I’m 6 years sober today

Cheers to craving what’s good for us

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If you live someplace Bookshop.org doesn’t deliver, you can still enter. If you win, I’ll send your hundred bucks via PayPal instead of the gift card.

Dearest Reader,

It’s my sober birthday! Or at least it is here in Thailand, where it’s February 11—which is the future for many of you.

I can’t fathom how six years have passed since my last drink. And yet, the days when the highlight of my day was wine with dinner feel like lifetimes ago.

If you missed last month’s letter about finding joy again after quitting something that’s hard to give up, it captures what I most want to tell you from this side of sobriety. Six years in, my life is genuinely richer, more present, more joyful.

I’m still deeply involved in the sober community, and I treasure those connections dearly. At the same time, the longer I’m sober, the less my relationship with alcohol defines me.

These days, I don’t miss or crave alcohol at all. I find myself more focused on the next layers: where I’m still hooked, where I’m still playing the same games just without substances, where I’m still numbing out and stuck in unhelpful cycles. (Always being on watch and feeling responsible, for instance. Or losing myself in reviewing, checking, rechecking.)

I don’t begrudge this ongoing exploration and practice—I find it expansive and human. It also aligns deeply with the containers of spiritual study and practice I’m immersed in this year.

And yet, I think it’s important to pause and remember just how much has changed since giving up alcohol. These changes and gifts were top of mind-body-spirit in early sobriety. But at a certain point, they became my new normal. I turned my attention to those next layers. I lost touch with how much better things are now compared to before.

If you happen to be a week or month or year or decade into sobriety, I encourage you to pause from time to time, too. Remember what’s changed. Recognize everything you did to get from where you were before to where you are now. Recognize how you changed the course of things in your own life, yes—but also in ways that reach far beyond you, ones we can’t fully know.

And whether or not you drink, a reminder and invitation:

The more we notice, name, and celebrate what truly nourishes us, the more we’ll move towards it and act to protect it.

And the more we remember that our body is our ally, our home, and our refuge, the better resourced we’ll be to care not just for ourselves, but for others and the causes we cherish.

All of this is about feeding our hunger for a more nourishing, more beautiful life—body, mind, spirit. It’s about choosing, and eventually craving, what helps us feel better.

This is why, in this monthly series, I invite you to ask: What’s truly nourishing me? What’s the deepest part of me hungry for? You’ll find my responses below, and I’d love for you to share yours in the comments.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Gifts of fresh fruit. From time to time, our husband-and-wife landlords, who live next door, bring over fruit from their trees—usually a bunch of bananas.

But one morning, as I was sitting at the table working outside, Nuk appeared with a large cardboard box. She tipped it just enough for me to peek inside, getting a glimpse of a ginormous, still-green papaya. She handed it over with clear instructions not to open the box for three days, waiting until the skin turned yellow.

This is one of my favorite things about living in Thailand: the steady, everyday ways people show up for each other. Whether it’s fruit from a neighbor, emergency home visits from our phenomenal vet, or being ferried out by boat during flooding, life here feels more connected. From my limited perspective, there’s also a strong emphasis on social harmony and compassion, on the belief that what we put out comes back to us.

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WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

One-on-ones. When I moved to Thailand, I paused my Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical practice. I made peace with that going in, and I see this newsletter as a way of sharing the medicine—one that’s from my heart and accessible.

Still, I have been offering remote health consults occasionally, through personal requests and referrals. These are diet- and lifestyle-focused, blending TCM, ancestral health principles, and a Yin-Yang approach to shifting our patterns—much like this newsletter but personalized, with the heart-to-heart listening and accountability that come with one-on-one work.

Each time I do one of these sessions, I’m reminded how this work buoys my heart, and how meaningful it can be for people’s health and well-being. I’m considering whether to offer remote sessions like these in a more structured way. In the meantime, if you’d like to explore this further, feel free to reach out.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me most about writing these letters is knowing I’ll get to hear about your lives—what’s supporting and helping you, what you want more of in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• Have you celebrated a meaningful milestone lately? How did it feel?

Thank you for being here and helping me pause, reflect, and celebrate. In lieu of birthday gifts ;), could you do me a favor and tap the little ❤️? It means a lot to me, and helps others discover small, reader-supported publications like this one.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

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