Sober By the Sea

As mentioned in my last post, I was very lucky to have two wonderful friends join me for a sober beach weekend.

Now I want to take a minute a chat about my friends (in general). When you are a blogger or even just on a social media group, there seems to be a distinction between online friends and IRL (in real life) friends. And this is bullshit.

I have been very fortunate to meet many amazing humans through my blog. People from all over the world. Many of them I have been able to meet in person and that is AMAZING. Some of them I have never actually seen, but still consider friends. Some of them contacted me. Some of them I blog-stalked and forced to be friends with me. NO ONE IS SORRY ABOUT THAT, ARE THEY?? So when I refer to my friends, they may local, they may be distant, but they are all IRL.

A bit about my beach-weekend sober friends: I met them because, last year, another blogger invited me to a vacation house gathering that was local to me, though most of people attending were traveling to meet. Some of them had already met others in the group (either locally or at retreats), but no one knew everyone and I knew NO ONE. But I went anyway and VOILA!! came away with two house-fulls of new friends.  It was a little scary. I was afraid they wouldn’t like me, or that I would be too different, or more importantly, that they possibly did not eat REAL FOOD. The reality was, we had vegetarians and Celiacs and meat eaters, but the binding factor of any sober gathering is SHIT TONS OF COFFEE. So it was a good gathering.

Okay, now the beach weekend: It was amazing. These ladies have enormous hearts and are smart and brave and beautiful. We talked SO MUCH. We shopped. We dined. We drank massive amounts of coffee and La Croix. We walked on the beach, we went downtown. We worked out problems, we virtually decorated two or three houses, we felt loved and heard and validated.

It is odd to think that in an alternate universe we would have spent the weekend pursuing a buzz, probably unable to leave the house, hungover, hating life, but acting like it was fun. Many selfies would have been taken, posted, then deleted the next day.

Fortunately, we are in this sober universe where is everything is naturally magical, where we’re just high on life (and possibly chocolate).

So if you’re struggling with the FOMO (feeling of missing out) this summer because friends or family are drinking all around you and making it look fun and sparkly, I want you to know that you are NOT MISSING OUT ON ANYTHING GOOD. They don’t have anything you need. You are whole and perfect just the way you are. There is nothing for you there.

If you get a chance to make a connection with another blogger, or someone you met on your sober social media group, then DO IT! You won’t be sorry. You may have a friend for life AND you may find someone right under your nose who will perpetrate fun sober hi-jinks with you! Now then, I don’t know what those are since we sober folk tend to stay out of trouble, but you’ll think of something.