Recently, Dr. Nicole LePera wrote the following about people pleasing, “At the end of the day, people pleasing is about ourselves. And not wanting to feel uncomfortable emotions. In working with people there’s always a “ah ha” moment when someone understands that they’re not really pleasing— they’re controlling. They’re trying to control how someone perceives them. And how they feel. Once you understand this, you can start breaking the pattern.”
I reflected on this very “ah ha” moment myself regarding my personal experience in an email from March 23rd, where I admitted that I wanted to be in control of the narrative that was out there about me, so I sought to people-please by keeping my addiction a secret.
In rereading that email, however, I realized I did not hold space for multiple things to be true. I did not hold space for the people who practiced people-pleasing, not because they were trying to control others or be manipulative, as people-pleasers are frequently accused of doing, but because they needed to be safe.
On pages 85-86 of the book Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance, Kelly McDaniel mentions other sources of people-pleasing behavior. She writes, “Appeasing behavior may be less risky than fighting or running…As children, many of us learn to appease our mothers as a harm-reduction tactic…Pleasing and appeasing is similar to a trauma response—it’s an automatic, unconscious reaction that can become an engrained personality trait.”
I share this to highlight that the same behavior can have a different origin story and purpose that it serves depending on the individual, their identity, how they grew up, and things that were happening to them over time. As we grow, it becomes our responsibility to recognize what we are getting out of a behavior, and we get to decide if it still serves us when considering the future we want for ourselves.
You may find that you are, in fact, a people-pleaser. Do you have a history of secretly trying to control others’ opinions of you, or have you had to keep yourself safe? It’s so valuable to slow down and reflect on this, so take a look at the questions below:
Questions to Ask Yourself About People-Pleasing:
If you used to appease people to protect yourself or others, are you still in need of protection? What threats, real or perceived, do you face today? How might your identity connect to this? Think carefully about this one. People from historically marginalized groups do face real threats that may lead to people-pleasing behaviors. I think about conversations I’ve had with family about being extra “careful” with police.
If you used to appease people to control others’ perceptions of you, what story did you want to live in other people’s minds about you?
What is the worst that could happen if you allow yourself to disappoint these other people?
Is this worst thing that can happen, your answer to question 3, something that you can live with? Would you be safe?
Upcoming Opportunities
Life Coaching Schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Though sobriety doesn’t shield us from life’s challenges, nurturing hope empowers us with the resilience needed to navigate whatever adversity we face.
In an interview for Time Magazine, researcher and psychologist Chan Hellman defined hope as “the belief or the expectation that the future can be better, and that more importantly, we have the capacity to pursue that future.” In sobriety, this belief becomes a lifeline for those grappling with addiction, giving them something to hold onto while working to release their substance of choice.
As my relationship with drinking drew to a close, though I didn’t know exactly whatto expect from a life without alcohol, I remember thinking that not drinking had to be better than this. At that juncture, my body was shutting down because of alcoholic liver disease—the idea of continuing to live desperately latched onto a substance that made me lie, sneak, and avoid consciousness felt equivalent to condemning myself to a living hell with a hopeless future.
Understanding that whatever sobriety had to offer me would be better than what my life was like in active addiction helped propel me into recovery. Hope empowered me to give up my career, surrender my home, and expose my secret struggle to the world—to reveal that I, the state teacher of the year, battled alcohol addiction. This surrender was based on the trust that doing these things would help me let go of the bottle I was drowning myself in.
Even now, years into this sobriety journey, I still need to hold onto hope because it provides a profound assurance that challenging times won’t last. When I experienced my heart-breaking pregnancy loss, one of the most brutal blows in my recent history, I confronted a pivotal choice—believe in a brighter future or turn to apathy.
I believe my future will be better, not because it’s contingent on specific outcomes, such as a successful pregnancy, but because I’ve honed the skill of real self-care. I have a lot of heart and love to pour into myself and others, and I won’t let the hurt I feel harden my heart and turn me into an apathetic person.
In Brené Brown’s words, “The brokenhearted are the bravest among us. They had the courage to love.” I choose to embody this bravery, leaning on hope as one of my pillars of strength.
About the author, Jessica:
Jessica Dueñas, Ed.S., the founder of Bottomless to Sober and 2019 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, is an educator in recovery who provides coaching services to individuals needing support in accomplishing their goals. In addition, Jessica facilitates professional development for organizations on wellness, leads workshops on writing and wellness, and is also available as a speaker for events.
In 2021, Jessica was named a Kentucky Colonel, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the state of Kentucky, for her service work in education and recovery spaces.
Content Warning: pregnancy loss, death by drug overdose
In the social media realm, sobriety-related posts present enticing promises to people who might want to quit drinking, from promises of glowing skin and better sleep to weight loss and the prospect of a life so fulfilling that the idea of escaping to drink seems unimaginable.
Appealing as they are, such promises are only true sometimes, especially the ones about loving your life so much that you won’t want to escape it.
In my early recovery, I subscribed to the belief that doing the “next right thing” would shield me from the unknown future, that getting my addiction under control would end my suffering.
The bulk of my suffering was caused by drinking, when, out of desperation for companionship, I found myself repeatedly entangled in relationships with men who feared commitment. When one of them did offer me commitment, it turned out that he struggled with opiate addiction. Ignoring it, I trusted that love alone would conquer it.
As no one likes to admit, love was not enough. Pile on the pain of the pandemic and the world being shut down, and he was driven back to the needle. I saw him for the last time, blueish, before the coroner wheeled him away. Just before his relapse and death, we had talked about what it would look like to build a family. His rough, calloused hands carefully held my face as he gently whispered, “You are my family,” and I shared with him that I wanted to have a baby. Not a week later, in what felt like an instant, he was gone.
Instead of seeking help, I dove into every possible bottle to avoid the pain of losing him. My dreams of a family were shattered. I felt I would never find a partner, fall in love, or become a mother.
That year, isolation and grief landed me in eight alcohol-related hospitalizations that lasted from three days to five weeks. When I finally got sober in November of 2020, I needed to believe that I had paid my dues of emotional suffering due to a life of alcohol addiction. I had to hold onto the hope that if I could stop pouring this poison into my body that everything would go just right. Surely, sobriety would bring me peace and a life I would want to embrace rather than escape, a belief that I carried until recently.
In December of 2023, I was in a new, healthy, long-term relationship and finally felt safe enough to consider actually trying to get pregnant.
On a chilly afternoon, I went to the grocery store and filled my cart with snacks, suddenly strolling into the family planning section. Like a teenage girl with a secret, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and I snuck a box of pregnancy tests into my shopping cart. My stomach fluttered with excitement as the cashier rang up my total. Rushing home to use the bathroom, I ripped into the box and tore open the test packaging.
A faint pink line came up.
Eyes wide, my chest tightened with anticipation as I pulled out another test and waited.
I was pregnant.
Grabbing the third test, I waited again.
I was still pregnant.
After years of not trusting myself or my partners, I rejoiced!
Finally, I get to be a mom.
On Christmas, I told my partner the news, the joy of which was the best gift I could give. Weeks later, we confirmed the pregnancy with an ultrasound. Upon hearing the heartbeat, we beamed at each other, bright with excitement.
We shared the news with our loved ones and colleagues, and I started to write notes to the baby in a collection of random thoughts titled, “All The Things I Wish I Had Known.”
The joyous anticipation abruptly extinguished during a routine checkup on January 30th, 2024. The ultrasound delivered the heartbreaking news of a silent miscarriage. “I’m so sorry, Jessica,” the sonographer said quietly. “The baby is gone.” Looking at the screen, trying to make sense of her words, I listened for a heartbeat that was not there. On the screen was a misshapen sac. My heart sank. My eyes watered. My partner squeezed my hand tightly as the room spun out of control.
Despite my beliefs about recovery, life had shattered the illusion of sobriety as a shield against pain and loss.
About one out of four pregnancies don’t make it. “It’s not your fault,” my doctor explained. “There’s no reason.” As I wept silently in my partner’s arms, tears in his eyes, too, my heart felt the familiar feeling of shattering. My thoughts raced.
Will I ever become a mother?
Do I have the courage to try to get pregnant again?
What if I never become a mother?
I’ve been through enough already – why do I have to go through this?
Haven’t I done all the right things?
This final reflection is precisely where I got things wrong about recovery and had some serious unlearning to do.
Recovery, I learned, is not a guaranteed dispensary of desires earned through time and effort.
Sobriety, it turns out, does not equal immunity from hardship but rather equips us with the tools to face life’s challenges.
In the face of this loss, I revisited a note I had written to my unborn child.
After the initial pregnancy confirmation.
Difficult times come to reveal something about you to yourself, Something that you would have never known otherwise. How could you know how strong you are If you never had something to overcome? Don’t seek hardships, but when they come, Say, “Hello. What are you here to teach me?”
Recovery doesn’t exempt us from life’s tribulations but transforms our ability to navigate them. Reading the note and contemplating this loss, I needed to process the lesson that recovery owes me nothing. It has armed me with the means to handle life’s challenges without needing to escape.
When my partner passed away in 2020, isolation and alcohol were my coping mechanisms. When I miscarried, I immediately leaned on others for support, accepting offers of food and companionship. I took time off of work, cleared my calendar, and sought refuge with my sister after having surgery to complete the miscarriage on February 1st. Simply put, I have allowed others to take care of me and changed the narrative of how I respond to hardship.
It’s my birthday weekend, and I canceled the celebration because of my broken heart. Still, I choose to stay sober and sit with the inevitable pain that comes with this past week’s events.
During group support meetings that I lead with The Luckiest Club, we always close with a reading of “The Nine Things” from Laura McKowen’s book, Push Off From Here. Laura says, “I wrote the nine most important things I needed to hear — from myself, from others, from what I understood to be God — when I was in the dark hell of my addiction. They were the things I still needed to hear daily in sobriety.” I needed to hear these things to recover from the miscarriage and gather myself to move forward:
It is not your fault.
It is your responsibility.
It is unfair that this is your thing.
This is your thing.
This will never stop being your thing until you face it.
You can’t do it alone.
Only you can do it.
You are loved.
We will never stop reminding you of these things.
Hello, hard times.
While I am not grateful for them, I am thankful for how I have learned to handle them, a testament to the essence of my sobriety.
About the author, Jessica:
Jessica Dueñas, Ed.S., the founder of Bottomless to Sober and 2019 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, is an educator in recovery who provides coaching services to individuals needing support in accomplishing their goals. In addition, Jessica facilitates professional development for organizations on wellness, leads workshops on writing and wellness, and is also available as a speaker for events.
In 2021, Jessica was named a Kentucky Colonel, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the state of Kentucky, for her service work in education and recovery spaces.
“If I work harder, sacrifice more, and say yes more, I’ll feel better about my secret problem with alcohol.”
I used to tell myself this, and all I was doing was creating a greater incongruence between me and my truth, which was that I was addicted to alcohol.
One of my biggest unlearnings in sobriety was releasing the idea that my output isn’t tied to my worth as an individual.
“More” was a word that dominated my story for years.
If I could do more at work or for others, get more degrees, and get more accolades, I could drink more alcohol because I couldn’t possibly have a problem, right?!
I hoped that if I could work harder at everything BUT me, those external things would somehow offset how poorly I felt about myself as a result of my drinking.
If you’ve also negotiated your drinking with yourself by leaning on all you do for others, be they loved ones or the organizations you work for, I see you.
In a society that constantly asks us what we bring to the table, it’s a rebellious act to look inward and recognize that what we carry by simply being is already enough.
Upcoming Opportunities
Life Coaching Schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Free Writing for Healing Workshop. December 24th Register here.
Feelings Aren’t Facts: A New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop. December 31st. Register here.
It wasn’t a cute or trendy choice, neither was it something I initially desired.
Thrown across the train tracks of my addiction, I felt resigned to an early death. The rumble of the oncoming train grew louder with each stint in treatment followed by a wild relapse.
Shame weighed me down, firmly pressing against the cold, wet tracks, fueled by my false belief that I wasn’t worthy of sharing my struggles. “How dare I be a drunk?” echoed in my mind, silencing me.
As the speeding train neared, a realization dawned—I had to push the shame aside to give myself a chance to stand and seek help. So, I shared my story in an op-ed for the Louisville Courier-Journal, confessing that, as the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, I had been secretly consuming a fifth of alcohol daily, witnessed my boyfriend die from his own addiction, and spiraled further into self-destruction.
I stood and walked away from those tracks when my story went live.
I concluded my op-ed declaring the following:
“My dream is to attain long-term sobriety, and I believe one day I will, but just for today, I choose to live in recovery until I fall asleep. I will fight my alcoholism daily. I no longer live in fear of anyone trying to “out” me. There were times this year I felt ready to die, but here I stand to tell my story of choosing to live. I will live a good life. I will have a family, find peace and STILL be of service to others, just not in the way I had planned. My mother has a saying in Spanish, “uno pone y Dios dispone,” meaning we have one plan, but God can have other paths to our goals, which I accept as my journey.”
Today, I stand proud, openly sharing my recovery journey instead of keeping it a secret. The past three years have been a testament to my commitment to living in truth. This authenticity has become my shield, repelling what doesn’t align with me and creating space for the right people and opportunities.
Saying “yes” is now a source of ease because it is grounded in the power to say “no.” The exhaustion of wearing a constant mask has dissipated, and the burden of living a double life is no longer a thing.
If you find yourself trapped by shame, it’s lying to you—you are not alone, and you deserve better. Reach out for support.
Upcoming Opportunities
Life Coaching Schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Free Writing for Healing Workshop. December 24th Register here.
Feelings Aren’t Facts: A New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop. December 31st. Register here.
“How do I know if I’m ready to date? I don’t want to get hurt.”
If you are stepping into the dating arena in 2023 as a person in recovery, I want to go ahead and hit you with the news that you getting hurt is a guarantee.
Someone will disappoint you, piss you off, or trigger some age-old insecurities about yourself you may have thought you got over. This truth isn’t limited to the idiots you may encounter. Even people with the best intentions for you who may be a good fit for you will, at a certain point, cause an emotional disturbance for you.
So, if you want companionship, step one is to accept that there will be pain in seeking it.
When I dated in early recovery, I made two mistakes.
I falsely believed the person I was with would never hurt me.
I was too early on in this recovery work and too unsteady to handle the pain that eventually did come. So when my heart broke, my attempts at sobriety shattered right along with it, leaving me to do a hell of a ton of picking up the pieces.
So, if you want to ask yourself if you’re ready to jump into the dating arena and look for companionship, first, you must accept that there WILL be times when connecting with others romantically will challenge you. Dating can be fun, AND you will still get your feelings hurt. If you have decided you want a partner, you have to be ready to take the risks that come with it.
Hurt, sadness, disappointment, and anger are all part of the human experience. Welcome to your human life.
So, what happens when you take the risk and get ghosted, or someone tells you they had a drunk mom and aren’t looking for someone with a prior complicated past with alcohol?
You might question everything about you, including your sobriety. The inner critic inside your head might say, No one is EVER going to want to be with you now that you’re sober. If you haven’t built a strong foundation for yourself or adopted tools to help you through hard moments like these, you may start to believe that inner critic to the point you drink to quiet the voice. To drown it out.
After the heartbreak after the loss of my prior partner, I committed to not dating seriously until I could trust myself to handle pain and not drink over it.
Once I started looking for a partner, however, I suited up and showed up, knowing that disappointment wouldn’t kill me, neither could rejection nor mixed messages. Would these feelings hurt? Hell yea. But they couldn’t harm me. I was safe.
I am safe.
Do I know that my current partner will never break my heart? No. I have no guarantee of that. What I do know, however, is that anything could happen with him, and I don’t have to drink over it.
My work on myself, the tools I utilize to cope, and the people in my circle have given me a safe place to land. So, if I ever were to hit a place of emotional devastation, drinking doesn’t have to be my way to handle it.
In closing, if you’re thinking about dating, ask yourself these questions:
Am I ready to feel the discomfort of a range of challenging emotions because people are not perfect and dating requires me to meet new imperfect people?
Am I equipped to handle the range of challenging emotions that may accompany this journey without drinking?
If your answer is yes, happy dating AND you should check out life coaching with me so I can work you to navigate that lovely journey I’m all too familiar with. You can schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Upcoming Opportunities
Life Coaching Schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Free Writing for Healing Workshop. December 24th Register here.
Feelings Aren’t Facts: A New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop. December 31st. Register here.
Dasha Kennedy, a financial educator known on Instagram as @thebrokeblackgirl, recently shared a list of tough financial decisions she had to make that saved her life. Her list inspired me to create a list of my own tough decisions I had to make to save my life via being in recovery.
Here is that list:
I sold the house I was super proud of buying all on my own in Louisville, KY., and moved into the guestroom of my sister’s home in Tampa, FL. Giving up the house meant letting go of the independence I had been proud of achieving post-divorce in 2017. I was raised to be “strong” and not dependent on others. Moving in with my sister also gave me the safety of leaning on people who loved me and would encourage my recovery.
I quit my job as a teacher in a school I loved that was part of a community I felt great joy in being involved in, where I had gotten recognized as a Teacher of the Year for my work. I worked as an entry-level salesperson at an online tutoring company instead.To be named Teacher of the Year and walk away from a space where I felt loved and respected was hard, but it was on my terms. I had a choice: face the hard of losing my job because of a circumstance I could have avoided, or face the hard of being proactive and walking away because it was no longer sustainable.
When I started dating again, I made it a priority to discuss my recovery from addiction very early on with the men I met, even if it felt uncomfortable. I knew that any man worth building a long-term relationship with would not view my recovery as a liability but rather as an asset. I wanted to repel people who wouldn’t meet that expectation quickly.
I accepted medical assistance and used medication for the first 1.5 years of my recovery.I let go of the idea that “I can do this by myself” and accepted that a licensed medical doctor could help me do what had felt like impossible work.
I talked about my story and fully accepted that I had been secretly addicted to alcohol for years. A huge thing that kept me drinking was being trapped by shame. Shame kept me thinking I was unworthy of connection, so I didn’t talk about my problem with alcohol to anyone for fear of judgment. Once I connected with others, I realized I was not alone, and it wasn’t just me.
I made time in my schedule to show up for my recovery.If I had made the time to drink, I could make the time to show up for my recovery, whether that meant meetings, therapy, or working with mentors.
I assessed my spending habits and put myself on a serious budget. I became dependent on food delivery services during my active addiction because I didn’t want to burn the house down by falling asleep while cooking. I was in debt and started learning about financial literacy to get my money in order.
I stopped telling myself I was bored when things were quiet—I experienced a lot of drama as a result of my drinking, so when things got calmer, I kept looking for something to scratch the drama itch.
I accepted that I wasn’t behind and embraced that I was where I was supposed to be. I gave up my home and a job I was passionate about to get sober. I can work toward a new home or change my work any time, but my life is the only one I have.
What are some tough decisions you have made to save yourself? Are there some decisions you know you need to make and are stalling on?
Upcoming Opportunities
Life Coaching Schedule a free coaching consultation here!
Free Writing for Healing Workshop. December 24th Register here.
Feelings Aren’t Facts: A New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop. December 31st. Register here.
I really wish I had a camera was a thought that lived in my mind the entire time I was at one of the treatment facilities I stayed at in 2020.
I spent five weeks in this facility, and though my memory of my arrival there is spotty, there are several snapshot moments of this experience I hope I never forget.
This is one of them.
“Karaoke? Here in a rehab? No way. You’ve gotta be kidding me.” I laughed while chatting with my friend Andy. Andy is this massive 6’5″ radiant personality I still get to text with to this day. We were in line for lunch at the cafeteria after finishing one of our group therapy sessions. There were eager murmurs among fellow residents that one of the staff members said she would bring in a mic and speaker set if we, the people who miraculously hadn’t killed themselves in recent weeks, were willing to do karaoke during her shift supervising us on Friday night.
It was early summer in 2020. After flipping my car upside down on Bardstown Road in Louisville, KY, I ended up in this treatment facility. The idea of going from barely wanting to be alive to singing into a mic in front of other people without a single drop of alcohol in my body was wild. I mean, I had to be locked away in a treatment facility because I couldn’t bring myself to stop drinking safely. Now, these people want to get me to sing along to a song on a microphone?
So many thoughts ran through my mind in response to this idea: What if I’m not fun to others and I just bore them? I’m not good enough to get up in front of others and just be. I like my singing voice, but I’m scared it’s not good enough to be a strong voice and that I can’t be silly enough to be comically bad for karaoke. Is there even such a thing as fun without alcohol? I’d like to watch others try. I love karaoke, but me? Sober? I’ll have to pass.
As we sat down to eat, Danielle, the staff member the buzz was about, approached our table. As usual, she was beaming, “Did y’all hear about karaoke on Friday? You ready, Jess?” She looked me in the eyes and smiled, which slowed the racing panic of my detoxing brain.
Danielle always put me at ease because her lived experience instilled hope that this repetitive cycle I found myself in would one day stop. In Drowning in Shallow Water: Chapter 1, I share how I learned that Danielle had also lost her partner to a drug overdose. Despite this loss, she was sober and working with others. Danielle gave me hope that I could find joy and love after losing my boyfriend, Ian. Her lived experience and confidence in how she conducted herself made me think, Maybe I can try this karaoke thing on Friday night.
I turned my face to Danielle, smiled while hesitantly shrugging my shoulders, and said, “I really don’t want to do it, but since you’re putting it together, Danielle, I’ll try it.”
“You won’t regret this, Jess!” Danielle declared.
And dammit, she was right.
On Friday night, Danielle came in for her shift. She decorated the residential lounge area, turned the overhead lights off, and connected her karaoke machine to her phone. As the music started playing and I felt the bass of the music vibrate a little bit, the sensory experiences began to take me back. The thumping with the darkness and the flashing lights from the machine took me back to being at a bar or club.
But I wasn’t at the club. I was in treatment.
One of the younger residents, Elly, got up to do a song. In our therapy groups, she was often disengaged and rarely used her voice. I assumed she did not want to take up space, so I remember my curiosity when I saw her awkwardly standing before us, her hand on the mic and the other on her hip. We waited for what felt like ages, and then the words came. Elly took a deep breath, closed her eyes, gripped the microphone with both hands and came to life.
I wish I could remember the song, but I don’t. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that Elly was freed beyond the walls of the treatment facility in those few moments. As she danced and performed as if she was on stage somewhere else, I elbowed Andy next to me, and I held up my hands as though I was holding up a real camera and took a snapshot of Elly.
So, what happened afterward?
After letting herself be seen, Elly started to speak up more in groups. And me? I did eventually sing, too, just not on that day. 🙂
On the left, me doing karaoke in my active addiction. On the right, karaoke sober.
Want to write your OWN story? My LAST Six-Week Writing to Heal Program for 2023 starts tomorrow, September 30th!
“They did the best they could with what they had” is something I often say, referencing my parents when telling my story.
With my parents, age 11 months. Brooklyn.
Often, there is this narrative that immigrants only want their kids to enter high-paying professions, to become doctors or lawyers.
In my parents’ case, this was not true.
I’ve wanted to be a teacher since kindergarten when Ms. Youssef helped ease my daily crying about being around a bunch of strange kids. Then, my high school teachers and mentors, Mr. Bailey, Ms. Frosch, Mr. Goden, Sra. Pimentel, and Ms. Murphy, inspired me to want to help others find their lightbulb moments while feeling wrapped in warmth and acceptance.
My dad in his later years in Costa Rica.
I grew to love my teachers, and when I told my parents that I wanted to grow up to help others learn, my parents proudly encouraged me. When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, Papi joined a group of other dads singing to students at a senior parent event. He fumbled through the words, but he didn’t care. Papi beamed at me, though he didn’t know or understand a single word of what he was singing along to because it was in English and he only spoke Spanish. He was just proud to be there for me as I got ready to go to college to pursue the education he had worked so hard for me to get.
My parents never pressured me into any career path. They wanted me to have an education and a better life than they had in Cuba (dad) and Costa Rica (mom).
They wanted me to be happy.
After getting an email from a new student in my Writing to Heal Program (which starts on Saturday, 9/30!) where the student stated, “Thank you, and please say thanks to your parents for having a wonderful, ambitious, smart child who gives it all away, from me.” I called my mom and translated the message.
Her response, “Claro que si!” (hahaha!)
With my mom in Brooklyn.
I am so grateful that today, I have a safe, stable, and happy life that my parents fought hard for me to have. I’m also thankful to have returned to helping others find their lightbulb moments through teaching and coaching.
My teaching today is not how I initially envisioned this role, as I went from working with middle schoolers to working with either college students or adults on their healing journeys. Still, like my mother always says, “Uno pone y Dios dispone,” meaning we can have one plan, and God can have another. Ultimately, things always work out.
Some of the wounds I have worked on healing come directly from my history with my parents, and yes, much of my success today is due to the work I have had to do on my own to get my addiction to alcohol in order.
My parents in their home in Costa Rica (they left the US in 2016).
Multiple truths can be true, and the email from my incoming student was a beautiful reminder that I needed. My parents saw my love for working with others early on, and it was a light they did not dare put out. My parents did their best with what they had and did a damn good job trying.
Upcoming Opportunities
Six-Week Writing to Heal Program. Last one for 2023! Starts September 30th at 11 AM. Register here.
“Wow, that’s different. I wouldn’t think a woman your age would have no kids,” said one of the fellow Mobilize Recovery participants I was sitting with after telling her I don’t have children.
I felt my heart race and my body go into a bit of a panic as I quickly fell into an old pattern of justifying my current circumstances.
I rambled, “Uh, well, you know, all those years that I drank, I worried about getting pregnant. I didn’t have the right partner. I didn’t want to have to change my drinking for someone else…” and honestly the list goes on of how I vomited at the mouth to try and defend my position as a woman with no children today.
I wish I had said, “Why does it matter to you if I have kids or not?” or “What are you making it mean that I, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children?”
But I didn’t.
And you know what, at this point, I’m better off asking myself these questions because she’s moved on with her life, and I’m still sitting here reflecting on this moment. I need to acknowledge, like Don Miguel Ruiz so often shares, if something in that woman’s words hurt me, it’s because she happened to touch on a wound that I already carry. So, what I need to do here isn’t worry about her remarks but pause, look at this, and ask myself what I need to learn about myself from this incident that disturbed me.
So with that:
Why does it matter to you, Jessica, if you have kids?And what are you making it mean that you, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children? As part of my socialization, I was taught that having a child is, in a sense, the pinnacle of womanhood and a necessary life experience. As a 38-year-old, when I look at society and lean on these external beliefs that I was given, I can quickly feel that I’m “behind” and that I haven’t “checked off all the boxes” of what a woman’s experience “should” be like.
And there it is, that word “should.“
That dangerous word that many times I shamed myself with and drank over. Anytime the word “should” comes out, that’s a sign that I need to evaluate the validity of my thoughts. It’s okay for me not to have kids today. It’s also okay for me to want children. However, having them or not does not make my life any more or less “complete,” and it certainly doesn’t take away from my lived experience as a woman.
So the next time someone makes a statement toward you that stings, if “don’t take it personally” doesn’t work for you at that moment, get curious and ask yourself:
What can I learn about myself from this incident?
Why does this statement bother me?
What am I making this mean about myself, and is it even true for me or is it true by an external standard?
