Sober Not Somber Hour: Safety

Come on into the rooms. Not the room of aa, just the room of Cadre. Happy September. Happy. I don't know, it's here. Sober, not somber hour today. I want to start just with a remembrance of what was happening in Minneapolis last week, not too far from where I live at Annunciation Church. Absolutely devastating, heartbreaking, horrific. And not, not safe. Does not feel safe. And this month's Cadre theme is safety. You know, we got that kind of rolling out to all of us contributors over a week ago, letting us know that this is a month of safety.

And of course, course, if you look at Minneapolis in so many ways, it does not feel safe for our children, our families and in our community. I attended the the walk. There was a march at noon yesterday on Labor Day, on Labor Day in Minneapolis and hundreds of people showed up to walk a path around the cities and ended up listening to speakers on the tragedy and just supporting all the Annunciation families in our community. Yeah, just feels like a very hopeless time in many ways. But I am seeing more so people springing into action.

So that's encouraging. And yeah, I just wanted to start this share today by acknowledging all of that and how new day today, kids heading back to school, parents having to send their kids to school. It's really heavy. My kids are 20 and 22 and they're on college campuses, which doesn't feel safe either in many ways. So Amar, thank you for joining Rick Graham. Thank you for joining Rick. I see you have a program tonight on safety. I'd invite everyone to attend that. Rick's phenomenal. I listened to one of his sessions over a month ago and it truly helped me so much.

Thank you Rick. Amar, hope you're doing okay today. Yeah. So let's dive in. Sober, not somber. Always starts with a beverage of choice. Today I am drinking what I discovered on Thursday night at a non alcoholic only mixology event is a product from Earl Giles. So Earl Giles has an event venue and they are amazing mixologists and experimenters with botanicals. This is a non alcoholic mixer. It's a ginger honey lemon. So I simply today I chose a wine glass. Of course, Rick, you're welcome. I chose a wine glass to put my cocktail in and I've got the honey ginger, honey lemon with just little bit of club soda.

And that's what I'm doing today as I'm kind of digesting the safety topic. So as you all know, my theme is sobriety and substance use and overcoming that and all the challenges that are involved. So when I think about safety when it comes to a few things, I want to talk about early sobriety. And this can sober or not, this idea of safety can be applied to anything that feels new in your life or potentially a little bit scary. And I would say early sobriety definitely did not feel safe to me, which is so ironic, given the behavior that was leading up to.

The addictive behavior that was leading up to. My last attempt at complete sobriety was not safe. I was putting myself in so much harm by my behavior, you know, from occasionally getting in the car to drive when I should not have been and other, you know, very unsafe situations. And that includes blackout drinking, which you have no context. You're, like, moving through the world and active. You're not passed out, but you are essentially in a state of just complete incoherence. You're never going to remember what you actually did, which is an absolutely terrifying feeling morning after.

So an addiction, not safe. However, moving into sobriety for me also felt a little unsafe. And I will say that in terms of, like, unsafe, in terms of, like, feeling uncomfortable out of my skin, like being in these AA rooms and having to say, I'm an alcoholic and, you know, totally out of my element, didn't know what lie ahead for me and the idea that I was always on edge, so not feeling safe. However, again, the balance of going back and forth, of something new is what I realized, is that the people in the rooms, even though I wasn't feeling safe coming into those on many occasions, they made it so they made it a safe space by sharing very vulnerably who they were and their journey.

And through those stories, especially in early sobriety and trying to maintain sobriety but sort of, you know, white knuckling it until I got it, they created that safe space for me to be open and voice my feelings around addiction and sobriety and what I was going to do to maintain that. So I think people. People can make a space feel very safe. The other thing I was noticing in terms of thinking about safety, so community can make that feel like a safe space. And another way to create that kind of safety for yourself, like, let's say you want to put yourself in a position of leveling up or doing something.

One of the things I did in sobriety when I was not necessarily feeling safe, to share my story more publicly, is I started small, and I started with a space that felt safe to me. And I am sharing this today in the hopes that you might find an area where you want to venture into. But it's a space that maybe doesn't feel, you know, safe to you. So how I did that in my journey around three years into sobriety, I wanted to be more vocal about it in order to help others who were struggling with the same journey.

I wanted to tell my story. And what I started with was a community called Dissonance. And Dissonance is a non profit organization locally, Minneapolis, been around for eight years or so. And they work in and through the arts to shatter stigmas around mental health, addiction and recovery. So we would appear as a table like at a concert venue where typically there was a lot of alcohol and we would be a safe space for people to come and talk to us about challenges in mental health or recovery and even in many cases pick up a non alcoholic beverage so they wouldn't have to be triggered or feeling like they were othered or not in a safe space because they weren't drinking and so many people in the venue were.

So by getting involved in dissonance and writing about my story and helping others, that created a safe space for me to start that journey. The alternative, like to be able to share that in a corporate workplace and be like hey everyone, I'm sober. Just wasn't available, wasn't going to happen. So through this dissonance community, I started to find my voice. In fact, when I left the board a couple years ago after about five years of service, I thank them generously for being that safe space for me.

And you know what that did for me was allow me to step into more purpose. So how many of you who are on are thinking about maybe stepping into a new space, leveling up in work or life, but something feels scary, not safe and you want to find a way to be seen and have your voice seen or heard. Anybody feeling that in your life right now in early September, I'd be curious. Yeah. So again, for me, picking up on that story, what started as a blog post called Let Go out Loud, gosh, probably seven or seven, eight years ago now, turned into that safe space, amplifying.

So what I did was able, I was able to kind of level that up. And I think feeling safe insists that vulnerability is. I use that each time and incrementally kind of built on that safe and vulnerable space and then took it higher and higher and higher until I found myself on the red carpet giving a TEDx talk about my sobriety journey and why we should shift drinking culture. So safety is good. Safety provides that safe space for us to be vulnerable and also experience profound personal growth. Amar?

Yes, interview tomorrow. Oh my gosh Oh, I love it. I'm sending you good vibes. I want to help people who struggle and in transition and use your lived experience. Oh, my gosh. And you have already. You're a perfect example of being completely vulnerable. Even on calls, peer counseling calls we've had. You've chimed in with your story, and you have such a willingness to be vulnerable, and that. That's going to help a lot of people, Amar. I just know it. So good luck with that. Yeah. And I. I applaud you also, as a younger person, like, I am.

What am I, 53 now? And I just really stepped into the idea of safety and vulnerability and how that works in life. Probably around age 42 when I got sober. So, yeah, I've seen 11 years of continuing to step into those spaces. And I'll also just kind of wrap with the idea that Cadre is a safe space to feel seen and heard. And one thing that I love as a contributor is that I don't have to go on Instagram and, you know, put this content that's on my heart out in the world without knowing how it will be received.

This is a safe space and a safe community with guidelines, and we're all here to better ourselves. And I think that's so special. Like, when Luke and Shannon reached out, I was like, are you kidding me? I have been wanting to do this, but not in an Instagram way, and be, you know, beholden to just putting out content. And Cadre has just been a beautiful solution for that. So I feel so safe here, and it's allowing me to be vulnerable, which in turn, I hope helps anyone listening be able to see how important that is.

Rick says, I recently broke through. Traded the not safe for feeling safe. Thanks for the connection with that sense of mission and purpose. Yeah. Traded the not safe for feeling safe. Oh, I love that. I'd love to hear more. Mmm. I'm thinking about that. Yeah. First step in that. Right. Is being aware. Being aware when you step into a space or something where you do not feel safe and what your behaviors are, and then notice when you step into a space that feels safe and how much more expansive you feel.

So I might just charge you with that this week. Just noticing an awareness as you step into some different space, spaces and community. Right. And how you shut down if it doesn't feel safe and trusted, and how you can expand if you put yourself in those communities and spaces where you do feel safe to be seen. I will wrap that with, again, just an expression of absolute outpouring of love and and and hope for all of us that need to come together and work on the many multiple challenges around the tragedy that just happened and the ongoing work that we need to keep doing in our communities to make spaces more safer.

NA Cheers. Have a great week.