Storm Prep, Motherhood & Sobriety
Looking in the mirror, I know I can be trusted.
That first August in North Carolina, we heard the inland Raleigh area where we’d moved rarely saw danger. We would simply see a lot of water.
But, people would freak out. Bread and milk would disappear from the stores. Power might flicker. It might be advisable to get bottled water.
Because of these reports, I took my three sons to Target to buy water and rain boots. In the checkout, I also scanned storm supplies for myself: a box or two of wine and some beers. The twins sitting in the joint shopping cart and the baby in a carrier on my chest, I waited patiently for the clerk to check my ID and approve the sale.
“Stocking up on Mommy Juice, huh?” Some other Target mom may have said.
“Gotta be prepared,” I may have replied.
We might have laughed together, knowing that an incoming storm may be cause for concern but, also, celebration.
And so it was: Storm prep. Maybe some bottled water, but mostly boxed wine.
I may have poured myself a glass when we got home. And when I say poured, I mean popped the cardboard piece out of the box of wine, opened the spout, and filled a pint glass to the brim.
Or, I may have waited until my husband got home—because if I started drinking too early, that would confirm that I indeed had a problem. Holding off until 2 p.m. or so kept me in the clear from really being an alcoholic.
I don’t recall how we spent that next rainy day. Surely watching the baby crawl. The toddlers toddling. Little Baby Bum songs on TV. Drinking wine, I’m sure. Mimosas, maybe.
Storm days were fun days. A day off. A day to indulge.
Two seasons later, the twins were four, the baby now two—not so much of a baby anymore. I was in the process of making my husband my ex-husband.
I had cobbled together days or weeks of sobriety here and there. Now, I was in my first long-term, multi-week stretch. It was once again summer, and that meant hurricane season in North Carolina.
I was sitting in my bed, as I did all those nights of early sobriety, when I was so bone tired, I just crawled into bed and fell asleep after my sons did. Back then, I didn’t know what to do with myself in the evenings. Sometimes I listened to meditations, sometimes I lay on my acupressure mat.
It must have been around 7:45 p.m. A text came through that their daycare would be canceled due to a storm.
Was it raining outside?
I could load up the boys and tell them we’re going to get chocolate Kinder eggs and bottled water, and I could just slip a box of wine into the cart, I thought. It wouldn’t be a big deal, my mind told me. They used to love these late-night store runs, where I would insist we desperately needed goldfish or strawberries or the like, and then plop a twelve-pack in the cart.
And then, reality, remembering, the letdown: Oh, right. I don’t drink anymore.
It was as though these thoughts had grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, shouting: This! This! Here and now! This is your chance! You have a reason to drink.
That next morning, I was home with my three sons. I drank too much coffee. The boys were stir crazy, but I was not hungover.
I was, in fact, so not hungover that I thought it was a good idea to set them up at the table and play with water beads. I had seen them on Pinterest. I was sober. I was a good mom. We could do crafts.
Sober or not, water beads turned out to be a tremendous pain in the ass. But still, I did not drink. I was finding water beads for months after.
Between those hurricane seasons and now: A few false starts and stumbles. Three three-day relapses four or so months apart.
Grasping, negotiating, clutching at, and finally holding fast to acceptance that I can’t take a drink of alcohol. Not ever. Not once.
The acceptance that moved from my brain to my heart and finally seeped into my bones that I am an alcoholic, and an alcoholic who chooses not to drink, one day at a time.
A million meetings. Podcasts. Books. The Luckiest Club, This Naked Mind, Quit Like a Woman, The Big Book. Journals and candy bars and meditations and cigarettes. Burritos and seltzer water.
687 days.
I have listened and learned and prayed and meditated. I have improved my impulse control. The neural pathways have reworked themselves and evolved. When I think a drink might help, I can follow the delusion all the way through.
I have accumulated an immense toolkit that I can reach into: pick up the phone (I prefer texting), eat something sweet, move a muscle to change a thought, go for a walk, take a warm bath, do something, anything, anything at all but take a drink.
When an off-hand thought comes through and startles me, seemingly out of nowhere, when I sit down at a restaurant, maybe, or travel through an airport, or put my toes in the sand on the beach:
I can recall waking up and hating myself.
I can recall the immense fear of looking at my phone.
I can remember swearing at 9 a.m. that this wouldn’t happen again and the immense despair from noon to four before finding myself at the Food Lion slipping a bottle of wine into the cart, and maybe some tall cans of those High Gravity IPAs I liked so much.
The no, the saying no to the first drink—that muscle strengthens. And I can choose, just for today, to not drink. I have come to associate not drinking with making a loving decision for myself, and today, that is the choice I make.
I was lucky. My children never got hurt. There were no outside indicators that their safety was compromised—as I now know it was, back in those drinking days.
These are the things that haunt me. These are living amends I make to my sons and to my sons’ father, my ex-husband. This is why, when I get up in the morning, I look at myself and I am able to say I am trustworthy—and to know that I am wholly trustworthy, not just that I got away with it over and over and over again.
By the time this season’s first storm approaches the Raleigh area where I live, it has been downgraded to a tropical depression and it’s just a rainy day.
Storm day doesn’t mean drinking day.
My sons stomp in puddles in their rain boots.
I am approaching two years of sobriety.
To know I would be able to care for my sons in the event of an emergency. To remember, fully, reading them books the night before. To know that I can look at myself in the mirror and say with complete confidence that I—just me, just little old me—can be trusted. To be wholly trustworthy.
What a gift.
Now you.
We’d love for you to share in the comments:
How have your priorities shifted since getting sober?
Have you found new trust in yourself in sobriety?
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Thank you for sharing so honestly and with such heart, Kristen. Your story is such an important one for moms and parents out there.
Such a helpful read. Thank you. I’m on day 12 and your words make so much sense. 💫