Tag: Recovery Yoga

Everything is a Practice.

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I have landed on a consistent, weekly writing practice. I say practice, because that’s exactly what it is. The more I show up and do it, the better I get at it. Like everything else. Everything is a practice. That phrase used to piss me off like no other when my therapist would say it to me. Because I couldn’t understand what she meant. I would come to her freaking out about one thing or another and her words to me would be “Remember, everything is a practice.” I am sure my practice at the time was to yell “What the fuck does that even mean?!” at her. She was very patient. Or she wasn’t and she just had really good boundaries and a strong sense of self. I am guessing it’s the latter. My consistent writing practice has been taking place on Sunday mornings as of late, and even though I didn’t write this morning, here I am, showing up for myself. I didn’t write this morning because I went to yoga church instead. Yoga Church is the practice that grounds and centers me for my week ahead like nothing else. It connects me to my past and roots me in my present. The same therapist who taught me that “everything is a practice” is my Yoga Church teacher. If you are familiar with my story, you already know I had a love/hate relationship with this woman. I could always count on her to call me on my bullshit like no one ever had. And I hated her for it. But I paid her good money to (in my mind) be mean to me every week. The reality is that she was honest with me in a way nobody else would be. She didn’t sugar coat the truth and wrap it in a pretty package either. I would have certainly preferred that. I have a head full of her “classic one liners” that were both absurd and hilarious. But spot on too. Nothing is hilarious unless there’s a bit of truth to it. When I first started going to the Buddhist Temple to look for peace and clarity, I mentioned this to her. She looked at me without batting an eye and said “Please don’t fuck the monks.” In my mind that was absurd, but in reality, I understood why she would say that to me. The me I was on that day anyway. I am sure I wasn’t even truly offended until I got in my car to leave and I am equally sure I called her and let her know how awful I thought she was. That was the standard procedure. I would spend an hour on her couch. She would piss me off. I would think about it on my drive home and upon my arrival I would call her and complain to her. About her. Or I would call her in the middle of the night, on the office emergency line if need be, because I needed something. Her.

I needed her.

During the time she was my therapist, I landed in a psychiatric hospital. I was allowed to make phone calls and I called her.

Because I needed her.

She reminded me to “practice my skills.” She was referring to the communication, emotion regulation, distress tolerance and mindfulness skills that I had been learning in my DBT Group. It seemed a little late for me to practice those skills since I was already in the hospital, but I went with it. I practiced my skills and did what I needed to do to get out of the hospital. But I stopped practicing when I got out. I was an emotional wreck, fueled by alcohol. Within a few months, I landed back in the psychiatric hospital. And I called her.

Because I needed her.

She reminded me to “practice my skills.” “Everything is a practice” she said. I was so pissed because nothing about anything seemed like a practice to me. This was my LIFE and I was losing. I screamed into the phone “what the fuck does that even mean?!” She simply repeated that it’s all a practice. Life is a practice. I hung up on her. I practiced my skills, did what I needed to do and got out of that hospital. But when I got home, I stopped practicing. Again, I was an emotional wreck, fueled by alcohol. A month or two later, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Again. This time I was committed on an involuntary basis. This was a different hospital. This was a hospital where the steel doors were kept locked and I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. I was “a danger to myself and others.” I saw what real mental illness looks like in this hospital. I was terrified. I called my therapist.

Because I needed her.

She did not tell me to practice my skills. She did not remind me that everything is a practice. She said “Oh. You’re in the Ha Ha Hospital. Why are you calling me?” This was not the response I was expecting and I honestly didn’t know why I was calling her.

I just knew I needed her.

She told me there wasn’t a thing she could do for me. I told her bye and we hung up. She was right. There wasn’t a thing she could do for me. There wasn’t a thing anyone could do for me. I did what I needed to do to survive that hospital. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Locked up. Terrified. I practiced my skills. I was there for 10 days. I was released from that hospital and eventually I started to “practice my skills” on a more consistent basis. I wish I could say this is the moment I got sober, but it’s not. It took more terrifying experiences to make me understand that alcohol was not helping me and was, in fact, destroying my life and killing me. It was destroying all the things I loved as well. I went back to therapy, and eventually I did get sober. When I rooted myself firmly in AA, that therapist let me go. She had given me all the tools I needed. She had pointed me in the direction of a skillful path. It was my turn to do the work. I was terrified.

And I needed her.

But I knew, it was time. I began the long, difficult process of becoming a sober person. And it sucked. So bad. I kept in occassional contact with that therapist just to let her know my progress and make sure she was still there.

Because I needed her.

Eventually, I needed her less and less, but she was always there when I emailed her, and that helped me let her go. I got sober. I grew. My life changed. Our relationship changed. I don’t need her today, but I am grateful for her presence in my life. She has been a wonderful teacher to me in so many ways. She gave me what I needed at the time even though it was never what I wanted. Today in “yoga church” as she was giving a dharma talk, she made a reference to a scientist who was so ahead of his time, that he was thought to be crazy. Isn’t that always the way it is with scientists? She told the class how this particular man “ended up in the ha ha hospital.”  I laughed out loud and flashed straight back to the day she said that to me. I remembered exactly the way it felt and the person I was back then. But then I came right back to the present moment.  I sat up a little straighter and beamed a little brighter because I am NOT that person today. That one little phrase made my practice that much sweeter. That one little phrase reminded me why I was there. I was there to practice. Everything we do is a practice.

1,700 Days

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Guess who woke up 1,700 days sober today? This girl right here! I am not really a day counter so much anymore, but occasionally I check my sobriety app and yesterday I happened to hit it at 1,699.    Last night before I fell asleep, I was thinking about my first AA meeting. Not really my first, because honestly, my first meeting was after a 28 day stay in a treatment center when I was 21 years old. I was battling an addiction to methamphetamine then, and not an alcoholic (in my mind), so I really couldn’t relate and didn’t feel like those meetings were the place for me. (I’ll share more on meth addiction another day) My first meeting on my journey to getting sober was here on Oak Island. I think it was early fall. September or October, but I could be totally wrong about that. Because I was drunk. I woke up that morning to find that my husband had hidden my car keys and wallet. A sure sign that the day before had not been a good one. He had also hidden my bottle of bourbon. Or poured it out. But, he didn’t hide the Mike’s Hard Lemonade (which I typically mixed with vodka). So, at 8 am, I started drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade because that’s what I had.  I was very much drinking it to piss my husband off. I was drinking AT him. That was something I did regularly. Like a child. I called a friend to start a bitch session about what an asshole he was to hide all of my stuff.  She stopped me short to ask WHY I was drinking at 8 o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t wrap her head around it and proceeded to tell me that I was drinking way too early and it was happening way too often. She told me that I might have a problem with alcohol and that I should go to an AA meeting.  She offered to take me to a meeting that was starting at 9 am.  I got off the phone and got ready to go, still drunk from the previous day and working toward a new day’s drunk. A few minutes later she called me back because her car wasn’t in her driveway. She had forgotten that she got a ride home the previous night and didn’t have her car. Immediately, I felt it was shady that I needed a meeting but she didn’t? For whatever reason, I was ready to go and kind of set on it, so I called another friend who came to my house, picked me up and took me to the church where the meeting was. She recognized the blue AA sign in the window, told me this was the place for me and dropped me off with my Mike’s Hard Lemonade. What a freaking mess I must have been. And really, her too, for recognizing the AA sign from her own attempts at getting sober and for letting me into and out of her car with that drink. But, Whatever, I was the one who was drunk at 8 am.  I got out of her car, took a big drink or the Mike’s, and poured the rest out. I walked into the meeting late and disruptive. As soon as someone tried to speak to me, I immediately became angry. Really, really angry.   I had nothing in common with these people. As far as I could tell they were a bunch of miserable old men who were forced to go to these meetings every day for the rest of their lives and that was it for them.   A miserable existence that I wanted no part of.  It terrified me.  I acted like a complete asshole in hopes that everyone would hate me and I would never be invited back. Imagine my surprise when they told me to “keep coming back.” And I did. As it turned out, everyone I knew was incredibly happy that I was going to meetings. In their minds it meant I was not drinking. In reality, it meant I was hiding my drinking and drinking even more because nobody knew. Let me tell you, once a person starts hiding their drinking, it goes downhill quickly. Since nobody knew, I could drink at 6 am. And I did. I just had to keep the ice quiet as I was filling my glass. I drank all day. Everyday.  I even woke up in the middle of the night and drank myself back to sleep.  The next year and a half was horrible. I was never not drinking, and therefore always making poor choices.  My therapist was treating me for Borderline Personality Disorder. Since nobody knew how much I drank, there MUST have been some real mental health issues going on with me. And I went with it. I took that Borderline Personality Disorder and owned it.  I even had the shirt. Seriously.  A shirt with the diagnosis code on it.   It was easier to go to therapy and work towards living a good life with Borderline Personality Disorder than it was to not drink.  I joined a Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) group and went every week. I sat in that group and judged all of those people in my head. They had real problems. I obviously did not. My life was a constant attempt to be drunk, without appearing drunk. My entire life was a lie. And it was hard. The reality is that I wasn’t really fooling anyone but myself, and at some point I stopped hiding. I landed in the ER countless times. On one occasion, because I no longer cared about anything at all, I went to bed in the middle of the afternoon with a half gallon of vodka. I proceeded to drink the majority of it straight out of the bottle and what I didn’t get in my mouth, I spilled all over myself and the bed. My husband decided I was probably going to die that day and he wasn’t having it. He called 911 and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. All of those trips to the hospital run together for me and I don’t have a clear memory of exactly what happened next. Some of those trips ended with me locked in the psych hospital. Sometimes they ended in detox or a treatment center. Never was it a happy place for me and never was it where I wanted to be. All through this process I was attending AA meetings and resisting the program because I didn’t believe I was powerless over alcohol and that my life was unmanageable. Can you imagine? THAT was a miserable existence. That miserable existence is one I never want to go back to.  Every day I am grateful for the moment of clarity that hit me on day 5 of my final treatment center.  The day I chose to live.

That’s why I do the work. I choose me. I choose to live. Some days I think it takes a lot to be me. Some days I slack, but there are so many things in my repertoire, that I am hitting on at least two or three of them daily. Meditation. Yoga. Journaling. Meetings. Energy Healing. Therapy.  I’m adding Kirtan and Dancing to that mix because they feel so good to me. There’s healing in all of it. In the past 1,700 days I have built a life that I absolutely love. It is through my recovery that I discovered my gifts, my passion and my purpose. I am FULL of joy today. I know what it’s like to live in the dark, and I am grateful when even the tiniest light shines my way.   Today, the whole sun is shining on me.

4 Years ❤️

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I couldn’t let this day pass without telling the world that today I have been sober for FOUR YEARS. That’s 1,462 days of feeling all the feels without numbing myself out. Four years of healing. Four years of growing emotionally and spiritually. Four years of making (mostly) good choices. Four years that have been beautiful because I have been awake and completely present. I love this day more than my actual birthday because this day four years ago is the day I chose to live. I didn’t just wake up on this day four years ago and stop drinking. That would have been great. Getting sober was a process for me. A long process. I know some people who actually do wake up one day, make that decision and get sober. That’s not my story. I couldn’t imagine my life without alcohol. Everyone I knew drank A LOT. It really didn’t seem to me like I should be the only one getting sober. I knew I would never have fun again. I was sure of that. I had been bouncing in and out of treatment centers, ER’s, medical detox facilities and even the ha ha hospitals. It was a long, miserable road for me and my family. On this day four years ago I woke up in a treatment center and I knew it was the day they were going to stop giving me pills to help me detox. It was the day I was going to have to be in my skin. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I sat. I sat for what was the most uncomfortable two minute meditation. And I didn’t die! The next day I sat a little longer. And every day after that. It was my go to when my emotions were too strong for me to manage. That, a ton of meetings, all the yoga and an awesome AA sponsor who I texted every 3 minutes so she could reassure me that I was ok. Those first 8 months were the hardest for me. I thought about drinking daily. Something shifted during that eighth month and the desire to drink practically left me. Sobriety, AA, meditation and yoga have given me a strong foundation. I have learned to love myself. Believe me that was a process too. I still work at it. Some days it’s easier than others. My life is so beautiful today. My relationships are healthy. I have so many loving and supportive friends in my life. Today I woke up at a yoga retreat in the mountains that I was invited to lead. I drove home to my beautiful family and then I taught a yoga class in MY yoga studio. All of these things are gifts of living sober one day at a time. That is never lost on me. My heart is FULL of gratitude tonight. ❤️IMG_5290.jpg

1,400 Days

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1,400 days of choosing me. 1,400 days of waking up and making the choice to live fully present. 1,400 days of making the choice to grow spiritually and emotionally. I choose me every day in every way. When I sit down on my meditation cushion. When I step onto my yoga mat. When I go to one of “those meetings.” When I eat foods that nourish my body. When I rest because I’m tired. When I let myself experience whatever I’m experiencing without numbing myself, I choose me. I heard early on in my recovery that “eventually we stop wanting what’s bad for us and start to crave what’s good for us.” I held on to that for a long time hoping it was true. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually, magically I think, it began to happen for me. I no longer feel like I’m missing out when I see people doing the things that I choose not to do. Believe me, it is definitely a choice. I’m not missing out on the blackouts, relationship problems, hangovers or any of that other “fun stuff” by choosing me. Recovery has given me the most precious gifts of all. Self respect and love for myself. The real kind of love. The kind of love that says it’s ok if you aren’t perfect. I love you as you are. The kind of love that says get your ass up out of bed and get on your yoga mat because it makes you feel good! The kind of love that says you are being an asshole and you need to take a nap. Real love. The kind of love that says it’s ok if the only thing you did right today was breathe. 1,400 days of learning what that real love is. 1,400 days of making one empowered choice after another. 1,400 days of choosing me. ❤️

Hope Dealer

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I am a Hope Dealer! Number 499!  Plus P Productions sent me a Hope Dealer chip in exchange for my story.  They are doing a very cool thing by giving a face to addiction and showing the world that we do recover.  Check them out!  http://pluspproductions.com

Everyone has a story.  This is mine.

I was born an escape artist. Simple as that. I don’t ever remember being comfortable in my body and in my own skin. So I learned to escape it. I grew up in a loving home with two parents that worked hard to make sure they provided all the things we needed and most of the things we wanted. Alcohol was present in my home and I liked to snag sips of my dad’s beers from a very early age. I caught my first buzz at 8 or 9 years old. I was with my parents at a cook out hosted by their friends. A friend and I decided to sneak into the cooler of the adults and sneak wine coolers. Oh my! Instant LOVE. I was happy and warm and completely comfortable. I loved the way I felt. Being an elementary school aged child, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to drink, but any time the chance showed up, I took it. By junior high school I was drinking every weekend. I had also picked up a new way to escape my body and my mind. Huffing. As in sniffing cleaning supplies or other harsh chemicals. Paint. Glue. You name it. I either sniffed it, or put it into a bag and breathed the fumes. Every day. All day. By the time I made it to high school, I was the kid who snuck alcohol into school every day in a bottle of Chloraseptic spray with just enough red food coloring to make it look legit. And then came the drugs. Marijuana was first. Then pills. Cocaine and meth followed. By the time I was 16, I had quit school to do drugs and hang with anyone who wasn’t going to school. I had my 17th birthday in a behavioral health center. It should have been a rehab. Who knew? I didn’t see the point. I learned nothing because I didn’t want to be there. I left and resumed the same old, same old. My life was a string of alcohol, drugs and many, many blackouts. When I was 19 I met a stable man who wanted to marry me. He owned his own business and didn’t do drugs. My parents were thrilled. My Mom planned a beautiful wedding and then sent me on my way into the grown up world. The grown up world was not ready for me. During that marriage I drank every day and became addicted to pills. I managed to stay married until I was 21. As soon as I turned 21 I was able to purchase my own alcohol and really didn’t see the need to be married. I moved into a small apartment. Alone. I immediately became addicted to meth and in hindsight probably already was when I moved in. I had a job that paid for my meth addiction and little else. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep and I didn’t pay any bills. I eventually got evicted and went straight to a rehabilitation center in Nashville TN. It felt great to get my head straight. I remember how healthy I felt and how much I liked being in that center with so many women who were so much like me. They were also much older than I was and I had a really hard time imagining that I was as bad as them or that I was in the right place. I did my 28 days and went back out into the world of drugs and alcohol. I lost my job that I hated and to accommodate my drug addiction, I learned how to manufacture methamphetamine with some of my “friends.” How I lived through this, I will never know. I saw the most horrible things in the two and a half years that this went on. I hated the things I was doing, the people I was doing them with and mostly I hated myself. I was just broken enough to agree to trying another treatment center. This one was in Oklahoma and it was a long term center. I was ready this time. I was miserable enough with my life that I was honestly ready to leave it behind. So I did. I stayed at that treatment center the entire 4 months it took me to complete the program and then I stayed to work there. I met my second husband there. He had also completed the recovery program and was working there. The treatment center probably should have mentioned that it was a bad idea for two drug addicts to get married, but that’s what we did. Then we had babies. Two of them. Two beautiful and perfect babies. And I was happy. I was healthy and I was comfortable being me. Being a mommy. The good times lasted only a short time and my husband relapsed. I had the sense to know that I would not raise my children in addiction. So he moved out. I had no idea how to be alone, with myself and with my two children. Alcohol reentered my life. I found solace in a bottle of Makers Mark bourbon. Every night. After I put my children to bed. I drank myself to sleep. I had a man friend who lived in North Carolina. I called him to come and visit me. He came and pretty much never left. Within 6 months my two small children and I moved to North Carolina. Oak Island. Party Central. Everyone is on vacation all the time there or so it seemed to me. My alcoholism really went unnoticed for quite a while. Years. In those years, we had another child and lived a pretty normal life where I drank way too much. My behavior when I was drunk became pretty outrageous and AA was suggested to me. So I did what any good alcoholic would do. I hid my drinking. I knew it was a problem. Since nobody realized how much I was drinking, my behavior just seemed strange. I needed therapy. Obviously. And special behavioral therapy because my behavior was so fucked up. Enter DBT. Dialectal Behavior Therapy. DBT introduced me to mindfulness. DBT combines Buddhism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy into one. The problem was that I was still drinking and, truthfully, usually drinking before therapy. I still saw my regular therapist who really kept pushing yoga and AA on me. After having a complete breakdown and ending up in a state mental hospital (which is one of the scariest places I’ve ever been), I decided to go into another rehabilitation center. I was ready to address my alcoholism. This treatment center was a 28 day program and it was close to home. I had my doubts. Once the fog lifted, I decided to try. I knew I had overcome bigger things and thought just maybe I could leave the alcohol behind. This treatment center had a lot of extras. Yoga, art therapy, guided imagery (meditation), and DBT. They didn’t call it DBT, but I recognized it. The problem was that I hated myself so much. So much. I didn’t think I was worth saving. I was failing as a wife, failing as a parent, and failing as a human. My anxiety was through the roof. Breathing is the one thing humans should be able to without too much trouble and I couldn’t even do that. I have this tattoo on my hand that says “HOPE.” HOPE is an acronym for Hold On Pain Ends. I knew what it meant to be hopeless. Some tiny piece of me also remembered that there was a better way. I started to pay attention to that HOPE tattoo on my hand. I went to yoga. I went to the art therapy sessions and drew mandalas. I went to guided imagery. And I sat. I sat and I stayed with whatever “happened” to me. Whatever happened was all in my head anyway. It was so uncomfortable, but it also felt good to begin to get healthy again. Eating food instead of drinking my calories. Moving my body in yoga. It felt good. I knew my therapist would be proud of me and believe me when I tell you I was all about seeking approval. I knew that I was going to have to buy in to the 12 step program they were selling. I had a hard time with this because of the whole God thing. This had always been a problem for me. I did have a tiny bit of faith in meditation. My therapist was adamant that meditation was the medication for me. I trusted her. She was the ONLY therapist I ever had that didn’t steer me wrong and I loved her for that. I began to use my morning free time to meditate. The others would play ping pong and foosball and I would take a yoga mat and go off on my own to sit. It was miserable. I could only sit for minutes at a time. 2 or 3 minutes. But I did it. Every day. 28 days flew by and I left treatment to go into a half way house. That didn’t work for me. I needed to be home with my children. I couldn’t get better away from them. My family was scared that I couldn’t be at home and get better either. I had tried before without success. I missed my family too much. After one week at the half way house, I came home. It was two days before Christmas. On Christmas I got a brand new meditation cushion from my mom. A beautiful Zafu and Zabuton set. And I sat. I sat and sat and sat and hated it. My mind darted here and there and everywhere. I went to local yoga classes. I hated it. I was so uncomfortable in my skin. I hated moving in front of people, I hated being touched by the teachers and most of all I hated the tears that I seemed to cry every time I was in class. I went to AA meetings. I didn’t hate them as much as I hated yoga and meditation, but they were weird and the people were weird. I went anyway. My life started to suck less. I was told that it’s not only OK to cry in yoga, it’s perfectly acceptable. I was taught that everyone’s mind darts around in meditation. That’s why it’s called practice. I was taught that all alcoholics and addicts have to learn how to get comfortable in their skin. I wasn’t special or unique. That little voice in my head, everyone has one. The AA people explained to me that I don’t have to act on every thought that enters my head. I really wanted people to meditate with, so I started a local meditation group. I posted to a FB page for locals in my community and found some people willing to sit with me. These people helped me so much. They were my teachers. Older. Wiser. They taught me that nobody really gets to meditation because things are so wonderful in their lives. They were all searching when they found meditation. Searching for something better. I was still going to yoga pretty regularly and still not loving it. But, I went anyway. It gave me something “wholesome” to do during my day that distracted me from my desire to get outside of myself. What it did was put me directly inside of myself. Inside of my body. It was moving meditation! For the first time in my life I was able to be in my skin, in my body with no distraction. I learned how to breathe deeply. I learned how to let go of my thoughts. I learned how to create space in my body by letting go of the years of torture I had put my body through. I learned to invite love and light into that space. I started to grow and to thrive. I wanted to practice yoga all the time. I started going to multiple classes a day. One day I saw a FB add for a Recovery Yoga workshop in Carolina Beach. I registered and I went. What I found there changed my life. I found a group of yogis in recovery, just like me. The people who put all of their addictive tendencies into their yoga practice. The people who, just like my meditation friends, came to yoga in crisis. Searching for something, anything better. I cried through that whole 2 hour workshop. This time it wasn’t my body opening up and letting go of years of abuse and anxiety, it was gratitude. Gratitude to be in a room of people who I felt a part of. Gratitude for my sober life. Gratitude for everything. I knew these were my people. The next week I signed up for a yoga teacher training in that same studio. On the first morning of teacher training we sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. Again, I heard through every one of these women’s stories that nobody gets to yoga because they love their lives so much. Yoga is healing. Yoga is love. Today I am a yoga teacher. I teach yoga to help people heal.   We are all recovering from something.  It doesn’t have to be addiction or mental illness. We don’t make it into our adult years without some sort of trauma, grief or loss. I teach yoga to help people heal. I teach a lot.   I have the opportunity to teach mediation every time I teach a yoga class. Meditation IS yoga.  I always incorporate meditation into my classes. Meditation came first for me. I had to learn how to stay with whatever came up. Until I did that, my yoga practice couldn’t grow. The two work together for me. I start my days with 20 minutes on my cushion. Every day. In times of chaos, I come back to my cushion to sit with it, to let it pass. In times of crisis, I hurl myself upside down into a handstand. My body and my mind are both aware of what they need today. It’s a beautiful place to be. I have so much gratitude for all of it.