"Peel the f*cking onion." | Addiction, attachment and breaking destructive cycles

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Healing is like peeling an onion. The final episode of this season is a story about love, although it's not a traditional love story. It's about love addiction, the fear of not being loved and the kind of love that can keep you alive.
It's about a mother's love, facing your greatest fear and learning to love yourself through it all.

Sara-Jayne shares her complex family background, the trauma of being abandoned and adopted at 7 weeks, and her struggles with addiction alongside her partner's relapse.

Through it all Sara-Jayne Makwala-King emphasizes that the opposite of addiction is not soberity, but rather connection.

SJ is a journalist and author and has written two books about her life story. 'Killing Karoline' and 'Mad, Bad Love'. Both are available online and in all good bookstores.

QUOTES:
'My biggest fear had just happened, and yet I was the one that had told him to go. I’d facilitated that. So that was the quake - the worst thing in the world that could happen to me as I exist is happening, which is that I am a single parent, and it’s all on me.'
'You feel as if it must be personal, and it isn't. If somebody's not ready to get well from addiction, there's nothing you can do. I am powerless over another person in their addiction.'

https://www.instagram.com/seanloots
https://www.instagram.com/thisissjking

Killing Karoline: https://exclusivebooks.co.za/products/9781920601959
Mad, Bad Love: https://exclusivebooks.co.za/products/9781990973567

RECORDED AT LATITUDE PODCAST STUDIO:
https://www.staylatitude.co.za/latitude-podcast-studio/
Chapters
  • 00:00 Intro
  • 03:09 Healing is like peeling an onion
  • 04:01 Adoption
  • 07:00 Rehab
  • 11:32 Understanding addiction
  • 12:57 Pregnancy and relapse
  • 15:45 Parenting alone
  • 17:08 Fear of being a single mom. Again.
  • 20:49 Loneliness and aloneness
  • 25:11 Understanding addiction
31 Mar 2025 English Explicit South Africa Documentary · Personal Journals

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