Life To Be Continued

A Mother’s Love: Patty Wetterling exemplifies the love, loyalty and grace we should all strive toward 

On October 22, 1989, when the Wetterling’s hell began, I had yet to be born.  Yet as I grew up in rural Minnesota, I learned who Jacob Wetterling was. I also learned about his mother, Patty Wetterling. We all did. Children don’t grow up in this state without hearing about one of its longest-standing, unsolved mysteries, or about the mother who never gave up hope. It was sad and it was eerie, but…

Today, Taylor took the time to reach out and tell me her story. I want to share it here. Name: Taylor McHargue Sobriety date: 10/1/2013 From: Oklahoma City This is her story: I took my first drink at 13. It was the day before I went back to school from winter break, I blacked out and came to at my dads house that was 30 miles away. I didn’t drink again until I was 18. Drinking terrified me, my…

3 Emotions To Expect On Your First Day Of Addiction Treatment

This post was originally published at http://www.orlandorecovery.com/.  I still vividly remember my first day of treatment even though it was over two and a half years ago. I did outpatient treatment, so I had time to try and prepare myself before my first session. The 40-minute drive felt like an eternity. I was so unsure of what to expect and felt so alone. I pulled into the parking lot and…

Guest Post: 7 Easy Steps to Sanity

By Joy Anderson What To Do When You Become Overwhelmed in Recovery Having trouble managing the beautiful onslaught that is life in recovery? Just getting a few months under your belt with a new routine?  You get up at 6 have coffee take the dog out, read your meditation for the day, hop in the shower, pack your lunch and you’re out the door to catch a bus to a train and another bus from the train…

My 12 Steps: Step 8

I love lists. As an extremely Type-A person, I make them constantly. There is something about literally writing down and numbering that makes a daunting task feel so much more manageable. In fact, I never met a list I didn’t like. Until reading Step 8. “We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” I found it less-than-thrilling to make a literal…

7 Life Lessons I’ve Learned From Working With Kids

Six years ago, under my mother’s pressure to find an after-school job, I begrudgingly accepted a position at a local daycare. I didn’t want to work with kids, but I wanted to work in food service even less–and those seemed to be my only options. Working with kids seemed to be the lesser of two evils…little did I know just how much I’d learn to love that stupid job. I spent one full school year…

IT HAPPENED TO ME: My College Binge-Drinking Led to Full-Fledged Alcoholism Before I Even Turned 21

Turning 21 was so close on the day I ended up in one a police cruiser on the way to the hospital. Yet I ended up sober before I ever had a legal drink. On the left, the day before I ended up in the hospital. On the right, one year sober. The difference in my physical appearance still shocks me. I used to dream about my 21st birthday. I couldn’t wait until I didn’t have to hit up older friends to…

Six Reasons to Break Anonymity

AA, Anonymity, And The Digital Age: That Thing Bill W. Didn’t Write About One of the first things I did while in treatment was post on Facebook and tell all of my acquaintances what was happening and why I was no longer drinking. I did so mostly because I was sick of hiding, sick of being ashamed of who I was and what I was going through. I did so for selfish reasons, because I knew it would take…

Ignorant People and Trolls

So the other day I got this comment on one of my posts.  The first time I read it was when I had woken up in the middle of the night and was half asleep. I saw the notification and skimmed it, thought about how stupid people were, and went back to sleep. Then I forgot about it until later the next day. I was going to just brush it off as I normally do with these types of comments, but something…

I just returned from my second ICYPAA (International Conference of Young People in AA) and happened to come across these words from a blog post I never published. I’m speaking at a meeting tonight and was panicking about what to say, then this presented itself and it’s as good a starting place as any.  I often wonder what I would have written if I’d taken the time to do so early in sobriety,…

5 Challenges Faced When You’re A High-Bottom Alcoholic

Before getting sober, I only had one general idea of an alcoholic. He was an older man, someone who had lost everything in his life at the hands of alcohol. He was hopeless and helpless. Sometimes he recovered and sometimes he didn’t. While that was my stereotypical view, to some extent I knew that addicts and alcoholics existed in all ages, genders and lifestyles. I just didn’t consider myself…

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I’ve always been comfortable with public speaking, even enjoyed it, but not this time. This time it is terrifying. I’m 20 years old and one month sober. I’m slouched in a circle of chairs, all eyes on me. I’m telling my deepest, darkest secrets to a room full of people who are virtually strangers with only one thing in common: addiction. We don’t know each other. We aren’t friends. I don’t want…

The upside of bad relationships and Tinder? Actually finding the love of your life

This was originally published at http://www.libertyproject.com I have always dated the wrong guys. Let me explain: I have always been attracted to confidence, which too often walks the line with cockiness. I have always been attracted to mystery, which often equals turmoil and brooding. In short, I have always been attracted to men who aren’t good for me — I even dated one for four years. My past…

Four years and $200,000 later: I quit my internship to pursue my passion

This was originally published at http://www.libertyproject.com While most of my fellow college grads were still scrambling to find a job, I had beat out hundreds of applicants and landed what I thought was my dream internship. It felt good, like I had a plan and a direction for my life. It lasted about six weeks before I handed in my letter of resignation. I have always been an advocate of doing…

9 Things To Consider When Dating A Normie

For the first time since getting sober, I am in a serious relationship. Actually, it’s my first serious relationship in years, even before getting sober. Once sobriety became a priority in my life, I’ll admit that I started thinking about how much easier it would be if I dated someone who was also clean. We could go to meetings together, talk about sobriety, really understand each other. In…