I need to tell you the truth about my recovery.
I didn’t do this alone.
There is a temptation, when we tell stories years later, to clean them up.
We remember the decisions we made.
The boundaries we learned.
The courage we found.
The work we did.
And slowly, without meaning to, the story starts sounding like one woman’s incredible journey of transformation.
That’s not my story.
My story has fingerprints all over it.
There are women woven throughout my recovery who carried pieces of me when I couldn’t carry them myself.
Women who answered the phone.
Women who listened to the same fear for the hundredth time.
Women who told me the truth when I didn’t want to hear it.
Women who prayed for me.
Women who sat beside me.
Women who knew things about me I desperately wished no one knew.
And somehow…
they stayed.
I am standing today because God gave me people who helped hold me up until I learned how to stand.
I Thought Strength Meant Doing It Myself
For a long time, needing people felt dangerous.
Needing someone meant they could disappoint me.
Depending on someone meant giving up control.
Asking for help meant admitting I couldn’t handle something myself.
And I desperately wanted to be someone who could handle things.
So I tried.
Even when I was drowning, there was a part of me that wanted to look like I knew how to swim.
Recovery dismantled that illusion pretty quickly.
I couldn’t think my way out of everything.
I couldn’t heal in isolation.
I couldn’t always recognize my own patterns.
I couldn’t simultaneously be the person struggling and the only person evaluating whether I was okay.
I needed other people.
Not because I was weak.
Because I was human.
Some Women Held Hope for Me
There were times early in recovery when I couldn’t imagine my life getting better.
I didn’t trust myself.
I didn’t know whether my marriage could heal.
I didn’t know what kind of mother I would become.
I didn’t know who I was without alcohol.
I couldn’t see very far ahead.
But other women could.
They had walked further down the road than I had.
They knew something I didn’t know yet:
Things could change.
Sometimes I think that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give another person.
Not advice.
Not solutions.
Hope.
The willingness to believe in a future they can’t see yet.
There were women who held hope for me until I was strong enough to hold it myself.
Some Women Told Me the Truth
Not everyone who carried me made me feel comfortable.
Thank God for that.
Some of the most important women in my life have been the ones willing to say:
“I think you need to look at this.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“You’re isolating.”
“You’re trying to control something that isn’t yours to control.”
That’s a different kind of love.
It’s easy to confuse support with agreement.
But safe people don’t simply validate everything we do.
They care enough about us to risk making us uncomfortable.
They don’t shame us.
They don’t control us.
They don’t demand that we become who they want us to be.
But they also don’t help us hide from ourselves.
I’ve learned to treasure the people who love me enough to tell me the truth.
Some Women Simply Stayed
And then there were the women who didn’t necessarily have profound advice.
They just stayed.
They sat beside me in uncomfortable places.
They listened.
They checked in.
They remembered.
They let me cry.
They made me laugh.
They talked about completely ordinary things when I desperately needed life to feel ordinary.
They didn’t try to fix me.
They weren’t afraid of my mess.
They didn’t need me to hurry up and become okay.
They were simply present.
Looking back, I think presence may be one of the most underrated forms of love.
We spend so much time wondering what to say to hurting people.
Sometimes the greatest gift is simply communicating:
You don’t have to be alone here.
Not Everyone Who Carried Me Was Meant to Stay Forever
This is something I’ve had to make peace with.
Some people are woven into our stories for a season.
There are women who mattered deeply to me who are no longer part of my everyday life.
Some relationships naturally changed.
Some grew distant.
Some ended painfully.
Some required boundaries.
Some people I once considered safe eventually showed me that the relationship could no longer continue in the same way.
And that can make gratitude complicated.
How do you honor what someone once meant to you while acknowledging that the relationship isn’t healthy anymore?
I’ve learned that both can be true.
Someone can have been good for you in one season and not be good for you in another.
A relationship ending doesn’t require us to rewrite its entire history.
I can be grateful for the woman who sat beside me years ago without believing she needs access to my life today.
I can honor what someone gave me without returning to a relationship that no longer feels safe.
I can miss someone and maintain a boundary.
I can grieve and still be grateful.
We’ve talked about holding grief and gratitude together before.
Maybe relationships are one of the places we practice that most.
God Often Showed Up Looking Like Other People
There were prayers I expected God to answer by changing circumstances.
Instead, He sent people.
A phone call.
A conversation.
A meeting.
A counselor.
A friend.
Someone willing to say:
“Come sit with me.”
I think sometimes we’re looking for God to move mountains while He’s quietly placing someone beside us to help us climb them.
Community isn’t a replacement for God.
It is one of the ways I’ve experienced Him most tangibly.
Grace sometimes looks like another woman answering her phone.
Eventually, Someone Needed Me
Something beautiful happens when you’ve been carried long enough.
One day, you realize you’re strong enough to help carry someone else.
Not because you have everything figured out.
Not because you’re an expert.
But because you recognize the look in her eyes.
You’ve felt that fear.
You’ve carried that shame.
You’ve asked those questions.
You’ve sat where she’s sitting.
And suddenly the things you once wished had never happened become places from which you can offer compassion.
You can say:
“I know this place.”
“I’ve been here.”
“You aren’t crazy.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Keep going.”
“It won’t always feel like this.”
Maybe that’s part of redemption too.
The hands that once reached desperately for help eventually become hands capable of reaching back.
This week, think about the women who have carried you.
Not only the ones who are still here.
Think about the women who showed up exactly when you needed them.
The friend who answered.
The woman at a meeting.
The counselor who challenged you.
The mentor who believed in you.
The woman who prayed.
The one who made you laugh.
The one who told you the truth.
The one who simply sat beside you.
If one of those women is still in your life, tell her.
Don’t assume she knows.
Send the text.
Make the call.
Say:
“You were there for me during a season when I couldn’t do this alone. I haven’t forgotten.”
And then ask yourself one more question:
Whose life am I being invited to show up in now?
You don’t have to save her.
You don’t have to fix her.
Maybe you just need to pull up a chair.
A Final Thought
If you asked me years ago what I thought recovery would require, I probably would have talked about courage.
Discipline.
Honesty.
Faith.
Hard work.
And it required all of those things.
But I would have underestimated how much it would require other people.
I needed women who could see beyond the version of me standing in front of them.
Women who weren’t intimidated by my story.
Women who refused to let shame have the final word.
Women who reminded me that I belonged when I wanted to disappear.
Women who held hope.
Women who told the truth.
Women who stayed.
Women who eventually had to let me stand on my own.
And even women I had to eventually let go.
They are all part of the story.
I didn’t become this woman alone.
None of us do.
We carry one another for a while.
And then, when our legs become stronger and our roots grow deeper, we turn around.
There is another woman behind us.
She’s terrified.
She thinks she’s ruined everything.
She can’t imagine the life waiting for her.
And maybe this time…
we get to be the woman who stays.
Maybe that’s what community has been all along.
Not having all the answers.
Not rescuing one another.
Not carrying someone forever.
Just refusing to let another person believe she has to walk the hardest parts of her story alone.
There were women who did that for me.
And I will spend the rest of my life grateful that when I couldn’t carry myself…
God sent women who could.
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