# Recovery

Everyone else is having a great time, everyone else knows what to do, everyone else’s life is just better.

I drank for 45 years to try and live like I thought everyone else lived.

I do not believe in fate. I do not believe in a higher power that runs my life like a puppet master. But I do believe that it’s up to me to see, hear, feel HP in my life (step 11). It will take me a while to fully grasp the lessons I have learned through this journey.

That the small decisions add up—in both directions. I can decide to take daily actions that put my needs first, feel incrementally better, and be able to help others. Or, I can put something else first, quickly start to suffer, and become a burden to everyone around me. It’s all so infuriatingly simple.

I was a shy and anxious kid, consumed by big feelings and perfectionism, neither of which I understood.

I think I became an alcoholic because I was ashamed of me. I was afraid to be me.

It feels like there are so many contradictory rules: we have to ask questions but also talk about ourselves. We have to be cool but not detached. We have to be smart and informed but not a pretentious know-it-all.

I don’t keep my recovery close to my vest because I don’t believe it to be a thing I should be ashamed of. In fact, it is my greatest achievement, or as Jamie Lee Curtis says, “her greatest legacy.”

I fully believe that my sobriety reaches back in time and heals for my family what they could not heal. I believe my sobriety reaches back in time and... See more