Ten years ago, Regina Diamond became the first guest writer on this website. I’ve been after her for an update for well over a year, and to my surprise and joy, this popped into my inbox this morning.
The Next Chapter: Blessings, Loss, and the Long Work of Becoming
When my story was first published in 2015, it ended at redemption.
I had survived addiction, incarceration, and reentry. I had graduated from college, earned my master’s degree, completed parole, and begun working in the very systems that once shaped my life from the other side. It was a story with momentum and resolution. It appeared whole and resolved.
And in many ways, it was.
But redemption is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a much longer, messier chapter.
After the Applause
In the years that followed, life unfolded quickly. I got married. I began working with NJSTEP. I became a mother. I bought a home. From the outside, it looked like everything I had worked for was finally falling into place.
And in many ways, it was.
I was living the life I once prayed for.
Motherhood, however, cracked me open in ways sobriety never had.
After my first child was born, I experienced prenatal and postpartum depression that I did not yet have language for. I was functional, high-achieving, and deeply unwell. I returned to work. I kept going. I told myself this was normal—that sadness, irritability, and emotional numbness were simply part of adjustment.
Then the losses began.
Grief Without Pause
Within a single year, I lost nine people—my grandmother, my uncle, my cousin, my aunt, my sponsor, and others I loved deeply. One loss followed another, barely leaving space to breathe in between. And then COVID arrived.
The world shut down. Grief became collective, but mine was already overflowing.
I was raising a toddler, caring for a newborn, navigating depression, and trying to function in a world that suddenly felt fragile and unsafe. I moved through my days on muscle memory and survival instinct—the same instincts that once kept me alive in addiction and incarceration, now reactivated in a different form.
I did not drink. I did not use.
But I was not okay.
The Illusion of “After”
There is a tendency to talk about an “after”—after sobriety, after prison, after trauma — as if there is a finish line where life becomes manageable and predictable. As if surviving the worst of it means the rest will be easier.
What I have learned is that healing does not eliminate pain; it changes how we hold it.
I had done many things right—and I had also made mistakes. I drifted away from meetings. I stopped asking for help. I withdrew from the community that had once held me and leaned almost entirely on my partner. Still, my marriage unraveled. Still, my mental health faltered. Still, life demanded more of me than I felt able to give.
By 2021, the relationship I believed would last my lifetime was breaking down. What followed were years of emotional turbulence—back-and-forth decisions, hope, disappointment, and the slow realization that love alone does not sustain safety or wholeness.
In 2024, I chose myself.
I chose stability.
I chose healing over familiarity.
That choice did not come with relief so much as responsibility—the responsibility to rebuild again, this time as a mother, a professional, and a woman who knows exactly how much she can survive.
A Shift in Belief
When I first got sober, structure saved my life. Ritual grounded me. Over time, my spirituality expanded beyond the confines of any single framework.
I explored what resonated and released what did not.
I stopped searching for certainty and started paying attention to alignment. I no longer believe spirituality shields us from suffering; I believe it helps us stay present inside it.
I still believe I am protected.
I still believe I have a purpose.
But I no longer believe purpose is static.
The Work That Remains
Today, I find myself at another crossroads.
My children are growing. My career is evolving. The systems I once fought to enter reveal their limitations more clearly. I carry lived experience, professional expertise, and a deeper understanding of how trauma, motherhood, grief, and survival intersect.
I am no longer interested in being a “success story” that reassures people everything works out neatly.
I am interested in telling the truth.
The truth is that healing is cyclical.
That stability can coexist with pain.
That purpose can change without disappearing.
And that surviving once does not exempt us from having to survive again.
What has changed is this: I trust myself now.
I trust my ability to ask for help.
I trust my intuition when something feels misaligned.
I trust that rebuilding does not mean starting over—it means building differently.
Moving Forward
If the first chapter of my life was about survival, and the second about redemption, then this chapter is about wholeness—learning how to live fully with everything I carry.
I am still sober.
I am still committed to justice, education, collective care—and to my children and the life we are building together.
I am still becoming.
And this time, I am allowing the story to remain unfinished.
——-
Regina Diamond