I am a yoga teacher. I believe in connection with the self, others, and something bigger than us.

For the first years of my journey into yoga, I was practicing the shapes, I was trying to still my mind, but all the effects seemed to stop there. It was as if they got six inches away from my heart and soul. Somehow, they ricocheted away. It was as if they could not land or stick.

I thought it was my mind. I thought it was my depression. In reality, it was an invisible wall that I had built with alcohol. It kept the bad stuff in and the good stuff out.

My sobriety was my ticket to healing. My sobriety was my way home.

My sobriety is Mine

It might be the first thing that has ever been mine.

My drinking started out as mine, but it quickly made its way to other people.

The ones who saw me wasted and incoherent and the ones who got me home when I could

not get me home.

 

My sobriety is mine.

It is not yours to make fun of or make light of.

It is not yours to hold as an excuse to not date me.

It is not something you could entirely understand.

It is mine.

It is a thing I have held and nurtured and come to love.

It is something I feared most of my adult life. It is something I never ever wanted.

It is the thing I need most.

It is my chance to heal deep wounds.

It is hard, it is heavy, and it is time-consuming.

It is confusing, and it is isolating.

It makes me hurt in new ways, and it makes me heal in newer ways.

It makes me light, it makes me joyful, and it makes me present.

It makes me more easily identify the harm that has been done to me by myself and others.

It has made me realize we hardly stand a chance if we do not heal our hurt.

It makes me hopeful.

It gives me something to believe in.

Alcohol numbed my inner voice, tore me up inside, and created a barrier that rejected the help and self-love I was working so hard to cultivate. Tearing down this wall allows us to connect with others, but we have to start by truly connecting with ourselves.

My sobriety is mine.

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