By: Lakeview Health
My name is Emily and I am a grateful, recovering alcoholic.
By the grace of God, my sobriety date is October 11, 2017. It was a long and treacherous road to get to where I am today, but I wouldn’t trade what I went through for anything in the world.
I have a loving husband and four beautiful children who are everything to me. My life today is far greater than I could have ever imagined. To me, the greatest part of recovery is that I finally get to be the woman, wife, and mother that God created me to be. Like I said, it wasn’t easy to get here but it was so worth all the hard work.
I grew up in a loving Christian home and nothing in my childhood stands out to me as to “why” I turned out to be an alcoholic. It is safe to say that I was born that way. I drank some in high school, but my drinking career did not really start until college. I blacked out on a regular basis and pretty much drank every single night. I was still “highly functioning” though. I met my wonderful husband my junior year and we were married three years later. I knew my drinking was somewhat of a problem, but I always told myself I would deal with it later. I had no idea the long road that was ahead of me.
A few years after being married, I became pregnant with my first child. I was able to stop drinking right away but I did not enjoy it. When I stopped drinking, my sleep was greatly affected. I didn’t realize how dependent I had become on alcohol to sleep. I had no idea at the time, but that introduced an entirely new addiction… anxiety and sleeping medication.
Over the course of the next three or four years, I had two more children and the cycle was pretty much the same. I would stop drinking while pregnant, but then I literally would pick right back up from where I left off. It was so exhausting trying to balance motherhood and alcoholism. I longed to be a great mother, but I also had a vicious disease that was taking over my life.
The summer of 2017 was when I reached my bottom and sought help at Lakeview Health. My bottom was not losing everything, although I almost did, but it was more of not being able to look at myself in the mirror and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. I made the very difficult decision of leaving my three young children and husband and checking into residential treatment for 30 days. I can honestly say that was the best decision that I have ever made.
Lakeview changed my life and I will be forever grateful. After getting out, I did have a brief relapse with pills because I did not take the very clear direction from the staff of following through with IOP. Once I decided to do that, that is when the magic happened. I poured myself into my IOP program and turned a short, three-month program into an entire year of learning how to live sober. Three months into my sobriety, I became pregnant with my fourth child and to this day, that pregnancy was the most wonderful and magical thing that I have ever gone through. Sobriety has not only changed my life, but it has changed the life of my husband, my children, and my parents.
My sobriety is the greatest gift that I can give to each one of them.
Ever since I can remember, being a mom has been my greatest desire. Motherhood made me fight that much harder for sobriety. For so long, I wanted both. I wanted to be a mom and be a mom that could drink. I now know that is not possible and I couldn’t be more grateful for that realization!!! It has truly given me such freedom to be the woman and mom that God created me to be.
My life today has a beautiful simplicity to it. It is not perfect, but it is so very sweet. My marriage has been restored and my kids finally have the mother that they deserve. I am active in the recovery community and I enjoy sharing my story whenever possible in hopes that it could help anyone out there struggling, especially mothers.
I praise God for his grace and mercy and for giving me my new life.
