sober camp #2

on returning to your best self

When I relapsed, I slowly and then quickly lost Creative Heather, one of the best parts of me, maybe the most me part of me. Of course Anne Lamott was right when she said (yes, to me; long story), Well, you could stop writing, but then you’ll be sad.

I have been a writer for a long time, but I’ve been a caretive idea machine my entire life. I once had space to kick around like five big great (questionable) new creative ideas a day. Then I would try to do all five big “great” ideas, which then defeats all the ideas since that’s impossible.

Of course not all my ideas were/are actually good or the right fit for my life and pocketbook. (Does anyone say pocketbook anymore?) But the ideas brought me joy no matter what.

My little bookstore was a really, really good idea and it worked. Placing it in a shared space was the ticket to being able to afford rent. It’s an inspiring and safe space for me, filled with opportunity for connection and community.

Starting a blog in 2007 was also a great idea. Thank God my friend Kelly suggested it. It brought me a writing practice and soul sisters across the country that I cannot imagine never having met. (Long live the original blogging community-mostly not “influencers”, but instead, incredibly talented storytellers, writers, creatives, artists and thinkers, in true community. I am 51 and I will now say, Those were the good old days.)

During the years of being the primary caregiver for my parents and taking care of three kids and four dogs, I still had ideas but no space to implement them. I would try (like the Hearty podcast with my beautiful friend Steph) and it would be going well, and then something traumatic would happen and I would be consumed by the aftermath while still meeting everyone’s needs. So it stopped. But it was fun. It was good. It wasn’t for nothing. Somebody somewhere got something out of it, and I know Steph and I did, too.

Anyway, here at sober camp, I’m reaching for my journal a lot, as ideas are starting to flow again when for many months there were none; none at all. I have these ideas on their own page, a list of “what ifs” and after a few days I revisit the list and see what still strikes me and what makes me go, Well, that was weird. No thank you.

I’m sitting with these “big” ideas instead of impulsively starting all of everything at once, like I often have. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. These stops were not failures. It was all learning.

A focus on drinking, an obsession with it really, killed the artist spark in me. I could not write. So apparently booze is not my muse. Creative Heather went silent, sneaking away in the same covert way alcohol had snuck back in. Creative Heather had no breaths left inside this tightly wound body and its ashamed broken heart. She tried to show up, like to writing group, and had very little to give. She had half-assed ideas she knew she could not truly follow through on while chasing a buzz every day. Creative Heather had gone to sleep, like Sleeping Beauty with no muse to kiss her awake.

Alcoholism has never been all that I am, but if I drink, it infiltrates the rest of me, closing doors and windows, pulling the shades and turning the locks.

Now, at sober camp, Creative Heather is here in this cabin with me, stretching and yawning and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I kissed her awake myself, and she’s even looking in the mirror and seeing a spark.

When we get out of our own way; sometimes drastically like sober camp, and sometimes by choosing some time in the quiet instead of hitting “play next episode” or doom scrolling or shopping or whatever the drug of choice to stay numb is, change always comes. Change always comes, just like spring always comes after the longest bleakest winter. We will not feel like this forever.

On the days when I feel like progress is too slow, or that I just feel too terrible to work at anything, I have this mantra gift from my sister-in-law, who lost her husband suddenly and tragically not long ago. Obviously she has many days where she cannot muster the energy through her grief to have a “good day.”

So she gives herself this profound grace: