Baghdad Beth
In April, 2005, I quit drinking. With a husband and two children that I adore, a career as an Army Master Sergeant working in information technology, and friends that were caring and supportive, I realized that my biggest threat to myself was me. Alcohol. I had to quit, and although I knew it would be difficult, I also knew that I had the support of my family, my friends, and my co-workers.
Then duty called. At the age of forty-two, with two months sobriety to my credit, two small children to raise, and two years left until my retirement, I was deployed to Baghdad.
In the original Twelve Steps program for Alcoholics Anonymous, the fourth step states that one must 'make a searching and fearless moral inventory of (oneself)’. Although not always fearless, it was in Baghdad I was forced to make that searching moral inventory of myself. As an alcoholic. As a mother. As a wife. As a soldier.
Then duty called. At the age of forty-two, with two months sobriety to my credit, two small children to raise, and two years left until my retirement, I was deployed to Baghdad.
In the original Twelve Steps program for Alcoholics Anonymous, the fourth step states that one must 'make a searching and fearless moral inventory of (oneself)’. Although not always fearless, it was in Baghdad I was forced to make that searching moral inventory of myself. As an alcoholic. As a mother. As a wife. As a soldier.
Baghdad Beth started as a personal essay about a day from my life, written during my Iraq tour in 2004 and published the following year in the collection, This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America (Editors Joni B. Cole, Rebecca Joffrey, and B.K. Rakhra).