Recovery Daily Podcast

Yesterday I took my daily walk down the street with Autumn to our small beach, both of us bundled in our warm coats, and even though it was freezing, windy, and heavily overcast, I said out loud, “It’s beautiful, Autumn!” It struck me that it was beautiful because that was the lens I brought with me on that walk. With three weeks of panic symptoms and heart palpitations happening even as I type th...

I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going, no longer having that next title or promotion to chase anymore. My old goals were always stacked against the outside world or next rung on the ladder. Now my goals are internal, rooted in who I’m becoming, not what I’m earning. I’ve created a career from my recovery experiences. I’m building my life by taking my peer recovery course, recording my pod...

What is the difference between serenity and tranquility? I used to search for peace and quiet because it was so loud inside my head. I searched externally, occasionally stumbling upon a babbling brook or wave-blanketed shoreline. I had no understanding of internal peace. In fact, I remember the first day I felt it at age forty-three (one year into sobriety). Serenity was uncovered within me, expos...

Today I’ve been thinking about perspective, exploring that what we leave out of our lives opens space and time to see what we previously couldn’t. Recovery progressively widens perspective. I was the thing missing from my own life for many years. It truly felt like seeing the world for the first time in some of those early days in sobriety. Before recovery, my life was overcrowded and now its simp...

I cursed twice this week, and that’s rare for me. I remember when those feelings would trigger me to escape life when I got overwhelmed. I tried to track down the title to my old car yesterday. The paperwork never got processed correctly because of the chaos around my stroke in 2021. The task instantly became a catastrophic, impossible situation yesterday. Before I even took a simple step, I had b...

I’m taking a 60-hour Peer Recovery Support training course which I’m super excited about. I was nervous about whether I could handle it physically, but the instructor reassured me he could accommodate my disability so that I don’t have to look at the screen. What I didn’t anticipate is the extreme cognitive fatigue as well. I constantly over-estimate my capabilities post-stroke. I slept 11 hours t...

Humility and humiliation are tangled up for me. Practicing healthy thinking when you’re “in the wild” is complicated: “right-sizing myself” vs shrinking myself. It feels safer to live in self-inflicted unworthiness than to risk vulnerability. However, it reinforces my old mindset that pain is inevitable, and I deserve it. Pain, shame, and humiliation are human experiences and reactions based on tr...

Comparing myself to others without realizing it is one of my character defects. When I judge someone, it feels like I’m trying to pull the covers off them to expose some hidden truth, but really, I’m pulling the covers over myself to hide my own insecurities. My instinct to judge comes from an inferiority complex. I’m bracing myself for imagined failure. A lifetime of experiences set me up to pred...

After my stroke and medical retirement, I see life from a different perspective. One morning, I noticed half-turned fall leaves still attached to a tree, green shifting into fall colors. I’d seen them countless times before but never looked at them the way I did that day. The beauty had always been there, but life blurred my view. Sobriety brought the same shift in perspective. As fear loosens its...

I was afraid of everything for as long as I remember. Late in my drinking career, I woke up with a racing mind and pounding chest, terrified of the day and convinced I needed a drink to relieve the fear. My anxiety was a constant hum beneath my skin. Chardonnay was my solution that quieted the chaos. When I discovered the morning drink, it felt like a breakthrough to steady my trembling morning ha...

Change starts with willingness to let go of what no longer serves who we’re becoming. My character defects are hidden in plain sight, showing up whenever I am disturbed, frustrated, stressed, or hurt. Each inner disturbance is a cue for change. I’ve noticed that a character defect is always quietly steering my fear, pride, envy, or self-centeredness. Step 6 is a lesson in self-awareness to recogni...

My obsessive thinking can either defeat me or drive me. My overactive empathizer has been feeling like a burden and handicap lately. After hearing terrible news my thoughts spiral into a very dark place if I don’t make a cognizant effort to distract myself. I was encouraged today that my intensity is a superpower that I use to help others. The trouble is that it can also trap me if I don’t ground...

Feeling isolated has been a thread running through my life. Upon reflection in early sobriety, I believed I was choosing isolation, but I realized this morning that I had felt isolated by the world , as if life had chosen to leave me out. That early victim mindset began thinking patterns that fueled my addiction. I’ve often heard in recovery that alcohol made folks finally feel like they belonged....

Today I went to a virtual workshop held by the Serenity House of Leesburg. It was called “Surfing the Wave: How to manage urges and strong emotions in recovery.” I focused on my emotional urges. The workshop helped me see that some of my old alcoholic thinking still lingers in subtle ways. When I hear about tragedy, I tend to sink into sadness and imagine the person’s suffering as if it were my ow...

For most of my life, I mourned the loss of a friend who died in a motorcycle accident the year I graduated high school. I thought I was grieving, but I was stuck in the shadows of that loss for a very long time. I cried without processing anything. I didn’t truly grieve his death until I got sober at 42. As a teenager, I was already hormonally irrational; add alcohol, and it tipped me into chaos....

Slowing down has been a gift of my stroke recovery, and I learned it through sobriety. I used to move so fast that I never noticed much around me other than that which I was trying to change. I miss moving fast because slowing down isn’t optional anymore. It’s necessary for my recovery and to minimize my daily head pain. But, through the stillness and quiet, I’ve learned to savor it, being fully p...

A spiritual awakening sounded a bit over the top to me when I heard folks talk about it in meetings. I didn’t really understand spirituality much less what an awakening was. But I’m sure I’m experiencing it. It feels like a gradual unfolding of reality, trust, honesty, hope, and faith. All the while I’m learning more about who I am and my connection to each of you and the world around me. Lessons...

Logic didn’t get me sober or compel me to make major changes in my life. I knew alcohol was destroying me long before I stopped drinking, but that knowledge wasn’t enough. I had to feel desperate. Every transformation in my life has started with an intense emotional spark. Change has always been ignited by pain, fear, guilt, or even hope. Messy, humbling emotions propel me if I allow them to.  It...

I thought honesty was just not lying to other people, but I’ve learned that it starts within. When I got sober, I could see the hiding and breaking promises, but I couldn’t see the lies I was telling myself. I began to look at my motives, fears, and excuses throughout the day. I had to stop justifying my behavior and pretending I was fine when I wasn’t. Honesty requires presence. I can’t be honest...

When I live in the present, life is simpler with less chaos, less noise, and less drama. In sobriety, that serenity comes from acceptance, willingness, and facing my fears. It’s doing the next right thing even when I don’t feel like it. That same mindset carries me through stroke recovery and life with chronic pain and vestibular disorder. Both require daily acceptance, balance, and the courage to...

 “How do you define yourself?” This question was posed yesterday in my first church attendance in years. I realized that I define myself by my limitations. I’m an alcoholic, I’m disabled, and I’m medically retired. But that’s not really who I am. I’m a woman with an endless passion in my pursuit of growth, joy, and serenity. I am changing my paralyzing self-pity and anxiety into action. Some days...

Hearing in early sobriety that I had “character defects” offended me. Who are you to say I’m broken? I just like to get drunk.  I’ve come to see these defects as imperfections or symptoms of being human. They’re not diagnoses that can’t be changed. My character defects distorted my instincts for survival, security, and belonging and were further swollen by alcohol. My drinking replaced natural ins...

I experience inner healing and transformation through giving back. Hosting a vestibular disorders support group on Tuesday reminded me why service is such a vital part of my recovery. Before the meeting, I was hoping no one would show up. This is a classic alcoholic instinct to avoid the work and discomfort. But they did show up, and what unfolded was powerful for me. One woman attendee spent thre...

It’s challenging to reestablish routines after a stroke, and I find it to be so once again after moving into a new house. Every habit that came naturally now takes extra thought and energy, from feeding the dogs to remembering where things are in the house. It’s a humbling reminder that lifelong recovery requires patience and self-compassion. The mental fatigue that comes from having to think thro...

Today has been one of those days where anxiety feels like it’s humming in every cell of my body. My heart’s been fluttering off rhythm since this morning, the way it does in a panic attack but for no clear reason. I keep taking deep breaths and telling myself it will pass, but the feeling lingered all day.  For so many years, I lived in this constant state of anxiety. Back then, my only instinct w...