Dr Marry and I did what so many of us do: we make a big declaration about something...anything in our lives. And we make a great big splash about it.
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So much already planned for 2023
Happy new year! I hope your 2023 is off and running. I’m using this post as an opportunity to share three offers I have created for the new year. Some of this can get confusing if you don’t live in my brain (be so happy about that, btw!), so I’ll try to explain as carefully as I can what each offer entails. I hope you’ll be as excited by one or more of them as I am. A FREE, virtual, 3-day (re)Discover Your Spark experience Tuesday, January 17—Thursday, January 19 over zoom from 11:45-12:45 CDT. In September, I held my first-ever, free opportunity for people to get a taste of…
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Who are the banks of your river?
I'm in the midst of making big, life-altering decisions, and Dr Marry's opinion is the most important one to me now. Today, he listens, asks thoughtful questions and considers all the options before sharing his ideas. The banks he provides keep my water contained but moving forward in a dynamic, fluid, evolving direction. We are alongside each other, the water up against the bank, creating an equal push and pull. And we effortlessly transition back and forth between the two different roles depending on the needs of the other.
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The bark of perfection aka looks can be deceiving
When Dr Marry was at the height of his drinking, I told no one. The darker the interior rings got, the harder I worked to maintain a healthy exterior because I was terrified of my reality being found out, of being deemed rotten and cut down.
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Why walking not talking really matters
It can be overwhelming to realize that talking rarely changes things. And it adds to the shame you already feel for uttering something out loud that doesn't get better. That kind of "failure" can lead to making worse and more poor decisions.
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Looks can be deceiving
This photo popped up in my memories today. I’m sharing it because behind this absolutely stunning dress (my grandma’s that she wore to the 1961 or 63 ND Governor’s Ball) and big smile is a woman who is as sick as she has ever been (including when I had COVID in Dec 2020). She is hopped up on DayQuil to the point of near hallucination. Her chest and back are covered in stress hives. She has a bruise on her chin from where she passed out the morning before getting out of the shower. Her husband is on day 8 of in-patient rehab for alcoholism and has been away from…
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It’s my five year -versary, too
If he had died, so many of my "problems" would have been solved. I would have gotten his life insurance policy, which would have taken care of the financial insecurity we constantly faced. I would have been cast as the poor, young widow whose husband had gone too soon. People who'd lived with alcoholism somewhere in their lives would have passed knowing glances at whatever reason given for his death because I certainly didn't know that that was what we were dealing with. He'd always been kind of "sickly," so I guess the rest of us would have chalked it up to a poor constitution, as if we didn't have…
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We’re day drinking all week long, and then this popped up. What a difference five years can make.
If alcohol is ruining your life or the life of someone you love, I implore you to get real about it and find help to overcome it. I promise you there is an abundance on the other side of drinking to excess. There can still be trips to fancy bars and fun holiday drinks to order. But there's also human connection, real engagement and a healthy, joyful life.
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A ripple effect of being married to an alcoholic enjoying sobriety
I can see in retrospect, and with so much more knowledge about Mazz in particular and alcoholism in general, that I was making my own sets of excuses. I was desperate not to believe what this person was saying about Mazz. In re-reading these exchanges, which I haven't looked at it in nearly 10 years, my stomach is tight, my anxiety is ratcheting up and I am immediately back in the swirl of knowing something is desperately wrong but not being able to articulate it. I don't know this because I haven't spent enough time with spouses of addicts or those in recovery to prove this theory out, but I…
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Now I’m married to an American?
I hurt his feelings terribly one day when I said, "Become a citizen, but you'll never BE American anyway." What I meant was that he will never have our Manifest Destiny propaganda, I mean spirit; he'll never tromp through the world with our sense of clueless, boisterous entitlement. He'll always have a sense of empathy for the underdog because his dad had to sleep on a park bench when he first arrived in England because no one would rent a hotel room to an Irishman. He'll always be comfortable with multiculturalism because, for all their ongoing struggles with race, England does seem to better embrace it than America does. He'll…
