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After the Storm: Holding on to What Matters the Most.

Published September 7, 2018December 1, 2018 by Jacqui Hathaway Levin in journey, life, recovery, sobriety, vulnerability

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Full and present blister. #poem

Happy Valentine’s Day ♥️🌷🌹 #shanti #loveandalliscoming #valentine

Not everyone likes my most authentic self, and that surprisingly still hurts sometimes. I don’t know why, but it does. The big difference is...I don’t care enough to stand down or step back. In fact, I step out further. I don’t actually change anything about myself or try to contort myself into a more likable version for anyone. This is it. 🤍🌸Today I’m baking Valentine’s chocolate muffins for Michael while packing up our closet. My mom comes in town this weekend to help us transition into the new house. Also, I’ve been writing a lot more every day, and the baby has been kicking me like crazy. 😍There’s a lot going on, but we’re out here doing it. Xo Hope you remember that you don’t have to step down or contort yourself into something else for anyone. Ever. #reminder

Hi you guys.🤍I wrote a new piece on the blog today. This one is about moving out of our current house, pregnancy and my relationship with music as a former codependent sad girl who is currently healing. Click the link in my bio to read⬆️ and enjoy this excerpt below. “When we feel a lot we tend to hang out in extreme emotions. That can be a sort of high on its own. Then one day real life happens to you like a bad car accident, and everything goes silent. Music becomes too heavy. Anything but silence is too heavy, and you look for a small slice of hope in the sounds of rain. You find comfort and patience in the wind blowing through tall grass. This kind of music does not ask you to get up and go riding the spikes of other times. Because when you are used to living in a haunted place, every step is dangerous. It takes a lot of therapy and healing to really pull yourself out of the past and enjoy music again.”🦎🤍 *Thank you, @afamilyoftrees11 for finding this cover art and always supporting me creatively. I feel that, and I’m lucky to call you one of my best friends. *

Current stack. I’m doing the @goodreads reading challenge for 2020 with a goal of 30 books for the year. (We will see how it goes.) I started with SSDGM, then QLAW, and I just finished Why We Can’t Sleep. Right now I’m vacillating between which Lauren Groff novel to start next. (FYI anything she writes is gold. Read everything Lauren Groff.) I trained myself to read this much. It’s good for my ADD. It’s good for my mental health. It brings me back to that first year of sobriety when all I could do was grow in a new direction. I like being a person who reads a lot, so I became an avid reader. *Also I will probably re-read Women Who Run With the Wolves every year or two for the rest of my life, but it is especially important to me now that I am becoming a mother.

I’m sitting on my bed answering these commonly asked questions about sobriety from a post by @holly today. 1. I didn’t feel free. 2. My days revolved around alcohol, and there wasn’t room for anything else. I’d experienced sobriety in the past and knew it was something I wanted to feel again. I just didn’t know how to get there without AA. I had a desire for something else—a curiosity. 3. I researched sobriety online and found Holly Whitaker through Pinterest. There was a clear moment where I knew other people were talking about sobriety. That meant I could breathe. There was hope for me too. I listened to podcasts and told myself this was a new start. This was different. I wanted to take a risk I’d never taken before. “What if I don’t drink? I know what happens when I do, so what if I take the unknown path and try not drinking?” 4. For the first two weeks, I still bought wine and stared at it like fire before pouring it down the drain. I was always one decision from taking a drink, but even when I poured myself a glass of wine at 14 days sober, I finally said, “I don’t want this anymore.” I never took a sip, and I poured it out. That was the last time I gave myself an option of drinking. From there on out it was “never question the decision”. 5. I would tell my past self that it’s okay you don’t know what’s happening because it’s better than anything you’ve ever experienced before. You are loved and so brave for taking this risk and changing your life. AND I would tell my past self that no one is making fun of her because for some reason this was a hard core projection of mine that made it difficult to feel brave or confident in my first year. No one is judging you, babe. 6. If you are just getting sober start by reading “Drink”by Ann Dowsett Johnson and “Quit Like a Woman” by Holly Whitaker. Also, “Meditation for Beginners” by @jack_kornfield and “The Great Work of your Life” by Stephen Cope were life changing for me in the beginning. ❤️ #howdidyouquitdrinking

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