I am officially nine months sober today, and I have jokingly been stating to my friends over the past few weeks, “I’ve almost made a baby!” The question kept coming up, “What do you mean?” to which I responded, “Well I’m almost 9 months sober.”
Now I know from having 3 kiddos myself that the true “term” from conception to birth is slightly longer than 9 months, but the widely accepted “term”-inology is 9 months.
This is an important milestone to me, because I have thought deeply about it as my “rebirth” time. I have officially given myself 9 months to be “reborn” to recover from my addiction and discover my sober self.
I want to give my testimony to this in hopes that I can help inspire anyone who is out there struggling and losing hope/confidence in themselves to say that:
I hear you.
I know you.
I was you.
I am you.
If you look back on some of my previous posts early on (I have attempted to recover from alcohol more than once), you will see that I had some major struggles with letting it go. It’s hard to let something go that is widely accepted by society as permissible to do as an adult, especially when it is so deeply engrained in all of our daily lives, events, etc.
I honestly had no intentions in the beginning of this to even really stop. I just thought I would give my body a month to detox from it being such a consistent part of my social life.
However, something changed in me the further along I went. I had more meaningful and deep conversations with God about my purpose, and I found a lot of strength and confidence in that relationship as time went on.
I committed to myself that I needed to push myself to 9 months to see how I felt about alcohol then. To give myself a true “rebirth” and see if the way I felt by that point was worth giving away and going back to being a “normal” person who liked to drink like everybody else.
I can tell you today that at 9 months, I have no desire to give up the way I feel today for another drop of alcohol. I cherish my sobriety and what I have accomplished and become too much.
Here are my proudest accomplishments since becoming sober:
-I have been 100% present to appreciate and watch my kids love life, smile, and grow.
-I have helped to strengthen connections with families in my neighborhood by organizing neighborhood events: annual chili competition, outdoor movie night, Halloween party, Christmas party, St. Patty’s day party/dinner, etc. These all built memories for everyone that will last a lifetime.
-I have made more friends in my neighborhood with kiddos that all have become my “tribe.”
-I played a starring role in another independent horror film and one hundred percent gave my best performance ever.
-I paid off my oldest student loans.
-I BOUGHT a real estate FRANCHISE. Talk about rebirth, there couldn’t be a more appropriate time than now to be opening doors on that one next week. 
I am sure there are others that I could add to this list, but those are the first that come to mind.
I don’t mean this in any way to boast about what I’ve done and accomplished. More so to say that if I can do all of this as a single mama with 3 kids and a full-time career, YOU CAN TOO.
I had to learn to stop making excuses and stop using my shortcomings and struggles as a crutch to lean on. I had to wake up and realize that I was the only one in control of my destiny and I could either be my worst enemy or my best friend. It was up to me to decide.
So wake up each day and choose to be your best friend. Choose sobriety. Don’t let your worst enemy of addiction creep out and tell you that it’s too hard to stay sober today. Every day you choose to listen to that enemy telling you that you can’t do it, you are letting them win. You can be the best version of yourself when you let your best friend be the voice of reason. Let yourself be your best friend, the one that supports you winning.
I know that saying, “I’m never drinking again in my life,” can seem daunting. So I’ve chosen to just break up my goals into fragments.
Since I had my “rebirth” today, I am thinking of it as I just took myself through a full term myself. Like I just came back into this world. So I honor myself.
My next goals to hit are to honor the births of all 3 of my children. So look out for my future posts about hitting 9 months 3 more times to honor each of them and any of the pain I caused by not being one hundred percent present for them during any of my drinking days.
I figured that by the time I go through 3 more “births” I should be one hundred percent disconnected from the cravings of alcohol (that’s another 27 months total of consistent sobriety). I am sure I will come up with another goal to reach by the time that 27 months is coming to a close.
I wish you all success in your sobriety journeys! I pray you all will find strength to know that the best version of yourself is waiting for you to arrive. All you have to do is make the choice to become your best friend! 
Keep working towards being your best friend. It is achievable.
but in a good way. I love it when people “boast” about recovery. Recovery is hard work but sooo worth it and I always absolutely LOVE hearing about success stories. I’m 124 days clean today and sometimes I get those thots about using. And to read about ur 9 months and loving how u feel and not wanting to let alcohol take that away, made me love where I am today. Yes it’s hard but there’s incredible things happenung in my life that I would have NEVER gotten by using. So thank u for “boasting” bcuz it reminded me of why this is all worth it 