The above list could go on for pages of all the things I tried to do as a mother, as a human in charge of small humans twisting and contorting myself in a million directions to play the ultimate role and all the while things dissolved into some murky grey after a certain witching hour, not every day but here’s the point, it was the unpredictability of it all that was probably hell on earth to be around. Somewhere inside the heads of our children, they must have asked or in the case of those of you who continue to lie to yourself and ‘manage’ your drinking, which Mum, Auntie, Sister, Wife, a friend is coming home from work today? Is it the fun Mum who will dance wildly in the kitchen to Robbie Williams? Is it the Mum who will annihilate me for failing my Maths test? Is it the supportive Mum who will tell me exams don’t matter that much in life; what matters is the kindness of my heart? Is it the Mum who will storm into my room and give out wildly that I have twelve coffee cups stacked across my desk? Or is the Mum who will joke and ask me “Are you trying to corner the coffee mug market in here?” s it the Mum who will remember that my sports practice has changed from Tuesday to Wednesday and from early evening to late evening? Or is the Mum who I will need to text at least two hours before as she will not remember I told her last night? Is it the Mum who tells me that she loves us more than my Dad her ex- husband or is it the Mum who will wish him to die screaming down an alleyway under the wheels of a four-wheel-drive that she may or may not be driving? Is it the Mum who can handle grief or is the Mum who will cry endlessly in the kitchen wishing every dead person in the world to be allowed to return from wherever they are for an evening for a chat and a joke? Ofwineoclock. Of, in the control of, rendered powerless, completely stripped of our identities, taking on a moniker that reflects our status as property of the alcohol we served, Ofwineoclock. “I feel like the word shatter.” ― Margaret Atwood Ofwineoclock. We can dress it up and dress it down in any which way we choose, we can call it modern recovery, smart recovery, whateverfuckingrecovery you want to call it but the bottom line is that we MUST recover. We MUST fight all the way up the mountain not just for ourselves but all those in our care, in our world, who deserve so much more than some moniker of a mother who is in the control of an addictive substance throwing her life and her stewardship of those around her down the toilet. That’s it. Ofwineoclock needs to become Offreedom. This morning, as I look skyward to say not today lady, not today I am beyond grateful to have shed the moniker Ofwineoclock to be the living proof Offreedom and that those living within my world are no longer subjected to the question which Mum will come home from work today? If you. have not faced it, face it. If you have not accepted it yet, accept it. If you have not yet taken ownership of your life, take it. “When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it ― Margaret Atwood, Not today lady, not today. Susan Christina xxxx
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