Building Confidence from the Inside Out

"The self-confidence one builds from achieving difficult things and accomplishing goals is the most beautiful thing of all." - Madonna

Confidence is something that I have lacked in the past, at different stages in my life. As a little kid, I often lacked the confidence to stick up for myself, so I buddied up with people who had no issue standing up for both of us (thank you, Natalie!). As a teenager coming into my own, I lacked the confidence in myself to be bold in friendships and romantic relationships, instead taking the supportive role in most of them. As an adult, my confidence was often wrapped up in my identity as it related to other people - good student, capable employee, smart daughter, loyal wife, loving mom. 

Unfortunately, for a lot of young women who grew up at the turn of the 21st century, our confidence was built into our outward appearance, how similar we looked to celebrities, and how much our clothes resembled those of the popular groups in school or on TV shows. As my body has changed from being a teenager with a questionable relationship with food to a young mom of twins to a single mom in my mid-twenties to a married woman and mom of four in my thirties and forties, I've had to learn to accept my body at each stage, or ignore the elephant in the room that was dragging my confidence now. Of course, my reliance on things like alcohol and food to cover up my insecurities and put a mask over my lack of confidence didn't help matters. 

When I decided to have gastric bypass surgery in 2022, I absolutely hated myself. I hated my body, even though it had given birth to four beautiful kids whom I adored, and had survived hard days and mental health circumstances and self-abuse in more ways than one. I looked at my body as something to hide, and blamed a lot of my unhappiness on how I looked on the outside. 

Now, I can look at the outside and see all of the work I've done on the inside. I'm at a place where I appreciate my body for what it can do today, versus hating what it is because of what it's been through in 41 years. I look at the progress I've made in the last 11 months since my gastric bypass surgery, and I'm proud of getting through those first few months where it was really hard to adjust to a new way of eating and living and treating my body as a resource rather than abusing it. Even more so in the last six+ months since I stopped drinking alcohol to mask my feelings and lack of self-confidence, I've seen the way my face has changed, and how my smile looks genuine rather than forced. I see the extra skin and chubbiness on my stomach and the stretch marks from carrying babies and I appreciate all the hard stuff my body has survived and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting me to this point. I don't weight myself as often anymore, but I'm somewhere around 95 pounds lost since April 26, 2023. I am down about four pants sizes, depending on the brand, and I feel comfortable in my clothes again. I can walk up three flights of stairs without getting winded. My knees don't hurt all the time from the extra weight my body is carrying. When I laugh, it comes from a place deep within my body, instead of feeling like it needs to be pushed out just to put on appearances that everything is ok. 

Change is possible. People can change. Bodies can change. Lives can change. I know without a doubt that the self-confidence I carry today is a direct result of the goals I've accomplished and am still working towards. Even the commitment to reaching goals is something new for me. I would often start things and feel like I couldn't accomplish the goal, and then quickly quit or change the goal to make it less difficult on myself. Not anymore. Today, I have lofty goals for myself. I want to continue making positive changes in a lot of areas of my life. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to get a second chance to do things, and to appreciate the beauty in achieving difficult things. 

Ride or Die Friendships & Choosing Honesty over Loyalty

 Up until very recently, I believed 100% in ride-or-die friendships. The ones that would help you bury a body, "Goodbye Earl" style. And I think there's a time and place and season in life for those types of friendships. I've been lucky enough to have a few of those in my lifetime, and they definitely served a purpose in a time of my life when I needed that kind of blind, no exceptions, ride-or-die support. 

Now, as I am finding my place and my footing as a sober woman, mom, wife, employee, writer...etc., etc., I find myself reading all the time. Whether I'm reading a romance novel (hello, late to the game obsessive addiction to Colleen Hoover's books) or self-help or sobriety memoir or just reading articles online about workplace culture and project management and human resources, I find myself really absorbing information in a way now that I didn't when I was drinking. My mind is more open to everything, and I'm capable of actually retaining information. Now, a miracle didn't happen, and I'm still a busy working mom, so my retention rate is not 100%, but it's way better now than it was a year ago, I can assure you! 

I was reading this weekend, and the amazing CoHo wrote this in It Starts With Us. And it got me all in the feels, appreciative for the friendships and family relationships that I have today, even while mourning the loss of friendships from earlier days. 

"She's not a ride-or-die friend, nor is she a ride-or-die sister. That's what I love the most about her, because I'm not ride-or-die either. If you do something stupid, I'm going to be the friend who tells you you're doing something stupid. I'm not going to join you in your stupidity. I want my friends to treat me the same way. I prefer honesty over loyalty any day, because with honesty comes loyalty." 

What a freaking gem of a statement that is! 

I don't want to be ride-or-die. That has gotten me in a position before where I have blinders on to what a friend (or romantic partner) is doing, because I'm going to blindly follow them along their path of stupidity. I value honesty over loyalty, even if that honesty hurts sometimes. When I argue with my husband (spoiler alert, most married couples argue), I may not like his brutal honesty, but I value that he can be real with me. I also want his loyalty, but like CoHo said so much more eloquently than I am, loyalty comes along as part of the package deal when you sign up for honesty in your relationships. 

My posts earlier this week/weekend were emotionally draining for me to write, and for me to process through writing those blogs. Sometimes I still really hate myself for some of the choices I made when I was drinking, when I was hurting, when I was more broken than I am today. 

But you know what? I'm learning as I go, and that's ok too. I'm redefining what peace looks like in my life, and doing everything in my power to protect my peace. If that means I take a 6-hour nap on a Sunday, so be it. If that means I go for a 30-minute walk on my lunch break to get some Vitamin D and let my thoughts circle around for a bit, awesome. 

Changing is ok. Growing is wonderful. And accepting yourself in whatever stage you're in is as beautiful thing. 

Shame Spirals

 I was looking for old pictures to post a birthday shout-out for my dad last weekend. Digging through photo albums on Snapfish can be fun and also torturous. It's cool to see old photos of my kids and nieces and nephews. But it's also torture to see some of those photos of times when I can't piece together what I did or didn't do when I was drinking. 

One photo album that grabbed my attention and put me in a bit of a shame spiral was a wedding in 2009, a few weeks after I met Nick and when I was still using alcohol to numb all of the emotions I didn't want to feel. I look at photos of me giving a speech (or actually, passing my speech over to someone else to read for me because I was too wasted to give the speech) and I cringe. I look at photos where I can see in my eyes that I was no longer present, and it makes my stomach turn over. 

The shame spiral and regret of choices I made when I was actively choosing to numb everything with alcohol can be painful still. I know I'm never going back to that, but I also recognize that I complicated friendships and made events really uncomfortable for some people because of my choices. I know that I won't repeat those circumstances because I know what alcohol does to my mind, my body, my emotions and my relationships now. But it's still icky to look back and remember (partially at least) what I did to people I loved because I wasn't capable of dealing with my real feelings. 

We all have trauma. I have trauma from my first marriage. I brought that trauma into my relationships with friends and romantic partners for several years to follow that divorce. In 2009, I was just figuring out how to navigate a real adult relationship with Nick, and there were people that got pulled through that mess for a while. I want to take the opportunity now to apologize to my friends, Katie and Jon, for what I showed up as at their wedding and reception. I am so sorry for my actions and for putting you in a position that was uncomfortable because of my choices. You were some of my favorite people for several years during a messy time of my life, and I am deeply sorry for anything that I said or did that put you in a tricky position. You are still some of my favorite people, whether or not our paths cross frequently anymore. I hope you know that the person I showed up as sometimes was not the authentic me that I'm striving to be now. 

Katie was my closest friend for some of the hardest years of my adult life, and although we have parted ways (probably because I was a hot mess for a long time during our closest years), I always think of her with fond memories. I am sure some of my actions towards the end of our closest friendship years have made her think of me with pain and regret. I'm truly sorry for that, Cracker Jack. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see you and Jon living out your happily ever after, even if I only have a distant seat from the bleachers watching it play out on social media now. You guys meant a lot to me at one of the times I was not my best self. I am grateful for you both, and apologize from the bottom of my heart for any pain I caused to you. I promise I'm working hard to make better choices, and I hope that one day, we can all look back on the good times with a smile, and recognize that some of the bad times were a blip in our lives that we can all move on from. I hope that the shame spirals and regret that I have don't cloud all of our memories of the truly fun and happy times we shared. 

I can't live my life in regret anymore. I can let that shame spiral and feeling of regret simmer for a minute or a couple of hours, but I have to move forward. I have to keep putting one step in front of the other and move towards the life I want to create now. It doesn't mean that the past disappears, but it does mean that it's something that will stay in the past, because I don't want to live like that anymore. I don't want the shame and regret to rule my mind and make the present and future something ugly or heavy. I want to rewrite the story and move to the next chapter. But I'll never forget all of the good times we shared, Cracker Jack. You will always be one of my favorite people. 

When Your Best Isn't Good Enough

 It's been a tough couple of days, for a number of reasons, all of which take me back to a time when I had zero self-esteem and was doing my best to just keep my head above water. I can't remember the last time I cried before this weekend, and that's a good thing (and kind of rare for me the past several years because my day-to-day was so heavily driven by my emotions). There have been a lot of challenges for me personally, and I am trying to navigate those without having my kids see the hurt that is bubbling up under the surface. 

My husband and I view a couple of things very differently. He is a logical, pragmatic, black-and-white type of person when it comes to a lot of things. I am an emotional, caretaker, lots of gray exists in the world type of person. As you can imagine, those stark differences can create some friction now and then. 

I feel like a lot of things I have changed about myself in the last six months to a year are positive. But sometimes I still feel like my best isn't good enough for some people, and that leaves me in this place of feeling like a failure and like no matter what I do, the outcome will remain the same. 

I have many, many flaws. I probably spend too much money on my kids and I don't say no as often as I should when they ask for something. I carry the weight of five people's emotions on a daily basis. Sure, there are things I could do better, and things I want to work on. But at the end of the day, I am doing my best. But maybe that just still isn't good enough. 

I look at this picture and I wonder when we lose the ability to just dance and laugh and smile. When does the innocence of childhood and having no worries about finances or planning for the future or carrying the weight of the world stop? Is it something that ever really exists for all of us? Or are some of us just born carrying the weight of meeting other people's expectations from a very early age? 

Sometimes I feel like I've taken 100 steps forward with my health and my sobriety, but for what? It hasn't changed some of the core issues that bring me sadness. So what is it all for? Why even bother? 

I hate crying, but I have been doing a lot of it the past few days. Stress from work, stress from marriage, stress from parenting. It all just feels too heavy sometimes. Feeling crushed by the weight of other people's expectations, not feeling like the people you care about more than anything can give you the same grace that you've shown them, and just feeling like your best isn't good enough is a super shitty feeling. 

I'm sure this too will pass, but while I'm in it, I just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel or the rainbow at the end of the storm. I wish I could turn my feelings off sometimes, but no matter how hard I try, they always bubble up under the surface at the most inconvenient times. I will spend today trying to  show myself the grace that I haven't gotten from other people, and reminding myself that my best is good enough for me, and that's what should matter the most, even when it doesn't feel like it. 

Protecting My Peace

 I've adopted a new catch phrase over the last few months. I think it's something I've been reluctant to do in the past because it means I am putting myself and my needs before others, and that's historically not something I've been very good at because I'm a people pleaser (and a mom). 

Protect my peace.

This is what I intend to do every day. Whether that's related to work, family, marriage, friends, or just life, I want to protect my peace (and along with that, my sobriety). By setting boundaries where they need to be, I can do a better job at protecting my peace so I don't get to those broken places full of emotional chaos that I often lived in when I was using alcohol and food to numb my feelings and just survive. 

I've given this advice to others lately. I hope they are able to take it for what it is and apply it to their lives too, in a way that is constructive, kind, and purposeful. 

I have a meeting at work this afternoon that I am dreading. Working in HR, there are some great things I get to roll out and introduce to our team (like a video we're working on to promote giving and charitable contributions for our company and employees), but there are also the hard conversations that I have to be a part of. One of the things that makes this type of work hard for me is that I genuinely like most people. Unless you give me a reason not to like you, I'm going to always give you the benefit of the doubt. When I have to be part of hard conversations, then I feel like those people don't like me anymore, or think I was being fake if I was nice to them yesterday and then a part of a hard conversation the next day. 

Being an enneagram two, empath, highly sensitive person, and a people pleaser means that I carry a lot of emotional baggage at times. I want everyone to be happy, I like there to be peace amongst my family members and friends and coworkers. It affects me deeply when there is not harmony in these groups that I live in. But, at the end of the day, I have chosen to work in a field that means I have to be a part of these tough conversations sometimes. As a mom, I've also chosen to have hard conversations with my kids and my spouse when we are parenting them and may not see exactly eye-to-eye. 

One thing that does make these tricky situations a little easier to manage is that I'm not drinking. I wake up feeling good most days, not hungover or off my game. I can show up for these things being 100% aware and engaged and ready to participate in whatever way I need to. 

Protecting my peace extends not just from dealing with uncomfortable situations, but sometimes it means going for a quick walk to get some sunshine and take a break from computer. Working from home can mean that the lines are often blurred - I'm answering Slack messages while watching my son's volleyball or soccer game on weekday evenings. I'm jumping from a video call for work to helping with homework sometimes. 

Knowing that these challenges are going to pop up because of the choices I've made to work remotely, work in HR, and also be as present for my kids' activities as possible, while still practicing self-care and trying to prioritize my mental health too, it's necessary for me to identify the boundaries I need in place to adequately protect my peace and my mental health above everything else. Because if I can't show up ready for the day, I'm not going to be of great use to anyone, and then I'm going to feel guilty because I failed at something. 

Prioritizing my sobriety, my mental health, my emotional well-being and my physical health is a huge goal for 2024. I want to lay the foundation for these things, and then I'll be in a better position to make any necessary changes to my career path once I feel settled and grounded in who I am and what matters to me. 

This weekend, you can find me reading a good book, taking a short walk, getting my nails done, and drinking my water and coffee.  If there was a pretty cemetery near by, you could for sure find me reading or walking there. I find cemeteries to be incredibly peaceful places. 

What do you plan to do this weekend to protect your peace? 

Sober Milestones & Chasing Dreams

 Today is my 6-month sober-versary! 6 months of choosing to walk away from alcohol as a self-medicating numbing agent after decades of leaning on it when I felt like life was getting too heavy, too messy, or too uncomfortable. I am working on a project with a sober friend, and she said in an email earlier today, "Sober collaboration is the best! Together we can make great things happen!" And boy, is that true. Today I am feeling like things have changed since September 14, 2023 when I decided alcohol was not serving a (positive) purpose in my life. Obviously, that was true for many years prior, but that was the day I decided to live in that truth moving forward.

In the past six months, I've made friends that I now consider to be some of my besties. They have walked a path that may not look exactly like mine, but they've walked a path that led them to the same decision I made six months ago. They are the truest kind of friends I have ever known because they love and accept me for who I am, despite all of my flaws. We share challenges and successes, and they are my biggest cheerleaders. I'm grateful for the sober community I am in, and especially thankful for the friendships I've made within that community. 

Those friendships have led to the beginning stages of chasing a dream and nailing it down into reality over the past couple of weeks. I have been working on a memoir of sorts over the past several months, bringing together pieces of writing from this blog, from previous attempts at writing a book, and from the ups and downs this journey of sobriety has brought to my life over the past six months. This friend whom I quoted in the first few sentences of this blog made a connection happen with an author in the quit lit space, who then introduced me to her publisher and editor. 

I think publishing a book is actually on the horizon. A goal for 2024 has been made. 

In the spirit of these connections, I want to share one of my favorite quotes from "This Side of Alcohol" by the genuinely fabulous Peggi Cooney. Something that resonates with me more at this six month mark than it did when I first read her book months ago. 

Peggi writes, "Sobriety has taught me the art of purposefully taking a pause, waiting a few seconds before speaking, a gift born from mindfulness." 

I, too, have learned this lesson in sobriety. I've also learned that now is the time to chase the dream that I wasn't equipped to handle years ago when I was still drinking. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and now I get to see it through to a finished product that I can share with the world. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. I worry about what my family will think, what my kids will think, what my friends will think. But I am also so excited to finally be putting something like this into action. 

Peggi goes on later in her book to talk about how she responded when her husband asked when she might be done with "all the meetings, courses, work" she was doing in her sobriety. Peggi's answer resonates so deeply in me. In her words, "I took a big breath and calmly answered: 'No, I am not done. I will most likely never be done. It has become my life's purpose.'"

I felt that deeply. I've worked in a field that I don't love, but I do love what my job affords me in terms of prioritizing my kids and their activities and still having a career that I can be impactful in and grow in. But now, the life's purpose has started to shine through. I think my purpose is not only to raise four productive and kind human beings, but also to impact the world in a way that shines a positive light on sobriety, allows me to share my thoughts in written words whether that be on this blog or in book form (or both) and creates connections for me within the sober community of women that have absolutely enriched my life over the past six months. 

It's all coming together, friends.  

These past six months have been a new page in my life's story. I've been reintroduced to who I am and who I was always meant to be, because somewhere along the way, I forgot about that girl. Sobriety has allowed me to truly show up as my best self everyday, and to chase the dreams I'd long since tossed to the wayside. 

I can't wait to see what the next six months holds. 

Highly Sensitive People & Feeling all the Feels

 In my sobriety, I've acquired a few things in my toolkit that I employ on days when I am feeling a little more sad or ill-equipped to handle the day-to-day stuff that comes with parenting, adulting, and feeling all the feels. One of those tools is listening to podcasts, and although I do have a few sober-specific podcasts that I love, I also enjoy listening to Glennon and Abby on their "We Can Do Hard Things" podcast. This week, they had Alanis Morisette on talking about highly sensitive people and empaths, and I was immediately locked in to the conversation. Not to mention that Alanis was the soundtrack to my 8th grade year, hello Washington D.C. trip memories with my walkman and Jagged Little Pill on cassette tape. 

I've always been fascinated by psychology and sociology, and as I mentioned on my blog earlier this year, I have a keen interest in the ennegram and the way that different people work. On this podcast episode, I learned about highly sensitive people (HSPs) and how that connects to empaths. I may have shared this previously, but I am an empath, as is my 17-year-old daughter and I thought my 10-year-old son was also an empath, but now I am leaning towards him being an HSP. HSP's feel things on a different level than non-HSPs and the way it was discussed on the podcast, a non-HSP will walk into a room and have to filter through 50 pieces of information. An HSP walks into the same room and has to filter through 500 pieces of information. They feel things, experience things, and respond to things at a higher level than non-HSPs. All empaths are HSPs, but not all HSPs are empaths, so Micah could very well be an HSP instead of an empath. I am convinced that Rylee and I are both. 

So what does that mean? Why do I care? And why should you care? 

Let's start with definitions.

An empath is "a person who is highly attuned to the energies and emotions of those around them...they are said to feel what others are feeling so deeply that they 'absorb' or 'take on' the emotions themselves, often at the expense of their own well-being." (Healthline)

A highly sensitive person, "biologically speaking, highly sensitive people pick up on more stimuli within and around them. Studies have shown that the HSP brain is more active in areas related to attention, emotion, action-planning, decision-making, and having strong internal experiences." (Psychology Today)

So the empath in your friend group is the one who always knows how others are feeling, responds to those feelings, sometimes carries the weight of other people's feelings even to their own detriment, and is always giving more of themselves to any given situation or friend in need. 

The HSP in your friend group could be an empath, but isn't necessarily an empath. The four traits of HSPs are depth of processing, overstimulation, empathy and sensitivity to subtleties (Goalcast). HSPs process things on a different level, can easily be overstimulated by an excess of emotions, processing through thoughts and situations, and are extra-sensitive to subtle non-verbal cues or environmental cues that others wouldn't notice. 

Think about that for a minute, especially from the perspective of a child who is an HSP. What a heavy weight for them to carry, right? The more I learn about this stuff, the more intrigued I am, and the more I think that some of the struggles I had as a kid and teenager were a direct result of being an HSP and an empath. I carried the weight of everyone else's emotions, and was unable to process those in a healthy way, which led to an addiction to self-injury, an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, codependency in my first romantic relationship, and a need to find outlets for all of the feelings I had bottled up. These outlets could be positive - playing soccer religiously for years, strong work ethic and need for perfectionism, tattoo/ink therapy addiction in my 20s and 30s, unhealthy relationship with drinking as an adult, and with eating starting as a teenager. 

Mind. Blown. 

Can you identify an HSP or empath in your life? What are some ways that you could support them with a little more understanding about how heavy the weight of feelings and processing for them might be? As an HSP and empath, I can't wait to dig into this more, and just ordered Dr. Elaine Aron's book. I do know that even though some days are harder (yesterday was an emotional day for me, with no real rhyme or reason behind it), and that's ok too. Because the sun will always come out again, and rainbows and sunshine will crack through the clouds when we least expect it. 

  

The List - 10 Things I Love About Me Now

 The list is long. 

The list of the shit I used to drink over. Pretty much anything that didn't feel good or caused stress or made me want to escape reality. 

I'd put anything on that list of shit to drink over - the kids were being too loud and I have a headache from my hangover the night before? Make myself a drink to feel better. 

My husband is working too many hours to pay for our nice house and all the things that come along with a family of six. Make myself a drink to relax. 

I feel alone in parenting because my husband works a lot of hours, and even when he is home, the kids come to me first. Whether they want a pack of fruit snacks or a hug, I'm their girl. Make myself a drink to feel less alone, and to comfort myself because this mom shit is hard. 

Yesterday, something happened that I for sure would have felt sorry for myself about, and then drank over. My husband and kids and I (minus my oldest who was working) went to Knott's Berry Farm, a local amusement park for a few hours. We had the best time. Everyone was laughing and joking together, there was minimal arguing, and it was just a good couple of hours. Afterwards, we were going to grab some lunch, and Micah (our resident foodie) wanted Mexican food. It was Sunday, so the closest option only had brunch which is expensive for a family our size, and considering I eat like a 5-year-old now since I had my gastric bypass surgery last year, it's pointless to spend $40 on a meal for me. So my husband just assumed I'd be happy to sit and watch everyone else eat. He didn't mean it maliciously, but he knows I don't eat a lot at each meal, and I think he sees it as time to spend together without considering how it makes me feel to literally watch everyone else eat while I drink my ice water. 

That would have 100% been a big reason to drink myself into a stupor had it happened last year at this time. That, my friends, is growth. Sure, I was a little pissed off and felt like my feelings weren't considered at all in the decision to eat at a brunch buffet. But, I ate my pack of Goldfish crackers in the car when we left, and I let it go. I didn't drink over it. Because nothing is worth drinking over these days. I don't want to go backwards. I'm much happier sober, and a much better version of myself. 

I'll be six months sober in 10 days. When I first started this sobriety journey, I didn't know what six months would feel like. The days seemed to take forever to add up at the beginning, but now it seems like the normalcy of not drinking is settling in. I don't think about stopping at the store on the way home to get a bottle of whiskey (or vodka when I was trying to "cut back" - in my mental gymnastics at the time trying to moderate, I thought switching up to vodka would mean I'd drink less). I don't think about what time of the day it is in terms of how many more hours until I can reasonably fill up my 32 ounce "Mama Bear" tumbler with Jack and Coke Zero. I don't wake up feeling like shit because I drank too much and can't remember if I was mean to my kids or husband the night before. 

Today, I'm writing out a list of 10 things I love about myself, most of which I couldn't even recognize six months ago when I was drinking to numb the feelings, and drinking to relax and drinking just because that's what society told me I should do if I wanted to survive motherhood. 

1. I love my passion for writing. 

2. I love my passion for reading. 

3. I love my body more today than I have in ten years. 

4. I love my relationship with my twins. I love that they include me in conversations about their lives. And they do that willingly in large part because of what we've been through together, and also because now I'm fully present for all of those moments and conversations.

5. I love my relationship with my husband. It's better than it has been in 13 years. 

6. I love my commitment to the people that I love.

7. I love being a crazy sports mom. 

8. I love how genuine my smile is in photos now. 

9. I love that my body can fit into amusement park rides so I can enjoy those memories with my kids instead of sitting on the sidelines. 

10. I love that I am smart and disciplined when it comes to work and education.