What Helped Change My Mindset About Recovery

It was the best day I’d had in a long time! Sitting there in that canoe. Floating along the river without a care in the world. Feeling the sun on our backs as it made its way through the canopy of trees, and laughing so much we could hardly breathe!

Kelsey leaned back on the other end of the canoe, “This is eating life with shining teeth! My dad would be so proud!”

“Yep … he sure would!” I said without skipping a beat.

“Wait … huh??? What does that even mean?”

She laughed, “It’s something my dad used to say. If you are eating life with shining teeth, it means that your happiness shows up in your smile. You’d be smiling so big or laughing so hard that all of your teeth showed. My dad always said if you can see teeth, the joy is genuine!”

Just another little nugget of Tracy Bryant — her dad’s — wisdom! It made me wish we could send you a picture of our smiles that afternoon. It made me wish we could call you to tell you just how amazing life tasted! It made me wish you hadn’t left so soon.

It’s probably strange that I’m writing to you. Maybe you’ll hear this. Or maybe you won’t. But I’m gonna go ahead and believe that if it’s meant to reach you, it’ll reach you. I’ll let the universe handle the delivery.

Hopefully you remember me. We’ve never actually met in person, but it sure feels as though we have.  Between the stories Kelsey tells me about you and the messages you and I exchanged during those last years of your life, I feel like we’ve met a hundred times.

I never had a chance to tell you, but you need to know that your life had (and still has) a significant impact on my own. These aren’t just words. So many times, your journey was the only thing that seemed to be able to reach me. The only thing that gave me the strength to take another step … another breath.

One of these times was several years ago when I had hit an unexpected low. I say it was “unexpected” because, at the time, I was a year into this whole “recovery thing” … and logic would assume that I’d be experiencing an all time high … not an all time low!

But here I was …
One year of being committed to a recovery plan.
One year of re-nourishing my body and my brain.
One year of doing “all the things” I was told would lead me to a better, happier, more fulfilling life.

But the ugly truth of it all was that I’d never been so fucking miserable. I was barely hanging on. I was angry, frustrated, ashamed, and I felt like an absolute fool for “falling” for the lies. Why wasn’t this working?!  Was there really no hope for me? It wasn’t fair! I had given it my all … and this is the shit I got?

Are you kidding me? Tears rolled down my cheeks as I told Kelsey that I didn’t think I could keep going. I was done. Just done. There was no point in continuing down this so-called “healing path” if things were going in the wrong direction. And they so were.

I knew Kelsey wouldn’t try to talk me out of the way I felt. She always had a way of letting me be wherever I was and just loving me through it. I really wasn’t expecting her to do or say anything at all, but when I wiped the tears from my eyes, I could see her nodding her head up and down as if to say “of course you feel worse.”

“I get it, girl … and while I wish you felt better, it doesn’t surprise me that things feel so awful. My dad told me the same thing after his first year of sobriety. All of the shit he had been burying with alcohol didn’t go away when he got sober.”

“Nope, it was all still there. Only now it was exposed. It was at the surface, right in his face. And the shittiest part was that he couldn’t use the one thing he knew would make it “better” (at least better in the short-term). He was kind of stripped of his coping mechanism without having something else to put in its place. It was not an enjoyable place to be. In fact, it was pure hell.”

OMG … yes … that’s it! That’s exactly how it feels! I wanted to pick up the phone and call you right then and there and ask if it was true.

“Really?! You really and truly felt that way too?? You actually felt worse after an entire year of ‘recovery?’ You mean, it’s not just me?”

For some reason, knowing you felt the same even after all that time (and knowing that it did eventually get better)… felt like someone had just wrapped me up in a warm, cozy blanket.

It gave me the strength and hope I needed to commit to one more day. And then one more. And then another. And another. It had to come from you… someone who had actually been there and came out on the other side! And although the details of our stories differ, I couldn’t help but wonder if this could mean there was still hope for me as well.

And that wasn’t the only time you pulled me through a rough spot. I mean, how could I not mention the whole AA chip thing?

I was getting ready to start a new recovery plan… again. Don’t even ask how many times I had started and stopped this process. And, given my history of dipping out when the “going got tough,” I didn’t really expect others to believe that this time was actually going to be any different.

Even though I wanted it more than anything, I don’t think I was even sure things were going to turn out any better myself! Maybe I was getting all jazzed up about recovery again, only to fall flat on my face in front of everyone… for the millionth time.

That’s when Kelsey showed me your 24 hour AA chip. It wasn’t your first. It wasn’t your second. It wasn’t even your 10th or your 20th. You had earned this chip plenty of times before.

So why was this particular chip so special? I flipped it over and saw that you had marked it with the date (01-16-13). Underneath were the words: THE REAL DEAL.

Once again, it seemed you had been where I now found myself. I’m guessing that you imagined people were getting tired of this game too.

Ohhhhh Tracy … there he goes again thinking he can beat this thing.
How long will he be able to hang on this time?
A week, a month, a year?
It doesn’t matter. It never lasts.
If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now!
Hopelesss.

Yep. That’s how it felt for me anyway. And who knows if either of us were right about what other people were thinking. Probably not. But it didn’t matter. Because, either way, we proved them wrong, didn’t we??

I snapped a picture of that AA chip and it’s been the background on my phone ever since. A constant reminder that hope is never lost.  That no matter how many times we crash and burn, we can always, always, always get back up and try again.  And dammit… one of these times it’s gonna stick! Your life served as proof of that for me. Proof that it’s never too late!

But you know, I think what stands out in my mind more than anything else is your faith. I had honestly never seen anything like it (and, believe me, I’d done a lot of looking). Your trust in a higher power (which, in your case, is God) was unwavering, unshakeable… rock fucking solid!

After you died, Kelsey gave me a little plaque of yours that still sits on a table in my bedroom. It reads:

Faith isn’t believing that God can… it’s knowing that he will.

And that sums up everything I had come to know about your relationship with God. You didn’t just “believe.” You knew! You knew without a shadow of a doubt that God always has it under control. You knew I was going to be OK.

There wasn’t an ounce of worry or fear in your “voice” at all. It’s not that you didn’t care. You just knew that God was already on top of things. You knew I was going to find what I needed… or that it would find me.

I’m pretty sure that, even now, our images of God would not be perfectly aligned. But, honestly, I don’t think it matters. Who God is for me doesn’t have be who “he” is for you, or for anyone else.

I know I wouldn’t have the kind of relationship with my higher power that I do if it weren’t for you. You never forced, pushed, insisted or claimed to have all the answers.
You just lived your life.
That’s all you had to do.
That’s all your daughter had to do.
Maybe that’s all any of us have to do.

I hope you know that the challenges you faced and the battles you fought while you were here were not endured in vain. I needed Tracy Bryant in my life. For whatever reason, it needed to be you.

And if we are all connected in the way I believe we are…

Your life needed to be exactly as it was.
So that my life could be exactly as it is.
So that someone else’s life can be exactly how it’s supposed to be!

I’m not going to pretend that I understand what it’s all about. I don’t know the whole story. And I’m OK with that, because I know what I need to know.

And what I need to know is that all of our lives are intricately woven together for some greater, glorious, mysterious, miraculous purpose.

We are literally all here on this earth for each other!!

Thank you for your life, Tracy.
Thank you for your struggle.
Thank you for your faith.
Thank you for your courage.
Thank you for your fight.
Thank you for your recovery.
Thank you for your wisdom.
Thank you for your daughter.
And, perhaps, more than anything else…
Thank you for sharing it all with me.

You’re where you need to be now, but know that you are greatly missed.  I can’t wait to finally meet you in person one day. Keep an eye out for me … I’ll be the one with the shining teeth!