I'm finally sober! My life up until I really got sober was in one word, chaotic! I didn't know what stability was. To top off my mess of a childhood, I went straight into a marriage with more abuse and alcoholism. But, what I have today is who I am, who I've become, I am with an amazing (new) husband, we have 4 kids and our fur-baby.
It has not been an easy road but I can say it was worth every fight and tear it took to get me here.
Sharing my journey with you and my past is not to display it all over the place but to help someone relate to what has happened and where my mind has been while I was drinking and where it is today. Its to give insight to those suffering that if you just keep fighting you can really have the best life you were meant to have.
Let's do this!
What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?
Art! I never pictured myself as an artist or someone that could paint on canvas.
Art was a class I didn’t enjoy in school but I picked in up in 2019/2020 during Covid 19. I started small. A picture of trees. Easy! As soon as I completed that I was hooked. Pinterest has been a huge inspiration for me and helped me develope the kind of art I enjoy creating and actually good at.
I’ve sold a few pieces which was exciting but I didn’t concentrate on making money from it I just loved creating and giving my friends and family a piece of what I created and they loved to hang on their wall. A bit of an ego boost! I am proud of myself for staying with my new found talent and learning new skills.
I’ve also become an author of childrens books which was never on my radar but fell into while creating art.
I wrote Mingo N Bumble while drawing a picture of a Flamingo and Bumblebee. I had to get a message out and do my part in society. Mingo N Bumble helps children see past the differences we all have. To help share kindness and friendship through support and being there for others.
I have another book in publishing. A sequel to Mingo N Bumble. “Mingo N Bumble meet Peli the Pelican.” Peli is injured and Mingo N Bumble help him get better and protect him while he’s recovering. I am really excited about it and looking forward to reading my next chapter to help bring change to the world, one story at a time.
Believe in yourself and you never know what can come out of something you’ve never tried.
Come visit Storyberry Books and help be the change.
Let’s face it, life has become more stressful in the last few years. Outside factors contribute to everyone’s stress. Especially in the last while, with food, gas, interest rates increasing and showing no signs of improving anytime soon.
Once you are home from work or whatever you’re doing outside the home, you come home to possibly more stress. It could be something as simple as tripping on the rug when you walk through the front door. All those stress moments in the back of your mind suddenly blow! Someone watching may think you need a bit of anger control but its the stress that we build up in ourselves that the smallest thing sets it off.
I used to hibernate my feelings and just pretend that everything was fine. It made everything so much bigger than it actually was because I wasn’t dealing with it. I drank, I stayed quiet, I hid, and I suffered and the people around me also suffered.
Today, I acknowledge the stress. What can I do about it? Can I control the situation? Is continuously thinking about it doing anything? Lastly, Is it my problem to figure out?
Stress can do so many negative things to our bodies and mind. It needs to be acknowledged and dealt with right away. It takes years off your life and makes you very unhappy. It takes away your potential and presence.
Let the situation come, analyze and move on. Talk to someone about it if its more serious. Use breath work to calm your nerves. Put your favorite music on if you can. Take 5 and remove yourself from the situation. Grab a pen and paper and write out what you want to say or do and tear it up. Sit quietly and release what doesn’t serve you.
Take what you can control and leave the rest. Don’t waste your life on stressing over things that wouldn’t matter a day or month from now.
Pip: Being Me Sober is the kind of blog that asks you a simple question — what's your morning routine, what would you tell your past self — and then answers it so honestly you forget you were just reading a prompt.
Mara: That's the territory beingmesober covers across these posts: mindset and letting go, family and where we come from, daily life with a golden retriever, and what it means to write with purpose. Let's start with the bigger inner work — silence, uncertainty, and the habits that hold us together.
Silence, Letting Go, And The Long Work Of Healing
Pip: There's a through-line running across these posts about mindset — the idea that the most important moves are the ones you don't make: the word you don't say, the worry you don't chase, the past you finally stop dragging forward.
Mara: The post on an underrated life skill puts it plainly. The setup is a lifetime of being quick to speak, quick to defend — and then this: "Silence means listening and trying to see things from others point of view or just protecting your peace."
Pip: And the consequence is real. Silence isn't absence — it's a choice that costs something, especially when your instinct is to correct, to explain, to fix. That's not weakness dressed up as wisdom; that's actual work.
Mara: The personal mantra post carries the same logic into time. The AA phrase it returns to is "Yesterday is gone, Tomorrow is not promised, Today is all we have" — and the post frames that not as a platitude but as a daily operating principle.
Pip: Which connects directly to the uncertainty post, where the answer to the unknown is almost defiant in its simplicity: take what's in front of you, leave the rest. No energy wasted on scenarios that haven't happened.
Mara: The time machine post distills it to three words — "Let. it. Go." — addressed to a past self. And the life-changing tip post grounds all of this in sobriety specifically: seventeen years alcohol-free, and the argument that a clear morning is worth more than any night that required explaining.
Pip: The song lyric post quotes Sheryl Crow — wanting what you have rather than having what you want — and adds exactly one word of commentary: "Truth." Hard to argue with that economy.
Mara: The outlook on life post and the best advice post both circle back to listening. The Job quote, the dad's voice saying "just listen" — the advice post traces that lesson from father to daughter across two generations.
Pip: And the unresolved trauma post is where all of this gets its stakes. The ego that refuses help, the apology cycles, the father who never got therapy and died alone — that's what the silence and the letting go are actually protecting against.
Mara: The pivot from inner work to where that work is rooted — family, where you came from — is a short step from here.
Births, Homes, And What We Build From What We Survived
Pip: The family posts are asking a quieter version of the same question: what do you do with the life you were handed?
Mara: The moment of feeling truly alive post answers that with a birth. The son, six pounds, blond hair, and then: "I now had a purpose and I intended to do everything I could to help him grow into the man I was proud of and he could be proud of too."
Pip: Thirty-three years later he owns a landscaping company, he's a father of three, and she's still keeping that promise. That's a long return on one moment of clarity.
Mara: The post on doing things differently from how she was raised shows the deliberate architecture behind that. Breaking cycles of abuse and silence — the oath made to herself as a child — is the foundation the parenting sits on. The Canadian Thanksgiving post and the place that felt like home post both show what that foundation eventually produced: Georgian Bay, a rebuilt knee, a good marriage, gratitude that sounds earned rather than performed.
Pip: The home decoration post is a small but telling detail — five houses renovated together, a style she calls classy chic modern, and the line that the home should be your recluse. People who grew up without safety build it deliberately.
Mara: And the adulting post holds that lightly — still feeling young at fifty-six, still freeing the inner child, while being fully accountable. The learn to love what you've been through post ties it together: "I am now free. I am free of my past."
Pip: From the roots of home, out into the daily rhythm of it — mornings, dogs, routines.
Gracie, Good Morning America, And The Texture Of A Good Day
Pip: The daily life posts are the least dramatic and maybe the most instructive — what a well-constructed ordinary day actually looks like.
Mara: The morning routine post is specific: Gracie the golden retriever wakes the household by seven, belly rubs lead to coffee, GMA plays while she scrolls, and then at nine the music goes on. "Mornings are times to be grateful for the day ahead and to be here with the ones we love."
Pip: There's something quietly radical about a morning that is genuinely that calm — no hangover, no dread, just a dog and a fresh brew. Seventeen years of that adds up.
Mara: The post on what Gracie would say confirms she'd demand the beach immediately. The dog post also introduces Molly, the first golden who served as sobriety support — the continuity of that role passing to Gracie matters. The favorite cartoon post finds the same theme in Snoopy: Charles Schulz turned rejection into a comic, healed quietly, and helped millions without realizing it.
Pip: The five apps post is where the routine gets its soundtrack — Deezer on the Bose system, Pinterest for the design soul, a fitness watch to out-step the husband who cheats by going to the gym.
Mara: From daily rhythm to the writing that comes out of it — that's the last piece.
Writing To Help One Person, Which Turns Out To Be Enough
Pip: The writing posts keep returning to the same justification — not audience size, not sales, but whether one person felt less alone after reading.
Mara: The author dinner post frames it through admiration: Danielle Steel, Stephen King, Sandra Brown. The question she'd ask any of them is "How do these stories keep coming to you?" — which is also the question she's asking herself, two books in, a third on bullying in progress.
Pip: The being an author post is the honest accounting: hair stylist, stay-at-home mom, school bus driver, cleaning company owner, real estate agent — and then Covid, and art, and somehow a children's book about inclusion.
Mara: The how I write post names the mission directly: "If I can help just one person, my writing is meaningful and helpful to that one." The mindset and financial success post extends that outward — the argument that negative self-talk is borrowed from people who were wrong about you, and that success is a state of mind before it's a bank balance.
Pip: And the September reflection post closes the loop — a month of caregiving, patience, travel, and a husband on a walker they're calling his BMW push version mobile.
Mara: Which is, honestly, a very good name for a walker.
Pip: Silence as strength, sobriety as foundation, a dog who wants the beach — these posts are all making the same argument: the ordinary day, built carefully, is the whole point.
Mara: And that the work of building it — the therapy you finally book, the word you don't say, the cycle you choose to break — that's what being here actually looks like. More next time.
Being a good person isn’t easy for some. They’ve given up on humanity or their life has turned them cold or sadly it’s a mental illness.
Being a good person to me looks like someone that has good morals and ethics. Someone who helps others in a time of need, a simple smile to a stranger or stopping in the road when a trail of Geese are crossing. Letting someone in line at the store or on the hwy.
Do to others as you’ll have done to you. What you give is what you get. Be honest and loyal to your word. Be kind to animals. Be nice! Take the high road and apoligise when it’s needed, take accountability for your mistakes, don’t judge what you don’t know or understand.
We run into all sorts of people through this life. We don’t know what others are going through so instead of matching their energy with a nasty remark or look, ask them if they are okay. If someone is in need, help if you can.
It’s our choice what mask we are going to wear when we start our day. Being a good person doesn’t take a lot, just be genuine and kind. Be the person that when people refer to you they say what a good person you are. Leave a legacy of good and inspire others to do the same.
Be good and do good and life will do the same for you.
As you can see from my title, it’s Thanksgiving here in Canada. The weather has been absolutely beautiful and we were able to enjoy the outdoors while our company was here.
Our company has left and my husband is enjoying football and resting his knee, 3 week post full knee replacement. I have to say we’ve been getting along really well and he’s improving everyday. Pain is minimal if not gone, just achy and tired. Take care of your knees!
I’m sitting outside on my front porch looking at the bay, Georgian Bay, listening to music with Gracie, my golden. I’m thinking about where I’ve been, in my mind and heart. At the age of 16, my heart was broken. All I wanted to do was die. Not knowing then at such a young age, you really don’t want to die, you want those feelings to die, that pain in your heart and in the pit of your stomach. How will you ever live through this? Oh that awful feeling or feelings that seem to take forever to leave. All you want to do is crawl in a hole and never come out.
Those feelings are real. They show you love and hurt but also making you strong. I hated when people said that to me, whatever Linda! Those Linda’s were absolutely right! Unfortunately, if your young it will take years for you to realize. One day when you’re in your 50s and you have a moment you may think about this and say, ya, she’s right.
Whatever you go through at times it may feel like you just want out, out of this life…DON’T! Go to a safe, quiet place and cry your heart out or go to the gym and work that shit out!
Don’t let those feelings take you or make you a person afraid to open your heart.
As I sit and look at the bay, I’m so thankful this Thanksgiving that I have taken all of my heartaches and let downs and let them build strength and character for me. All the hurt has taught and allowed me to decide who and what I want around me and my family. I have not allowed it to destroy me, though at times I did attempt and for this I am forever grateful that I did not succeed and neither did my relationship with alcohol.
I’m thankful for the family my husband and I have built and what we’ve accomplished together and what’s yet to come.
Ahhhhh, a new day. My golden retriever Gracie is usually the one who wakes me in the morning by 7am everyday. Her stretches and cuddles as she groans and with a few minutes of belly rubs we make our way out of bed and to the bathroom. Brush our teeth and get her breakfast that she jumps around for. While she eats I prepare the coffee.
Gracie and I step outside to the fresh air while she looks for the kitty’s to chase off the deck, does her business and return indoors to get my coffee and her treat!
I enjoy watching GMA, Good morning America, even though I am Canadian, I quite enjoy their show. I relax while enjoying my fresh brew and scroll the world on my phone while Gracie lays at my feet.
9am we are up off the couch and get ready for the day. The TV goes off and the music goes on. I clean the kitchen, make our bed and do some daily cleaning. I then think of what I can do for the day thats productive and helps me feel like I’ve accomplished the days tasks.
I create reels and videos to promote my Childrens Book, I check Jetpack for our daily prompts and write.
I’m fortunate that I am able to be home everyday all day as I no longer work outside the home, so my mornings are very relaxing. Weather depending, the days are full of activities to keep me busy.
Mornings are times to be grateful for the day ahead and to be here with the ones we love ❤️
Good morning! Have a great day and Happy Canadian Thanksgiving 🍗🍂🍁
One underrated life skill is learning to pause before you speak. Its taken me a long time to master this, even if I haven’t mastered it at all.
I’ve always been defensive when I feel threatened or feel I need to get my point across. I’ve had a difficult time holding my words and patience. I’m a truth seeker and stand by honesty. I would call people out when they were wrong. If I chose to stay quiet, my face would say it.
As I’ve gotten older and understand what staying silent means, it’s shown me patience and strength and most of all peace. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or wrong. It doesn’t mean you have nothing valuable to say. Silence means listening and trying to see things from others point of view or just protecting your peace. Silence allows you to absorb the words or actions and assess them and either deal with it in a calm manner or not at all.
Silence is golden. Listening is a skill. The urgency to respond right away is also a skill that takes work.
My most recent practice is trying to stay silent when my daughter is complaining or discussing with me things in her life that feel utterly impossible. To me, it’s easy what to do and I try to help her and explain what to do but my advise is at time irrelevant to her. So, I must learn to just listen and say nothing. Simple words like, I understand or just a simple okay. I can’t give her the answers she is looking for so I must try to stay quiet but also keep my face in check.
Sometimes the best thing we can do for them and ourselves is pause and wait before we speak.
What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?
The first time and place I heard it was in AA, one of our mantras.
“Yesterday is gone, Tomorrow is not promised, Today is all we have”.
It’s what I live by. I can’t do anything about yesterday, what I did or what I said, all I can do is learn from any mistakes I made and move on.
We are not promised to wake up tomorrow, it’s all up to the plan, yes, there’s a life plan.
Today, today is all we have. Focus on the day and control what you can. Be grateful for those in your life and the life your living. If you’re not happy with work, a relationship, then change it. Use today to change tomorrow. Don’t stress over things you don’t know the outcome. Don’t role-play in your mind all the what ifs. Live and like I’ve told my kids, “Just do the best you can.”
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
The moment I felt truly alive was when I gave birth to my first child. My son. He was/is perfect. His little 6lb body, his blond hair and the perfect human he was and became.
I was just shy of 23 and I was complete. I felt so alive and whole. I fell in love. I made promises to him that I would always be here and never leave him, to protect him and love and teach him everything.
I now had a purpose and I intended to do everything I could to help him grow into the man I was proud of and he could be proud of too. Of course we had our struggles, but today he’s 33 and is a father of 3. He owns his own landscaping company and is doing great! He is a wonderful father and husband, a hard worker with strong ethics. He is caring and thoughtful. He is smart and funny. He is everything I’d hoped he’d be.
My son (and daughter) has given me life and purpose. They are why I strive to do my best and lead by example. Why I stayed here on earth when all I wanted to do was leave. They are my life and what truly keeps me going.
Hello fellow warrior’s! I hope you’re all striving to be your best selves and doing the best you can.
Everyday I get an email from Universal Signs, it’s a wellness, spiritual site. It has some really good articles sometimes that make you think 🤔, like this one. What has happened in the month of September that has made you realize or appreciate certain instances?
This month, my husband and I traveled to our home in SOFLO and had a spectacular 2 weeks of relaxation and connection. I got to celebrate my moms 76th birthday. I’m grateful I have her as some of us have lost our mom, dad or both 🙏.
The toughest this month has shown me is being here for my husband after his full knee replacement. Ohhh the pain he has been in. I can feel every ripple of pain when assisting him to stand, sit, slowly and coincide with one another to move together, to position comfortably on the couch or to go to bed. To fill his ice machine, get his meds, help him shower, therapy everyday, etc. It has shown me patience in an area I’ve never had to deal with, and wasn’t quite sure I had the patience for. Its shown me just how strong we are together at times like these. Its only been 1.5 weeks so there is still a lot of recovery ahead for him but we got this.
Finally, September has been a good month and I’m looking forward to the change of season and my husband being up and back to his independence! It really does take a toll on his pride. And with saying that, he does use a walker but we don’t call it that, we call it his BMW push version mobile!
When you have a moment to yourself this evening and your settling in with a tea or coffee think about September and what it has shown you.