I am 10 years sober today. A whole decade. It feels unreal and at the same time, my only reality. Only recently have I come to realize what a big deal this is. It just has seemed necessary not something I have accomplished for so many years. It wasn’t an option in my mind. I had to stay sober or I would die. I didn’t want to die, so I didn’t use. Recently, I have been on the other side of addiction. I have been on the side of wishing, hoping and praying someone I loved could stick to it. I felt the utter heartbreak when they chose addiction. To me, there isn’t a choice, but I realize this is ..read more

I have a heavy heart. I carry such weighted emotion. My addict personality is a symptom of this affliction. I believe that I used to feel relief from that burden. I just didn’t want to feel, even if just for a moment. I know now that there is no temporary fix to a heavy heart. I know that using only makes the burden greater, not less. The only course for me is to feel those emotions, meet them, sit with them, process them and then give them daily to my creator. I also know I can use those feelings to create love. I used to feel so only in the depths of feeling, but with the weight of the wor ..read more

Dating is hard. Dating in your late 30s, sober, single mom with an inconsistent custody schedule is hard. I have thought about this post for a while now, whether or not I should write it and more and more I have had people talk to me about their own struggles being in similar situations. I still think about when my daughter asked me why I couldn’t keep a boyfriend…we soon found out where she had heard that statement from. It did make me stop and think. Why am I still single? I am the most healed and stable I have ever been in my whole life. I spoke with my therapist and friends. Why can’t I ..read more

I don’t know when it happened. It was slow and gradual. For the majority of my young adult life I have been an absolute hot mess. I was that train wreck that you were so horrified yet mesmerized by…could it possibly get any worse? I made mistake after mistake. I laughed about what a disaster I was. What else could I really do about it? What I had to do was get sober or die. 9 years later so you know what choice I eventually made. However, sobriety isn’t a magic pill. I used to think it was and I know I am not alone in that. That is why the statistics for people staying sober are so low. The ..read more

It is no secret that I have had obstacles in my life. I don’t think they are any more than other people’s, they are just mine, all I know. In the middle of these life obstacles, I often felt like I was never going to make it out. I honestly believed that some of them would kill me, but guess what? Here I am, so obviously they did not. I have mentioned before that I felt sadness about the time that I lost, cheated by addiction. I don’t remember over a decade of my life. While I am 37 by year count, I feel so much younger. In a sense, I started my life over when I began my recovery journey at 2 ..read more

I got sober to save my life. I stay sober to truly live. It has been 9 years since I have been a drunk. Sometimes it seems like forever ago, like I don’t even know that girl and then other times it feels like yesterday. Most people I know now don’t know that girl. Many people refuse to believe that I was “that bad off.” I was physically, emotionally and mentally dependent on alcohol for several years and many before that I was black out drunk every night. My life centered on drinking. It was who I was, what I did and all I cared about. I passed out every night and woke up sick and shaking ev ..read more

grat·i·tude Gratitude /ˈɡradəˌt(y)o͞od/ noun the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. Gratitude is a warm feeling of thankfulness towards the world, or towards specific individuals. The person who feels gratitude is thankful for what they have, and does not constantly seek more. There it is…. That “constantly seeking more” part that is where I struggle most. As an addict, I was always chasing that next high. It was never enough. I could never drink enough or get enough to be satisfied. I was always let down. In recovery, I struggled with thi ..read more

Check out my girl, Tallahassee’s Best Photographer 2020 here. This is a difficult post to write. Fully open and out there, but I think it is important to put out there because this has been one of my biggest struggles in recovery. It has been 4 years since I got divorced from Viv’s dad. The truth is, I thought I would be married now. I thought I would date as sober me, real me and God would just present the man I was supposed to marry. Yep, wrong. What no one says when you get sober and begin your journey in recovery is that, first, you have to find yourself. No, you have to become yourself ..read more

Adieren Narro Photography Halloween and Christmas are our 2 favorite holidays. Yes, I realize that they are very different to be one’s favorite, but here is why. To me, both celebrate the best things in life. Halloween is about celebrating the magic, fantasy, imagination and Christmas is about celebrating the love, connections and generosity. Halloween is also special for my daughter and I because we come together to create our costume looks and spend time together just enjoying the happiness of family focused activities. This year for Halloween we decided to go classic with our annual Hallow ..read more

Mostly, I write about how great sobriety is. I talk about how much I love my life. I want to share the good that recovery has given me. However, there are the other days that I guess I don’t talk about much. I think I don’t mainly because there are days I am just completely exhausted. There are days that I feel so overwhelmed by sadness I feel like I am drowning. My emotions are so heavy I feel like I cannot come up for air. I use all the tools I have learned in my almost 9 years of sobriety and nothing seems to release that weight. The weight of my decisions pull me farther and farther down ..read more