20 Years at Stonehaven Castle

 

20 years is a long time to live in one little place. We moved into this house on June 19, 2004. I was 29 years old.

We didn’t pay for a lot of upgrades – it took all we had to afford to buy a house. We signed paperwork for a price of $129,000. Our original goal was $100,000 so it was a bit over what we wanted, but we felt we could handle it.

The house was immense after a small one bedroom apartment (Torrey Place Apartments). We wondered how we’d ever have enough furniture to fill it. Because it had linoleum floors (to save money and we wanted to do our own floors), the house echoed with it’s newness and emptiness.

In 2008, Hannah arrived to this house, fresh from Lackland Airforce Base. I remember setting her carrier down on the floor, and wanting a beer. I was so happy to be home and to finally put the nursery to use. Mom and I had painted the wall in there in large color blocks of orange, purple and mustard.

We bought a glider chair where I rocked the baby. It was on the windowsill in the living room where she stood up for the first time, he sweet chubby legs shaking, her smile so proud of what she’d just done. I didn’t miss those firsts in her first year. I got to see her sit up, stand, and walk before I had to go back to work.

Later that year, our friend Mona moved in, and the office was now converted into a bedroom. Mona was coming down anyway more mornings than not because I had to be at work at 5 am in San Antonio at my new job. It made sense for her just to live her.

And it’s a good thing Mona was there, because the little house and my little heart exploded in chaos and sadness in 2010. I ran away from my little house with only my baby in the middle of the night. I was so afraid, but I was more afraid to stay. We hid from that little house for a while, waiting on the court system to rescue us.

I came home finally, alone at first. My cherished things broken and shattered on the floor. Ashtrays overflowing, beer cans on the floor. But in ways it also felt clean – a spirit had lifted and the air felt light. I could breathe again. I wasn’t afraid.

That’s when I started scrapping and saving to afford the house payment on my own. When I went to the store I kept a running total in my head so I wouldn’t get embarrassed at the register about not having enough money in my account. Every penny mattered. I was determined to hang onto that house – maybe mostly because I saw a text I wasn’t supposed to see that mocked my ability to make the house payment.

Hannah got stung by 23 wasps on the playground in the backyard, and Mona put her in an ice path. That's when I learned she's a champion pill swallower - Benadryl at three!

At my kitchen counter, Mona got the news that Josh had passed, the same day my neighbor who had taken me in on that dark night husband’s passed. I can still remember that January 2 exactly, like a picture frame frozen in time. My brother bought Mona a miniature crepe myrtle – I thought I lost it when I built the pool, but it defiantly has popped out the side of the concrete.

My neighbor across the way who held my head when I sobbed after the miscarriage got old and moved away. My other neighbor who secretly fertilized my tomato plants and tried to straighten my crooked crepe myrtle also got old and moved away. Dennis, Mary, Mickey, Jermyn, Crystal, Mable, Avery…. All neighbors who have moved away. But Susie has stayed. And now there’s Katherine, Paul, Julie, Matt, Otto. So many stories, meals, and drinks gone by. They say we don’t know our neighbors anymore, but I know mine. So many Christmas cookies and eggs given away and cups of sugar borrowed.

20 years is a long time. Another failed marriage. Another cleansing of the house and another clean slate and fresh aura. This one is too fresh to talk about in depth. Ushering in an era of sobriety. Being blown back from the bottle after letting God take it. Pouring bottles of liquor down the sink, cleaning out all the alcohol from everywhere – how the sink smelled like college that day.

A man coming around to help me with my travel trailer the week before the great road trip of 2022 to Broadway with Hannah. Walking around the side of the house, leaning against the brick, and wishing he had a brother. Only come to find out, he was to be mine. And soon.

A pool! A hot tub! Turquoise countertops! Painting the oak kitchen cabinets to look old. Patrick has come alongside me to transform this space for it’s current season.

The pets. Chloe the cat. The cat named Cat with the prosthetic tail. The beagles from Satan. Lilly and Carmen. The day Lilly ate the Devil Cat, and how we found her septic in the closet and nursed her back to health, healing her with honey. The chickens, the chicken coop built by Dad and Brian, patched by Paul, Hannah’s Dad, a few roofing crews, and now Pat.

Having Hannah’s sweet 16 on the patio – the patio that her daddy built and Patrick rebuilt. The table cloths of many colors, the lights, and ELVIS, can you believe it?

Christmases and Easters and Birthdays – sleepovers and tea parties galore. My brother built a castle in the backyard for one such party and together we braided 50’ of rope to make Rapunzels hair. That brother also crashed on our futon for awhile while sorting his life out. My other brother lived with us awhile here too. And the teenagers… Collyn, that quiet girl. Now a foreign exchange student.

It’s so much. It’s so rich. I’ve never lived in any one place for so long, and I love that we have lived here for all of this life. The memories swirl and flow. I hope I live in this little house until my end – I hope we build another 40 years of memories within these walls.  

Mediocrity Has Taught Me to Fish

Recently my business got a 3-star review from a customer, and it felt super unfair. We did an amazing job on his project, and he told our staff how pleased he was with his new roof. Yet on the 3-star review he commented only that after he paid as much as he did for a new roof, you’d think we would send him photos of his finished project.

Ouch. Burn.

Part of our company culture is that whenever we receive negative feedback or any constructive criticism, we do not just jump to the defensive (or if we do, we bring ourselves back to center before we react). I firmly believe that in every criticism, there is a grain of truth and something that we can learn from, do better at, and improve our process. Customers who take the time to give us feedback, even and maybe especially negative feedback, are actually giving us a gift. Even though it certainly doesn’t feel like it.

Now, I’ve thought about sending finished project photos in the past, but generally we just send them when a customer requests them. When we received this review, one of my first reactions was guilt for not implementing this long ago. But let bygones be bygones, all I can do is change it going forward.

I created an email template that:

1.       Lets customers know their project is complete (no matter how big or small),

2.       Attaches some job completion photos,

3.       Mentions nothing at all about payment,

4.       Asks them to contact us directly if they are not pleased with any aspect of the project,

5.       Asks them if they were pleased to leave us a review (I then I provided three links to leave us reviews at (Google, BBB, and Yelp!))

The first person we sent this email to with photos was the man who had left us the three-star review. His response? He was just so happy with our team and his final project and thank you so much. We were a bit puzzled.

I then directly emailed the customer, sincerely thanked him for his feedback, told him the changes I had implemented based on his feedback, and asked him kindly to consider changing his review. He has not responded to my email, nor has he changed his review. Yet I’ve reaped the reward, and that three-star review has yielded dividends.

The very next day one of our customers came into the office, beaming about his experience with us – from the crew to the roof to the staff in the office to his bottle of Roofer Chick Red wine – but especially his final photos he had received. He then left us a 5-star review.

Since then, we’ve gotten four more 5-star reviews from the email.

I pay a review company $750 a month to get us reviews because we have struggled so hard to get customers to give us reviews. This review service gets us 5-8 reviews a month, and I’ve been pretty happy with those results. BUT LOOK – apparently, we just got taught how to fish. It’s magic!

If this is as effective as I think it is going to be, it’s going to save us $9,000 annually and generate more reviews than they are getting us!!! That 3-star review changed my life and is worth it’s own weight in gold.

I’ve never been so grateful to be graded as mediocre!

Oh, Daddy-O!

 

“We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones.” - Alcoholics Anonymous, page 30

When I was a little girl my brother taught me that Daddy Longlegs’ legs regenerate. I didn’t believe him, but to prove it, he took a Daddy Longlegs, pulled its legs off and put it in a mason jar (being sure to punch holes in the lid so it could get air). I watched it all day, checking multiple times, and absolutely nothing happened. The next morning, I woke up and ran downstairs to check it again, and sure enough, it had grown it’s legs back!

I must have been in my 20’s when I was marveling on this miracle one day when it hit me full force that my brother had tricked me. I don’t know how I suddenly knew, but I did, and the sheer ridiculousness of it almost felt like something that might physically knock me over.

I have assumed since then that maybe a leg or two probably regenerates, but not if you pull them all off at the same time. There is simply no way.

Then today, I did further research with my Googloid. And guess what?

“In the daddy longlegs’ case, the lost leg doesn’t grow back. But they persevere. A daddy longlegs that’s missing one, two, or even three legs can recover a surprising degree of mobility by learning to walk differently. They have a 60% probability of losing a leg during their lifetime.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/daddy-longlegs-risk-life-especially-limb-survive

It is said that cats have 9 lives, and I assume that Daddy Longlegs must have 8 legs since they are arachnids. I thus suppose then they have 8 lives. As mere men with only two legs, adapting to one lost leg is arguably more difficult than it is for our arachnid friends. The analogy though makes me think of the “not yets.” Maybe I gave up alcohol after only losing 2 of my legs, where others got further down the road and lost 5 or even 6. And some alcoholics – maybe even most – lose the game entirely and end up in the bottom of a jar with only air holes far above them.

I would have to argue that our appendages do indeed grow back. Maybe not literal appendages – but our minds clear, creativity returns. We become emotionally stable. For some, we no longer need psychiatric drugs. We regain our health – our weight either increases or decreases to be where it should be. Our blood work comes back good. Our blood pressure drops. We can sleep.

Guess what else I learned? A Daddy Longlegs is not a spider. It’s an opilionid.

My mind is blown.    

My Moon

Image credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

This very real feeling of inferiority is magnified by his childish sensitivity and it is this state of affairs which generates in him that insatiable, abnormal craving for self-approval and success in the eyes of the world. Still a child, he cries for the moon. And the moon, it seems, won't have him!"

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART, p. 102

The night is dark and silent as their car meanders through the Texas Hill Country. She stares out the back window and watches the shapes of the trees against the sky. The air in the car is heavy – thick with anger, resentment, fear. That’s why she sat in the back – to put as much of a buffer between them as possible.

She knows she’s drunk. Her mother told her that and justified his anger, and she supposed there was some truth in that. It was plausible, at least. But she also knew it was something else. He’d made plans when she’d said she was going to stay at her mother’s, and when she changed her mind, it had ruined his plans.

She wondered distractedly, in a mostly detached sort of way who she was, and if they had planned to be in her bed. Their bed. She had come to peace with the idea some while back, in a sick way it even brought her some relief, to let go of at least some of her wifely duties. But for some reason today, she had latched onto it when she saw it was a thorn in his side, and even twisted it a little.

Maybe because she was drunk.

“Look! My moon!” The innocent little excited voice pierced through her dark thoughts.

“That’s everyone’s moon, baby. God made it.” She looked in adoration at her little girl – her big brown hazel eyes full of wonder, her sweet head with only whisps of blonde hair still.

“No, my moon!” she insisted.”

“It’s the whole world’s moon.”

“No, mama. My moon.”

It went that way for almost an hour, gentle banter filling the silence. She knew it probably annoyed him, but she was grateful to have that little voice push back the angry silence to the front side and her dark thoughts to the very edges of her thoughts, where she almost forgot them.

Finally, after she heard a large sigh, she relented. “Okay, baby. It is your moon,” and the baby girl was happy.

And that's how I gave my daughter the moon.

My God of Floyd

 

Sometimes I feel an immense sadness that my life didn’t turn out how I dreamed it would. The dream: the white picket fence, multiple kids, loving-devoted-godly husband, Bible studies. You know, days filled with making baked goods, keeping a clean house, decorating for each holiday, scrapbooking each chapter, and writing a novel.

I never feel like I measure up – morally – and truth be told, in the church is mostly what I’m talking about. As I’m putting the pieces of my life together, I realize that that feeling of not measuring up and that feeling of missing out on “the good life” – the remorse and the sense of loss – has always been there.

It’s the exact feeling I had in kindergarten when we attended Central Iowa Christian Academy (CICA), a rigorous Baptist institution. Here I was taught my morality measuring stick, directly out of scripture that we memorized because our very lives depended on it. Sins included lying, drinking, smoking, dancing, women wearing pants, anything sexual outside the institute of marriage (and likely even inside the institution as well), country and rock music, cursing, movie theatres, witchcraft and Halloween and dinosaurs. The list was exhaustive. To sin or to have sin in your life was the road to hell and I wanted to be good. I wanted to be perfect and I wanted God to love me. I wanted to do everything I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to do it.

But home was different. At home it seemed we followed very few of these moral guidelines. My dad sometimes cursed and he definitely drank alcohol – he even let us drink it if we wanted it (I did not). Mom and I wore pants. Mom enrolled me in ballet. We would go to the movies and my dad and my oldest brother listened to rock and country music. I will never forget sitting in chapel as they told us the evils of rock music and looking back at my big brother back there with the 6^th graders, and being terrified to the very depths of my soul that my brother was going to hell.

Something we didn’t all even know, just I knew, was that sometimes someone would crawl into bed with me in the middle of the night, and what would start as a backrub would end in what I was told was an abhorrent abomination. And part of me sometimes even liked it. No one could know about this – to speak it would give it life I didn’t want it to have. To give it life meant that everything that was already wrong would be even more wrong and I had to fix it and I could fix it and I would fix it. But I couldn’t fix that.

Every day my brothers received spankings (I would even say beatings) – first at school, and then again at home, to show that my parents stood in solidarity with the school administration and authority. I’m pretty sure everyone was trying to beat the sin out of my family, and I knew we needed it. I could hear my brothers’ screams in my classroom, and felt all the eyes on me from my peers as the lesson was halted due to the disruption. They never beat me.  Christy Nether couldn’t come to my birthday party because – well, because we were not good people. I was ashamed and understood the shun. We were outcasts.

And why? Why were we outcasts? Because we were not Baptist. We were Episcopalian. Try as hard as I might – try all I wanted – I could be perfect till my stomach hurt and puke on the floor over my shortcomings – produce straight A report cards and win awards for memorizing the most Bible verses – I would never be good enough. You can’t just scrub Episcopalian off, or even beat it out of you.

It would be okay if I didn’t care. But I did care. Ever so much.

In my 20’s I got angry at God because I could not measure up. A divorced failure – the biggest failure of them all aside from maybe abortion and murder. It was unforgivable (I asked just to be sure) and in the wake of rejection by the Church, I finally said that I didn’t care. Not caring was the only line of defense. I rejected God right back. Tired of not measuring up, tired of trying so hard, tired of failing, tired of no one protecting me, I dropped the measuring stick and considered the entire ordeal nothing more than a fairy tale.

But I would pick it back up, again and again and again and beat myself with it. The more time that went by, the less I measured up and the more outcast I felt and the more I wanted what I could never have, what I would never be. Some people can hide their sins and shortcomings and failures – but I have to change my name every damn time. And I also have a living, breathing miracle to prove it.

I have to ask myself, is that who the God of my Understanding is? Is this the God of Floyd whom I seek?

 

                                                                                NO.

 

This is not the God of Floyd. It might be the God of Abraham or Isaac – I thought they were the same when I first heard of this God of Floyd, but now I am not so thoroughly convinced. Do we not the serve the same God? The God of Abraham was rigid and cold and demanded sacrifice and obedience - the God of the Baptists for sure. I don’t know – but what I do know is that this rigid, harsh god is not the God of Floyd whom I seek. I don’t even know who Floyd is, firsthand, but I do know his God is the God of my Understanding. How do I know? I don’t know. I just do. My God is kind and loving, full of grace and forgiveness. He holds me inside and outside, all the time.

Have I held myself accountable to Pharisees?

 

                                                                                YES.

 

My life didn’t turn out how I dreamed it would, that is certainly true. Yet the life I have is beautiful and wonderful, and the person I am constantly evolving into being is someone I love and respect immensely. I know that I am beautiful, strong, kind, loving, fun-loving, adventurous and resilient. I am a good friend and a wonderful mother. I run an amazing business and I inspire others. I do not stand alone - my God is always at my side – my Comforter, my Love, my Light. 

And a white picket fence wouldn’t even look right with my house, anyway.

The Window

Her favorite place to sit was in the window seat on the landing. Mama had upholstered a cushion for the seat that had all different colors of stripes in all sorts of colors. The stripes rose up a bit off the main fabric and were slightly fuzzy. She loved to run the palm of her hand lightly over the fabric. The window seat had a smell. Three Boston Ferns hung from the ceiling, and the leaves would fall onto the fabric and also get caught up in the gauzy white curtains. Adults said it smelled “musty,” but Tamara loved that smell. Whatever musty was, she knew she loved it. From the window, she would peer out the window that looked down on the side yard of the farmhouse.

There was an entire world down there that only she could see, but she could see it vividly. There were streets and buildings, houses and stores. Sometimes when her oldest brother “lawned the mow,” as she called it, he would cut in paths for her and then go mow the rest of the yard before finally cutting her kingdom down properly. She loved those days and constantly asked her parents if Abel could lawn the mow, much to his horror. But secretly, she thought he liked it that it made her that happy.

Today it was raining in her kingdom, so she could only look down on it. All the villagers were scurrying about with umbrellas when they came outside at all. She wished her brothers would come home soon from school. Tamara enjoyed the quiet days with her mother, playing Yatzee and helping to cook dinner, but she also yearned for the day when she, too, could get on the bus that stopped at the end of the driveway. Next year, Mama had said. “Next year” seemed impossibly far away some days.

Then she saw it, out of the very corner of her vision, the tiny yellow dot as it slowly grew larger, racing down the highway. She jumped up and ran downstairs, determined to make it to the end of the driveway first. “Tamara, get a coat on!” Frustrated and almost in a panic, she went back to the hallway closet, grabbing whatever her hand landed on first – it was Jacob’s brown corduroy jacket– it was not a rain jacket, but it would do. She pulled it on as she ran down the gravel driveway to the road.

“That’s my jacket, Tae!” Jacob pouted.

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Jacob. You’re not wearing it today.”

Jacob scowled. Tamara loved both of her brothers dearly, but they rarely seemed to love each other. Everything was an argument between them, an unspoken struggle for power. Of course, Abel had the power because he was the eldest, and it infuriated him that Jacob did not respect that fact. What it meant to Tamara was that usually she only played with one brother at a time. She hated it when they fought – it scared her, actually.

“Let’s finish our fort in the barn!” Tamara suggested to Jacob. He seemed the natural choice this time, since it would make him less irritated with her about the jacket, and she could tell Abel’s comments had lit that quick spark in his eyes followed shortly after by a dark brooding. She was happy to see that look melt away almost instantly at her suggestion. They had been working on the fort for two weeks now, and it was almost done. She had talked Abel into stacking the hay bails into a high wall one day when Jacob had to go into town with Mama because he had his tutoring. All that was left was somehow forming a ceiling over the fort and dividing it up into rooms. Maybe they could build a sub fort in the back pen and bury it under some loose hay. Then they would have two houses.

“Let me go change!”

“Come inside!” Mama was yelling from the porch. “You’ll catch your death of a cold out there in that rain!” They all three giggled and started heading for the house. Tamara wondered why adults cared so much about things like rain and cold. It was rather silly. She envisioned that witch in that movie they had watched at church disappearing under water. The movie had frightened terribly her at the time (and she wondered why they had watched it at church, of all places), but now it made her giggle even more as she raced to the house, her skinny legs kicking out behind her. “I’m melting!!!!!” she screamed as she went, throwing her arms up in the air and spinning in circles.  

Lucky Charms

Lately when I look at myself in the mirror, all I can see is that I have this big belly that is spilling out the top of my jeans. I have realized since at least December that I would like to do something about it. The only way to conquer it, really, is to abstain from alcohol, specifically beer. In fact, in December I went 3 days without any alcohol, but then I gave in when I was hanging out with my crew during a blizzard, and someone smacked a 12 pack down on the table at the hotel. And I’m okay with that. I’m glad I joined them.

Today is my 7^th day without having gluten or alcohol. On February 22^nd, I slid my “lucky coin” into my pocket, and told myself, “Let’s go. Let’s do this thing.” And I did. Two years ago I didn’t know that I could do that. The thought of not drinking terrified me, and I did not think that I could not partake of alcohol in my own power. I remember saying as much, on a miserable day in December. Saying it out loud was scary. Saying it out loud with a witness was even scarier.

Within a week of that day, I found myself in an AA meeting. I had thought of attending AA (or Al-Anon) several times over the years – I had a morbid curiosity of it. But I also had a fear of it – that is not the type of person I wanted to be, and I imagined a room full of losers. If I was honest with myself, it is the last place I wanted to be. Going in that New Years Eve was terrifying – I was literally shaking from head to toe. An exceptionally good friend (who is to remain anonymous ha ha) went with me. I remember being so wound up I thought I might vomit, and I prayed no one asked my anything. But then a thing happened: as I listened, I heard myself in some of the words – both the words of the people speaking and in the passages they read. I felt some camaraderie and less alone. I found myself going back, and in short order, I fell in love. I fell in love with the people, the stories, the similarities, the laughter, the honesty, the willingness to be introspective. It was like church, in a way, but in a better way - it became my church. Even though we were not the same in age, color, religion, political affiliation or socio-economic status, I had found my people.

I went 7 months without drinking, for the most part. There was a week I took off – we were skiing in Colorado and I had some beers (gluten free!) on that trip, but when we came home, I went back to abstinence. I was learning that it can be like a faucet, and I can indeed turn it off and on. I didn’t regret my choice to drink on that trip, except for the fact I never did get a 6 month chip. It’s okay though – the 90 day chip is turquoise and beautiful and I loved it.

After 7 months, I went back to drinking, with a newfound respect for alcohol and a better understanding of my own relationship with it. While I enjoyed AA, I could not bring myself to call myself an alcoholic, and so I felt like an imposter of sorts. To me, step 1 is admitting you are an alcoholic, and I just could not do it (my exceptional friend points out that what it actually says is that you admit you are powerless over alcohol, not an alcoholic, and my brain says ‘Tomato, tamata’ to him).

I have thought about it like a toggle switch that only has two options – either you are an alcoholic or you are not an alcoholic. I have spent hours and days and months trying to decide if I am one or not, trying on the words when I am alone, having them spit out of my mouth like sawdust. This morning it occurred to me that maybe it could be more of a sliding scale – like introverts and extroverts. I have always been on the line between introvert and extrovert, where Edith is at 110% on the I-E scale. As I have evolved, I would now place myself at the 75% mark (toward extroversion). What if alcoholism were a sliding scale? Where would I be? I think I would be at 60%.

I told one of my pastor friends last week that I could see alcohol in my mind – that it was a real, live thing. He asked what it was like. I told him it is hard to explain - it is like a viny fog that is alive, almost like in a super hero movie or even Scoobie Doo. I finally told him, “It’s like a fog in the streets of the city that’s alive. At first it’s just a haze, I can hardly see it. Maybe it isn’t even there. And then it is there, but I think, it’s not that bad. I can live with this. But then before I know it, I can hardly see. It wraps around me, like tentacles. It suffocates me. It seeps into everything. It becomes everything.” And then later I told him, “It’s a demon.”

I told my therapist (and we have talked about it a lot over the past two years), that it just takes over. At first, you just have a drink someplace where everyone is drinking – an outing. And I tell myself, okay, I am going to drink, but only at functions – and only once a week. I am not going to bring it in the house. But then it is Friday after a long week, and I think, I deserve a drink, so I buy a 6 pack and I bring it home. I say then, just on the weekends. But then, soon, I have a bad Tuesday, and I tell myself, no more than 3 a night. Then I have one at lunch. Then 3 becomes 4 a night. And then it is 6. And then it is 10 am on a Saturday and I am the only one home, and I think, who cares? Does it really matter? And before I know it, it has seeped into every corner of my being, and I start scheduling my life around it – where it will be or will not be. In short order, it makes me its slave.

When I stopped this week, this time, to lose weight, I was told by many people that I am overreacting and that I am beautiful the way I am. I am not obese, by any means. I am between a size 6 and 8; after 6 months of not drinking I was a sub-4. What they do not understand is (and I do not generally tell them) that it is not just what it does to my outside, it is what it does to my inside.

In the past two years there have been several sections of time that I refrained from alcohol use. It is interesting looking back – I mostly do not regret when I did or did not drink. But there are a few situations of both extremes that I regret. I regret times when I did not drink? Yes. One in particular is when a friend came down to Texas to visit that I had not seen in 20 years, and I think she expected us to have a drink, and I did not. I wish I had. That might be the only time I regret. There are only a few times I really regret drinking, too – there are just a few isolated incidences. It is more the big picture than the details.

My therapist doesn’t think I am an alcoholic, because I’m hyper aware of what it does to me and I know when it’s time to stop. I also go slow and steady when I drink – a beer an hour. I don’t run off to Mexico and go to donkey shows or drink and drive. I do my chores and go to work and do the things I am supposed to do. But he also cautions about the sign that hangs on the AA hall wall, just over the righthand exit door that reads, “Not Yet.”

This is a subject that is taboo. This is a subject that makes others uncomfortable to talk about. I am not “supposed to” talk about it. I certainly should not publish it under my name. Some people worry that if I share it, it will hurt my business. But I find when I share my story with my friends, many of them identify strongly with it. One friend said she had the same issue with both wine and sweets. It is not just alcohol. It is addiction, which comes in many forms.

I am certain I will not go for forever without alcohol. I know I am just on another pause. But the pause feels good – like a demon’s claws lost his grasp on me. There is some mourning that goes with it too - and drinking dreams, night sweats, digestive changes and sugar cravings. I am currently working my way through a pack of Sweet Tarts Ropes.

One thing I struggle with is attending meetings when I know I am not doing this for forever. Can you say, “Hi, I’m Ami, and I’m 60% alcoholic”? The Blue Book would call it a heavy drinker. The Blue Book has a lot of wisdom in it. It feels a mockery to attend meetings when you are not 100% on board. Not 100% on board at all. I probably put way more thought into it than anyone else does about my being there or not being there. Sometimes I miss my people.