of paper scattered all over the floor back together, and it was very painful, and my relief of choice was most certainly alcohol during that period. And I remember drinking immediately upon coming home from work. I had a really long commute at the time. I remember drinking by myself on business trips. I remember one morning with the family loaded in the car to go to the beach, running into the house to get something that I had forgotten to actually and this is, thank God, the only time I ever did this, but go into the cabinet and take a shot of vodka and then run back to the car.
Erica Scott
Did you have any moment when that happened, of like seeing yourself doing that, or were you just in it? Do you know what I mean?
Cecily Mak
Um, a little bit of both. Honestly, I remember thinking, this is not a good sign. And I also remember thinking, Oh, well, I learned from my mother that you can't smell vodka, so no one will ever know. So what's the harm? Wow. Well, so I had really kind of gotten myself. Pretty deep in a state of as we, you know, talk about dimmed out or dulled out or non feeling or denial or survivorship, whatever it was. And so that first month, when I peeled off and stopped drinking, I actually kind of self isolated. I wasn't totally ready to talk to people about the end of my marriage. It was still hard for me to believe that that was happening. I definitely didn't want to talk to other moms in my community because we hadn't even talked to the kids yet, and so I didn't want like kids to find out from their friends who found out from their parents that the Macs were separating, so I just got really isolated and really quiet. That makes so much sense. Yeah, and I probably got pretty quiet from you. I think we may have spoken on the phone a few times. I know I came and visited a couple months in in North Carolina, which was a poignant visit for that well, but I really, I mean, my medicine at that time socially was to self isolate, and I really didn't start noticing the benefits of living alcohol free until, you know, the end of that first month, I realized a number of things in my life just felt better. And it's probably a combination of getting out of the difficult personal situation I was in and other empowering choices. But it really was months two and months three when I started looking around and thinking, have I just had a wool over my eyes about drinking? Yeah? Like, this is crazy. Wow. And you didn't know anybody else that was doing that at the time, right? You were, like, the only one, yeah, and you didn't have anyone to reflect with. I was, I was fairly isolated in that, in that time, for sure, you know, I reached out to people who were deep in AA, kind of heard their version. I had a buddy who was also sober with me.
Erica Scott
Did you go to any meetings at the time?
Cecily Mak
I think I went to three or four just checking it out in that first six months, maybe another three or four in the following six months, more in a support capacity and a curiosity capacity. But I just kind of navigated my way through and my memory, my memory of my relationships, including friendship with you and my family, was just being really careful, like I got to be really careful about what I say and what I do, and I was very caught up and not wanting everyone else to feel uncomfortable because of my choices.
Erica Scott
So So you were being careful on behalf of us, the others, were you also being careful for your, like, fragile state at the time, or like, still sort of, you know, protective.
Cecily Mak
I felt so relieved having finally made the decision to get out of my marriage and a little bit proud of it in a way it was really hard to do, and so I kind of denied delicacy. I probably could have afforded a little bit more delicacy and softness in that period and but a little bit more receptive to love and support from the people in my life who tried to extend it to me. I think my tone was a little bit more of a I've got it still. I'm good. I figured this all out. I'm good now. But with regard to the alcohol thing, yeah, I really didn't want to make the people around me uncomfortable, so I was the classic, go ahead, pour the glass of wine in front of me at the dinner table, and I just wouldn't touch it all night. And then I remember, you're doing that. I remember that, and bringing the wine like for us to enjoy and encouraging us multiple times to drink it. Yeah, I just didn't, I didn't want my choices to create difficulty for other people,
Erica Scott 38:40
which was loving. That was a loving gesture. I felt some peace in that, because I was so not ready to not be drinking, and I didn't want to feel bad about doing the thing that I would was always doing in your presence. And I I feel like that was a really loving, loving thing to do. I mean, I understand it's nuanced, and there were other other things at play. But just so, you know, I always appreciated that your intention to normalize us, yeah, as well, yeah, not, not an easy task.
Cecily Mak
And I think for all relationships, it's a little bit different too. Some people in my life I was less thoughtful or nuanced, I'm sure we just kind of have to figure this out. Yeah, I need you kind of finishing your first year.
Erica Scott
Yeah, just cross the first year line. Congratulations. Thank you. It feels good. Yeah. I love it.
Cecily Mak
How has it been for you in relationship realm, whether it's, you know, friendship or family or other in either communicating your choice or sharing your connection with somebody without something that was there before.
Erica Scott 40:00
Yeah. I mean, I really am evolving in that realm day by day. For sure, I what was helpful for me at the. Little bit like you, but maybe similar but different in that I became more insulated. I insulated myself because it was so much easier than saying yes to the party, you know, that I knew was going to be everybody drinking a lot, and I, in the beginning, felt like I might be tempted to drink, and I didn't want to be tempted. So when I wasn't in those environments, around people who were drinking and celebrating, I didn't feel anything. I didn't it wasn't no longer a part of my home routine, which it was very much before I made the decision this time to stop drinking. So that felt like a safe place for me to be at home with myself. I just didn't think of it. It no longer entered my mind to have a drink, which was like, huge for me. Like leading up to this time when I stopped drinking, I remember thinking to myself, I'm screwed, like I will always be a drinker. I will always want to drink. I will always like, at the four o'clock, five o'clock time, be like Pavlov's dog, like time for the glass of wine. And I loved it. I loved everything about it and it, and yet it was not healthy or good for me, and I knew that too. But I was caught. And so to be free from feeling caught by it was tremendous. And I really, I feel like I really gave myself time, plenty of time and space to settle into that and and not have to put myself in a position where I would feel awkward or be tempted. Yeah, and there were a couple of times when I went out, and I did sip some wine, and it was very conscious. It was like, What will this feel like? What will this be like? Let me see what happens. It was because I'm not counting sobriety anymore, because I'm not doing this in a program kind of way. That's part of the freedom for me is that I'm choosing very, very consciously, and I'm choosing 99.999 out of 100 times to not have anything. But I've also allowed myself to just check it out. And when I've checked it out, I'd never finish. I have like, a sip or two, and I'm like, meh, you know, it's just doesn't have a hook in me anymore. And that's the freedom that I feel, but I have had to dip my toe very carefully back into social situations where people are drinking, and mostly I choose to do things with people that don't involve that at all, like we go for a hike. I invite my friends for a hike, instead of going out at five o'clock to someplace for dinner or drinks where they have drinks? Yeah, that's just feels that feels better to me. So you just said something really interesting. I want to dig into a little bit, um, you said that it doesn't have a hook in you anymore. It does not, yeah, so why not?
Cecily Mak 42:54
What's different?
Erica Scott 42:58
That's such an interesting question. I want to just say it's not me, it's it's like luck again, or grace or something, or willingness to step away and find out that not drinking feels so much better than drinking. Like I don't wake up hating myself anymore. I wake up proud of myself, like and not drinking, has also led to a bunch of other healthy habits for me that now feel like, like I was thinking about this, like, what is the opposite of dimmers? Because I have a few things in my life now that are, like enhancers or brighteners that, like, really, really supply me with so much gratitude and joy and health and well being and endorphins, right? Exercise is a big one, and being outside is a big one, and I spend so much more time investing myself there, which then just reinforces how much I do not want to drink. I do not want to wake up being upset with myself again. I do not want to, like, be hooked by something that provides me with negativity. Yeah, every single day, like, I can't really imagine that the farther away I get, and the more, the more free I feel, and the more unhooked I am. As time goes on, I'm just like, why would I ever Yeah, how could I ever do that so great. I mean, that's the freedom, right? Yeah, I've had people come over to my home in the last, you know, years and see that we have vodka in the freezer and wine on the shelf and beer in the fridge. And they're shocked. They're like, are you? Like, how do you? How do you do that? That must be so hard for you. Yeah, what do you? What do you say to that? How is that for you? Because I'm curious about that too.
Cecily Mak 45:00
I mean, I think that when we get to a true place of freedom in this realm, it's because we're doing exactly what you're describing. We're actually making a choice every single day. And it, yes, it has to come from the inside, but it has to be this kind of awareness that. If I go down this path, that's what's going to happen. If I go down that path, that's what's going to happen. I had, for the first time in my six plus years of living alcohol free, an inclination to have a drink last week. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I was in the bedroom at this end of a long day. I've been super jammed with Office and family, and we were just kind of getting ready to put all the ingredients on the counter and start cooking dinner. And I remember I had this feeling of, yeah, like a drink to just like, designate that now all of that is over, and here comes the social, fun, relax, nourish, you know, relate part of the evening, and I watched my mind have that thought and that feeling I was actually with Soren, and I mentioned to him, within a minute or two, and this is where the work shows up, because my next thought was, oh, isn't that interesting? Look at that. Wonder why I feel that way right now. Oh, it's because of my being is looking for some type of quick shot of relief, literally and figuratively, right? And then the next thought was what you just described as part of just the ethos of being in this state, which is, I could do that, but I don't. I don't like where that step down that path is taking me, so I'm not going to, it's sure to take you there. Like, there's no question that it will take you there, right? It's like, Yeah, well, you don't think, I think like you, I'm, I'm sure, and I've thought about this, I'm sure that I could start drinking moderately if I wanted to have a glass of wine here or there.
Erica Scott
I could not. No, heck no, interesting. Tried that once. Just give it a few years, and I was like, You're just right back hooked again.
Cecily Mak
Maybe that's the case for me too, and I'm just not aware of or in denial of it. And maybe everybody's different. You know, I just in my world, it's just really easy to have a yes/no. I found I spent so much energy wasted thinking about whether or not I should drink that night, whether or not I should drink that, you know, weekend, how much water I was going to drink to offset the alcohol I was consuming. How much did I drink last night? What would have been a better amount to a drink? What just the waste of life, life force
Erica Scott 47:44
and energy and time spent in your head? Yeah. And that one I always had, like, the best of intentions of just having one. I'll just have one. Well, guess what when I have one now, my judgment is impaired, and two, does not seem like a bad idea at all. In fact, it seems like a great idea. Yeah. And it's so liberating to be on the other side of that, to be able to see it through to what I know will be that point for me, like I can fast forward before anything happens, and be like, do I want to is that where I want to go? No, I don't Yeah. So whatever I need to do, what? Even if that's say no to the invitation to the holiday party, which I did this year several times, if it's like, yeah, I'd rather spend it by myself and wake up really proud of myself and go on a big hike. And is that resisting? Is that making sure you're not put in the face of temptation, or because you don't want to be in that environment? I just don't really want to be the just don't really want to be the environment doesn't like light me up. And there are certain groups that I know that have certain kinds of parties where drinking is the thing that's like the central activity, and I know there will be lots of it. And I just really don't enjoy being in that environment, because I'm not I'm not with them. They're not with me. We're not connecting. And I really only want to connect. I just want to connect, yeah, yeah. And we can do it without.
Cecily Mak
You can do it with, even better without. I That's one of the things I really love about this chapter of life as a mom, is that there are a lot of kids in our house. There's a between my partner and me. There are three kids ages 12, as you know, 16 and 21 and they have their friends and their significant others, and then their friends are around. And I every once in a while, just think, isn't that interesting for them that they see this family that doesn't drink as another option?
Erica Scott
Yeah, yeah, as another option. I never saw that as a kid.
Cecily Mak
I didn't either.
Erica Scott 49:53
I never knew what that looked like. Everybody was doing it. So of course, yeah, and I had a lot of judgments and assumptions about I thought, Oh, the people who didn't drink didn't drink because they had a problem for them. That was the message that, yeah, like they were making this big sacrifice and or they had a condition or a label that made it not allowed in their house, so it was a sense of deprivation and kind of quiet guilt or something, yeah, and I judge them for not being fun, you know, like, well, obviously they're not fun if they're not drinking. Glad to be beyond that. I mean, I do. I have so many people in my life who choose to drink in a way that really works for them. And. And I am able to really love them for that and just be like, great. Like, good for you, whatever, like, Whatever you do, yeah, do you? Yeah? Exactly.
Cecily Mak 50:00
One of the things that's interesting about this clear life journey work for me is that I, in many ways, started it because I needed something that wasn't there. And I'm still trying to figure it all out. So I don't have the answers per se, but I want to honor and acknowledge you a bit for a version of that in your own path. You mentioned that your your primary dimmer of choice. Dimmer yeah has been food and body issues over the years. Yeah, and you made something that didn't exist because you needed it true. Can you tell us about that?
Erica Scott 50:49
Yeah, so it's been about a decade now since I created out of my own desperation to see myself and my body in relation to other people's bodies and experience of their bodies, it created something called the embody project, which truly was born out of my desperation.
Cecily Mak
Say more about that? What was your desperation?
Erica Scott
I just I grew up with supermodels from magazines, wallpapering my teenage bedroom walls in bathing suits and stuff. I mean, that's just I was, like, obsessed with L magazine and all the magazines, all the fashion magazines. And what I think I didn't realize was that I was really internalizing, very deeply internalizing the message that my body should look a certain way and it should look like them, and it didn't, and it, you know, it's funny, because other people might look at me and say, it doesn't look that much different than them. And that's irrelevant to our experience of ourselves, right? That was irrelevant to my experience of myself. In my experience of myself, I was vastly, tragically, brokenly different. And I think that's really common for girls in our culture, because what we're taught from an early age, and it's reinforced over and over, is that our currency is our appearance and our body and our face. And I took that in really deeply without without questioning it, I felt very, very different and very, very alone, because all the images that I saw in the world, in magazines and movies and everywhere in the media, were these perfected female bodies and sexualized and charged, and they were trying to sell us something. It was never people being real. It was never people in their actual bodies. And I just needed, at a certain point, much later in my life, after I suffered for many, many decades around this, I needed to see myself in relation to others. And so what happened was the partner that I had at the time actually said to me, You know what? And this was like, years into our relationship, and we're living together, and I moved from San Francisco, when we were first friends to be with this guy, to another city, and he said, I'm just not attracted to your body. I have to tell you the truth. And it was my worst possible nightmare, like the possibly worst thing that anybody could ever say to me, especially the guy that I moved to be with. So it put me into this, like incredible existential crisis, like my worst thing had come true, and I did not know what to do with myself, so I did what I could at the time. I'm a photographer, so I and I was I also went to school and studied other kinds of art, so I started drawing myself, and I started like, I would look in the mirror. I was like, How do I like when I look at other bodies in art, I see beauty. They don't look like mine. How come I don't judge them? How come, when I look at the magazines, I compare myself unfavorably, but when I look at Renaissance paintings, I don't like what's that all about. So I started to say, like, what if I put my image of myself, not in the mirror, but in art? So I painted and I drew myself, and I took pictures of myself, like self portraits, to try to heal this thing and just say, like, I don't believe you. I don't believe you boyfriend, that just because you're not attracted to me, that means that I'm unattractive. But so as helpful as that was, what was missing for me was seeing myself in relation to the rest of humanity, like other people's bodies that, you know, the only kind I ever saw was the idealized kind. I never saw real women in bathing suits. I never saw real men like with their clothes off. That bothered me, so I decided to recruit a few very brave friends to be in front of my camera in a really organic way, like at the by this time, I was living in North Carolina, in the mountains, this beautiful, beautiful place, and I would we would go outside somewhere in the mountains. And I let them guide me around what kind of photo shoot they wanted to have, naked, just real, real and naked, not Posey, not sexualized, not trying to look a certain way, but just being so. Maybe they were in motion, or maybe they were just laying on their bed, or maybe they were standing in the middle of a river, and I also asked them to write about their experience in their bodies, because that was also one of the things, like for me, that was important, because when you just see somebody, you don't know still what's going on with somebody. You don't know what their story is of being in their own body. And I knew intuitively that everybody has and also, from talking to my friends, everybody has challenges being in their body, judgments that they put on themselves, or comparisons that they make, and I wanted to hear those stories, so the first few went up onto this, like totally rudimentary website, and I would choose the photo and so that they didn't have a say in how they thought they looked best. I would wait until I got there writing about their experience in their body and choose the photo based on whatever was the truth, most truthful reflection of what they were saying. So it grew from there. It accidentally went all around the world. Somebody shared it on a blog, and I started getting emails from people in like Poland and Romania and like, Please, can I participate in your project? And they were like, Oh, my God, I've always felt super uncomfortable in my skin, or I just healed from cancer, or, you know, I'm going through a transgender transition, and I don't really know how to see myself. There was all these different things about people that were invisible, sometimes to the naked eye. No pun intended. And it was remarkable just to see how the thing, like, the pain point that I had, that I thought I was so alone in, was the thing that, like, connected me miraculously to others. And this is the embody project. Embody project, yeah, and I'm no longer actively conducting it. My life has moved in a different direction, and I think the culture has moved in a different direction. But the website is still there, and part of the healing is looking at these people and reading their stories, not just participating in the project. It's been amazing.
Cecily Mak
What impact did it end up having on you?
Erica Scott
While I was conducting it, it was like the closest to the divine experience of being human with others that I've ever experienced in my life. It was profoundly connective and beautiful to hold that space for courageous, vulnerable people to stand in front of my camera and interact with me and be interviewed by me naked, like raw and real and naked, and I just felt like I was in the presence of heroes constantly. So that was very healing for me, of course, and my journey as well. And my journey continues, and their journey continues, it marks a moment in time that was a moment in time for me as well, when that was really alive. I still struggle with my appearance at sometimes, because I'm getting older and it's changing, and we're all changing. Some of the people in the project are not alive anymore, and some of them have changed genders, and some of them have had children, and some of them have had cancers and all different things that we go through in our lives. So but it just allowed me, and allows me a grace again, that word for people to just be who they are, for us all to just be who we are, where we are in the moment that we're here. This is such a gratitude for that yeah, and thanks for asking
Cecily Mak 58:22
Yeah. And I see that in how you are yourself today, even though I know it's not always puppies and sunshine and rainbows for either
Erica Scott 58:46
I wish mostly just puppies.
Cecily Mak 58:50
There's a lot of self love too, a lot of honoring of kind of where we are. And I think I know for you and I, we've we've seen each other at our lowest moments. And I think we also have, maybe it has been apologetic for being in those low moments, yeah, or not. Wanted the other one to see that we reacted impulsively or emotionally in some way. And I know you and I remind each other all the time, the time, that that's actually the good stuff, yeah, and that's like the part of the path that we're on right now. And we're not stopping there. We never stop there. Yeah. We're really good about that, and I'm really grateful for that. So if you could go back, not the many years ago, but the maybe five years ago, six years ago, and tell yourself something. What message would you tell yourself when you're kind of in that final chapter of and I know it's a complex story for you, because it's not just alcohol, they're also food things, and you're you're in a healing journey. On all of this as am I, what would you tell your pre Free Self?
Erica Scott 1:00:13
You're stronger than you think.
Cecily Mak 1:00:16
Awesome. I know that's true of you as my friend.
Erica Scott 1:00:21
Thank you,
Cecily Mak 1:00:24
and here we are. We are now as sisters, really living today and thriving in, like a whole nother level of relationship, without that monkey business, yeah, like a whole other relationship with self. It feels like such a gift. Yeah, it's, it's tremendous, like, it's, it's not a small thing,
Erica Scott 1:00:49
and not easy. I don't want to, I don't want a rose colored glasses. No, no. It's like the ongoing, forever journey. And it's not just one thing. It's like those threads I was talking about. It's like, connected to everything. And if it's, you know, I like, okay, so I there's this healthy thing that I'm doing, but there's all these other unhealthy things that I'm still doing, or these patterns that I'm aware of, and then all these other patterns that I'm aware of, but I can't seem to do anything about it yet. And, you know, it's just the endless tapestry of humanity. Yeah, I think we again, like we all have that, and it's easy for me to single myself out and think that I'm the only one, or I have it worse than others, or I'm more messed up than everybody else, or whatever. But that's I don't. I don't believe it. I don't I believe it less and less I feel as always, really grateful for time speaking with you and my friendship is a gift. Absolutely, I feel the same way. Thank you so much. Thank you so so much for being in my life and for having this platform for people to join in in their own way. Yeah, it's a blessing. Yeah. Thanks for being part of it.
Cecily Mak
If people want to find you or learn more about either the embody project or your current work today, where can they go?
Erica Scott
So people can find the embody project@embodyproject.com and they can find all of my other work at Ericamueller.com, E R, I, C, A, M, U, E L, L, E, R .com, thank you.
Cecily Mak 1:02:14
Thank you.
That was Erica Scott in her 20-plus year career as a photographer, her work has been published in Vanity Fair, InStyle, W, People and US Weekly, and her commercial clients include Warner Brothers, Fox, Sony and wisdom 2.0 these days, Erica's lens is most often focused on her wedding and portrait clients in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, where she lives in constant awe of the stunning, long range views and with deep gratitude for the magic and mystery of life
You've been listening to Undimmed. I'm Cecily Mak. If you want to be sure to catch future episodes, please subscribe to Undimmed on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Undimmed is part of a larger movement called Clear Life. It's an exploration of what it means to live clear without dimmers that can interfere with our intentional, present way of being. It's really about tuning into our truest selves. To learn more about clear life, you can go to my website, cecilymak.com that's C, E, C, I, L, Y, M, A, K, or subscribe to my substack, also under my name,
Undimmed is produced by Joanne Jennings. Our music was composed and recorded by the great Lara and Sarah and Matteo Schimpf mixed and mastered the show. Thank you for joining us be well.
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