New Start: What Sobriety Really Means

Boulder, Colorado will always be sacred ground to me. It’s where I first met sobriety, not the kind that simply means “no more drinks,” but the kind that demands clarity, accountability, and truth. It’s where I learned that redemption doesn’t happen in a single moment; it’s something you practice, brick by brick, day after day.

For the first time, I began to feel alive again. I started helping others who were fighting the same storm I had barely survived. I found purpose in my pain and then, doors started opening that I didn’t even knock on.

A new role. A second chance. Influence.

It felt like grace in motion.

But as I soon discovered, not all new beginnings are built on new foundations.

Even as I stepped into a new life, some of the old lies still whispered. Lies about worth. About being “enough.” About whether I was truly loved, or just tolerated. Those lies had deep roots, and no amount of clean living could uproot them.

When someone from my past showed up again, I mistook her return for healing. But what I called “restoration” was really repetition. The truth is — you can be sober and still sick. You can be healed on paper and still hollow in spirit.

Recovery isn’t just about removing

who never offered grace and choosing to offer it anyway. It’s about cleaning up your side of the street even when others won’t step outside.

And most of all, it’s about learning that grace can’t be earned.

That part of the story, the pain, the confrontation, the redemption that follows, is where To Die Is To Live really begins. Because sobriety was never the ending. It was just the start of a new kind of dying, one that led me to truly live.

Read more of my story in my book To Die Is To Live. Available now on Amazon and wherever books are sold.