My husband is away with work and I want to talk about the difference in my life – now and before I was alcohol free. Sometimes it takes wee events or old triggers to come along and help you realise the changes that have occurred.Back in the day, the drinking days, this would have meant I would have drunk. It now sounds awful to me that I would have a bottle of wine when in solo care of my child, but I did it.

I am not proud of that, in fact, I am ashamed of that, but this too is part of the process of giving up the booze. You stare hard and cold at your old self and you can either fix on it and allow it to cripple you or you can forgive yourself and let it uphold you and your future self to not act that way ever again. Anyway, that is probably a topic for another post.

Back to last night. I would have told myself, jeez, you are doing this alone tonight. The bed, the bath, the homework, whatever… You deserve this. Also, you hardly ever get this kind of quiet time. You totally need to drink. A couch and a remote all to yourself, totally deserved, in fact entitled to it. Go on! And so it would have progressed. Alfie would have been rushed up to bed, bedtime story as quick as you can and downstairs to the wine and “my time”

But what happened this time was I promised Alfie a sleep over in my bed. He got home from his gran’s and we watched his usual episode of his favourite program and we went to bed. We lay cuddling while we watched it and I may have fallen asleep, sshh!! He got his 2 favourite teddies too. We did our Highs and Lows of the day and Alfie asked if we could cuddle all night (he is so, so sweet sometimes).

And we did, well until I got too hot, had to apologise and move away, ha!!! He tossed and turned and asked random questions, like what pets did I have growing up and I told him all about the hamster I was actually scared of and barely looked after, (sorry wee fella). He told me other random snippets of his day. We lay together and we listened to a sleep story on the HeadSpace app by Elmo and together dosed off.

You see, this is now “my time”. My wee golden opportunities and memories. Memories that were missed or lost back in the day. When his dad is away I now take my chance to have MY time with Alfie. Our time together, just the two of us. Not my time with wine, a couch and a stupid TV remote. Granted these are not the big life changing memories, but they are wee nuggets, wee golden ones that we will never get back. Ones that I cherish.

So yes, when you give up booze you give up the memories of the big wild nights, the long late nights, the bars and all-nighters, but you gain so much more. You gain what matters.

If you are looking for a team to support you through your alcohol free journey, check out our online community and our alcohol free challenge beginning in Jan! We are also running a free workshop on the 18th of December at 8pm. Check it out below!