Celebrating 7 years of recovery (in quarantine)

What got me sober is helping me right now

My seventh year of sobriety falls on the upcoming Tuesday, the 14th of April. It is almost entirely unfathomable to me that my sobriety has traveled around the sun seven total times and survived so many changes and heartbreaks and now, a global pandemic. 

The first full day of my sobriety was April, 15th, 2013. As a bomb was detonated during the 117th Boston Marathon, I made my way to my first AA meeting. Though I had been trying for six months to get sober, this was the real deal—it was the first time I grasped the reality of the situation, as I sat in a circle of folks alternately clad in business attire, mumus, workout gear, and tattered, dirty clothes. It was the first time in my entire experience that it wasn’t me alone going through what I was going through. There were others, and we had a common language of survival; no one had to explain why they were there, or what hells they’d been through. We all knew, and for once in my life, I understood that my suffering was not unique; i…