6/24/22 6/24/22

Permission to not have the best summer ever

I hereby grant you permission to not have the best summer ever

To have no writing plan or strategy

I hereby grant you permission to not have the best summer ever

To have no writing plan or strategy

To stay in bed on the days your head pounds and another wave of lingering Covid fatigue crashes down

To not improve

To not be the best version of yourself

To be a flawed and barely scraping by version of yourself soaked in grace

To not punish yourself when you feel like you deserve it

When something doesn’t go according to plan

When you’re not as far along as you think you should be

When you yell, “I never want to see you again”, waste the day, devour a bag of goldfish at the kitchen table in the dark

When you back out of plans and don’t reply to texts

When you give in to the OCD spiral

Choose grace anyway

Choose something delicious and delightful and disarming to do with your time

Jump in the pool, take a walk, brush your teeth

Write anyway, send the text late, kneel down and apologize to the kids, grab their hands and kiss their soft cheeks, let grace spill down like tears

Start over

Choose the always-moving-on memory of a child

Practice loving the flawed and barely scraping by version of yourself soaked in grace

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Permission Slip".

5/20/21 5/20/21

Relapse

“Good morning. Aly Alcoholic,” I say to the Zoom squares on my laptop as the kids pop in and out of their makeshift rocket ship made of scooted together stools and a crinkly emergency blanket.

The classic, “Hi Aly” of AA is replaced with muted waves on the screen. This is recovery in a pandemic.

“Activate!” my son yells as my daughter starts a countdown to blast off.

I take a deep breath and begin to share with the women listening on the other end.

…

I don’t know any other way to say this except to come out and say I’ve had some relapses since I stopped drinking a little over 4 years ago. I want to come clean to you, dear internet.

Relapse is probably too strong of a word. But it’s the word that reverberates in my brain in the dark hours of the morning. It’s the word that equals failure in my mind. It’s also the word that led me to seek help.

…

My first “slip” was around the 2020 election. Surely, you understand. Three years of sobriety can easily go out the window when the election is in the balance and people on both sides are making ludicrous claims and everything feels so uncertain.

I snuck a beer while frantically cleaning the bathroom baseboards. For a few golden minutes, my belly burned not with anxiety but with a happy tingling, an eraser, but it didn't last.

I woke up in a different world, to a different reality.

A world where I still hid my drinking.
A world where my perfect record vanished.
A world where I was an internet liar.

It was just a couple of drinks. In secret. I deserved it after the last four years, the last four months, heck, the last four hours before the kids’ bedtime.

An alcoholic can convince themselves of anything. That’s the scary part.

I told my husband about the drinks and texted a bunch of friends soon after. Everyone was encouraging, kind about it. But I felt like a fraud.

Do I write an addendum to Coffee and Crumbs, an open letter, an apology?

Is it really any stranger's business if I drink or don't drink? But I've shared this, you see. I put it out there and I can't take it back and it may be what's saving me.

I didn’t drink again for months because I just didn’t want to keep everyone so darn informed. The last I’d said on the internet was that I had my drinking (or lack thereof) under control.

And everyone believed me. I wanted to believe me.

…

The second time, last February, I didn’t tell anyone. It was only a couple drinks again. Just enough to help me sleep. I didn’t even wake up with a hangover. A shame hangover, yes, but not a physical one.

“I could do this,” I thought. “I could keep drinking and no one would have to know.”

Cold dread flooded my body. This is what I’d worked so hard to give up. The shame. The secrecy. The gnawing hole in the pit of my stomach. I probably could do this, but did I want to?

…

A couple weeks after that second slip, I listened to a podcast where a college friend spoke to her husband about his experience with alcoholism. He shared his story. He talked with great reverence and respect about AA. He made it seem like an exclusive club. He made it sound almost…fun.

I went to my first meeting that day. My heart pounded as I sat on the cold folding chair and worried about the room’s ventilation and the alarming number of people whose masks did not quite cover their noses.

For the first time in my journey to leave alcohol behind, I was not alone.

I now have been plugged into a great group of women who meet on Zoom and outside in a local park a couple of times a week.

I reached out to a sober acquaintance and now we have a little group of three women. We Marco Polo and share about alcohol, our progress, our demons and downfalls that keep cropping back up. We cheer each other on and remind each other what we’re fighting for.

I’ve realized it wasn’t that I didn’t have enough support in my life; I just didn’t have anyone who had walked the same road.

A relapse doesn’t make me a fraud; it makes me human.

…

I am still practicing that word on my lips—alcoholic.

But more than shame, that word has brought me community.

I worry what my kids think when I introduce myself as “Aly Alcoholic.” I feel an ache when I think of them growing up knowing that label applies to me.

I can get caught up in the brilliance of illumination. The high of the confession. The polished ending to an essay. It’s harder to show up every day and keep letting the light in. To live my struggle not in the shadows, but at the kitchen table as my tiny astronauts launch into space.

I worry my kids will think I’m weak. I pray that illuminating my own struggles will make them stronger in the end.

More able to cope with their own demons. More willing to put in the work to grow. More able to be honest with themselves about where they’re really at, how they’re really doing. More able to ask for help. To say, “hey, I’m having a rough time here.” To seek out community.

And, like all parents, I hope my weakness will be their strength. Maybe they won't wait so long to let the light pour in.

***

You can read my essay for Coffee and Crumbs on quitting drinking here: Dirty Laundry.

And my three-part blog series here:

8/20/20 8/20/20

Chasing Clouds

Clouds hover and humidity clings.

My daughter squeals at each pelican and heron that flies by.

“Yook! Bird!”

I try to focus on the pitter patter of her feet on the smooth deck.

The creak of the porch swing.

The smell of salt and marsh and sea life.

I want to savor this moment, but my to do list, the never-ending tasks for the semester intrude my thoughts like unwanted clouds.

Rest can be stormy for the overachiever. A discipline that paradoxically takes work. Rest is both necessary and hard.

What revives each person is different. What revives me now, as a mother, is different.

Given one hour to relax may actually feel worse than no break. One week of vacation felt the same. The list is so long of things to catch up on. If I spend the time sleeping then I don't get to read or write or prep for virtual classes or do the dishes or the laundry.

When was the last time I felt fully refreshed or caught up or revived?

We choose rest anyway--for the memories, the discipline, the change of pace and scenery.

Rest is not so much trusting that the work will be done, but acknowledging the work does not define us. Rest declares that our worth is not in our productivity.

This summer, rest looked like a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Rest included cousins, “Aunt Maw-yey,” and “gamma’s house,” boat rides and hush puppies, fried shrimp, bacon wrapped scallops, and barbecue. A drive by birthday party for my 85-year-old grandmother.

Rest looked like slow mornings playing Paw Patrol and afternoon ice cream treats.

Rest meant diving under crashing waves, splashing and giggling with my toddler daughter in the sand as she floated in her puddle jumper yelling “yook me” “foat, no sink.” Her little toes bobbing above the surface, her salty, wet hair plastered to her sandy face.

Rest also brought meltdowns for my homebody son. He didn’t want to share with his cousins (“Paw patrol is only my favorite”) or venture into the water. He sulked on the sand, whining for a snack, for mama to come in. “No one can be in the water,” he declared.

Rest felt like humidity. Like salt and sand settling in the mesh of bathing suits, sunscreen rubbed over hot, sticky skin.

Rest smelled of fish and marsh and giant drops of rain.

Rest meant the freedom to run through puddles after a thunderstorm.

Rest gave my kids a glimpse of a summer that mirrored my own childhood trips.

Rest can be like chasing clouds in a Carolina blue sky as they constantly change and morph from majestic to ominous, billowy and white to stormy and gray.

And still we chase. We choose to rest, to reset. To silence the to-do list and open our eyes to the beauty in the sky.

***

Photos taken by me, my husband, my mom, and my cousin, Mollie in Davis and Beaufort, North Carolina. All photos were edited by my husband.