Hi, sweet friends.
I’ve been wanting to share more the ins and outs of my sobriety – the messy stuff, the glorious parts, all of it. I receive a crazy amount of DMs on Instagram and there is a common thread that runs through almost all of them: sobriety. I’m not able to answer each one while still having a life and being a (somewhat) present mom for my kids, so I thought I’d bring it to the blog.
And now for the obvious: I’m not an alcohol counselor or someone who specializes in addiction or dependence. I’ve never claimed to have all of the answers. The only thing I can do is share my story and how I was able to stop drinking alcohol and fully enjoy my alcohol-free life.
(Oh, and one more thing – before I get messages saying I’m shaming moms who drink a glass of wine at night, please remember that this post is for the moms who are trying to quit and who have reached out asking for advice.)
One of the most commonly asked questions I get is…
When does sobriety get easier?
Oh, man. How loaded is that question, right? I can’t give you a milestone or a day when giving up alcohol gets “easier.”
Instead, I can suggest something else. What if you changed your perspective? What if rather than looking ahead and focusing on living without alcohol, you looked back at your relationship with alcohol? What if instead of trying to make quitting alcohol easy, you focused on getting curious? What if easy just isn’t the goal, anyway?
When I decided I was done drinking in January 2020, I had no idea what that meant. I was scared, but maybe even more than that I was curious.
What role had alcohol played in my life?
I dove into sobriety podcasts and audiobooks. (Read how I spent the early weeks of my sobriety here.) I lost myself in other mom’s stories of how they’d used alcohol to escape and what happened when they decided to start finding themselves instead.
I took a hard look at my relationship with alcohol. I faced my past and the ways I’d used alcohol to numb and hide. I wrote in my journal and uncovered the stories that I’d long buried and I shined a light on the shame.
What did all of those stories have in common? Alcohol.
As those early days ticked by into months, it became so damn clear to me that alcohol was the problem. It had taken me 20 years to realize that alcohol had been lying to me the whole time. All of its promises of pleasure and relaxation had more often than not gone up in flames and left me with a headache, anxiety and a whole lot of shame.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 2362 times, well…
The blinders were off and thrill of alcohol was gone.
So now, more than 2 years into my sobriety, I can say it’s easy. It’s easy for me not to turn back to a substance that has failed me so many times.
But, sweet friends, easy can’t be the goal.
Instead, get curious about your relationship with alcohol. How has it affected your life? Your anxiety? Your parenting?
Don’t worry about what next week will look like. Don’t worry whether you’ll want to drink this summer. (I know, easier said than done, but just go with me on this.) Take a deep dive into alcohol and its effects on you and your life. Reprogram your brain to see that alcohol was never the thing that made life better. You’ve lived life with alcohol. You know what that’s like. Maybe you owe it to yourself to see what life is like without alcohol…
Give yourself a chance.
Keep going.
For more sobriety inspo, head to my Instagram…
I’m going to be doing these sobriety posts weekly! If you have a question or topic you’d like to discuss, please leave it below…
