"Peel the f*cking onion."

Loading player...
Healing is like peeling an onion. The final episode of this season is a story about love, although it's not a traditional love story. It's about love addiction, the fear of not being loved and the kind of love that can keep you alive.
It's about a mother's love, facing your greatest fear and learning to love yourself through it all.

Sara-Jayne shares her complex family background, the trauma of being abandoned and adopted at 7 weeks, and her struggles with addiction alongside her partner's relapse.

Through it all Sara-Jayne Makwala-King emphasizes that the opposite of addiction is not soberity, but rather connection.

SJ is a journalist and author and has written two books about her life story. 'Killing Karoline' and 'Mad, Bad Love'. Both are available online and in all good bookstores.

QUOTES:
'My biggest fear had just happened, and yet I was the one that had told him to go. I’d facilitated that. So that was the quake—the worst thing in the world that could happen to me as I exist is happening, which is that I am a single parent, and it’s all on me.'
'You feel as if it must be personal, and it isn't. If somebody's not ready to get well from addiction, there's nothing you can do. I am powerless over another person in their addiction.'

INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/seanloots
https://www.instagram.com/thisissjking

BOOKS:
Killing Karoline: https://exclusivebooks.co.za/products/9781920601959
Mad, Bad Love: https://exclusivebooks.co.za/products/9781990973567

RECORDED AT LATITUDE PODCAST STUDIO:
https://www.staylatitude.co.za/latitude-podcast-studio/
Chapters
  • 00:00 Intro
  • 03:09 Healing is like peeling an onion
  • 04:01 Adoption
  • 07:00 Rehab
  • 11:32 Understanding addiction
  • 12:57 Pregnancy and relapse
  • 15:45 Parenting alone
  • 17:08 Fear of being a single mom. Again.
  • 20:49 Loneliness and aloneness
  • 25:11 Understanding addiction
31 Mar 2025 English Explicit South Africa Society & Culture · Personal Journals

Other recent episodes

"The things I hadn't dealt with."

Josh was 12 years old when the phone rang on a quiet Sunday morning. He was home alone, mid-game of WWE SmackDown, when a voice on the other end broke the news. In this episode, Josh talks honestly about delayed grief, the way children absorb loss without the language to…
24 Mar 25 min
 bonus  

From 14% to Full Breath: Remembering Tanya Bothma's Double Lung Transplant Journey

What does it feel like to breathe freely for the first time at 40 years old? Tanya Bothma has struggled with every breath since birth. After a meconium aspiration as a newborn and repeated severe viral infections during childhood, she was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a progressive narrowing of the…
17 Mar 20 min

"I will not become what I witnessed."

In this episode of Something Shifted, True Crime South Africa host Nicole Engelbrecht reflects on how childhood trauma shaped both her identity and her work, telling some of the country’s darkest stories. Nicole Engelbrecht grew up in a world where some stories were never meant to leave the house. Violence,…
10 Mar 34 min
 trailer  

What is Something Shifted about?

Something Shifted is a South African podcast about identity after interruption, those unpredictable lifequakes that divide our lives into before and after. Before the diagnosis. Before the loss. Before the moment everything changed. Hosted by award-winning broadcaster Sean Loots, Something Shifted explores identity, resilience, reinvention, and personal growth in the…
24 Feb 2022 1 min

"Harder to kill."

Conn Bertish, a high-performing creative director, faced a rare brain cancer diagnosis at 36. Emergency surgery revealed a medulloblastoma, usually only found in children under five. In a matter of hours, Conn’s life fractured, forcing him to confront who he was; and who he would become. In this episode of…
24 Feb 33 min