Counting recovery one day at a time I don’t talk about recovery lightly because it saved my life. As of today, I am 3,383 days sober which translates to 9 years 3 months and 4 days. Sobriety didn’t make me perfect. It made me honest. It made healing possible. This poem captures recovery as I lived it from the early days. The ones where your body remembers everything, your mind is loud, and you’re just trying to stay. I’m sharing this because I know I’m not the only one who has walked this...

This blog is part of my own journey of healing grief and learning to process loss in my body, mind, and spirit. L osing a parent in such a sudden, up-and-down way is one of the soul-quakes that rearranges everything that you thought you had already healed. The body holds the chaos of those moments. The beeping machines, the uncomfortable hospital chairs, the hospital lights, the feeling of being helpless. That’s what makes this feel like PTSD—it’s not just sadness, it’s the body remembering...

I was born beneath the wide Texas sky in the border town of Del Rio on September 28, 1983. I grew up surrounded by my mother, father, two...