Addiction: An Attempt To Fill A Hole In The Soul

“Killing Karoline” and “Mad, Bad, Love” are provocative book titles that track the life journey of my podcast guest, Sara-Jayne Makwala King. She’s an award-winning radio presenter, best-selling author, journalist, and public speaker.

Much of Sara-Jayne’s work focuses on issues of race, identity, adoption, addiction recovery, and mental health.  These topics don’t just touch a sub-set of society, they affect us all. If you have a hole in your soul for any reason, the chances are that you have developed some kind of addiction to fill the gap, even if it’s not drugs, sex and alcohol.

Her writing is based on the evolution of her personal story, which is such a fascinating one. It started without her permission from the time she was conceived across the colour line in South Africa. She was whisked out of the country by her white, British mother and put up for adoption in the UK. She lost her identity before she was born.

Killing Karoline was her first memoir published in 2017 about finding her roots, belonging, and fitting in.
Mad, Bad, Love, published in 2022, is about saving herself and taking full responsibility for the life she was given and co-created.

This podcast episode covers:

•  The trauma of breaking bonds between mother and child
•  The incomplete trauma of adoption
•  The yearning to find one’s roots and belonging
•  The link between adoption and addiction
•  The power of cellular memory
•  The connection between attention and bonding
• Guilt and parenting
•  Routine in parenting and in recovery
• Key lessons from Sara-Jayne’s journey through adoption and addiction

“Professionally, I’m a radio presenter, an author, and I do public speaking. But when all of that’s not happening, I’m just, you know, your average 42-year-old mother, trying to survive with a lot of history. It catches up with one and requires processing. And for me, the processing happens best in writing.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“I was born Caroline King in August 1980, and my biological dad is from Limpopo and my biological mother is from Yorkshire in the north of England, and they met while working at a hotel in Johannesburg. I was the product of that relationship.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“The act of adoption, if not done well and carefully and consciously for anybody (whether it be for a black child into a white family or for same race adoptions) is an erasure of identity that comes with its own trauma.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“According to Paul Sunderland, the impact of that severance between an infant and the mother (and he used the word severance), whether it’s a one-day-old, or 100 days old, is keenly felt.  And here’s what I found fascinating: he said the severance is not remembered, but it can be recalled.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“There are things that can be done to give a child familial support without the erasure of identity and familial links.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“So many adopted people end up in treatment centers and in jails, and are four times more likely to attempt suicide. Paul Sunderland explained to me that the feeling of separation is life threatening. It’s that for me. It makes so much sense.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection. And that is so key as a recovering addict. Sobriety is wonderful. Sobriety is the by-product of the reconnection. The right to reconnect. So I have to reconnect with my feelings. I had to reconnect with the things that were making me uncomfortable.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“It’s so obvious that so many of us end up using whatever it may be, whether it be behavioural addictions or substance addictions, because we’re desperate for that connection. And for me, as I talk about it in Mad, Bad, Love, even when I got clean, there was still a connection that was missing.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“We could call it co-dependency, even love addiction. We could call it attachment disorder or all of the above – a basket of all of those things, which is that connection. And you can’t underestimate what happens when that connection, that primary human-based connection, is severed.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“Seeking immediate gratification or immediate comfort is such an addict thing (even kids on social media). If your immediate needs are not being met, you will find something else.  And that’s what an addict has to fight against because they know that pill or alcohol will make them feel okay, quickly (even though it’s only short term). It was like that for me.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“I can always guarantee that food is going to make me feel okay. I can always guarantee that the control that I get from anorexic restriction will make me feel okay and safe.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“Parenting is nothing like I thought it was going to be. It’s wonderful in a way.  And it’s hard and terrifying and triggering in a way that requires me to look at myself, my past, and the type of parent I want to be.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“I can’t give from an empty pot or an empty cup. So that’s been a real learning curve for me.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“And if there’s one thing that I think I can say and I would hope people say about me, is that I show up authentically. I often look at these influencers on Instagram and social media, and I think, you know, you must be exhausted because there’s no way, there is absolutely no way your life is like this all the time.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“I know about living with veneers and masks and things, but I did it for a long time before I got clean. So I know all about that and it’s really pretty tiring. So yeah, my thing has been around letting people know who I am and that requires vulnerability, right? And vulnerability as a woman in business or as a professional woman is something that people don’t always like.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“You know, my blackness is something I can’t ever take off. It doesn’t matter whether I grew up going to Pony Club in Surrey as the only black kid or whether I lived in Soweto for five years..l Coming back to South Africa as a black person of mixed heritage was difficult.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.

“I wanted to know who I was. I wanted to know where I came from. I wanted to know who I looked like. To  grow up for 27 years and not look like anybody in the group of people you call your family is quite a lonely experience, particularly in a transracial situation.”

Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Award-winning Radio host, Author and Journalist.