Mr. UnTipsy Writes Again!

Love on a Bike Ride!

Inner Strength

It’s been a while since I last wrote a guest post.  So I thought it was time to do so again.  Mostly because I want to express my admiration for the hard work Untipsy Teacher has put into her new sober life and what that means for our lives together.

Untipsy Teacher is nearing the two-year mark since she decided to stop drinking and embrace sobriety. She has faced many challenges in the past twenty-two months, and I’m sure she will face many more in the future.  She has met those challenges head on and with each one she grew a little more.  She has grown in confidence and conviction.  She found a new community of supporters from around the world through her blog.  She has reached out to others in the community where we live.  She’s read studies and books and talked with friends. It’s a journey of discovery for both of us.  I’ve watched her deal with problems in her life which would have sent her into a downward spiral in the past, searching for relief from the stress with wine or martinis.  Now she handles the problems with a calmness she didn’t have before.  There is still stress in her life, there will always be stress in our lives, but she has learned how to deal with it without drinking.  Untipsy Teacher has always been interested in personal growth and self-understanding, sometimes a bit too much.  At times she would find fault within herself that really wasn’t there.  Causing her to worry that she wasn’t “good enough”, only adding to her stress levels rather than helping her grow as a person.  Now her introspection helps her find solutions rather than adding to her problems. Over the past two years she has learned how to begin to put things into perspective. Sometimes “a cigar really is just a cigar” and not a fundamental problem or flaw.  The process isn’t perfect, it isn’t perfect for any of us, but it is much better than in the past and as a result she is able to see these small problems for the minor inconveniences that they really are, such as deciding what to pack for a trip.  We are no longer making “mountains out of molehills”, such as deciding what to pack for a trip.  Did I mention that already?  By learning how to handle the small problems we are in a better position to handle the big problems that come our way.

Watching Untipsy Teacher these past two years I’ve learned that there is no one answer that fits everyone.  It’s not just reading sober blogs or going to meetings or entering treatment or reading books or going to yoga classes. Maybe it’s a combination of one or all of these. Each person is on his or her own path; using whatever tools they find that work for them.  I think the key is to try everything until you find what works for you.  It will most likely be more than one thing and it might not be the first thing you try.  The point is: keep trying!

These are the lessons I know Untipsy Teacher hopes others can learn from and by doing so, find their own inner strength.

With Love from Mr. Untipsy, 

(And Wendy)

On Day 679