Want to work on your wellbeing? Start by ditching the self-flagellation, my friend.
We women are experts in telling ourselves to ‘do better’. We constantly beat ourselves up for never being ‘enough’, for never getting things quite ‘right’. We’re utterly unforgiving.
I get it – I was expert level in it too!
And that’s why I drank. Because I was drowning under the unrelenting pressure of modern womanhood and I’d learned, from a very young age, that alcohol was my band-aid of choice.
My beginnings
If you don’t already know, I was born in the UK but grew up in Africa. My parents didn’t drink any more than any of their friends, BUT my grandparents started each day with a Gin and Cinzano. And, at the ripe old age of 13, I was allowed to start drinking too.
I don’t blame any of them. The received wisdom back then was that, ‘if we let them drink with us then they'll be used to alcohol and better able to...
I call bullsh*t on alcohol
Hello and welcome to Emma’s alcohol-free paradise; a place of sunshine, rainbows and eternal joy.
Juuuuuust kidding.
Alcohol-free or not, life is life. Immense highs, the lowest of lows and everything in between. And that’s a daunting prospect, especially without our trademark ‘safety net’.
Except our relationship with alcohol has never been, and never will be, ‘safe’. It’s a sneaky little devil, dressing up as a solver of problems while it lights fires all around us.
And still, it manages to convince us that we ‘need’ it. That life will be worse without it.
I call bullsh*t.
Alcohol takes more than it gives
The first step to that rainbow-filled AF world is to recognise (as above) that our perception of alcohol is TOTALLY skewed. It is not our friend, it is not a band-aid and it will be no loss.
Why is that important? Because perception and positive mental attitude are critical to our...