{"id":1100,"date":"2026-03-20T19:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T19:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/?page_id=1100"},"modified":"2026-03-20T19:14:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T19:14:40","slug":"press-release","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/press-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Press Release"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Growth Through the Phases of my Recovery<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Spring does not ask for permission to begin again. Each year, without apology or announcement, the earth softens, buds open, and what appeared dormant quietly returns bigger, brighter, and more vibrant. Every spring promises renewal and growth \u2014 yet some seasons of beginning again arrive slowly, quietly, and more painfully than we expected. Like snow in April or seventy-five degrees in December.<\/p>

Recovery taught me that healing moves like nature itself \u2014 unfolding through willingness, patience, and the courage to stay present long enough to trust what is changing beneath the surface. I am learning that beginning again is rarely a single moment \u2014 it is something we choose, quietly and repeatedly, long after we thought we already had.<\/p>

For years, I lived in survival mode. Whether through substances, food, work, relationships, or perfectionism, I learned to cope by pushing harder, proving more, and outrunning discomfort. Avoiding feeling became its own coping strategy. I avoided the grief of divorce, the fear of raising my children alone while working full-time, and the uncertainty waiting underneath the constant noise of doing and achieving. I kept functioning in a world I was trying to manage while quietly disconnecting from parts of myself I did not yet know how to face. Staying busy felt safer than sitting still long enough to hear what my body and heart were trying to tell me. I believed effort alone could fix everything. If I controlled more or tried harder, peace would eventually follow.<\/p>

Many twenty-fours later, as another spring season begins, nature reminds me that starting over is part of living. I find myself approaching recovery differently. I recognize how many times I tried to force change instead of allowing it. Like the seasons, growth happens through alignment, unfolding as we soften our resistance, stay willing, and meet ourselves with compassion along the way.<\/p>

When I first became sober, I thought transformation meant becoming a better version of myself overnight. I wanted certainty and immediate gratification. Mostly, I wanted relief. As I began learning about who I was in early sobriety, I wanted change immediately. Recovery gave me something unexpected \u2014 willingness \u2014 but my challenge of impatience reared its ugly head more often than I care to admit.<\/p>

After seven and a half years of sobriety, I am finally beginning to understand what starting again really looks like \u2014 and it requires more than hope or determination. Spring may invite renewal, but summer demands consistency, autumn asks for honesty about what no longer serves us, and winter teaches us how to sit with stillness when growth is not visible. Recovery, through the phases of my development, has quietly reshaped how I understand healing and beginning again.<\/p>

Willingness is one thing. Staying willing every day is another. Most days, it feels awkward, uncomfortable, and harder than anyone else realizes. Sometimes it simply means showing up when you would rather disappear. Sitting quietly when your mind wants to run. Breathing when anxiety tells you to escape. Listening long enough to respond instead of react.<\/p>

Understanding something in my mind was no longer enough \u2014 recovery was asking me to learn it in my body. Lately, that willingness has followed me somewhere unexpectedly, onto a yoga mat. Until recently, I avoided these spaces. Only now am I learning to trust my sixty-two-year-old body enough to try something new \u2014 even with all its aches and stiffness.<\/p>

Most of my life, I thought yoga was for others, not me. Long, lean bodies. Dancers. Women who seemed to glide through space with ease. At 5’1″, carrying extra weight for much of my life, I never imagined myself fitting into those rooms. Mine felt like a body that survived \u2014 strong from living and movement, never meant to look effortless. So, I stayed away.<\/p>

For years, I told myself I did not belong in those spaces \u2014 not because anyone said so, but because I had already decided it for them. Recovery later taught me something uncomfortable: sometimes the harshest judgment is not coming from the room. It is the one we quietly carry inside ourselves.<\/p>

Walking into my first yoga class, a little over a year ago, felt strangely familiar \u2014 like the first days of recovery, when humility matters more than confidence. I remember standing near the back of the room, rolling out my mat slower than everyone else, pretending I understood what I was doing. The instructor spoke about breathing into discomfort, and I caught myself holding my breath instead. My wrists ached. My knees complained. For a moment I laughed. There I was again, a newcomer, relearning humility. I wondered if I belonged. I worried I would do everything wrong. I assumed everyone else understood something I had not learned yet. Talk about discomfort.<\/p>

Then something surprising happened. No one expected perfection. The instructor kept repeating, \u201cJust do what you can\u201d. \u201cDo not compare your movements to others\u201d. \u201cStay focused on your body and your breathing.\u201d Yoga teaches the same lesson recovery does: flexibility develops slowly. Push too hard and the body tightens or becomes injured. Progress comes through repetition, patience, and respect for limits. Patience is definitely not my strongest skill, but it is a necessary requirement for progress.<\/p>

On the mat, I began noticing muscles and spaces in my body I had ignored for years. Small adjustments mattered. A lifted shoulder. A softened jaw. A breath held without realizing it. Yoga asked my body for presence instead of momentum, allowing awareness to develop rather than forcing change. I realized I was not just relearning how to move. I was unlearning how I judged myself.<\/p>

Long before recovery, many of us learned to live under pressure \u2014 to succeed, to belong, to appear healed. When we could not, we blamed ourselves. Recovery, along with yoga, meditation, and community, slowly revealed something unexpected: the problem was never effort.<\/p>

It was the distance we created from ourselves.<\/p>

Renewal begins when we stop fighting who we are and accept where we are. For me, yoga became an invitation to meet my body exactly where it is today. Yesterday\u2019s strength does not matter. Tomorrow\u2019s goals can wait. Today, I am enough. I am learning to surrender my thinking long enough to listen to what my body has been trying to tell me all along.<\/p>

In the rooms of recovery, many people misunderstand surrender. It is not defeat. It is the willingness to release the illusion of control. Instead of asking, \u201chow do I fix myself?\u201d we begin by asking, \u201cwhat do I need right now?\u201d Sometimes the answer is rest. Sometimes boundaries. Sometimes movement, sunlight, laughter, or simply sitting beside another person who understands without explanation.<\/p>

Yoga reminds me that surrender often begins in the body. On the mat, I learn to breathe through discomfort rather than escape it. Recovery asks for the same practice \u2014 staying present long enough to understand what discomfort is trying to say. Often, it is asking for gentleness. Some days gentleness looks like lowering myself out of a pose before my pride wants to, choosing breath over proving I can push through. Many of us learned to take action early. Self-kindness developed afterward. Self-compassion can feel unfamiliar at first, even undeserved. Over time, it becomes the foundation where real change takes hold.<\/p>

Somewhere between sobriety, awkward first yoga poses, and learning how to stabilize instead of strain, I began to understand something new about identity. Growth is not about becoming someone else. It is about unfolding into who you already are. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was not trying to go back to who I had been. Recovery was teaching me something harder \u2014 that I could consciously choose who I wanted to become, align my habits, my thinking, and my life with that decision, and begin living as her long before fully believing she existed.<\/p>

In my book, I Am an O: Focused on U (YOU), I describe an \u201cO\u201d as someone who learns to live beyond labels \u2014 open enough to change, willing enough to begin again, and whole even while still becoming. Recovery, yoga, and life itself continue to teach me the same lesson: healing is not about fixing who you are. It is about meeting yourself honestly enough to finally live as you. Renewal does not demand perfection; it asks for participation. To show up. To try again. To begin again. That is the real gift of spring \u2014 the reminder that rebirth is always possible, even when it arrives quietly.<\/p>

I used to think healing meant becoming different enough to finally belong somewhere. Now I understand something gentler. Belonging begins the moment you stop shaping yourself for someone else\u2019s expectations.<\/p>

Sometimes renewal is not learning how to bloom. Sometimes it is simply learning to live as yourself, open, unfinished, and willing to begin again.<\/p>

In my work, I call that living as an O \u2014 honest, open, and willing; unfinished, unapologetically evolving, and finally free to begin again, like spring itself, without permission.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growth Through the Phases of my Recovery Spring does not ask for permission to begin again. Each year, without apology or announcement, the earth softens, buds open, and what appeared dormant quietly returns bigger, brighter, and more vibrant. Every spring promises renewal and growth \u2014 yet some seasons of beginning again arrive slowly, quietly, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1100","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1100\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debra-j-perry.client-demo-websites.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}