The Painting and the Piano – A Must Read

The Painting and the Piano, by John Lipscomb and Adrianne Lugo hit very close to home for me. In this book, the authors each tell their own stories of abusive mothers, addiction, recovery, and finally love, in alternating chapters that captured my attention and held it until the end. I think that every addict and …

Don’t Stuff the Birthday Blues

Yesterday my husband and I had a discussion about stuffing emotions, and whether or not there is a difference between stuffing and just telling ourselves that those thoughts and feelings may be real, but it isn't doing any good to wallow in them. It's a fine line, I think, and when I am struggling with …

The Secret Keepers

I am happy to reblog this for my friend Karen at Mended Musings. As a survivor of rape as a child myself, this definitely hits home for me. Please read and share.

It’s Nature Karen

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to ask you to share this post. Reblog it, share it on Facebook, tweet it. Someone out there needs to hear this message today. Even if you think you don’t know anyone who has been abused. Even if you don’t read the entire post.

About a month ago I was asked by Dawn at WTF words, thoughts, feelings to contribute an essay for an anthology that she and Joyelle are creating for parents who are survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse (learn more at https://www.facebook.com/TriggerPointsAnthology).

I submitted my essay but I also want to shine a bigger spotlight on this project because I fear that they may not get many submissions. Not because it’s not a worthy cause or because there aren’t enough people out there to contribute but because survivors of abuse are secret…

View original post 1,196 more words

My Life in Six Songs

Hey Everyone, Head over to Running on Sober to check out Life in 6 Songs.  It's an awesome series of posts that Christy, Michelle, and Jennie have put together, where they challenged their readers to come up with a playlist of 6 songs that told the story of their life.  It was difficult to narrow my list down to …

A Mother’s Love…and Loss

I wrote this post last year. Today, on Mother’s Day, I wanted to repost it as a cautionary tale to those mothers out there that are struggling with alcoholism or addiction. I know that addicts aren’t usually successful at remaining clean and sober when they are trying to do it for someone else (otherwise I would’ve gotten sober long before 17 months ago), but sometimes remembering the negative consequences that are looming, just waiting for that first drink, can help us not to pick up.
I hope that all of you mothers out there have a blessed and joyous day and that you never take for granted that your children will always be in your life.

Sober Grace

The last few days I have debated with myself whether or not to post about this.  Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since I started this blog.  Since I couldn’t make up my mind, I decided to think about the pros and cons of writing about this subject.  The pros are that it will probably be cathartic for me, that I often get clarity about things when I write, that I might get some support by writing about this, and that I love the feeling of liberation I get when I am honest about myself and my feelings.  The cons are that it will bring up a lot of emotions, that it will be difficult to write, and that I honestly don’t even know if I know enough words to really express how I feel about it (not an ideal feeling for someone who just started blogging).

I think the pros…

View original post 1,041 more words

The Show Went On

I posted recently about a presentation I was scheduled to do at the college where I work about Alcohol Awareness Month.  I met with some resistance from my supervisor about including the fact that I am in recovery from alcoholism myself, in the presentation.  You can read the whole story here and here.   Well, …

500 days and counting….

I don't really count sober days anymore, but today marks a milestone for me. 500 days sober! Woo Hoo! As I told one of my friends today, it's a f*cking miracle!! When I was actively drinking, I gave up or lost a lot of things.  Now that I have been sober for 500 days, I …

Too smart, too young, and too pretty to be an alcoholic

Ok, my fellow bloggers, I am looking for your insight and advice about something that happened today. April is Alcohol Awareness Month and I have been asked to speak about alcoholism at our school assembly later this month.  This will be my second year doing it.  The reason that I have been asked to do the …

Close your eyes at your own risk

It looks like my last post didn’t show up on the Reader…?? So here it is.

Sober Grace

I rarely have nightmares, but I have had anxiety dreams for as long as I can remember.  When I was younger, I would often dream about going somewhere, usually school, and realizing that I had no clothes on.  There is nothing more terrifying to a kid.  I would wake up in a panic and it would take a while to calm down and go back to sleep.  As I got older, the themes of my anxiety dreams changed to one of two things, either some version of my teeth falling out, or some version of being unprepared for school.  I never had the same dream twice, but the themes were the same.  In the teeth dreams, sometimes I would be eating something and it would loosen some of my teeth and they would just fall out into my hands, or I would have brand new braces (I never had braces…

View original post 645 more words

Please let me off this ride

Last Thursday I was sitting and having lunch in the breakroom at work.  I was talking to a friend, when I started to feel funny.  I was just finishing a piece of pizza when I began to think that I might faint.  I have fainted before, every time I have to give blood, so I …