Dry Humping: Sober Dating & Sober Sex with Tawny Lara

Alex chats with Tawny Lara today, who is the "Sober Sexpert" based in New York City. In this episode, Tawny and Alex speak about sober dating, sober sex, and the process of writing and publishing her first book, "Dry Humping." Tawny describes what it's like to be an educator on these traditionally "taboo" subjects. We will meet Tawny for Sober Girls Book Club on Sunday November 19. You can book the Sober Girls Club with Tawny here: www.themindfullifepractice.com/live-schedule . You can order Tawny's book here: https://amzn.to/3FlFL9Y

Transcript

Hi, friend. This is Alex McRobs, founder of The Mindful Life Practice, and you're listening to the Sober Yoga Girl podcast. I'm a Canadian who moved across the world to the Middle East at age 23, and I never went back. I got sober in 2019, and I now live full-time in Bali, Indonesia. I've made it my mission to help other women around the world stop drinking, start yoga and change their lives through my online Sober Girls Yoga community. You're not alone and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling. Let me show you how.

Hello. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. I am really excited to be sitting here with Tawny Lara, again. I had Tawny on my show, I think maybe two years ago at least, I was definitely still living in Abu Dhabi when we had the interview. I don't think I had yet moved to Bali. It was a long time ago. Tawny and I originally got connected way back through our yoga teacher trainer. We went to the same yoga teacher training school years ago. I think she had mentioned that you're sober. Somehow we got connected. And it's just been so amazing. I was saying before we started recording just to follow along your journey and see where you started. And Tawny now just released a book called Dry Humping, which came out two days ago. I just learned. And I've been watching that full-time through her pitching this concept to agents and getting the publishing deal and the book finally coming out and it's just been incredible. I just want to congratulate you for that achievement. That's huge.

Thank you. It's definitely been a journey. And it's cool to last time I saw you, I was pitching the book, and now we're talking about this book that's literally out in the world now. It's cool to punctuate these meetings with you.

That's so cool. Yeah, we'll just keep doing them every couple of years.

Exactly. Well, it'll be interesting to see when I come back for the third time, what am I working.

Yeah, totally. That episode was about two years ago. But in case people who are listening haven't heard it, I was just wondering if you could give a little context into your sober journey.

Yeah, absolutely. On November 30th, 2015, I had my last drink, I guess, probably the 29th, but that doesn't matter. I've been sober since November 30th of 2015. Before that, I lived this very stereotypical bartender party girl life in Central Texas. You think about your stereotypical party girl who was dancing on bars, chugging liquor from the bottle, just living this very reckless life. For the sake of this conversation in my book, I got into a lot of very unhealthy relationships, romantic relationships, friendships. There's just a lot of toxicity in my life because everyone that was in my circle, it was all connected through alcohol. That's not to knock any of the people that I was in that circle with. I'm still friends with many of those people. I just don't drink anymore. But I relocated from Texas to New York City in June of 2015 to pursue writing. I moved here in June and I quit drinking in November, and that was definitely not the plan. I didn't move here to get sober. I didn't move to New York to get sober, but I really think I just needed to get out of my bartending bubble and just go somewhere new.

And as corny as it sounds, find myself. And I realized once I got out of that bartending bubble and I met normal drinkers, that's the first time that I really took a look at my relationship with alcohol for what it was because I realized I drank significantly more than these normal drinkers who could have a beer or two. I was at the bar ordering shots and people were like, What are you doing? We don't drink like that. Then that was a huge reality check. That night in November of 2015, I was having some drinks at a bar talking to some friends about how I don't have time to write. I left the pub and I realized I just spent four hours drinking, talking about how I don't have time to write. Maybe there's something there. I started a blog. This was 2015. This is when everyone was blogging. Instagram was not what it is today. I started a blog called Sobriety Party. That blog held me accountable both for writing and for not drinking. I documented my sober journey. It began as a year-long social experiment that turned into... November will knock on wood be eight years alcohol-free.

As we will discuss in those eight years my writing career has flourished. I have my relationships, my romantic relationships. I'm now engaged to the love of my life. I have healthy friendships. My relationship with my family is healthier than it's ever been. As you know, that's not to say that when you get sober, everything gets better because it's definitely things get pretty bumpy. It's hard. It's really hard. But I'm sure you'll agree, Alex, it's worth it. Yeah, that's pretty much in a nutshell, that's my sober story.

Thank you so much for sharing. I actually remember when you started telling that story, I was like, I remember the story of you being at the bar and realizing. And that's so true because I think of so many of the things that I now have the time to do that I didn't once have the time to do in my drinking days. And I didn't quite make that connection of like, Oh, if I took all this time I spent in the bar and spent it on like, I don't build my business.

Or- And the money. The money. Once I quit drinking, I had so much more time and money. And I put that into studying writing. I took so many writing courses. The first chapter of my book is called Dating Yourself. Really, I talk about that, like finding ways to be creative in early sobriety. For me, it was crucial. You're going to have the surplus of time and money. So how are you going to spend that time and money? I suggest investing it in yourself because that's going to help you feel more confident in yourself and you won't rely on that liquid courage as much anymore. I love that.

So tell me about the idea to write Dry Humping. Where did this idea come from?

I began my writing career as an essayist. I wrote a lot of personal essays, and so the natural transition for that is to go from essay to memoir. I began this book as a memoir. I knew that... Let me back up a little bit. When I first got sober, I had no idea how to date, let alone have sex. The concept of sober dating was truly terrifying to me. There wasn't any resources. Again, this was almost eight years ago. We didn't have words like sober, curious, and it was just a different sober scene. I really had to learn a lot on my own just by sober dating and talking to other sober people. I realized that I was not the only one struggling with dating and sex. That's what led me to the topic. Then I began writing it as a memoir. I spent years workshopping the memoir. That means taking writing classes, getting feedback from other writers, reading my work, editing it. I wrote so much of this as a memoir. Then I realized it just didn't feel right. There was a lot that I want to keep to myself, a lot that I wanted to keep private.

But I was still obsessed with the topic of sober sex and dating. So January of '21, I was like, Okay, this is the year. I'm going to fucking do it. I'm writing my book this year, well, book proposal. So I hired a writing coach and I could not have done this without her. She helped me get this book proposal together. Once I pulled myself out of the story and realized that I wanted to write about sober sex and dating from a journalistic perspective, that it came together then. I pulled myself out of the story, leaned heavily into research and hired help. Those three things were really what helped me get this book together. And you'll hear my story throughout the book, but it's not the Tawny story. My story moves the book along, but I interviewed dozens of people for this book. I interviewed sober, curious, people who still drink alcohol, doctors, mental health professionals, neurologists, biochemists. I really wanted to figure out what alcohol is doing to our minds and bodies while we're dating, while we're having sex, and while we're in relationships. That book was just way more interesting to me to write because I'm a journalist and I love to nerd out on and data and interviews, and it wasn't as painful as write...

A memoir is fucking hard. I have so much respect for people who write memoirs because you really have to relive some heavy stuff. I'm glad this book is not a memoir. This really is a guidebook. This is the guidebook that I needed in early sobriety.

And as you're talking about it, I'm like, I would have needed... I would have loved to have this too, because I remember it was one of my biggest fears going into dating. I was like, I don't think anyone is going to want to date me anymore. And I remember the very first date I went on when I was 21 days sober, the guy was trying to convince me to drink with him. And I posted about it in the sober, the recovery group that I was part of and the engagement on the post with so many people feeling like they weren't going to find someone either. And that to me, it seemed... I remember it took me a while to realize, wow, that's so crazy that all of us felt that way and none of us recognized that all of us felt that way. We were in this together, but it's clearly such a big common experience.

It is. And you know what's so interesting is now there's this new term called dry dating. It's people even who still drink alcohol, but they're wanting to remove alcohol from their dating experience. That is so fascinating to me because people are waking up to the fact that let's grab a drink, let's get drunk and hook up. It's not working out. Spoiler alert, it doesn't usually work, at least for me and pretty much everyone I talk to. I think that's really interesting that people are just becoming more mindful. I honestly think you could replace the word sober, curious, alcohol-free in this book. You could replace it with mindful. You could replace it with intentional. This book is really how to be intentional in your relationships.

Yeah, I love that. And that is really what sobriety brings is like a mindfulness and awareness to the moments and the experience. What am I actually feeling? What's actually going on right now? Does this feel right? Does this feel wrong? And when you tackle it from a sober point of view, you have a bit more perspective on it.

Exactly.

Yeah. I'm wondering, I'm like, Did I ask you this question already? I was going to ask why is it important to have a book about sober dating? But I think you've already chatted a little bit about that. Okay, so tell me about... I saw one of the things that Dry Humping includes is scripts for awkward conversations. Tell me about that. What are the awkward conversations? What can I get there?

Yeah, because like we said, sober dating is freaking awkward. Dating is awkward. I mean, let's be real. But there's a bunch of different sample conversations in this book for wherever you are on your alcohol-free journey and in your relationship journey. So there are sample conversations of how to talk about being sober or sober curious on a date, how to tell your long term partner that you want to stop drinking. So the book is divided into thirds. The first third is about dating, the middle is about sex, and then the last third is about relationships. And that relationship section includes breakups, which I think is very important because sober breakups are fucking awful. No, breakups are awful. I really do my best to meet the reader where they are and give them tangible advice and conversation starters because there really wasn't a guidebook for how to do this. How do I tell my husband that I want to drink less when all of our date nights involve wine? How do I tell this guy that I really like thatwith this guy that I've been seeing for a month that I really like him, but his drinking makes me feel uncomfortable?

How do I have these conversations? So all of that's in the book.

That sounds super helpful and relevant, that idea of scripts for awkward conversations, because going back to the Facebook groups and the Sober groups that I was part of, so many people were always asking questions like that, like how do I tell this person this or share this with that person? And so I think that sounds super helpful and cool. So I'm wondering, when you have this idea for writing, dry humming, how did you fit this in with the rest of your life? Were you writing full-time? Do you have a full-time job still? How did you write a book, basically?

I love this question because more people need to talk about how writing a book doesn't happen in a vacuum. So much happens outside of it. I had a day job. I've worked customer service, either restaurant industry or retail for 20 years, and I just left my customer service job in February of this year. I was juggling both plus freelance writing and writing the book and podcasting and doing all of these things to make it work. I will say having a really... I'm not going to say customer service is easy because it's really not. But having a job that does not require my creativity was a huge asset in my writing process. I don't know how full-time writers write books. I truly have no idea because when I say full-time writer, I mean someone who's a staff writer at a magazine or someone who their day job is writing. I don't know how they write books. Because when I would clock out from working retail, I was fine. I was like, Yes, now I can do the thing I want to do. Whereas if your day job requires creativity, I don't know how I would give creativity to both.

I would figure out a way, I guess. But for me to get this book done, I was literally folding yoga pants and working... That helped me. That helped my writing process. And also just having support like my partner, now fiancé, I'm still getting used to saying fiancé. We've only been engaged for a few weeks now. He's a wonderful cook, so he cooks for me. I think there's a lot to be said for the support that writers need. I have a mentor. My podcast co-host, Lisa Smith, she wrote a memoir called Girl Walks Out of a Bar. She took me under her wing. She edited so much of my work. She explained the publishing industry to me. I mean, it's like it takes a great deal of work to get a book out there. And we're just talking writing. We're not even talking about the publishing industry yet. Writing a book and publishing a book are two very different things, and I couldn't have done it without this incredible support.

Let's talk about the process of getting it published. What was that process like?

I did the traditionally published route. A lot of people are doing self-publishing, which is a great option. It's also an expensive option, I want to say. But the traditionally published route, so I wrote a book proposal. So a book proposal, if you are a non-fiction writer trying to traditionally publish a book, you write a book proposal. And that is basically a big ass word document that is explaining who you are, why you are the person to write about this topic. You bullet point your network, who's in your corner, who's going to help you promote this book? Which podcasts are you going to be on? Who's going to read it? Who's going to get advanced copies and promote your... Why is a publisher going to give you money to write this book, basically? And then the book proposal, so it's basically a marketing plan with a couple of sample chapters of your book. You send that out to agents. In a perfect world, you find an agent who is obsessed with your book and they sign you. I found a phenomenal agent and he really helped me shape up, finish my proposal, get it to... Then he sends it out to editors at publishing houses.

Then the editor at the publishing house is like, they're yay or Nay. To get to this point, you have to be very comfortable with rejection. There is a significant amount of rejection in publishing a book. As a journalist, I'm very used to that because that's how it is. Probably as a yoga teacher, you're probably used to that where it's like you just might not be a good fit for certain studios or some people may not like your style of teaching. And that's fine. You're not going to be for everyone. So you need some very thick skin because your manuscript is going to get chopped up, red inked. It's a lot of work. Hopefully, you get an editor. They love your book. They take that book proposal to the marketing team of the publishing house, and they defend your book. They're like, We need to publish this book because... We need to pay Tawny X amount of dollars to write Dry Humping because... So you really have to have a lot of people in your corner. I will say I had dozens of agents pass on me. I had dozens of editors pass on this book.

I had one yes. You just need one yes. I think that needs to be talked about more because people think you just write a book and it goes out there and it's so much more. Then the writing and publishing process takes about two years. I got my book deal in September of '21, and my book came out September of '23. In those two years, it was a lot of contract negotiation, book editing, book revising, rewriting, marketing plans, getting the books printed, promotional materials. You get a full team when you traditionally publish. And I'm very, very grateful that I have had such a wonderful editor and a great promotional team that's really helping me spread the word for this book.

Yeah, that's incredible. I'm very impressed with the resiliency and the commitment and thethe, I don't know what the word is, to keep pursuing it even after rejection. I wrote a book in 2020, and I know what that's like.

To be agents.

And reject and reject and rejection. And it's still been rejected. And it's in the limbo land of like, okay, do I self-publish this? And do I move forward in this direction? Or does this just live in my hard drive forever? So I know that it takes a lot, and I'm so impressed with anyone that's kept going with that and gotten to the point where you are. It's really inspiring.

Can I ask about your book? Yeah. Is it non-fiction?

It's a memoir.

Memoir? Oh, my gosh. Kudos to you. So you wrote a proposal or you wrote the book? I wrote the book. You did write the book. And then you wrote a proposal? I wrote the proposal. Yeah. Okay. I know people that spend years trying to find an agent. I know people who have found an agent quickly and then their agent has spent years trying to find a home for their book?

Yeah.

I mean, it's fucking hard. Publishing a book is so hard. I will say if you're considering self-publishing, it's an option and it's expensive. What do.

You mean by expensive?

You have to hire an editor, a graphic designer. You have to hire marketing and PR. You have to pay for the ISBN numbers to actually sell the books. I've looked into self-publishing before I went the traditional route. I would say if someone wants to self-publish and do it right and have your book look professional, it's going to be at least 20 grand, at least. So even if you can get a book deal with the traditional publisher, even if your advance is small, you're getting a little bit of money, you're getting an editor, you're getting a graphic designer, you're getting a publicist, you're getting a marketing team, you're getting all of this, which costs a significant amount of money. I would encourage you to keep going if you can, but that's my unsolicited advice. Okay.

Well, we'll see where it takes me. But definitely, I'm really inspired by what you've achieved. It's so inspiring.

Thank you. I'm inspired by anyone who writes a memoir, girl. That is a great deal of work. Can I give you one more piece of unsolicited advice?

A.

Lot of people now, a lot of memoirists are releasing their memoir on Substack. You could serialize it where you're basically like you put it on Substack and you charge like it's only for paid subscribers. You release a chapter at a time or however you decide to do it. I see a lot of memoirists doing that and really taking theit's just another way to do it. So that might be worth looking into.

That's really interesting. Yeah, I'll definitely look into that.

So.

When going through the editing process, how did you decide what things you wanted to keep in the book and what things you wanted to leave out?

Well, so when you're working with an editor, you must... The famous Hemingway quote, Kill your darling, which means cut. You have to edit, just to be scrupulous with your editing and just you have to let shit go. And you have to discern the edits that, A, advocate for yourself if you don't agree with an edit. You have every right to do that. But it's also understanding that your editor knows best. Their job is literally to edit your book. They know what readers want and they know what publishers want. So there is a lot of trust that goes into this. But there were a few times that I didn't agree with some of her edits, and I fought for them. So you really have to know... It's like a pick your battles thing. You get your manuscript back and it's just completely cut up. And you're like, Okay, what am I okay with changing? What do I really want to keep? What really needs to stay? Then I learned in my writing process, when I would talk to her, I'd be like, Well, this needs to stay because... And she's like, Oh, great. Well, that's not clear in your writing.

She was an excellent editor, so maybe my point wasn't expressed enough. And talking it out with her was like, Oh, great. Now I see why you cut it because I didn't explain why this is so important. Writing a book is a largely collaborative process, or I would say publishing a book is a largely collaborative process. Again, you have to have very thick skin and you have to advocate for what you want to keep in there because like I said, your editor is going to know best, but you're still the writer. This is still your baby. So it really is a balancing act.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Is there anything now that you regret including or things that you wish you had included?

It's funny. When I was writing this book, I didn't... I'm sorry, when I was writing the proposal, I still wasn't quite sure the shape of the book. And by that, I mean, I knew it was going to be about sober sex and dating. But the first round, it wasn't necessarily a guidebook. It was more like cultural criticism of the role alcohol plays in sex and dating. I had a really long chapter about alcohol and the Me Too movement, and we ended up cutting it because the final product is a guidebook. I basically just wrote an essay about alcohol and the Me Too movement. Jess, my editor, she was like, This is really good, but I don't think this is for... That's not for this book. That's something that I'm still playing with. I might publish that separately or who knows what I'll do with it. But I'm very passionate about the role alcohol plays in the Me Too movement, and so that's definitely a topic I want to explore more. Specifically, what I wrote about was Brett Cavanagh and Christine Blasey Ford, and then the Brock Turner, Chanel Miller trials. I wrote a lot about that.

So you can probably understand why that didn't fit into this handy little guidebook. But there is a lot to be said about how men... How do I want to say this? I'm not anti-alcohol. I want to be very clear about that. It's not for me. I think women should be able to be intoxicated if they want to and not be raped. That's the stance that I take in this essay that was cut. I talk about how these men like Brett Cavanagh and Brock Turner are... They got getting away with rape, getting away with sexual assault, and how the women were vilified for it because they were drinking. And it was the society, the media, the judicial system was vilifying these women for being drunk as if they deserved what happened to them. I strongly disagree. I think women have agency. And if they choose to get drunk, that's their choice. Getting drunk does not mean you should be raped. Again, you can see why this didn't fit into a guidebook.

Yeah, but it's such an important subject. I can see how that would be a separate essay, and I would love to read it if it did get published somewhere because it's so relevant and what's going on in the world today.

Yeah.

Okay, what's it like being a sober sexpert? Does that feel weird, ever, being so public about sex? And I actually think when I first had you on my podcast, I actually don't even think we talked about sex because I was still living in the Middle East and I was like, I can't do that. It's her on. It's not allowed. Now that I live in Bali, I'm like, Okay, it's fine. We can say the S word on this podcast.

Oh, my gosh, that's so funny.

What's that like?

Yeah, it's interesting. I had a little bit of imposter syndrome at first with the term Ruby Warrington, who coined the term sober curious. She also called me the sober sexpert, and now it's my title. It's on a book cover now. There was a little bit of imposter syndrome there because it's like, who am I to be an expert? I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not a sex educator. I'm not a sex therapist. Who am I to give advice on this? I really did some soul searching and talking with my therapist about what expertise am I bringing to the conversation? My expertise is personal experience and journalistic research. That is a different form of experience that someone who has the clinical and academic background may not have the personal experience or the journalistic research. That understanding what I bring to the table definitely helped combat some of that imposter syndrome, because I find that the more I talk about this, the personal experience is what resonates with readers the most.

Absolutely. When you talk about things like subjects like sex, do you ever feel weird about your family or people coming across your content?

Yeah, of course. I had my book launch party last night, and it was in a sex toy store in Soho, downtown Manhattan. My dad flew in from Texas. I was very aware that I wrote a book about sex and dating, and my dad's here, and we're surrounded by dildos and butt plugs. But it's also like I'm writing educational content. No, I see my work as very... It's important. I think we need to have these conversations. And the more we talk about this, the more we can destigmatize sex. The more we can destigmatize being alcohol-free or sober-curious or in recovery, however you identify. And my father is in recovery. So yes, I write about sex, but I'm not writing very graphic, explicit sexual experiences where I have in the past. And when I have, I tell my dad like, Hey, I have an essay in Playboy. Celebrate this moment with me, but please don't read it. And he's like, Got it. I think writing about sexual experiences is also important. I think that also helps destigmatize, especially for women. We need to be more sexual. We don't need to be more sexual. We need to be more aware of our agency in sex and dating.

And when more people share their sexual experiences, people can learn through that. Like I was saying, people resonate with the personal experience often more than data statistics. I'm a journalist. I want to nerd out on data. I will read a study and highlight it, but people just want to hear, tell me this really interesting thing you did.

Yeah. I think it's so inspiring and amazing what you're doing on so many levels. Like your sober journey writing the book, and then also breaking those barriers that even... One of the things that I removed from the book that I wrote is about sober sex because I was like, I can't talk about sex.

It.

Just feels too... It feels like vulnerable and shameful. And so I think that it's really huge that you're stepping beyond that for women and helping break that stigma.

Thank you.

It's beautiful. So this was an amazing interview. I really love chatting with you. And for those of you that are listening, Tawny is going to be our guest author for our Book Club in November. So she's going to be coming to Book Club on November 19th. That's Sunday, the third Sunday in November. And so if you're listening to this and you want to read her book, definitely give it a read. And we will all be gathering together for a check-in meditation. And then you can ask Tawny any questions about her book or her journey at that time. So thank you so much, Tawny. This is amazing. I really appreciate your time and being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I hope we can hug IRL one day. Our paths have crossed in so many ways. Sharing a yoga teacher experience is such a unique thing to share with someone and then the sobriety angle. I feel so connected to you, even though we are quite literally across the world from each other. There's a lot of shit we can say about the internet, but I'm so glad that it lets us do stuff like this.

I totally agree.

Totally agree. Thank you for having me. For those listening, she led me through a fabulous meditation to help me ground before we recorded, and it really helped me destress during this insane time in my life. Thank you so much for your work. You're welcome.

All right, take care.

Hi, friend. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Sober Yoga Girls Yoga Podcast. This community wouldn't exist without you here, so thank you. It would be massively helpful if you could subscribe, leave a review, and share this podcast so it can reach more people. If we haven't met yet in real life, please come get your one week free trial of Sober Girls Yoga membership and see what we're all about. Sending you love and light wherever you are in the world.