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We recently had to have a tree service company come out and look at the giant tree in our front yard. We were pretty sure that the tree was going to have to be cut down because of all the branches that have been falling in the yard and, frankly, it looked like it was dying.

To our surprise, the estimator came in and said the tree was actually quite healthy. “Somebody loved that tree a lot,” he said.

My wife and I looked at each other like, “Uh, ok, what exactly does that mean?”

He took us out into the front yard and pulled out a little red laser pointer. He shone the light on the bottom of the tree and worked his way up to about 25 feet into the tree, to an open space between the two huge halves of the tree. It splits into two about 10 feet off the ground, then those two halves of the tree go another 100 feet or so into the sky. It looks a little like a humongous wish bone with leaves.

He said, “Look right there, at the wire connecting the two halves.”

We stared up and noticed something we had missed for years—sure enough, there was a heavy-duty wire that looped around the two parts of the tree, like a 30-foot rubber band.

The tree service guy proceeded to explain to us that that sort of wire can be placed around a tree that is splintering so that it can continue to grow separately but never drift too far apart. “It allows the tree to chart its own path but never split to an unmanageable distance,” he said.

I really felt a gut punch in that moment, because I couldn’t help but think about so many relationships in my life—in all of our lives, really. We all move on from high school and move out from our parents’ houses, so we suddenly have distance between family and friends. Then many of us go on to college and make new friends in a new place. Then we move on from there. And on and on and on, for the rest of our lives, getting close and then moving away.

For someone like me, that also includes adding in addiction, which wedges even more distance between people. In my case, I lived in the same freaking house as my wife and kids and still managed to have a lot of distance between us. So it isn’t just geographic distance.

But sobriety provided me with that wire, and I am now responsible for maintaining that distance. I used to worry that by abruptly deciding I had to overhaul my life, that would shoot me off in one direction and I would be headed away from my loved ones. And that fear is real—there were lots of behaviors that I had to clean up, and there were so many people in my life who had adjusted their lives to accommodate and love that version of me.

Realizing that it was okay for me to branch off and still love all those people has been a revelation for me. We all grow in different directions, sobriety or otherwise, and it has to be a significant goal of mine every day to keep us growing in unison, even if we are not growing exactly the same.

A few weeks after that conversation, I was still thinking about it when the tree trimmers arrived. They proceeded to trim off a bunch of branches and reinforce the wire. Since then, I have noticed that the tree seems healthier, losing very few branches after a storm or windy day. And I also can’t help but look up once a week and find that wire because it helps me remember that it’s ok to grow apart from each other as long as it’s not away from each other.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “The closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood/alcohol level.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2002, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)

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