Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Donna McArthur. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Donna, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the best advice you ever gave to a client? How did they benefit / what was the result?

Self-trust is a deep inner knowing that is elevated in the presence of our truth. This is a learned skill so when I work with people to help them increase their sense of well-being it begins by helping them develop a foundation of self-knowledge which leads to a greater ability to know what’s right for them.

I offer this guidance from a heart-centered place that it will lead my client/patient (I work with both depending on what hat I’m wearing) to a sense of possibility, a knowing that change isn’t a pipe dream. However, while hope is wonderful it isn’t enough, we also need to apply concrete, evidence-based tools to gain momentum. Thankfully science has shown us many safe ways we can access our best self and I may suggest things like stepping into cold water, a specific journaling protocol or nutritional and exercise recommendations to clear their brain.

I recommend my client make the effort to get clear on what is the most important thing in this situation, as well as why it’s important to them. This creates an anchor for them to hang on to when the going gets tough.

Donna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I believe it’s possible to unravel the threads of our conditioning that keep us bound, and in doing so live a more fulfilling life. I define well-being as a fullness of body, mind, and spirit, but to achieve greater well-being we may need to focus on increasing our daily energy quotient. I learned this the hard way by running on empty for far too long.

Over the last ten years, I’ve left no stone unturned in my quest to elevate my energy and it’s these tools that I share with my patients (at my chiropractic practice), as well as the clients in my coaching practice, who want a mentor to achieve greater well-being. As well, I am the writer of The Bright Life, the newsletter I publish on Substack, where I encourage my readers to hear their inner whisper and have the courage to follow it.

I’ve been a healthcare provider in a beautiful, mountain town in British Columbia, Canada for almost thirty years. Together with my husband we have a busy, wellness-based chiropractic practice and have raised our two sons to adulthood. I have also spent years learning the soft sciences of how the mind-body-spirit connection plays out in daily life. I love science and also believe there are things science does not yet fully understand, many of these things can be helpful to feel better as we move through our days.

I believe a foundational aspect of well-being is inner clarity that is gained through living an examined life which is why I love helping people peel away the layers of life to heed their inner voice and offer them tools for their next right step.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

It is my mission to encourage my readers, as well as myself, to learn to hear our inner whisper and have the courage to follow it. This requires us to lead an examined life by creating space within the chaos of daily living to ask ourselves the bigger questions.

This requires us to be brave.

My work, in my writing, teaching, coaching, and clinical practice, centers around teaching heart-centered, evidence-based practices we can use that will lead to greater physical energy and from there the ability to respond to our life more fully.
I visualize my work going out from me, in all directions, to land in the hearts of those who need and want it the most.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I reached a place in my life where I knew if I continued to ‘relax’ after work with a glass of wine I would likely stop moving forward in my life. The alcohol was taking more than it would give and yet I resisted it because I loved it so much. For most of my life it had been a ‘fun’ part of my life, until I kept feeling more and more drained.

I grew up learning to drink like it was an Olympic sport and I was a champion. I had mad partying skills. Since I hit my stride in the 80’s you may have expected the typical start to be little steps with Baby Duck and California Coolers, remember those? Nope, not my crowd. We started with lemon gin – straight out of the bottle. While I was a kid I learned to drink hard and fast and so did most of my Posse. Thankfully, the lemon gin was a short phase as we ran the booze spectrum – ending with expensive wine as our drink of choice.

The Posse I learned to drink with…we are still together. Something happened in those formative years both with alcohol and bonding because 45+ years later they are still my Soul sisters, the fabric of my being, the best part. But alcohol became part of the fabric of my being as well – the worst part.

Occasionally in my life there was something I wanted more than drinking. I wanted a degree and I wanted motherhood, so I stopped drinking to achieve those goals. I also gave it up here and there but that pathway in my brain kept getting stronger and stronger. Relax, have fun, deal with stress, hang with your friends all meant drinkdrinkdrink.

In my drinking life there was no passing out, no vomiting, no missed work, no DUI, no trauma. But there was the daily regret of constantly letting myself down. I witnessed my soul lose respect for myself. I was living the life Garth Brooks talked about when he said “I’m much too young to feel this damn old”. The road was looking long.

My deepest, inner self thought I should stop drinking years before my physical body got on board. She would say things like “this really isn’t working” – I quickly blocked that one. Then She started making deals with me which I artfully dodged. I was excellent at ignoring my smarter self, but it became more difficult to evade every passing year. It looked like this…drink wine, tune out by eating the wrong thing, watching crap TV, feel exhausted many days while constantly thinking about the gifts you’re wasting and the lost potential, lose respect for self so feel even worse therefore drink more , repeat. For years. Oh yeah, and continue to get more and more tired every week of every year, all while running around managing a very full life.

The more this happened the more I drank but still…there was a spark inside that grew slowly until I knew I would implode if I didn’t step over to the other side. Change or become an empty shell, even with ‘only’ a glass or two (more on weekends – sound familiar?) a day.

Quietly, in the privacy of my own home, I started to get serious about it. I began looking at the research on alcohol in our culture (scary as all get out), what it does to our brain (it’s frightening) and the thing that really rocked me – what it does to our ability to feel joy and contentment (obliteration anyone?). I decided I wanted to quit forever. So, while still sipping away on my vino, I developed a plan to successfully stop. I happily no longer drink booze and feel much better for it.

I am so glad I quit, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In the years since I began talking about life with no booze our culture around sobriety has started to change for the better. It’s something the cool kids are doing. OK, I know there’s no such thing as cool kids because we are all just human and faking it. But before I quit I realized all the folks I thought were awesome & doing amazing things with their life had given up the booze. Just sayin, take a look around at who you admire.

The biggest gift sobriety has given me is clarity, which is also one of the main things I was looking for when I decided to quit. I rarely have foggy brain, I have gained a wider perspective and I can mostly stay present with what is happening in my life rather than withdraw (I am practicing this).

Are all my days now filled with rainbows & unicorns? No.

However, living AF (alcohol free) remains one of the greatest things I’ve ever done because:

I earned the respect of myself;

I can think clearly most of the time;

I feel my emotions – so hard yet so necessary;

I KNOW I can do hard things, just like you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donnamcarthur.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donnaleemcarthur/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdonnamcarthur/

Image Credits
image of ‘hear your inner whisper’ created by Kristi Keller all other images taken or created by my family