Your world has shifted yet again! I wonder how many more times I will write that. Now you are in Lockdown, severely restricted around leaving your home, or doing any of the things you have taken for granted for so long, and without any real idea when it will end.
Your health and the health of your loved ones is uncertain, schools closed, business closing, and you seem to have very little control over the future – your morale keeps dipping, not matter how hard you try to keep it up there.
My loves and I are safe and well, so I know how fortunate I am, but of course I still my dips too, and my most recent, in the scheme of things small, but at the time to me big, came about because I had planned, since January, to take My Girls (my 2 doglets) on a walking holiday in March. Three days of much needed re-connecting with myself and of regrouping on every physical and emotional level, as the three of us walked around the coastline. I had booked a chalet on the beach in Devon, and it is literally my idea of heaven. I have been going there 4 times a year for over 30 years.
I went when my mother was killed, 29 years ago and when my Dad finally passed in October 2018.
I have been visiting the same place, and do the same things, through the highs and lows of my life, and I feel at my most connected there, so to not go, and the decision made one day before I was due to leave, was a real blow to me, even though I knew in the previous week, it was unlikely to happen.
Plus, I lost my money, which no-one can afford to do right now. So, on the morning of my departure date, which was the first day of Lockdown, I was feeling very dispirited and low.
Then I took My Girls for our walk. I went to a lovely wood close to my home. The sun was shining, and My Girls, as usual, almost combusted with joy – honestly they act as though every bit of food they get is the first mouthful they have been fed in a month, and every walk as a release from their ‘chained-up-in-a-shed’ lives – it is so embarrassing, especially as they are treated like princesses!
Anyway, as we walked, the sun warmed my face, comforting my disappointment, anxiety and fears, and I felt my jaw loosen and my breathing slow as I took in the gifts of the world I am so blessed to live in.
There are always very precious gifts that remain all around you, regardless of what is going on in life.
The daffodils were still growing, the birds still soaring above, the huge Red Kites dipping down and gliding back up above my head.
And then I noticed something else, in this state of national emergency, when travel is restricted, the blue sky was, an unseen in the last 20 years of my life, an uninterrupted expanse without the constant planes overhead and the wood, close to the road as it was, silent of the cars that usually rushed past.
In the midst of all this turmoil, our plant, our Mother Earth is breathing a deep, long, grateful sigh of relief that we have stopped our ‘doing’ and she is allowed to regroup, to heal, to flourish again.
You must take this opportunity to do the same. You have been stopped in your ‘doing’ tracks, and now is the time to ‘be’.
To become close to one another again emotionally, if not physically, by reaching out to the aunt/uncle/friend that is always on your ‘I’ll must call them, tomorrow will be easier’ list – a tomorrow that as you know too well, never comes.
Now you have the time to set up a virtual coffee and chat. Make it a different person every day, maybe even make some a weekly event. Do this at least every other day. Connect with them, talk to them, nourish and be nourished by your contact with them.
Reach out to the nightmare family member – just by text if that’s all you can face (they are still a nightmare) – check in on them, tell them you are thinking of them and if you love them, tell that too. Do it for your sake, and let that ripple out.
You don’t have to pretend to be best buds, but knowing that you should reach out, and then doing it, will give you a level of peace you need.
Be kinder to yourself. Get to know who you really are, and what you really need. Relax into the enforced ‘stopping’ of your rushing around, in your attempts to acquire the ‘stuff’ you feel you need, but is not necessary, is actually irrelevant and sometimes even damaging, to your ‘being’
Make a list of the books you would like to read, and then buy/download one a week. Listen to an audio book as you move more gently through your day.
Do some loving decluttering, the physical letting go of no longer needed objects also enables you to let go of the no longer needed thoughts and feelings.
Create more space in you inner and outer world.
These small things will start to gift you back the peace and balance and contentedness that you lack, and it is the lack in your life that is the fuel of your drinking.
The universe has created this time for you. This is a time of transformation on every level. And not only is now the time, now, you have the time.
The time to heal, if you choose to.
If you use this now wisely, it will be the greatest investment of your time you will ever make.
Stuff the new car, the new clothes, the holidays, etc – the things you buy to make you ‘feel better’.
Take this time to be the person who truly feels better, who is better because of your new ‘being‘. Now is the time, like our planet, for you to start your self-loving process of healing.
All this will pass, and whilst you go through this process, be very kind and gentle with yourself.
Sonia xx
There has never been a more a more important time for you to invest in being your best physical and emotional self, and you know that alcohol takes you further from that you.
You cannot know where you will be in 6 weeks time in your outer world, hopefully things will be more normal, but you can’t be sure of that.
However, I can tell you 100%, that if you do take responsibility now to invest in you, you will effortlessly return to being the quietly naturally resilient woman you were born to be, able and confident in your abilities to give and receive the care, love you need and deserve without any need of alcohol to ‘get you through your days’. That is the is the result you will have at the end of the 6 week Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method process.
If you know, within you that now is your time to invest and commit to YOU, contact me here to book an Exploratory Call
