“There is what you experience, and then there is the story you tell yourself about it. Over time, that story becomes the truth you carry, as the other details fade in the distance. Over time, how you write the narrative determines how you experience reality.”
– Brianna Wiest in entry 208 of The Pivot Year.
Several conversations I’ve had this week have revolved around folks convincing themselves that if they dare to reach out to another soul for support during challenging times, they risk being ostracized for their audacity to seek connection.
Instead of telling yourself that by calling, you are inconveniencing your childhood best friend—who you recently informed of your sobriety journey, tell yourself that your best friend loves you and wants to be given opportunities to be there for you. She can’t help you if you don’t tell her that you need support.
Instead of telling yourself that your sister is too busy with her kids to take your call, tell yourself that your sister is a grown woman who will let you know if she can’t talk to you right now. You don’t need to assume what she is and is not able to do.
Instead of assuming that you are bothering the kind individual who offered you their phone number in a meeting and encouraged you to “Call any time!” by actually calling them, ask yourself, “Am I a mind reader?” Because what evidence do you have that you’re bothering this person? Are you now a telepath, too?
You are not an inconvenience.
You are not a bother.
The truth is that you will encounter difficult times, and the story you tell yourself will dictate whether you navigate these challenges alone or with the support of others.
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“Your immediate reaction does not tell you who you are, it is how you decide to respond after the reaction that gives you real insight into how much you have grown. Your first reaction is your past, your intentional response is your present.” – Yung Pueblo
Sometimes, when we encounter other people in this recovery journey, we might find ourselves struck by judgment. Perhaps someone recovers in a way that does not resonate with you, and you find your body reacting strongly when you hear that they do “x” to recover.
Inspired by the quote above, I want to offer this:
Lack of growth lives, not in the initial feeling of the judgment, but rather in the choice to remain in that headspace. Choosing to live in a space of judgment toward how someone recovers can limit your ability to be of service to others or even build community.
For example, you might buy into the false narrative that you have nothing to offer this individual, so you don’t reach out. On the other hand, you may think this person has nothing to offer you, so you decline to connect and build a wall instead.
What if, the next time you feel that pang of judgment run through your body, you slow down and get curious? What is this judgment trying to tell you about how you see recovery and the world? Is this belief something you can question? How might this feeling block you, and how can you transform it into compassion and service?
Just because someone else is in recovery will not automatically make them your next best friend—trust me about that! But you’ll never know if there is something to gain from connecting with them if you automatically dismiss this person because of how they chose to heal.
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Recently, Dr. Nicole LePera wrote the following about people pleasing, “At the end of the day, people pleasing is about ourselves. And not wanting to feel uncomfortable emotions. In working with people there’s always a “ah ha” moment when someone understands that they’re not really pleasing— they’re controlling. They’re trying to control how someone perceives them. And how they feel. Once you understand this, you can start breaking the pattern.”
I reflected on this very “ah ha” moment myself regarding my personal experience in an email from March 23rd, where I admitted that I wanted to be in control of the narrative that was out there about me, so I sought to people-please by keeping my addiction a secret.
In rereading that email, however, I realized I did not hold space for multiple things to be true. I did not hold space for the people who practiced people-pleasing, not because they were trying to control others or be manipulative, as people-pleasers are frequently accused of doing, but because they needed to be safe.
On pages 85-86 of the book Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance, Kelly McDaniel mentions other sources of people-pleasing behavior. She writes, “Appeasing behavior may be less risky than fighting or running…As children, many of us learn to appease our mothers as a harm-reduction tactic…Pleasing and appeasing is similar to a trauma response—it’s an automatic, unconscious reaction that can become an engrained personality trait.”
I share this to highlight that the same behavior can have a different origin story and purpose that it serves depending on the individual, their identity, how they grew up, and things that were happening to them over time. As we grow, it becomes our responsibility to recognize what we are getting out of a behavior, and we get to decide if it still serves us when considering the future we want for ourselves.
You may find that you are, in fact, a people-pleaser. Do you have a history of secretly trying to control others’ opinions of you, or have you had to keep yourself safe? It’s so valuable to slow down and reflect on this, so take a look at the questions below:
Questions to Ask Yourself About People-Pleasing:
If you used to appease people to protect yourself or others, are you still in need of protection? What threats, real or perceived, do you face today? How might your identity connect to this? Think carefully about this one. People from historically marginalized groups do face real threats that may lead to people-pleasing behaviors. I think about conversations I’ve had with family about being extra “careful” with police.
If you used to appease people to control others’ perceptions of you, what story did you want to live in other people’s minds about you?
What is the worst that could happen if you allow yourself to disappoint these other people?
Is this worst thing that can happen, your answer to question 3, something that you can live with? Would you be safe?
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Though sobriety doesn’t shield us from life’s challenges, nurturing hope empowers us with the resilience needed to navigate whatever adversity we face.
In an interview for Time Magazine, researcher and psychologist Chan Hellman defined hope as “the belief or the expectation that the future can be better, and that more importantly, we have the capacity to pursue that future.” In sobriety, this belief becomes a lifeline for those grappling with addiction, giving them something to hold onto while working to release their substance of choice.
As my relationship with drinking drew to a close, though I didn’t know exactly whatto expect from a life without alcohol, I remember thinking that not drinking had to be better than this. At that juncture, my body was shutting down because of alcoholic liver disease—the idea of continuing to live desperately latched onto a substance that made me lie, sneak, and avoid consciousness felt equivalent to condemning myself to a living hell with a hopeless future.
Understanding that whatever sobriety had to offer me would be better than what my life was like in active addiction helped propel me into recovery. Hope empowered me to give up my career, surrender my home, and expose my secret struggle to the world—to reveal that I, the state teacher of the year, battled alcohol addiction. This surrender was based on the trust that doing these things would help me let go of the bottle I was drowning myself in.
Even now, years into this sobriety journey, I still need to hold onto hope because it provides a profound assurance that challenging times won’t last. When I experienced my heart-breaking pregnancy loss, one of the most brutal blows in my recent history, I confronted a pivotal choice—believe in a brighter future or turn to apathy.
I believe my future will be better, not because it’s contingent on specific outcomes, such as a successful pregnancy, but because I’ve honed the skill of real self-care. I have a lot of heart and love to pour into myself and others, and I won’t let the hurt I feel harden my heart and turn me into an apathetic person.
In Brené Brown’s words, “The brokenhearted are the bravest among us. They had the courage to love.” I choose to embody this bravery, leaning on hope as one of my pillars of strength.
About the author, Jessica:
Jessica Dueñas, Ed.S., the founder of Bottomless to Sober and 2019 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, is an educator in recovery who provides coaching services to individuals needing support in accomplishing their goals. In addition, Jessica facilitates professional development for organizations on wellness, leads workshops on writing and wellness, and is also available as a speaker for events.
In 2021, Jessica was named a Kentucky Colonel, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the state of Kentucky, for her service work in education and recovery spaces.
Content Warning: pregnancy loss, death by drug overdose
In the social media realm, sobriety-related posts present enticing promises to people who might want to quit drinking, from promises of glowing skin and better sleep to weight loss and the prospect of a life so fulfilling that the idea of escaping to drink seems unimaginable.
Appealing as they are, such promises are only true sometimes, especially the ones about loving your life so much that you won’t want to escape it.
In my early recovery, I subscribed to the belief that doing the “next right thing” would shield me from the unknown future, that getting my addiction under control would end my suffering.
The bulk of my suffering was caused by drinking, when, out of desperation for companionship, I found myself repeatedly entangled in relationships with men who feared commitment. When one of them did offer me commitment, it turned out that he struggled with opiate addiction. Ignoring it, I trusted that love alone would conquer it.
As no one likes to admit, love was not enough. Pile on the pain of the pandemic and the world being shut down, and he was driven back to the needle. I saw him for the last time, blueish, before the coroner wheeled him away. Just before his relapse and death, we had talked about what it would look like to build a family. His rough, calloused hands carefully held my face as he gently whispered, “You are my family,” and I shared with him that I wanted to have a baby. Not a week later, in what felt like an instant, he was gone.
Instead of seeking help, I dove into every possible bottle to avoid the pain of losing him. My dreams of a family were shattered. I felt I would never find a partner, fall in love, or become a mother.
That year, isolation and grief landed me in eight alcohol-related hospitalizations that lasted from three days to five weeks. When I finally got sober in November of 2020, I needed to believe that I had paid my dues of emotional suffering due to a life of alcohol addiction. I had to hold onto the hope that if I could stop pouring this poison into my body that everything would go just right. Surely, sobriety would bring me peace and a life I would want to embrace rather than escape, a belief that I carried until recently.
In December of 2023, I was in a new, healthy, long-term relationship and finally felt safe enough to consider actually trying to get pregnant.
On a chilly afternoon, I went to the grocery store and filled my cart with snacks, suddenly strolling into the family planning section. Like a teenage girl with a secret, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and I snuck a box of pregnancy tests into my shopping cart. My stomach fluttered with excitement as the cashier rang up my total. Rushing home to use the bathroom, I ripped into the box and tore open the test packaging.
A faint pink line came up.
Eyes wide, my chest tightened with anticipation as I pulled out another test and waited.
I was pregnant.
Grabbing the third test, I waited again.
I was still pregnant.
After years of not trusting myself or my partners, I rejoiced!
Finally, I get to be a mom.
On Christmas, I told my partner the news, the joy of which was the best gift I could give. Weeks later, we confirmed the pregnancy with an ultrasound. Upon hearing the heartbeat, we beamed at each other, bright with excitement.
We shared the news with our loved ones and colleagues, and I started to write notes to the baby in a collection of random thoughts titled, “All The Things I Wish I Had Known.”
The joyous anticipation abruptly extinguished during a routine checkup on January 30th, 2024. The ultrasound delivered the heartbreaking news of a silent miscarriage. “I’m so sorry, Jessica,” the sonographer said quietly. “The baby is gone.” Looking at the screen, trying to make sense of her words, I listened for a heartbeat that was not there. On the screen was a misshapen sac. My heart sank. My eyes watered. My partner squeezed my hand tightly as the room spun out of control.
Despite my beliefs about recovery, life had shattered the illusion of sobriety as a shield against pain and loss.
About one out of four pregnancies don’t make it. “It’s not your fault,” my doctor explained. “There’s no reason.” As I wept silently in my partner’s arms, tears in his eyes, too, my heart felt the familiar feeling of shattering. My thoughts raced.
Will I ever become a mother?
Do I have the courage to try to get pregnant again?
What if I never become a mother?
I’ve been through enough already – why do I have to go through this?
Haven’t I done all the right things?
This final reflection is precisely where I got things wrong about recovery and had some serious unlearning to do.
Recovery, I learned, is not a guaranteed dispensary of desires earned through time and effort.
Sobriety, it turns out, does not equal immunity from hardship but rather equips us with the tools to face life’s challenges.
In the face of this loss, I revisited a note I had written to my unborn child.
After the initial pregnancy confirmation.
Difficult times come to reveal something about you to yourself, Something that you would have never known otherwise. How could you know how strong you are If you never had something to overcome? Don’t seek hardships, but when they come, Say, “Hello. What are you here to teach me?”
Recovery doesn’t exempt us from life’s tribulations but transforms our ability to navigate them. Reading the note and contemplating this loss, I needed to process the lesson that recovery owes me nothing. It has armed me with the means to handle life’s challenges without needing to escape.
When my partner passed away in 2020, isolation and alcohol were my coping mechanisms. When I miscarried, I immediately leaned on others for support, accepting offers of food and companionship. I took time off of work, cleared my calendar, and sought refuge with my sister after having surgery to complete the miscarriage on February 1st. Simply put, I have allowed others to take care of me and changed the narrative of how I respond to hardship.
It’s my birthday weekend, and I canceled the celebration because of my broken heart. Still, I choose to stay sober and sit with the inevitable pain that comes with this past week’s events.
During group support meetings that I lead with The Luckiest Club, we always close with a reading of “The Nine Things” from Laura McKowen’s book, Push Off From Here. Laura says, “I wrote the nine most important things I needed to hear — from myself, from others, from what I understood to be God — when I was in the dark hell of my addiction. They were the things I still needed to hear daily in sobriety.” I needed to hear these things to recover from the miscarriage and gather myself to move forward:
It is not your fault.
It is your responsibility.
It is unfair that this is your thing.
This is your thing.
This will never stop being your thing until you face it.
You can’t do it alone.
Only you can do it.
You are loved.
We will never stop reminding you of these things.
Hello, hard times.
While I am not grateful for them, I am thankful for how I have learned to handle them, a testament to the essence of my sobriety.
About the author, Jessica:
Jessica Dueñas, Ed.S., the founder of Bottomless to Sober and 2019 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, is an educator in recovery who provides coaching services to individuals needing support in accomplishing their goals. In addition, Jessica facilitates professional development for organizations on wellness, leads workshops on writing and wellness, and is also available as a speaker for events.
In 2021, Jessica was named a Kentucky Colonel, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the state of Kentucky, for her service work in education and recovery spaces.
“If I work harder, sacrifice more, and say yes more, I’ll feel better about my secret problem with alcohol.”
I used to tell myself this, and all I was doing was creating a greater incongruence between me and my truth, which was that I was addicted to alcohol.
One of my biggest unlearnings in sobriety was releasing the idea that my output isn’t tied to my worth as an individual.
“More” was a word that dominated my story for years.
If I could do more at work or for others, get more degrees, and get more accolades, I could drink more alcohol because I couldn’t possibly have a problem, right?!
I hoped that if I could work harder at everything BUT me, those external things would somehow offset how poorly I felt about myself as a result of my drinking.
If you’ve also negotiated your drinking with yourself by leaning on all you do for others, be they loved ones or the organizations you work for, I see you.
In a society that constantly asks us what we bring to the table, it’s a rebellious act to look inward and recognize that what we carry by simply being is already enough.
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“How do I know if I’m ready to date? I don’t want to get hurt.”
If you are stepping into the dating arena in 2023 as a person in recovery, I want to go ahead and hit you with the news that you getting hurt is a guarantee.
Someone will disappoint you, piss you off, or trigger some age-old insecurities about yourself you may have thought you got over. This truth isn’t limited to the idiots you may encounter. Even people with the best intentions for you who may be a good fit for you will, at a certain point, cause an emotional disturbance for you.
So, if you want companionship, step one is to accept that there will be pain in seeking it.
When I dated in early recovery, I made two mistakes.
I falsely believed the person I was with would never hurt me.
I was too early on in this recovery work and too unsteady to handle the pain that eventually did come. So when my heart broke, my attempts at sobriety shattered right along with it, leaving me to do a hell of a ton of picking up the pieces.
So, if you want to ask yourself if you’re ready to jump into the dating arena and look for companionship, first, you must accept that there WILL be times when connecting with others romantically will challenge you. Dating can be fun, AND you will still get your feelings hurt. If you have decided you want a partner, you have to be ready to take the risks that come with it.
Hurt, sadness, disappointment, and anger are all part of the human experience. Welcome to your human life.
So, what happens when you take the risk and get ghosted, or someone tells you they had a drunk mom and aren’t looking for someone with a prior complicated past with alcohol?
You might question everything about you, including your sobriety. The inner critic inside your head might say, No one is EVER going to want to be with you now that you’re sober. If you haven’t built a strong foundation for yourself or adopted tools to help you through hard moments like these, you may start to believe that inner critic to the point you drink to quiet the voice. To drown it out.
After the heartbreak after the loss of my prior partner, I committed to not dating seriously until I could trust myself to handle pain and not drink over it.
Once I started looking for a partner, however, I suited up and showed up, knowing that disappointment wouldn’t kill me, neither could rejection nor mixed messages. Would these feelings hurt? Hell yea. But they couldn’t harm me. I was safe.
I am safe.
Do I know that my current partner will never break my heart? No. I have no guarantee of that. What I do know, however, is that anything could happen with him, and I don’t have to drink over it.
My work on myself, the tools I utilize to cope, and the people in my circle have given me a safe place to land. So, if I ever were to hit a place of emotional devastation, drinking doesn’t have to be my way to handle it.
In closing, if you’re thinking about dating, ask yourself these questions:
Am I ready to feel the discomfort of a range of challenging emotions because people are not perfect and dating requires me to meet new imperfect people?
Am I equipped to handle the range of challenging emotions that may accompany this journey without drinking?
If your answer is yes, happy dating AND you should check out life coaching with me so I can work you to navigate that lovely journey I’m all too familiar with. You can schedule a free coaching consultation here!
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Dasha Kennedy, a financial educator known on Instagram as @thebrokeblackgirl, recently shared a list of tough financial decisions she had to make that saved her life. Her list inspired me to create a list of my own tough decisions I had to make to save my life via being in recovery.
Here is that list:
I sold the house I was super proud of buying all on my own in Louisville, KY., and moved into the guestroom of my sister’s home in Tampa, FL. Giving up the house meant letting go of the independence I had been proud of achieving post-divorce in 2017. I was raised to be “strong” and not dependent on others. Moving in with my sister also gave me the safety of leaning on people who loved me and would encourage my recovery.
I quit my job as a teacher in a school I loved that was part of a community I felt great joy in being involved in, where I had gotten recognized as a Teacher of the Year for my work. I worked as an entry-level salesperson at an online tutoring company instead.To be named Teacher of the Year and walk away from a space where I felt loved and respected was hard, but it was on my terms. I had a choice: face the hard of losing my job because of a circumstance I could have avoided, or face the hard of being proactive and walking away because it was no longer sustainable.
When I started dating again, I made it a priority to discuss my recovery from addiction very early on with the men I met, even if it felt uncomfortable. I knew that any man worth building a long-term relationship with would not view my recovery as a liability but rather as an asset. I wanted to repel people who wouldn’t meet that expectation quickly.
I accepted medical assistance and used medication for the first 1.5 years of my recovery.I let go of the idea that “I can do this by myself” and accepted that a licensed medical doctor could help me do what had felt like impossible work.
I talked about my story and fully accepted that I had been secretly addicted to alcohol for years. A huge thing that kept me drinking was being trapped by shame. Shame kept me thinking I was unworthy of connection, so I didn’t talk about my problem with alcohol to anyone for fear of judgment. Once I connected with others, I realized I was not alone, and it wasn’t just me.
I made time in my schedule to show up for my recovery.If I had made the time to drink, I could make the time to show up for my recovery, whether that meant meetings, therapy, or working with mentors.
I assessed my spending habits and put myself on a serious budget. I became dependent on food delivery services during my active addiction because I didn’t want to burn the house down by falling asleep while cooking. I was in debt and started learning about financial literacy to get my money in order.
I stopped telling myself I was bored when things were quiet—I experienced a lot of drama as a result of my drinking, so when things got calmer, I kept looking for something to scratch the drama itch.
I accepted that I wasn’t behind and embraced that I was where I was supposed to be. I gave up my home and a job I was passionate about to get sober. I can work toward a new home or change my work any time, but my life is the only one I have.
What are some tough decisions you have made to save yourself? Are there some decisions you know you need to make and are stalling on?
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“Wow, that’s different. I wouldn’t think a woman your age would have no kids,” said one of the fellow Mobilize Recovery participants I was sitting with after telling her I don’t have children.
I felt my heart race and my body go into a bit of a panic as I quickly fell into an old pattern of justifying my current circumstances.
I rambled, “Uh, well, you know, all those years that I drank, I worried about getting pregnant. I didn’t have the right partner. I didn’t want to have to change my drinking for someone else…” and honestly the list goes on of how I vomited at the mouth to try and defend my position as a woman with no children today.
I wish I had said, “Why does it matter to you if I have kids or not?” or “What are you making it mean that I, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children?”
But I didn’t.
And you know what, at this point, I’m better off asking myself these questions because she’s moved on with her life, and I’m still sitting here reflecting on this moment. I need to acknowledge, like Don Miguel Ruiz so often shares, if something in that woman’s words hurt me, it’s because she happened to touch on a wound that I already carry. So, what I need to do here isn’t worry about her remarks but pause, look at this, and ask myself what I need to learn about myself from this incident that disturbed me.
So with that:
Why does it matter to you, Jessica, if you have kids?And what are you making it mean that you, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children? As part of my socialization, I was taught that having a child is, in a sense, the pinnacle of womanhood and a necessary life experience. As a 38-year-old, when I look at society and lean on these external beliefs that I was given, I can quickly feel that I’m “behind” and that I haven’t “checked off all the boxes” of what a woman’s experience “should” be like.
And there it is, that word “should.“
That dangerous word that many times I shamed myself with and drank over. Anytime the word “should” comes out, that’s a sign that I need to evaluate the validity of my thoughts. It’s okay for me not to have kids today. It’s also okay for me to want children. However, having them or not does not make my life any more or less “complete,” and it certainly doesn’t take away from my lived experience as a woman.
So the next time someone makes a statement toward you that stings, if “don’t take it personally” doesn’t work for you at that moment, get curious and ask yourself:
What can I learn about myself from this incident?
Why does this statement bother me?
What am I making this mean about myself, and is it even true for me or is it true by an external standard?
Human beings experience a natural resistance to the unknown, because it is essentially the ultimate loss of control. This is true even if what’s “unknown” is benevolent or even beneficial to us.
Self-sabotage is very often the simple product of unfamiliarity, and it is because anything that is foreign, no matter how good, will also be uncomfortable until it is also familiar. This often leads people to confuse the discomfort of the unknown with being “wrong” or “bad” or “ominous.” However, it is simply a matter of psychological adjustment…
We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. Even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we’re most used to.”
From pages 17-18 of The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
I’ve referenced this passage in about three different conversations in the last 24 hours, so I figure it’s a sign that I should go ahead and share it in an email, too.
Sometimes, we have a friend, or another loved one who makes decisions that we don’t believe are in their best interest. For example, after infidelity in what is supposed to be a monogamous relationship, we may see our loved one choose to take the individual who betrayed them back. In our minds, we might be thinking, “What the f*ck are you doing? You deserve so much better!” And as a result, we get angry and disappointed. We’re basically taking it personally that our loved one did not choose what we thought was best for them.
Here’s a reminder. First, nothing other people do is because of you, ever. You may be the most supportive friend, and you may have all the evidence in the world as to why your friend may want to leave a job or partner who doesn’t treat them well, but let me offer you the idea of putting yourself in their shoes first while keeping this passage I quoted in mind. Especially that last line, “We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. Even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we’re most used to.”
So to you, it may be frustrating to see a loved one continue to drink, continue to go back to a workplace that treats them like garbage, or stay in a relationship where they are not valued or respected, but remember that to them, the idea of something unknown may be more terrifying than their current situation. You know that saying, “Choose your hard?” Everyone has to do just that: choose their hard. For some, choosing the hard of what is familiar may be all they can handle rather than opting for the challenge of diving into the unknown.
It’s not up to us, and it’s not up to you.
The second thing I wanted to do regarding this passage is to invite you to do some self-reflection work. Take a few minutes and think on or journal these questions after re-reading the passage:
What is a familiar pattern you keep diving back into because you’re scared of what might happen if you enter unknown territory?
What do you think is the worst that could happen in this unknown realm? Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen? ANNNND, so what if it did?
What is the worst that could come from you staying in the pattern you are in today, from staying in the familiar? Compare this “familiar” worst-thing-that-could-happen to your “imagined” worst-thing-that-could-happen from diving into the unknown. What do you notice?
Feel free to write back and let me know! Have a great rest of your week, and if you want to have these conversations 1:1, please note that I am open to taking new coaching clients again as of this month, so sign up for a free consultation here! https://www.bottomlesstosober.com/coaching-services/
