Without much plan about it, I was working through sets at the gym on Tuesday and noticed myself reflecting on the past year. I have not ever been one for resolutions. My relationship with definitive goal setting in general is somewhat convoluted and ineffective. It is not so much my thing. I do, however, love losing myself in a mood of diffuse reflection. A little bit of looking back and looking forward. In general, I feel myself to be steady state in terms of my day-to-day living and what I am trying to accomplish and maintain, I’ve no big ambitions that I want to tackle anytime soon. I am primarily interested in holding the course through Maple’s last year home with us, making sure that we all feel supported and connected as we prepare for big familial change. So, I was a little surprised when I paused to take note of where I stand now versus where I was situated a year ago. The changes that have taken place in one year have turned out to be much larger and more significant than I ever set out to create for myself.
On Christmas Eve, it will be one year since I stopped drinking. It wasn’t the plan, it was just what wound up happening. Our whole family was so sick for so much of the fall of 2022, it was awful. Maple missed so much school that I received a letter regarding her absences from the truancy office. Over Thanksgiving, we were all down for the count with some retched cough that came along with a round of really gruesome pink eye. At Christmas, I had the flu and by New Year’s I had RSV. And by the time I was feeling somewhat myself, near the third week of the year, I figured I might as well make it a Dry January.
Ok and before I continue, here is the drinking and sobriety back story, which I know I have shared before at some point on the blog or somewhere but just to get up to speed and make sure the context is clear. I have never ever been a big drinker. Even when I was “drinking regularly” that would look like a glass of wine or a beer several nights a week. Covid of course saw an uptick in that, but it was one I tried to pay little attention to at the time. It felt like the least of my worries. Drinking at all has never felt great to me. It disrupted my sleep and left me feeling groggy and sluggish in the mornings. I was kind of lukewarm about it forever.
When I was freshly 30, just before getting pregnant with Eider, I remember going to some yoga event and staying with Christina and she wasn’t drinking at all at the time. I don’t think I was either but not on purpose. Just because that is how I often was through much of my 20s and 30s. She said that she had decided when she turned 40 to give herself the gift of not drinking for the year and I remember thinking at the time that that sounded so intriguing. The idea that it was a gift that she could give herself. It has stuck with me.
Often, over the years I found myself returning to that idea as something I would like to do, gift myself a whole year off of drinking. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that it was hard to go for it because of two primary factors: social structures and my husband. It is difficult to bow out of the most culturally enforced recreational pursuit that exists for adults in our country, which has been normalized for us since birth. It was even harder to shift away from something that was reinforced in my home as it held more value for my spouse than it did for me. Now I look at that and see all of the enmeshment and codependency there and I have a little bit of remorse but mostly just a lot of compassion around the fact that it can be very difficult to go it alone. So now is probably a good time to say that Chris hasn’t had anything to drink since last Christmas either. It was inadvertent for him too at the start. But then the changes that transpired for him when he let it go have been so significant and striking that it completely upended everything that he and I believed to be true about recreational consumption and societal norms.
It is a bummer to know that I needed him to stop in order for me to stop. However, his relationship was more nuanced than my own; he had all of the pleasure and none of the negative feelings tied up in it that I did. I grappled for years. Wanting not to drink but still feeling like I had to for some dumb reason. He just enjoyed drinking and perceived no significant implications. Until, of course, he stopped. And stopped for longer than 30 days. 30 days is fine. I think it is good to do for sure. But I also now think that you don’t get any of the deeper feedback around not consuming alcohol until after 90 days. Then the data really begins to land. At 90 days, my human organism began to feel fundamentally different. My cells reorganized. I was clear and steady and feeling good in ways that had felt outside of myself when I was still consuming from time to time.
Giving up alcohol was something that I had flirted with for years and years. Even with infrequent use, I find that it is a tangled web to unwind and I had my own difficulty and reluctance in doing so. Like I said at the start, the end for me was inadvertent. I had kind of thought that I would just go the year. I wasn’t committed to any grandiose moratorium on alcohol for life. And in many ways, I am still not. I think Chris is. Who knows. Life is long and uncertain. But I am not going to pick it up again in the foreseeable future. Of that I am certain. I like my life and the world without slowly poisoning myself. My attention has turned even more completely toward feeling good for as much of my life as possible. I want to live long and live well. I want to function to the best of my potential.
And so, the other piece that unfolded for me this year, also inadvertently and yet not at all accidentally, is that after years of wanting to get more organized around my strength training and conditioning, I finally did. I have loved lifting weights since the very first time I touched a barbell in a CrossFit class in 2016, but I had a growing sense that my desire to improve and build my fitness and ability was going to need a more organized structure than a group class can provide. So a few pivotal things landed exactly what I was looking for right in my lap. First was that I had been going to the local gym, Deep Roots Fitness, since May 2022 and found the community and support I had been craving in a health and wellness-oriented environment. Second, is that I began teaching yoga there in April of 2023 which opened up access to the gym for my personal use. And then third, one of my longtime students, turned friend, turned coach, began programming progressive strength training blocks for me at the end of July and I have been holding steady with them ever since. This regular strength training behavior has been transformational for all parts of me.
The whole thing feels like a lotta stars aligned vibes and I am just really pleased to find myself in this space at the close of the year. And honestly, I didn’t plan on getting here. I had no goals set around any of it. But I will tell you what I did have: a shitload of longing, a ton of candor, the ability and desire to talk about what works, along with a clear vision of the woman I want to be for myself, my family, and my community. I think what happened this year is that I began to live into a lot of my values and in so doing, some of the superfluous bits began to fall away. The question most days now is not what I should be doing or not doing, but how I want to feel and what choices I need to make to be in service to my desired feeling state.
So many lovely outcomes have arisen by virtue of that singular intention. My body and mind feel better than they ever have, I have more patience, I have more peace, I am having great sex with my husband regularly, and my communication feels better and more productive in the majority of my relationships. I am playful and creative and motivated. I feel a profound sense of gratitude throughout most of my day. I am enjoying my life and I am inspired by the opportunity to keep on living it.
So that is it. Some of the deeper recap of my year. And funny enough, I almost didn’t pause to take any note of it at all. It all seems like such a fundamental part of who I am today. It is incredible to reflect on where I was a year ago. I’m glad I took the time for it. Thanks for reading.