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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.
(00:59)
Hello, happy Monday. This is a solo episode. I am in my closet. My three-year-old is on his iPad. My eight-year-old is on her iPad. Everyone’s on their iPads. Guys, it’s fine if your kids are on their iPads. This is just a little psa. I support it. You are doing what you need to do to take care of you, and that is important. Could we just all agree that we hold moms to impossible standards? Okay, that’s not what this podcast is about. But uh, yeah, I haven’t done a solo episode in a while and I want to try to do these, I would say once a month just to kind of touch base, sit down, share my thoughts. It’s funny because this is kind of becoming sort of like an audio journal for me. I don’t know if that’s interesting for you guys. It’s really helpful for me.
(01:55)
This is where I kind of process my thoughts and it helps me, you know, in this whole journey of sobriety. And I am now three years into it, three years. I celebrated three years, January 19th. I was gonna come on and share, you know, revelations from three years of sobriety and what I’ve learned. And I went back and I shared a blog post when I had two years of sobriety. And I looked back at that. That’s on my kind of suite. I’ll link that in the show notes. And it’s funny because it’s not like I’ve had any sort of groundbreaking realizations in the extra year of sobriety. I would say what has hit me now more than ever is that my sobriety, I can really feel it in the small, insignificant moments. And those are the ones that are most important to me. And those are the ones that I think are so easily missed when alcohol is in the picture.
(02:57)
And the thing about those moments is I don’t even think we realize we’re missing them when we’re drinking. And it’s only when we stop drinking and we are awakened to those small, insignificant moments that feel so important and meaningful in sobriety, especially in motherhood. Like last night, my husband was reading a book to my three-year-old and it was a book from my childhood that my parents saved. And so I was walking by, I was doing laundry, and I was getting the dirty clothes out of gray’s hamper and I just looked over and I, I heard my husband reading the book. It sounded familiar. I looked over, I saw the book from 1980, and I just had one of those, man, this is what it is, this is what it’s about right here. I don’t wanna forget this and I don’t wanna miss these moments. And I think had I still been drinking wine, I think I would’ve missed that.
(04:07)
I think I would’ve been thinking, let’s get these kids to bed. Because guess what comes after I get to drink some wine and veg on the couch. Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t look forward to watching reality TV on the couch after I get the kids to bed. This just means that there was nothing clouding my brain. I was fully present to enjoy this small, so easily missed moment that make up a life and make up a really full happy life. And I think that we miss so many of those when we’re drinking, I think we become numb. Everything is blurry, everything is fuzzy. And even if you think, well, I mean I only have two glasses of wine. I know when I was drinking even two glasses of wine and I would Ms. Small moments, I just would <laugh>. That’s just the signs of it.
(05:04)
So I guess that’s my biggest takeaway from three years of sobriety. And I try to capture those moments and really remember them by jotting them down in my journal. I’m trying to have less pressure when I journal. Like I don’t want to have to like make sense in my journal. I’m all about bullet points. Like maybe I’m just looking at it today, like, okay, what do I not wanna forget happened today? And then I’ll just jot down some bullet points and that is definitely one of them, man. So good you guys. So yeah, I had kind of set aside this episode to talk about three years of sobriety. Woohoo. But also I wanted to do a dry January wrap up because the last time I sat down to to do a solo episode, it was talking about dry January and kind of some tips and inspo and how to look at it and maybe a shift of perspective.
(06:00)
If you miss that, go back and look at it. It doesn’t have to be about dry January in particular. It can be about any sort of break that you’re taking away from alcohol. Um, and you can easily apply it to that. So apply it to February. What is it? What can we call this? Free February. Hey, I like that. Yeah, so go back and listen to that. It was at the beginning of January. And you know, I talked a lot in that episode about trying not to spend the month counting down to alcohol, because I think what that does is that focus is still on alcohol even in dry January. And that kind of defeats the purpose. You know, being sober or alcohol free or whatever you wanna call it, is not just about not drinking alcohol. It’s about the things that are going to slide into the place of alcohol. And so it’s not an absence of something in my life where I sit today three years sober. I do not feel the absence of something. Instead, I feel this fullness of things and actions and thoughts and habits that have taken the place of alcohol. And those things are abundant and I feel filled with those things.
(07:23)
It’s the alcohol that was depleting. But I think a common misconception is that when you’re sober, it’s like you’re pining away for alcohol. And it’s like, God, if I could only drink that and man, you guys, ugh, that might be how it feels in the beginning. I totally understand that because you’re still trying to figure the shit out, but that is not what it is. That feeling will not remain as long as you try to figure out why you were drinking, what was your trigger, what was it doing for you, what was it providing you? And then what can be put in its place that will actually help and actually nourish you and actually be better for your mental health. So spending dry January, counting down to February 1st and when you quote unquote get to drink again, I think is a waste. And yes, it’s not a waste for your body.
(08:34)
Any sort of break from alcohol is great for your body. You’re giving your body a chance to man to see what it can feel like and what it’s designed to do without putting a horribly addictive toxin in. I mean, that’s never a bad thing, but I’m saying as far as shifting your perspective on life without alcohol, counting down to when you quote unquote get to drink it again, I think defeats the purpose. And you might have missed something if you spent January kind of just white-knuckling it and counting down, like I said, in the dry January episode, I’m a runner, and it’s like running that first mile over and over and over again, and the first mile sucks. Um, your body’s trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. Your mind hates it. Like it’s just everything is in chaos and trying to figure out what is happening.
(09:31)
But then the second and third mile you really settle in, you find your pace, all the kinks are kind of shaken out, and you just start to feel comfortable in it. And that’s what happens in sobriety as you keep going, as long as you try to figure out all the shit that was behind your drinking, as long as you do the work. I wanna just leave you with this. I’ve talked a lot about, you know, dry January, dry July, sober October challenges and my kind of love hate relationship with them. I love that they get more people talking about sobriety and being super curious and just this whole podcast. And my whole mission is to create a space where women, specifically moms, because we have been targeted a lot in the past few years to give us space to question and examine our relationship with alcohol, because we’ve been taught that if we do that, that’s an issue.
(10:35)
There’s a problem. You are a problem. You have to declare yourself powerless for the rest of your life to this substance even if you don’t drink it. And that’s not true. That’s fucked up <laugh>, because if we don’t question and if we don’t examine what alcohol is, what it’s doing to us, why we’re drinking it, whether we really even want to be drinking it, what role has it played in your life once you start opening those doors that probably if you were like me, you kept shut for a long time because there was shame, there was shame and guilt behind those doors of, if I really looked at the role that alcohol played in my life, how I acted when I drank it, things that I said that I would’ve never said, had had alcohol, not been in the picture, things I did that I would’ve never done.
(11:34)
Those doors, I think for a lot of us remain closed because it’s scary to open them and to really see alcohol for what it is. And we’re taught that if we decide to go on this journey, this sober curious or sobriety journey of questioning and examining alcohol and seeing it for what it is we’re taught, then that yep, we got, we have to go to aa, we have to declare ourselves powerless and, uh, forever be tied to it. And I’m telling you, that’s not the only path. If that’s your path, and if you have found strength in that path and purpose, that is great. I know for me, that did not work. I did, I did not see myself doing that. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t question and examine this substance that plays a role in our lives. Because if we don’t question it, and if we don’t examine it, then it is in control, then we don’t, we don’t even get a say, we’re just gonna blindly do it because we’ve done it.
(12:45)
We’re just gonna blindly keep drinking it because that’s what we’ve done for the past 20, 30, 15, 10 years. Because that’s what everyone else does, because everyone else is telling us to you guys, that sounds crazy. Sorry, sounds a little crazy. Especially when we question everything, we question what deodorant we wear, we question organic, everything. It really organic. Let’s, let’s hop on that website that tells us the, the top 12 dirty foods or whatever it is. We question. What’s in our skincare, what’s in our beauty products, what’s in our shampoo, you guys? These are just things going on our body. These aren’t things we’re ingesting and that go directly to our brain and are directly linked to problems with hormones and gut and fertility and linked to numerous cancers. And on top of that is wildly addictive. You guys, I don’t know if you know this, but uh, secret deodorant, that’s not addictive.
(14:06)
We have to be able to question this substance that has played a role in our lives and is probably still playing a role in our lives. We have to be able to question it and to examine what it’s doing, and then we decide if we wanna keep doing that. And if we don’t, it’s scary. I know, I know it’s scary. I know it’s scary to say, okay, I’ve opened those doors. I’ve scared the shit outta myself by learning what alcohol is. I know in my gut, I know that I want to figure out how to live a life without it, but I’m scared. And that’s okay. Fear does not mean you’re making the wrong decision. Fear does mean it’s too hard or that you can’t do it. You’re scared because you’ve never done it before because you’ve probably lived your whole adult life leaning on alcohol. And there’s no shame in that because we’ve been taught to do that. We are a society obsessed with alcohol. But you don’t have to be and you won’t be, you won’t. You’re not going to be forever tied to the substance and there is freedom from it. I promise you.
(15:29)
I reached out to you and I wanted to get some of your questions because I get a lot of questions. You know, every day on my Instagram, on my kind of suite and the sober mom life, I see a lot of questions go through the Facebook group, sober mom life, Facebook group. I get a lot of dms and I can’t answer them all, but I’m going to try to answer some here and then I’ll probably carry some over to next month’s solo episode. And also I will start doing, ask me anything, questions and posts in Patreon. So in case you missed that, come over and join Patreon for our bonus content. I do at least one bonus episode a week. I have my mom there talking about mental health. She’s a recently retired therapist. We talk about everything, the difference between shame and guilt and what it means in sobriety and how we move forward through the shame that we feel.
(16:29)
Maybe if our kids saw us drinking or how alcohol affected our mothering. We talk about that. We talk about the stages of change. I think that is, that’s a mind blowing one. We talk about choosing your hard and the idea that avoiding hard is a lie. That’s a fallacy we don’t avoid. Hard alcohol is going to get harder and sobriety is going to get easier. So there’s no escape from hard things. We’re strong enough to do the hard things. And there’s one path that you’ve probably taken that you know where that leads. And this is what I’ve started to think about. I’ve started to think about that alcohol’s not gonna change. You’ve seen alcohol for what it is. You’ve kept coming back to it. It continually disappoints you. I think if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast. You continually feel tricked and it is a continual source of shame and guilt and anger and anxiety and frustration, low self-esteem, low self-worth, all of that bullshit. Alcohol’s not gonna change. I can promise you that. Alcohol’s only gonna get harder. You though you can change if you start counting on yourself and start really figuring out what your relationship with alcohol is, what’s behind it, the reason for it, and start implementing things in its place that will actually help. And I have a lot of episodes on that you can change.
(18:24)
So come over on Patreon if you would like some more content. If you, I’ve gotten some messages saying you guys have recently found the podcast. You have binged it. I am so grateful for that. I can’t tell you how much I love creating this podcast. And I read every single review and I am just so honored that you have chosen to come here and keep coming back and supporting this podcast. If you need more content, if you’re wanting more content, go to Patreon. That is how you can support this podcast. I am keeping it ad free so that you don’t have those annoying ads to, you know, fast forward through so that you could just pop your AirPods in and not worry about that. So that’s how you can support the podcast. The levels are five, seven, and $10 a month. $5 will get you all of the bonus content.
(19:14)
So all of the mental health moments with my mom, all of the bonus solo episodes in their bite size, they’re like 15 to 20 minutes. You’ll get all of that for $5 a month. $7 a month will also get you the unedited video versions of every podcast episode that is on this feed. So you get to see when my three-year-old comes in and is like, you know, asking for more chocolate. And the answer is always yes, especially when I’m recording. You’ll get to see that those real life mom moments. That’s for $7. And then you’ll also get the bonus content and then the $10 level, you’ll get a shout out on here and you will get, I think we’re still trying to figure this out. So you’ll get the video episodes and you’ll get the bonus content. And then I think my mom and I are going to do a live meeting over on Patreon for our $10 members once a week.
(20:09)
Stay tuned on that. We’re gonna flush out those details in like the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. We have been having a Zoom meeting every Tuesday, and you can access that through the sober mom life Facebook group. And that’s at 11:00 AM central time every Tuesday. And man, you guys, I love those meetings. W we have so many wonderful women who show up week after week. We’re really starting to get to know one another. It’s, oh, it’s just such a wonderful place. If you are struggling in your sobriety, if you’re new to sobriety, if you have encouragement to give, if you wanna vent, if you wanna cry, all of it, all of it is welcome. There is no pressure to talk, no pressure to turn on your camera. Oh, I love it so much. And my mom is there too. So come, you can get to that meeting through the Facebook group.
(21:06)
I’m, I’m keeping it not secret, but I, I don’t want it public because I really do feel really protective of these women and their stories and their, and their struggles and their triumphs and everything that happens on that meeting I feel very protective of. So I will never drop that link somewhere outside of our Facebook group. So I’ll leave the link to the Facebook group in the show notes. One note about the Facebook group. So I’ve gotten stricter about who I let in. We’ve had some spammy stuff, not a lot for how quickly we’ve grown. I’m just shocked. I’m continually amazed at how many moms we have in our group. I think we’re up to 6,500, which blows my mind. And it, it remains the most supportive place on the internet. And I am bound and determined to keep it that way. If I see a hint of anyone being judgmental or not supportive, you’re just removed immediately.
(22:03)
There’s a zero tolerance policy of judgment. No thank you. Okay, I’m gonna shout out our top tier Patreon members. Thank you so much. So you guys, these are the women who pay $10 a month to support the podcast. I can’t thank you enough. This is amazing. Are a little, Patreon is just chugging away and it’s growing every week and I’m very thankful for that. That’s how we get to keep doing this. So thank you to Dana, Elena, Erin, Megan, Stacy, Jamie, Heather, Julia, Paige, Jen with two ends. Jennifer, Amanda, Stacey, Joelle, Wendy, Heidi and Jen. And I’m not saying last names because I know that a lot of you are still just protective of your sobriety journey and not loud and proud about it. And that’s okay. There’s no pressure to be, so the last thing I wanna do is say somebody’s name and then they’re like, no, why did you say my last name?
(23:03)
So I’m gonna stick to first names, but thank you to all of you for supporting. I cannot tell you how grateful I am. Okay, before we get into the ask me any things, and I had a lot, a lot of you guys ask questions. So like I said, I’m not gonna be able to answer all of them in this episode. I’ll carry some over to the next episode and then I’ll do a special bonus episode on Patreon. For the rest, I just wanna leave you with this thought about dry January. As we’re wrapping it up, I want you to remember that alcohol will always be there. I promise you, alcohol is not going anywhere. It’ll be there tomorrow. Tomorrow if you decide to go back to it, it’ll be there next Monday. It’ll be there on the weekend. It will be there if you decide to go back to it.
(23:53)
So just what if you didn’t decide to go back to it today? Not after you’ve come this far, you’re just getting started. You really are. And don’t let yourself get bogged down in the what if and how about this and what about when? And I don’t know, that’s just fear and fear. I know how powerful it can be. That’s just your brain tricking you into thinking. You have to have this all figured out and you don’t. The only thing you have to have figured out is that you don’t wanna drink today. That’s it. And then tomorrow we’ll deal with that tomorrow. So, all right guys, ask me anything.
(24:48)
Okay, dry January was easy because no planned events want to continue, but nervous about being at a concert sober in April. Okay, I get it. This is that fear that creeps in because it’s new. This is brand new. You’ve never done this before. You said dry January was easy because no events were planned. So you, you kind of just hung at home, you hibernated, which is fine, which is great. I stopped drinking January 19th, 2020. Someone would say that would be the worst time to stop drinking before the pandemic in the lockdowns. I would say that was probably the best time to stop drinking because I didn’t have to deal with anything social. I didn’t have to do it. I didn’t have to navigate all of that stuff. And there’s something that happened then is that I just got to focus on how I felt and how I thought about my sobriety and how I felt about it.
(26:02)
And as I got stronger then and as those questions that I had slowly or answered over that probably year, I felt strong enough then to take my sobriety to social situations. But I didn’t do that right away. I think a lot of us feel that we have to test it and that it’s not true unless we can test it out in the world and out in the wild and like, well yeah, I’m sober, but I’m staying at home. So does that even count? And ooh, yes, that counts because there’s a lot that’s happening in those early days of sobriety. As long as you’re on that quest to figure out what alcohol is, what it took from you and why you drank it and what you need now that you’re not going to drink it. As long as you’re figuring out the answers to those questions, then that time at at home when you’re hibernating and not being social, that is gold.
(27:08)
And that was for me. And so by the time then I was ready to be social, I was not at all attempted to drink alcohol. And actually I saw it with such clear eyes that I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe you guys are drinking alcohol. I didn’t say that, but I definitely thought it like I wanted to say, wait, don’t you know what, what that is? Don’t you know what that takes? So there’s a lot that can happen between now and April. So your concert is in April. And I totally understand being nervous about it. And what if you just allowed yourself to say, okay, yes, I’m nervous about it, but I don’t have to have that answer right now. I have no idea how I’m going to feel in April. So I would try as best as you can to do the work that you’re doing and to go on a quest for information you are going to excavate, you are going to think about the times that you drank too much.
(28:15)
You’re gonna open the doors to what happened when you drank, all of that stuff that brings up shame and guilt. You’re gonna open that. You’re gonna shine a light on that cuz like Brene Brown says, shame doesn’t like light. Shame thrives in darkness. And what happens when you start opening those doors that have been long shut and locked, then you start to see that alcohol is the common denominator. And then you really do start to look at it differently. So it’s easy for me to say, don’t worry about April, that’s a long time. But I’m gonna say, don’t worry about April. Not yet. Acknowledge that you’re nervous because you’ve never done it before and then continue to do your work right now. Also, man, there is nothing like a sober concert. You guys, you, you can actually like enjoy the music and you can remember it.
(29:11)
You don’t need alcohol to dance and to enjoy music. What I have learned, I was thinking about this the other day, is that music for me is an escape. I don’t need alcohol and music, I just need music. It’s a time warp to a different time of my life. I can lose myself in it. That’s an escape use that you don’t need alcohol for that alcohol makes that shit worse. You get to dance and listen to music and go to a concert and without the bullshit, without waking up feeling like horribly the next day you can, you can plan something the next morning, you guys a sober concert, I’m telling you, it’s where it’s at. Okay, tips for a girls trip. I will be the only one sober. I think this is similar to that. It depends on when the girls trip is. You know, I’ve talked a lot about deciding, so there’s a thing in early sobriety when you’re still figuring it out.
(30:18)
There’s a lot of questions, right? When you know, okay, I I, yes, I’m, I wanna do this, I wanna figure out this alcohol shit and I wanna see what life is without alcohol. That’s when you decide, when you have something coming up like a girls’ trip, first of all, decide if you have to go or not. If I was newly sober and I was invited on a girl’s trip and I was gonna be the only one sober, I wouldn’t go. And I know that’s a really hard thing to hear, I just wouldn’t go because it wouldn’t feel like I was nurturing myself by going, it would feel kind of mean to myself to make myself go and for me to put myself in that situation. And if there’s one thing that we need in early sobriety, it’s to nurture ourselves. And I would listen to what your gut is telling you.
(31:14)
If your gut is telling you it’s not a good idea, then that’s your answer. It’s hard to listen to our gut when we have been so used to drowning it out with alcohol, but our gut can tell us so much. I think that would be tough, especially if you are the only one sober. My biggest advice would be not to go and to know that that will not be the last girls trip that you will go on. If they are your friends and they understand what you’re going through, they will be supportive. They might be bummed and frustrated, but they will be supportive if you have to go, which I don’t, I can’t think of a situation which you would have to go, but if you’re still going to go, then I would decide that you’re not going to drink. I would not leave it up in the air and see how you feel.
(32:09)
Because that is kind of like walking in the lions den when everyone is drinking. You have to decide what you’re going to say to them. You have to decide your boundary around their drinking. And if that means that you get to leave whenever you want to leave, you get to go back to the hotel, you have to decide what you will drink instead. And then I would focus on the mornings. I always did that in my first sober vacation. I think I was, I was maybe three weeks sober and we went on our first family vacation and I just kept coming back to running on the beach in the morning. And that was really important to me to make happen. And I did that and I continually just kept coming back to that thought. And then when I showed up on the beach in the morning, I was so fucking proud of myself. And that propelled me, that propelled me to the next morning and through that next night. It’s not easy, but it’s harder than continuing to feel disappointed in myself, I can tell you that much. So I would say, if you have to go, I would do those things. Okay. How to educate others without making it seem like judgment on alcohol.
(33:22)
Hmm. You guys, this is what I have to navigate every day. I would say, I mean the judgment is on alcohol <laugh>, don’t put the judgment on the person for drinking alcohol. That’s what I try to do. And I hope that you guys feel that I judge the hell outta alcohol because alcohol is shit. I do not judge anyone who drinks alcohol because I understand we’ve been tricked and there’s a big difference between judging the drinker and judging the drink. And I don’t judge the drinker. And I don’t think it’s a weakness in the drinker if they can’t handle the drink. I think unless you’re a sobriety influencer, it might not be your role to educate people. If you’re talking about people in your life like your husband, best friends, I think close friends, family, I think that’s different. I tell you from my experience, you have to have really thick skin, um, to have a platform where you’re kind of talking about alcohol in a different way.
(34:23)
I thankfully do have thick skin because I’ve been an influencer since 2015 and I have heard everything about me and trolls or trolls and uh, I don’t believe anything they say. So I don’t know if education is the right way to go about it. I think the, the best way that you can influence those around you is by living a full sober life. You know, my husband and I had him on the podcast a while ago. He is not one to be told what to do. And if he felt like I was educating him, I mean <laugh>, he would check out. And so while I, I am sure I get on my soapbox a little bit, I try not to because I know that that’s just gonna turn him off the best way that I have been able to, I don’t know, I guess spread the light about sobriety to people in my own life is by just living a full sober life.
(35:26)
And that’s not fake. It’s not put upon it. I’m not faking anything. They just actually see, wait a second. She doesn’t feel deprived. She’s not wishing she could drink. She’s waking up early, her skin looks great. Hold on. What is this? So yeah, I would say the best way to influence people in your life is live in your life. Live in that sober life. Okay. How do you respond when in social situations? Someone asks you why you aren’t drinking? When I was newly sober, I think I would just say I don’t drink anymore. I didn’t like how it made me feel. I remember one time saying, I don’t drink. Um, I was tired of being tricked by alcohol. I guess that’s kind of my edgy way of saying like that I’m not the problem. Alcohol is, there are so many things you can say. If you’re not ready to say that, that you’re trying out not drinking you, you could just say, I’m taking a break.
(36:28)
You can say I’m not drinking tonight and leave it at that. You could say I’m driving. You could say I’m on antibiotics. You could say alcohol just doesn’t agree with my stomach. You can say, I think I’m allergic to alcohol. You could say I have a cold. You could say, I don’t know, I’m trying out life without alcohol right now. And so far I love it. There are just so many things you can say. I would practice and see what feels comfortable to you because I think this is one of those things that you should have in your back pocket. You should know what you’re gonna say when you put yourself in a social situation where there will be drinking. And make sure you feel comfortable saying it. I’ll tell you that the first probably five to 10 minutes of a social situation may be uncomfortable.
(37:14)
And it’s okay. You are stronger than the discomfort. I promise it won’t kill you. And then once everybody has their drink starts drinking, they forget. They don’t care. They will not care that you’re not drinking. If there is that one random person who keeps coming up to you, keep trying to get you to drink, she’s doing that because she wants to feel better about her drinking. I know that because I was that person. Not all the time, but yes I was. Okay. Do your friends still drink a lot or did you find a different group of alcohol free friends? I think both. So I, I don’t know if it’s the stage of life, but I don’t have friends who drink a lot. And now that I say that, I can think of some people <laugh>, some moms in my community in their forties who do drink a lot.
(38:08)
I guess I just don’t hang out with them that much. My close friends drink, but not a, not a whole lot. And I still feel completely fine and comfortable and they are completely supportive of me not drinking. You know, I went to dinner with one girlfriend not too long ago and she like scoped out the mocktail menu beforehand and she was like, yes, they have amazing mocktails. And I’m like, you know what? That’s amazing. Like, that’s so supportive. That’s how you could tell a friend loves you. That just means a lot. So if you are drinking and you have a friend who doesn’t drink, do that because that makes them feel very cared for. But yes, I also did find a group of alcohol free friends and we get together over coffee or dinner and sometimes we talk about sobriety, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we just talk about life.
(38:58)
But it’s even at three years sober, there is some sort of comfort knowing sitting down, there’s not gonna be any sort of, oh, right, you don’t drink, there’s not gonna be any of that. Cuz we just all don’t drink. And sometimes the waiters hate us, but that’s okay. We always say, don’t worry, we’ll order a lot. And we have really good tipper. So yeah. I do think it’s really important to find a community of sober women. And that might be online at first, and that’s okay too. Come join us on the Sober Mom life Facebook group. It’s amazing what it feels like to read posts that you could have written and you think, oh my God, I had no idea that somebody felt the exact way I do. I think that’s such a great feeling when we’re struggling internally and we’re always in our head and we get so down on ourselves and why can’t we and we should be, and why am I like this?
(39:56)
And God if only in all of those things. And then to see just on a screen written out right there in front of you, your thoughts and it’s someone else’s post. I think that that’s really empowering and powerful. There’s nothing like a sober community <laugh>, it’s pretty intense because we just cut through the bullshit. It’s like, no, no, no. I, I don’t wanna talk small talk. Like there is true connection through sobriety and I think it’s the one of the most wonderful things. No questions. Just thank you for being an inspiration 25 days and never loved myself more. Oh my goodness. Brit, I’m gonna say your name. Thank you for this. That is amazing. I am so proud of you. Never loved myself more. Wow. Wow. Wow. I, I have chills. I think that’s a really good one to end with because, oh man, for me, that’s what sobriety is.
(41:00)
It’s a coming home to myself. It’s being able to count on myself and to trust myself and to get to know myself, get to know what I want and what I need. And to know that I can trust my gut. I can hear my gut, I can hear what I want and what I need. After years of drowning that out, I can actually hear it. I’ve learned to speak my own language and oh man, I think it’s the best feeling in the entire world. Brit, thank you for this and thank you to all of you. I cannot thank you enough for coming back week after week and, uh, supporting me as I navigate this sobriety influencer journey. I just, I thank you so much. So make sure you come back, come back next Monday. We are taking a little break. The real sober moms, we have reached the end of our conversations, but they’re gonna be coming back and I, I just have to figure out how and when. But stay tuned because we will have more real stories from real sober and sober curious moms. And I also have a lot of fun guests coming up. Yeah, guys, we’re doing it. We’re doing it. And I could not do it without you, so thank you. Thank you. I love you all. Let’s meet back here next Monday. Bye.
(42:44)
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.
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