London Calling...

Last weekend in London, amongst the twinkly Christmas lights and busy shoppers, the first TABB in person meet up became a reality as sober women from all corners of the globe came together to celebrate Christmas, to celebrate TABB and to celebrate each other. Although I have a fair number of sober days under my belt, I realised on Saturday in the middle of London, that for me there is still work - for want of a better word - to be done. I have never taken my sobriety for granted and would never be one to say – “I’ve got this now, I’m grand” - but still, a kind of complacency can set in as you wander further down the sobriety track. Although next Spring I will celebrate three years of sobriety, I have come to the conclusion that new summits can always be scaled in relation to active learning, the absorbing of new knowledge and integrating resources.

Way back when the first mention of a meet up in London arose, I thought it was a great idea, and I had been looking forward to the weekend for a long time. There was a little bit of anxiety – I wouldn’t be human if there wasn’t - but when Sarah collected me at the train station and we arrived at our host’s lovely home, I could feel the tension of a long day travelling gradually leave my body as we chatted and caught up over the course of the evening.

The next day as the faces gradually appeared outside Tiffany’s in Covent garden, faces that many of up until now I had only seen on a zoom screen, we all laughed at how it was so strange to see all of ourselves, saying how we had imagined each other to be shorter or taller than we actually were. It was quite discombobulating - to hear the familiar voices and accents that we all knew from the zoom squares and then to match them up to the bodies they belonged to!

As we wandered around the streets of Christmassy London I glanced to my right and my left occasionally and I saw many people already drinking alcohol in outdoor seated areas and it wasn’t that I wanted to be them but my thoughts were “What on earth am I doing here in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world with a group of women who don’t drink?”. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the day – it was more of a complete feeling of disbelief that I was there at all, and grief – yes there was grief for me – the grief centred around the fact that I knew and I know that I am never going back – I am never going back to drinking alcohol, I am never going back to those nights of numbing myself out, those mornings of feeling sick. And you may ask why on earth would I have grief for such an obviously detrimental substance that did me so much harm, that did my self-respect, my self-esteem, and my physical body so much harm? I think that the grief revolved around loss and was also mixed with an incredulity because in the cold light of a London Saturday, there was absolutely no escaping the fact that I had travelled over to Ireland for this event because I no longer drank, and that was why I was there. And there was no running from that amidst the group of beautiful women that surrounded me. Because everyone was themselves, nothing put on, nothing false. We may have been dressed up in our glad rags wearing sequins and spangles, but everyone there was uniquely and unapologetically their true sober selves.

Acceptance is a hard thing, I have thought and written about it before. It is something that I have discovered you just think you have got nailed, you think you have it all sorted, the box ticked, and then along comes another little test, another little challenge. Last weekend was most definitely one of mine! But with the acceptance that this is where I am now, that this is where I stand, there also comes a peace, a huge gratitude for having got here, for landing in this sober world, and such thanks for having a gorgeous community of women to stand with, to share experiences with, and I believe that’s what many of us walked away with on Saturday evening after our London meet up.

In taking away alcohol from my life, I have removed the one thing that was holding me back for years and years, and in doing that I now have to face up, to woman up, to the good days, the bad days and the in-between days. Because on all of those days, I know that I am doing the best I can, at any given moment because when I look in the mirror, of course I see the lines and the wrinkles and the evidence of a life that has been lived at times wildly and with abandon, but I also see honesty and I see truth. There is a newfound peace and a renewed sense of hope for a future that I couldn’t have dreamed of when I was drinking.

A life without alcohol at times feels like a life where the rug has been pulled out from underneath me. Sometimes it’s hard not to have the buffer that alcohol provided for me. And sometimes it’s harder to face the truth that I am still reacting to situations and experiences in the same way I would have done when I was drinking. But we are all human, we are all relatively new to this new life we have created, and I think we need to give ourselves space and time and give our heads and our hearts time to catch up. I know that I must stop being so hard on myself, I have to stop racing through my days to attempt to catch up on all those wasted days, when I did nothing but look forward to when I could obliterate everything by picking up the glass. I must realise that there is plenty of time and space to be, to breathe and to do all those things that I always wanted to do, always planned on doing, before alcohol became the only thing I really really wanted.

As I sat with the TABB hosts on Saturday evening in Chorleywood, I realised again that I have found my tribe and that I am part of something that is bigger than my own personal path of sobriety. We are all in this together. We are stronger together and my God, how strong we are!

During The meet up last weekend in London there were times when I felt overwhelmed with emotion, there was of course joy, there was so much laughter, but overall there was a gorgeous feeling of solidarity and unity and a feeling of togetherness, and I know that was because I was face to face and up close and personal with the TABB women in the flesh. I was accountable, I was totally out of my comfort zone. As I navigated the crowds on the tube, the trains and the bright lights and big city of London were about as far removed from where I live in a very rural unpopulated area of West Clare, where you can walk for a whole solid hour on the roads without encountering another single human being. But it wasn’t just the change in my physical surroundings that affected me or pushed me out of my complacency. It was facing up to my addiction again, with a band of women who have fought and continue to fight perhaps in different ways, possibly with different back stories to mine, but we all come from the same place. We were all addicted to an addictive substance; there was a point when we couldn’t put down that glass and although that can be a hard fact to face, whether it’s in the cold light of a solitary morning or whether it is in a restaurant having Christmas lunch with the TABB tribe. The acceptance of that, again again and again brings with it a renewed sense of peace and a willingness to keep growing, to keep uncovering what was shrouded in alcohol for so long.

When you stop drinking, you cannot stay the same, you cannot remain stuck, and sometimes I want to stay in the familiar, I want to stay with the old, with what I know, with what I am used to. But by the very fact that I have eradicated alcohol from my life, I cannot stay where I was, I have to look forward, look forward to how I can continue to grow and develop as a person, a person who remained stunted and stopped for so long. I have to keep on moving, and the more I can embrace that, and the more I can take a deep breath and face forward to the unknown, the more I can become the person I was always meant to be and I for one am so happy that I am not doing this alone! Thank you, Sarah, Sandra, and Maria for the beautiful weekend that you created for us in London and I look forward to many more to come.

MEMBERS ONLY

I have found my tribe and that I am part of something that is bigger than my own personal path of sobriety. We are all in this together. We are stronger together and my God, how strong we are!

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