It took a long time for me to find my edge – to understand it and respect it and live by it. When I was a child, my edge was clear cut and simple. I didn’t often challenge it or question it. I felt safe knowing the boundaries within my family and my home. I had a big sister who was often exploring and taking on the world, making friends and trying new things and having new adventures. I could always just tag along. Always safe. Always in tow.
It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I really began to branch off on my own, to find my own scene and my own people. I began to push the parameters of what I knew and what I was comfortable with. I began experimenting with various substances and social circles. I found alcohol was a particularly effective lubricant, making me more social and more daring than I would be otherwise. Alcohol began to define my edge and I assumed this party lifestyle as a core element of my personality. It was fun for a while, teetering on the edge of control. I felt wild and free. I began pushing the edge further and further as every new level of normal plateaued into a sense of numbness or boredom. I got hooked on the rush of danger. I stumbled far past the reasonable lines of my edge until I could no longer see it. Then, the edge began to crumble and I could not find my way back to it. That is when I began to free fall into the abyss of alcoholism and substance abuse.
Once in its grips, I began to live a shadow life. My world around me slowly fell apart as I lost friendships, relationships, and jobs to this all consuming behaviour. My self esteem was rapidly depleting. My dependency to alcohol became a crutch that I could not free myself from. I began moving from place to place, relationship to relationship, and job to job. It didn’t matter that I was dangling off the edge and barely holding on. It didn’t matter that I kept free falling only to catch myself on a ledge momentarily, then lose my grip and fall again. I no longer cared. I could no longer even remember the strong base of my family that I came from and the foundation that we grew from. It took losing everything to find my way back.
When I entered rehab, I felt scared and considerably hopeless. I had to let go of everything I thought I knew. I had to surrender to the uncertainty of another way of living. I had to accept that I did not have the answers and worse … that I had gone too far. I had to admit to myself that I had stumbled off my path, that I had lost sight of the edge, and that I could not find my way back to it. In 28 days, I learned to let go of all the fear and shame that I had layered onto myself over the years. I confronted my personal traumas and slayed a few demons. I made a promise to myself to find my way back to the edge. To climb back to safety and security. To nurture myself into feeling healthy and whole again.
Today, my recovery is about pushing the limits of what the world has to offer because this life is precious, beautiful, and fleeting. It’s about taking chances and trusting myself to keep growing and expanding. It’s about nurturing where I am going without ever forgetting where I have come from. My live edge is the place where I thrive, where I find challenge and growth and expansion. It is defined by my pursuit of aerial arts, yoga, writing, music and hiking. It is taking the ropes and learning to become an entrepreneur, to fulfil my dreams despite how scary that first seemed. To make mistakes. To sometimes fall. To learn how to get back up again. My live edge is where I define myself, my journey, and where I am going. It is the point of balance between the extreme and the grounded, the known and the unknown. It is situated around a strong base, a sturdy trunk, that tells the story of where I came from through the rings of life within it.
Finding your edge means finding the place on the brink of your comfort zone. A place that allows you to explore, create, and connect. A place that challenges you. A place that balances you. A place that strengthens you as you heal.
LĪVE EDGE RECOVERY 
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