For Me, New Motherhood Felt A Lot Like Early Sobriety

Two years ago, I was in my OB-GYN’s office. It was May 2020, and I was eight weeks pregnant and the only patient there, because Covid was raging. In the empty waiting room, I tighten my KN-95 over my nose and cup my turbulent stomach. My partner is not allowed in. Hundreds of anxious thoughts pass through my brain, until a nurse hands me a plastic cup to pee in. She tries to give me pointers and I nod, not wanting to brag but feeling, finally, for the first time that day: I got this.

The thing is I am a seasoned, expert-level cup pee-er. At age 25, I honed this “skill” at an outpatient center that mandated daily urine checks. I wasn’t addicted to one thing per se, I was addicted to using whatever it took — alcohol, drugs, relationships — to get out of my noisy head. At first substances felt magical and glamorous, then necessary, then a very numb norm that stood in the way of my relationships with family and friends, any sort of career, and above all, my physical and mental health. Asking for help led me to treatment, which was the beginning of my recovery.

Getting sober over a period of eight years was almost like getting hit by a bus. I didn’t feel like myself; I was tired and insecure and discombobulated, choking on humble pie. I worried I had lost my personality (self-absorbed, terminally unique, and chemically imbalanced) and my youth.

With a lot of help, these impossible, shaky early days of sobriety moved slowly but accrued over time. I repaired relationships, I worked, I met a wonderful partner. Small things changed, too: I woke up early, made the bed (most days), and stopped being perennially late. Miraculously, living without drugs and alcohol became just living.

Sobriety and motherhood required similar things: the scrappy capacity to put one foot in front of the next, a primal desire to survive, an ability to go inward and face hard truths.

Then I had my first baby and the feelings I experienced in early motherhood so closely resembled the beginning days of quitting substances that the phrase that comes to mind is deja vu.

Much has been written about sober motherhood in the face of mommy wine culture, which by now has been woven into the social fabric of motherhood. The momming days and nights can be insane; to be able to turn them off quickly seems fair, maybe even essential. For me, though, it's like eating a Snickers bar with a peanut allergy. It's simply not an option.

Sobriety and motherhood required similar things: the scrappy capacity to put one foot in front of the next, a primal desire to survive, an ability to go inward and face hard truths. They both demand partaking in many things I do not want to do and thinking of others before myself. They both mandated a flight from perfectionism and in its place, a sort of I-don’t-give-a-f*ck energy, a new kind of power, unleashed from the unburdening of shame. A strength emerged from feeling and then releasing humiliation about my pre-sober behavior and its consequences, taking a break from the world to get better and then having to explain it to people, and later making amends to people I hurt. Likewise, it is hard to own the physical and emotional indignities of postpartum, but when I do, the feeling is close to divine.

New vocabularies, cliches, and catchphrases abound and resonate during early sobriety and early motherhood. “One day at a time” can often mean “one hour, one minute, one diaper at a time.” The wisdom of “it takes a village” applies equally to raising babies as it does sobriety. Both transformations necessitate a ton of help and a lack of isolation. Being surrounded by or in constant conversation with other people going through the same thing was essential to my well-being during both periods. Just as my texts were flooded by other people counting days in early sobriety, now my phone is filled with other moms lamenting about teething, schedules, and tantrums. Through relapses, miscarriages, and Cocomelon, we cling together like lost journeymen speaking a language known to just us.

Ultimately, motherhood is about taking responsibility for the lives of others and sobriety is about taking responsibility for your own life.

I think of an afternoon from last fall when I gathered my toddler’s stuff at pickup and shoved it under the stroller. I handed him the applesauce pouch he’d been clamoring for and strapped him in. His baby brother was home with the sitter, so I decided to take the long way home through Central Park. It was a breathtaking autumn day, trees the color of blood orange pulp and marigolds, the sky so cinematically blue — a benevolent higher power did not seem out of the question.

I let him out to walk and happily crunch leaves under his tiny sneakers. I’m so lost in his joy that for an instant, mothering feels light, even glorious. With a brand new baby, a toddler, and lingering postpartum anxiety, it’s not often that I feel that light, so I try to be all the more grateful and present when it comes.

Then the path gets narrower, and we turn and I see my old spot, a corner where I’d hide away, out of view, to get high alone — a place I haven’t been to or thought about in a very long time. When I see the spot in the park, a part of me is heartbroken. I’m angry that these memories, and the residual shame, are taking me out of a moment I want to fully immerse myself in. I’m angry at the person I was, who squandered many opportunities, who was callous with the emotions of others, who proverbially f*cked around and got caught.

Becoming a mother broadened my emotional range, exposing me to deeper levels of fear but also a new level of hilarity and an exquisite love.

I worry about one day having to explain my pre-sobriety days to my kids, the questions they’ll ask, and the warnings I’ll have to give. But I’m proud, too — of how far I’ve come and who I’m with. I look at my kid who is now smiling at a fluffy, dopey-looking dog. With sobriety has come the opportunity to hold many competing emotions all at once, a practice that has come into handy many times during the bittersweet business that is motherhood.

Both are about wading through the world in a radically different way: less carefree, more solemn and responsibility-filled, and sometimes more boring. That said, the numbing effect substances had on me lowered the volume on my difficult feelings, but also my positive ones. Quitting drugs and alcohol also unlocked a new level of hard laughter. Likewise, becoming a mother broadened my emotional range, exposing me to deeper levels of fear but also a new level of hilarity and an exquisite love.

The two experiences were unique and a complete repackaging of my identity and relationship to myself. They were not about becoming a new person, but perhaps becoming the person I was meant to be. Ultimately, motherhood is about taking responsibility for the lives of others and sobriety is about taking responsibility for your own life. For me, I can’t do one without doing the other.