Sobriety Series: A holistic approach to financial self-care in recovery
My DIY financial system, an exercise to overcome overwhelm, this month’s link-up of provocative listens and reads
If you’re new to Sober Soulful, welcome! The Sobriety Series includes a letter with support for changing unhelpful patterns and finding serenity, plus a link-up of provocative listens and reads. You can upgrade your subscription for full access here:
Dearest Reader,
As we begin a new year, and with so many new readers joining since last January, I wanted to take a moment to revisit the purpose of the monthly Sobriety Series.
The Sobriety Series includes:
One letter a month
Support for changing unhelpful patterns and finding serenity
A collection of thought-provoking listens and reads that have helped me see complex topics in new ways or convey important messages I can’t stop thinking about and am eager to share
While many of these monthly letters focus on getting sober from alcohol, any unhelpful, difficult-to-break pattern is fair game. Even when I’m writing about sober recovery, the guidance and exercises I provide can easily be applied to other areas, such as our relationship with food and eating, social media and scrolling, money and spending—even gossiping and raging, blaming and complaining.
So, whether you are:
In recovery or examining your relationship to alcohol and other drugs, social media and online technology, food and body, money and finances, work and external validation, or ways of perceiving and relating
Seeking an intimate exploration of soulful living, healing unhelpful patterns, and being human
This monthly series is for you.
On February 11th, I’ll celebrate five years of sobriety. While I rarely think about alcohol these days (except when writing or reading about it), becoming alcohol-free has been a foundational step towards deeper exploration and ongoing practice.
I see this as a blessing and feel energized by asking: Yes, and what else can I notice and explore here? Where else might my default patterns be playing out? Not in a quest to solve the self (which cannot be done!), but rather as an effort to step into a fuller, more embodied expression. Also to ask, again and again: How can I live more beautifully?
As I engage in this practice, what feels most alive for me currently is examining whether and how I’m living my values. I’m also exploring (and reshaping) my default patterns related to: 1) online time and social media, 2) hypervigilance and external validation, and 3) scarcity, abundance, and money.
Which brings me to this month’s topic…
Financial Self-Care in Recovery
If you’re newly sober or riding the New Year’s momentum, this is a powerful time to take inventory and establish new habits. I’m not saying you have to use this opportunity to explore financial self-care—staying sober might be your number one focus and more than enough. But for me, organizing my home and finances not only made getting sober easier, but also made it feel celebratory, rewarding, and fun.
This won’t be true for everyone—we all recover in different ways and need different things. But since some sober content leans hard into “substitution” with spending or sugar or similar, I want to emphasize that not everyone goes that route or finds it helpful. I didn’t—and if I had gone that route, I don’t think I would’ve stayed sober. Body, mind, and spirit belong to one ecosystem. The way I’m wired (and maybe you, too), I had to address the whole of it.
Which brings us to money, finances, and the DIY tracking system I teased in Perfect Hunger this week. Maintaining that system, simplifying expenses, creating a leaner business, and saying no to unaligned work has brought me tremendous serenity. It’s also helping me heal unhelpful patterns, supporting my sobriety, and absolutely counts as self-care.
I share more details below, including an exercise to help simplify and organize any area of your life that feels daunting or overwhelming, as well as this month’s collection of listens and reads.
If you’re reading this in email, it might get cut off. To read the full newsletter, find out how I arrange my finances, and get the exercise, click through to the website.
