"Peel the f*cking onion."

About this episode

The episode explores love addiction and self-love through the story of Sara-Jayne's complex family background and struggles with addiction.

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…

People in this episode

Guest: Sara-Jayne Makwala-King

Topics covered

• healing
• love addiction
• self-love
• family trauma
• addiction recovery

Keywords

• connection
• abandonment
• journalism
• books

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Killing Karoline, Mad, Bad Love

Books & works: Killing Karoline, Mad, Bad Love, Something Shifted: The Soundtrack

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