happiest I’ve [n]ever been.

I’m existing in the holiest of spaces. Sometimes, my body doesn’t know what to do with all the happiness, though I’m not sure ‘happiness’ is an altogether reliable description. Synonyms of the word happiness include: pleasure, merriment, cheeriness, and glee…which are certainly applicable, but only sometimes. Like when I’m laughing hard enough to produce tears –  those are assuredly moments of pure happiness.

But this space…the place I reside and witness and experience on a moment-to-moment, week-to-week basis has roots stretching far beneath the surface of pleasure or glee. I’m laughing harder than ever before…and grieving trauma more deeply than ever before…and somehow all of it creates in me the same relief and reverence.

I often find myself wondering if other newly-woke humans feel this thing, too. Are other people reading books and learning yoga and making their bed, and feeling miracles? Are other people having a horrible day, shedding tears, walking through pain, and feeling miracles?

It is a deep, deep knowing unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Contentment?  Satisfaction? Still, those words fall short, but I feel called to do my best – to lay down something about what’s happening here.

I am coming into integrity with myself. I am welcoming my spirit home.

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All my life, I associated fulfillment or happiness with something over there – on the other side of a tangible obstacle (friends, money, six-pack abs, whatever). Home videos from my childhood captured my sisters and I dancing around our home, but I would disappear for periods of time. I was packing – always packing, always getting ready for a sleepover at a friend’s house. Because even then, something in my little body was searching for something out there, something to fill me up.

All my life, wherever I was, ’twas there I wanted not to be.

My dad tells me stories now, about my behavior as a little girl. He recognized in me a desire to look outward, to fit in, to seek approval from peers and adults alike. He worried about my restlessness my whole life…something I only came to understand recently. I sit astonished, hearing stories of my past told from his perspective. We laugh because there’s nothing to be done about the first 27 years of my life, but I think we both grieve, too, for that lost little girl and her desperation.

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Most days, I wake up between 5:00 and 5:30 in the morning, which is fucking insane. Long ago, I resigned myself to the fact that I am just not a morning person and I will never be a morning person and morning people are kind of terrible. My impression of morning people was that they had their shit together in a way that felt impossible to me. I never could seem to stick to a plan, no matter how hard I willed myself to do so. Good intentions were met with what felt like defeat, every single time.

My mornings are not productive in the traditional sense of the word. There is no fasted cardio going on at my apartment. You see, it never occurred to me that being a morning person could mean whatever the fuck I wanted it to mean. Maybe someday my mornings will evolve into something else – something involving five mile runs at sunrise or guided meditation. For now, I watch movies and drink coffee because it feels good and right and gives me time to sit alive and clear at a time of day that once felt impossible.

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Sobriety is the most stunning gift any human could ever give themselves. Period. It is an entryway to vibrancy – a decision to be here and know in a way most humans will never, ever experience.

Sobriety is not a failure or a defect. It is not shameful or embarrassing or deserving of the stigma it so often receives. To move through this journey without the use of filters or easy buttons is the most subversive, courageous, daring, rewarding thing we could do. Sobriety is both the climb up a mountain and the view from the top.

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Things I know for sure today:

• My body operates best, I feel best, consuming little-to-no sugar or gluten
• Social media is not my friend
• My sisters are my people and whenever I regret the years I spent running from my family, I must remember: without those years, I might never know how sweet this is
• My body loves yoga; my spirit needs it
• I care deeply, deeply about this Earth. When I am in nature, I am home. My path is destined to subsume my love of the outdoors
• I am a writer
• We receives hints from the universe all.the.time.

For sure, I know, I am the happiest I’ve [n]ever been.

 

 

 

 

 

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