I am not here to tell you how to have a perfect life.

I grew up in a violent home where we did not have much food and we were homeless often. The adults were supposed to take care of us, but a lot of the time my siblings and I had to take care of ourselves, each other, and the adults too.

We got jobs young. We helped raise our siblings while we were still trying to raise ourselves. We did not really get a childhood. Mine was scary, and I learned early how to read the room, stay alert, and keep moving even when I was exhausted.

I was sexually assaulted when I was young, and again multiple times in my young adulthood. I experienced domestic violence. I have been married and divorced. I became a dancer because I needed to make ends meet, and because dancing became my ticket out. It was a way to make money and leave. It was also complicated, and I am not going to make it sound prettier than it was.

This is not the whole story, but it is the truth of where I started. I am not sharing it so you can turn me into an inspirational object. I am sharing it because what happened to me shaped me, and because I refuse to pretend that the woman I am today appeared out of nowhere.

Doing it sober

I used alcohol to cope. Now I am learning how to stay present.

I am sober now, and I am not going to make that sound like a cute little chapter where I decided to drink water and became a better person. I drank to cope with the pain I carried. I drank because not feeling felt easier than feeling everything at once.

Now I have to meet myself there. I am still dealing with the pain that made me want to drink in the first place. Some days I have very little energy. Some days I want to lay around and exist. My body needs rest, and I am learning not to argue with it or give it some half-ass version of what it actually needs.

I am learning not to call rest laziness. I am learning not to work twenty-four seven so I do not have to think. I am learning how to care for my body, my healing journey, my marriage, and the future children I hope to have without repeating the generational trauma I was handed when I was born.

I do this every day, even when it is messy, because I want a life I can actually be present for.