SUNDAY 27TH NOVEMBER 2022
I have totally up-levelled my Gratitude practice this week so I’m putting my feel-good week down to that, rather than to the lack of alcohol in my system, although I’m sure that helps – it’s hard to ever feel great when your base level is mildly depressed and/or hungover. Last night our town Christmas lights got switched on. Normally my husband and I attend with thermal mugs of mulled wine, heavily laced with rum, to ignite the Christmas spirit and also to take the edge off the fact that our kids go through a small fortune in a very short space of time on the fairground rides that are always at the event. This year I made do with some non-alcoholic mulled wine and I was pleasantly surprised by how much it hit the spot, just the same….almost!
MY WHY
Last week I referred to my blog as being about Gray Area Drinking, because I guess that’s what it is. The term was apparently first coined by Jolene Park in her 2017 TED talk. I had never even heard of the term until I started my sober journey in 2020 and, as I’ve said before, to even hear that there was such a thing was a relief – not just me, then! It wasn’t till recently that I got around to reading an article she had written about it called Why The Gray Area Matters and realised how perfectly it describes my own relationship with alcohol. Here’s an excerpt from grayareadrinkers.com:
Maybe you:
- Don’t experience outward consequences from drinking, but struggle internally.
- Have silent conversations with yourself about your own drinking.
- Intend to have one glass of wine, but find it all too easy to finish the whole bottle.
- Stop drinking, for weeks or even months, then restart again, because, “why be so restrictive?”
- Realize the way you’re drinking isn’t helping you have the life you want.
Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.
I am so grateful to Jolene Park and her peers for highlighting that this gray area actually exists and for making it okay to talk about it. I no longer want to live in the Gray Area, I want to walk in the sunshine and chase rainbows.
Theme Tune: Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole