Honoring Anniversaries of Sobriety and Other Milestones

Yesterday marked my 14th anniversary of getting sober – which is a big deal! And also tends to stir up a lot of weird emotions: ambiguous grief, an intense combination of gratitude and longing, lots of hope and heaviness at the same time… So this episode is very much about my recovery specifically, but also about pausing to reflect on how far we’ve come – any of us, around anything we’ve been working toward or events that have changed us.

The invitations I offer here are to reflect on where you were a year ago and all the things that have changed, and also for you to think about one of the things you want for yourself, the change that you want to make for your higher good, and to then reach out and get some support. Because if I’ve learned anything in the last 14 years, it’s that we can’t do this shit alone.

I had another recording lined up to release this week, but I woke up this morning wanting to share from the heart about where I’m at in this moment, so this is a somewhat unique hybrid episode. I opted to read and reflect on the blog post I wrote last year for my 13th anniversary. And it wasn’t until I started typing up the show notes that I realized this will be episode 14 – which just makes it all so extra magical and perfectly aligned.

To anyone reading this, thanks for being on this journey with me. You’re magic, and I’m grateful to be on this journey together.

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Or anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Resources, References, and Links:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. One of the most famous books about trauma. Also, written more for mental health professionals than us lay people, but it’s a pretty big deal in the field.

My coaching business – Wanderlight Coaching

Original post – “What My Recovery Means to Me”

My post on perfectionism – “Doing Things Imperfectly in Public”

My post on personal archives – “Viewing Our Past with Generosity”

The episode on comparison – “Comparison Is the Thief of Joy”

Transcript

Hi, friend. 

It is July 3rd, 2024, and yesterday I celebrated 14 years of continuous sobriety, which is pretty cool. And it also has me in a super weird head space, which is pretty typical of anniversaries for me and for a lot of folks in sobriety. 

And that makes sense, you know. Celebrating sobriety anniversaries is this moment of celebrating this big, beautiful, hard choice that we made for ourselves that was coming from a place of being in a really shitty place in our lives. 

And so for me, every year, it just stirs up a lot of gunk – which also makes a ton of sense given that the body keeps the score, that the trauma of all of the life choices and all of the muck that accumulated that got me to the point of hitting bottom and of making a decision to do something different. Like all of that is stored in my system. 

And so there are a lot of ways that on a subconscious level, there’s just gunk kicking around around this time of year for me. And it can be this weird mixture of restlessness and sadness and loneliness and avoidance that all shows up in the same bucket as gratitude and awe and wonder and joy and just deep appreciation for how radically different I am from the person that I was 14 years ago. And I’m also still the same person. It’s fucking bananas. 

And so today’s episode is going to be a little bit of a hybrid. Last year for my 13th anniversary, I wrote a post about kind of where I was with my recovery. And it was the first time that I really dove into that on the blog. 

And because I really believe in reflecting and reflective practices and marking time by reviewing. I thought it would be really valuable to both read that post, because I don’t have an audio recording of it on the website or on the podcast yet, and then to reflect on what I said in that post and where I am around all of the stuff in it this year and what has changed in the last year. 

That’s a really common question that’ll come up – that a friend that I celebrated with yesterday at dinner asked me of like, you know, “what is different this year? What have you brought forward this year that is new?” 

And it’s been an incredibly amazingly wonderfully big year for me in terms of finishing several coach training programs, launching my coaching business, launching this podcast, leaving my marketing work behind and going all in on pursuing my dreams. All of that has happened since this time last summer. And when I say all of that aloud, it’s like fucking bananas. It’s so cool. It’s so exciting. 

But like we can get so lost in the doing and the like what’s in front of us that if we don’t pull our head up and look around and say like, wait a minute, how did I get to where I am? It can be really easy to like lose track of just how much can happen in a fucking year.

So regardless of where you are in this moment in your life, in your sobriety, in your journey towards being a healthier, holer, more fuller, more awesome human, this episode’s an invitation to just pick your head up and look back and be like, where was I a year ago and what has changed? 

So without further ado, here’s the post I wrote for my 13th anniversary, titled “What My Recovery Means To Me.”

[reading]

Today marks 13 years since I smoked the last of my weed (July 1st, 2010) and decided to try spending 90 days entirely sober (July 2nd, 2010). As it turned out, being completely substance-free suited me really, really well – eventually. 

When I got sober, I didn’t really think I had a problem with alcohol. I didn’t know what alcoholism was and certainly didn’t think it applied to me. I just knew that I didn’t like what happened when I was drinking, or who I became, or how I sometimes would wake up and have to ask other people what had happened. But I did know that weed had stopped working for me – stopped “fixing” the undiagnosed anxiety and ADHD I’d been using it to compensate for. And trying to just smoke weed and not drink hadn’t been working either.

An uptight, type A, people-pleasing perfectionist who was constantly on edge about everything all the time, I’d found weed when I was 18 and starting college. It made everything so much less stressful. I’d learned in high school that I had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol but that it left me feeling out of control. So, for many years, I stuck to weed instead. But growing up in Vegas had its effects on me, and the binge drinking picked up after I turned twenty-one. 

There were a lot of blackouts, a lot of stupid choices, a lot of damaged relationships and friendships that didn’t survive my drinking years. And I thought most of that was just Vegas. I didn’t know what normal drinking looked like. Or what actual friendships looked like. Or how to feel okay in my own skin.

Then, in 2010, three years into my graduate studies in Austin, Texas, my inner emotional landscape finally got so unbearable that I realized something needed to change. There was a traumatic break up that helped me see that drinking just made me cry more. There were a few months of noticing how social situations made me deeply uncomfortable, and the only way I knew how to cope was to reach for another glass of wine. There was a rather miraculous series of events that led me to a twelve-step recovery meeting at midnight in the middle of the woods outside a folk music festival in the Texas hill country. And then there was a dear friend’s wedding – where, thankfully, nothing horrible happened. But I did keep telling the bartender that this one would be my last drink and then going back for another, and another. Then I got in my car and drove, and only by the grace of the universe managed to make it where I was going without killing myself or others.

My last drunk was that wedding. And a little over a week later, I smoked the last weed of (hopefully) my life and tagged along to a twelve-step meeting with a friend of a friend who was in recovery. And I decided to really give it a try for ninety days – because that felt manageable. Forever seemed overwhelming and soul-crushing, but I could handle ninety days without weed or alcohol.

Thirteen years later, I feel unrecognizable from the person I was at that time. And I also can’t fucking believe it’s really been that long.

Recovery Makes My Life Better

When I started going to meetings, my life got better immediately. If it hadn’t, I don’t know that I would have stuck with it. To be clear, I was still a stressed out, overwhelmed, crying, emotional wreck for most of my first year! But I had a place to take all of that and people who understood and were rooting for me – and it made it easier to cope with the daily challenge of just being a wounded human in an overwhelming world.

Sobriety in a world designed to get people wasted is still really fucking hard sometimes. But it’s gotten easier. And I couldn’t have done it without a lot of support, without a sober community to lean on, and without a set of instructions for how to show up for myself and be a better human in the world.

I work a program of recovery, and I sometimes wish it didn’t feel like so much work. In the last thirteen years, my level of engagement with my recovery has waxed and waned. I’ve sometimes felt incredibly connected and often felt isolated and alone. But I haven’t gone more than three weeks without hitting a meeting, and frankly that’s probably the only reason I haven’t picked up. 

I still miss smoking weed. Still miss the way it let me set down all the things that felt overwhelming or stressful or too fucking hard to cope with. But I also know that those things were always still there waiting for me when the high wore off, and usually checking out for however long just made those things even worse.

I generally don’t miss drinking, except on days or under circumstances when I’m really depleted. Or, when I’m around other people who can drink normally and have a good time without blacking out or going too far. But that voice in my head usually isn’t very loud, and I’m grateful for that.

Life Is Still Hard – Even in Recovery

Perhaps the biggest takeaway I have to reflect on today is how hard life is – no matter what our circumstances. There’s always something to worry or stress about. Always too much to get done and not enough time or money. Always something I want that I don’t yet have. Always people who don’t act right and things I wish were different. But recovery makes all of that bearable, and even, usually, not all that bad. 

You’ll hear people in the rooms say that their worst day sober is better than their best day drunk, and most of the time that feels true for me, too. I did have some really fun times when I was still drinking, and I’ve had some pretty fucking bad days since I sobered up. But if I take the long view, the sort of stock-market/investment style view of things – I’ve been on an upward trajectory for 13 years now. Which is a big shift from the flatlined, if not downward trajectory my life was on before I sobered up.

Anniversaries are opportunities for reflection. For me, that often comes with a lot of ambiguous grief. Sorrow for the time lost, for the sad and deeply insecure person who I once was. Nostalgia for the early years of my recovery, the people that helped me stick with it, and the community I got to be a part of. 

Nowadays I have this blog that I care deeply about, the self assurance to write in my own voice, and the willingness to write more openly about the shit that I struggle with – and that feels really fucking good. And as I contemplated all of this during my 10 mile run yesterday (something I never imagined possible, let alone thought I would ever even want to do), I realized there was a lot I wanted to say here, to share with whoever might benefit from hearing what it’s like to celebrate thirteen years of sober living.

So, here’s what recovery means to me today – who and what it has helped me become.

I Actively Practice Self-Awareness, Self-Compassion, and Self-Care

This phrasing – self-awareness, self-compassion, self-care – is something I just picked up recently in my coaching training. But it describes a cycle that recovery has allowed me to offer myself. The more I’ve gotten to know and see myself, the more I’ve been able to offer myself compassion and gentleness, which has then allowed me to take better care of myself – because I have a better understanding of what I actually need. One thing leads to another, and the result is a much deeper capacity to cope with, well, everything.

I’ve Quit Going to Home Depot Looking for Milk

It took a long time, but somewhere in the last thirteen years, I finally learned that people are all different. Some people are really good at problem solving. Some people are good at laughter and lightness. Some people are good at coming through in a pinch. Some are good at financial advice, while others are great at interpersonal relationships. Some people can hold space for crying. Some people offer wisdom and hope during difficult times. But nobody’s good at all of that shit, and expecting them to be what I want just because I feel like they should be only leads to a lot of disappointment. Some people are Home Depot and some are the grocery store, and it’s my job to head to the right store based on what I need at the time.

I Can Usually Recognize that It’s Not About Me

This will be a whole post of its own at some point, but if I could gift everyone out there with one concept to fully internalize it’s that whatever other people are doing (or not doing), it’s probably not about you. People aren’t doing things AT me. They aren’t unable to show up in the ways I want them to because of me. And when I don’t get a job or a relationship ends or people aren’t able to give me what I need – it’s not really about me. It’s about alignment and timing and whatever is going on in their world (internal or external). The more I can embrace that concept (which I’m able to do 83% of the time these days), the more I’m able to find peace and serenity on a daily basis.

I Trust that the Universe Isn’t Fucking with Me

Before recovery, I didn’t have any sort of connection with Source/the universe/something greater/a higher power/god. I felt deeply alone in the vastness of everything and was pretty convinced that nothing was ever going to work out unless I made it happen. All of which felt pretty shitty. These days, I fundamentally believe that the universe has my back. Even when things don’t work out the way I want, even when I’m hurt and disappointed and confused, I trust that I’ll find my way forward and come out better on the other side. I trust that all of the hard shit I have to go through makes me better equipped to help others going through tough shit, too. I trust that I’m on a path of growth and healing, always taking steps that move me further away from fear and closer and closer to love.

I Genuinely Like Who I Am

It’s hard to put these things in any kind of order, but this is probably the most important gift sobriety has given me. It unfolded slowly, but I can look myself in the mirror today and genuinely like the person staring back at me (her body included). With the help of twelve-step recovery, a lot of therapy, and a lot of work on my part, I’ve finally let go of the self-loathing that drove me to drink and smoke weed in the first place. There are still aspects of being me that I struggle with, still things I wish I could change, but I’ve finally become my own friend and advocate. I finally feel worthy of love and care and belonging in ways that felt completely beyond comprehension for the first several decades of my life.

Progress Not Perfection

All of that being said, I still just have today. And I still have a long way to go. I’m continuing to come to terms with the idea that there’s never going to be an arrival; when it comes to my own evolution, I’m never going to look around and say, “ahhhhh. I’ve done it.”

I’m vastly more patient than I used to be, but shit still doesn’t happen on my timeline.

I’m much better with practicing healthy boundaries, but they’re still really hard sometimes. 

I’m a lot more willing to slow down and take care of myself, but I still agonize about canceling plans and letting people down.

I’ve learned to accept people for who and how they are, but that’s not a skill I can always access. I still wish people were able to show up in the ways that matter to me even then I know they just don’t have the capacity.

I have a lot more access to hope than ever before, but I still get depressed and frustrated and sometimes want to just throw in the towel on everything. (I just don’t act impulsively on those thoughts anymore – I’m more prone to eating my feelings than burning my life down).

It’s not as hard as it used to be to stay sober, but I’m not immune to the siren call of checking the fuck out. I still think about drinking sometimes. Not often, but that makes it all the more scary and destabilizing when it does come up. 

That’s why I keep coming back to the rooms. Why I keep my service commitments and maintain relationships with other sober people. While today might mark 4,748 days of sobriety, it’s important for me to stay present with the reality that all I have is today. Time adds up, but it’s not a guarantee of anything more than today. 

So, I’m really fucking grateful for today. And for all the amazing, courageous, kind, vulnerable, messy, supportive people who helped me get to today. More than anything, recovery means asking for an accepting help, in setting aside the idea that I can or should do any of this shit alone. 

[end of blog post]

Ugh, what a lovely little gift from past Cate! 

That was really neat to read and to reflect on. To see the ways in which, you know, most of that still holds true for me, and the ways in which I’ve grown. 

The past year in particular has been really big for me around perfectionism and letting go of the idea that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.

And I’m in a bit of an ebb in terms of my relationship to the recovery program, but I still go every week because I know for a fact that if I stop going, I will drink again. 

I don’t miss weed anymore. I think that’s been a really interesting shift this past year is that like the idea of getting stoned just doesn’t appeal to me. But having a drink does. And that’s why I have to keep going to meetings to get the reminder of why it’s a bad idea for me to do that. But that recognition that like, yeah, getting stoned just like isn’t on my radar anymore is pretty cool. 

‘Cause I’ve done a lot of work this year around soothing my nervous system, really learning about the nervous system and what activation feels like and how to soothe it and how to recognize when I’m in a trauma trigger and how to take care of myself around it. And so aside from kind of the big cool things that I mentioned at the top of the episode, I’d say like the internal shifts have been around feeling more comfortable in my own skin in an anxiety way. Like in that post, I reflected on like, I feel really good in my body and that’s still true. But on the like nervous system-anxiety level, I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress this year in particular. 

I’m also still thinking about writing that post about how it’s not about me. I think maybe I’ll commit. I’ll commit to like, that’s gonna happen by the time we roll around to next summer! 

But I think this whole experience that I’m having in this moment reinforces how reflective practices and creating a personal archive is so important to me. I think that’s a core fundamental value of mine and part of my coaching and teaching is like, write shit down. 

Capture where we’re at so that then somewhere down the road when you’re in a better place or you’re in a worse place, you can look back and be like, okay. That was true for me. And where am I in relation to that? 

I fundamentally believe that the only useful comparison is to who we used to be. 

Where was I? Where am I now? That’s a useful comparison. All of the other comparisons that we make in our lives, tend to be unhelpful. 

And so, I don’t know, spending this time reflecting audibly and sharing it with you and with future me has lifted my spirits today, and helped tip the balance out of kind of the more difficult emotions surrounding this anniversary and pushed me more into like the joy and wonder and appreciation of how fucking cool life can be when we make healthy choices and when we commit to doing things that are hard and uncomfortable but that are ultimately for our good. 

So in addition to the reflection invitation that I have already offered you, I would say my other invitation today is just to reflect on like, what is something that will be good for you, that you know will be good for you and that you want for yourself? And to like really touch on that, and then reach out for some support. 

I’d say my other biggest takeaway of this last year and this moment of having done all of this reflection is that we don’t heal alone. We don’t succeed alone. We need support. And the idea that we’re supposed to do everything on our own is capitalist bullshit! And it will just keep us alone and isolated and sad and frustrated and angry. Like we all need outside perspective. We all need support. We all need cheerleaders and I’m so fucking grateful for all the people in my life who have done and continue to do that for me, and I’m getting so tender…

Like, I’m just so grateful today for the beautiful souls that I have in my life, thanks to recovery, who lift me up and tell me I can do it and have gone before and can tell me how to get where I’m trying to go. I could not be doing what I’m doing with my life or be who I am today if I hadn’t found people and groups and therapists and wonderful, soulful, sensitive humans to reflect back to me that I was worthy of love, that I was deserving, that I’m capable of doing big cool things and that the things that I’m already doing are big and cool and good enough. 

I really needed other people to believe those things for me until I could get to a point where I could believe them for myself. And the cool fucking thing is I do believe that for myself today.

And so whoever you are listening, I believe that for you. You are worthy and capable and deserving of the cool things. You are lovable. You are loved and you’re not alone. So whoever you are, I hope you got value out of that. I got a lot of value out of recording it. 

Also, you finally got to like hear me cry. I talk about crying a lot on this podcast and like, look, it finally happened!

So there is my gift to both of us on this summer day. 

I’m just sending all of us a lot of love and light and tenderness.