The Sober Grit

Blessings and Salutations! 

First, I would like to thank you so much for even making it this far and clicking my blog (which is crazy to even type)! This is all new to me, and after years of healing, sobriety, motherhood, marriage, love, and loss, I am taking the leap and doing what makes my life purposeful, which is helping others. My hope and dream is to help inspire people to live their best life despite whatever circumstances they are presented with, and there will be many. After being told by a therapist, “you have what my father would call a life that would make a Preacher sad,” I then realized just how much trauma I numbed away for so many years. Now, with social media and extreme fear, I am here to share my story in hopes of helping even just one soul. After years of putting in work, I am all. Probably the addict in me, but hey, better to dive to help others than to dive to the bottom of a bottle.

Here we go…

I was born in Guam to a Master Chief in the Navy and a mother named Karen (go ahead, it is true). We moved to the states when I was about 3 and things changed drastically. Alcohol and depression completely took over my mother, and with my fathers alcoholism and absence while deployed, it was a perfect storm for disaster. My parents divorce was nasty to say the least and my father ultimately gained custody of me and my brother Tony, who was my 5 year elder. 

My family then moved to Virginia where innocence was lost. My brother suffered from severe mental illness and it became apparent in these earlier years. Almost textbook he portrayed almost all signs of a sociopath, including abuse and torture to animals with no remorse. The behavior then started taking form to people, and I was not exempt from the devil within him. My brother eventually went to live with our mother in California and I stayed with my father. My father soon after retired from the Navy after 26 years and Disney World was the only place I wanted to go, so we moved to Orlando, Fl. Not long after my mother and brother moved to Florida too so we could all be close again.

In only 2 short years our family changed forever. My brother Tony took his life at the young age of 16 from what I thought for many years was suicide, I know understand it as addiction. He was on his way to sell a gun for dope when the cops tried pulling him over. In no desire to stop, and a stomach full of whiskey, he made the decision that he was not going to jail. I went from eleven to twenty one real quick after that. By twelve years old I was drinking, smoking, doing cocaine, and LSD on a weekly basis. I continued this life for many years being stuck in a cycle of addiction and abusive relationships, as that was all I knew.

My mother sadly passed at fifty-two years young from cancer, just seven years after my brothers passing. Soon after my mother lost her battle to cancer I gave birth to my first and only child (biological at least). At nine months old my son was placed with a g-tube and at one year old he was diagnosed with Pachygyria. You haven’t heard of it, trust me. It is such a rare diagnosis that it only affects approximately 1.2 in 108,000, and only about 1,000 people in the US. He is now 18 years old and very low functioning non-verbal. After trying to get sober on several occasions, I had to accept how much of this was unhealed, as he deserved better than a drunk and angry mother. 

After losing both my mother and my brother, I also lost my oldest brother Rick. He wasn’t mentioned previously because during the nasty divorce and the custody battle, he was already old enough that he was on his own and ultimately battling his own demons. After years of drug and alcohol abuse, my brother Rick was getting his life in order, incuding becoming very active in Church and Service. He was waiting for shoulder surgery and washed a percocet down with a four loko, sadly his body decided that was enough. My brother died of an accidental overdose while living the cleanest he ever had, not perfect, but damn good for him.

Fast forward and now I am 38 years old and a little over 2 years sober consecutively, but I have been on this journey for a few years now, and with snips of sobriety, I kept earning for more. Everytime I relapsed it got worse and worse. Take this advice from everyone else, I swear to you this is true. I managed to go back to school in my 30’s and in active addiction, but I was functioning so I didn’t have a problem (was my story). I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Science concentrating in Human Services Degree. Degree in hand, and now sober, the sky was the limit, right? Well not so fast. I have a dirty little secret and wreckage of my past, I am a convicted felon and it seems society isn’t as forgiving as my God is. 

I was blessed to land an amazing position within a Luxury Treatment Center that did believe in me despite my past and I was granted opportunities that were once a dream. As life can be funny, and it is, my son’s behavior was registering off of the Rchter scale and it was clear where my time and energy had to be number one. My mental health went to the darkest place that it has ever been and repurposing myself was essential. Then the lightbulb went off, “social media” and “blogging” can be my platform to continue my work with those struggling and to give hope to those that seem like it’s all gone. If you have read this far, sincerely, thank you for taking the time to read about who I am and my hopes for the future. Please subscribe and follow me to join me on this journey of living a life that is worth living and doing it sober!

Kind Regards,
Donnette “The Sober Donut”