Tag Archives: recovering mom

Take Only What You Need But No Matter What Keep Going

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Dear ~K,

It has been quite a year! Too many days stuck inside and a life without our normal everyday movements. So much hatred and sadness, so many people hurting, struggling and suffering. It is a lot to take in everyday, often with no escape, and no place to go, like so many of us stuck at home with everyday pressures feeling more like a pressure cooker. On top of all the crazy outside I am dealing with a marriage that is failing, my world feels extremely small, smothering and so overwhelming and vast with loneliness all at the same time.

If I could summarize my days for the vast majority of the past year has felt stuck on repeat.  Things go smoothly for a while then they explode in front of me, like bombs going off in every direction and no place to run or hide.  My husband and I argue all the time, in front of our kids, which I hate but even if I try to hide or end the argument he persists and it escalates until one of us leaves the house or finally just stops answering.  The depth of the cracks in our marriage are deep, I am not sure they can be mended and I don’t believe my husband has the maturity, emotional or other wise, to make counseling work.  I also know I have work of my own to do to be more caring and show empathy and understanding. 

Although, it may appear this summary of the state of our relationship is cold or unfeeling it is not.  There is no need to say more here about that topic. I will have to make decisions in the new year that may be difficult but also owe it to myself, my husband and my kids to work on myself and my sobriety before I go making huge changes that have consequences on others I care about deeply. 

Looking back on 2020 the “major” events that happened, many have to do with my boys and the outside world. To start, I am proud of my kids they have done a very good job, during this pandemic, trying to manage their studies, grades and sports all while being quite isolated from their friends and normal life. I had an awesome review at work and proud of my accomplishments, I also applied for a new role which I will be in throws of interviewing for as we return in the new year. My younger son made a great lacrosse team and my older son was on fire for basketball over the summer and made his high school freshmen team as well.  My dad made it through two surgeries and is healthy! My father-in-law also made it through a minor surgery and still doing well in light of the onset of some memory issues.  Both my children got awesome grades even during a pandemic. I feel fortunate that our boys could go back to school with masks and have some normal days and be around other kids and learn in a classroom setting. My husband has been interviewing and will hopefully find a job in 2021.

I feel disproportionately lucky about the state we live in and the fact our boat club stayed open this summer.  We have been lucky in the sense that we are not locked down like others are but at the same time it is scary as you watch the numbers rise and the people around really not caring about others when they refuse to wear a mask.  My family and I were so lucky that we could go out on the boat, be on the lake and away from it all for hours. It was a wonderful escape for the kids and our family. Although not free of the fighting still a good escape for all of us from the boredom of the everyday of COVID life.

As I think back on 2020, I have learned many lessons, a few I would like to share include 1) I have matured a great deal over the past two years alone and I am proud of myself. I react differently in so many situations, I have the clarity to not tell myself stories, I am not drunk or hungover all the time and I don’t wake up not know what the hell I might have said or done the night before 3) I have grown in my sobriety, realizing that my journey may not always be a straight line and when my sobriety was meant to stick and I was ready for it to stick it would and has 4) I know everything is not my fault and recognize I need therapy and that I has many things I need to work through to support my personal and emotional growth, not to mention my sobriety 5) I am leaving space and time to let my emotions and understanding of situations unfold, not running from one fire to the next, that usually set myself to divert from the real things I need to sit with and give time to 6) I don’t need to be codependent and others can figure it out for themselves (this one is a work in progress) 7) Other peoples’ reactions and choices really don’t have much to do with me and I can just them go 8) I am a strong woman who is smart and learning more about myself everyday 9) Being sober is not just a label for me it is the pursuit of my best life 10) It is real life to feel all your feelings and have real authentic relationships 11) Sometimes things fall apart so you can rise again from the rubble even stronger. 

To move forward we often have to move through the unknown or dark places.  I feel like I have discovered quite a few things about myself this year and I know there is much I want to leave behind.  Though somehow I struggle to put my thoughts together in a cohesive manner about what to leave behind in 2020.  Not because I don’t have baggage or instances that I want to leave there – maybe I just have too much that I don’t want to take forward and that is the scarier part of what to leave behind, without leaving everything.  I am going to take a crack at the major things I can think I want to leave here in this year and not take with me in 2021 or any year moving forward for that matter.

I will leave my guilt and shame over things I did or did not do while drinking over the years.  I also want to leave my anger and resentments towards those people who have made choices to harm or send ill will toward my family.  I want to move through co-dependency and leave my resentments behind against my husband. No longer will I give so much weight to what others think.  Leaving all self-doubt and guilt behind about taking time to sit with myself and discover more about myself in order to grow. I am leaving the need to disappear for the benefit of others and giving others so much power over me and my life.

There are things I also need to start doing in 2021 like looking at my own shit, getting help from a therapist to understand why I am the way I am and why I choose to drink so much.  I want to explore more about myself, learn how to write, do more outside, not be held down by others and to know how and what to fight for in order to be the best me.  I need to start recognize when I am behaving badly, even when it is for a good purpose or point and change my behavior. I need to believe more in myself and find my strength without making others feel stupid. I need to reach out and put myself out there to make friends and more connections regardless of what I believe others think.  I will stop being everyone’s keeper and start encouraging and empowering my family to do things for themselves so I don’t get resentful.

Minutes, hours, days, months and years continue to click by we can make use of them, embrace them as they come or sit on the sideline and curse them out but they will keep coming – the choose is mine what I do with my time, my days, and my life.  Starting today I choose me and all the mess, brilliance and wonder that comes with my life.  I get to take back the wheel, steer my direction but still let things unfold before me. My wish for myself and my life as I move into 2021 is to love myself more, be true to myself and be open to path that begins to show itself in this new year.

I love you and always will. You are not a lost soul, you are bright burning star that brings light to many.  Keep searching for your spark, it belongs to you and you alone!

Love you always and forever,

~K from the Hill Country 

The Ever Changing Tides Inside of Me

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My emotions have always been all over the place, often too big and sometimes way too small.  I am often surprised how quickly they shift, as they go from really high to really low, in what at times, can feel like seconds and other times from day to day, without warning or cause.  I have been trying to pay more attention to my emotions in sobriety and how they have remained the same and/or shifted from when I was drinking, and may I add heavily. 

At first I had to identify that what I was feeling were in fact emotions. I had stuffed everything down for so long that the only emotions that ever surfaced were rage and hatred.  When and if these emotions came out they were alcohol fueled and over exaggerated so anything that was truly underneath (the true emotions) had no space or place to reveal themselves.  

I liken these past displays of alcohol fueled emotions as high tide, turbulent, unrelenting and with a strong undertow that would pull me and everyone else around me deep under the water, throwing them around, swirling in my rage with no way to escape for air.  Have you ever been in the ocean during high tide, when the sets of waves just keep coming? You quickly gasp for a breathe of air, haaa!, then dive deep under water again only to get tossed around like crazy as the wave rolls over you. Then you rise up, gasp for air again, only to be smacked in the face by the next large wave in the set. The salt water in your nose and mouth and you are yet again tossed about only to rise again, hacking and coughing, gasping for air yet again, before the next huge wave comes bounding down on you all over again. 

Why not get out of the water you ask? Well, in this space of relentless waves that pull you under and drag you back out again and again, it is hard, very hard to make your way out of the water and get back to shore. You have to drag yourself out, planting your feet with each step to pull yourself forward and ensure you don’t get pummeled by the next set of waves in the tide’s fury.  When you finally reach the shore you are exhausted and sometimes to be honest, terrified because the fury of the sea is much bigger than you and you realize how small and weak you really are compared to this ever changing vastness of water. Remind you of anything?

I compare my raging alcoholic self to high tide, as I can only imagine what it has been like for my family, through the years, as my drinking increased and my episodes of high tide raging, over dramatic pity parties would ensue.  I would always rage and wallow in how no one cared about me or how I did everything and no one helped.  You name it I raged about it.  My boys and husband must have felt dragged under with no way to rise and take a breath from my yelling and screaming.  I can only imagine how scary that must have been for my kids.

There were and definitely are times now of low tides of my emotions, these are mixtures of feeling alone, lost, or sad but also grateful, that I am now more calm and can handle these emotions more gracefully.  When I was drinking however, these low tides were the swirling, gradual stewing of emotions that I did not know how to deal with. These emotions would come in and out, never staying long enough for me to examine them.  They were just out of grasp, as they rolled in and out, just like low tide on the shore. I could wade in the water of my emotions but would never go too deep, as the water was too calm and I never really knew what was underneath.  I would try to wade in these low tides of shallow water of my emotions, but I could not because it hurt too much.  Shame, guilt, sadness and fear rolled in and out just like the tide, slow and steady never rising too much but just enough to make me wallow and feel unsafe, floating in the vastness of some very dark water, all around me like at the beach. As we wade out into the sea during low tide, small little waves and unclear water lapping all around me.  The low tide is enjoyable for awhile until the fear settles back over me, that I need to stop drinking and change, stop this insanity, all of this is just too scary for me so I drudge myself back to the shore for my perceived place of safety – drunkenness would prevail to “save me”.

“Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.” ~

Maya Angelou

Now, in my days of sobriety I am trying to identity my emotions more and understand why I still dive into the high tide of a raging sea inside of me.  But now I find the surface more quickly and take breathes between each wave that thrashes over me.  Yes, high tide still comes my way emotionally, but I am learning how to dive deep and rise again, bursting upward to breach the deep emotions that often try to drowned me. Instead of allowing the raging and screaming tides to devour me I stop and examine what is happening for me.  I am working hard to look at myself and stop blaming everybody else and drag them deep underwater with me.

The low tides are still there as well, and although now days, I venture further into the water to find out more about my emotions, I still enjoy the peaceful lapping small waves on the shore of my life, keeping me more grounded than I ever thought I would be.  Now, I can wade into my emotions, when I want to and walk out for quite a while with my emotions only stay about knee deep.  The further I wade and walk out gives me confidence that I can just be with my emotions, all of them versus just the previous few, knowing I can return to shore whenever I need to and never drag anyone else under with me.

I will forever love and fear the sea, just like I do my myself and my family.

~K from the Hill Country 

1, 2, 3, 4…My Resentment Grows No More

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When you start this journey of sobriety you begin with a day 1.  Anyone who is on this journey has one, a day 1.  Some people may have many day 1’s, I know I have. As the initial days begin to tick by you start to zone in on the number of days.  Particularly in the beginning as the first days are so important and help you get the strength and excitement to keep going.  You find strength and celebration in each day. 

As the time ticks by, it can feel like a contest of sorts, but it is not.  Each journey is different and each path is our own. But still as people around you share their days you worry what if I mess up? I will fall behind, I will lose my days and the gap between us will grow.  I repeat there is no competition, only the one you create in your own mind.

Then when you trip up, relapse as some say, the clock starts again for you but not the others.  They keep going and soon I found I was far behind, wishing I was where they were. But I had no one to blame but myself.  I drank, they did not, they kept going.  

It is a very lonely feeling, one of shame, pain and angst. Questions like why can’t I do this? Why am I such a loser? When will I get this right? But you see these are the wrong questions and the wrong approach.  My brain would jump to resentment as I heard the days and months of others, knowing I could have been right there with them.  I would beat myself up, still do at times. I felt weak, lost and forgotten. 

But I have come to realize everybody did not leave you.  They are paving the way for you.  They are clearing the path so you can follow them, making it easier for you to keep going.  No matter how many times you fall down, they will come back for you, pick you up and help you keep going.  This is not a race, or a destination, this is your life and for me, my sanity. 

Flip the script as you listen to others share their days, see them as personal triumphs for your fellow sober trail blazers.  I have come to realize this journey is mine and mine alone, but that does not mean I have to do it alone.  I need help, I need others to show me the way, to help me not get lost. I want the numbers, need the days to be honest, to keep ticking along.  I know now, the counting of days from others is my inspiration, the light that leads me on my way.  I need not compare or resent, I need to embrace and applaud others, as I know those before me are my guides to my long term sobriety. I am grateful for those before me, always.

~K from the Hill Country

The Roots, The Branches and The Leaves

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Every tree has roots that hold them to a place in the dirt.  Ever tree has branches or off shoots that showcase buds that turn into leaves.

We often refer to our families of origin as our family tree with branches of members and leaves that off shoot and come and go, change shape and color, and re-budding time and time again.  As we grow up and begin to grow our own family, we begin to plant our own set of roots and those roots begin to burrow onto our fiber and our being.  They hold us to the place, time and people that make up our family.  Throughout my life my family has grown and morphed, by this I mean, my family was sometimes made up more of close friends and their families, other times my extend family of origin and then changing again to my family nucleus made up of my husband, two sons and two dogs.

The nucleus has also included close friends as they have come in and out of our lives over the many years we have been together but nonetheless our party of four plus two fur babies has been the constant for a very long time now making up our immediate family tree trunk and branches.  

Our roots run deep and our trunk although slightly crooked stands tall nonetheless.  Time and awareness can make us either starve the tree of water, prune it too far or neglect it in other ways.  Or you can water, fertilizer and prune the tree so that it flourishes.  

In my case I have waffled on feeding and watering our family tree and at other times starving it causing the trunk to slant and roots to shrivel and loss grip on the earth and place that holds the tree in place.

As the years have gone by and so many things has changed one thing has remained and progressed that has caused the neglect to the tree. The drinking and havoc it has caused.  Although the drinking ramped up there were other things under the soil that kept starving the roots.  The resentment, the depression and the growing belief that the love was gone.  

I can’t say the exact point in time the love seemed to slip away or exactly why.  Perhaps we were never meant to be in the first place but just never took the space and time to examine that.  I know I play a big part in that ambivalence as I have for the vast majority of my adult life.  Always looking for the person who would sweep me up and be the one.  Always moving too fast and never really knowing who I was or what I wanted.  

But in this family tree there really was not an option I felt for walking away or moving away like I had done so many times before.  This time there were other people involved, my boys who so badly needed a sturdy tree that could help them change, evolve and grow so they could be the strong branches and the allow their leaves to continue to bud, grow, change and repeat.

When we make choices to hide or dissolve into our bad habits we leave very little space for those we love or who love us and need us.  I think about my actions, distance and numbness everyday.  I am defiant as a mother due to my own choices and the circumstances I have put myself in.  When the roots don’t hold you or your family to the ground you can falter, making your responses or lack there of worse creating even more distance between you and the ones you love. 

So this where I have the choice to open up for my children and keep the other parts of my sorrow and loveless marriage out of the picture.  Rise up and be present for my family or at least part of it.  There is no real choice to uproot the tree right now as it would devastate the branches and leaves forever.  Instead I need to look inside and be stronger, bring more clarity and peace to my home and not drink.  Remove the fog, the fuzzy head and shame just be real and be there for my boys.  I can take care of the rest later when it is safe to uproot the tree without damaging the branches and the leaves.

I share this here because I don’t want to falter, I will come back when it is tough and read these words so I know to stay the course and remember the to feed, fertilize and water my family tree.  After all it is a family tree, and my family deserves more and better from me.

~K from the Hill Country

So Small

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I am so small
My world is so small
I live life rolled up in a tight ball 
The space I possession just becomes less and less
My life is a fucking mess


My world is so small because I shut out all
Leaving no space or time for anyone to pay a visit at all
Shutting everyone out except for one who will definitely lead me to fall


I am small because I choose to be 
I was not always this small but my addiction restricted me 
Too small to raise my voice for help
Ego to big to really look at myself


My life is a mess because I gave up
Reigning chaos and letting everything go amuck
Never caring about anyone else, only me and how numb I could get


I am so small because I ignore it all 
Living among the lies that strangle me 
Minimizing my space so there is no way to get free 
Smaller and smaller my existence gets like anvil I can’t get off my chest


My world is so small as I have left room for only drink
I hide away so they won’t see my world is made up of only one thing
All else falls away or gets pushed out, there is no more room in my one room house


My life is small
I am small 
The mess of if all is so big it has devoured me
Small will just have to fit since I am too afraid to set myself free or ask for the key

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

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Kids often make very bad choices and do things that are not very smart, especially teen age boys.  This is most definitely the case with my son and he often makes choices that leave me scratching my head for understanding, or just down right angry.

I wish I could say he is the only one making bad choices but that would not be true. I don’t always do the right thing or make the best choices, and definitely NOT when it came to drinking.  So, maybe I am really not acting any better than he is?  Maybe I am not showing up in a way that is supportive enough for him to feel loved or strong enough to say no to stupid decisions.

It is so easy to say things like, “why would you think that was a good idea?” or “why didn’t you say no I am not doing that?” or “stand up for yourself when you know better!”, but maybe as a parent who drank I should be asking myself the same questions.  I knew better, I knew it is not a good idea to drink too much, and I had to learn to stand up to myself or to others and say no to a drink or drinking too much. I knew I should not be drinking so much in front of my kids or around them like I did for years. I knew I was not fully present when they needed me most so how can I say to my son, “make better decisions!” or “think before you do the next wrong thing!”

When and how did I realize two wrongs don’t make a right? 

The scenario where it really hit home for me was when I was drunk and got a call from the police to come get my son.  My son made a bad choice with some friends on this particular Friday night, the what he did, is not really important, but the state I was in was not good either.  Another red flag I was drinking too much, and my son needed me and I was in no shape or a state of mind to help or support him. 

We get a phone call that he and his friends are being held by the police and we need to come and get him. Well, that was the first part of the problem, second part of the problem was me! There was no way I could drive, I had been drinking and thank God I had enough wits about me to know I could not drive myself there to pick him up.  So, in the Lyft we go and pick him up.  When I get there I am frustrated, annoyed and embarrassed because I am not really in any shape to have a conversation with the police.  All in all, there was not a big incident, but my tone and manner with the police on the scene was harsh, short and clipped, which was probably not required.  Why was I that way? Well, short answer is two wrongs don’t make a right.  1) I should not have been that intoxicated 2) I was totally ashamed and embarrassed about the fact that I was drunk and should have been in a better state of mind, sober enough to help my son which led me to you usual reactive state of defensive and angry.  So my tone was clipped,  I became angry with myself, my son and the fact I was not present enough for the situation or to handle it with grace. 

Every time I reflect on that night I am still embarrassed and angry with myself. Now, you might be saying it was not a big deal. It was a Friday night and you were relaxing at home and had a few drinks that is nothing to feel bad about.  But the reality is that if something bad had happened to my son or the other boys he was with I would have been in no condition to support or comfort him.  How would it have looked if I showed up at a police station drunk? Or the hospital drunk?  That is the story on repeat in my head. I can’t imagine how my son would have felt if I would have had to retrieve him from the police station with all the other parents and I was drunk!  Or if I had to come to the hospital if he got injured or one of his friends would have been injured, I would not have been able to comfort him or care for him in the way a mother is supposed. I can only imagine how the other parents would have reacted toward me and where the blame would have fallen in the mix of the kids and who was responsible? My drunk state would have definitely focused blame toward my son and his home life and role models.

So, believe me when I say two wrongs don’t make a right, and sometimes they can end with two very bad “wrongs” which creates an even bigger mess.  These moments of inebriation and being checked out pile up for me like empty bottles in a garbage can and I am trying to figure out the equation for two rights = love and support. I know always being sober is one of the right things for sure.

One thing won’t fix it all

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We are always looking for the quick fix, the instant gratification, but we know it really does n’t really exist.  Most things, almost everything takes work, most of the time hard work.  Fixing things is not always easy and can be messy, frustrating and challenging.  If you are like me you avoid those things by looking for the quick fix or just sweeping it under the rug.  I am speaking to emotional things here not the overflowing toilet or the broken toy for my son.  The stuff we try to fix about ourselves or within ourselves. 

For me that is drinking, to start anyway.  I kept telling myself if I fix that everything, else will fix it’s self.  Really? How could I be so naive to believe that if I stopped drinking my marriage would magically get better or my relationship with my children would just instantly be perfect like Leave it to Beaver?

The things I drank over were vast, motherhood, relationships, shame, inability to be perfect, worrying about how other people would treat me or my family, sports, childhood disagreements for my kids, the list goes on and on. But these things to drink at and my feelings were so much deeper I just never took the time to look at them, I would just observe them and then drink them away.  Well, at these that is what I thought. These feelings and worries never went away in fact they began to amplify, and over time become overwhelming to the point I would have so much anxiety It was hard to breathe and I shifted to a shell of myself and a dark place that just kept getting smaller and smaller with what felt like no escape. 

I never really realized that I was drinking to avoid, numb or just live in denial about how things were transpiring in my life and how things were becoming messier and messier due to my drinking and checking out.  I did not really fix things.  I denied they existed, got defensive about them and when asked or confronted I would fly into a rage. I often cried in secret when it all became too much and about what a failure and fuck up I was as a professional, wife, mother and friend. I would drive home from work in the dark and scream at the top of my lungs because I had no outlet accept to drink. Those primal screams were terrifying, crazy and I seriously believed I was starting to loose my mind.  My reality was slipping away and I knew the curtain was coming down on my reality, soon I would truly be found out or I was going to go some place very dark that I was not sure I would be able to come back from.  

When I finally realized that drinking too much was going ruin me and that I was using drinking as way to not really address anything I was terrified of. By that time it was getting out of control and manifesting in very bad ways. Resentment, shame, anger, fear, and failure, worry and most important I think a lack of love or caring about myself or some of those close to me.  The resentment and shame made me more anger, which in turn meant many outbursts, lashing out, blaming others, being mean and hateful. 

My ability to love my boys and husband was getting further and further away from me and I was both terrified and ambivalent at the same time.  Who had I become or should I say who have I always been, this scared little girl who hid from everyone and everything, never letting anyone in so they could not hurt me.  There were moments in time I would have been happy to walk away, free myself from all of their shit and lack of respect for me.  But there was the other side that I knew if I turned my back, I would lose myself forever and devastate the people I loved.  

I stopped drinking twice now for good stretches of time, not years but 3 and 4 months chunks of time and many things changed for the better but new things emerged or became more clear which also terrified me.  

In these periods of time, I became more engaged with my boys and talked with them vs. yelling at them and being impatient.  I could rationalize with them and discuss things to work through them versus huge blowouts and long stretches of hatred and shame.  I would listen to them, most importantly vs. talking at them.  I spent more time with them and was more available. 

Those were the good things.  The other things that emerged were how much I was resentful of my husband and how much I very much hated the way he talked to me and treated me at times.  The verbal noise and disrespect was blurred and far away when I was drinking or caused reactions that were not healthy but when I was not drinking I was able to see things clearly and my responses were not combative or childish.  They were mature, thoughtful and came from a place of clarity and strength.  I would shut down arguments and call him out when he was creating stories or future tripping where before I would spiraled with him and been overly anxious and always worried about why people did not like me, why I was the problem, why I was weak etc.

When I stopped drinking I would be able to shut down unproductive conversations.  I would simply walk away after it had started calling out the fact my husband was telling himself stories or calling him out on his behavior, including a rationale explanation for why it was not right and I wouldn’t stand for it anymore.

I started questioning what I was doing with my life.  What I really wanted to do, who I wanted to be with and how or if I should make different decisions for the future.  I was starting to dive into how I go to this place, how I was not the mother or in the relationship I wanted to be.  You see it all stems back to the things we don’t want to fix or take the time to learn how to fix.  We just look for the quick fix which in my case became drinking. When I was younger I would just pick up and move so I did not have deal with the mess I made in my currently world. I would run away from everything and everyone.  I would blame everyone else and never examine myself.  In all honesty, I did not even know how to look at myself or my behaviors or that learning to love yourself was a thing.  I was what everyone else wanted me to be.  I would move, I would switch jobs, friend groups, anything I could to escape myself but you know the old saying “no matter where you go, there your are looking back at yourself in the mirror.”

I would try to change myself, want I liked, who I liked so that I could move forward.  Never stopping to do the work to fix what was really going within me.  I kept jumping into new relationships and looking for those relationships to take everything away, the fantasy of finding “the one”.  

I would go back to drinking during these two stretches only to realize very quickly things would go right back to the same place, no progress to the me I wanted to become. I would go right back to isolation, just not engaging, checking out completely.  Disappearing quite honestly. And that shook me to my core!

Now that I have sober AGAIN for a good stretch of time, I am trying to do the right work with the right tools.  Even if it leads to hard discussions, choices I am facing them.  I will not rush, or move fast but make very solid and investigated decisions.  I will take the time and re-engage, work my way back to who I want to become and how I want relationships to be, healthy, mature, nurturing, loving and open/honest. 

There are no quick fixes, there are no magic spells, there is only the work that makes us stronger, smarter and more alive.  I am in this for long haul and time is important but this is not a race and I am not looking for instant gratification.  Only love and admiration.

Why Ya Gotta Be So Mean!

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We all go through life and encounter people who are just not very nice.  It is enviable I guess, although I often wonder why people need to be so mean.  As an adult we learn to understand why people may come across as unfriendly, rude, stand-offish and the ultimate in your face down right mean.  We know these people maybe very insecure, have terrible home lives, are full of shame or just need to make others feel bad to make themselves feel better.

With all those things in mind I am still perplexed and bewildered why adults, who should know better, act like spoiled crazy ass brats! I guess we live in an age where people don’t need to know one another or make new friends.  Everyone judges everyone before they even know anything about them, either by making their own judgements because someone may not look the same as they do, or live the same way they do.  Then, there are those who judge based on what they have heard from others and just want to be part of a click.  Watch out the click is very fast to turn on you if you make a mis-step.

I have really been pondering all the reasons why people are unfriendly and down right rude or mean.  I have seen and experienced this lately with my kids and our family.  I try to be the person who does not judge, or make fast impressions and give people time to warm up.  I am not in race or need to impress others and seek out friendships that are real and honest.  I don’t need to be friends with everyone nor is that my goal as I know it is for some.  Give me a few good friends and all is good!

So how do we maintain good examples for our children when they encounter mean people? How do we stay strong and maintain a good face when adults are mean to us, whether they are judging us or hearing things from others about us.  When people turn their backs, don’t talk to you or wave how do we not get sucked into their swirl? Especially when you secretly drink too much and are riddled with anxiety, shame and self loathing. This combination of hatred from the inside and outside can be enough to send anyone into swirl that may not be possible to get out of.

I am adult women who has amazing career, traveled the world, been a friend to many, a good mom and wife.  I pride myself on helping others and being there for them when they need help or someone to listen.  So how it is that more and more I find people who are not friendly, “don’t need any new friends” and basically don’t care if you exist and make that very obvious. They don’t like you because of jealous about you, kids, kids abilities at sports, or the perception of more money. This list goes on and on.

If I told you that it did not bother me I would be lying. I find it hurtful, mean and so “high school” to be honest.  I will not apologize for not being just like them, or look like them. We all choose different paths in life.  No judgement here I proclaim, but damn people there is no need to make someone feel like dirt or less than because they don’t conform to your made up model! 

When these types of behaviors happen to my children I try so hard to remain strong and help them through “be the bigger person”, “rise above it”, “understand that it really is not about you.”  But damn, I just want to squash those other kids and parents for their mean, hateful and irresponsible behavior.  I am dying on the inside while trying to hold it together for my children who don’t understand what they did wrong or how to maneuver through the mob mentality that is trying to take them down or lock them out.

So how does this relate to the topic of drinking?

Well, think about what happens when you mix the external negative forces with the internal negative forces. It becomes an incredible force that literally traps you in a shame spiral and a state of panic, anxiety, and self hatred. You doubt everything about yourself, you begin to believe you can’t do anything right, you’re so afraid of more daggers being throw in your direction OR that they will catch on to the fact you’re drinking way too much and turn up the hatred and badmouthing.  

Literally, for the past 10 years or more, this has been my life and the absolute pain and isolation that comes with not only the addiction and paranoia. Our addictive brains make these outside forces of the mean and hateful things, so much bigger and all consuming as we can differentiation the reality from our distorted view of what people are doing to each other to earn some perceived space in society.  Bringing everyone else down to raise themselves up.

Now that I am not numbing and hiding any longer, I am facing these bad circumstances and working very hard to be present and provide clear guidance for my children.  It still hurts and my heart gets broken more often than not, but I will take every dagger they throw at me just to ensure I raise a child who can stand own his own two feet and earn his spot in life.  I truly hope our society can grow and move forward to care about each other vs. running over people to get their perceived place in life. It is like my mother always told me, “you never know what goes on behind closed doors.”  

Although I continue to keep my door open even though it exposes me to the draggers of others I am showing my children the right way to treat people.

Such a dark place for children to grow up in these days but at least my children have a sober mom.