I am offering these peeks into the challenges and extreme personal growth I experienced in my first year of sobriety because it may offer hope or at least a sort of roadmap for birthing an alcohol-free life. Sort of a version of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”, that standby book all expectant moms had shoved into their hands in the 90s.
If you are new and interested, jump back to the May 3, 2024 post. It was getting tedious to type these out (nothing creative in that!) so I am trying out the audio feature. If you would rather read than listen, the transcript is provided.
Warning: This may be boring to those who have never wanted to live a life without alcohol in it.
Love, Light, & Joy, Maria Luz
8.2.24 & 8.9.24 Show Notes
I may as well come clean and say that Spirit greatly nudged me to post these journal entries. While there is a tradition in Recovery communities of giving back to others on the path to sobriety, I didn’t realize how much it heals on both sides. I now also see it is healing to the collective of humanity past, present, and future.
There is some serious stuck generational trauma which needs to be seen and cleared. This work is spiritual in nature, because it involves forgiving family members or ancestors you never knew, and remember, if we go back far enough, we all intersect somewhere.
It also involves forgiving yourself as an ancestor to those who come after you.
It involves acknowledging harm to bodies done directly by or as a result of alcohol, and the trauma, including harmful conditioning, that typically relies on alcohol to stay under wraps. And because bodies are part of the natural world, this is healing to nature.
As I narrated these entries, I noticed that I started mentioning the work I was doing with the book A Map to Your Soul: Using the Astrology of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water to Live Deeply and Fully, by Dr. Jennifer Freed. I had forgotten how early in sobriety I started learning about astrology, nature, and myself as a being of nature and the Universe.
I also mention “The BFB”. This is a private Facebook group, The Booze Free Brigade. Funny that I mention in these entries how deeply I yearned for community in my life, because the BFB is one of my most beloved communities, more than a year and a half later. If you want to join, you just need to want deeply to remove alcohol from your life. Search for ‘Elizabeth Cloud’ whose avatar is a Penguin, and send a friend request.
