Three sober women walk into a bar...

Dumbest punchline ever.

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Photo by Tim Johnson on Unsplash

Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.

Miles Davis

🤘🏾

Last Friday night, it so happened that I had two friends sharing recovery milestones: one was celebrating 1,000 days alcohol-free, and on the very same day, the other was celebrating 2,000 days. The nice juicy round numbers made a worthy occasion in and of themselves, and the overlapping dates felt cosmic, so we decided to celebrate by going across town (a big deal for someone who rarely leaves a one-mile radius) to a swanky new bar that promised “unique non-alcoholic concoctions.” Indeed, the only reason we chose this spot was because the following was featured on the menu:

N/A MENU

we are determined to craft each cocktail, the japanese omotenashi way.
our bartenders have extensive knowledge and imagination at your disposal to create unique non-alcoholic concoctions. below are some notable examples to take advantage of…

Extensive knowledge and imagination! We sat down and a waitperson came over and immediately seemed annoyed when we asked questions about what the knowledgable and imaginative bartenders might whip up for us. No biggie, we ordered off the menu instead, letting her know we were non-drinkers, and re-emphasizing “alcohol-free” when we placed our respective orders.

It was a gorgeous summer-ish San Francisco evening. We were dressed up—I even wore heels, whoa. We got there early enough that the sky was still somewhat bright, and people in the bar were still behaving. It was, admittedly, a gorgeous little spot.

All was excellent until we ordered a second round. My friend ordered an N/A sparkling rosé, and maybe you can guess where this is going, but the bartender sent out a regular glass of wine and my friend took a sip and immediately knew.

Y’all, I stayed calm, but I was pissed. I asked to speak to the manager, and said something to the effect that if they are going to put on their menu that they take N/A beverages seriously, that they…actually have to take it seriously. I let him know it was not cool, and a big deal that they messed this up. He was sort of sheepish but I could tell he didn’t really get it, you know?

And it’s moments like these that I remember that not everyone is swimming in the water that I am. I forget this, inside of the work I’m in, running in the circles I do, where most of my people either don’t drink at all, or do so very infrequently. It’s moments like these where I see how far the culture still has to go to catch up with us. It’s also moments like these where I have to practice taking up space, being visible and unapologetic, and demanding something better for all of us.

Alcohol kept me hidden for a very long time. Recovery is a refusal to ever diminish myself again.

🤘🏾

One of the frames through which I view my practice that has me feel most powerful is claiming and celebrating my outsider-ness. Not participating in alcohol culture means not participating in general, much of the time, and at first, this was hard. OF COURSE this was hard. It’s not hard anymore. I do not miss the before. I have found many other ways to socialize, many incredible people to do so with.

Most people do not associate sobriety with liberation, and I love being a lantern bearer for the how to live a big, bold, authentic life without anesthetizing oneself. I do not traffic in deprivation. Recovery is the way that I wake up every day with an orientation toward freedom, and this is the commitment that keeps me going on the days that I’m sick of the damn lemon water and I don’t want to sit and meditate and I’m annoyed by everyone (a regular occurrence, let it be known). Recovery is bigger than me, than my day-to-day nitty gritty. And it wasn’t always this way.

Being SELF MADE, like being in recovery, is an active practice. Integrating the light and dark, becoming more whole and more fully who I am, does not happen without effort. Left to my own shitty thoughts, I still swim in the sea of lack. I obsess and fixate about all that I am missing. I feel terrifically self-absorbed. I worry what other people—like hip bartenders a decade younger than me at a bougie Russian Hill bar—might think. I get hooked in the thought loop of there’s something wrong with me.

What I got present to on Friday night was how far I’ve come. In the beginning, I would have been embarrassed to speak up. I would have felt ashamed that I even had to. I would never have been able to sustain a long-term non-drinking practice if I hadn’t gone to work on my thoughts, and gotten curious about the stereotypes I’d been socialized to believe about what it meant to exist as a non-drinker in this world.

Friday night reminded me of my commitment to moving beyond stereotypes, to becoming uncategorizable; a wild, unapologetic beast. This requires interrogating my beliefs, and then shifting my behavior accordingly, which is uncomfortable because it goes against what feels like instinct but is actually bummer programming. And this—this questioning of habituated ways of thinking, this practicing different behavior—is the sweet spot where the rubber meets the road.

This all sounds heady and abstract. Let’s get practical:

• Asking for help. This includes professional help, for sure. It’s the therapy, it’s the annual bloodwork, it’s the massage and reiki and all the things I can do to shore up my support team as much as my resources allow. And, it’s also: asking people to drive me to the airport. Reaching out when I’m blue at the exact moment everything in me is telling me to get in bed and stay there. Enlisting a trusted someone to give an extra set of house keys, to be my emergency contact, to be the person I call when I’m sick or hurt or in a bind.

  Despite what the phrase might imply, being “SELF MADE” takes a village. Asking for help is vulnerable because it takes risk. I do it because on the other side are friendships that are medicinal, with a depth akin to family.

• Community. If I want to shift the paradigm and find my people, I can’t do so in a vacuum. I need all the narratives and examples of what it looks like to live a full, vibrant life from a place of wholeness rather than lack, and it’s so much more fun to do so with other people in similar waters. Is this you? Holler, let’s be friends, the clubhouse awaits. Speaking of:

• Joy, pleasure and fun. I actively commit to cultivating these things in my every day to balance out my tendency toward melancholy, and to counter the whole lot of time I spend with myself.

  Admittedly I suck at this so I’m grateful for this post where I crowdsourced and you all did not disappoint.

• Coping in ways that cause increasingly less harm. Perfection is NEVER, NEVER the aim. There will always be squirrels in brain that unleash themselves and cause me to act in, well, squirrely ways. It’s a major win when I turn to something that causes less harm than before. Less harm, less harm, over time we cause less and less harm. This takes as long as it takes, which leads me to:

• Self-forgiveness over self-flagellation. This is another way to say: how do I actively practice loving myself (I know what you’re thinking, and YES, that is part of it)? What are the thoughts I might practice to counter the aforementioned squirrels who would insist that I am fundamentally fucked up? Who might I surround myself with who will extend the hand of compassion to me while I learn to extend it to myself, who will remind me that all the mistakes I’ve made (will make) were the not the result of being a bad person, but a human who did their best with the tools they had at the time? What would it look like to own my mistakes and move through with grace and tenderness, no longer caught in the mire of regret and rumination (or, to not stay there as long)?

• Actively building self-esteem: In the abstract, this is a practice of saying fuck you to magical thinking, which means turning and facing my actual life, instead of attaching myself to a fantasy version of it. In reality, what this looks like is making incredibly small, incredibly *realistic* goals that I can actually attain (instead of magically thinking things will occur just because I fantasize about them). When I achieve these goals, I’m able to gather evidence that I can trust myself; that I am a person who behaves in a way that isn’t confusing; that I keep my word to myself and others; that I am absolutely capable of change.

• Pursuing purpose: Another way I think about this: What do I want people to say about me when I’m gone? What kind of ancestor do I want to be? What can I nurture creatively, that has nothing to do with hitting culturally sanctioned milestones? It took me a very, very long time to create a life that feels meaningful. I treaded water for almost two decades. Somehow, alongside the treading, a part of me continued to show up. Showing up is the most important action of all. Showing up is what reveals a direction, our own unique North Stars.

  I can’t say how long it will take for your North Star to emerge. I wish transformation was as easy as following the instructions of a neat little bulleted list. What I can say, what I know, if I know anything at all, is that if you keep showing up, if you keep knocking at the door, eventually it will open. And there you’ll be, wild, unencumbered, purposeful, alive, and so, so gorgeously human.

🤘🏾

Over the next three weeks in the SELF MADE community, weekly content will focus on three areas that together, make up a cute little Venn-Diagram, the center of which is a picture of you having changed your thoughts and practicing new ways of being in the world.

Here are the three areas:

1. Thoughtwork. These are actual strategies for practicing new thoughts: Frameworks, experiments, worksheets!

2. Self-Compassion. I’m guessing this is NOT a surprise for any of y’all. How do we practice self-compassion in a way that it lands authentically for us, and doesn’t feel cheesy?

3. Joy + Fun. Maybe the hardest of all. But absolutely vital.

We’d love for you to join us 😎 Let’s experiment and live into the questions together!

Reach out with questions! Click here to learn more! Or go ahead and push the button to subscribe 👇🏽

One last thing:

One of the most life-affirming, courage-boosting things I've done recently has been a racial justice training for White folks led by Milwaukee's own Garrett Bucks, ala The Barnraisers Project. Garrett is a Quaker, a kickass writer (you can read his work here), and a deeply thoughtful human who has put a ton of energy and heart into creating this training.

• If you're sick of anti-racism book clubs, this is for you.

• If you're not totally sure what "organizing" actually is, but you've always been intrigued, this is for you. 

• If you're ready to take real action in your community, this is for you. 

It's free. It's actually hilarious and fun. It's 10-weeks (you meet every other week for 90-minutes with a cohort of amazing people from all over the country). 

It's such a gift. Which is why I'm plugging it here. New cohort starts the week of September 19th.  

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SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA. 

Click here to learn about working with me 1:1. Check out the “About” page for more information about our online community and click any of the “Subscribe Now” buttons to become a subscriber👇🏽

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Thank you.