My Greatest Comeback
It doesn’t take much more than being a deeply feeling person with some painful history and an anxiety-prone wiring to discover the momentary benefits of numbing out. I was 14 when I got my first taste of what it meant to put my overactive mind on the shelf for a while.
Add my authentic love of celebration and ritual into the mix and fast forward many years to find a person caught in that all too common trap of habit where “let’s have a glass of wine with dinner” becomes “I can’t have dinner without a glass of wine”.
Then throw a heartbreak into the mix and… well, you find you’ve accidentally become the one Alanis Morissette’s muse is spelling out in ‘Reasons I Drink’.
I had a healthy relationship find me, the man who is now my husband, and still he wasn’t getting the very clearest me for a while…because the clear me could only be uncovered once I felt safe enough to emerge from under my rock and learn how to relax. To settle into the idea that I was in a trusting environment. And to appreciate what it meant to treat myself right, for the greater good of all my relationships.
A friend told me that he was transformed by Annie Grace’s book ‘This Naked Mind’ and that he found himself suddenly golfing without the cocktails and finding peace in just being. It took me years to buy that book, but when I was finally ready, I did, and I can’t thank Annie enough for the perspective she so effectively communicates and the impact her words have had on my life.
Finally, they say you are your friends… peer influence is real. In the end, I think it was the courageous act of my friend Lisa to challenge herself by going a year without drinking, and the transformation I watched her go through as she brought that deep discipline to her life that inspired me to say yes to seeking my own peace. To seeking new routine, to committing to a new kind of inner safety. To clearing the cobwebs. And I have.
Everyone has their own definition of success. For me, any successes I am now experiencing in my career or marriage are in direct relationship to my capacity to trust in myself to make the right choices. Like Lisa says, when trust is lost, you can work forever trying to change a habit, but change won’t hold.
So Johnny and I have a general discipline in place that consists of not drinking during the week, and then whipping up some cosmos on a Friday night. I’m glad I have found in myself the capacity to consume, and then not to, while still getting to allow my celebratory, party-loving spirit to get its chance to let loose. It’s all in the coming back. The ability to come back reveals the sweet nectar of a balanced life.
In truth, I think my greatest comeback has been a comeback to myself… and I’m wishing you strength in achieving whatever comeback you may be working toward within yourself.
Your friend in earthly lessons,
Sherry
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Photo and digital manipulation by Johnny 🌈
