I am so fortunate to have grown up and live in an age where women want to be seen as strong and powerful, equal to and never less than anyone else in this world. Yet every time I hear someone tell me how “strong” I am, I have an instant aversion to that word. It twists my insides into knots and I feel like screaming. It’s not the polite way to reply to what’s intended to be a compliment, so I manage to bury the urge and force a smile.
I’ve spent my whole life being allergic to vulnerability. The idea of asking for help or even accepting an offer of assistance almost gives me hives. I always played it off to friends and family as just a strong show of my independence. Strong women don’t need help, look at everything I can do alone!
My sweet friend Jeanette once told me, maybe a year into becoming friends, that when she first met me she knew she was going to have to earn my friendship. I was horrified. She assured me it wasn’t a bad thing, she just knew it was going to take a while for me to trust her enough to open up. But I was an open book! I’ll tell you any story you want to hear, about any event in my life. The thing about story-telling is that it’s so easy to disconnect as the narrator of your own life.
She was right. It takes such a long time for me to really let my guard down and not just tell the story, but talk about how it made me feel. And I have so many friends who have never seen that side of me. So. Many.
On January 17, 2019 I decided to stop drinking. Years of battling with moderation and some of the lowest of lows finally caught up to me. Alcohol numbed me for so much of my adult life, and I decided to start living and feeling every moment of the rest of it. That meant being wide open to every emotion, no matter how vulnerable it might make me feel.
I started this blog to stop just narrating my life. It’s time to dig into my journey and feel it every step of the way.
“What an interesting little prison we build from the invisible bricks of other people’s opinions.”
Jacob Nordby
Mocktail Moxie 