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
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Water, Prayer, and the Thingy Fix
6.5.25 Running water inside my house is a luxury I took for granted until I didn’t have any this morning. This old farm house is on a private well. The faucet coughed once, then gave up. No water. Just air. That’s when I started to panic. What if the well was empty? I’ve heard about
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To Thine Own Self Be True
6.4.25 208 days sober. Today didn’t go how I hoped in terms of my new patience goal—I missed the mark. But I’m not spiraling over it, and that in itself is progress. I’m still sober. I’ll try again tomorrow. After work, I got my hair done. And yes, it’s still silver—unapologetically so. I love it.
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Patience, Patience, Patience
6.3.25 Patience is a virtue, but it’s also a pain in the ass. I’m learning patience — and like with most things, I find it much easier to show patience with others than with myself. Lately, I’ve been recognizing the moments where I extend grace to people in situations that the old me wouldn’t have
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Self-Compassion
6.2.25 Ironically, self-compassion isn’t even in the dictionary. I had to look up the definition of compassion instead: “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Psychologist Kristin Neff defines self-compassion as being made up of three key elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Book club was wonderful as always. I