I’ve had trouble with self-care, or the lack of, basically my entire life. To make matters worse, we’re led to believe self-care is putting on a face mask and taking a nap or binge watching TV. And I couldn’t imagine being able to take a breath and slow down, not without missing out on all of the things I could be doing instead like studying or working out. But when I’d drink heavily the night before, I would wake up so hungover, I would be forced into it, resting the entire day in my bed watching TV shows on my phone. And for the longest time, I thought that was self-care so I even would put on a face mask and eat berries. …

It’s that time of year, folks! It’s the most stressful time of the year and it’s also during a pandemic. Whether you’re able to visit family, or you’ve decided to quarantine yourself for the holidays, it can still be a time where your sobriety is the most vulnerable. We tend to associate celebrations and holidays with alcohol, so the absence of that is prevalent.

Here are some tips so that you can survive this Thanksgiving both stress free and sober.

Be selfish

One of the biggest triggers for drinking is the holiday season. You’re having to deal with a lot of stress in planning travel, seeing your extended family, and everything that has to still get done around all of that. …

Last year, I kept my milestones to ones that I felt were the most impactful so I only wrote about the really big milestones like 3 month, 6 month, and a year. I even referenced writing only about the big milestones in my three month milestone post.

Because it didn’t feel like those between months were valuable, I lumped them all into single posts. Why would someone care about what happens after two months, or even four?

But now that I’m going through it again, I regret not doing it every month because every month is so nuanced, it’s a roller coaster the entire time. Some months I’d be doing fine but others, I’d be struggling to make it through the day. And now that I’m at two months of sobriety in my second attempt, I’m already seeing major differences from last year and even from last month. …

I’ve always been a cautious person. If there’s some kind of protective gear, I’m going to buy it and I will use it all the time. This goes for bouldering with crash pads, helmets with bikes, and now pads with a helmet with roller skating.

And I’ve always wondered, am I too cautious? When I see others out there skating, it’s rare that I’ll see them wearing protective gear unless they’re at a skatepark. If someone’s riding a bike, I generally don’t see a helmet.

So who’s right? While I won’t go into statistics on safety gear, here are some reasons and experiences on why I think you should wear protective gear while skating. …

After a traumatic event and years of acting out when I was younger, it was recommended that I go to therapy. With one of my fears being toilets, this therapist made the decision to lock me in a bathroom that had one toilet with the lights turned off in some sort of twisted “exposure” therapy. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to find out that instead of helping me with current events and fears, this created more fear and chaos in my world. …

I recently read some articles and books on adult children of alcoholics and I found myself relating to a lot of it. Mentally checking off on every trait on the laundry list, I could see more and more that I wasn’t through the woods yet on past trauma.

It wasn’t a surprise to me, yet I found myself feeling down about myself. Would I ever feel like I was normal?

Laundry lists

Working through it all in therapy, I realize I have my own laundry list of things that I denied for so long that have shaped who I am:

• Child of an…

What are parties like? Will I even have fun? Will I even be fun?

When I first went sober, I didn’t think I could go to a party, much less have fun at one. It felt like I was closing off social gatherings for the rest of my life both from my own doing and just the fact that I wouldn’t be invited anywhere. And I did avoid parties and social gatherings when I first went sober which helped me, but it further pushed this idea that I would never be able to be social again.

But like all things that stem from anxiety, I did end up going to a party and realized that all of those thoughts weren’t true at all. Things did change but for this introvert, it felt like it was for the better. These may not happen to you, but they have been things that have consistently come up for me when I go to social gatherings. …

“Do a pull up in 30 days!”, “Simple progression training to do your first pull up!”, “Girls training for pull ups!”. These were all of the video titles on YouTube that promised that even someone with no upper body strength like myself could do a pull up. Some even promised it in under 30 days!

I had made it a goal of mine to finally do one unassisted pull up more than a couple of years ago but regardless of the effort, an unassisted pull up evaded me. Most of the time, it was because even the starting point in those videos was way too hard for me. I couldn’t even do a negative pull up, and most of the progression steps listed were too difficult. …