A love letter to the women in my life.
A couple of years ago I prided myself on being a guy’s girl. I thought it was fun to be a beer guzzling, swearing, football watching, insensitive girl who could hang with the guys. I surrounded myself with mostly male relationships because I honestly couldn’t connect with women. They made me nervous. I lacked this ability to connect with them and I didn’t know how to be vulnerable in my female relationships. I didn’t know how to talk about my feelings or to even feel my feelings; it was much easier for me to pretend like I got along with the guys than with the girls. In the vary rare instances, I did meet really great women I could connect with, I often struggled with maintaining those relationships. I would eventually destroy them without even realizing it.
The one amazing and greatest gift recovery has given me is the ability to be vulnerable, to know when and how to feel what I am feeling on any given day. It’s also given me the ability to connect with women and to build these amazing friendships. This afternoon I went to a women’s meeting and we talked about perfection. There is literally no other place in the world I would rather be than a women’s meeting. I not only chair one weekly, but I attend two others. It’s made all the difference in my life.
I love that women in recovery can sit down together in one room and share honestly about how hard life is. I love that we can spend an afternoon talking about the things that make us happy, the things that make us sad, and the things that rip our hearts out. I learn so much about life when I walk into those meetings. They teach me how to love myself, how to be kind to myself and others, how to show up when I can barely get out of bed, and more importantly what it means to truly be there for another person.
What makes sponsorship such a truly amazing process is that it’s this relationship that is completely about the other person. When I meet with my sponsees, it’s not about my life or how my day went. It’s about them. Sometimes they need advice but other times they just need someone to listen as they pour their hearts out and struggle to accept the things they cannot change.
Women have this tendency to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and we always spend so much time trying to caretake everyone else that we often forget about ourselves. I love that recovery has given me a place and shown me how to care for myself and how to say no. The women I have met have re-parented me; taught me all of the life skills and values I didn’t learn the first time around.
I am nothing without the amazing, strong and beautiful women in my life. I spent 7 years pretending I liked sports. I am very happy to report, I have not watched one single game since January 2010. It’s been absolutely fabulous. I hate sports, I fucking 100 percent hate them. I find them boring, I think talking about them is boring. I know a couple of people who will be happy to hear me finally admit this, I don’t really think I was fooling anyone back then. The point is today I can say these kinds of things and I don’t feel like the world is going to abandon me.
I know who I am, I know what I want, I know what I like and I am so grateful for the people who have given me the love and support I needed to find myself.
