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In June, we celebrate Pride Month as a community. At High Watch, you will find support regardless of who you love. We have weekly groups for LGBTQIA+ members and for those who want to learn more. Below, you will find a story of a former guest's experience and how High Watch has helped reach recovery.
Self-Love
"The end of May and the beginning of June has become a significant time for me over the last four yearsβa time of increased reflection, a time of increased gratitude, and a time to check in with the people I care about and care about me. May 28th is my sobriety date and happens to be essential for another reasonβit is the day I called High Watch Recovery Center to finally allow myself an act of self-love and peace by asking for help with my alcoholism.
A recent revelation during this time of self-reflection and introspection was aided by one of my favorite quotes that coincidentally popped back up in my life: ββ¦Itβs love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. Itβs love that saves them.β Taliesin Jaffe, 2020. I have the unique privilege of being a human being who also gets to be part of two groups: a member of the LGBTQIA+ community and an alcoholic. It took a trip to The Hill of Hope well into my twenties to re-teach the alcoholic in me a lesson I had thought I had learned years ago.
I identify as pan. I have known that since I was little. I also have the unbelievable privilege of growing up in an incredibly supportive household and family. It was stressed to my siblings and me that it did not matter who we loved if our partners treated us with respect, love, and kindness above all else. Through this, I grew up knowing that when it comes to friendship, partnership, or any form of relationship, these qualities draw me to a person. The struggle, however, was the fact that while acknowledging myself in this manner with relative ease, I somehow did not stick around when my alcoholism started to grow.
High Watch Recovery Center had to help re-teach me how to be gentle with myself when it came to my alcoholic thinking. The staff showed me the importance of accepting that I am an addict and alcoholic. The group and individual therapy where I was able to reintroduce myself to myself showed me how to accept this very human part of me that is my alcoholic mind. The bonus was that there was the LGBTQIA+ meeting on campus to remind me that I already know the importance of self-love and surrounding myself with loving people β I just needed to remember that this alcoholic is worth it!"
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