I spoke at a meeting Sunday night and something happened that I need to talk about. After I shared that I've been sober 15,397 days—ONE DAY AT A TIME—and I'm STILL doing the work, still dealing with anxiety, still discovering wounds I didn't know I was carrying, several people cried. Not during my talk, but after. When we were just standing around talking.

What they kept coming back to was loneliness. Feeling alone. Feeling like they're the only ones still struggling after all this time.

I ended my talk that night by reading a Robin Williams quote: "I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."

And then I said, "I have NEVER felt that way in these rooms."

That's when people broke. Because so many of them HAVE felt that way—in their families, in their relationships, even in recovery groups sometimes. They've felt alone in their struggle.

And that's when it hit me: You don't need to be working a perfect program to help others. You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to be honest about where you are.

The program works. It's perfect for each person in different ways. But we don't execute it perfectly—and that's okay. We can still help others while we're still working on ourselves.

This episode is about the exhaustion of recovery work. That feeling of "Really? I'm never DONE?" The despair that sometimes comes with knowing you'll be doing this work for the rest of your life. But also about the gift we have—tools, community, a roadmap for when life gets hard.

I talk about why being perfect doesn't help people. Real, honest, still-struggling people help people. Your mess is your message. Not your perfection. Not your triumph. Your willingness to keep going even when it's hard—THAT'S what gives other people hope.

Robin Williams struggled deeply with depression and addiction, but most people didn't know it because he never talked about it publicly. He made the world laugh while he was suffering alone. And that's exactly why we need to be honest. Because when we hide our struggles, when we pretend we have it all together, people feel alone in theirs.

If you're sitting there thinking you can't help anyone because you're still a mess—you're wrong. If you've been working on yourself for years and you're still struggling—nothing is wrong with you. You're human. And your honesty about still struggling is what someone else needs to hear.

Connection doesn't require perfection. Help doesn't require having all the answers. We're all just people trying to get better, one day at a time.

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