Becoming You-er
Posted May 26, 2023.
“Early sobriety resembles living life as a clam without its shell.”
The late Heather B. Armstrong (1990 – 2023) shared this metaphor in her last blog post. A pioneer in the early days of blogging, she began sharing her struggles with alcohol use in 2021. She recounted 43 days, one year, and two years of sobriety.
In her memory, here are 4 helpful tips for anyone struggling with some form of addiction.
Allow yourself to feel. Armstrong shared many stories about allowing herself to feel. She described,
This weight used to crush me, but now I am comfortable with it lingering there. I don’t run from it anymore. I don’t squirm or dash around looking for something to relieve the pressure or its heaviness. I no longer try to busy my hands or distract myself with chores. I am so intimately familiar with the nature of shame and embarrassment now, with the ugliest and most detestable parts of myself, the parts of me I tried to drown with alcohol.
- Feelings and emotions play a major role in recovery. Becoming aware and processing them are part of human development. More importantly, people in recovery are changing how they interact and relate with different feelings and emotions.
- Can you begin recovery and remain abstinent while avoiding processing your feelings? Running away from a feeling can make you a slave to it. Consider a long-term perspective. What are you trying to achieve by overcoming addiction. Underlying feelings and emotions are likely involved. It could mean overcoming boredom, guilt, resentment, etc. Remember that this unhealthy relationship with substances can be replaced with other unhealthy relationships – people, food, work, exercise, and other behaviors.
Learn about yourself. Sobriety brought immense clarity to Armstrong. Alcohol helped her forget parts of herself. She described, “I am forty-five-year years old, but have the coping skills of a wounded ten-year-old girl.” “The transformation in my life cannot be overstated. It was as if I had been given the gift of sight after living my entire life in blindness,” she said. Yet facing these unfamiliar parts of herself was only the beginning: “Sobriety was not some mystery I had to solve. It was simply looking at all my wounds and learning how to live with them.”
- You will need time and effort to know yourself. Addiction is an illness, so healing will happen. You have inherent strengths, and they will do you better than a single shell of protection.
- You are moving forward to understand who you can become, but it starts with reclaiming your parts held hostage. These parts of yourself – mind and body—helped you survive.
Forgive and love yourself. Armstrong emphasized self-forgiveness and self-love: “the purpose of the millisecond we are privileged to spend on this planet is to learn how to accept and embrace and love the most appalling parts of ourselves so that we can do the same for others.” She became empowered: “The common denominator in every conflict and stumbling block and misunderstanding of life has been me. I finally understood how I had been responsible for all the pain and suffering I had endured at the hands of other people.”
- Armstrong received love from others as well. She mentioned of her friend Hanky Plankton, she “loved me enough to help me forgive myself for all parts of motherhood that began to haunt me after I took that last swig from a bottle.”
- Forgive yourself to move forward, love yourself to embrace your past. Your memories will live inside you, but they can exist with different meanings. You don’t have to stay stuck. You can live without your burdens, failures, or mistakes. Every experience can’t be without pain, but you can begin adding better ones to your story.
Focus on yourself. As Armstrong helped others, she faced criticism. But she focused on telling her story: “I need you to understand that bestselling books and Wikipedia pages and three-page spreads in People magazine tell you nothing about who I really am.” The meaning of success changed for her. “I have everything to lose. Except, it’s already lost. Those decades are now just words on a screen,” she said.
- Armstrong’s days of sobriety remain impactful. Some people can’t see their significance. And some people are drawn to the reality they see in them.
- The stories are powerful because they belong to her. Anyone can read them, but only some can relate to them.
- Focus on yourself. You will have to interact with the outside world. Some days more than others. Some days pleasing, some challenging. Addiction cannot protect you from this reality, not in the long run.
- In your story, never forget the work you’ve done so far. Remember it during “bad” days. Especially when others try to tell your story for you. It can turn into something worse. Don’t be afraid to share your story but realize that it’s yours to tell.
Armstrong described removing alcohol as a clam losing its shell of protection. Perhaps a shell is not lost. Perhaps it’s about gaining a life more human than clam.
Clams are happiest during high tides because they are harder to find. When found, they remain secretive, isolated from the outside world.
Removing drugs from your life can feel like losing the only source of protection. But this removal is more of a replacement than a loss. It’s finding out that before drugs, you protected yourself.
Every day you face the world you choose not to hide from it. As Dr. Seuss said, you’re not just a clam, “Today you are you! That is truer than true!”
