My Story

By the time I was 42, I had lost everything.

Not all at once.
Not in some dramatic crash.

It happened slowly.

One decision.
One reaction.
One lie I told myself after another.

From the outside, I still looked like I had it together.
Career. Responsibility. Life moving forward.

But inside… everything felt like something I had to manage.

I replayed conversations.
Tried to fix things after they already happened.
Tried to stay ahead of how people saw me.

I was constantly reacting.

And the only way I knew how to quiet that…
was to drink.

At first it felt like relief.
Then it became routine.
Then it became something I couldn’t control.

And I still told myself I was fine.

That’s the part that gets me now.

How long I stayed there…
reacting, justifying, pretending nothing was wrong.

There was a morning I woke up
on a deflated air mattress
in a foreclosed house.

My dogs were next to me. They were happy. Just happy I was there.

And I remember laying there thinking, How did I get here? Not in a big, dramatic way. Just quiet. Because deep down, I already knew the answer.

That was the moment I stopped pretending. Not fixed. Not strong. Not proud. Just honest. I wasn’t okay, and alcohol wasn’t helping me anymore. It was part of what was destroying me.

Getting sober was just the beginning. Because once the alcohol was gone, everything I had been reacting to was still there.

And that’s when I saw it.

Alcohol wasn’t the only prison I had built. My thinking was.

The way I reacted. The way I took things personally. The way I tried to control what people said, what things meant, and how everything played out.

I blamed the world for how I felt for a long time. But the truth was, the world wasn’t my problem. My thinking was. That was another prison I built.

And when I started to really understand something, it changed everything for me. I have zero control over people, places, things, or situations. None.

The only control I truly have is my attitude and my actions. And for the first time in my life, that didn’t feel limiting. It felt freeing.

About six months into sobriety, I put words to something I had started to live.

Let go.be

Not as a brand. Not as a concept. Just something I needed.

Let go of trying to control everything around me. And be right here, in the moment I was actually in.

That’s when I started practicing the pause. When something hit me, instead of reacting the way I always had, I would stop. Not perfectly. Not every time. But enough.

Enough to not fire off the response. Enough to not make things worse. Enough to choose something different.

And that’s where everything began to change.

I wasn’t reacting to everything anymore. I started showing up differently, making decisions from a place that wasn’t rushed, defensive, or emotional.

And I started sharing it with other people. Not because I had it all figured out, but because I knew what it felt like to keep reacting and not understand why.

I still come back to the same thing.

When life hits, I let go of needing to control it. And I stay right here in it, showing up as the person my dogs think I am.

That’s why I do this now.

Because I know what it feels like to react to everything. To feel like everything needs a response. To try to fix, prove, or control what’s happening around you.

And I know what can change.

In a single moment. Right before the reaction.