🌞A Girl Can Dream: The Liberation of Rock Bottoms and Asking "Why Not?"
Volume 1, Issue 1
Welcome to the first-ever issue of A Girl Can Dream! In this issue, we’ll explore
🌻 how getting it wrong is the path to getting it right
🌈 why you don’t need courage to take risks (and what you need instead)
📣 all the good stuff coming in A Girl Can Dream
🌻Rock bottoms are… kinda awesome?
On January 1, 2020, I was 12 days sober and in a full-blown identity crisis.
By then, I’d realized the decade I’d just spent getting wasted wasn’t as innocent as I thought. It was never really about just wanting to party. I’d been running from myself – trying to escape my nonexistent self-worth in toxic, hurtful, and straight-up dangerous ways.
My adult life, up to this point, could be best described as chaotic and deeply unsatisfying. By age 30, I’d changed jobs several times, driven about 10,000 miles in cross-country moves, and even broken off an engagement.
I made all these changes in an attempt to fix the feeling that something was missing. But no matter what changes I made, I never got the satisfaction I was looking for. My attempts felt like trying to fill a bucket with a hole; nothing that I did ever brought lasting fulfillment.
Sobriety helped me understand why I never found that feeling as a drinker; what I was really looking for was a connection with myself.
With four years of perspective on this time in my life, I can now say two things with confidence:
this was my rock bottom, the absolute lowest moment in my life.
this was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Rock bottoms liberate you from focusing on what you thought you should be doing. The universe sits your ass down, forcing you to assess what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be done differently.
If I hadn’t felt compelled to stop drinking, I never would have realized why my attempts to find contentment never worked: I was looking for an external solution to an internal problem.
Had I not stopped drinking, who knows how much more of my life I would have wasted changing my circumstances when I really just needed to know and care about myself.
I have my rock bottom to thank for these realizations, and all the beautiful things that have been able to come through since then because of the space this reckoning cleared in my life.
If you are going through it too, I hope these words feel like a hug and a shot of encouragement. I know it doesn’t feel good now, but if you allow this moment to teach you, you’ll certainly come through a stronger, happier you.
🌈 The power of “why not?”
In the months immediately following my switch to sobriety, I went on a quest to get to know myself again. I explored my interests and did things I never would have done as a drinker – like host a book club, create a farmer’s market business, learn astrology, and start a podcast.
While I’m listing these rather casually here, pursuing each of these dreams felt like an enormous risk. Over and over, I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone; not because I wanted to, but because I had a vision that magnetized me toward what I wanted, which naturally led me to take action making the vision a reality.
I wouldn’t call myself courageous, but I am certainly determined (some might say stubborn 😉). I remember when I got the idea for the farmer’s market business. It was a random day in July. I was driving with my husband when the idea just hit me, and I could feel based on my visceral reaction that this was something I definitely wanted for myself.
I said to my husband, “Why not?” (as in, why couldn’t I do this?)
I know “why not” is an idiomatic rhetorical question, but seriously… why not? Why not you? Why not your dreams? Why couldn’t everything you want be possible?
For whatever reason, on this day, I asked “Why not?” and allowed my inner optimist to respond. For the first time, I envisioned a reality where I could have what I wanted. Why couldn’t I learn how to run a business? Why couldn’t I sell my bakes? Why couldn’t I at least try and see what happens?
Asking “Why not?” allowed me to restore the most important mindset I needed to take these risks: faith in myself. Because I let myself approach “why not?” from a place of assuming the best of myself, I saw a path of action and had no hesitation in following it.
When you have faith in yourself, you don’t need courage because you trust yourself completely. You stop wondering if what you want is truly possible, if you actually have what it takes, or any other question that stops you from trying. You feel clear in your vision and your instincts about how to make it real. This allows you to take action and get in flow with the energy of forward motion.
If you struggle with beginning to take action on behalf of your dreams, you probably believe on some level that you can’t have what you want. This is causing you to create reasons (read: excuses 😬) to delay actions that would create the reality for your desires to become real.
My deepest wish is for you to know in your bones that your most expansive desires are possible. Adopting this mindset has dramatically changed the quality of my life, and I know it will for you, too.
Here are 3 approaches that have helped me to build my faith in myself:
Make (and obviously keep!) tiny promises to yourself.
Make a list of all the times you have shown you can trust yourself (where/when have you really come through for yourself?)
Do one thing every day that feels ever-so-risky: go to a different grocery store, speak up when you normally wouldn’t, take an alternate route… and notice how you always figure it out.
📣Coming Soon in A Girl Can Dream
I have lots of ideas for A Girl Can Dream. The format will be largely an experiment of what I like, enjoy, and find exciting, especially until I get more insight from you, lovely reader, about what you want.
Some of my plans include
✨astrology q&a: exploring self-awareness and embodying your potential with astrology
📔dream diaries: BTS insights and reflections from people boldly going for their dreams
🌈memoir style essays: because one of my dreams is to skillfully express my complex, beautiful, overwhelming emotions in the most poignant way possible
For now, here’s what you can expect:
📚new issue each Sunday
💛bonus issue on Wednesday for paid subscribers
⚡️surprises! Cause I’m experimenting and I’ll most def get more ideas.
Why might you want to become a paid subscriber? For less than a coffee, you can get bonus subscriber-only issues, as well as have the ability to leave comments, join chats, and be a part of the community. Pretty sweet if ya ask me. 🍭 (other cool stuff in the works).
💬 2 Quotes
"The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. You discover the solid bit of you. The bit that can't be broken down further. The thing that you might sentimentally call a soul. At our lowest we find the solid ground of our foundation. And we can build ourselves anew."
— Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
🖋️Journal Prompts:
What would a potential rock bottom look like for you? What would that free you from?
How does limited faith in yourself hold you back?
What would change if you trusted yourself completely?