My Journey

I am a person on a path of recovery. On December 30, 2026, I will celebrate four years sober. Sometimes it is hard to believe how quickly the time has passed. Other times, I remember how slowly some days once moved. Mostly, I feel an enormous sense of gratitude for this time, for the life I have today and for the opportunity to continue learning who I am.

I am in recovery from alcohol addiction. But over the years, through a lot of clarity, curiosity, and uncomfortable self-examination, I have come to understand that addiction was about much more than alcohol for me. Tommy Rosen from Recovery 2.0 calls it the “frequency of addiction,” and when I look back, I can see that I lived in that frequency for most of my life.

how it started

I grew up the youngest of four children and the only girl. My parents were not big drinkers. My father never drank; he simply didn't like it, and my mother only drank occasionally, mostly on holidays.

I grew up in a time and in a family where we didn't talk about feelings. Like many people of my generation, I learned that feelings were something you kept to yourself. You stuffed them down and carried on. When I was young, I became very good at that by creating this identity of the good kid, the smart kid, the kid that didn’t need any help because everything was perfect. My sense of worth was wrapped up in doing well in school and being praised for what a perfect daughter I was. When I got to college anxiety began to creep in and I found myself feeling lonely and depressed. That’s when I discovered alcohol. It quieted the anxiety I felt about school, and I felt like I fit in with the crowd. I could drink on the weekends, have fun, and still show up for class and do everything I was supposed to do. I could still be the “perfect” person.

Towards the end of college, I entered a deeply codependent relationship. At the time, I didn't recognize that as a form of addiction. When that relationship ended after college, I turned more fully toward alcohol. Again, I didn't want to feel my feelings. I drank on weekends, sometimes in the middle of the week with friends, but I always got up and went to work. I continued to accomplish things.

Then alcohol gave way to another addiction. I developed an eating disorder and began compulsively exercising. I was obsessed with running and pushing my body to the limit. I became seriously underweight and was not a happy person. For a couple of years, running became the thing that occupied my mind and controlled my life. Then I needed foot surgery and could no longer run. My old friend alcohol was right there waiting for me. That began what would become roughly a 15-year journey with alcohol addiction.

The Slow Progression of Addiction

Around 2008, I began to feel that something was wrong. I couldn't name it because I didn't know how to name feelings. I had spent my entire life avoiding them. But there was a persistent sense that something inside me was not right.

I called a therapist. During our initial consultation, she asked me why I was seeking therapy. I remember saying, “I don't know. I just feel like I'm phoning it in. I feel like I'm sleepwalking through my life, and I can't figure this out.” I began seeing her weekly. But I wasn't honest with her about my drinking. I didn't think it was a problem because alcohol is socially acceptable and everybody around me drank. I went to work every day, even with the gnarliest hangovers and I still got my work done. From the outside, I was “highly functioning”. It wasn’t really “high functioning”, I was putting on a really good performance.

In 2020, during the middle of COVID, one of my brothers died suddenly from a massive heart attack caused by severe alcoholism. He was only 51. His death was a tremendous wake-up call, but instead of quitting alcohol I really ramped up my drinking. This was the only way I knew how to cope with the loss and numb the really hard feelings.

For the next two years I was trapped in a horrible cycle of shame, anxiety and self-loathing. Every day I would wake up in the morning and ask myself: What's wrong with me? Why can't I quit? I'm a strong person. Why can't I stop this? I would tell myself that today is going to be different. And then, by the middle of the day, I would tell myself, “I'll just have one.” It was never one. I never had an off switch.

I could feel myself deteriorating physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I felt like I was slowly dying. In fact, I was having persistent dreams that I died and it was absolutely frightening. As I continued on this hellish path I slowly started feeling that I was meant for something more in this life. I couldn't articulate exactly what that meant. I just knew that this could not be the purpose of my life. I knew I needed help.

At the time, Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't the right fit for me. I had a lot of resistance around the idea of God, and I wasn't ready for that framework. But I knew I needed community and that I couldn’t do this alone. I found an online recovery community that became an enormous support for me. I stopped drinking and made it three weeks. Then, around Christmas, I went to visit family and fell right back into drinking. The day I was flying home I was sitting in the airport and I remember thinking clearly: this has to end because if it didn’t end, I wasn't going to be here much longer.

Somewhere inside me, that feeling returned: I am meant for something more than this. December 30, 2022, was my last drink.

Recovery: it’s more than abstinence

My first year of recovery was very simple: just don’t drink. I started seeing the same therapist I had worked with years earlier. I became honest with myself, first and foremost, that alcohol was a problem and that I needed help. I leaned into an online recovery community attending meetings several times a week and after a while I began to share in meetings allowing myself to be seen and heard.

In those first few months of sobriety I also turned my focus more deeply to yoga. I had practiced yoga for nearly 30 years coming to it as many people do, through the physical practice. In 2017 when my father was nearing the end of his life, I had started returning to yoga more consistently because something about it allowed me to feel, although at the time I was still deep in alcohol addiction. Over time, my yoga practice slowly became more than just the physical practice; it was helping me to reconnect with my Self. In my recovery through breath work, movement and meditation, I began to learn how to change the frequency of addiction and turn inward for solutions instead of externally. The gift that yoga gave me in early recovery was an understanding of what I had been searching for all those years: connection to my Self, the freedom to live a full life and to feel at peace.

And that purpose I felt was there all those years? It has emerged as working as a yoga therapist and recovery coach bringing the teachings and practice of yoga to others struggling with addiction or looking to find more meaning and joy in their recovery.

A Life I Don't Want to Escape

Recently one of my clients asked me if I do the practices I was teaching him like the breathing techniques and meditations. “Do you do these things?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “I do. And they really help.” Then he asked me a much bigger question. “Are you happy?” I told him yes. But then I realized that “happy” wasn't quite the word I was looking for. Happiness comes and goes. What I feel most of the time is something deeper. I feel content. I know that I have resources now to surf the waves of life, the ups and the downs. I have my recovery communities, yoga and nature.

There Is Hope

Recovery has not made my life perfect. I still have difficult days. I still have moments when I dip down and feel disconnected from myself. But now I know what to do. I know how to reconnect.  And I know that I don't have to escape.

For me, recovery began when I stopped trying to do it alone. It grew through community, honesty, therapy, yoga, nature and a willingness to finally feel the things I had spent my life trying not to feel.  And somewhere along the way, I discovered something I never imagined possible: I am free and I can have a life I don't want to escape.

Life is not always easy. I am here for it. I am present for it. And I am deeply grateful to be on this path of recovery. After spending so many years trying not to feel, I now understand that feeling my life—every bit of it—is truly one of the greatest gifts that recovery has given me.