Hi Friend,

Erin, here! I am so excited you are here and intrigued to learn more about Safe 2 Shore! To say this is my passion would be an understatement. When the Lord put it on my heart to create this community, I was nervous, scared, and apprehensive, but it is something I wish I had as I went through my journey to becoming sober.

So, let’s dive into a little more about who I am. I am 54, a mama of 4, and in recovery from alcohol addiction. My story with alcohol isn’t short and simple, as most of our stories aren’t. I grew up with an alcoholic father. A lot of good memories, a lot of traumatic memories and, if I’m honest a lot I’ve blocked out, and have no memory of at all. I started drinking in my late teens, and I drank for decades. There were countless times when alcohol served a very special purpose, to numb feelings I didn’t understand and couldn’t cope with. 

I found genuine joy and happiness in my life being a mom and a wife. I also found a lot of peace in my faith in God throughout my life, but this peace was only peppered into times in which my heart was broken enough to let God in. I was married to a man who, though he loved me, was extremely verbally abusive to me and our kids. He was unfaithful a lot of our marriage. My relationship with Jesus was very inconsistent. I now know that it was this fractured connection that allowed alcohol to take the place of the hope and promises available to me with Jesus. I couldn’t see it then. I think I didn’t feel worthy, so I separated myself from God. I went my own way thinking I knew what was best for me. I was a busy mother of 4 young children, a full-time teacher living in another country away from my family. Alcohol was there for me, and it was just so normalized as a way to destress and make life easier, more fun, and even more manageable. 

Alcohol addiction is progressive. For me, as my kids got older and needed me less, and my marriage wasn’t getting better, I didn’t know who I was, so I drank more and more. The consequences started getting worse and worse. My addiction took me to a dark place. I did things I’m not proud of. I went to jail twice, and still didn’t stop.  

So, how did I finally stop drinking? I started praying. I prayed and prayed and prayed to the God I knew loved me but whose love I had rejected. I literally heard Him say “you have to stop drinking “every time I prayed. I felt His presence next to me in the passenger seat of my car and I sensed His hand holding mine and I knew. I knew that He had been chasing me and I had been running the other way. I was tired of running. I just knew I had to listen. I turned toward Him and stopped trying to change on my own. For the first time I felt that it was possible.  I knew that getting sober would not be easy. God doesn’t promise me that I won’t have struggles. He promises me that He will be with me every single step of the way. That was the beginning of my sobriety, and a renewed faith in Jesus, my saving grace, my Savior.