I’m not an expert and I can’t speak to anyone else’s life or reality. But I drank for the first 15 years of my daughters’ life, and I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that being sober this past 14 months has made my reality of being a special needs mom SO MUCH BETTER than it’s ever been. Dylan has Down Syndrome and Autism, she is non-verbal and still incontinent. She requires care and supervision 24/7. Nothing about Dylan or her situation has changed … yet our life is drastically different - for the better - since I quit drinking. My patience level has improved by leaps and bounds. I used to be so short tempered, quick to anger, and also really prone to spiral into depression, anxiety, overwhelm, sadness…. all of it. I had no idea how much alcohol was the cause of it all. I rarely feel those intense sad emotions anymore. I am sooo much more capable of managing everything without feeling like the sky is falling all the time. It’s easier for me to stay calm. Easier to stay positive. It’s easier to process the heavy & hard stuff - of which there’s plenty. My husband and I trade nights sleeping with her. She’s in diapers 24/7. She can’t talk. And there’s the looming reality of a long legal process to stay her guardian when she turns 18.
BUT, now that alcohol is not clouding my reality, there are so many more moments of SIMPLE JOY. Gratitude for the little things. Being present & feeling CAPABLE, no matter what. I drank because wine helped dull the edges of the hard parts of parenting. I thought it took the sting out of what felt like ‘too much.’ But here’s the thing I realized: it was dulling the good stuff too. So many good moments that I now only have fuzzy, blurry memories of because I believed that ‘mommy needs wine.’ Towards the end of my drinking I started to see that the stress and sadness and frustration wasn’t about the circumstances of my life anymore - it was because of the internal struggle caused by and fuelled by my drinking. Alcohol was completely hijacking my emotions, and made parenting so much harder than it already can be. Sober parenting does not mean everything is magical - but sure it is so much more manageable and for that I’m grateful.
