362.292 - My Sobriety Primer

catching you up so we can move forward

Yes, yes I am retitling my posts on specific topics with Dewey Decimal numbers. Yes, I do miss being a librarian.

Let’s just catch you all up here on my sobriety journey. We’ll do so via my Instagram posts on the topic because if there’s anything that makes me weary, it’s rewriting thoughts from the heart. That’s a lie of course ~ more things make me weary than don’t. I was off the interwebs for most of 2020 and the first half of 2021, meaning nothing was captured on this topic until summer of 2021. And then, the only place I wrote anything for a few years was on IG.

Once I catch you up, this context will help in all future writings on the subject. And the therapist I just broke up ignored HER primer on my sobriety when she recommended a glass of wine after work to help relax. WTAF??? Good riddance.

Let us journey back to 2021……..

Instagram post from summer 2021

Here is the caption from this post (second image below caption):

I’ve been really quiet about something that is actually a pretty huge thing. I last drank alcohol on December 14, 2019 ~ 2.5 glasses of wine at my graduation party when I finally finished my library Master’s degree. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since then.

Prior to that, my last drink was on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend 2019 when I split a hard seltzer (GROSS) with my sister and sister-in-law at a concert ~ we would have ditched it because we hated it, but since it cost like $15 we felt obligated to hate-finish it. I have absolutely no idea what the last drink I had before that was, but I guarantee it wasn’t much. I say this because I wasn’t drinking much at all before I decided to never drink again. 

Maybe that’s why I’ve been a little embarrassed to say I’m sober? Because my life didn’t change a ton? I also think it was incredibly anticlimactic because I barely left my house besides for work from March 2020 ~ April 2021 so my opportunities to turn down alcohol were zero. Choosing to stay sober during lockdown and the insanity of 2021 and spring 2021 though ~ that was radical, I’m realizing.

I definitely had my drinking days. Those are stories for another time. But today, I just want to acknowledge that I’m beginning to see how rare it actually is to be a sober 40~something woman and mom in 2021. My best friend @mykindofsweet has helped me realize, through her own chronicling of her sobriety journey, that mommy wine culture is EVERYWHERE. She’s talking loudly and proudly about her journey at her account plus over at @thesobermomlife . It finally hit me when I watched her and @graceinthecrumbs do an Instagram live about their sobriety how BIG of a thing it is to NOT drink.

Swipe for my February 2020 review of the book that totally cemented my forever-sober decision, as well as started me on my journey to be 98% caffeine free ……….. I have a lot more to say on this. I’ll be back to talk about it.

Review accompanying above graphic

So, that was the first thing I ever wrote about sobriety. Then there was this one just a week or so later ~ again, summer 2021:

This was the second pic in the post with the Yoga / Sobriety graphic

Then, that was it for awhile. Last summer (2022), I was a guest on on my friend’s podcast The Sober Mom Life ~ you can listen here.

And other than occasional mentions in my Instagram stories, I don’t write about this a lot. But I do want to. And I will have lots of books and resources and thought pieces to share and want subscribers to have some context about why all the sobriety content? I’m still sober. It’s kind of weird to talk about. But of course you know I will anyway.

That’s all for today ~ thanks for being with me on this journey.

Katy