MY BREAKFAST SAVED MY SOBRIETY

no, that's not a metaphor <3

My breakfast saved my sobriety.

I know how that sounds. Like some wellness influencer bullshit about morning routines and manifesting your best life. But I’m not talking about manifestation. I’m talking about the difference between drowning and learning how to float.

Every morning for the last two months: 56 grams of protein, athletic greens, chicken sausage, spinach, avocado, zucchini, ground turkey, two eggs. Same bowl. Same time. Same refusal to make it interesting.

Because interesting was killing me.

---

---

THE MATHEMATICS OF FALLING APART

There’s this moment when you realize your life has become a series of reactions instead of choices. When every decision is filtered through what might trigger you, what might hurt you, what might remind you of everything you’ve survived.

I spent years ping-ponging between extremes. All or nothing. Perfect or broken. Sober or spiraling.

The space between felt too dangerous to occupy.

But here’s what I learned about that dangerous middle ground: it’s where all the actual living happens. It’s where you discover that healing isn’t about going back to who you were before the breaking—it’s about excavating who you are after the surviving.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE EDUCATION

I used to think recovery was about willpower. About finding the right program or hitting some magical day count or white-knuckling your way through cravings until they disappeared.

But recovery, it turns out, is about learning to sit with discomfort without immediately reaching for something to numb it. It’s about recognizing that your body has been trying to tell you something important, and maybe it’s time to listen.

---

I’M VERY OPEN ABOUT MY SOBRIETY JOURNEY ON THIS PAGE, BUT IF YOU’RE UNFAMILIAR WITH IT AND NEED THE CONTEXT, HERE IT IS:

If you’re new to my page, welcome. I’m a survivor of sexual assault and am 520+ days sober (776 if you don’t count the lil break I took to experiment with being a social drinker… but I do count that, so here we are).

During that time, I started my business in June of 2024 as a solitary act of survival, and this Substack is one very small portion of it. It’s my outlet. My safe space. The area where I can explore what wellness and healing mean in developing a life that holistically supports your career and mental health goals.

I have highlights and multiple reels on my Instagram page dedicated to sobriety. If you’re interested on my takes on those topics, check it out.

---

The months I went back to drinking taught me more about myself than the entire first year of sobriety. Not because drinking was good for me—it wasn’t. But because those months showed me exactly what I was trying to escape from.

And once you know what you’re running from, you can finally turn around and face it.

THE SCIENCE OF GETTING BETTER

The thing about trauma is that it rewrites your relationship with everything. Food becomes fuel or punishment. Exercise becomes strength or obsession. Work becomes purpose or avoidance. Drinking becomes social acceptance or anxiety spirals. There’s no in between.

So, I had to learn the difference between healing and performing healing. Between showing up for myself and showing off my recovery. Between integration and perfection.

Some days I could build a business from scratch while prepping for a sexual assault trial. Other days I could barely answer emails. I stopped pretending I was either fully functional or completely broken.

I was both. And that was okay.

Recovery isn’t about choosing between holistic wellness and medical intervention. It’s not about natural versus pharmaceutical. It’s about using every tool available to help you feel like yourself again.

Whatever that takes.

WHAT SAVING YOURSELF ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE (BACK TO THE BREAKFAST BIT)

Forgot about the breakfast bit, didn’t ya? No worries. We’re circling back around. (*laughs in corporate*)

My breakfast isn’t just fuel. It’s proof that I’m worth taking care of. It’s a daily vote for the version of myself that chooses consistency over chaos, nourishment over numbing.

Every morning I show up for myself in this small way, I’m practicing the same intentionality that keeps me sober. The same discipline that helps me show up for my clients. The same self-awareness that taught me the difference between healing and performing healing.

My breakfast grounds me when everything else feels uncertain. It keeps my hormones stable. It fuels my brain for strategy calls and gives me energy for writing about the messy middle of recovery.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ANCHORS IN TRAUMA RECOVERY & SOBRIETY

This breakfast isn’t Instagram-worthy. It’s not a perfect morning routine. It’s an anchor. Proof that small, consistent actions compound into massive change when you stop trying to perform your healing and start actually doing it.

It’s a piece of my day I can look forward to and root into as reset, even if the world around me is falling apart–even if my PTSD is roaring loudly that day, or if the doubt that presenting my story in front of a jury of 12 peers instilled in me sinks in and tells me I’m not worthy of all that I have.

The creative work, the business growth, the stable relationship with my body, the sobriety—none of it would exist without these tiny daily choices that nobody sees or celebrates. These anchors.

---

---

But lastly, and absolutely not least, we all need to have a little bit more compassion, to have a little bit more grace, and to have a lot more love.

On Instagram, where I talk the most about my journey with sobriety, I often am the recipient of half-drunk confessionals describing a visceral desire to be sober.

“I want to be sober but don’t know how.”

And the most common theme I see in all of these messages is a viscous cycle of self shame–a theme that’s severely lacking recognition for the humanity we walk through each day with.

So, just know, if you are one of the many people who struggle with this cycle, you are not alone, and you deserve to love yourself a little bit more.

You deserve to realize that the best place to start with sobriety and health and wellness and creativity is by thinking about it and observing what it means in and around your life by feeling into it. By understanding every drop of emotion that it stirs up in you.

Because that’s how change begins—slow and small and sticky and sweet and full of so much feeling.

PS: You’re worth it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

---

---