New Ways to Celebrate

 A little over a week ago, I hit a milestone.

3 years of sobriety.

And with this, comes new ways to celebrate, new ways to show gratitude, and new ways to manage stress and anxiety. 

On this soberversary, I posted on social media. Not to toot my own horn, but to acknowledge the milestone and mostly to share what I'm grateful for in this season of life. 

Grateful for another year out of the fog that alcohol created around me for years. Thankful for opportunities that came my way and doors that opened once I had freedom from drowning my stress and anxiety with alcohol. Today, I'm living the life I only dreamed of having two decades ago. And the text messages today just made it that much sweeter.

New ways to celebrate are pretty boring. But I'm good with that! Flowers from a friend, foggy mornings sitting in the backyard with coffee and Gunner for a few minutes, and watching really bad reality TV are a few of my favorite things. Cheering my kid on from the soccer or basketball sidelines, chats with my favorite "baby adults" and quiet inside jokes with my husband - all bring me joy. 

And the nerdiest joy of them all - grading a stack of 176 essays and enjoying every second of the madness. The balancing act of teaching and working in my "regular" job is getting a little tricky. My heart is definitely with teaching, but my anxiety loves the stability of my "regular" job and there are some amazing colleagues that I get to work with that I would miss if I took the plunge 100% into higher education. 

The beauty of being sober, of being present, and of being grateful is that I do not feel a need to push things to move faster or to make super huge decisions. I can just take things one day at a time, and the future doesn't scare me as much, because I have faith that things will work out. It's amazing the way everything fell into place after I made that decision three years ago. 

So this is my public service announcement - do it scared, do it tired, do it overwhelmed. If you don't do it, you'll always wonder how it could have turned out.