Like so many people, I’ve experienced a multitude of seasons with my family. It’s always a mixed bag, but lately (and when I say “lately,” I mean for the last decade or so), there’s been a grounding spirit of grace, humor, and forgiveness whenever we visit. More mindfulness. More charity, a sense of service. Delight in the teeniest, most ordinary details. Irritation and deep breathing at a lifetime’s worth of family patterns. So much familiarity.

It is birthday season in my family. My sister’s birthday was last Friday, and my father’s was a week ago Monday. Mine is coming up soon, too. So we are a house full of Aries, and with my mother being a Leo, we are all fire, all the time. It made for a particular growing up experience, all that fire.

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What’s really enjoyable now is seeing the love. Just being open to it, being present for it. My parents will be celebrating their 63rd wedding anniversary and still the love is visible. They’ve had a long road, filled, too, with many seasons.

We’re all aging. Everything changes. What is becoming more important for me now is the practice of letting go. Letting go and being available and awake for the present moment. Letting go of trying to control, change, help, fix, assess, manage, or otherwise judge and interfere (even with the best of intentions) with others. It’s huge work and stuff I’m not naturally good at. Maintaining awareness of my own idiosyncrasies, biases, filters, needs, impacts on others, desires, and patterns is an armload of work. It helps me keep the focus off of others when I’m focusing on managing my own stuff, freeing me to just be present with them, aware of them, awake to them, and freely sharing love and appreciation for them.

Big gratitude share:

I’m grateful that I can visit my parents at will; grateful that I have the kind of employment that allows for space and flexibility to do that whenever I wish, and appreciative and knowing how not terribly common that freedom is for everyone.

I’m grateful for this wonderful turn in my relationship with my sister, and that we can spend close time together with humor and care and grace.

I’m grateful that I can stay in touch with friends and family while flying *through the sky!*. Super grateful for WiFi connection in-flight so that I can access my writing platform when I wish or need. Grateful to own my identity as a writer and author and that I’ve given myself permission to share my voice in the world.

I’m grateful, too, that I love myself today, knowing that the more I love myself, the more free I am to love others, deeply and without hesitation.

When I was drinking and using other mind-altering drugs, there was no way I could reach any sense of gratitude, love, or acceptance of anything. And wow, did I want that. So badly. But I was looking in all the wrong places, in all the wrong ways, to find that. Sobriety — not necessarily my idea (initially), but a path that was gifted to me — was the first door I opened to better physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

It’s taken me a long, long time to reach this sense of deep love and awareness. But like peonies opening in the spring, each year unfurled beautiful gifts that sustained me on a sober path. Encouraged by each small wondrous learning, new skills gained, an ever deepening sense of peace, the ability to manage my emotions more easily with each year’s passing, I’ve been astonished at what I’ve gained from being sober.

I do distinguish being sober from being alcohol- and drug-free. Abstinence from mind and mood altering substances (street or unprescribed usage versus prescribed usage) for me is just the beginning. I’ve spent time in that space, simply settling for abstinence. It wasn’t long, though, before I became too uncomfortable in my own skin that I felt the urge to pursue more healing, more growth. What’s exciting to me now is that the growth and healing doesn’t end — I don’t think there’s an end in sight! There’s no destination but truly, a mind-blowing journey. It’s most definitely not always easy, but after decades on this path, I remain full of wonder and excited about what’s to come.