Sobriety & Rebuilding from the Ashes
Without ruin, there’s no space for restoration and growth.
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For me, nature is poetry. Similar to the words that rhythmically flow off a page evoking deep emotions, the natural world can have such a profound impact on me. Both allow me to view the human experience through a different lens. When I read a poem thick with analogies and imagery or witness a bird flying above a body of water as it glides across the sky, time completely stills. That moment lasts a lifetime. Then it ends and I leave, having witnessed and experienced its remarkable influence.
Nature and poetry have been threaded throughout my sobriety journey and have become my healing anchors. They have served as tools that I lean into for guidance, comfort, and reminders of these truths—that I am always held and that I belong in a world that has tried to teach me that I do not.
Early in recovery, I spent every day walking in the desert of New Mexico on a trail not far from my sister’s home (where I was staying). It is an ecosystem filled with cottonwood trees, coyotes, porcupines, various birds, turtles, butterflies, and cacti—all surviving along the Rio Grande River.
We locals call this area the Bosque (bose-kay). It is a surprisingly lively trail, and I visited so regularly that I began to memorize its twists and turns and befriended its inhabitants. It became a sacred place for me. I have shed countless tears there, especially as my life of abusing substances, self harming, and toxic relationships began to morph and shed away. It revealed its treasures with every walk and never failed to lend a hand of ease and calm on some of my hardest days.
In the summer of 2021, only three or four months into my sobriety, a section of the trail caught fire. I remember driving to my sister’s house that day and seeing the thick black smoke rising from behind the school where the trail is found. My heart immediately dropped. That feeling of tightness and fear spiraled throughout my gut as I came to terms with knowing that something awful had happened.
I imagined the porcupines that I would look for high up in the treetops, the woodpeckers I would play hide and seek with, the tree (Mama) I spent hours sitting on, and the coyotes I learned to co-exist in fear with. What if they were hurt? What if their home was ruined? What if they died? What if it would never be the same?
Prior to developing this connection with the trail, I had been living in an apartment with my now ex-boyfriend about thirty minutes away. I was a manager for an AmeriCorps program for youth with disabilities at a local non-profit. I had just received a raise and was making more money than ever before. I was impressing people in ways I had always dreamed of. And yet, internally, I felt utterly broken, beaten, alone, exhausted, and…empty.
It was a season of coming to terms with a truth that I was deeply ashamed to accept. A truth that I had known since I was a teenager, after my very first blackout: I was addicted to anything that helped me escape the experience of being me. I hated being me, but for the first time, I no longer wanted to hate being me.
In 2020, as the chaos, fear, and losses of the COVID-19 pandemic were really beginning to sink in, I began therapy. I attempted to convince myself it was because I needed help navigating my work stress. Ultimately, I knew when I read the biography of my therapist and learned she was an “expert in substance abuse recovery” that there was a growing desire in me to stop abusing alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis.
It took many events and people to get there, including a car accident that was my fault, a binge trip to Scottsdale, reading numerous memoirs, sober community, family, and falling (quite literally) to my knees and begging for help. Eventually though, the courage came.
For me, it was a quick and rapid fire that burned down the life I had been living. After about a month and a half of not drinking or using cocaine, I chose to leave my partner and dog. I moved in with my sister and her family, with no intention of staying long, but ended up living there for two years. I lost every friend I had at the time except for two people. I no longer knew how to have a relationship with my parents or one of my brothers due to past pain that was surfacing and the reality that I did not know how to stay sober around them. I walked away from the job at the non-profit and all of the work that I had poured my heart and soul into the previous three years.
My entire life had turned into ashes. Heavy grief and sorrow crashed in. Those same questions encircled me: What if I’ve hurt someone? What if my sense of home is ruined? What if a part of me dies? What if nothing will ever be the same?
I remember the first time they reopened the trail a month or so after the fire. The first glance of the destruction was jarring. Tears instantly filled my eyes. The trees that were once filled with green lushness were now majestic skeletons. Their bark was bone smooth, lined with streams of black and beige. The entire area was desolate. The fire had burned every patch of life that it had touched.
For the next three years, I continued walking that trail. I witnessed every season three times more. What I saw over that time was breathtaking.
Each spring and summer, I noticed an increase in green patches starting to grow at the surface beneath the trees. I observed the soil change texture and birds begin nestling in the branches of the skeleton trees. That patch of the trail became my favorite part of the walk. I found myself eager to observe new growth, what had returned, what beauty had now taken place.
It turns out the fire had hurt some of the wildlife. It had destroyed homes. It had caused death. It had completely changed. But it also brought new life and new homes, even creating life for different plants. It transformed into a unique and important part of the Bosque—one that told a new story.
One day, it dawned on me. The parallels of the trail in relation to my own experience and life were undeniable. Sometimes fires have to happen. They have been proven helpful at clearing out the old in order for new growth to have space, in more fertile soil. Similarly, in my recovery, I had to remove the old patterns, people, and realities in order for new growth to take place in a more loving me.
Fire and destruction can feel very painful. Yet the resiliency of the trail and the resiliency within me had an opportunity to shine. Anytime doubt returns, I bring the challenges I faced during that time to the forefront and trust that, no matter what, I will be okay. I have proven myself capable of rebuilding from ashes.
It is a very slow process. It did hurt and I did unintentionally hurt others. It did mean letting go of people and places that used to be my home. It did result in many parts of me dying. Nothing is the same.
What I have gained, however, is far greater and more valuable than what was lost. I am now able to move through the hurt and come alongside it. I have learned how to accept that hurt is an inevitable byproduct of being human. I am now finding home within me and with people who are safe and unconditionally accepting of who I am and who I’m becoming. I feel more alive and awake than ever. I have transformed.
I am grateful for what destruction has taught me. I now understand that I am part of creation, and the cycles of death and rebirth are part of the natural flows of this planet. I understand that, without ruin, there is no space for restoration. I now have the wisdom that the beauty of the new growth is far beyond what I am capable of ever imagining.
It is the journey of watching it grow and bloom that makes transformation miraculous, not the outcome. It is because of this part of my journey that I know I am unique and I have a story that may just help others. The biggest gift comes on the days when I think I cannot survive any longer. This period of my life serves as a significant reminder for me that I absolutely can and that from deep pain, deep compassion may grow.
Now you.
We’d love for you to share in the comments:
Did you have to “burn things down” in sobriety in order to become who you are today? And to have the life you now have?
What new wisdom or places of insight arose from the hardest parts of your recovery journey?
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Such a beautiful, poetic, nourishing share, Jamie. It speaks to one of the most special parts of sobriety, for me, and one of the most special parts about the sober community. There’s a sense that all parts of us are welcome here, and it’s never too late to begin again.
Jamie, thank you for putting into words the painful yet beautiful experience of becoming sober and alive. This is such a powerful analogy, one I will try to remember on hard days. Reading this made a wonderful way to start my morning. 🌼