Malcolm Stern: 0:46

So welcome to Slay your Dragons with Compassion. My podcast, done in conjunction with online events and where I interview a range of people, some well-known, some not so well-known, but all of whom have a story to tell. And today's guest is no different to that. She has a wonderful story to tell. I've known her quite a few years and I've been really impressed with how she's come through some really difficult times. So, Karen, welcome to you.

Karen: 1:12

Thanks, Malcolm. Nice to see you. I would say yeah, good.

Malcolm Stern: 1:16

Well, it's good to say that.

Karen: 1:17

It is good, yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 1:18

So, and what we're looking at is that you were if I were to put it in quite obvious terms you were drunk for 40 years. I mean you used alcohol for 40 years. I wouldn't say I was drunk for 40 years.

Karen: 1:32

I mean you used alcohol for 40 years as a way, I wouldn't say I was drunk for 40 years, I mean I I, yeah, but I have been drinking, my, I have a relate.

Karen: 1:40

My terms are that I would have I had a relationship with drinking for 40 years, since the age of about 16. I would think, yeah, um, what makes it a little bit more than 40 years actually? But uh, it hasn't been. Um, I would what I would be what you would have called in back in the day a functional alcoholic. I don't like the term alcoholic, so I'm not going to particularly use that label.

Malcolm Stern: 2:06

I'm not a great fan of labels anyway me neither, so we don't have to say that. But I think what's interesting is that very often what we use is certain addictions and we all have addictions certain addictions to cover up pain and difficulty, and you were covering up something very major. So as a young woman you were very beautiful you're still a very attractive woman now, actually but, um, but you were a very beautiful young woman and men would hit on you all the time yeah, that's, that is fair to say, and it is actually um up a site to why I pretty much started drinking yeah, so you started drinking because actually you.

Malcolm Stern: 2:50

it was the only way in which you could actually do what you were expected to do, and to just numb yourself enough or to dissociate yourself enough that you would be able to function particularly women and I've been working particularly with women over the years that I suffered from social anxiety.

Karen: 3:16

We didn't have those labels then and I don't necessarily attribute myself to that label, but I do know that everyone said I was very shy and timid and in fact, in social situations it was practically impossible for me to be out in social situations without having a drink, because what I learned numbed me enough to be a different version of myself, or at least the version I thought that other people wanted to see myself, or at least the version I thought that other people wanted to see, because I didn't actually have a great sense of self-esteem, even though, as you say, I was even if I do say so myself very attractive. I had no inkling of that. All I knew was that blokes would hit on me. I didn't know how to handle it and I was quite bemused by it. Actually, I had no mentors either to sort of help me along and say uh, give me some steering as to how to manage it. Um, I think all my nan would say was keep your hand on your apony girl, and I didn't even know what she was talking about.

Malcolm Stern: 4:31

But I don't think it would have helped in the first place no, I don't think it would, and actually what you were doing is you were going down the wrong road for you as well, which you've discovered, and you've discovered it at a late stage, and what interests me in your story is that actually there's a real clarity that you are actually um, and I don't know what you would describe it, as you say but you're actually a gay woman.

Karen: 4:57

Yeah, and again, interestingly, as you say, this is it's quite painful for me to talk about, in fact, because you know I feel quite emotional now. Now, to wait till I'm 60 and not be who I am has been very, very painful, and I know I've drunk on that it's. And to have men hit on me in fact it didn't help that I was sexually abused when I was 18, before I'd even become sexually active. So my early relationship maybe that you know, I don't know. No, I have to say I have to be true to myself here.

Karen: 5:41

When I was 11 years old, I wanted to be a little boy and in fact I cut my head, I had a tantrum, I had to have my hair cut off, I had long hair, I had it all cut really short and the best accolade anyone could give me would be to say hello, sonny, what can I do for you? And I feel great. I dressed as a boy. I was really crossed that I couldn't go to football matches with my dad, where my brother could. I had to do the bloody washing up and cook the dinners, which I thought was really unfair. There was a lot of stuff that internally I was rebelling against, but I had no language, for it was the early 70s and I know there was a huge movement, but I came from a very strict upbringing. My dad was a policeman and my, my family were very if you pardon the expression very straight. In fact, I found out since that they're not. But, um, you know, I, I was supposed to be the good girl. I tried to be the good girl, but internally there was something rebelling, and when you have something that is not authentic to your own heart, uh, then that pain is is quite extraordinary if there's no way you have an outlet for it.

Karen: 6:59

And uh, so at the age of you know, I did the same as most teenagers did I experimented with alcohol. I didn't like it at first, I hated it. It's awful, but that was the year of baby sham, if you remember malcolm and um, baby sham, brandy and baby sham, and wines were black tower and pierre d'or and uh, leif van mickmill and all that rubbish. Uh, and we never, we weren't a drinking family at home, except my dad would drink whiskey by the bottle pretty much every day because he had such a hard job. My mum didn't drink, but at parties, you know, no limit. It was quite ordinary to drink and smoke and drink and smoke. But it wasn't the environment. It is today which has changed. The culture has changed around drinking today.

Karen: 7:46

And I have changed along with it. So I would say that, along with many, many people, alcohol became a habit for me to manage my social anxiety and to manage and to keep repressed and pushed down who I actually am and feel inside.

Malcolm Stern: 8:07

And what I've noticed is, as you've allowed yourself to be who you are, there's a there's a fresh confidence in you, there's a power in you. You speak with more authority, and so there's something about it doesn't matter when. I mean, of course, it's better if we do it young and we have all that time to explore. But you've got the wisdom of the years now to go forwards, and I think what, what made the shift, is that you got quite ill and and often that's what happens it's something happens that actually forces us to rethink our trajectory. So tell us a little bit about getting ill, and how long ago was that?

Karen: 8:40

well the thing. The thing is, you know alcohol. Actually alcohol is a habit, but it's a bit like people. Alan Carr talks about the picture plant analogy, where you've got this plant and the fly comes along and smells this lovely aroma and thinks well, the nasty stuff's the bottom, but I'll just get to the top and you start having a little nibble at the top and then eventually, as we know, he ignores the fact that there are lots of flies dead at the bottom and eventually get sucked down, of course, and alcohol is a bit like that. Uh, well, it's not like that.

Karen: 9:20

When you first start drinking as a youngster this is my story. Obviously some people go straight for it I wouldn't drink at home, I was drinking socially to help myself. Then I went to college, did hit it big time at college because of the environment and of course it was like I didn't know what it was to be gay. I mean, I suppose that was my opportunity, but I didn't take it. Then I can't describe to you how incredibly shy I was. I was terrified of the world.

Karen: 9:52

So I used to go straight to the student union bar and get my cider and black and neck it and then I would feel okay, and then I'd be a version of myself that I felt was palatable to other people and you know it worked for me for a while. So I started to demonize alcohol, but I've reframed that because for a while it was helpful. It was helpful for me. But a while it was helpful, it was helpful for me. But you know, as you asked about my illness, I've had three children, so I've been married three times, which, of course, and I prefer to call myself queer. Actually I'm a bit of a queer.

Karen: 10:30

Yes, yes, I think queer fits me more than uh, gay or, and I don't identify lesbian, I don't like labels. But I was actually on a writing workshop a couple of days ago and I said I'm queer, I know who. I am pretty much now have with the clarity of being sober, but I don't think anybody else does. I've. I've been getting ill on and off in the past, over the past 10 years, with various ailments like um, ibs. I think maybe some people can identify with that insomnia, because when you drink a lot as a habit uh, and I was on probably I was drinking probably two bottles of wine a day, maybe more if I went out with friends and sometimes and sometimes I'd had spirits in too. I didn't often have spirits gin and vodka maybe, but I wasn't a spirit drinker, I wasn't a beer drinker, but if you add in all the extras, that's quite a lot of alcohol on a daily basis. So I started to get very I would pick up any bug going and this year I went into. I was going for a routine knee replacement operation by the way, I would say it's not routine but I ended up having my lung but I had emsema of, uh, what you call it pulmonary embolism, that's it. I had a pulmonary embolism, fortunately while I was still in hospital, which meant I couldn't get out of bed at all for three weeks. Uh, then I was on blood thinners and my blood clot and it basically held me back from rehabilitating my knee. Then Then, when I came out of hospital, I picked up COVID again or whooping cough, I don't really know and I still have lung problems. Now I've been suffering from a cough for about six months and I've been to various doctors and they still can't quite pin down the problem. I've been to various doctors and they still can't quite pin down the problem. But you know, when you drink that long as I say, when I was pregnant I wasn't drinking, but that was a sort of what do you call it hanging by my fingernails job. As soon as I was not breastfeeding, I was drinking. My kids suffered I know they suffered and I have endless shame around that, and of course I drank on that shame. So it's a vicious circle. It's very, very difficult to get out of that vicious circle.

Karen: 13:15

But when I was ill, and I was ill in bed, literally I couldn't sleep. I was sweating cough couldn't breathe and obviously at that point I thought adding alcohol to the mix here is just bloody stupid. Also, I had become sick and tired of being sick and tired to give you an AA analogy. I had been off the booze while I was in hospital, obviously, so I'd cleaned my body of those toxins.

Karen: 13:47

I was on a lot of medication, including morphine, which, as an addict, is you know, I'm sorry to say, but I liked it. I watched I was fortunate enough to watch that program Dope Sick about OxyContin, which is what they put me on, and I got myself off that fairly quickly. So then at some point I was medication and alcohol free and I thought and obviously I can't swear now, but I thought F that I'm going to stay alcohol free. I have absolutely had enough of that. I'm still not well well, but I'm getting more clarity in my mind and I have a more as you pointed out, malcolm a sense of self than I have ever had in my life overcome a sense of self than I have ever had in my life.

Malcolm Stern: 14:41

I think that's the thing, and I know with AA they talk about having to go all the way to the bottom before you come out, and you obviously had lots of dips towards the bottom but you finally bottomed out. But I think what's been sitting there behind you and again, again, in the time I've known you, it's been something that's sort of ticked away inside you is the fact that actually you are not drawn to men at a sexual level, you're drawn to women, and and there was all the shame that went along with that when you were growing up, because it was a different environment then your dad probably wouldn't have been particularly welcoming of you as a quick woman.

Malcolm Stern: 15:16

But actually now it feels like you're finding yourself, and often we find ourselves later on in life when we've got enough wisdom, enough experience. And so where do you go from here? What's your, what's your journey now? Because actually it feels like there's a whole world that's open to you, the whole world of possibilities yeah, good question.

Karen: 15:37

I still suffer from social anxiety, but I've also matured a lot. I know what it's like now to go out and not drink, and I believe that you have to experiment with these. You have to build emotional muscle or build spiritual muscle, and the only way to do it is to do it. So there have been a number of firsts, like, um going to a restaurant. I always had the idea that you could. Now, this was this will sound daft to people who don't drink, but I always had this idea that you have to pair wine and food and, um, that the food is enhanced by the wine. So it's absolutely ingrained in me.

Karen: 16:21

I'm not a wine snob. I don't really know much about wine, I only know. But in fact that's the funny thing I do. I did like good wine, but when you're at the end of your drinking you buy shit wine. I was very sorry about that. Um, you don't, you buy poor quality wine. I mean, I was even at one point looking at the one euro liter in the market. Well, I live in France. In the market, you know, in a plastic bottle that he poured out the back of his trot is good, god knows what it was, but I didn't buy it. You can buy wine cheap enough here in boxes. So in the end it was boxes of wine for eight euro, five litre boxes. You know that's it wasn't bad wine, it wasn't fantastic wine. So you know, the idea of, uh, drinking wine because of the taste, for example, is rubbish, frankly.

Karen: 17:14

So when I went to the restaurant and had, um, a meal without, it was my birthday, actually, uh, my first birthday without alcohol, which was quite a milestone. I had ordered what their version of a pina colada it's. Actually it was actually pineapple juice, but, um, I had a meal and it was fine. It was more than fine, it was great. You know, my husband was drinking a beer and he had one beer, but I felt didn't feel the need, and since then I have found that food actually tastes better without alcohol, because I actually taste it. I used to reach for the wine list before I got the menu. It really didn't. I didn't really care about what was on the menu and often I didn't eat my food. I would just care about which bottle, which cocktail I was going to have first, which wine, and then perhaps, maybe I could squeeze in some more wine afterwards if I drank it fast enough now.

Malcolm Stern: 18:18

That sounds terrible and I it sounds like what it is, but what I'm interested in is the part of you that has been suppressed forever, which is the part which is actually who you are, and you found it when you were young, because you wanted to dress up as a boy, because you were actually interested in girls, but you had no way of being able to express that, and I'm wondering how you're able to express that now. You've talked about your husband. I'm wondering how he feels about you being a queer woman well, he's struggling with that obviously.

Karen: 18:48

Um, in fact, his words to me recently were why? Now? I said you make me laugh, because I thought, why it actually puzzled me, because I thought why now it's been forever Exactly. This isn't happening now and I've told him I told him five years ago anyway that if I was, at the very least, bisexual and that's only because I've been married three times and it just seems daft to say that I'm, you know, gay. But since then I've been doing a lot of reading.

Karen: 19:20

I found a book called Married Women who Love Women, which is written by a woman called Karen, funny enough, written probably about 30 years ago, I think. So things were a bit different then. Interestingly, I had I don't know if my girls are going to see this, they may do, but you know, excuse the pun again going to come out at some point anyway I had an affair with a woman when I was about 35. It was a very explosive, amazing affair and I regret not having the courage to follow through with that because I had three small children at the time and I couldn't handle the kickback from family. But now, sadly, my father died in 2020. In some ways, that's released me from that fear of judgment. Uh, and I also think now, if not now, when that's?

Karen: 20:26

really good that is the other thing. I look at other women, uh, in my, my age, and I think, wow, they look fantastic, you know because thought, well, perhaps I was too old. I joined a writer's workshop three days ago for writing queer fiction which I want to write. I'm going to write a sort of semi-autobiographical novel about a woman who grows up feeling as I do and squashing it with alcohol, so it's a kind of quit lit. Sorry, we won't go there for the moment because this is a family program. But you know where I'm going with that, um, and I want to.

Karen: 21:13

I was going to go to Toulouse tonight. I've looked up a gay bar. It's just for women, a female gay. It's the only female gay bar in Toulouse and they're doing a drag king workshop and I would love, I would just love, to take part in that. I would love to drag up. I saw a case Smirthwaite's Milo Penis to Milo. Brilliant Milo Standards. Quick plug for Kate there. I just think she's fantastically brave going out there, but she's straight as far as I know. We need more drag kings and I'd like to be a drag king in my 60s. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Malcolm Stern: 21:58

That would be amazing. So what stops you going tonight then, Karen?

Karen: 22:03

Well, practicalities, really. My youngest daughter is arriving tomorrow or Sunday and I have, literally two minutes before I got on with you, finished putting up the kitchen with another workman for her use. That's the other thing. How come? As you know, I've used my dad's money the inheritance I had from my dad, to renovate the garage downstairs where I live into a flat, a self-contained flat for myself, and I sleep here now, so I sleep in the garage. I'm a queer in the garage and I've got my own bed, bathroom and living room, which I'm sitting in now. You can see Bowie on the wall. He's my go-to androgynous, I mean. I don't know whether he was what he'd call himself. He was married to Iman, gorgeous Iman, but he was androgynous and for me, a queer man queer in the sense I mean that it can mean anything. For me, queer is I am who I am, um, I don't, I don't ascribe to anything, and also I'm.

Malcolm Stern: 23:12

I'm a bit of a toddler, you know, in this world so, karen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop you because I'm just gonna sort of like take you somewhere with this and you could say no if you like.

Karen: 23:21

But I heard you say, um, I it's.

Malcolm Stern: 23:25

If not now, then when? So tonight I heard you come up with a crappy excuse about why you couldn't go to the practicality, why you couldn't go tonight. I would like to invite you to go tonight and then to reflect back to me how it's been and to really allow yourself. Worst comes to worst. You don't enjoy it. My sense is you're going to absolutely love it, and I want to invite you to actually honour yourself and go there. Your heart's beating fast. So this is a challenge online and a challenge, you know, for you to actually live your dream, which is there's something there tonight that actually speaks to you in a big way. Don't run away.

Karen: 24:05

OK, Malcolm.

Malcolm Stern: 24:09

Are you going to go?

Karen: 24:13

I hate it when you challenge me like this. I really hate it because I even looked up hotels in Toulouse because I thought it would be too late once I'd finished I'd have to go and stay in a hotel. I just want, I'm just curious, I just wanted to go to see. And also, you know I'm not going to say it will take balls because I don't like them, but it would take a lot of courage for me to go alone into a bar. But I'm also fairly sure that somebody would talk to me.

Malcolm Stern: 24:45

I'm fairly sure that somebody will talk to somebody as well, so are you going to go?

Malcolm Stern: 24:51

yes, malcolm right, that's fantastic, so that's said before our large audience as well, so that's really great. But but I also think there's something about taking those steps that very often we think I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that. And then we step out and you go. My God, I've been missing that all this time and I can see that you're ready to fly, you're ready to give birth to a part of yourself. It's been waiting in the wings for a really long time, so I look forward to hearing how it's gone tonight as well, and I hate having to report back.

Malcolm Stern: 25:23

Never mind, that's what you're going to have to do. So we're coming towards the end of our podcast. It's been really, really interesting talking to you and I really loved watching your journey, where you're freeing yourself from the fetters of what you thought you ought to be to to please other people, to what you're going to become, to be yourself. And I always ask this question at the end, which is which dragons have you had to slay, what have you had to overcome in order to be who you are?

Karen: 25:51

oh god, well, dragons, wow. Well, one of the main ones obviously is alcohol. If I hadn't stopped drinking alcohol and I know I'm in the early months of that, but even those early months, despite the fact that I'm physically compromised, my head, my mind, is much clearer. Having a clearer mind allows you to then reflect, you know, with hindsight, on what and what did went wrong and what. And, by the way, it really doesn't help to go down the shame route, because the shame route will always took me back to drink that's really important because actually, what?

Malcolm Stern: 26:33

what I'm looking at people educating other people through their experiences, and what you're saying is shame, did not do you any favours.

Karen: 26:40

Not at all, and shame and guilt are the two worst ways to get well. So, although I count days, I don't count days. I know I've been sober, I know that I don't want to have another drink. I know that I can be around people, in fact, um and the other one of my first was just quickly going into a bar. I can manage about two hours around drinkers. Now then I have to go you know your own boundaries.

Karen: 27:09

You know your boundaries that's the other thing boundaries. So stopping drinking was the most important thing, because without that there is nothing. The second thing was to be myself, obviously. Authenticity. There is no other game in town really To be your authentic self, however that shows up. However anyone sees me. If people don't like me, they don't like me. There's nothing I can do about that. Some people will like me and some people won't. As the French say, tant pis too bad. I will find my tribe, and I know that when I'm around women, I light up, and I'm not talking about women who are gay. It doesn't matter what sexual spectrum you're on. As far as I'm concerned, I feed off ideas and creativity more in a group. I don't dislike men as well. I'd like just to point that out.

Karen: 28:15

I don't dislike men individually or on on mass. You're a pain in the backside, quite frankly. But you know um I love talk. I love a good discussion about uh, you know, sexuality or uh it doesn't have to be about sexuality, about anything off politics, obviously.

Karen: 28:36

But, um, yeah, I, I just want to see people be kind to each other and I'd like people to be kind to me in my transition. There is a transitional phase that I'm going through at the moment and I'm going to have to draw on courage and uh, and that needs sobriety. So there's the foundation of that. Uh, I need to be able to draw on courage and go into a female gay bar in toulouse where there's a lot going on.

Malcolm Stern: 29:10

Sober is not a small thing for me I really hear that and I really, I really honour the fact that actually you're someone who's ready to strike, who's already striking out, who's already making differences, and actually what you do is you help create a role model for other people around you to also live their authenticity and be themselves. So I'd like to thank you very much for coming here and being so open and honest with what you're dealing with, karen, and we'll be in touch again. I'd like to send me some photos tonight as well.

Karen: 29:43

You're relentless.

Malcolm Stern: 29:44

I am, I am.

Karen: 29:47

It's been lovely to see you again, malcolm and I, you know, wish you well and hope that we I'm sure I'll see you in Totnes or somewhere, wherever you might be floating at some point, with or without photos depends how the photos go brilliant, good to see you and you bye okay, bye then.