05/06/2026
Dear Me,
I know you don’t always see it, but you have survived things that should have broken you.
Not inconveniences. Not “bad days.” Actual life-altering, soul-crushing, nervous-system-setting-itself-on-fire kind of things.
You started drinking at 14 because life hurt long before you had words for why. You spent years surviving trauma, chaos, addiction, grief, shame, fear, and pain while somehow still getting up and pretending you were fine. You drank like your life depended on it… until one day your life literally depended on stopping.
Remember that hospital bed?
Remember being told: “If you have one more drink, you will die.”
Remember the liver failure? The withdrawals? The hallucinations? The fear? The version of you that thought she’d gone too far and couldn’t come back?
Look at her now.
Nearly twelve years sober.
Twelve.
Years.
You didn’t just stop drinking. You rebuilt an entire damn life.
You became a Registered Nurse.
You went back to university and smashed it. High distinctions. Golden Key. Postgraduate study. You built a platform from pain and called it Sober Sister, and somehow turned your darkest years into a place where tens of thousands of people felt less alone.
Do you understand how wild that is?
You spent years believing you were “too much,” “not enough,” “too broken,” “too late.”
Meanwhile you were over here quietly becoming a walking middle finger to statistics.
And then last year—because apparently life saw you standing and took that personally—it threw more at you.
The back injury.
The two spinal surgeries.
The pain.
The temporary paralysis.
The grief.
The moments where you sat there wondering how many times a person can reinvent themselves before they simply collapse from exhaustion.
And somehow… somehow… you kept going.
Not perfectly.
Not gracefully.
Sometimes with tears.
Sometimes with rage.
Sometimes powered entirely by caffeine, sarcasm, and what I can only describe as pure feral determination and spite.
But you kept going.
I know lately you’ve felt unseen.
I know you’re tired of being “the strong one.” Tired of being the nurse, helper, fixer, emotional support human, crisis hotline, recovery advocate and unpaid therapist all rolled into one.
People got used to you carrying things so well they forgot they were heavy.
And that hurt.
Because beneath the Sober Sister voice, the humour, the resilience and strength… you are still a human being who desperately needs someone to occasionally say:
“Hey… are you okay?”
You deserve that.
You always did.
And while we’re here, can we stop acting like surviving everything you’ve survived is somehow normal?
Because it isn’t.
Most people haven’t survived addiction, liver failure, homelessness, heartbreak, chronic illness, spinal surgeries, disability, their housemate k*lling their other housemate, grief, trauma, shame, regret, stigma, identity loss, and still gotten back up saying:
“Cool. Guess I’ll build a movement and help others.”
That’s ridiculous behaviour, Samantha.
Iconic, but ridiculous.
So here’s what I need you to remember:
You are not a lost cause.
You are not behind.
You are not weak because you’re tired.
You are not selfish for needing support.
You are not hard to love.
And you do not owe endless pieces of yourself to people who only show up with buckets when their house is on fire.
You’ve spent enough years setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
No more.
Because despite everything…
You’re still here.
Still standing.
Still sober.
Still fighting.
Still helping.
Still becoming.
And if I know anything about you, it’s this:
You didn’t come this far just to survive.
You came this far to thrive.
And thriving looks really good on you.
Love always,
Me
P.S. Still sober. Still struggling. Still a goddamn icon.
