CHR I S T I N E SO J O
I didn’t mean to become sober. I clung quite dearly to my ability to drink and was grateful I wasn’t an alcoholic or didn’t have a drinking problem… Sobriety to me would mean missing out - a dry, dusty life of suppressed monotony whilst sitting at the lake, feeling empty, heavy and lost. My story isn’t one of dramatic family intervention or DUIs - thankfully no one else was hurt. My story is one of a quiet sadness that was undetectable to those closest to me, some call it life. Parenting is hard, having little kids is hard and being a stay-at-home-mom will drive you crazy. A good mother has to give up essentially everything: privacy, desires, identity. On the outside my life seemed great. Attentive hard working husband, rambunctious but adorable young sons. We had a beautiful home in a nice neighbourhood and friends, but inside I didn’t feel right. I knew I should enjoy it all more and be grateful.. yet I just couldn't. Surrounded by everyone and everything that I loved, I felt numb to this life I owned. I found The Artist’s Way and while I didn’t identify as an artist, Julia Cameron’s manual for creative living offered simple practices that had my name on them! It began with morning pages, three longhand pages of stream of consciousness and I found I had the the time, and started looking forward to waking up and diving straight into my notebook. I began to reconnect, and could feel myself wanting the connection to grow and become stronger. In starting a practice, I created a channel for inspiration and ideas to flow and a love for myself. It was cathartic to be able to get the words and feelings out of my head and body and onto the page. Another important practice from Julia's book was her weekly artist dates where you give yourself an hour, an afternoon, whatever you can to carve out and you wander, maybe through shops, museums, or the park. But you make a date with yourself and you use the time to see what inspires you. You create space for the fire to ignite.
Buried under obligations, commitments and responsibilities, the fire can’t light. You have to clear some space, give it some air. It was on one of these dates that I remembered my love of pottery. I’m drawn to texture, form, and the desire to get behind the wheel propelled me to discover that our local community center had a fantastic art studio. I quickly signed up and now I was creating even more space. Three hours a week, just for me, clay, and possibility. While writing was still an important practice for me, pottery gave me a physical object that also felt like proof of my life. Look at this mug, I made! From my hands, it’s part of me. And the me that showed up for pottery felt true. And the more space I gave my true self, the more she wanted. I started to notice when I was feeling in the flow, and when I wasn’t. And aiming for flow as much as possible, my desire to feel good reduced my tolerance for feeling bad. And while my creative practices were giving me time and space, they were also changing my tolerance. I had to look at my whole life, and even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t un-know what I now knew. My daily drinking each evening, my weekend warrior lifestyle of live hard, play hard was depleting my energy, my patience and keeping me living at a survival level. Surviving the week, surviving the weekend… surviving motherhood. I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to thrive. I wanted to see what I could create out of this life, this opportunity, and I knew deep down I would have to make some changes. I resisted this, I tried to pretend I didn’t know, but like all truth, it wouldn’t go away. I was living on the hamster wheel of survival. There is no time for creativity, for MY art.
I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to thrive. The competition for busyness is talked about more than, “What are you doing for yourself these days? How do you take care of yourself? Are you taking care of yourself?” As a mother, you don’t have any time for yourself in fact the best mother is selfless… The days blend into each other, years roll by and I’m keeping my morning pages and it keeps coming up… alcohol is in the way. But I’m terrified of a sober life, and of the ways to get sober. I am terrified my friends will leave me and with two young kids, I don’t have time or a desire to sit in church basements every week for the rest of my life. I can’t say to a roomful of people, “I’m Christine and I’m an alcoholic” because that doesn’t feel true. I want to remove alcohol but it feels impossible. I believed it was helping me relax in the evenings and how I celebrated occasions in life. How would I possibly celebrate without a drink? I didn't want to just quit alcohol, I wanted to understand why I thought I needed it. I couldn’t imagine a summer without alcohol at the beach, or skiing without shots of fireball, or mountain biking without beers in the parking lot. But I think, through the waking up of my creativity, ie. my intuition, I started to notice that I actually felt drained and worse and fuzzy after drinking. I would be too loud or say things that offended people and I wouldn’t really remember everything that happened and the time spent recovering was too precious. So I did what I do when I’m curious: I read read read. I read quit-lit, I read recovery books, and listen to podcasts. I found Rachel Heart’s “Take a break from drinking” I found a podcast called “Unruffled” which sobriety and creativity together had been floating in my mind, but I had never heard anyone else connect them. So maybe I’m not alone? I was sober curious for a long time, just like I am a curious creative. I think curiosity is one of my superpowers. I was curious about the kids drinking in the back of the ski bus, and I was now curious about these sober women. Women who told stories of feeling good, of struggling and finding themselves and I wanted this so much.
| AUGUS T 202 1 • HOL A SOB E R |
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