Pro #111 to being sober
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Join Date: Jan 2015
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Pro #111 to being sober
(111 is in honor of my mother as 1s and 11:1 and all relate to hope and faith and butterflies; which all symbolize my mothers spirit to me.)
I am legitimately and purposefully channeling my mother’s strength... I say legitimately because til to I decided to become sober I was only faking. My mother was an amazing woman with tremendous self-control. I never realized at the time and only in recent years her strength of character and steadfast determination when she set her mind to something.
She and my father both smoked when I was little, her up to three packs a day prior to her quitting. She basically quit cold turkey when she developed pneumonia, and she never looked back. For another 25 years she lived and traveled with my father, who remained an avid and perpetual smoker. I recall her commenting at one point about how she missed sitting outside with a cup of coffee while smoking a cigarette, especially when dad would be smoking. After her cancer diagnosis, etc., I asked her once “Then why not have one.” Her response was simple, “Because then I couldn’t say that it has been X days since I smoked.” X at that time was in the multiple thousands. I recall when I quit smoking and tried to make excuses for being moody during the process, she shut me down quickly and said I didn't have to be moody, that it was my choice to be so. And she was right.
I recall her loving the smell of certain liquors, but my parents never drank that I recall – we didn’t have alcohol in the house. I never really knew why. Mom eventually told me snippets of a few bad drinking encounters she had long before she and my dad met.. and dad said that alcohol just never really agreed with him. I imagine for mom perhaps being able to count how long it had been since she drank was another reason that even facing death she still never touched a drop – but I vividly remember baking cookies and her smelling the rum extract once and just smiling while she said, “Mmmmm”. Such self-control.. such determination.. such vision of purpose for the outcome that she wanted and knowing she alone had the power to make it reality. And only recently did I learn from my father that his father had been a terrible alcoholic.
So as I face this journey, I will attempt to emulate just a small portion of my mother's strength, so that I too can achieve an X number of days in the thousands and know that I alone had the courage to make it so.
I am legitimately and purposefully channeling my mother’s strength... I say legitimately because til to I decided to become sober I was only faking. My mother was an amazing woman with tremendous self-control. I never realized at the time and only in recent years her strength of character and steadfast determination when she set her mind to something.
She and my father both smoked when I was little, her up to three packs a day prior to her quitting. She basically quit cold turkey when she developed pneumonia, and she never looked back. For another 25 years she lived and traveled with my father, who remained an avid and perpetual smoker. I recall her commenting at one point about how she missed sitting outside with a cup of coffee while smoking a cigarette, especially when dad would be smoking. After her cancer diagnosis, etc., I asked her once “Then why not have one.” Her response was simple, “Because then I couldn’t say that it has been X days since I smoked.” X at that time was in the multiple thousands. I recall when I quit smoking and tried to make excuses for being moody during the process, she shut me down quickly and said I didn't have to be moody, that it was my choice to be so. And she was right.
I recall her loving the smell of certain liquors, but my parents never drank that I recall – we didn’t have alcohol in the house. I never really knew why. Mom eventually told me snippets of a few bad drinking encounters she had long before she and my dad met.. and dad said that alcohol just never really agreed with him. I imagine for mom perhaps being able to count how long it had been since she drank was another reason that even facing death she still never touched a drop – but I vividly remember baking cookies and her smelling the rum extract once and just smiling while she said, “Mmmmm”. Such self-control.. such determination.. such vision of purpose for the outcome that she wanted and knowing she alone had the power to make it reality. And only recently did I learn from my father that his father had been a terrible alcoholic.
So as I face this journey, I will attempt to emulate just a small portion of my mother's strength, so that I too can achieve an X number of days in the thousands and know that I alone had the courage to make it so.
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Join Date: Jan 2015
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Posts: 773
Originally Posted by MariahGayle 
Sweet I can do better!! Congratulations on 111 days.....your Mom would be proud!!
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