**This week we bring you two essays, so the length is a bit longer. If you receive this newsletter by way of email, it may appear truncated in size. Simply click on "View entire message" and you'll be able to view the entire post.**
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in sobriety is that I can’t do this alone. This gnarly work of recovery. This beautiful journey of discovery. I am so lucky to have found friends who want to roll up their sleeves beside me. Fellow travelers who know what it feels like to seek and wonder and not run from the things that get kicked up on the pathway of recovery.
In the spirit of National Recovery Month, I’ve invited one such friend to join me on the page this week at DARE TO BE. Jennifer Bridgman writes
She braids together the mess and the magic of sober living in a way that smooths out my edges right when they feel ruffled. Jenny is a seeker and wandering wonderer like me. So, of course, it felt right to ask her to contribute and collaborate on this month’s theme of AWE.If you don’t already subscriber to
, go do it. You will know why magic is in the title. Jenny casts a spell with her words.The question we both picked at was:
How does wonder and awe intersect with your recovery?
From
I am in a season of simple. Where the mundane feels magical. This is a photo of my favorite street in my hometown.
I walk it almost every morning. If I time it right, I can catch the sun’s rays beaming down, a streak of light sandwiched between green. A strobe light for my soul. A spotlight that only lasts a few minutes. I hope I never take it for granted.
Cedar, Oak, Maple and Pine far outnumber the homes on this street. I hear the missile call of Blue Jays above. Birds zip line from tree to tree. I get to take in the morning songs and witness the breakfast of worms dangling from beaks. Halfway down the street is a path where I can glimpse into the dog park. Sometimes it’s an early morning happy hour of wagging tails and bouncing ears. A reminder of how easily canines make friends.
None of this is out of the ordinary. Yet, these moments are when I feel most alive. I am more interested in the downloads that hit me when I’m offline. When I’m away from screens and surrounded by trees.
These moments—fleeting yet personally profound—propel me forward, especially when the day ahead of me feels uncertain. Before I wear my day, I lace up my sneakers and head out. Because when I’m out there, I am most in here - in my body.
“None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections will be of any use here: two legs suffice, and big eyes to see with. Walk alone, across mountains or through forests. You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk. But the walker who marvels while walking (the blue of the rocks in a July evening light, the silvery green of olive leaves at noon, the violet morning hills) has no past, no plans, no experience. He has within him the eternal child. While walking I am but a simple gaze.”
― Frédéric Gros - A Philosophy of Walking
Awe isn’t a universal experience. But it does ask something of all of us: openness, receptivity, a willingness to be surprised. Recovery demands that same posture—a readiness to grow, to change, to be inspired. When we stay curious and lean into the unknown, we create space for awe to enter. It’s not always easy to let ourselves be moved, but when we do, the world begins to look different.
I view the world now through a lens of curiosity.
This lens invites and ignites. It feels like the most generous way to meet the world. This kind of awe is quiet. Unassuming. I trace the veins of leaves like they hold a story in each line. Maps embossed in chlorophyll and time. I am just a walker, meeting marvel. One morning at a time.
From
Setting Fire to What No Longer Serves Us
so that freedom, joy + wonder can come dance in the flames
Stick around recovery rooms long enough and you'll likely hear the cautionary tale of "yets"—the dark places a problem drinker will eventually reach if they are to relapse or continue drinking.
Many people like myself first entered the rooms of recovery with a relatively "high bottom." We shuddered at the harsher stories we heard—tales of lost jobs, broken homes, failed marriages, legal woes.
Listen for the commonalities, not the differences, we were told.
But for people like me—the ones with averted eyes and crossed arms who took a seat in the back row, closest to the exit sign—we were looking for a way out, not a way in. It was not a panacea we hoped to find in that room, but proof that we weren't that bad and a permission slip to keep on drinking.
At least, this was my situation. I used the more dire shares as a measuring stick of sorts, one that would reassure me that I didn’t qualify for this caliber of f*cked up. (And also justify my swinging by the liquor store that I couldn’t help but notice on the drive over.)
Secretly, I scoffed at the notion of "yets"—the idea that anytime we heard a share that made us think, Thank God I'm not that bad. I mean, I’ve never done XYZ, that we ought to slap a “yet” on the end of that internal thought.
Meaning, no problem drinker is exempt from serious consequences down the road, should they continue to drink.
I haven't been arrested yet.
I haven't crashed my car yet.
I haven't destroyed my reputation yet.
"Yets" serve to not only underscore the progressive nature of addiction, but also as a reminder that alcohol does not discriminate.
YETS: You're Eligible, Too.
It would take many years (and several trapdoors to my own personal rock bottom) before I became a believer. And no one was more surprised than me—that diligent, disciplined, and determined gal with the high bottom in the back row who'd had herself convinced that she was different.
Like many grateful souls in recovery, it required many painful missteps to discover that I’m just as human as the rest. Alcohol would always maintain the upper hand, so long as I put it to my lips.
Things that had once made me shudder—several of the very ones I’d sworn to never do—eventually became part of my story. I found myself unable to break free from alcohol’s grip despite my best intentions or my worst consequences. Somewhere along the line, life had become a series of bad choices that no longer felt like mine to make.
As Samuel Johnson famously remarked, "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."
Like countless other addicts before me, I began to drop my "yets" one by one.
I drove after drinking.
I humiliated myself at a school function. A wedding. A family vacation.
I lied to my husband about how much I drank.
I hid bottles.
I drank on weeknights, even after promising I would not.
I passed out fully clothed before getting my kids to bed.
I skipped events to stay home alone with my wine if I knew I couldn't drink there.
But perhaps the most haunting "yet" that I eventually had to lose was far quieter, far darker:
I do not hate myself yet.
Because I never realized that saying yes to alcohol was saying no to the life I was meant to live.
I never knew that every time I picked up a drink—whether as a reward or an escape or a bid for connection—I was drowning my own internal spark.
At five years sober, my life looks notably different on the outside, but it’s nothing compared to how the shift feels on the inside. Recovery has led to a whole new internal world—one rife with freedom, joy, and wonder.
I invited myself on a date the other day—something I've started to do often. Since childhood, I’ve required a fair bit of alone time to feel balanced and recharged, but solitude has turned downright sacred in recent years—especially now that being alone no longer scares me the way it did while in early sobriety.
Today, I cherish my own company most of all, and I am not afraid to admit it.
In my mid-forties, I've begun courting myself. I'm swiping right. I'm taking myself out on dates. These started out simple—long hikes and long drives. Trips to the botanical garden. A museum. Now, we are braver. More committed. More public with our love story. Meals. Weekend getaways. Writing workshops. Yoga retreats. And most recently—dancing.
Two weeks ago, I showed up for a full moon ocean dance party. I brought along my most timid and authentic self—the courageous one who has learned to whisper yes above her roar of self-conscious no’s. I arrived sober and shy in a pale pink tulle skirt that begged to be twirled. I donned my headphones, closed my eyes, and settled into my skin, barefoot on the sand of a rather public beach in San Francisco. As the evening progressed, and I allowed myself to surrender further into the movement and meditation and music, I found her—the woman I was always meant to be.
“When I ask you about your first love, I am always secretly hoping that you will say your own name. Now, wouldn’t that be beautiful—to above else have a heart that was proud of itself.” – Bianca Sparacino
I have spent most of my life longing to move, feel, express, create, sing, and dance, yet fear has gripped my shoulders tight, holding me back, and demanding to know just who the hell I think I am.
For decades, I turned to substances to override these fears, which I’d mistaken as flaws, merely adding layers to the paralyzing shame. In a sense, the drinking and drugs worked—except that they didn't. Because the gal who felt brave enough to show up in those experiences was never my authentic self—the one I now invite out to try a new poetry class or meander across meadows or dance barefoot in the sand like no one is watching.
Eventually, I’d become dependent on these substances, believing they held the key to my freedom without ever realizing they’d transformed into my captor.
I’d spent decades subconsciously trying to "fix" myself from the outside in, often blaming my physical body for whatever felt wonky in my life, often punishing it through sweat, starvation, and substance. I turned on my own mind as well, second-guessing my own judgment and having a nasty, non-stop internal dialogue. As a woman, wife, and mother in my thirties and early forties, I found myself constantly overwhelmed yet continually overcommitting and overriding my own needs, as though my life and worth depended on the daily hustle. Behind my pretty and polite exterior were oceans of secrets, resentments, and pain that even I was too afraid to cross.
There was always joy, too. Tremendous joy, golden and plentiful, spilling over the edge of my cup as a wife and mother. Yet shame will tell us funny things about how much wonder, delight, and love we are allowed, even when it's giggling on our hip or holding our hand or sharing our pillow. I never stopped believing in good things waiting just around the corner, but by mid-life—utterly attached to the bottle and utterly detached from my own self—I reserved my expectations of goodness mainly for my children. The best of my days had already come and gone, I'd subconsciously believed.
At five years sober, I am learning to reclaim joy and wonder. Not delicate, tidy bites with a folded napkin in my lap. But fistfuls and mouthfuls, with crumbs on my shirt and juice dribbling down my chin. It has taken time, work, and massive rewiring, but I am learning to replace that napkin with a bib. Because life is delicious, and it's time for me to start savoring my fair share.
So, what has it been like to court myself in mid-life?
I am learning it is safe to be me.
I am learning to go inward for answers, to remain soft when life turns hard, and that slower is always the fastest route to my better path.
After years of declining life’s invitations, I'm learning to say "yes" as much as possible—especially when it is my inner wild child, begging to head to a playground just beyond our comfort zone.
Two weeks ago, as the sun winked its brilliant farewell and dipped beneath the horizon, I felt my shoulders unhitch and the last bits of my fortress walls crumble. I held nothing—no phone, no shoes, no expectations, no regrets. With two feet in the sand, I began to soar.
It had been a long while since I’d stood on the shoreline and allowed myself to close my eyes. Since becoming a mother, I have rarely visited the ocean without my children. And in motherhood, the sizable frothy-green waves of the Pacific Ocean had offered undercurrents of anxiety, not peace. Every time my three sons entered the water, my nervous system sprang into high alert. Counting heads. Straining to decipher every scream, cry, and laugh over the loud waves. For fifteen years, ever since my husband’s paralyzing accident, I’ve been stationed alone on the shore without my backup lifeguard beside me. The beach has changed for us both in many ways; it has been hard to enjoy something that my husband no longer can. For years, I’ve been wondering if the shore has lost some magic for me.
But two weeks ago, as the sun set and the full moon glowed, I remembered my place beside the ocean. There was no one to watch over. No one to worry about. Just me. Not young, not old. Just flesh and bone, heart and soul, with nowhere else I longed to be. My mind slowed—thoughts blowing in, blowing out. The waves crashed, beckoning me, until the water lapped at my ankles. The mist rolled in, and I forgot to worry about my frizzy hair. I lifted my hands to the sky as if to give thanks, and I forgot to notice if anyone was watching. I grinned and wept in the same moment, and I forgot to fret over deepening crow’s feet and my runny, pink nose. I moved and bounced and took deep belly breaths, forgetting to care if my thighs jiggled and my stomach protruded. I was utterly in the moment, in my body. And I was safe.
I closed my eyes and saw the world. I spun and swayed my hips to the beat of my own heart-drum, feeling at one with the Earth, the Moon, and the endless sky.
I am wild.
I am free.
I am a mother.
I am a daughter.
I am a dancer.
I am alive.
At this last thought, my eyes flung open, as if seeing the world anew.
“I. am. alive,” I whispered aloud, not bothering to suppress the smile on my lips.
The reality is that we are all miracles. Each of us defied tremendous odds to come into this world. Some lives are quite long—till our faces become lined, our backs turn crooked, and our feet slow to shuffles—but even those lifespans are mere blips on the master calendar of the universe.
How often do we forget the magic of life on this tiny but mighty, magical little green and blue planet, spinning around its own axis, orbiting around our closest star?
I spent a lifetime missing the magic right before my eyes. Failing to notice the winking sun and glowing moon, even as they warmed my days and witnessed my nights.
Very few of us walk this earth cognizant of the fact that the human body is composed of billions of atoms, most of which were formed in ancient stars. Like Mother Earth, we are made of elements. The same elements in each of us, regardless of tongue or temple, clothing or country. Yet, we continue to look around our world, our states, our neighborhood streets, and see our differences, not our similarities. How easily we forget that all humans are made of bones and blood, tissue and organs, oxygen and water—and every one of us searching for love, safety, and belonging.
Sobriety has become one long bridge, connecting me to diverse experiences, faiths, ideas, beliefs, people, and lands. Nothing has expanded my world more, yet at the same time, shown me how small it can feel when I remember our shared humanity.
The most surprising gift of all is that this long bridge has led me back to the home within myself. After a lifetime searching for refuge and adoration outside of myself, I finally see that I am the one I’ve been waiting for.
Do I have some regrets?
No, I do not believe so. Not when I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Not after I’ve been given the chance to fall in love with life again. Not when I’ve rebuilt my own life from the ground up by design.
Because when we set fire to what no longer serves us, we invite freedom, wonder, and joy to come dance in the flames.
Today, I am comfortable having more questions than answers, but the one thing I no longer question is my “x” on life’s ever-changing map.
I trust the universe, and I trust me.
Today, my “yets” are no longer yellow cautionary tape or blaring alarms to keep me in line and on my toes; they now serve a far different purpose—they are guideposts toward joy.
They are whispers of delights, just waiting around the bend. They are the kindling to my inner-lit life. They are what lull me from sleep at four a.m. and cause the hours to fly by. My dreams are no longer tumbleweeds, blowing by silently. They are now “yets” waiting to unfold. And I believe I am worthy of them. The list is lengthy—things I will accomplish, places I long to visit, new passions I aim to explore, more ways I want to play.
As quoted by author and business coach Dan Sullivan, “Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”
Five years ago, this thought would have terrified me. It would have soured my stomach and torn me apart because I was living in a way that my insides rarely matched my outsides.
Today, I am the same woman in every room that I enter. I no longer have to worry about meeting this “could have been” version of myself, for I have the chance to witness her daily. To court her. To swipe right.
Mid-life is turning out to be a fabulous time to start dating oneself again—and as luck would have it, fall in love like never before.
“Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.”
To learn more about Jennifer, visit her website here
TELL US:
Where do you feel most in rhythm with wonder?
Have you ever taken yourself out on a date? If you dared to, where would it be?
What are your “yets” waiting to unfold?
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Allison—I loved reading your shared experience. I also feel so alive and connected by movement, notably yoga. I’m just a walker and a mover too trying to find my way free of judgment and anchored in authenticity. I remind myself over and over again in every aspect of my life, be it law practice, motherhood, yoga practice or anything really, that done is better than good. If I can remember it, (not always easy lol) I also assure myself that perfection is the enemy of the good.
Allison & Jennifer - WOW!!! This beautiful combined essay hit home in so many ways. Sometimes I just want to forget about my drinking days, and sometimes I need reminders... reminders of the "yets." I know deep down in my heart that I was VERY close to some "yets" that would've been painful and most likely devastating. I am incredibly grateful that I chose to put down the drink before the unthinkable happened. Sure, there are memories in my last dark days that will unfortunately stay with my forever, but those memories fade a bit as I experience the new "yets," the joyful ones. In fact, I just saw a Facebook post yesterday of a friend in the Fingerlakes enjoying the wine. My 2 trips to the Fingerlakes were amazing, and I really, really liked the wine there. For a moment, I wished I could go back there, sample all the wine again. But then I have opportunities to read essays like this one, and I'm reminded of the joys of sobriety... the simple awes in nature, the experiences with my family that won't be clouded, learning how to be with myself and actually enjoy some alone time. Allison, I walk along a street similar to the one you pictured, and I love when I see the sun's rays shining through the trees. I also love how you phrased it - "a streak of light sandwiched between green." One last comment... when thinking about where I'd like to take myself on a date, the answer is to the beach. I've never driven to the beach by myself (takes about 3-4 hours from where I live), and I really want to do it! Maybe my 3 year soberversary in November would be a good time to tackle that "yet." :)