week 32: thirty years
this week on the little dream farm
Today, August 11, 2024, marks a very significant milestone in my life.
Today, my mom, Sharon, celebrates 30 years of sobriety.
To celebrate her, I’d like to tell you a little bit about her journey and why it’s so significant to me. And to do that, I’d like to share with you a chapter from my book, Such is Life, about this very topic.
Before we dive into today’s Farm Note, I’d like to thank our sponsor!
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Thirty years.
Thirty years of looking at the darkest parts of you and facing them. Thirty years of healing. Thirty years of showing up and doing the work. Thirty years of giving yourself and your time and your wisdom to helping others. Thirty years of living every single day, one day at a time.
I doubt my mom will even recall this week is her 30th AA anniversary. That’s the most impressive thing about her sobriety through the years. She’s always just remained focused on one day at a time.
Today, three decades in, she’d tell you she’s a recovering alcoholic, not recovered. There’s a key distinction there that I think translates for all of us in life.
We are always and forever on the journey. We never truly arrive.
When I was a kid, I never liked to admit that I loved going to AA meetings with my mom. I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed of her, I just knew that it was probably strange for a kid to want to hang out at AA meetings…why I liked listening to these adults tell their stories and share their heart more than I cared about playing with my friends.
I can’t explain that, I just understand today that it’s part of my soul, part of who I am, part of what I was put on this earth for, and something I’m now extremely grateful for, as it has largely shaped who I am and the way I view life.
So today, in honor of my mom and this incredible anniversary, I’d like to share with you the first chapter—or Revelation, as I referred to them—of my very first book, Such is Life.
I hope you enjoy it.
Such is Life
29 Life Revelations from a 30-year old Dreamer
Revelation 1: One Day at a Time
I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when I was seven years old.
My mom was never a raging drunk but we come from a healthy line of alcoholics, and she found herself in a place that was concerning to her.
So I tagged along with her to meetings from the beginning, the same way I tagged along on every trip to the grocery store, every Kmart run, and every stop by the gas station for her pack of cigarettes.
To you, I imagine that sounds insane, and perhaps like a poor parenting choice. But it’s my story.
Such is life.
For as far back as I have memories, my mom has been my hero.
I love absolutely everything about her, even the things that drive me totally freaking mad.
She’s my first example, and thus my definition, of true love.
She’s wonderful and sweet and impatient and flawed and I can’t get enough.
Hands down, she’s one of the coolest human beings you’ll ever meet.
And so I begged her to take me with her to AA meetings, just for another hour to spend with her.
Maybe my story is different from other kids who’ve lived with alcoholic parents, because I never saw my mom drunk once in my whole life.
She was the kind of drinker that left me and my three siblings, all under the age of nine, at home with my dad on a Friday night so she could cut loose at the bar.
Then she’d stumble in during the dead of night, long after my dad had already put us all to bed and gone to sleep, too.
If you told me as a kid my mom had a drinking problem, I’d say you had the wrong mommy.
But I think we all get to a place in life where enough is enough, when it comes to any obsessive habit or lack of one at all—like smoking too much or not exercising enough.
In my mom’s case, enough was enough of the Fridays at the bar coming home wasted long after her family was asleep.
On August 11, 1994, she found her way to “The Rooms” of AA and into a life of recovery.
As a kid, I hung out in the playrooms of the churches where the meetings were held, either by myself or with the kids of other recovering alcoholics. When I’d hear the chairs shifting, I’d rush back to the room to hold my mom and another person’s hand as everyone circled up for the “Our Father” and “Serenity Prayer” at the end of the meeting. I recited every word loud and proud.
“Keep coming back. It works if you work it…and you’re worth it, so work it!” I’d cheer.
In my teens, I started sitting with my mom through the hour-long meeting, listening to stories of suffering men and women sharing their heart and working to save themselves from a disease that, it seems, tears apart more families than kills people.
The one thing I learned early on is that every single person had problems, and all of them were working on bettering their lives. Because none of them could do it alone, they found themselves in The Rooms, together.
I didn’t hear my mom share frequently, but when I did, my palms would sweat like crazy.
As her daughter, I was scared to hear her share pieces of her life that didn’t fit my image of her.
On the other hand, I couldn’t have been prouder. I even sat a little taller in my chair.
While she shared, I’d look first at her, then around the room, and you could plainly see that people were just as mesmerized by her as I’d always been.
There’s a feeling about being my mother’s daughter. It’s like a vibration, and even now while I’m typing this, my palms are sweating.
When we’d step out of the car and into the circle of recovering alcoholics gathered in a church parking lot smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, hugging, and saying hello—in that space my mom was the coolest person I’d ever known.
People flocked to her. Their faces lit up when they saw her. They threw their arms around her, kissed her, and loved on her. It was common that someone would come up to her and say, “You’re Sharon, right?” And because I was her daughter, I got all that same love, too.
She has so many friends in the Program and all of these people became like family to me. They supported me through middle school, high school, and into college, and still cheer me on to this day.
From the very beginning I loved going to meetings.
I’d ask to go every weekend, and she always said yes.
I loved getting in our old heap-of-junk van and driving to Dunkin’ Donuts, where she ordered a “Large with cream and two Sweet’n Low,” the same coffee she still orders to this day.
I loved pulling up to the parking lot of the various old churches and seeing familiar faces waiting to love on us.
I loved the way the rooms smelled like bitter coffee and faint cigarette smoke and old Bibles.
And I loved the way I felt after leaving a meeting.
To this day, I haven’t asked my mom why she let me go with her to meetings.
Why would she expose me to a room full of drunks when I was just a kid?
It doesn’t matter the reason. And if I asked her, she’d probably say she never thought twice about it. Or that she’d said yes simply because I asked.
The people I’ve met in The Rooms of AA are some of the kindest, gentlest, smartest, most hardworking, incredibly strong people I’ve ever known. They come from all walks of life, they all have their own story, and every single one of them has fought like a gladiator to turn their lives around.
Those are my kind of people.
I say that everything I’ve learned in life is from my mom and dad and a bunch of drunks.
In the 23 years of my mom’s sobriety, I’ve become the person I am today. My life is infinitely better for all the little moments where her one decision to stop drinking made all the difference for me.
This unique experience from early in my life has shaped so many of the opportunities I’ve had and the directions I’ve taken up to this point.
I am absolutely my mother’s daughter, and I’d bet a lot of money that phrase has never been used so proudly. If by some amazing miracle I become even just half the woman she is, then I am certain to live an incredibly full and amazing life.
Each year in high school I had the opportunity to present my mom her AA anniversary coin.
We’d go to the meeting to celebrate all the anniversaries taking place that month and would clap and cheer and love on the people celebrating 10 years, one day, 10 months, 15 years, 35 years of sobriety.
Talk about a good feeling.
Then the time would come for me to give my mom her coin. As we stood at the front of the room, each year I’d say something to the tune of, “Thank you to all the parents in the room who’ve chosen, fought for, and persisted in their sobriety. I’m the daughter of a mother who lives one day at a time, and her sobriety has created more opportunities for me than I ever would’ve had, had she continued down that same path. Thank you to every single mom and dad in this room who also lives one day at a time. We, as your children, have a life today because of your commitment to recovery.”
In the Program they say, “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.”
I decided I always wanted that thing my mom has. Her wisdom, experience, and her love of life, and of other people.
Her ability to take life one day at a time.
Admittedly, this way of living is still extremely hard for me.
Of all the lessons I’ve learned, this one eludes me.
One day at a time is the only way to live. It’s that simple.
It’s jut not easy.
I personally struggle getting caught up in my past and thinking too often about the future—not fully living in the day.
It may seem like there’s no cost to living this way, in a manner where you live in the past or future instead of the present. But the price to pay, as I’ve found, is true happiness.
I’ve never met a person who doesn’t want to be truly and fully happy.
So I love the saying, “There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.”
And while I’ve tried to walk that path my way so many times, I’m learning the only way to walk it happily is one day at a time.
If this concept eludes you, too, you’re not alone.
Taking life one day at a time is not easier. In fact, it’s much harder.
That’s why it’s worth it.
When you can learn from and let go of the past, and have hope and faith in the future—without letting either or both control you—you’re free to live for today.
Twenty-three years ago my mom made the decision to live her life one day at a time. It wasn’t going to be easy. She had no idea of everything she had to let of of, and all that her future could become.
But she just kept going, one day at a time.
As am I.
Keep coming back. It works if you work it…and you’re worth it, so work it.
To my mommy…
Thank you for being aware enough of your struggles to know you needed to make a change, and for being brave enough to make it then, and to continue to make it today.
Thank you for taking your seven-year-old daughter to AA meetings…probably an odd parenting choice by most normal standards. I’ve never been prouder not to be normal.
Thank you for seeing me as mature enough through the years to share with me all the things you learned in sobriety.
I think you were meant to be my mom. I think I was meant to choose you. I think we were meant to go down this road. I think I was meant to learn all these lessons through you as it’s made me who I am. I think perhaps I was meant to struggle with that for so long in order to learn acceptance.
I can see now how the Serenity Prayer is far less of a prayer and far more an instruction manual to living a good life.
Thank you for being my one living, breathing, constant example of how to live life one day at a time.
I love you to the moon and beyond.
This week’s Words of the Week are a few things my mom always says that have been my favorites throughout the years:
My mom always says:
“My life is so good I feel like I’m cheating.”
“The hardest decision you’ll ever have to make is the one that is best for you.”
“If everyone were to hang their problems out on a clothes line like laundry for everyone to see, you’d always take back your own.”
“Thank God I never got everything I thought I wanted because my life is as it is today.”
“Everything after BUT is bullshit.”
“Watch out for the void, because you’ll always fill it with something.”
“How’s that working for you?”
“Act your way into a new way of living.”
“Subtract. Don’t add.”
“You can change your day at any time.”
Order your copy of Such is Life:
Would you like to order a copy of my book, Such is Life? You have three options!
A personally signed, print copy: Please email me at bergsteinsarah@gmail.com if you’d like a personally signed, print copy of the book. They are $25 and includes shipping within the US. Please send me who you want the book made out to, the address you want it sent to, and I’ll send you info to make your payment before the book ships. All signed copies are sent via USPS.
A non-signed physical copy: You can order the print copy by clicking here.
An e-book: You can order the ebook by clicking here.
Enjoyed this week note...😊😊
Wow, what.a story. Now I know why you don't drink. Congrats to your Mom on 30 years. That is truly a reason to celebrate because it's certainly not easy. I loved her one saying about laundry & I may share it at times.