WITH GRATITUDE
With the holiday season in mind, we asked these clean and sober individuals how gratitude plays an important practice in their recovery
BY PAULO MURILLO
LIFE, AUTHENTICALLY
“Gratitude is important in my recovery because it allows me to be in the moment. It allows me to acknowledge how different my life is today and to fully show up, as opposed to constantly looking for what I don’t have. I think before I got sober, it was very much a theory. I was saying all these things, but my life didn’t reflect that. I wasn’t practicing gratitude, so it was not authentic. I was trying to read self-help books to fix how I was feeling and my life was like falling apart. If I forget to be grateful, I become really complacent, a little bit more irritable, and I kind of let life pass me. My life is full today because of gratitude. For example, I’m grateful I was able to walk a mile, in a Marie Antoinette costume on Halloween and was able to call my mom on FaceTime. I’m grateful I’m sober and comfortable in my own skin. I have so many amazing relationships today, and I’m just grateful to be able to show up to life authentically, and not have to be drunk to do anything or go anywhere.”
—Caden Richardson, sober since October 14, 2022.
DAILY BASIS
“Gratitude is the basis of my recovery. I feel like if I’m not, I lose my connection to what got me sober in the first place. I make it a practice to do a gratitude list of 10 things every day, and I share it with a small group of friends. I consider my sobriety a gift. It just makes sense to stay grateful on a daily basis. My gratitude has definitely deepened since I got sober. I have appreciation for the things that I have in my life and the things that I have been able to keep because of my sobriety. If I lose sight of my gratitude, I just get obsessed with myself. It’s like my head starts spinning, and I forget to look outside of myself. Today I’m grateful for my connection to my Higher Power. I’m grateful for my dogs. I’m grateful for my partner. I’m grateful for a good relationship with my family and my health. Those are pretty constant.”
—Conrad Woolfe, sober since January 6, 2008.
BROAD PATH
“Gratitude for me as a state of being. It helps me stay in alignment with my Higher Power and it reminds me of what brought me here. I try to stay in it all the time. My life has changed entirely because of sobriety and that puts me in a place of gratitude and I’m able to see how my life has changed. Before I got sober, I had no concept of gratitude or what it was going to do for me. I think the more I got sober, the more I realized that what I was doing and what I had going for me is amazing. It just kind of opened this door to gifts and some miracles. If I forget to be grateful, if feels like nothing works out in my life. It’s like swimming against the grain. I have to remember what brought me here, and how it led to my sobriety. I’m grateful for good health, I’m grateful for my family, I’m grateful for my incredible relationship with God, and I’m grateful for this really broad path that I’m on. I’m grateful for my life and my experiences, because it’s unique and it’s my own.”
—Gurpinder Virdee, sober since February 15, 2013.
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