I’ve kept no secrets about how difficult the last year has been for me after a miscarriage, separation, and uncertainty of a marriage. And oh yes I am a severe codependent recovering from addiction with little idea how to love myself without external validation.
            The reality of the human condition is this; pain is inevitable, suffering IS more avoidable.  But no matter how much I read, write, pray, meditate, work a program, yadayada, the fact of the matter is I’ve had to process feelings.  And sometimes, there is nothing to do but feel horrible or cry my face off.  Before recovery, I would wake up dreading the actions of the night before.  Now I wake up with a terrible lump in my throat like “Oh yeah, this is my reality today and it’s nothing like what I envisioned.” And yes I can write gratitude lists and tell myself it will get better, but there are very few things I have found to do in an instant that can shift my mood like being of service to others.  One of the most amazing gifts of being in such prolonged emotional pain is the ridiculous amount of compassion you develop towards others. Being of service is the single most efficient way to get out of our own minds while positively impacting others.  Is this not a total win/win??!! When people hear “service to others” they think volunteering at a shelter or donating clothes and food to a local center, but the truth is we can be of service over and over throughout our day, every day.  So to jumpstart you in vibrating at a higher frequency tomorrow, I have started a very basic list of ways you can be of service to others, IMMEDIATELY:

1. Call someone you know who has been struggling and tell them you have been thinking of them and wondering how they are.  If you are limited time wise, call hands-free from the car or just explain at the beginning of the call that you only have a few minutes but needed to reach out.  Here is the key, JUST LISTEN TO THEM, don’t try to fix ANYTHING.  Just hold a safe space for them to feel their feelings.
2. SMILE at a perfect stranger today.  In fact, lets get crazy, see how many perfect strangers you can look in the eye and smile at in one day! Need to be held accountable? Make it a contest with a friend!
3. TEXT someone that you love them.
4. Hold a door for someone or let a car out in traffic.
5. Give your hard working lunch or dinner server a few extra bucks.  Chances are they may need it more than you!
6. Keep blank note cards around the house and write to someone about how special they are. Snail mail can be a nice surprise these days. Seriously, just do it and see how good you feel when you drop it in the mail…
7. Compliment someone!! Why not tell EVERY PERSON you encounter today something positive about them from a smile, to the shoes they are wearing, to the way they handled a particular situation.
8. Choose NOT to forward a negative Facebook post so your followers can avoid one additional negative vibe in their day.
9. If someone engages you in gossip, bring the conversation somewhere else, JUST FOR TODAY.  Don’t let someone be spoken of today if they aren’t there to present their side or defend themselves!
10. And when all else fails, just stop in the moment of suffering and ask the universe, "How can I be of service in this moment?" Something WILL come to you!

RealYou Revolution, LLC. is New England's premier resource for cutting edge                                                     substance use disorder services.

     Advanced Intervention - Recovery Coaching - Family Support Services 
                  Case Management -Sober Companions - DUI/OUI Support 
            Self Esteem Development - Anxiety Management Management 

Over the last six months I have been a bit more in the shadows than usual.  There have been very few blogs, minimal speaking engagements, and no boasting about random accolades.  I’ve been prepared to write this post when the time was right, and it feels like now.  There are a lot of things about recovery that we don’t really give thought to when we are hanging on in the very beginning.  For me, this journey has been about unpeeling all the layers of BS and learning who I am, what I love, and what my sacred contract on this particular journey is all about. 
            After nearly two years of sobriety this past spring, I was blessed with the gift of a new life in my belly.  I always planned on having a family.  I mean, that’s what people do…get a job, make money, get married, have kids and live happily ever after…right?  It didn’t work out that smoothly, at least for me.  Once I found out I was pregnant I was devastated.  It occurred to me that I was doing this for my husband who had been nothing but loving and supportive over the last 10 years, especially through my early recovery.  There was SO MUCH shame for me, hating myself for being sober and STILL not recognizing my truth. How was I not “farther along??”  Then there was the guilt of “ruining my husband’s life” not just by being an alcoholic, but also now to tell him that I didn’t feel ready for a family, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be married. It was horrible on so many levels.
            We went through 11 weeks of highs, lows, therapy, and lots of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.  Seeing and hearing the heartbeat at the first ultrasound was surreal but I could tell the technician was uneasy and that something wasn’t right.  They brought us into a room and told us that the levels were not where they should be and that we would need to return in one week.  There had been a whole lot of soul searching up to that point and my husband and I could both see the writing on the wall if this pregnancy didn’t make it.  A week later there was no heartbeat and a month after that I moved into an apartment alone.
            When dealing with addiction many people have to hit rock bottom and lose everything.  Today with so much more awareness just as many people don’t.  I hadn’t lost everything. But when you spend your whole life building up a story on a false foundation, there is a daunting amount of work that has to go into deconstructing, in the hopes of one day building again on a healthy foundation.  There were so many days romanticizing my addictive behaviors of partying and obsessive working.  “None of this would be my reality if I stayed in the fog.” But the truth is, there IS no reality in the fog.
            There would months of waking up in the morning and praying for the universe to help me put one foot in front of the other and to stay away from distractions of any kind.  I turned down offers this summer for roles and opportunities that would have brought my ego a lot of satisfaction.  I got sober to stop reaching outward for inner peace in ANY way, not just with substances.  The time had come to go inside.  So I have gone inside, and I am there…in the pit, where the knitty gritty work has to be done.  And its haaaaaaard.  It’s lonely.  It’s painful.  It’s inconsistent.  But I am recognizing that in this pit is where I have to go to live a truly free and genuine life.
            One day in the car a few months ago I asked my husband (he knew I was sharing all of this as its partially his story to tell) what he thought would happen with us and he said he honestly had no idea.  As far as what my life looks like one year from now, I too, have no idea.  But I am grateful that I have stayed present to walk through this with clarity and honesty.  This post isn’t about sympathy or attention.  It’s about transparency.  My professional bio paints the picture of “perfection” and “awesomeness” in sobriety, however THIS period has been about having the courage to let go of what my story is going to look like and how I think it needs to be.

 RealYou Revolution, LLC. is New England's premier resource for cutting edge                                                     substance use disorder services.

     Advanced Intervention - Recovery Coaches - Family Support Services 
                  Case Management -Sober Companions - DUI/OUI Support 
            Self Esteem Development - Anxiety Management Management 

For an addict (I use this term to include alcoholic), feeling our feelings is a critical component to dealing with addiction and recovering from addiction.  It is important to understand that someone who has been numbing their feelings for years is going to go through a phase in early recovery where they begin to feel feelings for the first time, and it’s typically a scary and unpleasant experience.  I remember hitting about the four-month mark crying on the phone with a woman in the program telling her I would rather be trashed every day of my life then feel the way I did at that moment.  Everything I had avoided dealing with was coming out of my cells, pains and struggles I had stuffed down for over 15 years.

 Another important piece in understanding addiction is that the addict essentially stops growing emotionally around the time they first started using drugs and/or alcohol. For many of us the path started with pot or drugs as early as 12 or 13.  This applies to anyone and everyone recovering from addiction whether 15 or 50.  So recognize that now you have this person who has stopped the addictive behaviors but has started to have some uncomfortable feelings come up, who has the ability to deal with such issues on the same level as a teenager or preteen.  This is why as many support systems as we can put in place are critical to the recovery process.  Meetings, sober peers, therapists, recovery coaches, it doesn’t take one or two of these but ALL of these to increase the chances of success and long-term sobriety or the ability to bounce back quickly from a slip.

            Even after a significant amount of time in recovery, having feelings come up is risky.  The addict wants to instantly “fix” the feelings and have control over numbing them or making them go away.  So aside from the initial support systems a person must develop the proper coping skills that work for him or her. This even applies to physical feelings… I know every time I got sick in early recovery I wanted to drink because in the end that was what I did to feel better.  A person cannot simply be told what works for them, they have to learn to develop and understand these coping mechanisms as they see fit for themselves. The key to feeling negative feelings is not to sit in the pain to sulk and stay depressed; it is to process through these feelings until they have left us.  Taking a line from the wonderful Pema Chodron: “ The best thing you can do is learn how to fail really well, to hold the pain of things happening that you really don’t want to be happening … to experience the rawness of vulnerability … and to know the experience of when something terrible happens it means an opportunity for you to evolve into a better place, a new experience”.  In the end, life happens; we must all understand that moments and feelings pass, yes, both the bad and the good.  The beauty of life in recovery is being able to recognize this, be in moment, and ride the wave.

RealYou Revolution, LLC. is New England's premier resource for cutting edge                                                     substance use disorder services.

     Advanced Intervention - Sober Companions - Recovery Coaches - Family Support Services - Case Management -DUI/OUI Support - Anger Management                                   Self Esteem Development - Anxiety Management

Tonight on the news there was a report about 1 in 10 binge drinkers only being "problem drinkers" and not "alcoholic". As I have always said, in the end for me, I was sick of trying to "define" if I was or wasn't an alcoholic. It was about me knowing that I deserved more from the world and the world deserved more from me. Forget stats and definitions, each and every one of us knows deep down if we are being %100 honest with ourselves or not. For me, regardless of everything I lost in early sobriety, I still was able to wake up (for the first time in my life) knowing I was true to myself. It didn't matter what worked or didn't work for anyone else. The lies and justifications I told myself were NOT working towards me living to my highest potential. In my mind, that is addiction, as Tommy Rosen says "Any behavior that you continue to engage in despite the negative consequences that the behavior leaves in its wake". And that's accurate enough for me. People can call it what they want, and they can also choose to exist for their entire life in a fog. But I have decided that's not for me, and I couldn't be more grateful that I took that leap of faith. 

If you are looking for help on an intervention, or learning how to overcome addiction, call or email us today! 774-329-4393 [email protected]

Traditional signs of alcoholism often provide too little information, too late.  Every alcoholic is considered “high functioning” at some point in his or her drinking.  For those who drink too much or are on the path, situational awareness can be virtually non-existent.  Let me put that in street language for you, drunk people have been known to act like morons, thinking it is completely acceptable behavior in their “unrealities” of “Buzzville”.  It’s a common phenomenon to hear someone in recovery relive mortifying drunk-a-logs while shaking their head in disbelief about the behavior they once deemed acceptable. These Live Tweets from a Modern Family Editor sitting behind a trashed airplane passenger are a perfect example. The tweets make me cringe and bring back way too many personal experiences.  Apparently because the passenger seems to have a happening life (and a major arrogance issue) she thinks she can’t have a problem.  WRONG.  So before cheering on that token party animal in your crowd, you may just want to think twice about what they are struggling with behind closed doors, or the inevitability that’s to come. 

-Know anyone in Boston who could use cutting edge Intervention or Recovery Support? Call us at 774-329-4393 or email me personally at [email protected]