As I fill my oversized goblet with crisp Pellegrino, I shake my head in near disbelief not only that I used to drink wine from such a monstrosity, but that I used to drink wine at all. It was only a few years ago that I didn’t think there was any other way. Now here I am in my second sober holiday season, bright-eyed and highly aware of—well, everything.
The process of recovering from an addiction is a slow moving thing, but every once in a while it can be jarring. There are some moments that come out of nowhere when I can feel the jagged edge of where I tore my drinking self away from my non-drinking self. Like two paper dolls in a chain, suddenly ripped apart. In some sense, that’s how it was for me. I went cold turkey and never went back. That was the first day of 2022. Now as we close out 2023, it feels like the rush of this second year in recovery is hitting me all at once.
Maybe it’s the early darkness this time of year where I live; maybe it’s the earthy scent of fallen leaves crushed into the dirt path when I walk through the park in the evenings with my husband, but whatever this season of raw decay is that’s happening around me, it’s happening inside of me, too. It’s a burst of glorious colors reaching toward the sky, and it’s the smolder as those colors fall back to earth, curl, wither, and die. We are cycles, seasons, spirals; both predictably patterned and wildly mysterious.
My husband and I just celebrated our seventeenth year of marriage last week. How time flies, I guess is how they say it. This will be our twentieth holiday in our house. That’s outrageous to me. And one of the most beautiful things I have to show for my time on this earth. For someone who was tangled in the very particular kind of chaos that is addiction, I have remained steadfast and solid in a few deeply important things. My relationship has always been one of them. In ways I am just now starting to see and understand, my recovery is recovering us both. No more raging fights in the middle of the night. No more moody melancholy spewed out in all directions (that was me) and no more pretending to be able to help what couldn’t be helped (that was him). Our walks now are quiet, comical, joyous, wonderful. Our nights end early and our mornings start cozy and fresh. Year seventeen is our best year yet.
I take my sparkling water out to the back patio and hang out with the love of my life as he grills our dinner. I consider a cigarette and decide not to bother. The crimson-orange light splits and spills the sunset through the red and yellow trees. It’s been a long year of emotional turmoil and growth for me. It’s been grueling, as healing often requires of us. I’ve been stretched and wrung out over and over again. I’ve buried some things, at last. Not the way I used to bury things, in order to avoid them or hide them or pretend they didn’t exist. But the way you lay to rest a thing that once had its place in your life, but now you honor it for what it was, and say goodbye. Goodbye, and thank you, grief, sadness, anger, hurt, pain, resentment. Thank you.
I struggled against a very dark thing for two decades of my life. For most of them, it was so dark I couldn’t see it. And just because I’ve started to be able to make out its shadowy shape doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle with it. Maybe that’s what recovery is. A shimmering light that climbs its way to find you through the thick of your particular plot of grizzly trees. It’s never all darkness or all light. It’s a threading through of both. It’s the scent of earth, fire, water, and wind, at any given moment.
My second round of sober holidays is upon me, strange and alive with feelings of every conceivable kind, some I expected and some that catch me by surprise. But none that I run from. And I am eternally grateful for that.
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Allison Marie Conway is a Certified Professional Life Coach with a specialization in Addiction Recovery Coaching, working primarily with women who want to quit drinking. As a creative and resourceful woman living an intentional life of sobriety, Allison brings her deep compassion for those who struggle with alcohol addiction, and her unique life experience in navigating the ups and downs of sobriety, to her beloved work. She is also a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), wife, mother, mentor, and addiction recovery researcher and advocate. Before opening her private practice in 2023, Allison worked in the professional corporate environment for over twenty years, excelling in supporting C-Suite executives for well over a decade. She earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences from Pennsylvania State University. Allison grew up in and around northeast Philadelphia, and currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years.
There are several people I know who have been sober since January 2022, and I can confirm your feelings are 100% authentic and true. I truly thought after the first year things would settle down, but I continue to unearth surprises within me even after two years. I am forever grateful to wake up every day seeing as clearly as possible.
The scary part is that I'm feeling some distance between me and those who aren't on this journey with me, and I feel like I'm leaving them in the past. Not sure if this is universal or not.
How lovely Allison, a belated happy anniversary to you both.