BJDW: Embarking on a Spiritual Journey: Transforming My Alcohol-free Life, Part 2 with Jolene Park
We love having guests on the pod to share about their quitting drinking journeys and Jolene’s gray-area drinking story last week is powerful. Today’s story, equally powerful but unlike any other story we've shared before, is the second part of our conversation with our friend, functional nutritionist and gray-area drinking coach, Jolene Park.
From growing up a self-described “pew warmer” in her family’s traditional Presbyterian church to a “spiritual but not religious” adult life, to then abandoning spirituality altogether and to more recently a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and a return to faith, Jolene’s spiritual journey has taken many twists and turns along the way.
Listen along to hear how an uninspired early church life and Jolene’s lifelong seeker personality made it easy to get behind the “feel-good” New Age thinking that dominates the sober and sober curious spaces. What finally led to Jolene’s spiritual awakening igniting her pilgrimage back to her Christian roots? How did a bad yoga experience play a big role in her journey? What do London’s cathedrals have to do with this conversation? How does “faith” look different now than it did from Jolene’s growing up years? How did a friend's comment about reading the bible put her on a trajectory to not just reading the bible cover to cover for the first time but actually devouring the bible?
How did the teachings of C.S. Lewis, Dr. Curt Thompson and Alissa Childers inspire curiosity and help to transform her relationship with Jesus? What are the parallels between the freedom from the “New Age” and freedom from alcohol journeys?
We dive head first into this messy and beautiful topic and we hope it leaves you curious and hopeful for wherever you find yourself in your alcohol and/or spiritual transformation journeys!
