Love

---

My husband and I went on one of our walks Monday morning, getting a later start and moving slower than usual after spending 12+ hours in the car the previous day, and five whole days in the Central time zone prior to that. We’d both taken an additional day off to recover from our annual Midwestern vacation — and to celebrate another recovery milestone.

July 7 was my six-year sober anniversary.

This, naturally, was the topic of discussion as the two of us set off for our local state park, slogging through oppressive heat and soupy humidity, each carrying a hand towel to wipe sweat and shoo bugs.

I admitted to feeling kind of numb, or neutral, about the day, as I typically do about these “big” days. After six years, alcohol-free living is just regular old life. No big deal. But I was curious what he thought, since our lives are intertwined, and of all my loved ones, he’s the one who’s been with me the whole time in the trenches of addiction and recovery. He goes to 12-step meetings and therapy and really “gets” what’s going on.

“It’s impressive to me,” he said, swatting his towel at buzzing sounds in the air around his head, “because I think about how hard it is to do something consistently every day for six years.”

Is it? I’ve always been a determined and disciplined person for whom “hard” things seemed like requirements if they led to my chosen goal. Sadly, in my transition from adolescence to adulthood, the “goal” I chose was, “check out of reality by any means necessary,” and no one can deny I went HAM in chasing that for 20 years! 😳

---

I’m a creature of habit who’ll go to seemingly outlandish lengths to maintain my routine or perform tasks I’ve deemed a priority — hello; I’m up at 2AM on a Saturday so I can write and hopefully get a run in before it gets too hot! So, really, the same “addictive personality” that drove me into alcoholism makes staying sober almost second nature. I chose to switch my train from one track (headed for disaster) to another (headed for who-knows-what) back on 7/7/19. And once I got chugging along in recovery, it never felt like an option to switch back, and the stakes felt too high for me to derail and crash. 🤷🏼‍♀️

My mom sent me an anniversary text (see below) on Monday afternoon that sums this up perfectly. You can tell she truly knows me and and has invested time and energy into “getting it,” too:

---

Walking with JP, then reading Mom’s note, it hit me: the “secret to my success” over these six years is… love! I’ve been brave enough to venture out on this sober path and face the terrifying uncertainty of raw, real life, sans security blanket/suit of armor, then keep going when the realness and rawness started to hurt — as they do — because I always felt deeply secure in being loved.

It takes tremendous courage to kick an addiction, to be willing to deal with all the mental health issues you’ve been self-medicating all your life and to be open to doing things differently, rather than running on autopilot or reverting back to old familiar patterns that feel safe. It takes great discipline to keep handling whatever life throws at you, managing the day-to-day discomfort of being alive and being around people, without just saying “f*ck it” and giving in to the lure of easy escape.

(If you are out there doing that right now, I see and celebrate you! 👀🎉)

It was possible for me to rise to this challenge, to attempt to fly despite the risk and fear of falling, and to put my innate character traits to good use, because I was pushing off from a rock-solid foundation. Without the unwavering support of my family, particularly my hubby and mom, I have to think I’d be writing a completely different story.

---

If you’ve been following this story for a while, you might remember that my mom was with me — arguing with me, actually — in the miraculous moment when I finally acknowledged the truth. It had been obvious to everyone in the universe but me, and Mom was the rare soul who loved me enough to actually point it out, even if it started a fight.

We were standing on the back porch of my childhood home in Illinois, a few days before the 4th of July, and it was happening again: me, drunk at 11AM, and her, protesting this tired (and very unfunny) Groundhog Day routine.

Something came over me there that I still can’t explain.

Must’ve been love?

“I know I have a problem, Mom, and I know I have to quit,” I said, tension melting from my battle-ready body and tears of relief beginning to flow.

“…but I’m so scared.”

She didn’t say anything — which, if you know her, is a miracle in itself! 😂 — and just stepped forward to wrap me in a hug. We both cried for a while. And that was that. In that moment, I knew I could do this, could live without alcohol, and no matter how hard it got, I would be OK.

Flash forward about a week, back in PA, and my husband sat right next to me in a church basement — it was a “closed” meeting, but what the hell did we know? 😂 — as this terrified AA newcomer stood up, sweating profusely, looked upon the floor and said the words.

Father. Smith. Warrior. Mother. Maiden. Crone…just kidding. Random pop culture brain infarct. Sorry.

But more than just being there and helping me feel safe enough in a room full of Strangers (😉) to confess my alcoholism and ask for help, JP came home with me to a dry house, having delivered our last drops of booze to the neighbors or down the drain. And he, despite being a total normie endowed with next-level self-control, hasn’t sipped a drop of alcohol around me since that day…not even on a beautiful summer holiday afternoon at Wrigley Field when the Cubs are blasting bombs faster than I can shade the diamonds on my scorecard, beer vendors are relentlessly swarming our section from pregame to long past the old 7th-inning cutoff, and joyful fans all around us are partying hard with their Surfsides ($14) Goose Islands ($18), and frozen daiquiris (national debt).

That is love.

---

Being back home with my family of origin reminds me how complicated love can be. It’s caring deeply about people who you also resent, reveling in their goofy personalities and endearing quirks while also finding them annoying af, and missing them while thanking God you live far away, but aching with the knowledge that they won’t be here forever. It’s being in familiar places that both feel exactly the same and somehow irreparably changed, and yearning and grieving for times gone by and a version of reality that’s lost forever while filling your heart with the beauty and preciousness of the present.

These days, it’s feeling all that big stuff and staying put, rather than numbing out, because I’m finally grown-up enough to handle it.

Well, sort of. I mean, loving people is still really hard for me, tuned in as I am to every tiny detail and subtle vibration in my environment and wired as I am toward hyper vigilance and self-protection. These are the aspects of my nature — high sensitivity and high anxiety — that conspired to destroy me via addiction and eating disorders and made relationships a mystifying challenge I’d rather avoid than try to muddle through.

It makes sense that I would instinctively keep my distance from people, given my desperate need to feel in control and create a sense of safety and certainty for my jacked-up nervous system, combined with my heightened awareness of other folks’ chaotic energy — “Their eyebrow twitched! That’s it! They hate me!” 🙄 “They smiled at me! Oh shit! How soon before they realize I’m not worthy?” 😱

It makes sense that I would end up seeking connection, and ultimately oblivion, in a liquor bottle, because one just can’t avoid people and live in society. Plus, underneath all my antisocial neuroses, I am truly a loving person — or, as my mom says, “a good heart.” I have always possessed deep empathy for other humans and wished for “all those still sick and suffering” everywhere to feel better, find peace. Be loved.

Makes it really tough to be alive, in general, but especially right now! 😢

---

I guess, though, that this is what moved me to use my “second chance” at life to become a therapist. Recovery has opened my mind and heart, unleashed the authentic, loving human I’d guarded so tightly in that alcoholic suit of armor, and freed up so much dormant, wasted capacity that I can finally harness, channel and use my gifts as an HSP empath, with so much wisdom gained from life experience, for good.

I’m courageous enough, deep down, but there’s no way in hell I would have felt empowered to do the work I’m doing if I hadn’t already done the one-day-at-a-time work of getting sober.

Recovery taught me that a meaningful life requires a willingness to engage with the raw, real, vulnerable and painful business of living, which necessary involves engaging with other people. It reminded me that I have the determination, discipline, resilience and hopefulness to stay the course when the road gets rough and everything starts to hurt.

It also reminded me, and continues to remind me, that I am not alone on this road. My addiction dragged my dear loved ones into some very dark places — did I mention that it was my mom I called the one time I was thinking about ending my life? Or that JP came and rescued me when I could have ended someone else’s life, trying to drive myself home, blind drunk, from a bar in Princeton? — but they never abandoned me. They were right there to lift me up when I finally surrendered, said the words, asked for help. And here they still are, even though being around Sober Jen isn’t always a picnic or day at the ballpark!

So, I dedicate six sober years to the boundless love that makes this bold life possible. I’ve always been much better at writing in isolation than conversing IRL, so I hope this post gives you folks an inkling of how much I love you back! 🥰