Hello & Goodbye, Again🗽

I’m grateful for running by the water in windy conditions and seeing the waves majestically crash onto the shores. I’m grateful for how much the past nine days have taught me about my sober self. I’m grateful for the sun shining brightly as my trip winds down. I’m grateful for urban parks and how much of a refuge they are. I’m grateful for delicious homemade rajma. I’m grateful for a final hang with my cousin and her kids. I’m grateful for candidly connecting with her about our shared family traumas and how we find ways to constructively move past them in order to thrive. I’m grateful my parents trust me with their car and don’t have to wonder if I’ll drink and drive. I’m grateful for folks who stick by us alcoholics through the pre-recovery years for without their support, their love, I know I’d be dead before getting the opportunity to let the miracles happen. I’m grateful for playing soccer in the hallway with the kids, which made me feel like a kid again.

It has been a beautifully reflective week in my old hometown of NYC. I got to catch up with some cherished fellows, friends, and family. The wide-ranging conversations helped me take stock of how much has changed in sobriety, especially the ways I’ve grown in the past year.

A big part of the growth certainly came from changing geographies. Actually being in NYC it has kind of surprised me to realize the extent to which I have become fond(ish) of Colorado living. I add the “-ish” not to be catty, but because I’m still finding my community there, still assimilating into the area. However the progress I’ve made does give me hope that Denver will be a wonderful place for this stage of my life.

Now of course I dearly miss the people, the culture, the conveniences of NYC. While riding the subway home earlier in the week I was listening to some ’90s jams that I remembered were a part of my playlist (on cassette tapes!) back when I was a kid doing the same commute. It was poignant to grapple with the tremendous amount that has changed over the decades, and yet somehow certain aspects of life do hold constant.

Back to Denver though. I believe that if I’d moved without having a strong footing in AA it might have been trickier. I knew as soon as I arrived there I needed to find meetings I enjoyed and attend them regularly just like in NYC. Without that connection then I’d be isolated and to be an isolated sober person is dangerous. From a purely social standpoint, it is challenging to build a new community in your 40s. Unless you have kids, are attending school, or at a workplace that encourages outside camaraderie, people generally keep to their own busy lives. I’m lucky though because AA is kind of like having a college campus around the world. We are encouraged to build bonds in the rooms, to get outside our comfort zones and say “hello” to strangers as that interaction can help save their life and our own. Part of why Denver has been positive for me is that I have been able to slowly foster a few connections thanks to regularly attending in-person meetings and putting myself out there in environments that welcome such extroverted action.

Another action I’ve practiced a lot this week is “acceptance”, particularly around meeting people where they are. I’ve realized a precursor to embracing acceptance for me is refraining from judgement. Left unchecked my mind can be quite judgy (a clear 4th Step defect), which then precludes me from productively engaging with others. However when that judgmental thought comes and I let it pass quickly – understanding it’s there as one of many inputs my brain needs to assess a situation – then I can move onto acceptance and ultimately reach the end goals of internal peace and engagement in the next right action. Specific examples that arose this week when it came to exercising the above is when I met a friend’s new boyfriend, who I will admit I had a lot of ideas about even before he uttered a word. Another was around interactions (or lack thereof) with the new sponsee. A big one was seeing sights (like the evergreen grove from last week) that were symbols of my painful drinking past. The hardest was certainly my parents and their insistence on avoiding tough, but important topics of discussion. Luckily the know-how around choosing acceptance arrived fairly fast. Certainly consistent prior investment in AA made acceptance easier during a trip that could have otherwise been more of an emotional roller coaster.

As I write this I’m realizing that moving to Denver has served as valuable training ground for finding acceptance. I was (am?) a fish out of water there, separated from my familiar East Coast vibes where I had in all honesty become complacent on several fronts. Denver has pushed me to test whether what I am doing in sobriety is correct – or even sustainable. Investigating what routines, what thought processes, what ideas are worth letting go of and what are worth doubling down on for the longer-term. In a brand new setting my old antics weren’t seamlessly integrating in those first few months so I had to drop my stubbornness (another defect of mine) and soberly evolve in novel ways while still being true to me. This journey continues to be a work-in-progress, and probably will be for the rest of my life, but I’ve enjoyed the more immediate, semi-forced requirement to push towards exploration and experimentation. Because I’ve had to accept a plethora of new things in Denver, it has given me new perspective when coming back to NYC on how to accept things here that I was previously finding too overwhelming, too perplexing, or was simply too lazy to address.

So what am I trying to say with this post? Frankly I wanted to try writing without a thesis statement in my head save for what my quick trip to NYC has taught me. I think what I’ve landed on is – 1) I’m glad AA has helped me integrate into the social fabric of a new place where I had virtually zero connections; 2) Actively and successfully practicing acceptance in a new city like Denver has afforded me a certain fresh insight that makes practicing acceptance in NYC around old concepts that used to frazzle me much simpler. Hopefully that resonates with those reading.

Later today Harper and I are on a flight back to our home state of Colorado. The fact that I can have two places I legitimately call home is incredibly far from the directionless vagrant I was during my addiction only a few years back. It’s a genuine miracle, an immense blessing, and all of it is thanks to the guidance of AA. ✈️

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