Sixteen years ago, I was a 38-year-old mother of three young children living in the suburbs of New Jersey. Chris, my husband of nine years, and I owned a small Cape, white with blue shutters. The kids – two boys and a girl, ages 7, 5, and almost 3 – happily played in the fenced-in backyard, jumping in piles of leaves in the fall and running through sprinklers in the summer. Chris commuted into New York City for work. I worked part-time as an administrative assistant, a job that gave me the flexibility to be the kids’ primary caregiver. It was a picture-perfect life from the outside. No one knew I was harbouring two secrets – one life-threatening, one morally reprehensible, both shameful. I was an active alcoholic, drinking vodka most days while taking care of my children, and I was a cheating spouse. I had managed to hide the drinking from nearly everyone, including myself, for over 20 years. My entanglement with the other man lasted four months. What I didn’t know then was that without the one secret, I would never have been saved from the other. It was midday on a Monday in December. Chris was away on a business trip. The kids were at school or napping. Electricians were finishing the last tasks of our house renovation, milling around outside my bedroom door. I was sitting at my Ikea desk, sipping a vodka cranberry, crafting yet another email to the man I’d spent one night with in October. We had reconnected at a reunion, so cliché! Facebook messages became texts, texts became phone calls, and those phone calls led to that one night at a Marriott. A few days before the planned tryst, I’d wanted to call the whole thing off. I should have. But I felt like I was on a moving walkway at the airport, and I couldn’t find a way to escape. When the guy cut me off completely the morning after, I felt unmoored in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I’d gotten used to the mood boost from the ding of my Blackberry. Without it, I was slugging back vodka cranberries as soon as my coffee buzz wore off in the morning. I was begging my therapist to tell me what I had to do to be happy, without mentioning the drinking. Drinking wasn’t the problem. My marriage was the problem. My life was the problem. That fateful day in December, I wrote the email and then left it open on my laptop screen when I went to take a nap. Let’s face it: when I passed out. The phone rang, and I jolted awake. The clock read 2:12pm. On the nightstand sat my glass, once half cheerful bright-red cranberry juice and half vodka, now just a sad sip of pinkish backwash. The caller hung up without leaving a message. Telemarketer, I thought. When the phone rang again, my realisation began to bloom. Time slowed. I could sense the wrecking ball swinging on its chain, first back, then like a pendulum reversing course, straight for me. Wham. The author, right, and Chris, left, are avid hikers and are currently (very slowly) section hiking the Appalachian Trail. Chris had remote access to our home computer. He logged on most days to check the budget or grab a family photo. When I ran back to the bedroom, a Microsoft Notepad message covered my email. I guess we need to talk, Liz. My stomach dropped, and the vodka cranberry lurched up in my throat. The phone rang again. It was Chris. What the hell is going on? I hung up on him. Then I grabbed the vodka hidden behind the Cuisinart blender, poured it into a glass, and topped it off with cranberry juice. The drink was strong and stung a bit as it went down. It landed in my stomach with a familiar and welcoming warmth. My body loosened. My shoulders dropped. When I breathed out, I realised I had been holding my breath. What the fuck am I going to do now? Getting caught should have been about the affair. And for a while, it was. Chris came home early. We hashed it out on the back deck – accusations, confessions, details neither of us wanted to give or receive. And then, without planning it, without knowing I was going to say it, I said: There’s one more thing. He lit a cigarette. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I drink, I said. I drink vodka during the day. Not every day. But most days. I watched the words float in the air and wanted to grab them back. Once you say a thing like that, you know what comes next. I knew because I had watched a family member go through it years before. Once you admit you have a drinking problem, you have to stop. I did not want to stop drinking – especially not now that my marriage had imploded. After my admission, I knew what I had to do. I reluctantly entered the rooms of AA, but I didn’t officially stop drinking until 33 days later, on Jan. 8, 2011. I followed the suggestions: I got a home group and a sponsor. I worked the 12 steps. One day at a time, I stopped drinking. But life didn’t immediately get better. In fact, things with my marriage got worse. We’d try not to fight in front of the kids, but it still sometimes happened. Sometimes one of us had to check into a hotel for the night just to keep things from boiling over. Chris went to Al-Anon. I went to AA. We tried couples therapy. Our individual therapists worked better. We circled the drain of divorce for almost a year, but then something happened. We got better. At some point – and I couldn’t tell you exactly when – we made a choice. Not a dramatic one. More like a quiet agreement between two exhausted people who had survived a shipwreck together. We could let go of what remained of the wreckage, or we could hold on to each other. We chose to hold on. We’d be honest with each other. We’d forgive each other. We’d rebuild. We renewed our vows on our 10th wedding anniversary. And because we did, the marriage we have now is not the marriage we had before December 2010. It’s stronger. The author, right, and Chris, left, renewing their wedding vows on their 10th wedding anniversary. The uncomfortable truth I’ve come to terms with, 15 years sober and 25 years married to the same man, is this: sometimes the thing that saves your life is also the thing you’re most ashamed of. The affair was the worst thing I ever did. It was also the wrecking ball that took out the last wall I was hiding behind. I don’t recommend it as a path to sobriety. But it was mine. Elizabeth Jannuzzi is the author of Sober Mom: A Memoir (July 2026). Her work explores themes of loss, motherhood, and recovery from alcoholism, and has appeared in HuffPost, Under the Gum Tree, The Rumpus, Memoir Monday, WOW! Women On Writing, The Brevity Blog, and more. Elizabeth earned a Best of the Net nomination in 2023. She is the program director at Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing organization. She resides in New Jersey and engages with her audience through a weekly Substack newsletter. Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com. Related... I Got Sober, My Husband Still Drinks. This Is What We Tell Our Kids I Always Thought Cheating Was Unforgivable. Then A Friend's Affair Made Me Question Everything. 6 Lessons An Affair Therapist Has Learned About Cheaters