# Recovery

I tried so hard to “reset” so I could drink like a normal person.

What are the biggest benefits or gifts of sobriety?

The greatest benefit, to me, is the ability to handle adversity and joy with the same heart. To know that despair and bliss are feelings and not states of being, and that my feelings won’t make me or break me. The greatest gifts have been my spiritual life and having true relationships

I tell them that the Big Book isn’t about getting religion or worshipping anything—it’s simply about recognizing where you really stand in the Universe and answering some very personal questions about how you got here, where you’d like to go and the things that would need to change, to make that possible.

My body knows — has always known — what I want. The feeling of ease and sinking into, yes. This. This feels right.

In sobriety, I am recalling what my body wants.

What I have to tease out in sobriety is what is a nervous feeling for good reason, and what is a nervous feeling from trauma.

The body knows, my favorite Boundaries Coach Molly Davis... See more

I drank to escape what I thought about myself.

Drinking did for me what I couldn’t do for myself: it hid my insides from the outside world. It concealed the parts of me that I deemed unacceptable and unlovable.

Perfectionism is a mindset that demands we perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person. We conflate our goodness as a person with our performance in areas we care about—academics, our job, our social behavior, fitness, appearance, parenting, home organization, the list goes on.

the fundamental work of the Steps, understanding ourselves and accepting ourselves in an honest and authentic way.