I didn’t post my one year on this thread but I did on my personal thread:
I remember feeling some uneasy feelings leading up to it but then when I reached it it was like my brain kind of exploded with all these thoughts and more and more posts on that thread. Milestones can be tricky but they can also be such an opportunity for reflection and self evaluation, looking back on lessons learned and also looking forward to the future. Even though I am very focused on taking a day at a time, I still am a planner at heart and I think it’s important to build some vision for the future, however specific or nebulous that might be.
I’m glad to have read through these recent posts here and I am beginning to understand some of the sort of “stuck” feelings as I head toward my two year milestone. Such a helpful exercise to look back on old posts of my and others and gain some awareness!
@petzam
I was kind of looking at this differently for myself. I see my recovery journey truly beginning before a year of consecutive days sober. I’m sure others will see this differently, but that’s when I started to see differences in myself. When I started to make real changes toward the goal of living a sober life but also working actively on my mental wellness is when I see my “year” starting, in a sense, because even though I had some short stints of drinking in a codependent way with my husband, I had put behind me the binging, the lying, the hiding, and shame. I could feel my confidence growing, I was learning more tools for emotional regulation, self care, and my depression and anxiety were less severe, I was seeing progress. i mostly saw my progress through daily journaling in a notebook that I would go back and read, same with posts on here, and through some short stints in therapy.
I was also understanding that no matter what my husband chooses to do, that’s his business, not mine, and I make my own choices. And I don’t want to drink. His drinking is not problematic to me when I let go of whatever I am feeling about it because it’s not about me (and he is a normie, as they say, most of the time). So on October 1, 2021 I reset my clock even though I had not had a drink with him in a while because it felt like a good date to me. This involved setting solid boundaries with him, asking him not to offer me tastes of his home brews or pints and explaining that this is for me, it is not to hurt him or be disparaging of his hobby. I had to let go of feeling like I was disappointing him by not sharing in it. It took a few reminders but things are all good now.
Anyway that’s a piece of my story.