Recovery and the Holidays
Hannah Green
Image Eric Muhr
Happy Thanksgiving
Wishing all of you a safe, happy holiday.
I recently had a great time talking with Annie Schuessler on the Rebel Therapist Podcast. Her podcast has been a source of inspiration to me over the years. I talk about the Embracing the Shadow Women's group, my morning practices and staying away from burn out by channeling creativity. Hope you enjoy!
Listen to Me on the Rebel Therapist Podcast
Art: A little fairy indulging by Omar Rayyan
I feel the pull to consume more around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Plus, who on earth has done enough spiritual practice to stay present and grounded during a family dinner ~ let alone through an entire holiday season? The old coping mechanisms can come down the chimney during the holidays as well...
During my first sober Christmases I often thoroughly enjoyed walking around with a bottle full of Christmas colored M&M's and taking liberal swigs of sugary goodness. I would fill a glass coca~cola bottle with these little chocolate pearls and loved feeling their silkiness fall into my mouth as I tilted the bottle back. After all, I wasn't drinking alcohol and I was so grateful for that.
I thought of myself as Buddy the Elf, on a happy diet of sugar and celebration. Those were good years in early sobriety. They were necessary years. I wouldn't change them.
It seems however, that years of therapy, recovery, magic and building awareness through a plethora of mind expanding modalities has slowed (not eradicated) my unconscious consumption.
I had a hungry little girl inside me...that had never had enough....enough love, enough attention...so I fed her well. Really well.
And I still do...but it is more conscious now. I am able to taste sweetness in many things, including a more conscious relationship with food. Feeding her "well" has new meaning.
I don't have to get stomach aches from celebrations with the precious little girl inside me.
I sincerely hope my reflections don't come off as discouraging or shaming of anyones enjoyment or reveling this season. I once bought 20 Tartine eclairs to share with my graduate class! Enjoyment and celebration with food was and still is a core value.
I am writing this though for all those who are bringing consciousness into their relationship with imbibing and consuming, wether that consciousness resulted from a happy and miraculous insight, through hitting a painful bottom or through painstakingly being willing to pause and feel a moment of seemingly perilous discomfort...only to find out....a craving passes.
I am writing this for those who commit to pausing before reaching for an old coping mechanism and ask: Is there anything really wrong with this moment? When we pause and ask the question, sometimes we find out:
This moment is enough. I have enough. I am enough.
Rewiring the pleasure center of my brain to enjoy the dopamine available from a nutritious meal, a calm connection, a fresh morning walk is a gift I am so grateful for.
I no longer drink spirits but I drink in Spirit as often as I can. I find spirit in this moment, the moment I almost missed in my endless quest for enough.
Perhaps this anomalous 2020 holiday season will give me a unique opportunity to pause and experience this moment and appreciate the abundance within it.
I do not regret the years of imbibing large amounts of intoxicants and sugars. The associated dopamine rushes were the training wheels for the grounded ecstatic experience of recovery...and provided the necessary relief at the time.
I am so grateful for another sober Thanksgiving and am looking forward to a more conscious enjoyment of bountiful, beautiful food.
Enjoy! Love to all.