Tomorrow, I am two years sober.

How does one capture this wild ride in words?  

I’ve been in the wilderness. And I think—I think—I’m finally ready to emerge.

I remember sitting on my rooftop in Washington, D.C., on March 19, 2024—the Spring Equinox. Feeling empty. Longing for something I couldn’t define. Something that lived in me but had not yet translated into consciousness, form, or a plan.

A stirring. A rumbling. A bone-deep knowing: there has to be something more. 

A calling.

Nothing in my life was “wrong.” Everything was pretty good, and from the outside, people would say, “Wow, you’re such a badass. You’re on fire!”

And I was on fire—in a slow, self-destructive kind of way. A wildfire that had gotten out of control and needed redirection. Not put out, but contained and channeled toward creation instead of destruction.

That fire scared me.

Too intense. Too powerful. Too dangerous for the nice, polite, good girl I was taught to be.

So I did what any good girl “should” do.

I drowned that fucker out. With a smile and probably an apology or two. 

When feelings of ecstasy, rage, or pure joy came, their intensity felt unbearable, too vulnerable. I had to learn to feel the intensity I had the privilege of being born with, without dimming the flame. 

Let me be clear: I didn’t have to.

I never hit a proverbial rock bottom. I had solid relationships, work I enjoyed, and a “good enough” life.

But there was an ache.

An ache for something I knew I couldn’t access with the layer of protection alcohol gave me.

I had to enter Dante’s journey, into the actual ring of fire, where my ego could not come along intact.

I did not want to go.

I had heard the call for years, but I also had enough excuses to stay comfortable. I told myself: It’s not that bad. Everyone is doing it. This is just how it will be for the rest of my life.

But over time, the nudges got nudgier.

And I reached a point of no return: Spring Equinox, 2024.

“Let’s do this,” nature said.

“Fuck no,” I responded. “This is who I am. Leave me alone.”

“How about you just try?”

I guess…

And here I am, two years later. The most brutiful years of my life.

Never have I been so painstakingly alive. And never have I willingly sat in this itchy, fiery, I’ve-got-to-jump-out-of-my-skin kind of rage. Never have I experienced such acute existential loneliness—the kind that turns the heart into a hollow ache, melting into a tenderness for all. 

Walking into a baptism of oceanic grief. Rocked by a rhythmic tide that comes and goes with every unforgiven memory, mostly of myself. 

I entered a wilderness.

So many times I said to myself: Why did you choose this? You can go back at any moment.

In Internal Family Systems, Dr. Richard Schwartz talks about our Protector Parts—the ones trying to keep our exiled selves safe with survival strategies that are no longer working.

One of my firefighter protector parts would say:

“Omg, look at you. You’ve become the controlled, good girl you were trying so hard to break free from—and you went and put yourself right back in a cage. Look how boring you are. Look how boring your life has become. Why don’t you just live a little? YOLO.”

But there is an indomitable force called alchemy.

A fiercely compassionate witness—not mine, but ours—who watched, in real time, these painful, shameful, repressed, and violent parts begin to transform.

They didn’t need fixing.
They didn’t need distraction.
They certainly didn’t need to be drowned out.

They needed a safe, trusted presence. They needed someone to stay.

And to tell them: You were always enough.

The adventure has been far from boring. But I now understand the sacred circle of the wilderness.

To enter, you must strip away every identity built on “this is who I am.” A psychological “everything must go” liquidation. It is the paradox of being human—wired for comfort, wired for safety.

But that circle of comfort must be protected, maintained. It is not often safe to step beyond the fence, where the gnarly beasts of the underworld creep at night.

And yet, the world—the galaxy within and around us—is vast, wild, free. Breathtakingly stunning.

It is not for sale. But it is there.

Waiting for those willing to walk toward discomfort, dissolution, and the annihilation of who they thought they were.

Within this two-year wilderness portal, I have never, ever (ever) felt so free, alive, connected, and on fire, while simultaneously feeling all the other terrifying, uncomfortable emotions we humans are blessed with. 

For the first time, I have an embodied sense of how they coexist.

I used to roll my eyes when I read, “If you numb negative emotions, you also numb your access to joy and freedom.”

Blah, blah, blah, I thought. I already feel enough—I don’t need more intensity.

I was wrong.

There is an integration that happens. An intertwining. A circle forming.

The elements alchemize into a force of nature—a power from the inside out—that cannot be exported, capitalized on, controlled, or taken away. The raw truth reveals itself, without the need for protection, validation, or explanation.

It just is.

No longer trying so hard to become, achieve, or move forward, there is now, in each exhale, a trust. A sovereignty. A bone-deep knowing:

I will not abandon you.

One of my teachers, Dr. Martha Beck, says the thing people long for most is peace. I used to think: Maybe other people. I am chaos. That’s where I thrive.

But when the fire of chaos meets the force of the ocean…

Something shifts.

The waves begin to rock you—in and out, in and out—whispering:

You don’t have to fight anymore.
Trust me.
Surrender.
I’ve got you.
Come home.

Sometimes I still stand on the outside and wonder, Why not just go back to how it was?

Then I soften into this one “wild and precious” life I used to quote from Mary Oliver—no longer words on a page, but something lived.

As I step into a new season of travel, people, teaching, studying (so many moving pieces, uncertainties, and unknowns…), I am reminded:

You were born for these times.

I am a paradox. I want to control every move, while at the same time being drawn to, and lit up by, uncertainty.

I do not know what comes next.

In an unstable world, I will stay ready to pivot, to create, to use the force sobriety has returned. To meet it all with curiosity and the occasional “fuck.”

I used to love this quote by Hunter S. Thompson. Now, I have become it:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming,’ Wow! What a ride!'”

~