Authentically Me: The Journey to Live with Purpose: Emotional Hangovers and Self-Love

This was my first sober Christmas in many years, and it definitely brought it's own heaviness in certain ways. Of course, it was my husband's first Christmas without both of his parents, and we hosted his brother's family on Christmas Eve as we've done for many years now. The tradition started before me, but when I met Nick, we would go to his dad's and then later his aunt's in San Diego to celebrate Christmas Eve together. As his dad got older and less mobile, we started hosting, and it's been a great way for the cousins on my husband's side of the family to connect over the holidays. We don't see each other as often as we should, but those are special memories for our kids to share. Drinking on Christmas Eve has always been a thing, and it was a bit challenging this time because I wasn't drinking, but my husband has been so supportive of my personal growth the past several months, and he didn't drink either, so it was overall a good day. I was very anxious leading up to it, and the anxiety and weight of making sure all of the kids are happy is something I carry on holidays and special occasions as well.

Christmas Day has always been spent with my parents and siblings and the cousins on the Burton side (my sister's kids and my brother's kids). There are a lot of complicated relationships and emotions on that side of the family, and balancing everything was definitely exhausting for me. I definitely had an emotional hangover after the Christmas festivities were done, and I put myself to bed at 7:30pm on Christmas Day this year. Definitely a different way of coping, but one I'm learning doesn't make me selfish, it simply makes me aware of my boundaries and my needs, and expressing those needs is a form of self-love and self-care. Those things were definitely not priorities for me in the past, it was all about survival and getting through the day and making sure everyone else was happy, even if that means I checked out by drinking and numbing all of the feelings that I had myself.

On a sobriety community call yesterday, someone I've gotten to know as I've become a part of the LHS community shared her sobriety story. It was so impactful, and it's amazing to me how many of us women can find similarities amongst one another, even if the story on the outside might look vastly different. The speaker said something that really resonated with me. Actually, a couple of things. (1) showing yourself compassion during sobriety and doing the work on this journey to love yourself is a key to recovering, instead of just "not drinking"; and (2) finding similarities and common ground with people in recovery is the difference between doing this alone and doing it with a community - find those similarities, because if you think your story is so different than someone else's, you'd be surprised at the commonalities you can actually find there.

Loving myself and showing myself compassion has always been a challenge for me. I can easily hand out love and care to others around me, but learning to love myself and sometimes put myself first (like when I need to go to bed when the sun goes down sometimes) is part of the healing, part of the recovery journey. Most of us with a problematic relationship with alcohol have some recovering to do, because the reasons we drank cover up deeper issues. My personal growth this year is something that my husband recognized in my anniversary card from him a couple of weeks ago. It's nice to hear that someone else is noticing, and that my journey to healing isn't viewed by others as selfish, but instead, something to be celebrated.

So if you are struggling through something, if you are on the road to recovery or healing from a pain deep inside, don't give up. The work is worth the end result, and the journey to healing and recovering and becoming the best (most authentic) version of myself is something I'm really looking forward to in the New Year.