On this day three years ago, I started this blog. In my first post, I was only three days’ sober.
I knew everything about alcohol and the mental and physical devastation it causes, or so I thought. I’d read every sober memoir I could get my hands on. I’d been to AA, then quit, then gone back, then quit again.
I used to sit in the back of those AA meetings and hear people say that they had surrendered and just never looked back. It wasn’t like that for me. I never stopped looking back, wondering when I could drink again.
But now I see my long journey to sobriety as an invitation. I was being invited to decide, over and over again, that I deserved better than a life led by addiction. I was invited to experience the pain and heartbreak it causes until I decided I’d had enough. I was invited to see where I’d given away my power, and decide that it was time to take it back.
Ultimately, it was an invitation to love myself, no matter what the world told me, that finally helped me save my life. It was a decision made through the heart, and not the mind. It was a blind faith in my own worth, no matter what crazy thoughts spiraled through my brain.
That voice told me that I was only funny, attractive, or worthwhile after a few drinks. It told me that I would lose all my friends and be relegated to the dull side of life if I stopped drinking. It told me that I would never survive in stressful times without the anesthesia of drink. It told me life wasn’t worth living without the possibility of a drink at the end of every day.
It never told me, “This shit will kill you.”
So three years ago, I wrote my first blog. I hoped that by putting all that pain and confusion “out there,” it would go away. I didn’t succeed right off. It took me another month of false starts until one day, I drove myself to a mountaintop and began the long, sacred process of healing. With shaky steps, I started stringing together a few sober days.
I still marvel at the miracles that took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. I invited them to travel with me because I knew I needed all the power of heaven and earth to make it. I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
This time around, I committed to listening only to my better angels. I refused thoughts of guilt and shame, and returned my thoughts to self-love, no matter how many times I stumbled. When thoughts of drinking rose in my mind, my mantra became I love myself too much to drink.
And this thinking brought about more miracles. I forgave myself for the past, and let go of long-held grudges. And all that love I sent out returned to me — sometimes through gorgeous sunsets, sometimes through overpowering feelings of peace and wellbeing. And sometimes through the love and support of strangers who became friends, here in the blogging world.
Thank you from the deepest well of my heart.
💕
Finding a Sober Miracle 