Celebration - Part II

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

~Thomas J. Peters

No quote was ever truer to my old life.  I had long since stop celebrating life and life's events and had moved onto just celebrating wine.  Not celebrating with wine.  Just celebrating wine.  The fact that I could drink with abandon and no one could tell me what to do.  I was a grown ass woman!  If I wanted to kill myself drink, I could!  Leave me alone.  I know what I'm doing!  All I want is MORE!  Why can't anyone understand that?

But the quote is also true now and will be forever because I want to celebrate more of what I have now.  I want to celebrate the peace that comes with sobriety.  It doesn't come right away.  In the beginning that damned recording just kept playing over and over and over in my head and I had nothing to numb it.  It was more exhausting than anything I had every encountered while drinking.

But eventually it quieted.  And I found peace.

And so I want to celebrate that peace.  How do I celebrate it?   Well thank you for asking.

I celebrate by thanking God, several times a day for all He has given and all He has helped me build.  We talk a lot but I make a special effort every morning to really pray as well.  That way if I get too busy to stop and say "thank you" or "guess what" or "damn God, that was crazy" during the day, I'm covered.

I celebrate by trying to be kind.  I love that word.  I think it's my favorite word.  You can be angry or frustrated or upset and still be kind.  In fact, I've seen seemingly happy people be very unkind (I don't think they were really that happy to tell you the truth) from time to time.  As I said in a former post, it's never okay to be unkind and guess what?  It doesn't cost a dime.  Plus it fills up your karma account which is some good stuff.

I celebrate by looking at the world through rose colored glasses.  I've been called (among other things) a silly optimist, a hopeless romantic, Susie Sunshine, and my personal favorite, "For Christ's sake Sherry would you stop putting a positive spin on EVERYTHING?"  But that's just how I see the world.  I don't think it will all work out, I know it will.  It may not be the way I thought it would be, but it still works out.  And so I celebrate that by always trying to see good and light and love in everything.

I celebrate by loving.  Loving not only people and pets and housing and jobs and all the other normal everyday things, but loving things that you might not think about.  Like the maintenance guy in your building that has some challenges but overall has a pure heart.  Or the homeless guy begging for money on the side of the road who may or may not be scamming me but who gives a fuck.  It's cold and he needs money.  I'm warm and I have some (not much...but some).  No brainer for me.  Or the salesclerk who is being rude.  Who knows why she's being rude but I'm certainly not going to add to her bad day.  I'm going to approach her from a position of love...and hope for the best.  Or the old pond along my walking route that looks just awful but is home to some of nature's more beautiful creatures.  Pretty little frogs and graceful cranes and,  my personal favorite, Mallard ducks.  Or yoga (I'm sticking to my resolution!).  Or a big green chair by the fire that welcomes me home in the evening and in which I firmly plant my ample behind.

I celebrate by staying true to my sobriety and not letting myself down by drinking.  I know I'm only one bad judgement call from relapse, we all are, but doing so would be to violate everything I've come to love about sobriety.  It's just not worth losing what I've gained.  I pray I never forget that. 

I celebrate by writing this blog everyday and communicating with "my people" (you guys are "my people"...I love having "people"...I feel like Beyonce).  People who have been touched by addiction in one way or another.  Some are recovering, some are just sober, some are still struggling and some are dealing with family members who are caught up in this web of ugliness and pain.  All are precious and giving and loving and without this blog, I don't think I'd still be sober.  I know I never would have moved into recovery*.

And yes, sometimes I just celebrate with cake!  Because it's good and life is too short to pass up the opportunity to eat cake.

In moderation of course. {wink}

Namaste

*I talk alot about being sober vs. being in recovery.  For me this marks the time I moved from just sober to the place where I started dealing with all the ugly crap that I had shoved down for 30 something years.  It's when I started to heal the broken little girl and started the journey to liking - and maybe one day loving - myself.  It's different things for different people.  This is what it is for me.