Living Clean, Judged Dirty

There is a very specific kind of heartbreak that comes when your recovery gets questioned.

Not when you’re in the thick of it.

Not when you’re fresh and fragile and still learning how to breathe without the chaos.

But years later.

After you’ve clawed your way out.

After you’ve done the therapy.

After you’ve sat in the meetings.

After you’ve told the truth about the ugliest parts of yourself to rooms full of strangers.

After you’ve built something real with steady hands.

After you’ve said, publicly and without shame, “I am in recovery.”

There is something almost violent about having someone look at you

after all of that

and decide you’re failing.

It doesn’t just sting.

It splits you open.

Because the first thought isn’t anger.

It’s: Did you ever believe in me?

Did you sit in front of me while I told my story and silently think, “She’ll fuck this up eventually.”

Did you clap for my milestones while waiting for the relapse?

Did you watch me build my life and think it was temporary?

What have you thought of me all this time to be so quick, so comfortable, believing that I am back to being that girl?

That girl.

The one who was drowning.

The one who made reckless decisions.

The one who self-destructed because she didn’t know how to cope.

The one who hurt and was hurting.

Here’s the part that’s hard to explain:

As much as that girl still lives through me, I am not her anymore.

She built me.

She shaped me.

She taught me what rock bottom feels like.

But I am not her.

I am the woman who stayed.

The woman who chose sobriety when it was lonely as hell.

The woman who chose growth when it would’ve been easier to numb out.

The woman who held her own damn hand through the withdrawals of becoming someone new because no one else understood.

& yet, sometimes it feels like all I will ever be in people’s eyes is an addict.

Not a leader.

Not a mother doing her best.

Not a woman building projects and platforms and safe spaces.

Not someone who turned pain into purpose.

Just an addict.

Like it’s stamped across my forehead in permanent ink.

Like every bad day is evidence.

Every emotion is instability.

Every boundary is defensiveness.

Every human mistake is relapse-adjacent.

Do you know what that does to someone who has fought like hell to become more?

It makes you question everything.

You start spiraling internally:

Am I missing something?

Am I blind to myself?

Is this how they’ve always seen me?

Is my growth invisible?

Will I ever be allowed to outgrow my worst chapter?

& the cruel irony?

My entire life now is built around helping people believe they are more than their addiction.

Everything I do...

every post.

every conversation.

every piece of work I pour my soul into... is rooted in this belief:

You are not just your lowest moment.

You are not just your diagnosis.

You are not just the version of yourself that coped the only way you knew how.

I try every single day to be the reminder that we can evolve.

That we can rebuild. That we can fucking rise.

& now I’m on the other side of it.

The side where I’m made to feel like nothing but an addict.

The side where my years of recovery feel reduced to a rumor.

The side where my accomplishments feel fragile because apparently, they can be erased by suspicion.

& let me tell you where I am now.

I am stable.

I am self-aware.

I am accountable.

I am building things I once couldn’t even imagine for myself.

There was a time I didn’t believe I’d live long enough to have goals.

Now I have vision.

There was a time I couldn’t sit with my own emotions.

Now I hold space for others.

There was a time I believed I was broken beyond repair.

Now I help people see their cracks as entry points for light.

I have built things from scratch.

I have shown up consistently.

I have faced my trauma instead of running from it.

I have chosen growth over comfort more times than I can count.

& still...still... there are moments where someone’s doubt tries to drag me back into a version of myself, I fought to bury.

But here’s what I know.

Recovery is not about becoming perfect.

It’s about becoming honest.

& I am honest as fuck about who I was and who I am.

Yes, that girl still lives through me.

She keeps me humble.

She reminds me what’s at stake.

She reminds me that addiction is patient and cunning and doesn’t disappear just because life gets good.

But she does not define me.

She does not get to override the woman I have grown into.

I stand with the people who feel like they will forever fight to not JUST be an addict...but to be everything they are growing and manifesting into.

The entrepreneurs in recovery.

The mothers in recovery.

The students.

The leaders.

The dreamers.

The ones rebuilding credit, reputations, relationships, self-worth.

I see you.

I see the quiet exhaustion of having to prove yourself over and over.

I see the way you over-explain your success because you’re afraid someone will attribute it to luck or manipulation instead of hard fucking work.

I see the way you hold your breath when someone questions you, because you know how fast narratives can shift.

We are more.

We are layered.

We are evolving.

We are allowed to outgrow our past.

& if I’m being brutally honest?

It hurts like hell to realize that some people may never update their version of you.

But their inability to see your growth does not cancel it.

Their fear does not define your reality.

Their doubt does not erase your work.

I am not just an addict.

I am a woman in recovery.

I am a builder.

I am a cycle breaker.

I am someone who took her worst chapter and turned it into purpose.

& even when it shakes me...because yes, it fucking shakes me...I will not shrink back into a version of myself just to make other people comfortable.

If you are fighting to be more than what nearly destroyed you, I am standing right beside you.

We are not “just” anything.

We are becoming.

& that is so fucking powerful.