When you’re sitting in a twelve step meeting and you announce a new milestone in your clean time you are inevitably asked the question, “how’d you do it?”.
When I celebrated my one year mark and was asked the question, my answer started off with telling them some days I wasn’t quite sure how I did it. To me sometimes the “how” doesn’t really matter, what matters is that I did it. What matters is that I am sitting here today being a living testimony to myself and others that a whole new life without drugs and alcohol is possible, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
Breaking down the “how” further it really comes down to one word, change. Without change in your life all you have is abstinence, and it’s inevitable you won’t have that for long if you are not willing to truly sit with yourself and look at what addiction has done to your whole self. For me, this life of recovery has to be so much more than just not getting high.
The first place I had to start with was changing how I viewed myself. When I looked in the mirror at the reflection staring back at me I would quickly look away in disapproval after I had picked apart all my flaws and imperfections. If I couldn’t learn to look in the mirror and treat the woman looking back at me with love, acceptance, and compassion I was going to be stuck in the old behavior of seeking that love and acceptance and validation from outside sources. That destructive pattern played such a huge role in the very beginning of getting me to where I was in the first place.
So I began to write positive affirmations on sticky notes and sticking them all over my mirror that I looked into every single day. Now, I am fully aware that simply repeating positive affirmations wasn’t going to change my life, but when I looked into the mirror and saw the acne or the crooked teeth and began to critique myself I would also see those sticky notes reminding me that I am beautiful. I am worthy of love, I am resilient. I am powerful. I am enough. Seeing those would quickly send my negative thoughts on a detour and bring those positive reinforcements to the front of my thoughts. Eventually I got to the point where the first thoughts when I looked in the mirror were no longer negative, I could look at myself and see beauty, strength, confidence, and love. The most important part about that is for the first time in my life I could truly see that myself. I didn’t need anyone else to show that to me.
That simple change of how I viewed my own reflection turned into a domino effect for so many more positive changes that followed. Once I changed the narrative of how I viewed myself that began to reflect in how I carried myself and presented myself. I no longer felt the need to wear all the makeup, or make sure my hair was perfect, or need to wear attention grabbing outfits, because I had learned to not need that negative attention or validation from those around me. I began walking with my head held a little higher, my back a little straighter, I could look others in the eye. All of these things came from the one simple first step of loving and respecting myself.
Throughout this process I made so many other small and simple changes that had an immense impact on how my life improved. I changed the people I allowed access to me and my life. I deleted all of my social media accounts, changed my phone number, and purged my phone of pictures, apps, contacts, and anything that had a connection to the life I had been living before I got clean and sober. This took away so many outside negative influences. I no longer cared how many likes a picture got. I wasn’t wasting my time scrolling through my boyfriend’s posts to see if any women liked it and driving myself crazy over nothing. I wasn’t scrolling through a constant feed of other people’s problems and drama. I wasn’t comparing my real life to other people’s highlight reels and allowing myself to feel less than. Nobody that I didn’t willingly give my information to could no longer reach out to me. I no longer have my energy being drained on anything that is not serving this new life I have worked so hard to create.
I had a vision. I wanted to become a woman with class, grace, courage, confidence, and humility. I began repeating that on a daily basis during the times I would really sit with myself and meditate on what I wanted to make of this new life.
There were so many words I used to describe myself for 15 years of my life. Today those words have changed full circle. Today I am honest. I am caring. I am confident. I am resilient. I am beautiful. I am humble. I am healing. I am growing. I didn’t change because someone forced me to. I didn’t change because I had no other options. I changed because there was a day that I made the decision that this was not the life I wanted to live anymore. I changed because there was a day that I said this is not the kind of person I am willing to pretend to be anymore. I changed because I chose to. That is one of the most beautiful aspects of this new life.
Today I have choices. Today I have the choice to make this life as beautiful as I want it to be. Today I choose to wake up and be a better person than I was the day before. If I continue to choose that every morning I wake up, growth and beauty is inevitable.
