Today, with the help of my loving sponsor and an incredible sobriety community, I am 18 days clean and sober once again. 18 days seems to pale in comparison to the almost three years that I had but somehow each of these 18 days feels like gold to me and I value my sobriety like never before. There is a new level of surrender which is actually so refreshing and I get this funny feeling that there is whole new level of opportunities and gifts that live at this level of surrender. It's like I decided to play mercy with alcohol just taunting the disease to see if it's real and if I have it. Mercy I cry out and once again I have surrendered. This week someone about my age from this small town where I live died of a heroin overdose and all of a sudden any shame that was associated with my relapse faded into sheer gratitude for being alive. I have learned to reframe relapse as a symptom of sickness and not a sign of being bad. I am not a bad person, I am a sick person and as long as I keep coming back I am on the road of recovery.
Being new in recovery again I am filled with tons of unbridled emotion and yesterday I was reminded of what in an incredibly sacred place my yoga mat is. Like a magic carpet I can take all of my fear, all of my sadness, all of my desire to be anywhere but in the moment that I am in, to my mat and somehow I always come away feeling much more grounded yet uplifted. This is a powerful tool for these early days.
So, I bask today in letting go of what I know that I don't know and I live in that sweet spot of surrender. I find my freedom and my bliss right here where I am standing.
