The Red Thread Which Leads Me Home.

A few words on addiction, connection, and belonging.

Another year, another snakeskin lies shed on the floor.

I began this post well over a week ago, July 7th to be specific. I am writing to commemorate an important anniversary. I write about this every year, but this year feels different. 

Maybe because for the last 20 years I have felt like I was moving away from something: my past, an addiction, a string of frightening experiences, a toxic marriage, a huge disappointment in motherhood and shame…yeah, definitely that. And I’m not anymore. I feel…still.

This is a notable day for me, though it is not my “birthday” in the sense of being the day stamped on my license, but in the sense I chose to live on this day. I chose myself. I chose a life without a specific poison which, at the time, was slowly corroding not only my body, but my soul.

That morning, I stared at the rising sun knowing I was done. It was a reclamation, and it was the emergence of the “red thread". 

Honestly, the “red thread” had been teasing me for months. It guided me: Here, there, not there now. Leave! It was telling me to go. It was whispering,

“Follow me if you want to save your life.”

The “thread” is mine. Some part of me that is intrinsic, protective, and aware. It consistently if not constantly tugs at me. Now, I typically feel somewhere below my belly because yes, it is still with me. Then it was a stitch which would peek out of an old and unraveling sweater. Now, it is something which has been disassembled and rewoven into a fabric which is mine, which I can wrap around me, but also occasionally tightrope walk upon. 

The urge to risk does not fade all at once. It takes time and patience to love ourselves well enough to remember our wholeness. The urge must be turned towards ventures that test our edges, but do not actually harm us. 

My own “dark night" was a brutal reckoning. I squirmed through the hours not having any smokes, I was a pack a day or more smoker at the time. Not having a phone, I’m sure the bill wasn’t paid. Not having any food, not that I was hungry as much as wanting a distraction from myself.

It was awful.

When morning rose over the mountains, I got into my car and drove to a friend’s house and broke down in tears. That was my “bottom.” Well, damn close, but truly the “bottom” smacked me in the face a few hours later upon calling my mom. I asked if I could now have the ride I had refused to the bus station a few days before. She said, “No". 

I dissolved on the spot into a panic attack. She needed to say it. No. And I needed to hear it. 

The only way I knew how to turn my back on the life I had created was to leave it and everyone I knew behind. So I did. I got myself on a Greyhound bus the following day and… well, we all want to say we never look back, but I did. Many times. 

My past haunted me and stalked me, not only my meth life, because oh, yes, have I not yet mentioned? I was doing methamphetamines up until that day. I had been doing it on and off for about 7 years. It wasn’t just the meth, man. I have come to understand that it was  some aspects from my childhood that were the foundation (or lack of) which caused me to crave not only the hyper-stimulation that methamphetamine provided, but also all the relational insanity that accompanied it.  

It was my own hormonal cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol and more dopamine than any person ever needs in their whole life which I unconsciously craved; meth recreated it.

It’s taken me many years to understand: it wasn’t truly the drama or even the drug that I craved—it was resolution. Even once that understanding set in, it’s taken many more years for the reality to fully establish itself in my psyche and body.

Our desire to resolve our wounds and trauma is actually why we tend to recreate scenarios and relationships through which we can re-experience those feelings playing out. Our addictions are what we use to numb, suppress, stifle, exacerbate, or soothe it. We long to be soothed in ways which we do not know how to soothe ourselves by people, places, and things which are not genuinely “feeding” us. We are hungry and we ache for care and connection.

Perhaps the way we humanize addiction is we need to admit: nearly all of us are addicted to something. 

I would describe an addiction as: the engagement in or use of any behavior or substance which creates a buffer for your suffering, but over time, erodes your values, and interferes with your ability to care for yourself and those and that which matters to you. For me it was motherhood.

Motherhood defines me. It really always has. Motherhood is the “thread”. As a born devotee to Her, I was mothering even before I started warrioring and really only started to warrior when something threatened those whom my soul perceived as my charges. That could have been my brothers, my friends, a pet…notice me leaving something out? Myself! I did not learn to mother myself until much later in life—long after quitting meth. But it was to be a mother again that I initially wanted to quit. I gave up custody of my daughter for a time to protect her from the consequences of my habit—and I wanted her back.

So, I had to get sober, or at least quit meth, and I did, but unlike many addicts I do not choose to abstain from everything. It is my journey and I walk it in a way that works for me.

My sobriety is keeping contact with that “red thread”. My sobriety is maintaining an honest dialogue with myself; that’s one of the reasons I consistently journal. Journaling was a practice I began as soon as I stepped out of the realm of that drug, but not only journaling. I also began Shamanic journeying. I slipped into the inner realms as if I was born there. 

I am by no means a “purist”. I roll my eyes, all of them including the third, all the way down about as far as it will go into my base chakra when I see vegans dressed in all white claiming to have “cornered” the way to “be in relationship with God.” Gag me. There is no way the Gawd Force is that selective or boring.

There have been many nights where consuming a few cocktails have contributed to ecstatic lovemaking. That to me is every bit as sacred as the “sacraments'' which people take at church. My church is my body! Come to me and worship. Are we less holy worshiping each other’s flesh when drenched in rum? Not in Gawd’s eyes, I guarantee.

Should we be shamed and made to feel wrong for needing a balm for the wars inside us? For needing a buffer between our swirling bellies and the wars out there? Gawd isn’t judging us for that and it’s typically not our substance abuse that makes us better or worse humans.

It’s our shame.

The more we hide our hurts from the world and ourselves, the lonelier we feel. The lonelier we feel the more convinced we can become that something is wrong with us. The more convinced we are that something is wrong with us, the more we need to hide and soothe. And round and round the cycle goes.

It is not our desire or even need to intoxicate that keeps us separate from Gawd, ourselves, and each other. It is our shame—our deeply held beliefs that we aren’t worthy of love and belonging.

When we do finally find the thread that ties us to our intrinsic worth nothing can sever it. No substance. No abuse. No harm. No system.

It is this thread that I picked up this morning in the early morning light while sitting on the porch of  my little tin cottage. It is the same thread I followed down the hallway over 20 years ago when I whispered my plea for help. It is the thread that connects me to my daughter, my granddaughters, my truest soul friends and lovers. It is the thread that no matter what I “take” or who I turn from or to it always leads me back home.

And whatever that “thread” looks or feels like for you, I guarantee it is there. Listen for its voice. Attune yourself to the tug. Give yourself permission to unravel and with it weave a tapestry from your worthiness.

Lotsa love,

~Justice

Stay tuned for a podcast I recently did on the subject of tending and humanizing addiction as well.