Sobriety: Awakening, And Release...

This spring I entered my second year of sobriety. 

Appropriate in many ways, as renewal wells forth upon the earth.

I imagine that my writing in partnership with The Parma Observer off and on for the better part of five years has left mixed reviews of my political leanings throughout the readership, perhaps even me as a person. I will however also venture to share that we can all relate to aspiring peace and serenity beyond the dense forests and clamor that at times reflect our troubled souls. It is through navigating such turmoil where we at once discover deeply questionable aspects of ourselves that we may ultimately choose never to share with anyone for fear of labeling, marginalization, or worse, the fear of permanently losing grip of our minds and being branded in public in such a way.

These sufferings, while costly to our well-being at the time, our families, friends, work relationships, and the wider community, also serves a purpose similar in nature to that of churned soil. Soil full of what may appear to only be debris and decay, yet is the circumstance from which all life renewed must emerge.

Like the pruning of plants, the fallen leaves, even volcanic ash that renders a land desolate following an eruption, only to exhibit ever more vibrant bursts of flora and fauna decades later, so too are the calamities we face at our deepest levels. Calamities we convince ourselves that have no end, calamities that lead us down roads only we can see our way out of, when we finally listen and decide to no longer allow room for continued misconceptions supporting the fallacy that our ailment ‘defines us’.

A heavenly reminder that we were born without such emotional ailments, and grew with them over time through various levels of social disconnection and internal displacements that then made it easy to slip into seeking to subdue the restlessness through overindulgence of substances that only served to make things worse.

It is only a ‘terminal illness’ when left unattended; the storybook of our lives is not that of our adversaries, it never will be. Nor is it the characters within the pages written. The storybook of our lives is held within your hands, your hard working hands - formed by those that came before you and wished nothing less than your peace, serenity, and salvation, that you grow to be fully actualized in the sacred reality that we are ancestors in the making and must carry the torch of that honored strength for those to come.

The storybook of our lives holds you in immense esteem, as it’s unequalled author…