Tag: family

Mental Health

What I’ve been up to the last couple years…

beingmesober

Hello fellow warrior’s!

I hope you’re all striving to be your best selves!

As you may have read I’ve been getting creative and picked up Art and wrote a children’s book. We now have 7 grandbabies and loving every minute of it.

We moved in both places, here in Ontario and down South. Both were such good decisions. We are closer to our grandsons and our daughter down South and enjoying them tremendously!  

I’ve been watching my kids grow into their 30s and although it’s been a rough road at times, we manage. I try to be open minded and advise them as best I can. I’ve learned to step back and let them figure things out.

Hanging out with my son’s children, 4 and 1, has been wonderful. I love seeing him with his son’s. He interacts with them and plays and disciplines and loves them. Its amazing seeing he turned out that way after the way his father treated him. I worried about that. I prayed he would be a good dad. A good dad is what he is, a good provider and partner. Making Mama proud!

I turned 56 this year! Only 4 years to 60!! Whoohoo!! Hard to believe because I still feel so young. I actually find it comical. Onwards and upwards 🙌

I often think my life started at 40. A year after I left alcohol in the ditch, when I really enjoyed living alcohol free. I stopped thinking and living in the past. Finally having someone who stood by me and loved me and my kids. I have truly never been so adjusted, calm or happy. I’ve never felt I had a home, until I built one, ( not literlly ) with my husband, I was always running or given a reason to run. My life, our life improved tremendously when I got better. I got therapy, I went to AA, I know not for everyone, I had proper support and the right group of friends. I weeded my garden. It took years for me to break free from some toxic relationships but eventually I chose myself and removed what didn’t bring me peace. More weeding.

I have a life I love and that’s from making choices that I didn’t think I needed to make until faced with loosing everything I loved so much. Making choices of who was part of my life. Who deserved a place at my table.

It’s an illness that never goes away but once we get to the better side of it, a new you emerges. The one that you looked for, the one that’s been waiting to flourish, the one that matters.

We all hear the stories of what alcohol did to us but what about the good stuff. The positive and great things that come to our lives when we make that choice to live different and authenticly. Love ourselves enough to be who we are meant to be. Be amazed at what you can do, the potential that lays in you, and the opportunities that come your way. Embrace what life has to offer while we are here. Be the change. Have as much courage to set that drink down, that you did to pick it up for the first time. Think back. Remember how scared you were to drink. What’s gonna happen? It made us sick.

Trust me, it’s far from a boring life. It’s adventurous and so much more than you realize.

But, who am I to say, you should just try it and see for yourself! I dare for you to make a liar out of me 😋 I hope to see you on the other side.

This is, Being Me Sober

Mental Health

The hard years…

beingmesober

What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?

My hardest years from 1998 – 2009. Staying in a marriage that was abusive towards me and my son. Eventually getting out. The years I drank to escape. The years I felt so alone. The years I wished I wasn’t here. The years of escape drinking.

My kids got me through those years. My son 11 and daughter 8. I had to be strong for them.

When I decided to end the marriage, 2004, it wasn’t easy. I was a stay at home mom. That was my career. I did work here and there and eventually started my own cleaning company.  I didn’t have money to up and leave.

My ex had a problem paying me support. Not because we didn’t have the money. We did. We were very successful and owned a business that he eventually destroyed. He refused to buy food for us, my car was repoed and he stopped paying the mortgage and the utilities.

My mom was in my life and had helped me with the mortgage until it sold. Her and my stepfather lent us a vehicle and somehow I was able to put food on the table.

Once our home sold, me and the kids packed up and moved closer to my mom. We left our dream home behind to never return to that part of life. As we drove away in the moving truck I was sad but happy. I was sad that it ended the way it did after 12 years together, but I was happy to have escaped, finally.

I knew we could make it just the 3 of us and I was looking forward to the future.

I was still fighting with my ex and eventually gave up on his support. Emotionally I couldn’t fight anymore. I was exhausted.

The money from selling our home wasn’t going to last and I had to start my cleaning company again in the area we moved but knew it wouldn’t be enough without my exs help. So, I put my head down and walked into the welfare office and applied.

How on earth did we get here? We had money, we had everything at such a young age. The big house, the cars, the underground pool and all the toys and there I was walking in too ask for help from the government. 

It was temporary I always told myself and no one needs to know. As soon as I made enough money to support us 3 I would get off welfare. The anger grew. The feeling of complete failure grew.

We lived on it for a year and I was back on my feet. I, we didn’t need my exs help. We can do this, and we did.

I tried to protect my kids from their father and his drunk abusive ways but the courts didn’t help. I eventually gave up on that too and decided to let my kids figure out how bad their father is and why we couldn’t stay. Why I was trying to keep them from him.

He never did pay one cent of support on his own efforts, but because I filed with the FRO – Family Responsibility Office, anytime my ex got a tax return my support was deducted or was deducted from his pay. So he stopped doing his taxes! Got a job that paid cash or just didn’t work. It was okay tho because I wasn’t stuck anymore, I was happy, I had my kids and that’s all I needed. We didn’t have a lot of money but we had each other.

I made our rental home nice and we had fun. My kids are my life and I would and did do everything and anything to make us happy and content.

The kids do have a relationship with their father. Not ideal but he’s in their life. He has helped them as they got older and of course doesn’t have to go through me to give money to get to them. So warped how some think.

Everything we went through was worth the finish line to get us too where we are now. We are happy, humble and stronger than we gave ourselves credit for. It left scars, deep deep scars especially for my son but together we made something so unimaginable into something worth fighting for. Peace and happiness.

Leisure

A book, a movie or TV show I wish I could experience again for the first time?

beingmesober

What’s a book, movie, or TV show that you wish you could experience again for the first time?

Sitcoms back in the 80s and 90s. It was all about TV. The great series of shows or sitcoms. The Young and The Restless. Family Ties, Knotts Landing, Dallas….

I loved coming home at lunch and watching the Flintstones or Leave it To Beaver. I sometimes wish to go back there. It was simple and it meant watching TV or movies with your family. That’s what I miss. Not so much the shows but the time together. Today we are distracted by our phones or just not settling enough or too busy to make the time. There are so many distractions compared to back then.

To me, remembering tv, and or movies is not so much about the shows, it was about who I watched the shows or movies with.

Keep those memories and cherish them because one day you may think about those times and it really may have nothing to do with the TV or movie, just the bonding itself was what it was about.

Leisure, Mental Health

A positive thing a family member has done for me.

beingmesober

Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

I’d like to honor this post to my God Mother who is also my Aunt. Aunt Lee Ann. She passed away March of 2025, she was the oldest of 4 children and the sister to my father, who passed a month earlier, in February of 2025. Yes, together they left.

Aunt Lee has a son and daughter. We were extremely close growing up and still are. My cousins became like a brother and sister growing up together like that.

Lee Ann was a strict Catholic and when her 2 kids were older and had moved on with their own lives, she started getting more involved with the church, she did some tremendous work all over the world . She helped many and devoted her life to the church. While she was busy doing her life, no matter how busy or what part of the world she was in, she never let a birthday or Christmas go by without sending me a message. It had to be sent at 12:00am exactly every year so she could be the first to wish me a happy birthday 🎂, or a Merry Christmas. I was also told I made the best tea ever! Ha, til I figured out her game 🤔. Some of my favorite memories throughout my life are with her.

She played a very positive roll in my life. She guided me and helped me get through some of the worst times with my dad and our estrangement. She was the only one who totally understood where I was coming from and kept me sane pretty much.

I miss her, but I know she is up there watching over me, still guiding me. She will always be the first voice I hear on my birthday, wishing her, “favorite niece” the best birthday from her, “favorite God Mother and favorite Aunt”.

Thank You Auntie Lee 🙏🎂🎄

Mental Health

Chapter 2…Going home

beingmesober

Going to the hockey game with my dad was a highlight. Watching the Toronto Maple Leafs live at age 8, what a memory. The players looked so much bigger than on TV when we watched the games at home. Every time hockey night in Canada plays that iconic song I go right back to childhood and watching the games with dad or falling asleep to that song when they had later games.

My dad had a new girlfriend when I moved in with him. The last one he told me he broke up with because she made me eat green beans every time I went to spend the weekend with him and she knew I didn’t like them. I remember that conversation. I remember feeling so special and protected. His new girlfriend was so nice. She was so pretty and fun. We lived in the same house that my parents bought together, so I was back in my bedroom and had my playroom again. We took pictures together with Bonnie our dog, each one having a turn, pictures of me and dad and ones with me and his girlfriend. My dad asked why I wasn’t smiling. I said because I was told to not show my teeth. He looked at me with a sad expression and said not to listen to them and to smile big, you’re so pretty he said. From that day on I smiled with all my teeth showing, not afraid of what anyone thought and I was happy because my dad was praising me instead of hurting me, making me feel sad or making me feel bad.

I finished off grade 4 at a new school, school number 5, when I moved back home. But once I was half way through the 5th year, the school and my father decided the best route was to have me put back in grade 4. My mom being Catholic, had me enrolled in Catholic School, going to church every Sunday and Sunday school for me for the 8 years I was with her. I am grateful for having God be present in my life, I certainly needed him going forward. My father being Protestant, I had to go to a public school. A whole other school system and learning system so that was their reasoning why I had to be put back in the 4th grade. I’m sure I was nervous and anxious about first, starting another new school then having to be put in a new class half way through the year. Thank goodness school is not run that way any longer.

My dad was having a hard time with me at the babysitters. I was being very aggressive and misbehaving. Not listening and acting out. My grade 4 report card said if I couldn’t get my point across verbally, I would get it across physically. It was a family joke for years. What I was doing was what I had learned and what I watched and how I was punished. I watched and learned that, this is how you communicate, through yelling and hitting.

I was getting better though, I stopped sucking my thumb at 9 years old. I was so excited. I ran to my dad’s room and told him. He was so proud of me. My sleep walking however wasn’t going away. I didn’t leave the house anymore like I did when my mom lived there, so that was a good thing. My mom had put a lock on the outside of my bedroom door so I couldn’t get out. I would walk all the way to the corner store. That was where my bus stop was so I imagine I was dreaming of having to go to school. The sleepwalking, latching on to my thumb for security, as well as the night terrors eventually stopped. I was feeling safe. I was happy and building a good relationship with my dad and his girlfriend. I was also very happy to be back with Bonnie. My ultimate protector. I knew nothing could happen to me if Bonnie was there.

School however was a challenge for me. I was a slow learner and had difficulties. I can still visualize my dad sitting with me at the table helping me with math and using fruit to assist us. He was very patient with me. He taught me how to clean, with after school chores, he taught me how to ice skate at the park on a pond that froze over. It was just a short walk. We’d gather our skates and walk and talk along the way. He taught me so much. I loved being with him. He was my best friend.

Mental Health

In the back of my mind…Preface

beingmesober

My story. I keep hearing, “tell your story”. Do I tell my story? Do I expose the truth for everyone to read and have opinions? Do I tell my story for myself to heal fully? Who am I telling my story for? All these questions come to mind when I put my fingers to the keyboard and try, again and again to not start, but to finish my story.

When someone sits to tell their story it isn’t just about them, it’s about all the people around them that had a hand in their addiction, their trauma, their path of success or failure.

I’ve told my story in a round about way but never divulging the entire story because of fear of hurting the people I love or starting something I never intended to start.

It’s time. It’s time to tell the story of how I became powerless over alcohol and how at the same time it made me feel powerful, how it gave me an escape to live through what I was living with and then how it almost ruined me and my children.

I am not sure how I will get this out, maybe a chapter book, or blogs as chapters. I guess the main thing is to start and finish. Continue to heal and help others. Time to unveil myself and the secrets I carried since I was 4 years old. The blindness, and countless nights of prayer and hope.

The name of my book will be, “How did I get here”. Isn’t that the big question we always ask ourselves when we are at our lowest and full of toxins that fuel our brain and emotions. The unraveling of the tied up ball of mess that we had become. Who would be there at the end of the tunnel when we became whole again.

My trauma started at the age of 4, witnessing my father abuse my mom. I walked in on them one night after hearing my mothers cries and screams. I saw her face was full of blood and my dad full of rage. My father saw me and picked me up, brought me to my room and threw me on my bed, pointed his finger in my face with his teeth clenched and said, “You stay in here and don’t come out!” It was that day that I started to self-sooth and stay quiet. The first time I felt scared and alone, but at that age I didn’t recognize those feelings so I began to express them in different ways.

While still at the age of 4, I remember standing in the hallway between my room and my parents, holding my mother’s hand with a suitcase in her other hand and asked me while standing in front of my father, who I wanted to stay with, her or my father. Of course a daughter always wants her mom at that age so naturally I went with her. I believe I would have been scared to stay with my father after what he had done to my mom.

We stayed with my aunt and uncle for a bit until we moved into a basement apartment. My mom had a job selling encyclopedias door to door, this was 1974-75 so that’s the kind of work that people used to do. Funny now as we look back at how times have changed, but for some reason, some people don’t. Ever. While on her route she stepped into a Collection agency office, while trying to sell the receptionist books, the owner of the business came out from his private office, and, while stunned at her beauty, asked her what she was doing selling encyclopedias looking like that. Blushing and defensive, she laughed him off. He asked again. She replied, “I have a little girl I have to support and this is what I have to do!” He asked her if she could type, and how many words a minute. Again, 1970’s, we had typewriters. Anyway, I honestly don’t think he cared if she had experience or not, he was so taken by her. Her deep blue eyes and pale skin, with long black hair, so petite she was, and dressed to the nines. Of course he offered her a receptionist position as long as she came back at 5:00 that evening for a drink. She refused because she had to get home to me, and that was not something she did. Is this guy nuts, I could hear her saying, but he insisted and she did go against everything she stood for as a woman, that night, that job, changed our lives. There was hope and my mom was proud to be able to get out of her sisters and have our own little nest. We could put everything behind us and go forward.