#122 – Samantha & Nicole Senia

Sober Mother & Daughter Talk Supporting Women in Recovery

Samantha & Nicole Senia are a dynamic, passionate mother daughter duo supporting each other in sobriety. 

Samantha is a born entrepreneur. When her marriage fell apart, she drowned herself in chardonnay until she was no longer functioning. With sheer grit, she joined the road to recovery and started a new empire out of her garage, determined to teach her two kids, Nicole and Brandon, that they can do anything they set their mind to. 

Nicole is a creative soul with a mission to remove the stigma associated with sobriety Nicole was on a fast track to success on her artistic path when addiction to drugs and alcohol derailed her plans. After getting sober, Nicole is pursuing her passion for singing and songwriting and completing her college degree at Loyola Marymount University.

Today, Samantha is the CEO of Elite Home Staging and Elite Maison, a furniture collection, where she has garnered numerous accolades for being one of the most sought-after stagers in Southern California. She works with her daughter Nicole who is one of the top saleswomen at Elite Home Staging.

The mother daughter duo recently started THE POWER OF WE, a podcast that peels back the curtain on sobriety, sanity, and survival.

Additional Information

Connect with Samantha & Nicole Senia

• Instagram | The Power of We Podcast | @thepowerofweofficial
• Instagram | Elite Home Staging | @elitehomestaging
• Instagram | Elite Maison | @shopelitemaison
• Website | The Power of We Podcast | thepowerofwelive.com

Connect The Courage to Change

• Podcast Website | lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Instagram | @couragetochange_podcast
• Podcast Facebook | @thecouragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Email | podcast@lionrock.life
• YouTube | The Courage to Change Playlist

Lionrock Resources

• Lionrock Life Mobile App | lionrock.life/mobile-app
• Support Group Meeting Schedule | lionrock.life/meetings

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did you know you were an alcoholic then?

Samantha Senia:

Absolutely not.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Don’t you love that? Don’t you love it? Oh, I love it.

Samantha Senia:

But they liked to tell me. I’m like, I’ve got all this pressure, I’ve got your dad driving me crazy, I’ve got all this stuff. I was so much pressure, so much stress, and it was like, how am I going to get through this? How am I going to do this? And wine just kept me going.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today we have a double guest episode, Samantha and Nicole Senia are a dynamic, passionate mother-daughter duo supporting each other in sobriety. Samantha is a born entrepreneur. When her marriage fell apart, she drowned herself in chardonnay until she was no longer functioning. With sheer grit, she joined the road to recovery and started a new empire out of her garage, determined to teach her two kids, Nicole and Brandon, that they can do anything they set their minds to. Nicole is a creative soul with a mission to remove the stigma associated with sobriety. Nicole was on a fast track to success on her artistic path, when addiction to drugs and alcohol derailed her plans.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

After getting sober, Nicole is pursuing her passion for singing and songwriting and completing her college degree at Loyola Marymount University. Today, Samantha is the CEO of Elite Home Staging and Elite Mason, a furniture collection where she has garnered numerous accolades for being one of the most sought after stagers in Southern California. She works with her daughter Nicole, who is one of the top saleswomen at Elite Home Staging. The mother-daughter duo recently started The Power of We, a podcast that peels back the curtain on sobriety, sanity, and survival.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All right. This one is great because it’s different. We have a mom-daughter duo that talk about sobriety. They work together. And we also get to hear a bit about the intergenerational aspect of alcoholism. Samantha, her mother was an alcoholic. Her mother and father were alcoholics, and then she became one, and then her daughter became one, and actually, her son does get sober as well. Samantha got sober in 2019 and Nicole, her daughter, gets sober in 2020, so we get to hear a bit about that and about what that looks like for them now and how that looked as Nicole was growing up and saying she was going to be nothing like her mom. I think we’ve heard that story many times, where people look at their parent and their drinking and their use and say, “I don’t want to be anything like that.” And then, somehow, we end up right where we said we weren’t going to be, and so I think it’s a really great conversation with both of them present to talk about that dynamic.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, without further ado, I give you the mother-daughter duo, Samantha and Nicole Senia, episode 122. Let’s do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re listening to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us, no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hi ladies, thank you so much for being here.

Samantha Senia:

Thank you.

Nicole Senia:

Thank you for having us. How are you?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Doing really well. I’m excited to have a mother-daughter pair on the show. This is our first mother-daughter pair. Can you introduce themselves so the listeners can get to know your voices?

Samantha Senia:

Sure. I’m Samantha Senia and I’m Nicole’s mom.

Nicole Senia:

And I’m Nicole Senia, the daughter. I also am attending LMU, journalism major. I have a little over a year sober, my sobriety date is June 16th.

Samantha Senia:

And my sobriety date is July 25th, 2019. And I own a company called Elite Home Staging and Elite Mason. Nicole works with me and we stage homes. We help empower women to start their careers and do something that they never did before. And so they come to me and they have never staged or maybe they’ve had a little bit of experience, like sales.

Nicole Senia:

Or design experience.

Samantha Senia:

Right. And they come and they start their career. So that’s really where I started.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. So that’s kind of the passion, right? You guys are bringing all your passions together. Recovery, home staging, female empowerment, and then also your relationship.

Nicole Senia:

Yes.

Samantha Senia:

Well, it’s really about sobriety, strength, and hope. And I’ll cry because it’s so emotional. It’s been a long journey, but we got here. And that’s the important part, right? The important part is to come together and that’s what we’ve done. And also, my son is sober, as well. I don’t know if you know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. So tell me a little bit. Where are you guys originally from?

Nicole Senia:

So we are originally from Calabasas, California. That is where my parents, my mom and my dad, raised me and my brother, Brandon.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah. So I raised them in Calabasas. I’m from Irvine also and Playa del Rey. I went to San Diego State, and then I met my husband selling cell phones of all things and he moved me out to Calabasas, which I never in a million years thought I would live somewhere like that. And God bless anyone who wants to live there, but it wasn’t the best experience for me. But I had two beautiful kids out there, so it was a journey, for sure.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you and your husband divorced when the kids were six and seven. How did that happen, what was the final straw that led to that decision?

Samantha Senia:

My husband and I got married and we were married three months short of 10 years. We were very different. We’re very different. Unfortunately, he had an affair. And we tried to work it out, but we were just too different at that time. It’s not even about the affair. Who cares about that? It’s about, we grew apart. And the reason we grew apart is because we didn’t communicate. I mean we still love each other as friends to this day, but we didn’t communicate. And people think you jump to another thing, it’s always going to be better, right? So that’s actually an interesting question because that’s when my journey of alcoholism really kicked in.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you talked about how, in the marriage, up until that point, you weren’t communicating and that there was this disconnect, and I’ve been with my husband for 12 years, so I know about what it takes to stay a long time. It’s a lot of communication. And even when the words you’re communicating are true, maybe there’s more body language or other things that aren’t being communicated. I feel like sometimes I don’t even know that things are going on with me to communicate to him, right? So there’s so many different ways you can communicate with another person. Do you think that it was the realization at the time that the divorce happened that it brought up all the things that you hadn’t been paying attention to? Why do you think that you didn’t need the alcohol before that moment? Because obviously, the marriage was struggling before the divorce happened.

Samantha Senia:

Wow, that’s a great question. Well actually, I did use alcohol a little bit. Not much because I was usually going to bed. But let’s go back. What happened to us is, outside influence became more important than our own relationship, which happens to a lot of people now. The big cars, the big house, the nannies, all that crap, that became more important than us communicating and working on things. And then, now I can say this, but we weren’t doing any self-work, and if you don’t work on yourself and put the oxygen mask on yourself, you can forget about it. You can’t help each other. So that’s when sex and everything else starts to go away. I mean it was both of our doings. It’s not one person. It’s never one person in any situation, it’s always both people. It was a good learning lesson, but now I would love to share with everyone else, don’t just blame. The blame game never works. You’ve got to look at your own cup.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was your relationship with alcohol before the divorce?

Samantha Senia:

I wasn’t a big drinker in high school, I wasn’t really much in college because I have a friend that fried her brain and that was very traumatic for me, and my mom was an alcoholic. But I would drink and I would black out. I was fun until I wasn’t, so I didn’t drink as much. So that’s really where it started, and then when I got divorced, and this is so important is that it starts like, “Oh, I’m going to meet my friends for one drink.” Because you’d be handling the kids, taking them to baseball, taking them to soccer, taking them to dance, running around, I was working. “Oh, I’ll just meet my friends for a drink,” when I didn’t have the kids. Well, that one drink turned into two drinks turned into three drinks, and I was not a good drinker, I blacked out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you would black out, were you able to get home? Did it cause you any problems or it was pretty manageable until later on?

Samantha Senia:

I don’t know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah. Nicole, care to weigh in?

Samantha Senia:

Well, I drove drunk, if you want to know the truth, like a lot of people in this world, and I thought that I can drive. It caused tension between Nicole and I. I would do things that I wasn’t proud of. My son became my father almost because my father died during that time, so I would talk to my son who’s eight or nine at the time like he was my friend. Your kids are not your friends at this point.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. And she did talk to us as friends growing up, but as much as I don’t think kids are your friends, I think that it has definitely helped me evolve. And a lot of people say I’m way more mature than I should be or more wise for my age, and I think that has a huge part to play in it, so honestly, I’m grateful for that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was your perception of what was going on with mom and alcohol?

Nicole Senia:

Oh, I knew she was an alcoholic. I mean I remember when my parents got divorced, there’s one memory I have, it’s very vivid, of my mom just sitting in the bathtub with four bottles of wine next to her and just drinking because she was crying her eyes out because she was so upset, and that was her way of coping with, obviously, the divorce. And it was sad to see, but in my brain, I saw my grandma be an alcoholic, that’s when I kind of knew my mom was an alcoholic, and my grandpa was also an alcoholic, so alcoholism definitely ran in my family.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [0:12:18]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So your experience, your exposure to alcoholism was always alcoholic, right? With grandma, grandpa, mom. How did you know it was abnormal?

Nicole Senia:

That’s a good question, actually. I think because I’m a pretty intuitive person and the way she or these people in my family would act wasn’t normal. Even if it was normal in our family environment, it just wasn’t a normal reaction to have in general. The way they would act out and just become different people. And it didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right, it just felt wrong, so that’s how I knew it wasn’t normal.

Samantha Senia:

And I embarrassed her, right?

Nicole Senia:

Oh yeah.

Samantha Senia:

I mean I thought I was being the fun mom as they got older. I did all kinds of things with them and their friends, but it wasn’t fun for them.

Nicole Senia:

And even from a young age, she would drink with my friends’ moms, so that’s an interesting question, like, why wouldn’t I think it’s normal? Because if my friends’ moms are doing the same thing, it does look normal, but for some reason, it sat not right with me and I always had this, “I never want to be like my mom.” Honestly, that was the one thing I used to always think. “I’m never going to end up like my mom, I’m never going to be an alcoholic,” which is so interesting because I’m sitting here today, a complete alcoholic, drug addict.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, there are some things we can’t escape. And I think it is interesting. My mom’s not an alcoholic, but I thought those same things. She embarrassed me, I didn’t want to be like my mom. I think there’s this track of normal differentiation we have with our parents. My mom had this Mercedes black station wagon that she drove. You remember the-

Samantha Senia:

Yes. I had one, too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. So she had this and I just would talk so much shit about it. I have really big dogs, I always have, and the second car I got was a black [crosstalk 00:14:25].

Samantha Senia:

Of course.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I used to say, “I’d rather walk to school than be caught dead in that thing.” And my dad, I’ll never forget being in my early 20s and my dad taking a picture of both of our cars right next to each other and he was like, “Oh, I wish I could show this to your 15 year old self.” So there’s this normalcy of, “I don’t want to be like my mom. I’m embarrassed by my parent.” But then, I feel like with children of alcoholics, there’s something that makes it a little different, that above and beyond, that core feeling of, “Please don’t make me like this person. That’s not what I want.” And I think that’s where the differentiation is because there’s a normal like, “I don’t want to be like my parents.” I have four year old twin boys and they tell me all the time that I’m not cool and that I’m not like Gecko and PJ Masks or whatever the stuff is, and I think there’s just this innate thing, differentiation. But what you’re describing is so different, right? It’s this deep-seated feeling of, “I see the disorder. I see the dysfunction. I can feel that something isn’t right.”

Nicole Senia:

And I think in my subconscious, I probably knew that it’s something that was probably able to happen to me because that’s probably why I had that core feeling deep down. “I never want to be this way,” because I probably knew it was a possibility for me. And it wasn’t like, “Oh, I don’t want to be like my mom. I’m embarrassed.” It was a way different feeling than that. It was this core gut feeling like, “I can never act like that. That is insane. That is insanity. I can never do that.” And then it’s crazy because in high school, I honestly didn’t drink a lot.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah, that’s true.

Nicole Senia:

That’s when her alcoholism was really at its peak, when I was in high school. So I would have parties, she would black out at my high school parties. Just crazy shit would happen and I wanted to be the sober one because I wanted to be responsible. I didn’t want any correlation between the two of us that I was like that. It was embarrassing and I also felt like I needed to be responsible because someone needed to be. So then I did, but I’m not going to lie, I remember my eighth grade graduation, we had a big dinner and they gave me wine and I blacked out. That was the first time I had drank. And then I remember I went to one party in high school and I blacked out, and then I wouldn’t drink because I was like, “Oh my God, this is crazy. How did I black out already?” And it was, like, I think a solid three times I drank in high school and I blacked out every single time. So then, when I did go to college, obviously, like I said, I wasn’t a big drinker, but I went to a big party school and I wanted to be in a sorority. That was my dream. I wanted to be a sorority girl, I wanted the college experience. I wanted that, I craved that.

Nicole Senia:

So I rushed a sorority and I remember sitting in my dorm room the first night with these three girls who were all going to rush Alpha Phi. We were so excited to go to the rush tomorrow, get our outfits together, and this one girl in my room was like, she pulled out a bottle of Ciroc this big and they all sat in a circle and they’re like, “Okay, are you guys ready?” And I was like, “For what?” And they’re like, “We’re going to drink this whole thing right now.” And I started laughing because I’m like, “This is a joke. Yeah, right. We’re not going to drink the whole bottle.” And we sat there and proceeded to drink the entire bottle the first night of college and I had never been so sick in my entire life. I blacked out, I woke up in my neighbor’s bed with my head back.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s crazy.

Nicole Senia:

I woke up and my friend and her boyfriend were like, “Are you okay?” And I was like, “What the f? Where am I?” And that was just what it looked like from the first time I really decided to drink.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. I want to jump to you, Samantha, and say, did you have similar feelings that Nicole had about your mom? You mentioned your mom was an alcoholic. Did you think the same thing?

Samantha Senia:

Yeah. As we’re talking, it’s becoming very emotional because it’s like, holy man. I was in high school and I didn’t drink because my mom was a complete alcoholic and my stories are calm compared to her stories. She was all over the place. It was hard. She was married over seven times, she did things that I’m sure she’s not proud of, and I would run across my busy street to my neighbor’s house just so I could get away from it. So I looked like, “I’m never going to do this.” And unfortunately, obviously, you know what happened. But at first, it took a toll on me until I did work on myself. I did the work before I got sober, which is very interesting. And I’m skipping around, but what is really important is that I knew I was broken. I knew watching them that I couldn’t keep doing this. But it was hard. It was hard.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When Nicole is talking about those times where she says the peak of your alcoholism, did you know you were an alcoholic then?

Samantha Senia:

Absolutely not.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Don’t you love that? Don’t you love it? Oh, I love it.

Samantha Senia:

But they liked to tell me. I’m like, “What?” [crosstalk 00:20:02] right now. I’m working, I was pressured, I’ve got your dad driving me crazy, I’ve got all this stuff. I was so much pressure, so much stress, and it was like, how am I going to get through this? How am I going to do this? And wine just kept me going. And let me tell you, a lot of my friends drank that wine next to me and the thing is is that we were all making mistakes, but I really made mistakes and it was always when I was drinking. So would I have done those mistakes when I wasn’t drinking? No. It was definitely tough.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s so funny because I talk to a lot of people and I’m sure you guys have come into contact with people where they are like, “Well, I don’t want anybody to know I’m getting sober. I don’t want anybody to know I’m an alcoholic.” I mean this is why the 12 steps became an anonymous program. We don’t want anybody to know. The joke is that we’re the last people to know. Everybody else knows we’re an alcoholic.

Nicole Senia:

Exactly.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [0:21:05]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right? I always just giggle to myself, like, “Buddy, don’t worry. Everybody knows. You’re the last person to figure it out.” Because we’re so all over the place, it’s such a mess. And that’s not the case for everybody, I mean I do come in contact with people who somehow stay under the radar, but I, like you ladies, was not like that. I was just a ham everywhere and it truly baffles people how we can not know in those moments, when you’re describing the four bottles in the bathtub, although, I don’t know any other way to take a bath other than four bottles of wine. The only way to bathe. But it’s like, how could you not know? Or how could you not know if you’re blacking out? How could you not know? And I just laugh. I’m like, we don’t know. I can’t explain it, but we’re certain we don’t have a problem.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. And I feel like with that, it just becomes so normal. We almost normalize it in our own heads and we surround ourselves with people who are doing the same thing, especially I know when it comes back to college, I didn’t really think I had a problem at first because everyone in my sorority, everyone on the college campus was taking Adderall and smoking weed, so why did I have a problem? It becomes so normalized almost in society, I feel like especially in the college culture, that it’s hard to see that you actually have a problem sometimes.

Samantha Senia:

But the one thing is, is that I woke up with that guilt and shame every single time. And that’s when I knew, like, this is not right. I mean we all know that guilt and shame the next day. I was amazing at ignoring it. I would feel guilt and shame and be like, “Okay.” And my mom used to do that. She would wake up the next morning and be like nothing and I would be like, “What’s wrong with her?”

Nicole Senia:

Yeah, it was always like nothing ever happened.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah. Nothing ever happened.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But you have to, right? Think about it. If you’re going to maintain that and if you’re going to continue living like that, you have to be able to teach a master class in putting away that shame and guilt.

Samantha Senia:

100%.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Samantha Senia:

100%. And I don’t know how that doesn’t eat you alive in itself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Eventually.

Samantha Senia:

Right.

Nicole Senia:

For sure. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

Speaker 4:

Hi, it’s Ashley Jo, producer of The Courage to Change, and I wanted to chime in and let you know about our new mobile app, Lionrock Life. It is now available for download on your phone or tablet from the app store or the Google Play store. So here’s the download on the app. The app is designed to streamline your online recovery experience, allowing you to view live meetings in progress, join meetings quickly, and build stronger connections in recovery. So whether you’re newly sober, have many years in recovery, or you’re in recovery for something other than drugs or alcohol, the Lionrock Life mobile app has a space for you. On the app, you’ll find alternative recovery meetings and traditional meeting offerings. We have everything from Recovery Fellowship to Community Workshops, LGBTQIA+, women’s meetings, men’s meetings, 12 step meetings, and more. With over 75 meetings on our weekly schedule, you’ll find a meeting that meets your individual needs. And with the app, you can personalize your recovery experience. Join with privacy in mind and recover with the support of an incredible community. Join us and find inspiration for a lifetime of recovery by downloading the Lionrock Life mobile app today. If you have questions or need help, simply visit Lionrock.Life/mobile-app. Thanks.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The college culture’s a really interesting thing that you bring up, Nicole. I have two younger sisters, one of which went to Tulane in New Orleans and I watched real closely and I would go down and visit and I was sober when she went to college, and I would talk to her about it. “I mean everybody here is drinking in what we would describe alcoholicly.” This is 100% binge drinking. And she and I would talk about this, and as the years went on, what we saw and what I see generally is alcoholism behavior in college is considered acceptable, right?

Nicole Senia:

Yes.

Samantha Senia:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Pretty much as long as you’re doing okay in college.

Nicole Senia:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The people who are failing out, not so much. But if you’re partying and you’re doing okay, you’re passing in college, partying alcoholicly is considered okay, and then it’s, what happens when people get out? A couple years after. And that was what we saw with both of my sisters’ contemporaries, which was everybody was partying kind of the same, and then they get out, and it took everybody a couple years to calibrate. But then they separated. Then it was the people who just kept going. Personally, I’m the kind of drug addict, alcoholic, I don’t go to college, I don’t go to school, I don’t show up for anything, so I’m always just impressed with people who managed alcoholism while in college because I’m like, that’s impressive. This is just straight impressive to me. But we do have a societal thing where it’s like, you described a situation. Can you imagine if, at 30, a bunch of women who joined a book club sat down and somebody pulled out a bottle of Ciroc and was like, “We’re going to drink this whole thing right now while we read Jane Austen. Go!” And everybody had to finish it? That wouldn’t be normal, right?

Samantha Senia:

No.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah, exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But somehow, you’re at a party school, you’re rushing. I bet a lot of people across America who’ve been in your situation are like, “Yeah, that’s pretty par for the course.” So there’s this genetic component that you have, there’s this intergenerational trauma from what you guys have experienced, and then there’s trauma intermittently, and then there’s also this societal piece of going to college, because you were in high school and kind of the responsible party, that was at least how you felt. You were in college and you get this opportunity, and now everybody’s telling you, “It’s cool to drink like this. Let’s do this.” And you can. So we have these two pieces where, how do we advocate for people to be sober, but also, how do we keep people from not thinking it’s okay to drink alcoholicly just generally?

Nicole Senia:

Right.

Samantha Senia:

Well, that’s a good question, and that’s one of the reasons we started this podcast because when I went to her college, I was in shock. I could not believe. I went to San Diego State. Trust me, I partied there. But this college, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was insane. Everyone was doing all kinds of stuff. They didn’t care. I had to stay sober to watch and see what was happening with her, with her experience, and I was just blown away. It was all day, all night. There’s no adults.

Nicole Senia:

None. That’s what surprises me so much in going to LMU. I go to LMU now and there’s adults everywhere and I’m, like, shook. I’m like, this is a thing? When I went to the other school I went to, there was no adults anywhere, it was just kids doing whatever the f they wanted. Partying, drinking on campus grounds, in class, with their vodka filled up to the top, chugging it, smoking blunts in class. No one cared. It was crazy.

Samantha Senia:

It really scared me. It was unbelievable. But I really think this and I really want to say this. So when we send our kids off to college, we think, “Okay, we’re done. Let them go. Let them experience life.” Well, I really want to say, you’re not done, it’s just beginning because you need to stay in contact with them. Because first of all, kids are scared. They’ve never been off on their own and you’re just like, “Here you go,” dumped in with a bunch of kids and it’s a free-for-all. It’s so important that you stay connected and talk to them and show up. Parents only come on parent weekend or something. No. Show up when they don’t expect you. Make sure you’re there once in a while because I think that kids feel a little bit abandoned in a way because it’s scary. I mean going to college is scary and that’s why a lot of people probably could reach for the drug, the alcohol, they want to fit in, they want to be cool, they want to be skinnier, they want to be prettier. It’s so important. That’s why we talked about doing this podcast because she really wants to let people know, you can still have fun.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Samantha Senia:

We have the best time. We were just dancing to one kiss is all it takes. That’s our song. [crosstalk 00:30:52] our podcast.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Love it. Love it. So that actually brings us to, Samantha, you got sober in 2019 and Nicole, you got sober in 2020, which, both very different years. One year is really more like 10 in that span of time. But Samantha, when you got sober, what did that look like? How did you get to that place of really that desperation, of wanting to make that change?

Samantha Senia:

Well, I think you know, my kids are my life, and it makes me emotional because my son, at the end of my alcoholism, he was disappearing. And it was so hard for me, I was so angry. “Why doesn’t he want to be around? Why doesn’t he want to be with me?” And I went out for one last night and I went to a bar in Santa Monica with one of my friends and I was going dancing, and I hear, “Samantha!” And I was like, and I turn around, it’s Brandon’s best friend, and I’m like, “Oh cool.” So I do a shot with him, we take a picture, we send it to my son. That’s God intervening right there because I woke up the next day and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m in big trouble.”

Samantha Senia:

And you know what I got within one hour? A call from him. “If you don’t stop drinking and go to rehab, Mom, I’m never going to speak to you again.” And he meant it. He did not speak to me for six months and I didn’t have a choice to go to rehab. I was a functioning alcoholic, I had this big company, and I was like, I have to treat it like business. I have to get up, do what I need to do. And I started a program and I didn’t really understand, but I just kept doing it and I had a coach, which is so important for me. I had a coach, I used meditation, I went into this program, and I prayed. And I just cried a lot. I cried a lot. It was not easy. This is not an easy thing by any means. But when you start getting it, you feel the freedom.

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [0:33:08]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was so devastating about the photo of you with your son’s friend?

Samantha Senia:

I mean would you want your mom to take a picture in a bar at 2:00 in the morning with your best friend? Probably not. It was because I was wasted.

Nicole Senia:

You were supposed to be getting sober at that time.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah, probably.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. She had told us that she was getting sober.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, okay.

Nicole Senia:

I don’t know if you remember that because we don’t remember things when we’re using.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah.

Nicole Senia:

But she was supposed to be getting sober at that point and Brandon probably thought she was working on it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah. And also, I mean just a lot of memories came up and it wasn’t like I was present for him, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah.

Nicole Senia:

And I feel like in the beginning, we, especially as alcoholics, we say we’re going to get sober, we’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to get sober. I’m going to get sober.” It’s words, so it gets to a point where it’s like, it means nothing.

Samantha Senia:

I don’t even remember saying that.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah, I’m sure. Right?

Samantha Senia:

I don’t remember saying that. If I said it, I definitely didn’t mean it at that point.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh man. Yeah. I like that you said, “I treated it like a job.” Because there is something very disciplined, showing up every day, being accountable, being skilled. There’s a lot of pieces to getting sober and being in recovery that, we’re using the skills that we use at our place of employment are very, very helpful. That’s really great.

Samantha Senia:

I use it every day in my business. But if I’m not on my daily journey where I literally have to get up, I have to meditate every morning, I’ve got to pray, and then I do a quick little workout, go about my day, and then before I go to bed, I do the same thing. If I don’t do that, you can tell, I’m irritable, or I’m stressed out, or, “Why aren’t they doing this? Why aren’t they doing that?” It’s so important for me to be in my own little program of what I need to do, to workout, to meditate, to do my program or whatever it is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Samantha Senia:

So I feel grateful and I am so grateful today because I couldn’t be here.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. And Nicole, what was it like getting sober in 2020?

Nicole Senia:

Getting sober? It was interesting because that was really when the pandemic was. We were in lockdown and you couldn’t go to in-person meetings and stuff like that, because I’m in a program and I was doing a lot of Zoom meetings, and I actually found a good group of people that helped me stay sober, but it was very hard in the beginning because I had overdosed. That’s what happened. I had overdosed and I went to my mom and I was like, “I need help.” First of all, I looked at her and I was in, like, a … What’s it called?

Samantha Senia:

Brain fog.

Nicole Senia:

No. That’s an understatement. Like mini-psychosis. Literally. I was literally overdosing on drugs, we’ll just say that. And I remember sitting, starting at my math textbook on so much Adderall thinking, I remember having an assignment and it said name. Obviously, we know on our homework assignments. And I couldn’t remember my name and I was like, “What the hell’s wrong with me?” And then I kept going into this deep thought of, who am I? Why am I here? What is my name? And I, for the life of me, could not remember who I was, what my name was, why I was on this earth or did I have a purpose, and that’s when I was like, I was tripped out. I thought the TV was talking to me, I was not okay. So then I went to my mom and this was a God shot because she was at the restaurant across from my house and I walked over there, don’t know how I got there, and I was like, “I need help.” And she takes me … I love my mom for this. She looks at me and she goes, “Let’s go to Whole Foods and get you some brain vitamins.” And I’m like, “What? Okay.”

Samantha Senia:

I had no idea because I wasn’t a drug person, so I just totally wanted to believe that she was on her path.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Nicole Senia:

But anyways, from that point, my mom took me in and I ended up living with her for a month and she helped me get sober, really. I mean I wouldn’t be sober if she wasn’t sober. I did a mini-rehab at her house is what I like to call it.

Samantha Senia:

Yeah.

Nicole Senia:

She took me in, she cared for me, she showed me how to live sober and took me to these meetings that I ended up really liking and getting a lot out of and just introduced me to what recovery really was. And I ended up meeting this amazing person who has helped me stay sober throughout my sobriety who I look up to and has helped me, take me through, walks me through the journey. And again, introducing me to meditation and prayer, helping me find my higher power, my understanding, and just really giving it up to God. And that’s really how I’ve stayed sober, especially during the pandemic.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What do you guys do when you feel like the other is struggling and the urge to step in? And maybe, Samantha, this is more for you, but the urge to … I suspect, Nicole, you probably have some of this in you as well, is to save the other person or interfere with their program.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah, that’s a great question.

Samantha Senia:

That’s a good question. So we both have very strong, strong people, sponsors that help us. We also have a life coach that is amazing and has been with us for almost seven years, so we use that. We do coaching together as well. If she knows I’m triggered, she calls me and we do a prayer together.

Nicole Senia:

We try to have very open communication.

Samantha Senia:

Right.

Nicole Senia:

I feel like that has really helped our relationship, so for me, I know if I feel like she’s not acting right or something and I know something’s going on, then I’ll be like, “Hey, did you meditate today?” And most likely, she’ll be like, “No.” And then she’ll go do meditation and we’ll be fine.

Samantha Senia:

It’s always that. Dang it.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. But if it’s something more-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Are you ever like, “Are you serious?” Just get pissed off that you would even ask that or something? Is it ever a trigger?

Nicole Senia:

Oh yeah. I mean yeah, we definitely yell at each other. I feel like we act like sisters a lot of the time.

Samantha Senia:

But she does know and I know, too, but we don’t overtake each other. We just kind of give a little nudge and then it wakes us up. Why does it wake us up? Because we are open and we are aware now. Before, we wouldn’t speak. So now it’s like, when she says something to me, I’m like, “Oh boy. I need to go meditate. I need to get back in my zone.” Because I’m not helping anyone if I’m in this place.

Nicole Senia:

And we are together so much, obviously, we work together, we have a podcast together. We’ve built this relationship where I can say anything to my mom now and I know she’s not going to react negatively. I think it’s all open communication. For any relationship. With your parents, with your significant other, with your siblings, friends, open communication is the one thing I’ve learned is the most beneficial to having a good, healthy relationship because without communication, you’re lying to yourself and to other people.

Samantha Senia:

And what about, we were doing a podcast last week and it was crazy that one of the girls in the studio, she was this young girl and it makes me cry. And when we were done, she started crying and she’s like, “I’m going to call my mom.” She wanted, because she saw us.

Nicole Senia:

It was really a God shot.

Samantha Senia:

It was. It was like, wow.

Nicole Senia:

She came up to me after and she’s like, “You know what? I’ve been trying to get sober.” So just the fact that God put her in the studio room. She was the one person that was in there and she was trying to get sober, so I got to connect with her. And then she text me after and she was like, “I love my mom so much. I’m so grateful I got to hear you guys share your story.” And she said she called her mom and was crying, saying how much she loved her family. So just little things like that are the reason we have our podcast now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s cool. Yeah. When does your podcast go live?

Nicole Senia:

Our podcast goes live September 13th.

Samantha Senia:

13th.

Nicole Senia:

We’re very excited.

Samantha Senia:

I’m so excited.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. And the first opening podcast, is that your story?

Nicole Senia:

No. We have a special guest coming on our first podcast for the kickoff.

Samantha Senia:

Which will be announced soon.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. We’re really excited because he’s just such a great person and such an influential figure in the world.

Samantha Senia:

And he got sober much later in life, which is important because that means there’s no timeline. You can get sober at any time, right? I mean this all is a journey, so it was really special. It’s a special one. We’re excited.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s awesome. So what is the name of the podcast and where can people find you?

Nicole Senia:

The podcast is called The Power of We and you can find us on Instagram, our Instagram is The Power of We Official, we also are going to be on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, [crosstalk 00:42:29].

Samantha Senia:

Anywhere you can find podcasts.

Nicole Senia:

Really anywhere, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay, awesome. And that’s September 13th, 2021.

Samantha Senia:

And we definitely want to have you on our podcast as well.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I would be honored.

Samantha Senia:

So amazing. This has been so much fun.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So fun. I would be honored. Yeah, your story is awesome and I think this is a family disease and we have so much to learn from doing this journey together and teaching other people how to communicate, and Samantha, you know what it’s like to watch your child get sober. I think that’s a huge thing we’re going to see more and more of, and how to be involved, but not too involved. I mean there’s so many dynamics there and I think it’s really, really valuable to stop the line, the disease. We can maybe change how many people are affected by this, ongoing.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Samantha Senia:

It is absolutely crazy when you think about it. There’s programs and meetings. I mean there’s so many different programs out there, there’s just not one way to get sober. There’s many different ways, which I didn’t know because when my son was getting sober, I was like, I don’t know what to do first, because I only knew one way. But there are so many different ways. That’s the great thing about this, and really I call it a club for living your life.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It is. It is. I mean all the things that we’re learning are applicable to anyone in life. I would say that alcoholism, the difference between me and another person is that I have a fatal reaction to normal problems. To the things that happen. But the solutions are still helpful. So all the things that we’re doing and all the things that we’re talking about and teaching about I think are incredibly helpful, whether people need to get sober or not, and I think there’s an audience for you, Nicole, to talk about … A piece of this is, I know a lot of kids who grew up with an alcoholic parent who didn’t drink in high school because they were afraid or because they had to keep things together at home. Same thing. And then they get to college and it’s like, “Well, I guess now’s the time.” And it’s a perfect Petri dish for alcoholism to thrive and I think this is something we need to talk about.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh gosh, I’ll put it in the show notes and I’m totally blanking right now, but there’s an organization that puts up sober housing for college students. And I went to UCLA and I was sober when I went. And I lived off-campus, but you definitely feel it, and I think there is a place in the college culture for those of us who don’t drink and sober housing and things like that to support those movements so that people who want to continue that way or want to insulate themselves from that culture, that pressure, are able to.

Samantha Senia:

That’s really incredible. Make sure you let us know about that because we’re involved in the Battered Women’s Shelter and we donate a lot of products from Elite Mason and Elite Home Staging for them to live, so I would love to do that for sober people because that’s part of our journey, right?

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Samantha Senia:

And Nicole, one of her first stagings was with a person that was recovering, so it’s so cool.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah. And back to the college, just a little bit about the college. The awareness of sobriety on the college campuses, I’ve noticed it’s expanding a lot ever since I got sober. Maybe I’ve just been more aware of it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re not drunk.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah, exactly. But I just recently joined a recovery club at LMU and it’s all about sobriety and strength and hope. I’m a social media chair now, so we get to raise awareness on the campus, make posters, hang them up. On Fridays, we give out water bottles to the drunk kids. It’s just a cool way to be of service.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s so cool. Totally.

Nicole Senia:

To raise awareness of this disease.

Samantha Senia:

Can you imagine if someone gave you a water bottle when you were drunk, though?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I would be so grateful. I needed some hydration.

Nicole Senia:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well, thank you so much for what you’re doing and for coming on here. I really appreciate it and I’m super excited for your podcast and I know that you ladies will do great and put out lots of good content that will help people.

Samantha Senia:

Thank you so much.

Nicole Senia:

Thank you, love. Thank you for having us on.

Samantha Senia:

It was very, very nice to meet you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Absolutely. Nice to meet you ladies as well. Have a wonderful day.

Samantha Senia:

You too.

Nicole Senia:

You too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock.Life. Lionrock.Life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.Lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at Lionrock.life.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [0:47:41]