September is Recovery Month
For those of us in recovery and on a journey of staying sober, there is a month for us! I didn’t know that but I think it’s beautiful.
I also think it’s incredibly fitting that September is also Suicide Prevention month.
The connection between addiction and mental illness is significant. The culmination of untreated addiction and mental illness is very often death, as was the case with my father. I’m not sure if my brother was ‘addicted’ to alcohol or substances, but I do think of other dependencies that he had, that many of us have, that keep us from clear thinking and lead us to mental illness, such as emotional dependencies.
I think about how integral survival has been for my identity and how integral recovery is now. Both are important antidotes that I’ve needed to address all my issues—intergenerational trauma, my own complex grief and trauma(s) as well as my own maladaptive behavior of alcohol abuse that spun into unmanageability of alcoholism, my other inherited family disease, that I also proceeded to live out, to enact, in self medicating and failing to address my traumas and repressed feelings.
I now know that my sobriety is integral to my survival. The two are hopelessly intertwined.
I am happy to declare myself observing both themes of the month of September!
I am truly blessed and grateful.
<3