Hello World!

Tough times don’t last, tough people do. – Robert Schuller

My name is Ciana ‘Ci’, and I am an alcoholic. I’ve struggled with addiction for most of my life. As a teenager I experimented with drugs and alcohol but was always able to stop using drugs without any significant withdrawals or impact. Alcohol on the other hand, was not so easy.

I’ve maintained sobriety in the past for long periods of time but always given in to ‘one drink’. For those of us suffering from addiction you know that one drink is too many, and one more is never enough. I wanted this time to be different, I needed this time to be different, because no matter how much I lied to myself and tried to lie to everyone else, I could see the effects in every aspect of my life.

So, I went to rehab! I started journaling as part of my daily routine in rehab. I kept thinking about something I heard there that really resonated with me. I watched a recording of Brene Brown who said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” I don’t know if this blog will become someone else’s survival guide or just my journal to reflect back on later, I will be stronger for it either way.

May you be sober and happy always! Ci

  • Summer Rain

    06.20.26 I woke up this morning feeling different. Not because anything in my life had changed overnight, but because my perspective had. As I listened to the rain outside, it felt like it was washing away some of the negativity, fear, and frustration I have been carrying around. For once, I wasn’t immediately focused on

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  • My Heart Is Full of Gratitude and Grief

    06.10.26 Today when I turned on my computer, the screen greeted me with, “Hi Ciana, how are you today?” My first thought was that if it really wanted to fucking know, I was prepared to unload on it. Instead, I took it as a sign that it was probably time to sit down and write.

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  • Checking Myself

    06.02.26 Last night, something a friend said in the meeting hit me hard, maybe a little too hard, but in the way that kind of stuff usually does when it’s something I needed to hear. It shook something loose in me. It made me realize I’ve gotten out of the habit of having those real,

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  • Moving With Life

    05.17.26 The seasons changing used to terrify me more than I ever admitted. Something as simple as the days getting longer, work picking up, having more responsibilities would immediately make me feel like I was drowning before anything even happened. My brain would start racing, trying to calculate how I was going to keep up

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