…but I needed to come back to this space after a few years of near total absence, and in fact, I’ve totally scrapped every word I used to keep tucked away here like a box of old letters.

It was time.

I’m turning 56 tomorrow, and I’m 91 days alcohol free today.

Sober. Me. Yeah. I know!

California Sober, to be honest. I don’t have an issue with the other things one might enjoy – gifts of the gods, one might say, that grow naturally in nature-like. THC is medicinal for me, and I use it for pain, anxiety, and sleep, but only in delicious gummy form, and only when I need it. Fungus of various sorts are fine things for funsies, but this is not an every day or even every week thing.

These are things I can take or leave as I see fit.

Wine was not such a thing. Maybe it will become such a thing in the future as I continue to heal, but for right now? Nope.

It didn’t start out that way. It started out as me, looking for a way enjoy being a grown ass woman with grown ass kids. It started as a thing I did on Wednesday (WINESDAY) or when I gathered with witches, or when I was camping or out at karaoke or in the candlelit bath or about to have sex.

But it became a thing I did daily and “wine o’clock” shifted from “after dinner” to “after lunch” and it was an all day, every day thing because it is an addictive substance and as much as I’d like to believe I’m above and beyond all that, well…

…I’m not.

So I quit. And while the “not drinking” part is actually really easy, the “feeling everything I was numbing by drinking” thing is most decided not.

Which, I think, is why I’m back. I need a place to tell my stories so I can let whatever I’m feeling flow out of me and into this screen of light for safe keeping, because my stories?

They’d drive anyone to drink.

But today isn’t for stories. It’s for a toe dipped in the waters of writing what’s alive in me in this moment. It’s for the weekend I’ve spent painting (and selling paintings), and watching Vikings, and eating those little tiny chocolate bars that you can buy in bulk at this time of year, and swilling iced matcha or London Fog lattes (Taco concentrates are so good!) made with 5% cream because I lost a fuck ton of weight over the course of the last year, and eating homemade soup (today it’s deconstructed cabbage roll soup), and gratefully receiving well wishes on the eve of my birthday, and putting up lessons and editing video and listening to The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Abel for the eleventy billionth time.

It’s for feeling this edgy, “raw dogging life” feeling with a little bit of fear because that shit is fearsome, but zero resentment because I know this is what’s right and good for me. It’s for feeling really good about every single person I call friend (for once in my life) and knowing I’m safe with the people who have access to me. It’s for knowing that I have the right to curate my life so that I never have to feel unsafe with he people who have access to me *ever again*.

But that’s a story for another day.

Today is my birthday eve, and I’m sober. I’m alive. I want to be, too.

And that’s progress, so I’ll take it.