ONWARD: Three Years Sober, Still Becoming
Tomorrow marks three years since I last had a drink.
Three years.
There was a time when I couldn’t imagine writing those words, let alone living them.
Usually, a milestone like this would inspire me to reflect on how far I’ve come, perhaps with a little humor, some carefully selected music and a few words about the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
This year feels different.
Not because the accomplishment means any less.
Quite the opposite.
Life has a way of bringing everything into perspective when you least expect it.
Sometimes it’s not one experience, one disappointment or one defining moment that causes us to examine where we are.
Sometimes it’s everything.
The things we’ve survived.
The things we’re still navigating.
The lessons we thought we’d mastered.
The realizations that arrive quietly, long after we believed we’d made peace with the past.
Lately, life has felt like several chapters unfolding at once, some familiar, others entirely unexpected.
I’m still finding the words for parts of it.
For someone who has spent her entire life writing, that’s saying something.
Perhaps that’s why this milestone feels less like a finish line and more like an invitation to examine the journey itself.
Some victories become more meaningful when we understand just how much they cost.
The Stories We Don’t Tell
I’ve lived enough life to know that the version of ourselves other people remember isn’t always the person we were beneath the surface.
There was a time when my relationship with alcohol was almost something to laugh about.
In college, I even had a nickname: Grey Goose.
Yes, Grey Goose.
I wore it with a certain pride.
Looking back, there’s something ironic about celebrating an identity I would eventually work so hard to leave behind.
Still, that is one piece of a much larger story.
Nearly 20 years have passed since that moment. The experiences that challenged everything I believed about myself. And that was not the beginning. 
Some memories have faded. Others have never stopped speaking.
I remember moments of loneliness in rooms full of people.
I remember looking in the mirror and struggling to value my own worth.
I remember wondering how someone who appeared to have so much going for her could feel as though she had so little left.
Those experiences weren’t the beginning or the end of my struggles.
Life continued.
So did the lessons.
Some arrived through circumstances I could control. Others came through situations I never would have chosen.
Some are still unfolding.
There are chapters of my life I could write entire books about.
Some are difficult to revisit.
Others aren’t mine alone to tell.
I’ve learned that honesty doesn’t require disclosure.
Sometimes the most powerful part of a story is what the writer chooses to leave between the lines.
When Knowing Becomes Doing
October’s theme for I Am Victorious is Onward.
I chose that word with a particular direction in mind.
Funny how quickly life can remind you that you aren’t always the one holding the pen.
I’ve spent this month encouraging others to move forward, release what no longer serves them and recognize the difference between healing and concealing.
I’ve written about accountability.
I’ve written about acceptance.
I’ve written about the courage it takes to confront yourself.
Then something occurred to me.
Was I listening?
I was moving so quickly, collecting lessons and finding meaning in everything around me, that I nearly overlooked the person who needed those lessons most.
Me.
I’ve been encouraging people to stop looking backward while privately revisiting places I promised myself I’d never return to.
I’ve talked about extending grace while struggling to extend it to myself.
I’ve encouraged discernment while occasionally allowing fear to do the interpreting.
There’s a difference.
A rather significant one.
Sometimes what we call discernment is simply an old wound recognizing a familiar feeling.
That doesn’t necessarily mean history is repeating itself.
Sometimes it means we still have healing to do.
The Things We Mistake for Strength
I’ve always paid attention to details.
It’s the journalist in me.
Long before I had a platform or a profession, I had a pen, an imagination and a mind that could turn the smallest observation into an entire story.
Writing was never something I became. It was always part of who I was.
I notice what people say.
I remember what they don’t.
I can piece together an entire story from fragments that might seem insignificant to someone else.
That’s a gift when you’re investigating a story.
It’s exhausting when you’re investigating your own life.
At some point, I became so skilled at recognizing what could go wrong that I forgot how to recognize what could go right.
I mistook anticipation for preparation.
Suspicion for protection.
Control for peace.
I’ve spent so much time preparing myself for disappointment that sometimes the possibility of happiness feels more frightening than the disappointment itself.
Imagine that.
Being more comfortable with a familiar pain than an unfamiliar peace.
There’s something sobering about realizing that the very defenses you built to protect yourself may be the same things preventing you from moving forward.
Perhaps that’s why refinement can be so uncomfortable.
It requires us to examine what we’ve been calling strength.
The Power of Being Still
I’ve tried a lot of things throughout my recovery.
Some helped.
Some didn’t.
There are resources, people and experiences that played important roles in helping me reach this milestone.
I don’t dismiss any of them.
Yet the greatest source of strength in my life has never been something I could manufacture on my own.
I’ve known where to turn for a long time.
Knowing and trusting, however, are two different things.
It’s one thing to understand a principle.
It’s another to apply it when your emotions are louder than your reasoning.
It’s one thing to speak about love.
It’s another to demonstrate it when you’ve been hurt.
It’s one thing to believe in forgiveness.
It’s another to release the desire to have the final word.
Lately, I’ve been reminded that silence isn’t always avoidance.
Sometimes it’s restraint.
Sometimes it’s humility.
Sometimes it’s the recognition that not every question requires an answer, not every misunderstanding requires a defense and not every battle belongs to us.
There’s a certain freedom in understanding that. I’m still learning how to experience it.
Three Years. Still Becoming.
Three years without alcohol doesn’t mean three years without mistakes.
It doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled.
It certainly doesn’t mean I’ve mastered every lesson life has placed in front of me.
There are parts of my journey I’m still trying to understand.
There are conversations I’m not ready to have.
There are things I’m learning to surrender without first demanding an explanation.
None of that changes what tomorrow represents.
Three years.
Not perfection.
Progress.
I think about the young woman who once struggled to look at herself in the mirror.
The one who measured her worth through the eyes of other people.
The one who couldn’t imagine how much life she still had to live.
I wish I could tell her that one day she’d understand that being seen isn’t the same as being valued.
That attention isn’t affection.
That knowing the difference between love and its imitations doesn’t automatically make us immune to confusing them.
I’d tell her that some of the things she desperately wanted would eventually become the very things she’d thank God for withholding.
Most importantly, I’d tell her that she didn’t have to keep proving she deserved to be loved.
She simply needed to learn how to recognize love when it was genuine.
Including the kind that had been available to her all along.
The Victory Was Never Mine Alone
There’s something rather humbling about having a website called I Am Victorious while realizing how much work you still have to do.
I can laugh about that now.
Somewhat.
I’ve spent time writing about survival, self-discovery and the importance of reclaiming our lives.
Those messages weren’t wrong.
They were simply incomplete without application.
I don’t get to exempt myself from the lessons I encourage other people to learn.
I don’t get to demand grace while withholding it.
I don’t get to celebrate growth while resisting correction.
Most importantly, I don’t get to confuse surviving something with having fully healed from it.
Maybe that’s what this season is teaching me.
There is a difference between having the strength to walk away and having the peace to stop looking back.
There’s a difference between recognizing your worth and believing it when nobody is around to remind you.
There’s a difference between declaring victory and understanding where the victory truly comes from.
That last one?
I’m beginning to appreciate it more than ever.
A Note to Myself
So, Britta, this part is for you.
You’ve spent enough time collecting evidence of everything that could go wrong.
You’ve spent enough nights rehearsing conversations that may never happen.
You’ve spent enough energy trying to understand things that were never yours to control.
You know better.
Now comes the work of doing better.
Stop confusing constant movement with progress.
Stop demanding perfection from someone who is still learning.
Stop allowing yesterday’s pain to dictate tomorrow’s possibilities.
Remember that you can be grateful for how far you’ve come without pretending you’re finished growing.
Remember that you can acknowledge your mistakes without allowing them to become your identity.
Remember that correction isn’t necessarily rejection.
Sometimes it’s evidence that there’s still something worth refining.
Tomorrow, I’ll acknowledge three years without alcohol.
I may not celebrate the way I once imagined.
I may not have everything figured out.
There are things I’m carrying quietly, lessons I’m still learning and prayers that don’t require an audience.
For once, I’m comfortable leaving some things unwritten.
The One who needs to know already does.
Perhaps Onward was never about how quickly I could move forward.
Perhaps it was about learning when to be still, when to let go and when to trust that I don’t have to see the entire picture to take the next step.
Three years without alcohol.
Nearly 40 years of lessons.
Still learning.
Still being refined.
Still becoming.
The victory was never mine alone.