Recovery Daily Podcast

Some days I feel awakened to another level of awareness about myself and the world around me, even though my head still hurts. Today, I felt strong despite the headache and dizziness. I got outside with my rucking backpack, walked Autumn in the cool(ish) morning, and chose to see the day through a lens of effort and gratitude. I considered how far I’ve come, even on days when the pain is constant...

Between 7:18 a.m. and 10:18 a.m., my morning unfolded with a string of serendipitous moments that confirmed I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. I arrived late to my sobriety meeting due to some much needed zzz’s. As the air hung for a few breaths, I chose to share what was on my mind, apologizing first for not knowing the day’s topic. I shared about the importance of practicing self-care in sobriet...

I’ve seen people quit drinking, living physically sober without emotional sobriety. Are they white knuckling life? I couldn’t not drink without changing everything about me. I needed a program of recovery that encourages emotional sobriety. Emotional sobriety unfolds across the Twelve Steps as a series of micro decisions and actions. Steps 1–3 introduces surrender and hope. Steps 4–7 expose resent...

I skipped recording for a few days because I felt uninspired, tired, and visually overloaded with symptoms. What I realized this morning (once again) is that these feelings surface when I ignore my physical well-being and do stuff I know I shouldn’t be doing (like catching @justbeingmelanie’s last post on Instagram). As the discomfort sets in, I lose motivation and start listening to my wanter, wh...

I debated whether to record today because 1) I’m having really bad symptoms and felt an alarming but rare sensation that the room was about to flip upside down (room tilt illusion), and 2) I wasn’t confident that I could provide an interesting angle to discomfort and adaptability. But yes, yes, I could…and I did! I feel an unspoken contract to show up daily and talk about what’s going on between m...

When I get angry, I cry. Anger is the yuckiest of all feelings, in my opinion. I rarely experience it since I quit drinking. I wasn’t an angry drunk, but whenever I was angry, I happened to be drunk. Alcohol reinforces a cycle of drinking to relieve hostility, experiencing intensified resentment, and returning to alcohol for temporary relief. Unresolved grudges, chronic resentments, and a survival...

Alcoholism wears many disguises, designer suits, yoga pants, varsity jackets, and even clergy collars. I grew up thinking it only happens to the homeless guy holding a liquor bottle in a paper bag. But alcoholism quietly hides in boardrooms, backyards, dorm rooms, and retirement condos. Each person battling addiction pulls a constellation of loved ones into the orbit of their struggle. Partners ti...

Last night as I fell asleep I imagined my thoughts written in invisible ink, like with the secret decoder pens that we’d find in a cereal box back when Kelloggs was cool. You remember, you can’t read the message without the second decoder pen. As I let go of my thoughts, I was comforted by the thought of not decoding my thoughts until morning. I wasn’t ignoring them. I was simply choosing to put t...

Today I met with my sponsor about Step 4. I began to see the self-inventory in a new way, broken down into three parts. The first is the traditional part of writing down my resentments and identifying my role in those relationships. What surfaces for me is a fear of abandonment. That fear has shown up in so many ways throughout my life, including pulling away from people before they have the chanc...

One of the scariest things I’ve done was let go of what I believed to be the truth about how to survive in this stressful world. My nervous system was shot. One could visibly see me shaking and hear my stomach doing gymnastics. To defend the life I’d built and settle my trembling hands, I had to drink. So, taking off that armor by denying myself alcohol was like casting me out naked in front of th...

Today I was thinking about the quiet voice inside me. It’s not the one that I call self-talk that likes to beat me up. It’s the one that tells me what “the next right thing” is. I had a long talk with my mom today about life and death, and I thought about how much energy exists inside us while we’re alive. When someone passes, it fascinates me to think about where that energy goes. I’ve come to im...

I recently decided to reconnect with a part of my life I had left behind. After graduating from Longwood College, I disconnected from Zeta Tau Alpha, the women’s fraternity I belonged to. For years, I avoided because college left me with memories of sadness, low self-worth, and heavy drinking. Even though I loved the women around me, I never felt whole or that I had anything worthy to offer. I mas...

Someone recently shared how frustrated they were with coworkers, and it took me right back. Work sometimes felt like a pressure cooker where everyone was trying to protect and meet their own goals, making resentments easy. Even though I usually got along with people, there was always that one person who consumed me with frustration. To manage the building resentment, I’d write their name down and...

When things go wrong, my emotional reflex has always been to fix it. D oing something about it was pouring a drink and making a drastic decision to escape the yucky feelings. I hated sitting in the unknown. My anxiety was through the roof. Drinking gave me the illusion that I was doing something about it, but I was only making things worse. Living that way was like gambling on horse races to survi...

I used to live in a constant state of anxiety. I was always bracing for something to go wrong. Everything was already wrong. I was dying a slow alcoholic death, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I no longer carry shame about that part of my journey. It wasn’t a graceful decision to change. It felt more like being dropped into the deep end. But I had to hit the bottom of hopelessness to start...

During a recent virtual sobriety meditation meeting, I was sitting peacefully still as the chair played a beautiful piece of music he had carefully selected for us. Just as I was settling into that serene space, a YouTube ad unexpectedly blared through the speakers. The chair quickly scrambled to silence it, clearly frustrated, despite having tested the video beforehand. The interruption startled...

My to-do lists feel more like a guilt trip than a game plan. I need to pause and take a step back. The endless pressure to do it all drowns out what truly matters in my life. Instead of fitting my priorities into my schedule, I should be scheduling around my priorities. I started with identifying my top three core values yesterday. I shared that those are communication, health, and learning. But n...

Stop. Do you know what your core values are? Mine are communication, health, and learning. These three themes have shaped every meaningful part of my life. I discovered them several years ago through an exercise where I named all the values that resonated with me, then narrowed them down until I found the top three that consistently showed up in the moments that felt most fulfilling. These three h...

Letting go has been one of the difficult practices in both sobriety and stroke recovery. It felt like failure when doing things my way, how I planned it, didn’t work out. Letting go felt like giving up. But looking back, I see that my way just kept ending up with me drunk, depressed, and isolated. I wore my ego like armor to protect me from all those around me that I believed were better than me....

Flow is the sixth and final stage of my Acceptance Framework, where daily life starts to feel manageable again, even if the tough emotions are still present. Fear shifts from being paralyzing to protective and productive. Routines resume, boundaries are respected, and living feels possible. You’re living within your acceptance and no longer fighting reality. Some days we have to revisit earlier st...

Flex is the fifth stage of my Acceptance FRAMEWORK, focusing on rebuilding confidence through practice. This is where we start gently and consistently exposing ourselves to the thing that we’ve been avoiding. For me, this means I start small like holding on to someone’s arm when crossing a parking-lot. Each time I reach out for someone’s arm for help it sends a message to my brain that I’m managin...

Mapping Fear Into Action is the fourth stage of my Acceptance FRAMEWORK that addresses the emotional pushback we feel when faced with things we can’t control but need to accept This stage doesn’t eliminate fear, but it gives it a purpose, lowering anxiety and creating momentum toward change. By gathering facts, leaning into your support network, setting micro-goals, and allowing a trusted person t...

Stage 3 of my Acceptance FRAMEWORK series explores the emotional wake that follows when reality snaps into focus in Stage 2. Fear, anger, bargaining, and shame are forms of resistance to vulnerability. They are emotional friction that protects us from the full weight of reality. These emotions are normal, even though they are uncomfortable. This is the friction between knowing the truth and being...

This is day two of my series on the six stages of acceptance. Stage two is when reality snaps into focus, like a gut punch. Whether it's a medical diagnosis, a red flag you’re ignoring, or someone saying what you’ve been too afraid to admit to yourself, there's usually moment in time when denial evaporates and truth is staring your square in the face. You can’t unknow the truth once you’ve...

Saying “I’m fine” can be an automatic response when you live with disability and chronic pain. It can, however, symbolize denial, showing up through humor, constant busyness, or focusing on other people’s needs. The result may be delayed medical care, increased strain on relationships, and a gradual buildup of fear and stress that drains energy over time. To break that pattern, start by recognizin...