Looking Back Without Staring

To receive future newsletters, please sign up HERE

Memorial Day in the US has always felt like a slightly strange holiday for me.

Not because I don’t understand the importance it holds for people, but because I’ve never been particularly pro-military. If I’m honest, I’ve spent most of my life feeling uncomfortable with how easily we can hand ourselves over to institutions and identities and stop questioning whether they still serve us. That probably sounds more loaded than I mean it to. It’s less about criticism and more that I’ve always found myself more interested in people than systems.

But despite that, there is something about Memorial Day that I’ve found myself thinking about this year.

The idea of remembering; not reliving or getting stuck, just acknowledging where I've been.

This month I turned five years sober, which feels strange to write because in some ways it feels like yesterday and in other ways it feels like another lifetime entirely.

And I’ve found myself doing a bit of looking back recently. Not staring at the past, just recognising what has happened. Trying to understand what changed and what actually mattered.

One of the biggest things I’ve realised is that so many of the things I thought were absolutely critical to who I was turned out not to be important at all.

At the time they felt essential. Ways of socialising. Ways of coping. Ways of showing up. Ways of feeling comfortable. Versions of myself I thought people liked more.

And there were definitely moments where I thought letting go of those things would mean losing parts of myself permanently.

But weirdly the opposite happened.

Letting go of those crutches allowed me to become someone I never could have imagined becoming.

Not because sobriety magically fixed everything. It didn’t.

But because once all the noise disappeared there was finally space to ask what was actually mine and what had just become habit.

That doesn’t mean everything is solved though.

One thing I’ve been realising lately is that I struggle with connecting with people in ways I never used to, which feels strange to admit because I was always someone who felt incredibly comfortable socially.

But I think getting sober at exactly the same time COVID happened created this weird double whammy where so many of the social skills and patterns I’d relied on got completely rewritten.

So now I find myself going into new spaces and feeling anxious in ways that feel unfamiliar. Meeting new people. Building relationships from scratch. Feeling awkward. Second guessing myself.

And I think part of it is that I don’t actually know what the new version of connection looks like yet.

But I’m trying. Trying to push through it, to retrain my brain a little and to get comfortable being uncomfortable again.

One thing I’ve consciously been doing lately is something really small.

When I walk to the gym or go and get coffee in the morning, I’ll pass people out on their morning stroll or walking their dog and I’ve started making a point of smiling and saying good morning.

That’s it. Nothing profound.

But I’ve realised it feels like a really low stakes way of practising connection again. A tiny moment of acknowledging someone else.

And I also like to think it gives something back too because so often now we’re all looking at our phones or moving through the world completely disconnected from the people around us.

It’s not creating deep relationships or life changing conversations, but I do believe there’s a bit of a butterfly effect to those moments. That being seen for even two seconds can shift someone’s day in ways we never really know. Maybe that’s part of rebuilding connection too?

And it’s funny because the more I think about it, the more it reminds me why I wrote the second book, 12 Steps to Success: Finding Your Purpose.

That book didn’t come from certainty. It came from feeling lost and from realising I needed to understand what my purpose was rather than what I thought it should be.

Using the structure of the 12 Steps gave me a way of constructing that process for myself.

The thing that’s been really nice recently is hearing from people working through the book and hearing what they’re finding in it. I’ve had some really lovely messages and I’d genuinely love to hear from more of you as you go.

But maybe what I’m realising is that I need to apply the same process again. Not to purpose this time, but to connection, communication and rebuilding something that feels rusty.

Which maybe means there’s a third book somewhere in all of this.

That feels ridiculous to say because I was surprised there was a second one.

But who knows.

I’d love to know though, has something like this shown up in your life? Have you ever had to let go of something that felt essential to who you were, only to realise later it wasn’t? And if you’ve had to rebuild afterwards, what helped you break the cycle?

Hit reply and let me know.

Eric x

PS. If any of this feels familiar and you want to spend a bit more time with these ideas, 12 Steps to Success: Finding Your Purpose goes deeper into identity, change and figuring out what’s yours and what isn’t.

You can find it here: Amazon

And if conversations are more your thing, that’s also why I started the 12 Steps to Success podcast - available wherever you get your podcasts