Author: jenwielgusjournalism

Follow me on Threads and Bluesky @jenwielgus!
sober lifestyle

Temperature

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📍: Bolton Valley Resort in the Green Mountains of Vermont 🏔️

Get you a partner who loves all your favorite activities…and isn’t the least bit fazed by single-digit temps when it’s time to go out and be active.

It was 3 degrees in the sun when we hit the slopes for our annual ski trip — first time in New England; woo! Different world!— and my husband took his hands out of his gloves multiple times to snap us some pics. No cell phone camera could do justice to the breathtaking majesty of the winter landscape we beheld at Bolton Valley Resort, but you can at least tell by the icicles in our hair that I’m not kidding about the cold.

J-P and I have never been ones to let something silly like “extremes conditions” keep us from enjoying our outdoor adventures. (See past posts from Elk Mountain, PA, and Ithaca, NY.)

It took me two weeks to get around to writing this reflection, and the weather here in suburban Philly today (Valentine’s Day) is positively balmy compared to what we were dealing in late January.

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sober lifestyle

Christmas

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I felt so seen when I saw this…Threads, you are a gift that keeps on giving the whole year! 🎁

“I feel like a melting snowman,” I told my husband en route from my parents’ house in Morton Grove to my sister’s in Evanston, as we made the rounds on the day after Christmas, saying our final goodbyes before heading back east.

That was my best attempt to explain to him why I’d spent pretty much the entire trip crying, triggered by everything from the refugee snakes in “Zootopia 2,” to the beautifully “woke” sermon at Christmas Eve service in my childhood church, to the tiny Cinderella onesie and baby Yankees beanie in my sister’s pile of gifts (new niece due in March; her dad’s from New York 😉), to lamenting current events with my mom, our family’s OG “radical left scum,” to random sentimental songs on Holly, or Jolly, satellite radio stations, to the usual memories of Christmases past and loved ones lost…

J-P and I have been married 18 years, so he’s used to my high sensitivity and seeing me “emote,” as he puts it, but this was…extra. I couldn’t hope to make him understand when I didn’t totally get it myself, but now that we’re back in Bucks County — as the calendar turns to 2026, I’ve now lived in Pennsylvania longer than I did in Illinois 😳 — my whole “thawing out” analogy makes much more sense.

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sober lifestyle

Thanksgiving

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Scenes from the past week in my Bucks County, PA neighborhood

I spent about five total hours celebrating Thanksgiving this year — three at the gathering, one in the car each way — but that’s all it took. A short break from routine. A quick scenery change. One step off the beaten path —> a much-needed shift in perspective.

I guess it’s like the iconic Leonard Cohen lyric, about the cracks being where the light gets in? My protective instincts have always worked really hard to seal those cracks, to shut out the unknown/uncontrollable — so, basically the entire outside world — in an attempt to keep me “safe” from pain. If I let them run on autopilot for too long, I can find myself shut away in an airtight vault where sameness passes for certainty, numbness feels like home, and my whole purpose for quitting drinking gets lost in the dark.

Don’t get me wrong; it feels delightful inside the vault; I mean, what sane human really wants to face raw, unadulterated reality — especially (*looks around at America*) right now? Alas, I made the decision to “sign up for life” by saying no to booze, then went and pushed my chips forward into a helping profession, so I’ve got no choice but to snap out of my avoidance utopia if I am going to live/help….and continue to grow.

“Why? I’m so much happier here…” 😵‍💫
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sober lifestyle

Trouble

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I was desperate to get to my class, but every path I tried was blocked, so I ended up cutting through the pool — as in, a fully-clothed plunge and doggy-paddle — and climbing a steep staircase around the natatorium rafters to a window, where the only option appeared to be wriggling under an open crack. And just as I was about to shove my head between pane and sill, like Wendy Torrance clambering to escape the Overlook Hotel bathroom, a loud voice boomed over the PA system, dripping with contempt:

“JENNIFER WIELGUS, GO IMMEDIATELY TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE. YOU ARE BEING EXPELLED.”

It was then that I realized…this wasn’t real! I could just open my eyes and be free! 😅 Relief was followed by bewilderment, which quickly turned to frustration.

“Damn! WTF! Why does my brain hate me?!?!”

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sober lifestyle

Liberation

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L: April 2018 – 40 years old; R: August 2025 – 47.

I’m six years (plus three months) sober, but still a big Avoider, and after experiencing all the ways this personality type can harm a person over the past 40+ years, I think I finally found one way that it helps.

I stopped looking in the mirror.

OK, so it’s kinda hard to make that claim, after I clearly invested time in assembling the attached collage ⬆️. That is me, standing at the mirror in our master bathroom, and the “After” selfie was snapped only a few months ago. I’m not sure it’s the best way to illustrate the point I’m trying to make, nor am I sure exactly how to explain the miraculous transformation that’s happened from L to R.

But I can tell you it has nothing to do with my weight.

You’ll just have to trust me when I say: I’ve adopted an “ignorance is bliss” mentality toward my appearance that’s been a total f^cking game-changer. I feel as “recovered” as one can from a disordered relationship with eating and exercise, and more comfortable in my skin than I ever dreamed possible.

I truly have quit body-checking, beyond a quick last glance on business days before I leave for work. This is really a preemptive courtesy to my clients, given my tendency to “save some for later” when I eat spinach, not to mention my rough touch with the mascara brush….

Can’t hold a safe, therapeutic space for folks to let their guard down when you’re out here looking like Elaine after a 6-hour schvitz!
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sober lifestyle

Interruption

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I didn’t realize how hard it had been raining until we finished hiking one gorge (Taughannock Falls; pictured above) and got in the car to head to the next (Ithaca Falls; see below). I plopped into the passenger seat, and all at once, I was forced to feel my soggy jacket and leggings clinging to my limbs, my soaked hat/hood weighing heavy on my head, and my tangled hair clumped against my neck.

For the previous two hours, I’d been completely unbothered, my personality split off to its “pleasant” side as my three favorite elements of the universe — my partner, nature and movement — converged in/around one gargantuan hole in the Earth. I found myself feeling grateful for the weather, because despite it being a Saturday morning at a high-traffic tourist attraction, my husband and I barely encountered any other humans on the trails. It was a cleansing rain, from that point of view, washing away both the residue of the week and the weight of the world.

But then, we stopped, and sat stewing in our respective puddles, and I felt my mood instantly turn irritable. Every inch of my body was antsy, to either get where we were going, stat, so I could move again, or get on back to our AirBNB so I could change into cozy pajamas, stuff (burn) my mouth with freshly-baked frozen pizza, and dissociate to Netflix by the fire.

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sober lifestyle

Weirdness

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“What were you just cackling about?” my husband asked as he entered my lair, aka our bedroom, where I was hunkered down behind the blackout blinds at 4PM on a beautiful summer Friday, looking like Charlie in “Always Sunny” writing his Dayman song.

No, I wasn’t in there huffing paint, but I had just popped a melatonin gummy and settled into my usual routine: burrowing into bed, flipping on one of my crimey comfort shows, and scrolling Instagram to numb out after another week white-knuckling it as a mental health professional who’s not exactly, like, the gold standard of mental health herself.

I squinted at his silhouette, backlit by “Law & Order,” as my foggy brain sputtered (*old school computer noises*) to translate silly —> sane. The man I married is a “normie” in every sense of the word, and bless him, after two decades together, he continues to seek logical explanations for inexplicable phenomena — such as, WTF I am doing or saying and why.

“Uhhh…” I stalled, swiping at my screen. I tossed him the phone. “This?” 👀⬇️

😂😂😂😂😂😂
Source: @kindminds_smarthearts
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sober lifestyle

Art

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A window into the mind of an 80s kid, shaped by Disney, Kenner, MGM and heteronormativity! 🙃 (No idea why poor Toto’s down there looking like Jesse from “Family Guy”…)

On a recent trip back west to visit the parents, my dad went digging in a remote corner of an upstairs closet and produced a bunch of laminated drawings he and Mom had saved from my glory days as a pint-sized art prodigy. 🤣

These prize-winning works are legendary in our family, but not so much for the content as the controversy. Supposedly, the panel of judges at the Morton Grove Library were so enamored with the childish scrawlings I entered in their kiddie art contest every year that they basically rubber-stamped the blue ribbon on everything bearing my name. My dominance so aggrieved some other kid’s mom that she asked them to ban me so her little Picasso would have a chance. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Not to worry, though; my head never gets a chance to swell much before Dad busts out some or other cringey writing project from that era, like my “children’s series” featuring anthropomorphic insects/animals. Somehow, the stories always seemed to cut off before I could come up with an acceptable ending — I apparently was fond of the “it was all a dream” plot device — but each book had a complete “about the author” bio listing all my elementary school accomplishments. 😬

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