When I was a little girl, on special occasions my parents would buy a big bottle of Welch’s grape juice and let me drink it from a real glass while clinking in celebration. My ideas around celebrations and happiness formed and to me, a toast was the ultimate projection of happiness. As I aged, anything without a clinking sound and a sip of something just felt less deserving, less special, and way less festive.

But what is a toast? What was it about the grape juice in the stemware that signified release, ease, and happiness? When I was little, I wasn’t getting drunk or even the slightest buzz from the dark purple concoction but somehow the occasion still brought me so much joy. I now know that the joy was the actual occasion-the graduation, first communion, a wedding toast, or a holiday. It was looking around at a room filled with people I loved all smiling and enjoying themselves. It was some kind of unspoken brief moment of rest, a time to let the worries, stressors, or otherwise troublesome things go and to emphasize what was going right in our lives.

Naturally, I wanted to feel this way all of the time. In my confusion, I started to belive that it was the buzz that made occasions special and therefore tried to recreate that feeling. I began working toward happiness starting daily at 5 o’clock and carrying that idea into every single scenario possible. I loved connection, people, happiness, and celebration so I figured if I could bring my glass to clink followed by a sip, I would be transported to that time as a child when all was right with the world.

Overtime, this excitement became routine. Trying to create happiness every single day no matter what was going on started to lose it’s allure. Instead, I found myself clinking and sipping even if I was feeling stressed, or just watching TV, or looking at my phone. Instead of raising a glass with a group I was raising a glass alone feeling more and more unsettled.

Happy Hour went from something I looked forward to that would make me smile to something that I deserved. This would bring to it a feeling of resentment toward anything that wasn’t making me happy. Sometimes I felt rage or anger. Sometimes I felt distracted or agitated. Most times, I felt numb. It became numbing hour. I traded in joy for nothingness, just another hour. The constant clinking and sipping had robbed me of my range of feelings. It diminished my senses and disrupted my body’s systems. I lost my way.

Fast forward many years and today I’m finding my way back to happy hour. Over the last couple of years, with Covid, the political battlefield, racial injustice, and other stressors going on in the world it’s hard to find that feeling of joy and peace. But thanks to Grüvi, I’ve filled my special glass back up with bubbly grapes and I have learned to take a moment to celebrate the small wins of the day. Completing a 1,000 piece puzzle, making it to Friday, celebrating another month of sober living, finding gratitude for things that I have always taken for granted (water, cozy winter blankets, and free books at the library). My glass is full of all the wonder that I felt as a child and empty of all of the lies that alcohol would in some way enhance my beautiful life. I am finally back to looking around at the smiling faces of the people that I love and in that moment I feel…..happy.