Today is my Year and a half anniversary of sobriety.  Some days it feels like I just started and others feel like they are never going to end, but all of them are freeing!  I am very happy, today, to know the people here.  I have accomplished more positive goals in this short time that I had in a lifetime.  18 months ago i remember trying to do a push up and being unable to push my 300 pound body off the mat without shaking.  I cried all the time!  I threw up during many classes.  I couldn't complete the classes  without a break.  I remember thinking "what the hell do you think you are trying to do.........kill yourself".  But every day i came back for more! 

Erik would say things like......."your goals are worth fighting for", but i wasn't real sure what my goals were.  I knew that i wanted to lose weight, I knew that i didn't want to wake up with a hangover anymore.  And I am pretty sure that is all I could comprehend at the time.  What I didn't know is that I just wanted to LIVE!

Today I take 3, sometimes 4 classes a day!  And I do that 3 to 4 times a week!  My goal to live has been blown out of the water.  I can't believe that I lost 100 pounds sense starting.  I know I have more to lose but 100 pounds is a pretty good start!  I found that not drinking allowed me to identify with the things that scare me about life.  I know now that I was so afraid of what other people thought of me that I felt the need to hide who I really was.  I hid that so well that I forgot who I really was.  Today i am present!  I participate in my own life!  I am not a spectator!  I am a roll model for my children.  I know today that the woman standing here is not only an Alcoholic who is overweight.  I am a woman in recovery!  I am healing from years of self inflicted injury.

Thank you to all my coaches here, to all my friends here.  My new goals are: to lose the rest of my weight in the upcoming year, to get my orange shirt, and to compete!

Lets do this people!  lol

Catherin Mars