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Early into her sobriety in 2014, Alyson Marla Chavez attended a recovery-themed meditation class at the Mindfulness Community of Milwaukee. She went at her sponsor’s behest, initially rolling her eyes at the complete factor. Then she caught sight of Joshua Robert Stewart.
“I realized: ‘Oh, there are cute guys at A.A.,’” Ms. Chavez mentioned.
The two struck up a dialog throughout a tea break however didn’t cross paths once more till a few months later, at an Alcoholics Anonymous assembly that spring. Mr. Stewart seen that Ms. Chavez, who was having a significantly troublesome day, appeared distressed. So he provided to go on a stroll and seize a espresso along with her when the assembly ended.
From then, the pair started spending extra time collectively, each at and out of doors of conferences. Though a deeper connection began to bud, romance wasn’t on both of their minds.
Neither Ms. Chavez nor Mr. Stewart had been making their first try at sobriety, however each by then had been dedicated to creating it stick. That meant hewing carefully to the directives of Alcoholics Anonymous, which cautions in opposition to new romantic entanglements in the first yr.
“We were friends,” mentioned Ms. Chavez, 46, who was raised in Lakewood, Colo. “It was fun and exciting to hang out with him, but at first, we really were just trying to build our lives.”
They went on espresso runs, out for meals and engaged in additional frivolous however amusing pursuits resembling scouring Milwaukee, the place each had been dwelling, for the “perfect milkshake,” Ms. Chavez mentioned. They additionally spent a lot of time open air.
“I like using nature as a form of a higher power,” mentioned Mr. Stewart, 40, who grew up in a Milwaukee suburb.
After many months, Mr. Stewart, who then labored as a area service technician and sometimes needed to journey, had a realization whereas on a journey to California: He missed Ms. Chavez.
In December 2014, the couple had their first actual date. They went ice skating, which proved to be extra romantic in idea than in execution.
“I think we went around the rink once, and both almost fell about ten times,” Ms. Chavez recalled. They quickly ditched their skates and obtained scorching chocolate as an alternative.
Both say that their bond and love couldn’t have deepened over the years with out open communication, a robust go well with for the couple from the starting.
“One of the crucial parts of being sober, if you really want to make it work, is being fully honest with yourself and everyone else in your life,” Ms. Chavez mentioned. “We understand how to be honest with each other, how to talk to each other, how to get through problems together.”
Added Mr. Stewart, “It’s good to constantly have that partner in crime that’s on the same page as you.”
He proposed on the day after Christmas in 2019, whereas the two had been on trip in Santa Barbara, Calif. A month earlier he had surreptitiously flown out to Los Angeles to ask for Ms. Chavez’s household’s permission.
“He’s an amazing planner,” Ms. Chavez mentioned. “He’s very thoughtful about how he celebrates people.”
Months later, when the arrival of the pandemic led them to postpone their authentic wedding ceremony date, in August 2020, they noticed it as a disappointing, but becoming, growth.
“It’s very typical for things to take a long time for us,” mentioned Ms. Chavez. “We are a slow-moving couple. It’s part of what I think has kept us so strong.”
While working to restage their nuptials, the two purchased a home in May 2021 in Franklin, Wis., the place they at present reside. Ms. Chavez is now a bilingual director of neighborhood relations at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Mr. Stewart works in technical gross sales at Cleaver-Brooks, Inc., a equipment trade firm in Milwaukee.
They had been married July 30 at the Lake Park Summer Stage, in Milwaukee. The Rev. Rick Deines, a Lutheran minister and a founding father of the Serenity Inns, an habit restoration heart the place Mr. Stewart as soon as lived, officiated. The venue, inside the metropolis’s Lake Park, was a place the couple commonly visited, to take walks, train and revel in reside music.
For the reception that adopted, as a nod to the location, that they had organized an outside live performance for their 145 visitors. A detailed pal that they had met via Alcoholics Anonymous carried out a two-hour set along with his band.
“We’ve really taken good steps in the right direction, and we’ve stayed sober through it all,” mentioned Mr. Stewart, who together with Ms. Chavez has now been sober for greater than eight years.
“I always say it’s a miracle and it really is,” mentioned Ms. Chavez. “It’s not like our life is perfect. But we’ve been able to rebuild.”
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