Daily email
Dearest Sober Queens,
I am sharing these little family memories in a bid for you to see what I saw in January 2019 setting out to crack this issue I had around wine. In my depths of despair, I called on every dead relative I could think of asking their spirit to guide me as I knew in my heart and soul I needed as much help as the universe could provide. I found myself very reflective in the opening months of my sobriety looking back at so very many lost moments and just when I felt as though I would drown in shame and guilt, my granny would come into my memory reel. On my desperate Day#1 I somehow grasped I had to turn her few pence on the butcher shop counter into slots of my time. I needed to have all of these sober time slots recorded in a ledger of sorts, documenting my progress so that at the end of the year, I too could withdraw a giant prize in a learning or a knowing. I had to follow my grannie's basic principle of keeping my eye on the prize investing daily wholly committing to that investment in myself to ensure the glory of the gift would come to pass. She taught me the law of practice and habit. We now know that habits are represented in our brains by collections of neurons linking together to create a pattern of thinking or behaviour that we fall into automatically and, habits are a cluster of mental maps that are built gradually over time and are strengthened by repetition - none of which my grandmother knew or understood…… but what she did know was, a repeated good behaviour has POWER. She also taught me, was the art of smiling at the butcher's counter, she didn't begrudge the sacrifices she made to ensure our gala Christmas, she saved with joy with her eyes only focused on the outcome. So, I began smiling doing my sober work knowing that if neural connections are accompanied by pleasure, they form much faster and more strongly and so to enforce my new habits I did so with love to myself smiling as I learnt how to be my best self thus creating a new default setting in my life.
"The hopes we had were much too high Way out of reach, but we have to try No need to hide, no need to run 'Cause all the answers come one by one The game will never be over Because we're keeping the dream alive." -Freiheit- (great song and great lyrics)
My grandmother could barely read or write raised in an Ireland where education was not always possible for working-class families and when it was, it was usually the preserve of sons not daughters. Her command of the spoken word was unblemished and free flowing but a book or a pen and paper defeated her. Without schooling, she didn't speak a word of Gaelic, and as small children, we used to teach her words which she then threw into her daily conversation. Some of her favorites were ‘Leaba’ meaning bed and ‘maith an cailín’ meaning 'good girl.' She was a whizz with money saved her pennies in jars and a member of both the ‘Christmas Club’ and ‘The Lourdes Club.' A ‘Club’ at that time in Irish working- class communities was when a private citizen or a small business ran a book taking in small amounts of money lodged and recorded for those who did not have a bank account. My granny and her sister Annie were part of the Club which operated at the back of her local butcher shop. At the end of her weekly order of sausages, rashers, ham, and a large chicken she would leave the change (coins) with Maria at the counter to put in the ledger around the back. She made these deposits weekly without fail. The results of these little savings culminated in an annual fund that we as children believed made our granny the richest woman on God’s green earth. With great aplomb every Christmas she would present each of her twelve grandchildren with 25 pounds and to her four children, one of whom was my Mum she presented 100 pounds. I recall very clearly how as a child I marveled at how such small amounts of money lodged with Maria could somehow within one year become such a lavish fund of gold.
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