Thursday, April 23, 2015

Count the very's in this post...

Today is a brilliant day to be sober!!!

The sun is shining strongly in my home town and I woke up feeling happy and optimistic .. a feeling that I always appreciate when it does come because not all days are like this.

Last night at 5pm I was stuck in some thinking loops and realised I was feeling teeny bit angsty & glum so I had to administer some sober first aid.

Comfy pants - tick. Oil burner on - tick. Nice drink - tick (a cup of yummy herbal tea, lemongrass & ginger). Feeling kindly toward myself for experiencing uncomfortable emotions - tick.

Also managed to NOT binge on any nasty sugar although I did have 3 mini packets of chippies.

Now after a great nights sleep I have woken up cheery! Just goes to show how feelings come and go.

It would be nice to  eliminate all tricky emotions but I know that is an impossible thing to wish for and we can't expect life to be like that.

Last night's mood made sense. I'd recently hugged Mr D goodbye - he's away overseas for 12 nights on a work trip. I hadn't had as many hours sleep as I'm used to. I'd had one work thing cancelled on me and attended a big meeting on another work thing.

None of this stuff is earth shattering .. but it's my stuff and it all affects my emotions.

Anyway I've just packed my boys off to school. I've got all morning to myself to do a bunch of things that have been playing on my mind (tax, dentist, glazier, electrician). I am listening to a playlist on Spotify my sister compiled of songs from our childhood (LOVE IT!!), the sun is beaming through the windows in my sunroom, I will also do a little bit of pottering in the garden and I am very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very happy to be sober.

Yes!

Love, Mrs D xxx

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Peaks and troughs....

The longer I live sober the more I get to know my natural rhythms and flows. Ups and downs. Peaks and troughs.

I've just been away from home for 9 days.. busy busy family holiday with loads of other people around and very little (no) time to myself. Looking after the boys on my own mostly (Mr D was only with us for the first 3 nights), driving from place to place to place throughout the days, not getting my usual 8ish-hours of blissful sleep every night, harder to keep eating healthily, extended family matters taking up more brain-time than usual, lots of planning and negotiating activities.

I'm not complaining, it was a great holiday! Really stimulating and fun. Lovely reconnecting with a lot of my family. Fun being out of my usual routine and away from my house which I usually spend endless hours in. And the boys had a super-fun time with loads of activities and sleepovers and input from grandparents, aunties & uncles, cousins and friends.

It was all good.

But I KNEW that I would come home exhausted and I KNEW that after about 3 days at home I'd hit a bit of an emotional slump. I know now from having lived raw & sober for 3+ years that a big energy output like that I've just had on my holiday takes it out of me and I'll have a corresponding 'low' in the week following.

I know this and I was prepared for it.

So yesterday it hit and sure enough I felt exhausted, a bit low and itchy and irritable. I ate bad food. I surfed mindlessly on the computer too much (note to self: stay away from dailymail.co.uk!). I felt a bit blah.

{ha ha while I was writing this I just went over to the dailymail.co.uk and spent 10  minutes looking at crap paparazzi shots of celebrities. I MUST BREAK THIS ADDICTION!!! Mrs D is Going Without The Daily Mail starts NOW!!!}

Yesterday as 5pm approached I realised I was stuck in this emotional rut and needed to do something about it. Not something to avoid it and make it go away (like drink 5 glasses of wine). Something to just acknowledge that I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I needed to take care of me.

So I went to my bedroom and put my comfy pants on (comfy pants are my new 'glass of wine'. I wrote a post about that on Living Sober - here). I shut the curtain and turned on the lamps. I fizzed up a bottle of soda water using my SodaStream and poured it into a large goblet with ice cubes and lemon slices. I lit a scented candle.

These things sound trite and dumb but it was more about what was going on in my head. I was calm and gentle with myself. I was understanding myself and my rhythms. I was accepting my mood for what it was - it made sense to me and was ok. And I was being kind.

Nothing escalated with my internal feelings or behaviours with my family. I didn't freak out. I just went gently through the evening and then fell into bed and slept for NINE HOURS.

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!! Try THAT with a belly full of wine!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm still tired today but that's ok too. I know that it will take me quite a few days to get fully back to normal. I know that because I stay fully connected with myself now 100% of the time. I don't blur myself and make myself harder to understand. I am sober, alert & aware of my feelings 100% of the time, and now only after months and months of living this way am I really starting to reap the benefits.

And people still ask me if I miss drinking. Ha ha no way. All of these benefits - like greater self knowledge - they can't be quantified. They are immense and wonderful.

That's my experience anyway.

Love, Mrs D xxx

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Easter!

Things are going well here for me in my housewifey sober life. I am busy - the whole family is - but it doesn't feel out of control.

I've been doing this mindfulness course through a great book and am blogging about it daily on my new blog called 'Mrs D Is Going Within'.

Maybe one day I'll start writing a blog called 'Mrs D Is Sugar Free' but I can't see that happening! I try hard to control sugar intake and manage to most of the time. Occasionally I have a binge (usually when I'm in a funk, no surprises there).. but I can recover from it pretty quickly.

If nothing else I am definitely very mindful about when I am going hard at the sugar! That's a step in the right direction isn't it?!

About to head away for our annual big extended family Easter holiday extravaganza in a remote isolated place. I'm really looking forward to it ... but it definitely does present as a wee bit of a challenge for me as I am the only sober person in the extended family. I've just written a long post about this on Living Sober. You can see it here.

But in general I am feeling calm and good.

I am still utterly delighted and grateful that I recognised booze was a problem for me and worked bloody hard to get it out of my life.

And I am still endlessly fascinated how things shift and change the longer I am sober. It was very noticeable to me after I reached 3 years in recovery that a new set of challenges were presenting themselves. I was starting to experience low-grade anxiety, found myself getting caught in thinking-loops about stuff that was tricky to navigate, and some of my parenting was less-than-calm.

Maybe this was because I wasn't so busy working on my sobriety. Maybe this was because parenting three boisterous boys would be challenging for even the best zen-master! Or maybe this was just something many of us develop in later life (and particularly women as menopause approaches).

I'll never know. But now I find myself delving into mindfulness meditation and it feels so bloody good.

I have a LONG way to go and a lot of practice to do but I'm committed.

Only sobriety would have bought me to this place. I'm grateful, I know Mr D is grateful, and without knowing it our sons are probably grateful too.

In my humble opinion there is nothing bad that can come from getting sober. And so much that is good.

Happy Easter and go easy on the chocolate!! I'm going to try to anyway...

Love, Mrs D xxx