Growth

Our beloved and very clever community member @prudence has just celebrated her 2-year soberversary! It has been such a pleasure watching her journey in recovery and lately she has been really on point with her writing and sharing in the Members Feed. With her permission I am sharing some of her recent words of inspiration….

==========

@prudence: There are always those of us who after a while of being alcohol-free start to second guess our decision to live sober. Maybe we should try moderating again? A perfectly normal reaction that happens to the best of us, I assure you.

I, like many of us old timers, go on about how much there is to gain when we get sober. That’s absolutely true, but I do “get” that there is quite a lot to lose as well; like fun & laughter, anticipation of a good night out, loose dancing when you’re right in the groove, a bit of stupidity, camaraderie, a cafe at the beach with a winey lunch, all the social aspects.

So now we are here because we’ve made the decision to let it go, but we are still left with looking at it all in the face, and feeling torn knowing it was all such a big part of our lives. Why stick to our resolve when faced with losing all those ‘fun’ aspects of drinking…? And why struggle trying to get used to ourselves?

Well the word that I woke up with in the middle of the night was GROWTH.

I do feel that if you can take two years out of your drinking life to really give this a shot, you will experience such amazing growth. You will really know who you are, what you need, and how to give others what they need. You will learn patience and calmness. You will face big things that still hurt and you will heal.

Not only will you be fitter and healthier, more motivated and energetic on the outside, but the inner deeper parts of you will become strong and intuitive and you will be fully in touch with yourselves at all times. Please all be wise and strong and get over that calling to jump back into the cauldron.

When we take alcohol right out of the equation, although it takes some time and feels alien at first, we end up in a life where we are not bored, living in a space where we are just ourselves. We are normal. We do not swallow mind altering stuff every day or night to block out our true selves and escape into a lesser and more idiotic version of ourselves.

For me, I can see so clearly now that even if I could actually moderate, (and stick to just having a drink on weekends or something) it would change the shape of my life completely. Every other day would be spent thinking about the day I would drink. I would  probably feel a bit deprived on all the days that I didn’t.

The moment we try to moderate again, we have convinced ourselves that drinking is actually a nice idea and we will be very good and only have a wee bit here and there, and there begins the contradiction and the fight we will have within ourselves. There begins the different shape we just gave our lives. We gave the power back to the alcohol. And in doing so we give ourselves the eternal struggle to stay in control, and we take away the massive freedom of knowing we do not need alcohol in our lives any more.

We can get used to our lives without it and find so much richness, contentment and growth in our own hidden depths, and a much better appreciation for life the way we were born to live it.

Stay brave.

Power to you all.

xoxo @prudence
Happy daze everyone xoxo