A sober Christmas in photos..

Ever since I joined Instagram I've been thinking more about images I can use to promote recovery and illustrate my sober life. Instagram (features big photos with captions as long as you like) offers a slightly different outlet to this blog (words mostly), Living Sober (loads of words and interactions), Facebook (some pictures and words and links) and Twitter (links mostly, short words and some photos). Each online outlet has a slightly different personality in my mind.

I'm a social media slut for sure - but I don't care! I love being sober and I love sharing about my sober lifestyle. It's fun, it helps keeps me off the sauce and hopefully helps some other folks too.

Anyway, this past week ended up being very much about photos for me - I kept looking for images that I could use to illustrate my third sober Christmas.

I found myself snapping a photo at my Mum's house one evening last week and sharing it on Instagram with the caption: "The best chamomile tea in the world, candlelight, toffee biscuits AND Christmas cake!! Who needs wine? #notme #sobriety #recovery".

A couple of my sisters commented online that this teapot of mums was the 'best in the land'. That was fun (we only communicate via social media in our family ha ha). They're right - it is a magnificent teapot that pours brilliantly, for sure.

Then at my sister-in-law's house a couple of days later I spied a bottle of wine in a ridiculous 'costume' that had been gifted to her by a client - couldn't resist snapping a pic of it and sharing it with the caption: "Devil in disguise?! #sobriety #recovery"

I mean, honestly……

The next day I spent an obscene amount of money on limes and ginger because I'd decided I wanted to take full control of my liquids and was sick of sugary sodas. Another photo opportunity for Instagram! This one captioned: "Got my drinks organized for Christmas! $25 worth of limes. Bloody expensive but only a fraction of what I'd have spent on booze in the past. Squeeze half a lime into a glass of soda water, add a few slices of peeled fresh ginger and ice cubes - sorted! #refreshing"

Then I made the drink and shared a photo of that on Twitter (told you I was a social media slut).

Got loads of favorites and comments including one from my friend JJW (he writes awesome posts like this and this on Living Sober) which said "LIMES! You high roller". Yes Jackson, you are right, they were bloody expensive and I am a high roller.

At this point I was private messaged a photo on Twitter of one of our Living Sober members smiling broadly and holding out a glass containing a creamy mocktail. The message read "Having fun trying different drinks! Yay! #soberchristmas". Honestly the sight of her smiling face made me cry. I wish I could share it here but won't to protect her privacy, but imagine a very happy, healthy, proud looking lady holding a glass with a straw sticking out of it in one hand and a bowl of cherries in the other.  This image made my day, no doubt about it.

Christmas Morning I decided to prep my drink ingredients to take around all the houses we were going to that day. Of course I had to take another picture to share (are we over-sharing here? Don't care, don't care!).

And look what a Twitter friend who goes by the handle @OhioSQ tweeted me back!!!

Ha ha, brilliant!!!!!!!! This made me so happy!!!!!! She's rocking the lime, soda, ginger combo too! See how great the online recovery community is? We all share, share, share and in doing so we feel connected and secure in our sober lifestyles. What's not to love…..

My online interactions through Christmas were going on left, right and centre. Living Sober was buzzing with people forging ahead with a non-drinking Christmas, the Members Feed there was full of grit, love, wisdom & support. (It bloody works that site. If you're not in there go join right now. It's free and you can be anonymous. You have to register to get into the Members Feed and that's where the amazing real-time support goes on.) Facebook - where I'd also shared a photo of my limes and ginger plus my Sober First Aid Kit - had a nice supportive feel to it with a few likes, comments and private messages coming in. Sober folks on Instagram were sharing pics that I was liking and commenting on and Twitter conversations were taking place. I'm sure all my relatives think I'm crazily addicted to the internet, truth is I was on-and-off the iPad a lot, but I still felt very connected to what is going on in the 'real world' and I think they appreciate how important my online world is to my recovery.

Last two pictures of the day - the bottle opener I won in my Christmas Cracker "#notveryuseful" ….

And finally me wearing reindeer horn hair-clips, eyes swollen from days of crying over losing a loved one, but smiling and happy. The caption read: "Feeling the Christmas love. Love my family. Love my friends. Love getting loads of scented candles! And most of all LOVE MY SOBRIETY!!!!"

Yes indeed. Hope everyone had a lovely sober Christmas. And if you didn't quite manage it this year, don't despair. Keep trying and you will get there eventually. You must - sobriety rocks. Really it does.

Love, Mrs D xxxx

A sober funeral...

Tears, lots of tears. A small gathering in the garden. The shining sun. And this from the New Zealand poet A.R.D Fairburn.

Farewell.

What is there left to be said?
There is nothing we can say,
nothing at all to be done
to undo the time of day;
no words to make the sun
roll east, or raise the dead.

I loved you as I love life:
the hand I stretched out to you
returning like Noah's dove
brought a new earth to view,
till I was quick with love;
but Time sharpens his knife,

Time smiles and whets his knife,
and something has got to come out
quickly, and be buried deep,
not spoken or thought about
or remembered even in sleep.
You must live, get on with your life.

Winds of change….

So that was really interesting.. lots of lovely comments on my last post about dealing with death and many of the lovely commenters shared that they'd lost a loved one and everyone thought they were being so strong but the reality is that they were boozing their way through their grief and not feeling like they were coping at all…

This: "People used to think I was so strong but in reality I was dulling everything with alcohol."

And this: "Every one praised me for how strong I was but in reality I was just a coward and tried to escape the raw feelings."

And this: "Like others I simply drank my way through my grief originally and was praised for being strong when I was anything but." 

We all probably look at people who seem to be "holding it together" and think they are doing well, and look at people who are "falling apart" and think they are doing it hard… but the truth is we just don't know how people are doing really. 

My lovely friend Sue said the other morning that she thinks sitting somewhere in the middle of "utterly devastated" and "coping marvelously" is probably the natural way to deal with grief. Sometimes crying and deeply sad, other times feeling calm and at peace with the loss. 

But who fucking know what is the 'best' way to deal with grief. Is there a best way? Is anyone judging? Is there a grief competition that we are all taking part in at one time or another?

No. We each deal with it how we deal with it. 

I choose to deal with it raw. 

My beloved step-father just died about one hour ago. He was a kind, generous, warm, giving, unassuming, lovely man who had been in my life for 22 years. 

An hour ago I was sobbing and went through fifty tissues. Now I'm calm and typing on the computer. Tomorrow I get on a plane to be with my family.

Sorry this is not very Christmassy but this is life and I am feeling the winds of change.

And by the way. I am so fucking glad that I am sober.

Love, Mrs D xxx 

How do YOU deal with death?

Because we are about to lose a dearly loved one (I know I said I was going to keep some of my life private but I can't pretend this isn't happening) I've become a compulsive researcher into how people deal with grief.

This is how I roll.. when I come up against something I research, research, research. My work has been all about researching (journalism & documentary researching), my studies have been all about researching (popular culture & media ethics), giving up booze for me was all about researching (how does one become a non-drinker?), when I first got sober I researched like crazy (how do people deal with emotions?) and now this.

I went onto YouTube the other night and typed in "How do you deal with death". Watched some great clips. This one was cutely animated and reassuringly told me "You can expect grieving to be rough." Also loved the way they illustrated the word 'grief' as a roller coaster and said of grief "there are peaks and dips and they don't always happen in predictable ways".

This man I loved - he was so reassuring about the process of death, he's studied near-death experiences and has undertaken major research talking to numerous hospice and palliative care workers etc to examine what happens for people when they die. His talk was fascinating and made me feel a lot calmer about the process.

There are sooooooo many Ted talks on dying and grieving and mourning etc.

And of course I've been listening to my beloved Tara. This talk and this talk are both great.

So where have I ended up?

Sometimes I feel very calm and at peace and accepting of what's going on.

Other times I feel deeply, heart-breakingly, devastatingly, gut-wrenchingly sad.

I think it's definitely what you could call a roller coaster.

Do I want to escape this feeling? Well… I'd rather my loved one wasn't dying, for sure. But they are and they will.

Do I want to numb the pain with booze? No fucking way. I am however eating as much as is humanly possible every day. It's like I can't possibly be full enough. So I know that I am hurting emotionally and I'm not dealing with that 100%. It's so dumb. But then again… emotional pain sucks.

I'll try harder not to eat so much from now on. Maybe confessing it here on my blog will help me with that.

Love, Mrs D xxx

Tears...

Today in the Members Feed at Living Sober one of our most treasured members who posts all the time has been sharing that she's been in bed crying all day and this is not like her AT ALL. She wrote "I want to be strong and I know this will just be a passing thing, but it just isn't like me to be lying in bed sobbing my silly wee heart out."

I just logged in to Twitter and the top tweet in my feed says "Let your tears come. Let them water your soul."

Today my tears are quick to come, they're popping out and then going back again, popping out and going back. We are about to lose a dearly loved one and it hurts, it's hard.

I never used to cry much when I was boozing. And I always say that I cry more now I'm sober. I said that to Mr D the other day and he said "yes you did" (cry when I was boozing) which kind of took the sober wind out of my sails. But he is right - of course I did cry when I was boozing - but the crying I do now I'm sober feels different. It feels more authentic and proper somehow. Gentler, sadder, more uncomfortable. He can't possibly know that.

I was talking to a friend the other day about something big and bad that happened to me 20+ years ago and I suddenly burst out sobbing when I was talking to her. Sobbing. This thing happened 20+ years ago! But I couldn't hold in the gulping tears. They came from way deep down. It was unexpected, weird, and uncomfortable. But since that day I've felt somehow better about that thing that happened all those years ago. Like just expressing the deep sadness with tears was enough to shift it inside of me a little. How amazing that letting those tears out did that.

Earlier today I replied to the Living Sober member mentioned above "These tears are important…let them come… feel the deep awful just fucking uncomfortable sadness and pain… feel it… I promise when you look back at this day and all the emotion that you let flow you will feel more at peace with it. Your feelings are real and there for a reason.. so feel them and let the tears flow."

Like I'm some goddam guru of life - I'm not! But I'm speaking to her based on my experience. I've discovered that crying, when coupled with feeling my emotions in a raw state, is very cathartic and powerful. I don't know why. Maybe the tweeter above is right, maybe our tears are watering our souls. That sounds kind of a bit kooky. Another way to put it might be "Let your tears come. Let them fall freely so that you may free yourself". Also a bit new-agey and kooky. What about "Let your tears come. It's how we are built to live". Hhhmmm, not sure I've nailed a snappy line about why tears are powerful. What about this…

"Let your tears come. They are fucking amazing."

Love, Mrs D xxx

What's not to love…?

What's not to love about being sober?

You feel strong, clear, in control.

You feel connected, alive, aware.

You feel brave, daring and tenderly vulnerable.

You have fun enjoying authentically fun and enjoyable things.

You work on proper techniques to deal with big painful things - and they work. so. much. better. than. boozing. ever. did.

You work on slowing down and accepting the mundane, gentle, plodding pace of life, and it's so calming and lovely.

You stand proudly aware of the obstacle you have overcome and can see in other people's eyes they're impressed too.

You've fought addiction and won, making you open and tender towards others still battling their way.

You appreciate that life is in the little things, in the simple moments, in the ordinary beauty.

You feel so grateful to have left behind a life of guilt and sickness and bullshit.

You feel delightfully immune to the lies we are fed by alcohol marketers and society in general - that alcohol is a positive, harmless addition to a person's life. Yeah right.

You feel free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do anyway.

Love, Mrs D xxx

Riding the waves of life!

I'm following some of my own advice for the silly season. Leaving functions early, choosing not to go to some at all. I'm definitely putting together a Sober First Aid Kit for our 3-night trip away over Christmas Eve/Day/Boxing Day, and I will be continuing to work my own programme of recovery right throughout the summer holidays. 

For me that means keeping my thoughts in the moment, listening to lots of Tara Brach, communicating with other sober people in the Members Feed at Living Sober, writing posts there and here in my original 'warm bath' blog, being active on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram (for goodness sakes I'm spread across the internet like butter !)….. and most importantly staying lovingly connected with all the beautiful real, live, flesh-and-blood people in my life. 

To do that I work hard to keep the house tidy and organized, wash, dry & fold at least one load of washing every day, make 3 meals each day and endless snacks in between, read stories, test spelling words, drive to swimming lessons and football games and Cubs meetings and birthday parties and school assemblies and drama classes, answer questions, explain things, listen and commiserate and share and advise and laugh along with funny (and not so funny but trying hard to be funny) stories. 

Basically my life is a very ordinary housewifey life with a bit of amazing connectedness going on through the internet. It's ordinary but for one glorious fact. I never touch alcohol ever.

I got lots of kind messages from people after my last post when I was quite annoyingly cryptic about things that are going on for me. It was very lovely (friends who I didn't know still read my blog because they never say anything to me about it were emailing and texting to see if I was ok!) and online 'friends' also reached out. Very lovely, thanks everyone. 

I don't know what else I can do other than be cryptic because I don't want to share all the details of my life but at the same time I can't regularly blog about my sober life and pretend things are peachy all the time and not tell the truth. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place - wanting to share and be honest, but also wanting to maintain some privacy. It's ok really, the only casualty is readers who might wonder what the hell is going on.

Life!!! Life is going on. Life in all it's fantastic, messy, painful, crazy, up-and-down glory. It's ok. I'm ok. I'm better than ok. I am gloriously connected in a real, raw & calm way with all that is swirling around me. I am riding wave baby, and I'm not going to drown.

Not sure that metaphor makes sense but hopefully you get my drift!

Bye for now….

Love, Mrs D xxx

Repeating myself...

Because I have come out from behind the lovely protective cloak of anonymity and most people around me know that I blog I'm far less inclined now to give details of what is going on in my life.

I'm not complaining, I chose to release a memoir about my drinking problem and then cry on prime time TV talking about it .. so I've no-one to blame but myself!

I continue to share regularly here on this blog and at Living Sober because I want to help others get free from the evil clutches of booze.. but I also want to maintain some privacy about my life.

So I can't (won't) share the details of a few big things that are going on for me… some things that have been occurring for me … some mistakes that I've made and some big shit that is going down.

But let me just say this.

Shit goes down.

It's hard sometimes. It hurts. It's uncomfortable. It's not nice. I'd rather not make mistakes, or have to feel emotional pain.

Or would I? Would I really rather sail through life with no trials and tribulations? Can anyone do that?

How can I love wholeheartedly and be open not feel pain sometimes? People get sick and die. People can be hurtful. That happens.

How can I be brave and open and avoid making mistakes sometimes? Without mistakes I wouldn't learn.

I want to stay open. I don't want to close up. I don't want to go into 'fright and flight' mode (to quote Tara Brach) and live in that scared miserable place. I want to be open and alive to all that comes. Even the hard stuff.

And that is why I choose to be sober, and to cry and to feel all the time and to never escape.

I didn't know that was what I was choosing when I decided to remove alcohol from my life 1170 days ago. But boy am I happy that this was the end result of my big decision.

I love being sober. Have I mentioned that before?

Love, Mrs D xxx

A post about exercise...

I just did a 44 minute walk around my neighborhood and I know that might not sound like a big deal but trust me, it is a big deal because it is the first official 'exercise' (of a structured nature i.e. I am walking for no other purpose than to get exercise) I have done in at least six months.

Have definitely let the exercise hole in my life get bigger and bigger and … yeah… haven't been doing any basically.

So today was a BIG day .. I got the boys off to school and then I parked my car by the library and got my iPhone out and opened up the new 'Map My Walk' app I downloaded on the weekend, and set it to start and then I put my iPhone in a little bag I was wearing over my shoulder and put my headphones on (connected to the phone of course) and hit play on my cheesy pop music playlist and then I WENT WALKING!!!!!

Honestly, you would have thought I'd run a marathon the elation I felt when I got back to my car 44 minutes later. It was AWESOME!!!!! I got super-hot halfway through because I was wearing a dress (!) with thick black tights underneath (!!) and it's coming into summer here and today is a scorcher.. so I had to stop at a bus-stop halfway and quickly take my tights off and tuck them in my little bag so that I wouldn't be so hot.

I think next time I'll dress a little more appropriately.

But I'd forgotten how true it is that exercise makes you feel soooo much better!!! More 'in your body' and alive and fresh and functional (as opposed to dysfunctional, my biggest hate as it reminds me of when I was boozing and feeling so dreadfully dysfunctional). I have known for a good few weeks now that I needed to get back on the exercise horse, I cancelled my gym membership before my book came out and haven't been doing anything since then other than the general running-around-the-neighbourhood that I do.

I have also started recording a show on the Living Channel called 'Yoga TV' every morning and have actually got on the floor in my living room and followed along with the 25-minute class a few times. Am going to try and do that regularly as well as keep up with the walks.

And I've decided I'm going to stop weighing myself. I'm eating well, very little sugar & wheat, and am sick of the scales dictating how I feel every day. So they can piss off.

That is all for now.

Love, Mrs D xxx

Totes Amazeballs!!!!!!

I've got that familiar feeling of life ebbing and flowing and I'm really appreciating experiencing all of it all the time raw … living sober is soooooo utterly fantastic.

Shit happens, I get through it, an easy patch happens, I slide through it, some more shit happens, I get through it, sleep is bad, I deal with it, sleep gets good again, I love it, shit happens, I get through it, things go smoothly for a while, I love it….. this is sober life.

And I always know what's going on. I don't get confused. I'm alert to things because my brain is never blurred. It's still gob-smacking to me the impact my habitual boozing had on my overall experience of life. Because I was high-functioning you wouldn't necessarily think the regular brain-bending was impacting me so greatly. But it was!

Taking the booze away has had a profound impact on my overall experience of life.

It's so freaking amazing. It's TOTES AMAZEBALLS!!!!!!!!!! A newspaper in NZ had that saying on their 'Going Down' list on the weekend.. meaning it's not cool at all and shouldn't be used. Dumb judgmental too-cool-for-school newspaper journalists being snippy about sayings that aren't hurting anyone. Totes Amazeballs!!!!! I'm not too cool for school! If I want to say 'Totes Amazeballs' instead of 'Totally Amazing' then I will!!!!! In caps no less with far too many exclamation marks!!

SOBRIETY IS TOTES AMAZEBALLS!!!!!!!!

The biggest thing is the calming down. When I was boozing I was always reaching, reacting or moving somehow to do something to cope (usually in the direction of a wine or 3..). It was kind of frantic head-whipping way of living.

Quick I feel pain - do something!! (something that takes me away from the feeling i.e. drink)

Quick I feel sad - do something!!  (something that takes me away from the feeling i.e. drink)

Quick I feel angry - do something!!  (something that takes me away from the feeling i.e. drink)

And it worked the other way too...

Quick I feel happy - do something! (something that 'enhances' the feeling i.e. drink)

Quick I feel celebratory - do something! (something that 'enhances' the feeling i.e. drink)

Quick I feel proud - do something! (something that 'enhances' the feeling i.e. drink)

Alcohol doesn't 'take away' or 'enhance'. It numbs.

Now I don't drink I'm never numb to these feelings. I fully experience them. With the tough ones I get a sort of weary (calm) resignation that there is nothing that can be done, so I trudge through the pain/sadness/anger knowing that it will pass by. And it always does. And with the good ones - happiness/celebration/pride - I feel them so much more! My happiness is pure, my pride is real, my celebrations are amazing, it's cool!

Drinking away the bad also meant drinking away the good. And you can't do that. You can't selectively numb emotion.

Brene Brown is big on this.. she says "To fully experience positive emotions, we have to be open to our negative emotions. We have to resist the urge to numb ourselves and cultivate the ability to be vulnerable without feeling compelled to protect ourselves. We have to develop a sense of comfort with our discomfort."

I think that's what getting sober has done for me. It's led me to develop a sense of comfort with my discomfort.

Hallelujah. I'm telling you… it's totes amazeballs, and I am deeply profoundly grateful to be living this way now.

Love, Mrs D xxx