Today I am chatting with Sara!
Drinking was the norm in Sara’s family growing up, so it felt only natural that she took to drinking once she became a mom herself. Alcohol cemented itself so deeply into Sara’s life after becoming a mom that she didn’t quit even while she was fighting cancer.
It wasn’t until her sons were teenagers that she began to really ask herself some hard questions about her drinking. What behavior was she modeling for her sons? How could she ask them not to drink when she still drank every day? The hypocrisy proved too much for her, so Sara decided to explore what life could be like without alcohol.
Since becoming sober, Sara lost her mom. It has been such a relief to find healthier ways to work through her grief than simply masking it with alcohol.
Her favorite part of sobriety, though? It’s the simple fact that she can be the taxi cab driver for her teenage sons and their friends without worrying about if she’s sober.
We now have a Patreon! Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron. Learn more here: http://patreon.com/user?u=84021397
Join The Sober Mom Life FB group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1542852942745657
We have merch!!!! Check it out here!
Click here to follow The Sober Mom Life on Instagram
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, welcome to the Sober Mom Life podcast. I’m your host Suzanne of my kind of suite and the sober mom life on Instagram. If you are a mama who has questioned your relationship with alcohol at times, if you’re wondering if maybe it’s making motherhood harder, this is for you. I will be having candid, honest, funny conversations with other moms who have also thought, Hmm, maybe motherhood is better without alcohol. Is it possible we’ll chat and we’ll talk about all things sobriety and how we’ve found freedom in sobriety. I don’t consider myself an alcoholic. You don’t have to either, and maybe life is brighter without alcohol. I hope you will join us on this journey and I’m so excited to get started.
(01:02)
Hi Mamas. We have another real mom chat today. Today I speak with Sarah. Oh man, this one pulled up my heartstrings. Sarah is a breast cancer survivor. She is a warrior. She beat it. I love her, her just sober journey and what she’s learned. We also talk a lot about grief in this episode, grief through sobriety, grief when you’re drinking, and how to deal with all of just that heavy sadness. Oh yeah, I loved this chat. Um, I know you guys will too. So just a reminder, if you are loving the podcast, please follow it wherever you listen, rate and review it. Let me know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what you’re wanting to hear in the new year. I cannot believe it’s right around the corner. Also, come and join us. All of these amazing moms are in our sober mom life Facebook group. So come and join us. We’re talking about sobriety and the truth about alcohol and all of that good stuff all day long. There’s just, it’s such an inspiration to follow everybody’s journey and everybody’s sharing their stories and their wins and their struggles, and it’s just, ugh, I love it. It’s the sober mom life on Facebook. Come and follow me. The sober mom life on Instagram, sober mom life pod on TikTok, and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sarah.
(02:50)
Okay, happy Friday. Even though we’re not recording this on a Friday. It’s Friday in podcast land. Hi Sarah. I’m so glad to have you here.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, I’m excited to hear your story. Okay, so why don’t you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and then we’ll dive into the drinking story.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Sure. So my name is Sarah. I live in Slidel, Louisiana, which is right outside of New Orleans. I’m married to my husband, Jason. We’ve been married 20 years and we have two teenage boys.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
14 and 16. So we are deep into raising teenagers.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, you’re in the teenage zone. I’m scared of that. How is it?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
You should be. It’s tough. Oh, no, it’s never a dull moment. I’ll leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yes, I can imagine <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So yeah, that’s where I am.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Okay. So before we talk about sobriety and where you’re at with that, let’s talk about your relationship with alcohol and your drinking past.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Sure. So drinking was very much part of growing up in my family. We had alcohol at every occasion, holidays, birthdays, baptisms, weddings, funerals, you name it. Totally. It was just understood. Yeah. Like that’s how we roll. And a family get together tended to look like the adults sit around and drink and visit and eat, and the kids kind of do their own thing. So that’s kind of what I saw growing up and I started to model that with my own kid, you know, as an adult.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah. So it was just like it was normal, right? Yeah. Like no reason to question it just totally normal because when you grow up, like does a fish know it’s wet? Everyone’s doing it. So of course,
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yes. You know, I mean, like you said, it was normal is what I knew. I didn’t really understand how people could do differently. That was just part of adulting. Yes. You celebrated with wine. That was the sophisticated drink. You had beer at crawfish boils, cuz that’s more casual. I, I just started to do what I knew growing up when I became a mom. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I drank wine and I noticed as you get more involved in motherhood and the demands grow and at another child and the family grows. So it’s the stress and the anxiety. So yeah, I thought that’s where the wine comes in. And I have so many memories in my Facebook sharing mommy wine memes. And there was even one time when my boys were really young that my youngest asked me, and he was probably about five at the time, if wine was like lady beer is what he
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Called it. Oh my God, that’s so funny.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yes, because he associated beer with men and wine with women, so, yeah. Yeah. I was,
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Oh my god,
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I didn’t think anything of it then. But fast forward to kind of where I am now, about a year ago I started looking at my relationship with alcohol and kind of realized that I didn’t really like what I was modeling for my teenagers because now you know Yeah. Who am I to be hypocrite and tell them you shouldn’t be doing this? And yeah.
(06:02)
So it kind of made me look inward a little bit. And I also started to think about, I have a few friends, not very many, but a few that don’t drink at all. And I was like, what does it look like to be an adult if you don’t drink <laugh>? Which was kinda challenged by like, let me see if I can adult without drinking because it’s in every facet of my life. I was like, I don’t have any hobbies. My hobbies are to go out and drink, go out on the boat and drink. Yeah. Go to a football game and drink. What do I do that doesn’t involve it? And I, I really couldn’t think of anything so I was just like, I kind of wanna see what this is like. And so it was kind of a challenge for myself.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Okay. So was there anything that led up to that moment? I mean, it sounds like you were pretty deep into mommy wine culture, which is not a fault of yours. I mean, that’s what we are taught. We are tricked into thinking that wine is here to save the day, to save the witching hour to save mm-hmm <affirmative> our sanity. Like it’s gonna help motherhood. So you were deep into that so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what kind of switched or was it a slow kind of recognizing? Like was there a moment that you can remember?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I think what switched or what made me decide to take a look at it, it’s, I really started to notice how much I was looking forward to it at the end of the day. Okay. At the end of the day, started to look earlier in the day than five o’clock and like, yeah, three o’clock I’m looking down at my watch like, okay, am I done with work yet? Can I have, you know, a truly yet? So when I started to notice that I really was looking forward to it more than I should have and that made me start to, yeah. Kind of second guess how much I was drinking, how often I was drinking. And I started to notice that, I mean we all know this, but it took more alcohol to get me to the numbed feeling of yeah, one glass, one glass of wine did years ago. It nearly took a bottle now to do the same thing. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And that totally creeps up on you. Like you’re like, oh wait a second.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
It does. It’s like a slow fade.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Totally. I think that’s interesting because it’s like, yeah, so you weren’t just affected by alcohol when you were drinking it, so you were thinking about it even when you weren’t drinking it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, even though it was probably affecting your mind and your body and all the ways that we know now what it does. But it was taking up that mental space of counting down.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It really was. And I didn’t know that then, but my anxiety was creeping up too. Yeah. I was thinking that I needed a drink at the end of the day to numb my anxiety, but now I know differently that it’s the alcohol that was increasing my anxiety. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It’s like a vicious cycle. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So about a year ago I decided to take a look at that actually November 6th of last year.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
At first I was like counting days, but I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I’m not counting days anymore. I wouldn’t say that I am sober at the moment, but I wouldn’t say that I don’t identify, identify as an alcoholic. I’ve never been to meetings or anything like that. Yeah. I took a break from alcohol for about six months, eight months, something like that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I would just tell myself, I’m not drinking today. I never wanted to put out there that I’m never drinking again. Right. I won’t even say that now because I think the finality of that just sets me up for failure.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah. I, I try to think about what would I ever say? Like when would I ever feel a need to say I’m never doing anything again? Right. Like, do I ever put that much pressure on anything? No. And do I ever ask that question about anything else? No. So cuz I say, yeah, I’m never gonna smoke a cigarette again. But then I mean I just kind of know that because I don’t wanna smoke a cigarette. But then even when I say that it’s like, whoa, that sounds, but I don’t like smoking cigarettes. I don’t want ’em, I don’t. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
But
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Just saying something never again is such a hard line in the sand and it’s like we don’t do that about anything. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Because
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Why, that’s another one of those questions I think that if it bothers you, like don’t answer it. Yeah. Don’t ask it, don’t answer it because you don’t have to.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah. One other thing that was really a big part of my reason to take a break with from alcohol or look at my relationship with alcohol is kind of how I framed it for myself was I’m a breast cancer survivor.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So about three years ago, well in 2019 I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Wow. And I took a leave of absence from work and was able to stay home for about nine months while I went through chemo and radiation and surgery and stuff like that. So I would enjoy wine at the end of the day, even though I was home from work and I know now in hindsight that I was self-medicating. Yeah. Anxiety, fear, depression, all of those things with wine.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And people don’t think that somebody going through cancer is drinking. Yeah. And I very much look forward to that glass of wine at the end of the day. And I even went to MD Anderson, which is a huge cancer center for a second opinion, and I’ll never forget this. I’m going there to, you know, they’re the best in the world to hear what they have to say about making sure that my treatment plans going in the right direction. And there was a nurse practitioner there and I’m a new patient. So they ask you 150 questions about your lifestyle. Yeah. It was different than other new patient surveys. They wanted to know what you drank, how much you drank, how often you drank. Okay. So, like I said, glasses of wine, you know, every day two to three. And the nurse practitioner whose name was Mercy Oh wow. Which I feel like is pretty ironic. Yeah. She really gave me a big old lecture about drinking.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Okay. What did she say? She
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Was like, this is really bad for your liver. You could be causing more damage to your liver while you’re, you’re going through treatment, you’re more susceptible. And I remember distinctly looking at my husband when she walked outta the room and I was like, I’m not giving up my alcohol. Right. I already have cancer so fuck it. You know, like how much worse can I get? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You’re like, can I have something? Right. I totally get that. Right. And so then you kept on going, you beat it.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, I did. I did. And I actually finished.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Congratulations, you’re a survivor.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Thank you. Thank you. I finished right before the pandemic started. So like March 5th, 2020 I had my last treatment. Wow. And then two weeks later the world went on pause for this pandemic. So I just joined everybody else in the day drinking. Yes. And the rest of the world was like how to live. They didn’t know how to live with uncertainty. But I had been doing that for a year already with everything going on. So yeah. You know, it kind of continued until I started to look at it last year. But now I know that there’s a link between breast cancer and alcohol, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there’s a higher chance of developing breast cancer if you frequent drinker. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it makes me wonder if that had something to do with it. I’ll never know and it really doesn’t matter. But I feel like yeah, by giving it up it definitely decreases my chance of a recurrence, which is something I think all survivors have in the back of their mind. So
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah. It’s kind of like you taking your power back. It’s like cancer took that power for a little bit and then you said, fuck off, I’m gonna do whatever I can and I’ll beat you. And you did and now, yeah. Yeah. Now you have the power, which is so incredible. Yeah. That’s amazing. It
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Feels good. It really does. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
And so you don’t count days. So talk to me about that, cuz you said you did count days at first. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I have just a different relationship with counting days. I know I don’t count days either, but I know some people love it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and feel empowered by it. But I know some people just gets them down. So how did you feel about counting days at first when you were doing it?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, so at first I did count days because it was empowering for me. Yeah. It motivated me to keep going to know that, oh, I made it a week and oh I made it a month and yes, I made it through Christmas and I made it through the new year. Like those felt really empowering, but after doing it for six to eight months, it was like, okay, I’ve changed. This is my lifestyle. Yeah. I still wasn’t saying never again, but it just wasn’t something that I felt the need to go back to. So I did kind of attempt moderation. Okay. Earlier this year when I went on vacation with my husband and had a couple of drinks while we were at the beach and then did fine with that moderation. But my mom passed away unexpectedly.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Oh, I’m so sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah. In June. So I partook with my brother and sister because that’s what we did growing up. Sit around and well still what we did do, sit around and drink together. Yeah. So I kind of joined them, but I noticed after doing that for a few weeks, that I was really looking forward to it more than I should be. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that moderation was getting harder, so needed to take my power back as far as that’s concerned again. So back in August I just said no more.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah. First I’m sorry about your mom. I, I mean, thank you. Grief and sobriety is fucking hard.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Is. I, I lost my dad last year unexpectedly and it is like, uh, you just do want to escape mm-hmm. <affirmative> and sometimes Yeah. You just do. So I think it’s easy to beat ourselves up but don’t. Yeah. You know, I’ve talked to so many people now about their sobriety journeys and so many of them, it is about this. Just trying to figure out what works for them and going back and just seeing like after a stint of being alcohol free, being sober, going back and saying, okay. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, let me just check this out. Let me see if I can moderate. I think that tends to be a very common thing and it’s not a no falling off the wagon or failure or anything like that. It’s like a, hold on. Okay, let me see. Let me see if I can moderate. And you know, moderation tends to be tricky. Um, and it does tend to be something that people can do right away. And then like you said mm-hmm. <affirmative>, then it starts to ramp up a little bit more and then it’s like, oh, okay, so here’s what I had to figure out.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah. I’m sure you notice this too, but you’re so much more in tune to your body once you have alcohol out of the picture. Yes. And I noticed that one drink I would not sleep as well that night and I was a little more groggy the next morning and just moving unproductive and moving kind of slow and stuff like that. So I definitely noticed even just one drink how it would impact me. And I love Saturday mornings without a hangover. I mean it feels amazing.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So good
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I get stuff done instead of Yes. Laying around in bed until nine o’clock and then trying to figure out what to do with my day. I mean I, I love it that I will never get tired of.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I know. It’s so true. Like sober mornings are like the best and I think, yeah, I almost think that, well you have to have that period of alcohol out of your system in order to know that your sleep is bad because of alcohol. Like that’s that control experiment. I think some people just think, oh this is just how I feel and they don’t link it to alcohol. But you can only figure that out when you take alcohol out. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then you get sleep without alcohol that you’re like, wait a second. And then when you put it back in, then you can clearly tie it
Speaker 2 (17:34):
To. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah. But I think that that doesn’t happen unless you take a break from alcohol.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah. The same applies for me with anxiety. Yes, I’ve taken anxiety medicine for years, but I definitely noticed that right before I decided to look at my relationship with alcohol, my anxiety was the highest it had been in adulthood.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Really.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I was even at a doctor’s appointment shortly before I decided to take a break. My anxiety’s higher than ever. We really need to take a look at, you know, my prescription. Like I’m just, I’m having a really hard time with just day-to-day stuff. Yeah. I had no idea it had anything to do with alcohol. I thought that was helping me. Yeah. <laugh> keep the glue of this show together, but apparently it was not. And I used to take a prescription that was for situational anxiety in addition to Yeah. Wellbutrin. So like Wellbutrin’s like my regular go-to every day. But then when situational things would come up I would have this other prescription to help me. But I haven’t taken that since I addressed my relationship with alcohol. So I could definitely see the difference. Yeah. Like even objectively like that, that’s just not something I need anymore. I
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Know. Isn’t that amazing? And think about like moms and anxiety. I mean that’s like hand in hand, like what mom actually what person, but what mom doesn’t struggle with anxiety. Right,
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah. And like I think Laura McCowan says like alcohol is just like pouring gasoline on your anxiety. Yeah. And we don’t realize it. We’re taught that it helps.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah. And I feel like those of us that are alcohol free, like know this secret about life and I mean, I wanna scream it from the rooftops. I know, but I also don’t wanna come across as judgmental. Yeah. And I don’t want to push away friends because we know that us sharing our story makes people look at their own relationship and that’s not why I’m doing it. I just, I feel amazing now and I want other people to experience that. But it’s a big decision.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah, it is. And I often talk about sobriety as freedom and freedom from anxiety and all these things, but there is shit that comes up in sobriety too, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like it’s amazing and it’s a superpower and I’m like, like that’s why I started this podcast to be like, hold on, I don’t think everybody knows this.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Alcohol is making mom’s motherhood harder and like yeah. That’s why I started this. And then I also, I don’t know, I think especially with grief, I found that dealing with grief while being sober. Oh my God. I mean there’s no place to hide. Yeah. And so like have you found that coming up in your sobriety that you’re kind of dealing with the stuff that you were escaping when your mom passed?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Definitely. I don’t think that I would be where I am in my grief journey. It’s only been like four months. Um, if I was masking it with alcohol.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I think even though people associate grief with a death when I was diagnosed with cancer, there was grief that goes along with that.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So I was masking, dealing with my emotions associated with cancer diagnosis. So it took me a long time to get past that. Whereas I just, I have healthier ways to move through my emotions without hiding it behind alcohol.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
For me in early sobriety, and I don’t even know what early sobriety is, one year, two years, I don’t know. But like sobriety, if I could like sum it up, it’s a lot of crying, it’s a lot of sleeping. Oh yeah. And it’s a lot of feeling and that means the good stuff too, but also the hard stuff, like the hard stuff that we haven’t even allowed ourselves to feel and we didn’t even know, we weren’t allowing ourselves to feel.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Like all that stuff comes up. And so while it’s amazing and I always talk about how amazing it is, I think some of these like feelings catch people off guard. Yeah. Because we don’t know how to deal with them. Cuz we haven’t been. And I think grief is like one of the big ones of just, you don’t know. I don’t know how to deal with grief. I still am trying to figure it out. Mine is just actually just crying in my closet, you know, when it just gets too much and I’m like, I can tell if I’m like getting mad at my family for nothing. I just have a lot of feelings under the surface. I’m like, oh right. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I gotta go deal with this and just let those emotions take over. And then it usually is me just crying on the floor. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
<affirmative>, I cry in the shower, so I get that. Yes. Or on a walk, I’ll go outside and I’ll probably be that crazy lady. Yeah. Car walking around the neighborhood while crying, but
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Not crazy. Not crazy, you know, it’s just, yeah, it is. And then you feel like, okay, something happened there and now you can go about your day a little bit easier. Oh man. Grief and sobriety.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah. I’ve read and listened to a lot of quit lit and podcasts Yeah. And stuff like that. But one that really stuck out, and I think it was in this naked mind, was about emotions and how you kind of have to ride the wave of the emotion. You know the word emotion is in emotion. Yes. So it’s not stagnant, like you’re gonna move through it, so you just have to stick with it and feel it out.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So true.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
When we’re drinking, we’re just masking that, trying to cover it up and it’s still there. We’re gonna have to deal with it one way or another. We’re just kicking that can down the road. So
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Totally. We’re kicking the can down the road. We’re not feeling it and we’re adding like anxiety and a headache to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
<laugh> and not sleeping well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And not sleeping well. And so then even when the alcohol’s worn off, which that takes a while, then we’re still dealing with the effects of the alcohol and it’s like, holy shit. It’s just like you’re getting deeper and deeper into this hole of emotional angst and you don’t even realize it. Yeah. But now, like being free from alcohol is the only time that I could look back and be like, holy shit, that was a shit show.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That was emotional shit show
Speaker 2 (23:53):
For sure. You know, one thing I really enjoy about being alcohol free is like this season of parenting I’m in, my oldest doesn’t drive yet, although he would love to have his license. I just can’t trust him quite yet. Yes. So I’m like the teen taxi driver. So Friday nights I’m driving them to where they wanna go or picking them up and I really did not appreciate this until I gave up alcohol. Like they can call me at any time of night and I can pick them up and not have to worry about being drunk.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I love that feeling, you know? And since I’m not numbed with alcohol, like my relationship with them is so much better, more present. I’m hearing what’s going on with them and it really just has kind of improved things all the way around. But I love just knowing that on Friday night I can just pick up and drop them off or pick them up and not have to worry about
Speaker 1 (24:48):
That. Yes. That clear conscience of like, there’s nothing to hide here. There you are, you’re stable and you’re steady and you’re just you all the time. Yeah. And they can count on you and you can count on you. That’s how I feel too soon as if I’m like driving home from a party. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I’m like, just pull me over. Just do it. Right? Yes. Like I want you to just do it so that I can be like, no, see I’m not drinking <laugh>.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah. That’s so good. And what about your husband? So is he still drinking? Like how is that? So
Speaker 2 (25:19):
He is, but we are polar opposite. He is super disciplined and yeah, I am like a D H D and kind of all over the place and so Yep. He would never be a weeknight drinker. He set a rule for himself that he doesn’t drink on weeknights and yeah. He even doesn’t drink that much on the weekends. It would kind of have to be an occasion. This
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Seems to be like a popular thing. You’re one of many who I’ve talked to who is like, yeah, my husband still drinks, but he’s kind of like, fine. Like he does it here and there, it’s not a thing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s how my husband is like, it
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Seems it is a lot like your husband, you know, I’ve heard you talk about he likes to drink when he goes to play golf. Yeah. That’s kind of how my husband is. It kind of has to be an occasion. He’s not gonna have a beer while he is watching a football game at home on Saturday. If he goes to play golf or we go out to dinner, he’s gonna order a drink, but he really doesn’t drink at home much. Yeah. But I will say that when I was drinking the most before I started to take a look at things, he never said anything to me, but I know that he noticed. I feel like I got a few side eyes like, yeah, you’re really gonna pour a glass of wine right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
So I do appreciate that he didn’t tell me mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I knew that he did and I’ve started to feel like guilty that I was Yeah. I got the impression that he knew and
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah. And you could feel that. Yeah, we know we wives, we know, we know what our husbands are thinking. What What they’re <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah. I will say now that, now that I don’t drink, it’s kind of funny, when we go out to eat, he’ll order a drink and I don’t, and the first few times we did that, I think he expected me to. Yeah. You know, he didn’t say it, but it was just kind of like, oh, this is one of those things you’re doing. You’re not gonna do it tonight. Right,
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Right. You, it’s like, not when you’re with me, not when we’re out to dinner.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah. But our dinner bills is a lot less expensive. <laugh>,
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Isn’t it? So crazy. And like dinner goes way faster too. <laugh>. It does. Like my husband and I’ll go out to like our dinner date and then not drinking and stuff. Well, we’re like, wait, what? We have like two and a half more hours. What? What do you wanna do?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
What’s your favorite? Like do you have a go-to cocktail or anything that you like?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
No, I, I drink a lot of
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Seltzers. Same
Speaker 2 (27:30):
If I’m out in a restaurant, I’ll order club soda and cranberry with lime. Yeah. It’s kind of a UR blanket to me to have a drink that looks like a cocktail. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s really how I got through my first few holidays. I would be drinking cranberry and diet Sprite. Yes. Uh, in a pretty glass. I could walk around with the same cocktail glass as everybody else. And that worked for me.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
That’s a great tip. Like with the holidays coming up and holiday parties, I’m gonna do a separate episode on that. But yes, having like planning on what you’re gonna drink and having it in your hand, so there’s not that moment of someone giving you a drink or handing you a drink or asking what you wanna drink. You’re good.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah. And I still put it in my pretty wine glass. Maybe it’s muscle memory or something like that.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
And also to go along with that, bring your mocktail to the party. Yeah. I never had mocktails before. Right. When I hosted it was like, you’re out of luck if you’re not having wine or beer.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
<laugh>. Right. You like tap water.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah. Bottled water.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, I know. That’s a good, good tip. For sure. Well, Sarah, you’re a survivor and you’re so inspiring. I love this story. Thank you. I just am honored. I’m so sorry for your loss, but I’m so thankful for your vulnerability and sharing and opening up to us.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Well, thanks for what you’re doing. I really enjoy the podcast and I think you’re reaching a lot of women and I’m glad I could be a small part of that today.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks. I’ll see you in the group. Is
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That right? Sounds good. Thanks. Bye.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Okay, bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Silver Mom Life. If you loved it, please rate and review it wherever you listen. Five stars is amazing. Also, follow me on Instagram at the silver Mom life. Okay. I’ll see you next week. I’m gonna go reheat my coffee. Bye. Why are we doing an ad again? So that we can tell people about brand new information, a pop culture and political podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Say it in a way that doesn’t sound like game show host.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Okay. Do you wanna be in a room of overeducated, douche bags and feel comfortable? Brand new information is for you.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
What’s it gonna take to put you in this podcast today? We have brand new information on sale for free, free wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah. We might not break the political and pop culture news of
Speaker 3 (30:04):
The week, but we put it right back together for you.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
That’s right. Listen, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
