Amy’s posts from Australia spoke to my experience with family relationships improving when not drinking. Like Beth, Amy is an avid runner, a professional with a high stress job and a wife and mother. Reading every week about her empowerment through sobriety kept me inspired.
My 15 year old daughter and I just had a lovely, long chat, after making a healthy dinner together. We talked About boys, sex, friends, who’s doin who and who’s doin what. Very revealing!
I was reflecting a bit about why I’m so happy about this. It’s not that it’s unusual for her to talk to me about this stuff, as we have a good open relationship. but I was thinking about how I normally am feeling on a Sunday evening like this. I would either be :
A) drinking by myself or with my husband and pretty pissed by now & in my own little world.
B) hungover from the night before and tired and cranky. Not in any mood for meaningful conversation, but I would pretend to listen. The idea of cooking any sort of meal would seem a ridiculous expectation.
C) asleep/passed out, either because I’d started drinking early, because it’s a public holiday tomorrow…..or
D) pissing on with friends to get an extra weekend night in, due to the public holiday, which would leave me feeling like crap tomorrow. As that would be the 4th if not 5th night of drinking in a row.
I loved how present I was with her, how calm and interested I genuinely felt. It was the best talk we’ve had in ages. She told me she was proud of me for not drinking and happy that I am taking good care of my health.
So after a gloomy, flat, tired, cranky couple of days, with a dash of FOMO thrown in, this has been the best silver lining I could ask for. What my children think and feel is more important to me than anything else in the world. They matter like nobody else. I am so on the right path here. Sweet dreams all.
If you’re drinking too much too often Rethink the Drink.
Alcohol is the only drug that people will question you for Not using.
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