Dear Sobriety,
One of my sisters in sobriety shared this today and I am absolutely bursting with excitement to share it with all of you!
If you ever think you’ll never see the light at the end of the tunnel, take a moment to click this link for an exercise in gratitude. You will soon see that the light has been surrounding you the entire time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PMjZ98sxzQ0&feature=youtu.be
Sending much love and good vibes to you all!!
🥰🤗🥰🤗🥰🤗
Dear Sobriety,
So apparently I cook all my own food now and create my own recipes. This is the one I’m proudest of so far!
I love cheap gas station French vanilla cappuccino. Point. Period. The End. 🤷♀️
But I haven’t been able to enjoy one since starting keto this year, so I decided to see if I could recreate that sweet, creamy, processed French vanilla flavor at home in a very unprocessed way.
It took two attempts and the discovery that apparently the secret to gas station cappuccino is very little actual coffee. 👀🤔👀
Warm the soy milk, heavy cream, vanilla, stevia and salt over low heat. Add the brewed coffee and stir until hot. Taste and adjust the sweetness or vanilla if needed.
That’s it! ☕️✨🍦
Sweet, creamy, vanilla-forward, with just enough coffee in the background to taste like the gas station version I was craving.
IN-Convenience. 👀
Because El Guapo from The Three Amigos taught me that if infamous means more than famous, then obviously in-convenience means more than convenience. (#MovieLogic)
And this took considerably more effort than pushing a button at a gas station, so the science checks out. 🤭
#MonicaSue-zyHomemaker 👩🍳☕️✨
Dear Sobriety,
Getting sober in 2017 initiated an unexpected health kick for me.
Within the first few months of simply not consuming alcohol followed by drunk binge eating calories, I’d lost 20 pounds. And by starting to build up new habits, like drinking more water and regularly walking outside, that number slowly grew as I watched the one on the scale in the bathroom shrink.
It took me 5+ years to lose 80+ pounds.
That’s a long time, huh? I think so too, but being on this side of it, I needed to take it slow.
Because evolving from a rampaging drunk who hoped to die to a hiking warrior deeply in love with life is not an overnight kinda process.
So when I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired, I had to start putting that energy somewhere constructive.
My mentality was, and essentially still is:
I’m sober now, so… I guess I gotta figure this shit out.
I found a glimmer of hope in losing those first 20 lbs. I had made a huge lifestyle change by not drinking and positive results were starting to show.
I’d spent the first half of my life drunk, high on pills and in unhealthy relationships, so sometimes I feel like I “suddenly woke up” in my late 30s realizing,
If I want a knight in shining armor to come save me, then I’m gonna have to put on chainmail.
Because I finally started learning that the only person who can really make a difference in changing me is… me.
That’s when I decided I wanted to start building a healthy life for myself.
So that’s what I’ve been working on the past few years: replacing all the time I used to spend drinking with… everything but that.
If you’ve ever tried losing or gaining weight, you know how difficult it can be to get that number moving in the direction you want. It can be so disappointing and demotivating when it doesn’t.
So after that first 20 lbs, I started hitting a plateau and realized I couldn’t ride the wave of just not drinking anymore. If you’ve heard of the “pink cloud,” that was starting to run out and reality was really starting to set in:
If I wanted to change, I had to commit to it.
That’s when I started paying attention to consistency and I’m neurospicy, so when I say CONSISTENCY MATTERS to me, please know I mean that in my mentally unstable little soul.
Consistency helps create clean metrics and patterns to help you see results. And I can see the logic in consistency.
I’d been consistently sober for a couple months and already I was seeing benefits.
But the only place I thought to look then was at the scale. And it was giving me the same data, no matter how hard I felt I tried to keep it decreasing. I realized I had to start finding motivation elsewhere if I was going to keep losing weight.
I read an article somewhere that once mentioned “non-scale victories” and listed out a few suggestions.
With that thought kinda stuck in the back of my brain, these are some of the things that kept me motivated when the scale wasn’t budging:
If the last time you went to the gym was a bad experience, you’re probably going to have some anxiety going back. That’s to be expected with (re)starting any habit. You’ve got to do it a few times to start building up a tolerance for it.
One thing that held me back from even going to the gym was feeling like people were going stare at me being awkward and new at something.
Which… putting it in writing like that makes me think: is that really so bad? It’s so cliche to say, but you gotta start somewhere, right?
How I changed my focus from all the thoughts that other people might be thinking about me (aka my projections) was to put mental blinders on myself.
I zeroed in on every little detail of myself:
Once I started focusing fully on my body, I was able to begin seeing that all the people working out around me were literally there trying to do the same.
People make the gym out to be a place that’s scary, and, I mean… you’re going to a place where you’re literally putting your physical weaknesses on display while you work to get stronger. That is scary.
But once you get into a habit, you may start finding you begin to enjoy it.
Which leads me to my last bit for today…
Like… what if you start to enjoy it?!
Maybe you could go from thinking:
I don’t want to.
To…
Ok. I’m making life changes. I see progress. What if I keep showing up for myself?
To…
I can cycle for 60 minutes in 125° sauna and when Lil Jon’s Turn Down for What pops on, I say, ”Yes sir! I’ll turn down for another song while cycling, of course!”
Maybe that’s the thing nobody tells you.
You start out hating it.
Then you keep going because you see progress.
Then one day you realize you’ve become someone who actually enjoys the thing you once dreaded.
Somewhere between the first miserable workout and singing along to Lil Jon in a 125° sauna, I stopped trying to survive my life and started participating in it.
And that’s probably the biggest non-scale victory of them all.
Dear Sobriety,
I recently finished reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson and honestly… beneath the sarcasm and f-bombs, there’s a lot of solid psychological insight in it.
I’d definitely recommend it if you feel like you need a perspective shift or a reminder that discomfort is part of being human, not proof that life is broken.
Also, IMHO, the book proves to me once again that most self-help books can be summed up at their most basic concept by AA page 417, IYKYK. And if not, here’s the Cliffs Notes version:
Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
It’s kind of wild how many different ways humans keep relearning the same lesson. 😅
What’s stood out to me the most are the sections about entitlement and the difference between blame and responsibility.
Because ooof. Those hit home. 😬 So let’s dig in!
One of the points the book makes is that modern culture can quietly encourage a kind of emotional entitlement where people begin to believe:
And to be clear, I do not think feelings are fake or unimportant. Quite the opposite. Feelings are incredibly real. I have them all the time! Ask my partner. 🤭 I’m his little tornado of emotion! 🌪️
But I do think I’ve spent periods of my life unconsciously expecting external things to fix internal discomfort.
If I felt hurt, angry, rejected, triggered or misunderstood, I often wanted relief to come from outside of me first and pictured it like:
And sometimes those things mattered.
But sometimes… I was also unknowingly handing other people responsibility for emotional work that ultimately belonged to me.
That’s where the book’s distinction between blame and responsibility really landed for me.
One of the biggest ideas in the book is:
That’s such an uncomfortable concept at first because our brains naturally want fairness. We want the person who caused the pain to also resolve the pain.
But life does not always work that way.
I didn’t ask for degenerative cervical discs. 🩻 Trust me, if there were an unsubscribe button for that experience, I would have smashed it immediately.
But whether I like it or not, it’s still my responsibility to learn how to manage it, adapt to it and take care of myself through it.
I can resent reality all day long and my spine will still be my spine.
That realization applies emotionally too.
Trauma may not be your fault.
Triggers may not be your fault.
Loss may not be your fault.
Other people’s behavior may not be your fault.
But eventually, healing still becomes your responsibility.
And honestly? I think accepting that has changed me more than almost anything else in the past few years.
Because the more I worked on my own emotional regulation, the less energy I spent trying to control other people. And that’s turned into:
Meditation has helped with that a lot too. It created space between trigger and reaction. Space to notice my emotions without immediately becoming them.
And weirdly enough, some of the most freeing realizations I’ve had lately are:
Sometimes feelings are signals.
Sometimes they’re old wounds echoing.
Sometimes they’re projections.
Sometimes they’re important.
Sometimes they’re fear.
Learning the difference has probably been one of the hardest and healthiest parts of growing up for me.
I still have opinions. Loud ones sometimes. 🥹👉👈
But I’m getting better at pausing long enough to ask:
Is this actually about the present moment?
Or is this an emotional reflex looking for somewhere to land?
That pause has changed a lot.
I still have a very loud internal monologue sometimes. 🧠 The difference now is that I don’t automatically treat every emotional reaction like an emergency anymore. And honestly? That’s been freeing as hell.
Want to learn more? Watch Mark Manson summarize the entire book on YouTube 👉 here 👈 or go old school like me and check out the book at your local library! 📚
Dear Sobriety,
Road rage is hurting you more than helping.
I used to watch an ex get genuinely frustrated behind the wheel every time it rained. The law in Missouri states: if it’s raining, turn your headlights on. And he took that seriously.
So seriously that he’d aggressively flash his brights at every passing car without its headlights on trying to “correct” them, convinced he was helping.
But the thing is… the other drivers probably didn’t experience it that way.
They weren’t grateful.
They weren’t learning a lesson.
Most of them probably didn’t even realize anything had happened.
All that effort, all that frustration… and none of it actually changed anything.
That’s when it clicked for me: a lot of road rage isn’t really about safety… It’s about control.
And not just control… fear.
Fear that something unpredictable is happening around us.
Fear that other people won’t do what we expect.
Fear that we’re not actually in charge of what unfolds around us.
And when humans feel fear, we tend to react instead of respond.
We escalate.
We correct.
We try to force order onto something that was never fully ours to control.
But here’s the truth… 👀
I know no one appointed me to be the boss of the road and I bet no one appointed you either.
Let go of the weight of managing everyone else and you stop carrying tension that was never protecting you in the first place.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is…
Stay in your lane. ✨🚙✨
Dear Sobriety,
When I got sober, I began learning how to “practice the pause” (aka pause myself before reacting to a trigger). But overstimulation still has a way of shoving that pause right out the proverbial window, leaving me raw and reactive.
In May, my partner introduced me to Transcendental Meditation. While six months of building a consistent practice hasn’t “fixed” my problems, it has opened a deeper channel into my emotions.
Meditation has given me the ability to see the feeling behind the trigger – the emotion that drives the reaction – and to respond with more clarity.
I’ve learned to (mostly) compartmentalize those big emotions when they surge. Instead of being swept away, I can hold them, set them aside and return to them when I’m ready to work through them at my own pace and time.
Now, with the holidays fast approaching, I’m realizing just how strong that ability to compartmentalize has become – and also how much clutter still lingers in my head, waiting to be untangled.
Personal growth, it turns out, has opened a new category for me…
Frustratingly Hopeful – a place where strength and mess coexist – where progress is undeniable, but the work is far from done.
Want to read more about my Transcendental Meditation practice?
Here’s how I got started: Day 2,796 – Demystifying Meditation with Magic Shell
Here’s an update: Day 2,814 – NOW! That’s What I Call Living in the Present! Vol. 1
Dear Sobriety,
When I choose to take responsibility for my own feelings and emotions, I release my loved ones from carrying that weight.
In the space created, joy has more room to dance. ✨
Dear Sobriety,
When I learned to lift myself up and fill my own cup, love from others no longer filled a void… it simply overflowed. 🖤
Dear Sobriety,
In honor of the woman I once was – the one who couldn’t do this – and in celebration of the woman I am today, who can and does…
I offer every individual who reads this a challenge.
Go to a mirror. Look yourself in the eyes and tell yourself,
I love you.
If you can’t say it, or don’t mean it, I challenge you again to begin the work of finding what you need to heal.
The world won’t heal until the people do.
And you, of all people, are worthy of your own love.
Dear Sobriety,
I learned how to create memes on CoPilot and doing that inspired this blog.
Acceptance isn’t surrender… it’s alchemy.
For a long time I thought healing meant fixing. Erasing. Making sense of the mess. But acceptance has taught me something softer, deeper and far more powerful: I don’t need to understand every negative life event in order to move forward. I don’t need to agree with what happened to reclaim my worth.
Acceptance doesn’t mean agreement. It means I stop fighting the past and start honoring the present. It means I let my story breathe – even the jagged parts. It means I trust that every version of me led to this one. And this one?
She knows now she’s been worthy all along.
I created this meme to remind myself (and maybe you) that healing doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it curls up on your lap. Sometimes it exhales through a joint. Sometimes it whispers:
You’re allowed to begin again, even if no one else understands why.
Maybe I didn’t know then, but I know now. And now is the perfect time to learn that.
A lot of my inspiration for applying acceptance into my daily life is from being in recovery. If you’d like to dig further into the world of Acceptance, these are two of my faves:
Dear Sobriety,
Read about it here: https://dearsobriety.home.blog/2025/07/13/day-2796-demystifying-meditation-with-magic-shell/
“NOW = Never Over Whelmed”
Jen Sincero
My reward for a consistent meditation practice is that my outlook on life is no longer influenced by anxiety, hormones and pain. And that, my friends, makes my life so magically simple.
Have you ever felt “on edge” about something? You know the feeling. Like when you’re waiting to hear if you got the job or not. Sitting at home, staring at the phone… almost willing it to ring. And when it does, it scares the crap out of you so badly that you literally scream? Yeah. That feeling. Well, the feeling right before the phone ringing and hollering… the AN-TICI-……
…PATION.
That’s the best way I can describe what it feels like to be overstimulated and anxious. I feel wound up inside – quite literally sometimes – because I’m anticipating the Universe’s next move. And that feeling doesn’t go away. It starts from the moment I wake to the moment I fall asleep. I’ve learned that the volume can get turned down with regular exercise and a healthy diet, but it never goes away. And the volume always gets turned back up with PMS and pain – there’s no mental break for me allowed during PMS and pain.
Anxiety can even manifest as a physical feeling for me with things like traffic. While I’m driving, a knot forms in my belly and pulsates with the energy of all the cars and people around me. If I’m talking on the phone with someone and I get cut off in traffic, I will scream because it’s too overwhelming for me. Ask my partner. He’s been on the receiving end of those calls a few times…
Damn that’s embarrassing to write. But it’s true. When I’m overstimulated, I have no control over my emotions or reactions.
🎤 Sorry, mic check… I HAD no control over my emotions… until I started meditating in May.
In June, I noticed my PMS moodiness and associated general lack of patience had vanished. Yes. Vanished. I still have body aches, breast tenderness, bloating and night sweats. My body is still going through the whole process, but my mind is no longer tied to it. It’s so freaking cool and so difficult to explain! So I wanted to wait until at least another month had rolled around to make sure that what I was experiencing wasn’t just a “fluke”.
Here we are in July and my PMS moodiness and overall lack of patience is still gone. My breasts are super sore, my back hurts like heck, but here I sit typing away with a slight smile on my lips and a new lightness in my fingertips.
Life is still happening, stress is still there, work is still worky, but I’m not anxious about it. Instead, I’m confident that I’m putting my very best abilities out into the world right now.
And NOW… I’m Never Over Whelmed.
Dear Sobriety 