Walking my path to recovery and healing

My recovery began 8 years before I stopped drinking, when I started walking in the hills with my mother. We had become closer than ever before in the fallout of my brother’s death, and were supporting one another a lot. Walking was something she enjoyed, so one day, longing for something else to do other than sit at the table and drink tea and tears, I asked her to take me.

I have never felt so alive as I did in the moment we stood at the top of the mountain looking out over the valley we lived in. Never noticed the beauty, never felt such exhilaration and joy in my body.

Within weeks, I was kitted up, and spending Friday nights alone, sober and getting an early night so I could get up early to walk the following day.

Connecting with my body on such a deep level gave me a desire to begin to care for it. I became very focused on fitness, eventually finding my way to yoga, and although I stayed in my addictions for a number of years, the seeds that led to my recovery were planted and growing.

Walking became a powerful healer for my grief and mental health, and gave me a healthy outlet for my stress both in my grief and in the challenges life presented me on a daily basis.

Now, over 8 years in recovery, walking is still a vital part of my mental health medicine cabinet. I leaned on it heavily last year as a way to manage my emotions around Mum’s illness and death. I don’t know how on earth I’d have got through lockdown without these beautiful hills to walk in, And now, as I turn more and more to meditation, it is become a far more meditative practice, as I leave my phone at home, slow down and experience the world around me and under my feet far more fully.

What do you do to manage your stress when it arises?

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