Editor's note: Mandy Richard is a former North Bay resident who is now the Communications Manager at Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory.
She has battled a drug and alcohol addiction and recently celebrated her sixth-year sober anniversary.
"In honour of this, I wrote a poem," she says.
Everything that I loved, I cared about no more,
A vast of emptiness, I tried again and again to ignore.
Drugs and alcohol was my escape,
One of its many forms is avoidance, but addicts don’t notice its shape.
Drugs and alcohol gave me numbing,
Little did I know, more trauma and pain was forthcoming.
You always think “this will never happen to me”,
Until you are drowning in the addict’s crashing sea.
I did not expect sobriety to come knocking at my door,
Transformed into a loud pounding as I slid down towards the floor.
Holding myself crying in defeat,
Sobriety promised me one day I will feel complete.
Often people ask me why I don’t do drugs or drink,
I tell them it’s because alcohol, drugs, and me aren’t in-sync.
For a long time, my spirit begged me to get sober,
And as a result, my pain and trauma got some closure.
Sobriety gave me a sense of control,
And at the same time, it allowed me to let go.
It opened my heart,
To face the traumas that tore it apart.
It opened my eyes to see the beauty and pain within,
And only then can true work begin.
Sobriety is bigger than it seems,
It laid the foundation for me to chase my dreams.
Through this journey of what we call healing,
I happily embrace everything I am feeling.
My sobriety saved me,
Because it offered the truest guarantee.
To feel whole and complete starts within,
And through my sobriety, I re-discovered our teaching: mino-bimaadiziwin.
