Sober Moms, Happy Moms: 12 Real-Life Stories of Women Who Gave Up Alcohol and Found a Better Way

By Anonymous Moms and April O'Leary

Have you ever thought you may be drinking too much? This unique book shares the anonymous stories of twelve modern moms who got sober and stayed sober using the Twelve Steps and Alcoholics Anonymous. They have chosen to remain anonymous out of respect for the AA tradition so that they do not break their anonymity at the level of media or

• Language: English
• Publisher: O'Leary Publishing
• Release date: May 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952491160

Book preview

Poem:

Mother Grief

Anne Meese

anne-meese.com

I hear it in the voices of mothers I come across

In the circles I inhabit

In churches

Online

In the store

On the street

Wherever it may be

I hear the tone of disregard, of minimizing or ignoring

Their child

And I want to say

You’ll regret that someday

Someday

You will miss that child beyond measure

You will grieve for the chances to love them again When they were small

You will have so much love for them

And no where to put it

And you’ll cry the most bitter tears

Surprising yourself with those tears

That is, If you can,

The ball of them feeling so tight in your chest Sometimes

That it can’t break apart,

Held up in that place of the heart

That has it’s own entrance with no discernible exit...

Your children will age

And the chance to do things differently

Will be gone

And you’ll notice too late

Never knowing what to do with the images and the Messages that the terrorist within you reminds you of:

"You should have stopped whatever the hell you Were doing

And listened to him

Played the puzzle with him

Sat with him for a while

Before bed

He asked you to

He asked…"

I never knew what to do with such regret and pain

Until the Universe told me one day to express it

To push it out of myself in song or in writing

Like this poem

Maybe a painting

To see what will become of it

And I did

And I felt free

For the first time

And I continued

And I came to understand from the depths of my Soul that

I must connect it to the Universe of other mothers

In history and beyond

Before recorded time even

I needed to connect it to the other forever loves lost

That float on a cloud

Coming in steady from the west

Circling the earth

Picking up the swirling, churning pain of all mothers

In their songs, their writings, their paintings

Holding the pain

Until ready for a rain release when full,

A steady, warm rain

That lifts the leaves of the tree of knowledge

And washes away all sin and sorrow

The fresh air opening a mother’s heart

Soothing her soul like a balm

Like the one that surely soothed a mother in Gilead

Awakening her mother wisdom

To ease her sad self that day

That moment

Now

To learn anew that

The winds of sorrow will build again

And again the clouds will come,

Catching the misery that some

Have carried too long

Their hearts broken

With troubles unbearable

Finally ready to be offered up

Hands up

On their knees

The cloudy mist will grab it

Moving on

To the next county

Passing overhead

Smooth

On a breeze

Ready for the next batch of

Misunderstood and confusing

Mother grief to rise up

Readying her once more

To be washed clean

Calming her

The mother

The hero angel protector warrior fighter lover

Surprisingly stronger

Ready for another chance

Forgiving

Healing

Returning her to

Her own mother wisdom

Knowing

She is not alone

Precious Gifts

I stopped drinking for good on September 15, 1991. The night before, my husband, our 2 boys — ages 8 and 9 — and my sister and I had returned home to Ohio after a week at the beach in Delaware. I was miserable from drinking too much, watching my husband and sister drink, and keeping everyone’s supply of liquor stocked. All that week I had felt a constant low-level panic about the kids swimming in the ocean. I didn’t sleep well, I didn’t eat well and I didn’t relax the entire time.

It wasn’t a family vacation in the sense that most people think of one. All the strained dynamics normally found in our home — the easily hurt feelings, sarcasm, refusing to talk, the flaming resentments — were alive and well at the beach that week. Being on this vacation was like taking our same dysfunctional behaviors, thoughts, and feelings on the road to a different town in a different setting. I was barely there in any conscious way, consumed with the battles raging in my head and unable to engage with my children, whom I so loved. I felt no connection with my husband or my sister. I cried a lot, alone, not wanting anyone else to see how out of control I felt.

Before getting in the van for the ride home, we made one last stop at the beach. I had a glass of wine in one hand, and a camera in the other. My sister took the camera and snapped a photo of me standing there in the sand. I didn’t stop her. I just stood there, embarrassed, ashamed, frozen — caught on camera drinking at 10 a.m. At that moment, I became deeply aware of what I looked like — a mom who drank too much and was hungover, irritated, stressed, exhausted, and ironically, looking like I needed a vacation. I knew I was in trouble with alcohol and had to stop. The experiences that led to that moment of clarity and honesty were the foundation for the most important decision of my life. The story of how they fit together has become clearer to me over time, and the following is what I know to be true about my recovery since that day.

I tried to stop drinking for three years prior to that family vacation, so plaguing thoughts about drinking were not new to me. My attempts to stop were inspired at first by a cousin of mine whom I had a chance to talk with at a family party. When I told her that my mother and siblings were driving me crazy with their drama and drinking, she suggested I attend support groups for families and friends of alcoholics. She said the meetings were helping her with similar family issues and that I might find some help in handling my family relationships. She recommended a meeting near my home that she knew of and liked. I thanked her and told her I would think about it.

What I didn’t tell her was that I had a drinking problem of my own. I drank too much every day and had for years. I tried to stop many times, but couldn’t stay stopped for more than a day or two. I didn’t tell her that I drank just as much as the family members I had complained to her about. I didn’t tell her that I drove with my kids in the car after I drank too much, or that they smelled alcohol on my breath with every goodnight kiss. I didn’t tell her that I ignored my self-imposed 5 p.m. daily start time for drinking, and started earlier if I had ironing to do, or yard work, or if it was the weekend.

I didn’t tell her about the time my 4-year-old son was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I stayed with him around the clock for three days without a drink. I had begun to detox on my own right there in the hospital: sweating, not sleeping, nauseated, wanting to jump out of my skin. I didn’t tell her that the first thing I did when we came home from the hospital was to fix myself a drink. I didn’t tell her about the time I had been drinking and took my older son to his karate class. Sitting in front of a mirrored wall, I was unable to avoid looking at myself, hunched over, hugging myself, frightened by my frantic, stressed-out face that I thought I’d been hiding so well. I didn’t tell her how depressed I was, wanting a different life, wanting to be someone else. In fact, I didn’t tell my cousin I had already been drinking before the family party because I needed a drink to feel OK and handle just being there. I needed to look like I had it all together. I needed everything to look perfect and I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t.

I drank with many different people in many different places throughout my life, but my final bar was in my home where I drank every day. I spent a lot of time over those last few years of active addiction being consumed by drinking too much, trying to drink just enough, planning for my next drink, protecting the supply of alcohol in our home, functioning in a brownout, hungover, or half hungover. As a stay-at-home mom, I did all the things that a full life with kids involves, but I was erratic, impulsive, and inconsistent. When drinking, I lost my temper with them, yelled at them, expected too much from them, and scared them. When I wasn’t drinking, I overindulged, trying to make up for how I treated them when I was drinking. I didn’t see it, but my drinking affected every aspect of my life with them.

A few weeks after that talk with my cousin, I had a terrible argument with one of my sisters, putting me into an emotional tailspin for days. I could not stop crying, and I knew I needed help. I decided to go to the meeting my cousin had suggested. I arrived just before it started, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk through the door. I took a seat by the exit just in case I wanted to leave before it ended. The chairperson began the meeting and said that instead of the usual topic-and-discussion format, they were going to have a speaker. It was a woman who talked about how she learned to maneuver through her relationships with several alcoholics and addicts in her life. To my surprise, she also revealed that she was an alcoholic in recovery. I tried to hide my tears as she spoke, overwhelmed by her story. I related to her explanation of the progression of her drinking over time and how scared she was when she finally admitted to herself that she could not stop drinking on her own. Listening to her, I had to admit to myself that I, too, had a drinking problem — that I was an alcoholic. However, as quickly as I admitted this, I also raised my wall of denial against it once more.

Like I’d done with many other things in my life, I built a narrative around drinking that justified it. I convinced myself that my main problems were the people in my life. I only drink because…(fill in the blank) or If they would just calm down, I’d be OK. The reality that I was responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors was too frightening to face. I often had a raging civil war in my brain, with one side saying, You have a drinking problem, and the other saying, No, you don’t. The latter usually won out. I left that meeting before the closing, so I wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. Despite my ongoing struggles with the war inside my brain and knowing that I must stop drinking, I continued going back to the group every week, attracted by the honesty and openness I saw so freely shared among its members.

In the groups, I identified with people who shared about their trauma of being raised in an alcoholic home, as I had been. My father was an abusive alcoholic who terrorized my mother, my six siblings, and me throughout our lives. Due to experiencing my father’s unpredictable explosions of anger and physical abuse, I learned it was smart to stay mad and to remember how I’d been hurt, so I could prevent it from happening again.

I left home at age 18 as a distrustful, anxious young woman who was an expert at leading a double life — one where my outside looked great, but my inside was a chaotic jumble of emotions I often couldn’t control. I was attracted to the meetings because I saw and heard how people were healing from their childhood experiences, and how they were making changes in their current relationships because of that healing. I was becoming aware of how my own childhood experiences echoed throughout all of my relationships and my parenting, and I was desperate for change. I wanted to heal as I saw others heal. It kept me going back.

The immediate, critical, day-to-day issue I faced during that time was that my husband still drank, and had no intention of stopping. The few times I told him that I wanted to stop drinking, I received little to no support. We were emotionally disengaged by that time and never talked about the issues I had opened the door to. He said he couldn’t relate to me and that I just needed to control my drinking. He ignored my requests to remove the alcohol from our house, so I stopped asking. We never talked about the meetings I was attending, or what I was learning there. They were in the evenings after the kids went to bed, and he got used to seeing me go without questioning what I was doing. Being mad at him for his lack of support was part of the fire inside me to keep moving forward. Despite our conflicts and my fears about my drinking, I was moving forward on my own winding recovery path. Seeds were being planted in my head and heart. I was changing, even though I didn’t see it.

There was no one specific thing that came to a head for me that day on the beach, but rather an accumulation of things. It was the countless sleepless nights I spent worrying about what the future would look like if I stopped drinking and my husband didn’t. It was the rejection I feared from my family if I stopped drinking with them. It was my worry about how I was going to take care of my kids and my home without my best friend — alcohol. But I was also meeting remarkable people who were making huge changes in their lives — changes that I wanted to make, too, but didn’t know how. The misery I felt was finally stronger than those fears. I wanted to change and I was finally willing to do anything to reset my life as a sober mom, no matter how it affected my roles as a wife, sister, daughter, and friend. Standing there on the beach, after my sister took that picture, I clearly heard the message in my head, Go back to the recovery meetings for alcoholics, tell the truth, and find a program that works for you. You can’t go on like this. I knew I was done. Over those three years, I had slowly gained the courage to stop drinking. I decided to begin my recovery for real when I returned home from vacation, and I kept the vision of my children’s faces in front of me as I took my first steps.

At first, I had a lot to learn about living without drinking. I’d been a daily drinker since the age of 23, so I needed a daily plan for not drinking. The idea that I could take it one day at a time worked for me. Taking each day on its own, I applied the advice and good habits I was hearing from other people in recovery meetings. I would break down the time in small increments and coach myself up, saying, OK, you got through the morning — that was good. Now go and get ready for your meeting. When I had fears about the future, I put the Weather Channel on TV