Everyone knows I love a good joke… and often even a bad one. And I used to love all the jokes about booze.

🗺️ A postcard that reads “I wish you were beer.”

🥃 Or a restaurant sandwich-board promoting “The soup of the day is whiskey.”

…very funny.

But now, I see these jokes and memes—even New Yorker cartoons—and they all just make me mad! Not because I’ve lost my sense of humor, but because I know the power of societal conditioning…

Do you know your love language?

Stepping away from a life spent “coping” with alcohol opened a portal for me into a new realm of balance, self-compassion, and ::calm::

In learning more about the many legitimate methods of self-care—not associated with numbing or escape 😬 —I’ve discovered a whole *world* of eye-opening [and surprisingly simple] techniques to support Radical Self Care.

Radical, because in our society of hustle and grind, it’s a bold choice to step out of the *achievement game* and rest. 🧘‍♀️💕✨ …to put down the labels and politics of “success” and lean into an inherent sense of self-worth.

Conversations of Love Language typically refer to receiving love from partners, family, and friends…

BUT.
I’d like to offer a twist:

Happiness vs Fulfillment: What they don't teach us about joy.

I used to say that “the little things were the best.”
A good cup of coffee in the morning. A delicious meal with friends. A nice bottle of wine…

This motto still holds true, but my definition has shifted.
I can see in hindsight that I was simply following the bread crumbs of dopamine… as we are biologically programmed to do… and, because so many of my “little things” involved an artificially high dopamine supply (from booze, especially) this led me down a treacherous path.

I didn’t know the difference between “switches” and “seeds” back then...