I wanted to distract myself from the political DOOM facing us in the UK today. Which resulted in my six year old daughter bursting into tears at the school gate saying ‘I don’t want the baddies to win Mummy’ due to an ill-advised election related convo on the walk to school. Which, to be honest, I had no idea how to respond to except to feel like joining her. Urgh.
Anyway to cheer myself, and hopefully others, up, here are ten things I love about being sober at Christmas.
1. Coping with the overwhelm of school admin and having to do all the things for all the people without my head exploding. I literally could not have done this with daily hangovers. It is beyond me how those of you with school aged children before you quit coped with this time of year. BEYOND me. You are amazing just for that reason alone.
2. Sober treats, which I never bothered with because I was crap at self-care and couldn’t afford because I had to buy all the wine and go out boozing two to three times a week in December. Highlights this year are my Lindor advent calendar (chocolate for breakfast is always a moment of pure indulgence) and my sparkly snowflake gel manicure. Shallow? Hell yeah. Guaranteed to give me a little pick me up on even the gloomiest of days? You betcha. Do they ever make me feel like crap the next day? Not even once.
3. My self-care practices, which I just seem to have totally down this year. I know what to do when I’m getting up against my edges and I know how to spot when to ramp up the self-care. I’m limping towards the end of term but I’m also going to three yoga classes over the next three days, meditating nightly again, writing daily gratitudes in my Positive Planner journal, drinking more water and eating more plants (with a slight blip last night when I had halloumi fries for tea. Whoops.) And it’s working. These are my tried and tested methods for taking care of myself in the most basic way and they really work, in a way that my sole method of ‘self-care’ in days gone by (that would be wine) never EVER did.
4. Tuning in to the little sparks of goodness in the world and having the clarity and awareness to really see them. One of my lovely choir ladies who has planned our Christmas do nearly reduced me to tears of gratitude last night when she told me that she had arranged with the venue for me to take in some alcohol free fizz for the party. It genuinely warmed my heart. And then we all sang The Christmas Song and the world did not seem such a terrible place after all.
5. Being the best mum I can be for my little girls at Christmas. Enough said.
6. Looking forward to my Christmas parties (which for me are friends, work and choir) in a simple, uncomplicated way with no feeling of ‘oh god what if I make an awful arse of myself’ dread or ‘how the actual fuck am I going to physically survive the next few weeks’ trepidation.
7. Because sobriety has brought me (not entirely but definitely compared to my previous self) a certain degree of body positivity and food freedom, being able to have delicious treats but not in an uncontrolled shame-tinged bingey way, because a lot of the time what I fancy more than anything is vegetable soup with lovely warming spices and because I’m not eating in some kind of last chance saloon desperation before the iron regime of January deprivation descends upon me. Sod that, it’s cold and grey in January too and I won’t have a Christmas tree or fairy lights on the front of my house to cheer me up then.
8. Being more on top of things than I can ever remember being before. Shopping mostly done, check. Wrapping paper (of two types so Santa and Mummy do not have the same) bought, check. Cards written, check. Menu and logistics planned for Christmas Day, check. Extortionately priced festive outings for the girls booked, check. Ten billion trillion things remembered for school, check. I know this is very similar to number one but it’s such a massive benefit of sobriety that I thought it was worth mentioning again!
9. Having lovely things to look forward to in January like a trip to London to see my gorgeous sober sisters and to meet some more who have only been Instagram friends until now, and some writing plans I can’t wait to get cracking on.
10. This is kind of cheating really but just all of it together. This coherent sober life I’ve built for myself over the last nearly three years. Where I am the same person for all of it and so can build up some true self-esteem. Where I can steadily work towards professional goals, (hopefully) get better and better at being a mum, nurture my self-care practices and the hobbies I love and grow the relationships I have with all my awesome friends without ever getting in my own way or tearing down all my achievements. Which is priceless at any time, but I’m especially grateful for it at this time of year, because my Decembers used to be such a mad sprint of party, spend, stress, crash and burn, followed by a miserable purge (and often an inevitable bout of flu) in January.
So there we have it. Ten reasons sober Christmases are better. And honestly, from the perspective of two years and ten months of sobriety as of this Sunday, I can’t for the life of me think of ANY reason why the alcoholic version was better. When I look back on those festive boozy dos in my mind now they don’t look like the sparkly adverts we see of thin, impossibly beautiful people in glam and glittery outfits with glasses of champagne. In any way, shape or form. They look blurry and muddled, they look like doing things I slightly regretted again and again. They look like dragging myself out of bed feeling headachey and nauseous, like bone-aching fatigue and constantly asking myself how I was going to survive until January. They look like me stumbling round in a confused fog, never entirely sure why I was doing it or whether I was enjoying myself at all.
It’s when I look back over the last two years, at my two previous sober Christmases, that I see the sparkle. Those Christmases stand out to me in crisp, bright, beautiful technicolour. Because I was there for all of them. I was fully present for every single fairy light, glittery bobble hat, sequinned party dress, every delicious mocktail or AF fizz in a beautiful glass and every smile on my little girls’ faces when they saw that Santa had been or opened the present that was top of their wish list. And I can remember it all.
I couldn’t be more grateful to be having another Christmas like that. And I’m so glad I powered through that first sober Christmas (which to be honest was a bit of an assault course) with lots of planning, determination and sheer bloody minded grit. Because it brought me to this place where hindsight tells me, so very clearly, that sobriety really does deliver everything alcohol promises for Christmas. It’s so worth it when you get there, I promise.
So Merry Christmas to you all, you marvellous sober animals. Stay sAFe and enjoy the real authentic sparkle of a sober Christmas.
