When we had been dating for six months, I became pregnant with our daughter. The pregnancy was awful. I was crazy and he was abusive. I lived in fear of him taking her from me, and when she was 6 months old, he tried and failed. With nearly 2 years of recovery under my belt, we underwent a brutal, four-day custody battle and, by the grace of God, I was granted custody of our daughter. A few years later, my first husband fell to his own addiction and my older two children came back to me as well. I can’t take the credit for any of this. I may have done the work, but these were outcomes that I know my Higher Power had a hand in.
Today, I have 5 years and 9 months sober from any mind-altering substance. I’ve worked hard to heal the brokenness that led me to drink and use the way that I did. Sometimes I fall back into old behaviors (last year I rushed into a marriage that was annulled 3 months later), but I’m growing. It doesn’t happen all at once. When I got sober, I wanted everything to go back to ‘normal’ right away. Which was silly, really, since things had never been normal for me at all. I had to create a new normal. I had to create a new life… a new me. I had to change everything. I could no longer use my past traumas as a crutch to justify my behavior. I had to accept that I was more than just a victim of circumstance; I had choices.
Leave a Comment