• 🍿 The Popcorn Practice: Witnessing Without Absorbing

    Post 007 A reflection rooted in Al-Anon wisdom There comes a moment in recovery when something quietly liberating settles in: Trying to rationalize irrational behavior is irrational. If you’ve loved someone struggling with addiction – or lived close to chaos, unpredictability, or denial – you know the mental effort well. The monitoring. The explaining. The…

  • Post 006 When Your Nervous System Has Been Living in Survival Mode

    Post 006 When Your Nervous System Has Been Living in Survival Mode You may not have realized it at the time, but your body learned to stay alert.Always scanning. Always bracing. Always ready for what might come next.This isn’t a flaw — it’s what happens when love, uncertainty, and fear live side by side for…

  • Post 005 When Your Body Has Been Living in Survival Mode

    Post 005 When Your Body Has Been Living in Survival Mode For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. Why I was always tense.Why rest felt impossible.Why my chest tightened at the smallest shift in tone.Why my mind replayed conversations long after they ended. I didn’t know the language for it then.I…

  • Post 004 The Day I Realized I was Lost Too

    I thought the addiction was only his problem—until I saw I was drowning beside him. Admitting I was lost was painful, but it was also the first step toward remembering myself and coming home to my own light.

  • 003 And Then Came Al-Anon

    Walking into an Al-Anon meeting changed everything. For the first time, I faced the truth: I could not fix him, I could not make him see, and I was not alone. That was the start of freedom.

  • 002 When Loving Them Meant Losing Me

    I thought I could love him back to life. Instead, I lost myself piece by piece in his addiction. This is the painful truth of disappearing into someone else’s chaos—and the beginning of finding my way back.

  • 001 The Secret Pain No One Talks About: What It’s Like to Love Someone in Addiction

    On the outside, I looked fine. But inside, I was carrying a secret pain—the invisible weight of loving someone in addiction. This is the story of how I hid, survived, and began to heal.