I ran my car into a telephone pole after midnight with my three-year-old in the back seat. Four times the legal limit—you guessed it. Some woman rushed out, screaming at me, calling me a piece of shit, and threatening to take my baby from me. I was too drunk, too out of it to even comprehend how messed up the situation really was.
At the hospital, the nurses treated me with thinly veiled disgust. I had a broken tibia, and my little boy had a hairline fracture on his nose, bruised but otherwise miraculously unharmed. That booster seat and my little “jellybean” of a car somehow kept him safe from anything worse. I was drunk enough to still be trying to limp around on my leg, desperate to see him, though my BAC was .223 even after an hour in the hospital. No wonder they were protecting him from me.
That night, I had gone to an ex’s house, begging him to take me back, desperate for my boys to have a dad, desperate to feel loved, no matter how broken I was. My self-worth was in pieces, on full display for everyone to see.
For the next six weeks, my mom had the kids. I could only see them under supervision. That was rock bottom—a stark look at who I had become and the damage I’d caused, not just to myself but to the people I loved most.
Everyone says they get sober for someone else, but the truth is, we all get sober for ourselves. At the time, I thought I wanted to get sober for my kids. And while they were part of it, I know now that I wanted to get sober so I could be the mom I wanted to be for them. I needed to get sober for me, so I could show up for them the way I truly wanted. The happy outcome was that they’d see a sober parent, but the journey had to start with reclaiming myself.
Like You Mean It 