I was everything I thought I was supposed to be, and always wondering why it wasn’t making me happy. Wondering what was wrong with me. Always trying to fix myself. If I could just lose more weight/ read more self help books/ find a better schedule/ be prettier/ be more productive maybe I’d be happier. Maybe I’d feel like I had more value. I was hustling for affirmation, trying to get some sense of self worth from the things I did and the people I impressed, because none of it came from inside. I didn’t like who I was. And instead of getting closer to loving myself, I got even further away. Eventually I discovered alcohol – first as a way to cope with the stress and pressure of life as a stay at home mom, with a husband who was absent two thirds of the time. But over the years it crept further and further into my life, going from a coping mechanism to a crutch. By the time I realized what had happened – that I had become addicted – it was too late to just turn off the switch. Now I had the shame of my addiction to add to the stress and pressure of life. I hid my drinking, never wanting anyone to know how bad it was. I was drowning in lies and shame and hidden bottles, and the fear of being found out. As the addiction grew, so did the self loathing. I knew I was lost and I didn’t know how to find my way out, but I would never tell anyone for fear they’d find out my secret. I’d tell myself I was quitting, but I would only last a few days before life felt like it was too much, and I’d drink again. That cycle continued for several years. 

I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol. It was a part of everything I thought that I was. It made me outgoing and fun. It helped me relax and go to sleep at night. It helped me cope with anxiety and stress, and it took care of every difficult emotion. I was certain that life would be dull and boring and miserable without alcohol, and I didn’t want to experience that. 

I didn’t want to believe I had a problem. That I was one of “those” people. I couldn’t handle the shame of that. I just wanted to be able to drink like a normal person, and I thought if I worked hard enough at it, that I’d be able to. So that was my focus for a long time.

In 2019, I got a call that changed everything. My birth mother – who I never did get to meet – died, and it was likely due to excessive alcohol consumption. The more I learned about her, the more I realized I could end up like her if I didn’t make a HUGE change. So I stopped. All at once, without any support, I stopped. I white knuckled my way through fourteen months of a lonely, painful version of sobriety that only left me feeling even more empty. I had no idea what recovery was supposed to look like. I just knew I couldn’t drink. 

But because I had no roadmap, no example, I eventually went back to my old way of being. I decided that if I could stay sober for fourteen months, surely I was fixed. I could moderate. I could drink like a normal person. It started with just one drink. I enjoyed it, and stopped after one. But over time, it started creeping back in. I was making rules for myself: “I’ll only drink on the weekends.” “I’ll only drink two drinks per night.” The rules were exhausting and I barely managed to stick to them. I knew it wasn’t healthy and I knew it wasn’t “normal” but I couldn’t imagine trying to quit for a second time. So I just kept forcing myself to try to follow them. To try to moderate.

Six months into my “moderation”, my dog Hope, my very best friend, was shot and killed by my neighbor. And the moment I got the call telling me she was dead, all bets were off. I told myself I couldn’t stand to feel that pain. I couldn’t survive the hurt. My drinking went from “moderate” to full-bore. Within four months, I was drinking whiskey from the bottle hidden in my closet, sips throughout the day to keep myself just numb enough to feel like I could manage. Life was spinning wildly out of control and I couldn’t stop it anymore. My fear of feeling the pain was too deep. The chaos continued for a couple more months. I was a person I never could have imagined I would become. I drove drunk with my children in the car. I drank wine at 8 am to stave off the hangover and just to feel human enough to keep up with the still perfect-looking life I was barely managing to portray. I was an emotional disaster, going to from ridiculously happy to terribly depressed to raging with anger, triggered by the simplest things. Finally, in a fit of drunken rage, I totalled the beautiful new 4runner my husband had just bought me. And that’s when everything started rolling to a halt. 

 It took another couple of months for me to really get a handle on my drinking. Though you’d think wrecking my car would be enough to make me stop, I still couldn’t quite get a handle on it at first. I’d get a couple of weeks sober. Then a couple of days. The cycle slowed down, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. Until I found the support I needed, and finally found a space to start talking about what was really going on in my life. Everything behind the curtain. The shame. The grief. The fear. The emptiness. The loneliness. The self loathing. The alcoholism.

I found the courage to start talking about it, and I found people who would listen. I started making friends where, for maybe the first time in my life, I felt truly connected to. I started getting painfully honest with myself, and started looking for the changes I would need to make in order to create a life where alcohol didn’t fit anymore.

It wasn’t a fast process. Recovery never is. But I finally understood that I had to do a lot more than just be sober. I had to actually do “the work”. And day by day, month by month, the tiny bits of progress started to add up. I focused on authenticity – discovering my true identity and starting to honor it. I found the courage to dig into my emotions, to face them and understand them. I learned that taking care of myself had to come first, and that it couldn’t come with a sense of guilt and selfishness. I found a sense of self worth and began to truly fall in love with my whole self – flaws and all. I found my passion and the confidence to chase it. It sounds so cliche’, but the world started to feel brighter, colorful, full of Hope. My life now isn’t perfect, not by any means. No life ever is. But I can face it now. I can face it with confidence, and honesty, and integrity. I’m not hiding anything anymore. I’m not drowning in shame. I’m free to really, fully live.