My Sober Journey: How Sobriety Helped Me Find Inner Peace and Strength

When I look back on my life before sobriety, I'm reminded of a poem I once read that epitomized what I was like and what I wanted to be but had no idea how to reach. The poem described fields of tall wheat grass bending and swaying wildly in the wind, while deep below, the roots stayed strong and grounded. Waves crashed and foamed, but beneath the surface, there was deep calm and tranquility. For so long, I was like the grass swaying violently in the winds and was caught up in the crashing waves, washing up on shore.

I wanted to be the strong roots—not the reeds. I wanted to dive below the waves and find my inner calm and strength. But, over and over, my body crashed in the waves and bent to breaking in the winds. That was just what it was like for me until I put down the bottle and started working a 12-step program—started doing my inner work. In sobriety, I’ve found that deep place within, a sense of peace I had been searching for.

There was a time, about 20 years ago, when my life seemed shattered. I had lost our home by fleeing to another state after barely surviving therapy abuse. My marriage was hanging by a thread. I had no job and no friends in my new state. It felt like I had nowhere to turn, and my emotional pain was overwhelming. So I did the only thing I knew to cope with life and pain—I reached for a bottle and stayed there for 15 lost years. Drinking was my solution to my problems, a way to numb the pain and find that peace beneath the waves.

But it wasn’t until I hit rock bottom, when the bottle stopped numbing my pain and turned on me, that I found a path to true recovery and freedom.

With over four and a half years of sobriety, I feel a shift happening. I've heard it said that around the five-year mark, “you get your marbles back,” and I see that happening for me. Even with everything going on—my husband’s recent melanoma diagnosis that has upended our world, financial struggles, and the general uncertainty that’s so present in our world—I am realizing I have a sense of inner peace that's radiating from deep within, from my core. This turbulent time of uncertainty could be tearing me apart, but this time, I have strength. I have a peace that doesn’t come from anything external.

I’m not that grass whipping wildly in the wind anymore, nor am I the wave crashing and foaming relentlessly.

For the past few weeks, I've been feeling grounded, calm, and resilient in a way I never thought possible. I'm realizing sobriety has given me the peace I once tried to find in a bottle. The pain I tried to cover up with alcohol has healed. There’s no fear, no urge to run or numb myself. My heart is full of gratitude, and I feel a connection to my Higher Power that guides me every day.

Today, I am the root and the calm beneath the waves. I know in my core that everything is okay—that everything is happening according to a greater plan.

For the first time in my life, I am truly free.