Jen Varale reflects on sobriety and a recent sauna retreat, shares drawing the grasshopper tarot card, and explores what taking a leap of faith means for recovery, career choices and personal growth while inviting community examples.
The host says hello, announces Sober Not Somber hour, and invites viewers to join the chat and say where they're logging in from. This brief opening sets a friendly, community tone before the main discussion.
Jen introduces the show's focus and connects it to sobriety, noting her 11 years sober and mentioning her usual non-alcoholic beverages. She also explains she's been guiding sauna events and why she's hydrating instead of drinking today.
Jen recounts attending a larger sauna event where she felt oddly unable to relax and decided to draw a tarot card. She pulls the grasshopper card and begins to explore its message about taking a leap of faith.
Using the grasshopper symbolism, Jen explores what taking a leap of faith means, including uncertainty and discomfort, and proposes that choosing sobriety itself can be seen as such a leap. She encourages listeners to recall their own leaps and considers growth that follows uncertain decisions.
Participants offer personal examples (like staying in Florida after treatment) while Jen highlights how leaps of faith give others courage. She also mentions large life decisions—career shifts and entrepreneurship—and reflects on listening to intuition before making big moves.
Jen shares her plans to pursue a career-related travel leap, reminds viewers of her local sauna events, offers to answer questions via direct message, and thanks everyone before signing off. The segment wraps up with logistics and a friendly farewell.
Hello and good afternoon. Sober not somber hour. I think I'm actually on this this time. Yeah, I had a couple weeks there where I don't know what happened, but we just had a glitch in getting me running and up. So yeah, Jen Varale here. Sober not somber hour. Oh, hi there. ROZAY Rose. Join. Gosh, perfect. Perfect. People are coming in. Come on into the chat. Say hello. Where are you logging in from? I am going to share with you today, as I do during Sober Not Somber hour, some things that have popped up over the last week.
And I'm going to connect them to Sobriety. So I myself have 11 years of sobriety. That never gets old saying that. It truly is a gift. And through CADRE, I have been sharing over the last year typically some of my really great non-alcoholic beverages as we chat. I don't have one of those today. I'm actually heading out to a sauna event after this. Yeah, no drink today, Rachel. Yeah. Water. Water. I need to hydrate. I am doing up to five different sauna events per week, which just means that I'm guiding and I'm in the sauna and I'm holding space for people.
And yeah, I just got to stay hydrated. Maybe I should be highlighting electrolytes. Yeah. Anyway, topic for today that is self-selected. If you recall, in March, we were talking about protecting capacity. I want to share just something that came into my universe, I would say over the last weekend. I was at a larger event and it was called Sauna Synergy in the middle of Wisconsin. And I found it a little challenging to relax. I don't know if any of you have experienced that. This is just very telling where I was like, very eager to meet people, be in community, but sort of felt like it was a little challenging to relax.
And I'm not sure why, if I just was feeling guilty of having three days away from my laptop, which was blissful, or, you know, why? Hi, Speak Wonder. Hi, Rachel. Yeah, Rachel says I got to get back on the water train. I'll be one. Speak wonders in I'll be one. Oh, it's so good to reconnect with you guys. I haven't been able to see the comments for so long. So anyway, in relaxing and having time this past weekend to take time for myself, there was at the event the opportunity to draw like a tarot card and it was all set up in this beautiful space and I spent some time and took some energy to kind of focus on what was my intention, what was coming up for me during the weekend.
And this was a Saturday evening. Like, why couldn't I just relax? I needed to relax. So I drew a card. I drew a card called the grasshopper. And what happens when you draw a tarot card, if you've ever done that, is you can look at a booklet that tells you all the meanings of them. I have my booklet here that just kind of goes through, if you draw this card, here's what it means. My grasshopper, like on the card, there was an icon of a grasshopper was telling me it's time to take a leap of faith.
So I sat with that and a lot of things came up because I am I'm feeling like I'm on the precipice of doing something larger in my life and needing to be very much more forward about it and own that. And there it was, there was the card saying it's time, like it's a fortuitous card. And regardless, you know, do we need a card or not to take action on things in our life? No, we don't need a card to tell us that, but I always look to them as being interpretive and what might that message hold. So in the idea of taking a leap of faith, I've been sitting with this for the last couple days and trying to think more deeply and broadly about what that looks like now.
But in Sober Not Somber hour, what I'd love to reflect and help everyone here reflect on is in their past, when have you taken a leap of faith could have been your journey to get sober if you are in long-term sobriety, or it could have been a leap to change careers, a leap to something super small, you know, like trust that this is going to work out and I'm going to step forward, move forward, leap forward without knowing the outcome. That's the other piece. Because I think once we have certain things in our life we can control and may have predestined outcomes or we generally understand what the outcome is, it's maybe not as much of a leap of faith.
Do A, result B. Leap of faith is truly, can be spiritual, can have all these elements to it, but at its core, it essentially, there's an unknown. to the outcome. And I would love to, if anyone has had an experience like that in their past leap of faith that ultimately turned out well, feel free to share if you had something that was a negative outcome, but leap of faith that maybe turned out really well for you. So I've been thinking about that in my past, and I never thought about sobriety as taking that leap.
But For those of you maybe struggling, maybe if people are coming in or seeing this later, if you are considering mindful drinking or don't know the outcome of what a sober life would look like, but you have a sense that you want it, that to me is a leap of faith because when I think back to my early days and attempting to be sober, the outcome seemed very dismal. And to me, that meant no drinking at all whatsoever for the rest of my life, right? It was like, I don't understand the outcome of that.
How is that going to work? What was promising in taking that leap of faith and getting sober was trusting in the outcome way, way, way on the other side of moving past that initial Could be for me, it was at least a good solid year where it was highly uncomfortable. And that's part of it. So taking again, taking that leap of faith doesn't always mean we're comfortable doing something. But we don't know the outcome, but we are placing ourselves in a position for growth. And I think about the grasshopper, like literally leaping, they freak me out if I ever see a grasshopper in the fields, I'm not.
Like, they kind of surprise or shock me. But that's the card that I pulled. And I think of like the energy and the effort to like do something new that we're not comfortable with. Like, what does that really take? Yeah. Rachel, staying in Florida after treatment. At first it was only transition to a day, but yeah, patient, but deciding to get a job and stay longer. Wow. And it's such an impactful time in your life, right? Where the easy decision might have been to go back to where you were from, your home and your life, but something might have compelled you to stay there and you recognize that, which amazing, especially in a vulnerable time post-treatment.
Yeah, speak wonders since when you take a leap of faith, you give others the courage to try. Oh, for sure. And I would even say I have looked to my friends in my life. I think specifically of like women entrepreneurs who have boldly just made choices in their career for their, you know, benefit of their family, maybe pulling away from career. So Those are huge leaps of faith. They come with uncertain outcomes not only for your livelihood, but potentially your financial situation, your safety, your security.
All these things can be threatened. You know, once once you're taking that leap, but I would encourage you all to think about that. I mean, it is spring and I think of. moving forward. And I personally am really sitting with that lesson from this weekend and reflecting on how sobriety might really have truly been the sleep of faith. I believe that. Rachel, and then continuing your story, choosing to move back home was something that was maybe not a great leap. Well, how do we know? How do we know?
Yeah, how do you know without doing it? my gosh, that is the essence of it. That is the essence. I am working on a career leap to go travel and figure out what life looks like to do the work that I want to do in travel. And it's huge. It's huge and scary. And the safe route is, maybe finding something stable here career wise or just continuing to do as I have done. But something about that leap of faith has like other things under the surface have been pulling me toward making a bigger move. So I also am listening to my intuition.
So there's things right that play into that leap of faith. It's not a completely uneducated leap. There are things surfacing and Change is so huge, the momentum to make that kind of change. So I will leave you with that today. Thank you so much for tuning in. It was great to see you all again. I will have a beverage in hand next week. But yeah, I'm always doing saunas starting at 5:00 here in Minneapolis on Tuesday. So once I end this, I go right over there and yeah, I'll be drinking a lot of great NA beverages.
So yes, I would love to do that, Rachel says, assuming you mean sauna. Yeah, I've been getting in a lot of it. So ask me any questions about that direct message me. Thank you again and have a wonderful Tuesday. We will see you next week. Good Eve.
