SEVEN Years of Sobriety Time Capsule/Nostalgia-fest

dispatch 63

Sep 25, 2024

Hi all. I really debated whether or not I had the energy this year to put together a post to mark another year of sobriety. In truth, this has been by far the hardest year of both my recovery and my life and I’ve been swirling around in a deep depression for almost the last six months.

But.

This year has also had so many incredible moments of beauty. Loss has taught me that people will show up for you, and sometimes it will be those you least expect. It has taught me that sometimes grief care looks like a zoom with friends who are also in the thick of it, where we create a silly plan for who and how we’ll haunt in our mutual afterlife. It has showed me the strength of my partnership and our love at the exact moment that I have felt the least lovable.

It is a year that I will look back on and wonder how I got through. But I did. I got through it. I’m still getting through it.

Seven years is a long time and my life has changed immeasurably in so many ways since I stopped drinking alcohol. I know it will continue to change, so right now it feels right to take this moment to remember and honor this year for exactly what it has been and who I have been on both sides of it.

The Soundtrack:

Usually I make a specific playlist for each year of sobriety…this year you’re getting a playlist very aptly titled “Crying in the Shower”.

The Evidence of Joy…because there really was joy:

From top left: My and my dear friend Erica after years of not seeing each other, my little nephew holding my hand; my two loves on a Christmas morning hike; Freya the cat who acted as a beloved friend this year; turkey tails; first picture with our keys as homeowners; a sandwich on a cliff overlooking Cayuga Lake in a rainstorm; so excited to be at Friendly’s we actually exited this astral plane; Mocha being both demure and mindful.

Some things I’ve learned this year:

Fuck, I miss my mother: If you’ve been here awhile you know I wrote about my mom a lot. We had a complex and sometimes fraught relationship and yet she is my closest person. She made me within the hull of her body and so it makes sense that in losing her, I lost a world. We are finding new ways to be in relationship across time and across death but I miss her voice. I miss being able to call or text her something silly. I miss our mutual memory. I am devastated that I cannot take her on a walk through the woods or show her around our house as it slowly comes together. I miss the way she said “Hello?” when she answered the phone in a specifically silly way and how she always complained about getting too many emails despite signing up for more spam than one person should be allowed to bring upon themselves.
The Dead Parent Club (DPC) is a true gift: When my mom died, I got a text from a newish work friend who’s father had died years ago. I still can’t read it without crying and she has since become a good friend and a person who has helped steward me through these first months of grief. My siblings, who lost their father years ago, have kept me laughing with totally inappropriate and mildly uncomfortable dead parent jokes that can exist alongside deep conversations about death and loss. A friend who I hadn’t seen in years, who lost her father as well, came back into my life and it has been a huge gift. Losing a parent is absolutely awful and this is a club I would not wish on anyone. It is a club I very much did not want to join. But as I enter this stage of life, I am so very grateful for people who make space for ongoing grief in all of its forms, and to be held by people who truly understand.
How to be a spaceholder for my own grief: I’ll write more about this but in the weeks following my mom’s death I could not stop telling people my mom died. At the bank, at the grocery store, on the customer service line I could not stop bringing up my dead mom. Honestly, most days I still can’t. Which makes everyone very, very uncomfortable (and would have made me uncomfortable six months ago!). What I am learning is that the greatest gift you can give someone in grief is to ask them questions about who they lost. Learn the names of their dead. Let them talk about them however they want for as long as they want. I have a friend who will periodically text me “Tell me a story about your mom” and it prompts me to cast my mind back and bring forth some small story of my mother’s magic. It always, always brings me joy to talk about her and share her with someone who didn’t get to know her.
I’m a healer: This year I’ve gotten more comfortable with sending teas and tinctures to loved ones and their families in times when they need support. It’s a way that I show care across distance and time. As my relationships with plants have deepened and my learning (still so new!) continues to grow, I’ve been receiving kind and encouraging words about my herbal work. Getting a note that a tea brought a friend’s father comfort and nostalgia for his childhood abroad while he navigates health challenges...it showed me that this is what I am here for. It is what I am good at. So, I’m making a choice to step into the mantle of healer and the responsibilities it entails. I don’t know exactly what this means yet, but it one of the most generative spaces in my life right now.
You can take the girl out of the eating disorder but can you take the eating disorder out of the girl?: It seems vain to think about my body negatively while I am lucky enough to have one but I have struggled hard with body image this year as I always do when things feel out of control. Moving to the woods means that I am rarely perceived, but when I am perceived I spiral hard. I heard a conversation between Katherine May and Sam Irby once where they talked about not understanding how to dress themselves after years inside for the pandemic. I feel that deeply. I am also aging, turning 36 in just a week and a half, and I am still really confused about how to care for myself without harming myself with restriction. I have no idea how to like myself! Which is very embarrassing but also somehow liberating to admit?
Grief will reorganize your life: Everything that is said about the shifting nature of relationships (of all kinds) when you experience loss is true. The people who show up hard will take you by surprise with their love in the exact moment where you need a reminder that life can be beautiful. Grief will reinforce some relationships, bend time to help you find people again, and surround you with forgiveness for people you never thought you could forgive. You will receive grace from the most unexpected places. There will be people you love whose silence breaks your heart. It’s not their fault that no one knows what to do with death. But the people who are meant to show up for you will. Trust them.
When you can’t, you can’t: I have historically had an unhealthy relationship with my own capacity. What I mean by this is that I disregard it completely, abuse it, and push past it at every opportunity presented to me. I cannot do that anymore. My capacity is very, very limited right now and I am needing to honor and learn from that because we are apparently in our Volume 5: The Capacity Strikes Back era. I don’t have a choice, but I am trying to summon the humility I need to learn what my body is trying to teach me right now.
Building new/old family: A lot of my relationship with my mother’s family in Finland was through the filter of her: her memory, her stories, the ways she sometimes creatively translated what was said. I let my relationship with my grandmother be stoppered by my iffy grasp of Swedish but now that is no longer an excuse. Getting to regularly video chat with my grandmother, my cousin’s wife, and her children has been a beautiful thing to come out of this impossible time.
We can do things I never thought possible: This year Max and I bought and moved into a log cabin in the woods. On paper this is a wild action for two people who never thought they would be able to buy a home at all, let alone multiple acres of wild land. Moving out of the city has felt nothing but right and we are learning about all of our new plant, animal, and fungal neighbors every day. It somehow does not feel overwhelming, but a right-sized challenge. Knowing that we have the space to house loved ones if they want or need it is an exhale I had been waiting for. You are all, always, welcome here.
Hard times can deepen love: I am generally a person who prides herself on being “okay”. As a child I was taught that my needs were embarrassing and unwelcome and so in this very difficult year, in which I cannot stop falling apart, I have really struggled with feeling like I need too much. Separately, when I was a young person, I’d lay on my childhood couch and dream of a love so big that it would eclipse everything. A love that had space for learning and change, deep discussions, and yes, falling apart. I tell Max frequently that it is like I conjured them, made them up, or that somehow all of those years ago something in me knew they existed, that this was my destiny somehow. But I didn’t make them up, we were just doing the hard work of becoming in parallel until our paths could cross. In the hardest time of my life, I have been loved and held in ways I did not know possible. And I am so grateful. Max, whatever happened and no matter how long it took, through every winding path, choice point, and change we endured, I know that we were always meant to be right here. I’ve found you nine times before, maybe ten, and I’ll find you again until the last time. I find you because I know you and I know you because we are the same. You will know your endpoint when you reach it. Thank you for loving me. For showing me love in all of its many facets and forms, for painting rooms with me, for dreaming so big, and for being exactly who you are. I love you.

The books that got me through:

What’s next? Year 8: The Moodboard

Usually I do a 9 photo moodboard for what I’m calling in for the next year. But this year, that didn’t feel quite right. Instead I am sharing this long lost photo of my mother which has quickly become a favorite upon its re-discovery. She’s in her early 20s, sitting poolside in Jamaica smoking a cigarette. She looks carefree and joyful in a way that I did not often see her later in life. She looks alive, and I don’t mean that in the sense that she was existing on this plane. I mean that she looks like she FEELS alive. I want to call in that feeling for myself and my loved ones. I want to call in that feeling for her, wherever she is.

This year has been one of trials and pain. It has been one of joy and awe. It has been every single damn thing that being alive is. And that is the thing, isn’t it? I’m alive. I am alive and when she was my age my mother was more than halfway through her life but did not know it. We don’t get to know when any of this ends and so it is the moments that matter. Each tiny, fragile, glorious second cupped in the palm of a hand, running through unseen cracks in clasped fingers. This is it, this is it, this is it. And I don’t want to miss it, even when it hurts.

I don’t use social media right now, so these posts act as my sobriety yearbook…so if you want to sign my yearbook in the comments I’d sure love that (don’t worry…I’ll imagine it’s written in gel pen). I’d love to hear what you’re most excited about right now…what feels like it’s on the cusp of shifting for you? I’d love to celebrate alongside you. I love you a lot, and appreciate this space to just be amongst you all. Here’s to not letting our inner cynic stomp our joy for even one minute. Here’s to us, always.

xo,

lisa