As many of you know, I have been working on a great project that is very close to my heart and embodies my life purpose.

I have heard my whole life that if you love what you do, you never feel like you are working. I know now what that really means because I have the honor of getting to live my passion and my purpose on a daily basis. It is referred to as ‘work’, but there isn’t a moment that I feel like I am working because I have so much fun and there is so much joy in living my purpose.

When I was newly sober, I had a circle of friends that were so valuable to me. We were all new in sobriety and embarking on a new life, and we did everything together. There were around 10 of us and we travelled in a pack. We went to 12-Step meetings together, we did volunteer work together, we all held service positions for our 12-Step group, we cooked together, watched television shows together each week, ate dinner together, saw movies together, and everything else. We were each other’s support and love and we built a foundation that has been invaluable in my sobriety.

The success rate for long-term sobriety is not great. They say somewhere around 8-10%. As an Addiction Professional, Interventionist, and Coach I see people relapse and struggle everyday. This battle is hard and it often takes several tries to get it to stick. This is an illness that defeats you, baffles you, and makes you feel like a crazy person.

But together, we can make it. I am so grateful to say that now, more than a decade later, not a single person from my group has ever relapsed. We have all moved on, some moved away, some are married to one another with children, and we are all busy living our incredible lives. And in our beginning, we did it together.

We weren’t mad about being sober because we were busy having fun. We weren’t sad about the changes we had to make in our lives because we were creating these friendships and we were having fun!

Now, as a professional, I get to embark on the next leg of my journey opening a sober living house for men using the foundation and principles I learned early in my sobriety.

My sober living house is based on this same unity and fellowship that my friends and I had in my beginning. This house is a place where we will live our recovery together, not just talk about it and ‘try’ to stay sober. But we will be immersed in a recovery lifestyle.

We will have sporting events together, hiking, sober softball, kayaking, and other fun things with other sober people.

We will host a weekly recovery meeting in our home to keep the energy clean and our purpose front and center. We will have family-style dinners where the guys cook together, eat together, and laugh together. We have house meetings and movie nights and service work is required because together we are building a foundation to live a new life that is full of joy.

This is how I learned to be sober. This is how I learned to enjoy my life as a sober person, and it’s the only way I know to do it.

Together. We. Can.