grace

I came, I saw, I came back

I’m not gonna be able to let it go ‘til I lay it down.

I’ve taken some time away, to grieve a transitionary moment in my life. Though every ending means a new beginning, I do still have to tend to an ending before beginning again.

Essentially, there was a pumpkin in my patch masquerading as a chariot, but a pumpkin can only pretend for so long before its wheels fall off.

Thank God/Universe that time provides clarity.

I am writing this knowing that not everyone who watches me wishes me well. I have to breathe through that & hope they enjoy the view, or at the very least learn something.

Moving on, let’s talk about where I am in my sober adventure. I gotta be honest, although I’m not drinking, I don’t feel sober. I’ve been so busy “doing” life that I’ve had little time to feel, much time to do, even less time to Be.

I was worried about moving back home because I remembered what I’d left there.

However, when I returned, there was more.

More support, more grace, more opportunities, more authentic connections, more welcoming environments. So I jumped right in, to every “feel-good” being offered to me because none of it was necessarily bad, but it was in excess.

Communing with friends who see me, resting well, and working freely at my new jobs, I didn’t see a need to slow down. Then I revisited some of my old writing & realized that I had let that sparkly, new, sober feeling slip through the cracks of constantly moving & doing.

It made me recall something from a meeting, “relapse happens long before you take that first drink”.

It felt like the only way I could slow down my body & my mind was to “numb out”. Being adamant about not drinking ever again, I buried myself in wasted hours on Instagram, I started watching TV again (I had a marathon of The Office waiting on me almost every night), causing my days to blur together. It’s wild how you don’t notice what’s gone missing until someone else notices. (Thank you to my Sag Yoda, check out her blog! (https://substack.com/@yogawithminelli).

I couldn’t even get offended. I’d been journaling (sparingly), "vlogging” on IG & for my personal collection and sporadically recording voice notes.

However, I hadn’t been tending to the words or the work. I hadn’t been sharing about my journey, how it became about more than hitting those high notes from counting my days. Somehow, it became an active life of avoiding interacting with my sobriety altogether. Once I realized it, I was worried (read: afraid), confused, ashamed. I knew this was prime time for me to slip up. I needed to stop falling into old habits of hiding within my addiction & move toward being seen in my sobriety.

I needed community, “real bad.” So I got to a Sober Black Girls Club meeting, the meeting topic was vulnerability. It felt like coming up for air. It was just what I needed.

I cannot express how vital it is to be in community when embarking on a sober journey. There will be moments when you’ll feel alone & afraid of yourself. You’ll be so in the thick of it that you’ll even be confused about what it is you actually need to get through these moments that seem to draaaag on.

What you will be certain of is the deep ache you have for something to shake you out of this. To quote the admirable Jenifer Lewis, “Don’t stay in those dark rooms too long”.

It took me months to get here. It took me months to trust that what I had to say was imperfect and valuable. Perfection paralysis has been BEATIN’ my ass. I don’t even wanna get into the subject-verb agreement running rampant through this piece.

Normally this is where I would push myself to button this up in some beautifully worded way, but babyyy this is all I got today.

Never stop lifting yourself up every day to try again.

Thank you in advance for grace.

I’ll see y’all on Sundays, for real this time☺️😂