Will I realise my dreams?
Will I find true and lasting love?
Will I find a job that fulfills me?
Will I ever be financially stable?
Will I be fit and healthy?
Will I visit all the places that I’m drawn to around the world?
Will I ever be debt free?
Will I have brilliant relationships with my family and friends?
Can I be happy?

As another ripple of thunder cuts through the sky I realise that if I had carried on drinking the answer would be NO to all of the above questions. But TODAY on my one-thousandth-and-thirty-eighth day of sobriety I can say YES to everything on the above list!
Just as the sky right now holds endless possibilities of what the day will produce, so does my life. ANYTHING is possible, I really and truly believe that.

I am one half of a supportive loving marriage.
I live in a beautiful mansion and have to pinch myself everyday ‘is this real?!’
I am living my dream life. There is nothing in it that I don’t want there.
I am financially stable.
Being sugar, dairy, gluten and ALCOHOL free means that I am fit and healthy.
I have a daily meditation practice.
I have no more debt.
I have wonderful relationships with my friends and family.
I am well on the way to visiting new and exciting places on the earth that I’ve never been to before: including Bali this December!!!

And my job now is passing on the information that I’ve received so that others can also live a dream life. I’m teaching less yoga classes, and doing more motivational speaking events. Life is constantly changing and evolving, just like the weather, and that would never be the case if my life was still caught up in a cycle of addiction.

Today holds so much potential. The potential for it to be anything, and everything feels possible. Rain, sun, storm, wind, and we even had a meteor shower last week!
Did you see it?

When I was drinking my hangover would prevent me from actually doing my meditation practice in the morning. It would then stretch into my breakfast choices, which would be less than healthy as my acidic body would crave more acidic foods, plus I’d pop a few codeine tablets. I’d then feel like crap and sit around wondering why I felt lethargic and unmotivated to do any work. Then my addiction to codeine would kick in again and I’d HAVE to take some to be able to teach my evening yoga classes.
Of course once completed the wine would make another appearance and the whole sorry pattern would play out once again, caught on the merry-go-round of addiction and unable to make the wretched ride stop.

Why couldn’t I stop it?
Why was I so weak?
Why wasn’t I enough without it?

But the ugly game continued from the age of 15 to 40, my whole adulthood consumed with doing something that I didn’t actually want to do.
How stupid I felt.
How ridiculous a situation it was.
The frustration was unbearable and the tears often came.
And I kept asking myself WHY WAS I SO WEAK?

A life of struggle.
25 years of being stuck.

But the time came when I was finally able to believe in myself, and that I DESERVED a better life.
A brilliant life was in fact possible for me, not just for the people I saw on TV or in magazines.
I started to believe that I could have that too.

I shook off the life of a drunk, and tried on sobriety for size.
I liked it.
It fit.
And now I had opened a new chapter of my life.

The real beauty of it is that I can now be authentic.
I’m no longer hiding.
And I had been the drunk yoga teacher hiding my drinking from my students for such a long time, and I was bored of it.

There was so much SHAME.
And that shame pulled me under and suffocated me.
I often felt that I’d drown in it.

But I didn’t. I sunk to the bottom of the ocean and kicked up again to the surface, where now I am flourishing.
My meditation practice is my support, my teacher, and my saviour.
The hours I sat with cravings rather than give in to them, training myself to think a different way.

And it worked.
Suddenly the urge to drink/smoke/snort GONE.
Now nearly three years later there are never any cravings.

Birthdays are better sober
Celebrations are better sober
Anniversaries are better sober
Christmas is better sober
Holidays are better sober
Parties are better sober
Winter is better sober
Autumn is better sober
Spring is better sober

And summer?
Well summer is just so sexy sober!

Not feeling bloated, fat, and ugly.
Now filling the summer months with vibrancy, energy and hope.
Do you want some of that?
I’d love you to join me in the feeling of AMAZING!

If you’d like to chat to me about our addiction program, then I am here for you. Our August retreat is full but we have spaces on the next one, and please pass this blog on to anyone that you think may need to hear the words.

Be your best, realise that you are ENOUGH, and allow yourself to be your fullest potential. Let me know your thoughts via email, facebook or twitter, and here is to the summer being totally gorgeously sexy! x

Copyright: Jo De Rosa August 2015