The Spirit of Recovery: The Series
Once upon a time, I went off to war. Like many young adults, I believed that resilience meant pushing through anything, never showing weakness, never slowing down. I built my life around that belief—around structure, discipline, and a stubborn refusal to fall apart. I collected achievements the way some people collect souvenirs, each one a small proof that I was strong enough, smart enough, determined enough to outrun the weight I carried.
But I learned the hard way that trauma doesn’t care how hard I work. It doesn’t care how many accomplishments I stack against it. Over time, the cracks began to show. And as some middle-aged people do, I woke up one day and realized that all my success had come at a cost I could no longer ignore. I had built a life that looked solid from the outside, but inside, I was relying too much on alcohol, too much on the approval of others, too much on anything that kept me from having to sit quietly with myself.
The Spirit of Recovery is a series of personal essays about what happened after my breaking point. At the center of this series is my journey to receive Spirit, my service dog, who came into my life at a time when I wasn’t sure I deserved anything good at all. Through her—and through the humbling process of learning to receive help—I have begun to find a different kind of strength. Not the strength that comes from never falling down, but the strength that comes from getting up differently each time I do.
These essays are raw. They are honest. Some of them are hard for me to write, and some may be hard for you to read. But at their core, they are about hope—the slow, stubborn kind of hope that refuses to die, even when everything else feels broken. It’s about how I am learning—still—to live differently. To carry the past without letting it drag me under. To accept love without feeling like I have to earn it. To make peace with the parts of myself that will never be perfect.
If you see a piece of yourself somewhere in these words, I hope you’ll stay a while. Healing doesn’t happen alone.
