On this day thirteen years ago we lost my stepbrother Kraig. It was a horrible and unexpected event that ripped through our family. I was attending college at UC Davis. My parents were visiting my godmother up in Sacramento. A tragic motorcycle accident. Kraig was 19. I was 21. Born on January 13th, 1989, thirteen […]
Read MoreHere I come to you from the year 2022. I’ve been MIA from this blog since its last post, In 2021 I hope, and quite a lot has happened over the last year plus some months. To start us off with an understatement. I didn’t update you on my sobriety birthday, which I usually do, […]
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I took my first drink at fifteen. Rum. Bacardi Limon, to be precise. Over eighteen years later my throat still recoils at the memory of the flavor. The liquid tasted awful going down, but it sure felt heavenly once it went into effect. It wasn’t really ever about the alcohol. I never really liked the […]
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Vulnerability hooks me. It calls me close. It’s a brave act. A demonstration that the thing being shared is more important than the perceived safety of holding it inside. That the thing needing to be revealed is far more important than the discomfort of revealing it. It’s a sacrifice. An unfolding. A blessing. Vulnerability comes […]
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I remember being twenty-five, newly sober, and feeling like the scum of the earth. Everything felt impossibly hard and overwhelming. I remember being scared, so scared, that I had messed everything up beyond the possibility of repair. Everything was a hurdle. I couldn’t figure out how I had gotten to where I was, why everything […]
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There’s something so magical held within the promise of a new beginning. Fresh starts, blank slates. I love them. Pregnant with hope and with trepidation, all interwoven and impossible to separate. I cannot seem to hold one without the other. In December of 2016 I wrote this post and, in closing, wished for 2017 to change […]
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I watch people around me doing brave things, every single day. Women and men alike setting their junk aside to go out and own their destiny. I wish that they could see me cheering for them, these astoundingly brave people. I’m in their corner- believing in them, hoping for them, celebrating with them. Sometimes these […]
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I started a new job last month. Let me preface this story with saying that I was happy, mostly very happy, in the job I was in. I had actually never been happier at work. The company was wonderful. The team was fantastic. I was a top performer and had just started to feel I […]
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I had hoped that outing myself as a recovering alcoholic would open up the floodgates of my writing. I had envisioned really raw, insightful posts immediately after my last update, expounding on all of the lessons in wisdom I’ve been “holding back on” because you didn’t have the backdrop to a significant portion of my […]
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At twenty-five, I was working as a waitress and not using the fairly impressive-sounding degree I held from a fairly prestigious California university. From an outsider’s view, it didn’t make much sense. Why was she working in the restaurant industry and not using any of her potential? I frequently got asked by the customers I was […]
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Sarah Cueto 