Addiction: What Advice Would You Offer A Woman Who Is Afraid To Alter Her Life?

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LaDawnna explains what she would say to a woman who is struggling with addiction and is afraid to change her life.

LaDawnna:
A woman that’s struggling with addiction and she is afraid to make a change in her life, first of all with addiction you just can’t do it by yourself.

You have to have someone that will hold you accountable, which is one of the things that I do when I help women that are trying to get off of whatever addiction they have, whether it’s drugs or sex or food.

I hold them accountable, which it takes a while to do and it takes a lot of time but it’s worth it when the woman comes out on top.

So one of the things that I tell them is never quit quitting. When I used to smoke and I used to smoke weed and I used to pop pills and I was high all the time, but when I decided to stop I didn’t stop right away.

I stopped and I would go back. Something would happen, a tragedy in my life and I would go back to cigarettes, I would go back to drugs.

And I didn’t really drink a lot but I still had an alcohol problem. But I said, I just don’t want this in my life. I don’t want my children doing it.

So the things that I could not do in front of them I didn’t want to do at all. So I just kept doing it. I kept quitting and each time I would go through something and I would smoke and go, I am quitting. I am smoking today but I am quitting tomorrow.

And when I quit, I quit right then. I don’t finish the pack. I quit once I finish that cigarette. I throw whatever I have left away and then I just go from that point.

But I never just say you know what, I am going to always be a smoker. I am going to always be an alcoholic. I am going to always do drugs, and I didn’t. I don’t do any of those things anymore. I have been clean.

Even when I got a physical they couldn’t believe that I ever smoked because there’s no sign that I smoked.

I smoked since I was a kid but there’s no sign that I ever smoked, that I even got high because I am in such great physical shape because I have a made-up mind.

I am not going to let that get my body down. I have to move forward. So exercising is always good when someone that’s addicted to eating and they are obese, overweight, they just need to…the bottom line is don’t eat as much and you have to exercise, which is the hardest thing to do, making the first step.

You have to make the first step, and sometimes you have to make the first five steps and you have to do it knowing that you are going to probably do this on your own.

It’s nice to have someone backing you up in the beginning but just know that they are not going to be there all the time.

At some point they have to back off and let you do it on your own and you may fail, but if you have in mind, okay, how many times I fail I am going to do it again.

And people always just say, well you quit smoking, how long is this going to last?”

A year, couple of months – no matter how long it does I am going to quit the next time again. I am not going to stop quitting until it’s done, and that’s what I do. That’s what I encourage women to do.

About LaDawnna Hudson:
Pastor LaDawnna Hudson is the CEO and founder of Women of Power International as well as the first lady and pastor of Shield of Faith Christian Center in Mesa, Arizona. LaDawnna's desire to help women stems from her early years of abuse, depression and poverty. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan in the late 50's, the fourth of nine children, she saw firsthand the struggle of her mother and other women being undereducated, suffering with low self-esteem and being abused by men who treated them more like property than wives. She too suffered hard times, she was raped, beaten, strangled, suffocated, ran down by a car and married to a man who tried to kill her twice. LaDawnna's journey through her troubled past motivates her to help other hurting women change their lives.

Visit LaDawnna at her website