Booze soaked world !!!!!

My Goodness I live in a booze soaked world ! It's every-bloody-where. No wonder so many people struggle with the goddam stuff. It's so normalised.

Me and my 12-year-old just drove around delivering letters to families from the local Scout group as part of a fundraiser.. the letters were for a special wine offer!! Oh how we laughed at the irony of the situation. Here was a sober housewife, one who wrote a book about getting sober, one who promotes sobriety all over social media, blogs and runs a website for people who are getting sober.. delivering wine promotions around her neighbourhood!! Don't tell anyone!! (Whoops, too late).

Should I have not been doing it? Well sure, I could have taken a little personal stand and not.. but I'm part of a group working hard to raise money for our Scouts going to Jamboree and someone else came up with this idea and I wanted to do my bit to help out.

And this is the world I live in. One where selling wine is a good way to raise funds because a lot of people will buy it (we get some money back from the wine company for every bottle/case that we sell).

While we were driving an ad came on the radio about daylight savings which came into force today.. it went "Don't forget clocks went forward this morning...so you've got one less hour to recover from your hangover." Wtf??!! I had a rant to Mr 12 about how this sort of line being said on a 'cool' radio station makes it seem totally ok to be hungover and also how expected it is that many people are hungover on a Sunday morning because getting drunk on Saturday night is what we do.

This is normalising alcohol and boozing and hangovers!!! But this is the world I live in. One where  mainstream radio stations reference hangovers in relation to clocks going forward.

I could have taken a wee stand at this point and switched stations in protest but then they played Sia Cheap Thrills and I love that song.

Mr D has just arrived back from the States (yay!) and he made a comment about how noticeable it is when you fly into New Zealand airports that you are greeted by a huge wall of booze in Duty Free.. "and everyone is running for it" he said.

Booze soaked society. Booze soaked country. Booze soaked world.

I could feel angry about all of this or sad and left out of the 'fun' gang or a host of other emotions. But I don't. I just feel grateful and relieved to be free from that boozy trap and living my life without touching that shit ever. As I've always said.. there are many clever people working hard to try and change the big picture.. I just want to focus my energies on me and my truth, and on anyone else who is being honest and brave and wants to change their relationship with alcohol.

So today after having just felt the full force of my booze soaked world, I'm calm in my space and all the more determined to help other people get free by shouting from the rooftops at any available moment BEING SOBER IS AMAZING!!!! RECOVERY IS AWESOME!!!! I AM SO HAPPY I NEVER TOUCH ANY ALCOHOL EVER!!!!!

Love, Mrs D xxx

A reader seeks advice....

Last week I travelled to Rotorua to attend the Cutting Edge addiction conference. It was AWESOME!!! I really loved it. Such a treat to get to sit and listen to people talk about a subject that is absolutely 100% in my wheel house.

The theme of the conference was 'transformation' and there were loads of people sharing about their own journeys in recovery. I cried more than once - boy had some of them experienced incredible turnarounds. I also learned heaps and made some great connections. So glad I went.

I also got to meet an awesome lady who was 29 YEARS sober (!!), she was my Air BNB host, an artist and very smart and cool. I also hooked up with some lovely community members from Living Sober who were having a meet-up in the area at the same time. All in all it was a great wee break from my normal life.

My normal neighbourhood life has NOTHING to do with recovery and addiction. This trip away was EVERYTHING to do with recovery and addiction. I feel hugely enriched from the trip.

Home now and back into the grind, working like a demon on my new book. I have a ridiculously tight timeframe and desperately want to meet it but am not sure if I will. Every spare moment when the boys are at school I am writing, with only a short break in the day to walk the dog (which feels annoying to have to do but is probably good for me).  Mr D is traveling away for a week on Saturday and then it's the school holidays.. so I'm going to be super-busy doing household/parenting stuff on top of the work.

But it's ok. I can only do what I can do and I don't want to be a stressed-out nightmare of a mother so if the deadline has to be stretched then so be it!

This new book is a follow-on memoir .. covering the next-stage of my recovery (mindfulness and stuff). It's harder to write than the first one. But I'm happy with how it is coming out so far.

On another note I have just received a comment from a reader on an old post from August and thought I would re-post it here so that maybe some of you lovely readers could reply to this person. (if you are reading this post on email you'll need to visit my blog so you can reply!).

I would love to hear your advice for this person as I know there is much wisdom floating around this online space....

I wonder if any of your readers have felt the same way as I do now? I have been drinking steadily for 15 years and have been contemplating giving up booze and living a healthier lifestyle as I feel so totally rotten and unhappy. I made that decision last weekend and have now been sober for a week - maybe it is early days and all the nasties have yet to come out of my system but I still feel miserable, tired and very vunerable. I think the drink may have covered up something that was missing in my life, a big hole that is still not filled - how do you find that? I feel that if I don't find what it is then I could easily start drinking again because I am not feeling great like so many others have mentioned on the blog. Am I being too impatient? Has anyone any suggestions or hints? I would be very grateful to hear them, thanks :-)

Leave a comment below and hopefully they'll see your reply.

And now I'd better get back to writing!

Love, Mrs D xxx

FIVE YEARS SOBER! (Honesty post).

Today I am five years sober. Yes!!

I want to put those exclamation marks to denote happiness because I am super-happy to be living alcohol free and am super-proud of myself to have turned my life around. And this morning especially I woke up so, so, so, so happy - joyous really. I was on a real high! But then things just got busy and real.

Truth is I spent today running around after kids.. one kid got sick and spent the day by my side, another was in a swimming competition so we went to watch him race, and the other kid finished school at lunch-time because the teachers were having a union meeting. And then they had playdates and activities and stuff. It was a very kid-centric day.

And I had a headache for no obvious reason. And at one point I cried a little (not sure why).

If you'd been looking at my social media accounts today you wouldn't know any of this - I've been sharing up a storm, all pictures of me smiling and looking delighted and holding up signs with big '5 years' on it and stuff.

And it has been a lovely day in many ways - I wasn't exactly lying on my Instagram and Twitter and Facebook feeds.

It's just that ordinary life is far more ordinary and gritty than social media accounts can ever really reflect (that's what blogs are for!).

And headaches are a fact of life and so are motherly duties and so is food guilt (yep still in a bit of a rut) and so are work commitments and so are indiscriminate tears and basically today was a typical day in the busy, emotional life of a sober housewife.

And that's ok and frankly it doesn't matter what today was like because today is just another day in a long line of sober days that I have been living since September 6, 2011.

These sober days are all shapes and sizes. Some are delightful, some are hard work. Some are boring, some are fan-bloody-tastic. Today was a mixture of all of the above!

And that is ok. That is absolutely ok.

I love being fully present in my wild and messy life. I love my boisterous, busy, demanding sons. I love my work writing about sobriety (and I have a new book contract by the way as well - very exciting!). I love my body even though it is not waif-like. I love my tears they feel like messages from my soul.

And most of all I love my husband who wrote me a card this morning that says "I'm so proud of you reaching 5 years, it's a remarkable achievement, that has had such a positive force on this family. Celebrate your day knowing that we think you are the brightest star!"

I will do.

Love, Mrs D xxx