I was sitting on the couch—glass of wine in hand—my four kids with me. It was a Friday night in November last year, movie night in our house. I can’t remember what we were watching because I was never really paying attention. Also, I can’t remember how much I’d been drinking. It might have been my second glass or it could have been my third. Out of nowhere my four-year-old son turned to me and said “You’re boring now mummy. You don’t have fun with us anymore.”.
Kids say random things like that all the time but this time kicked me in my guts because it wasn’t random—it was true. For too long my days had revolved around wine. If I wasn’t drinking I was counting down the hours until I would be. Wine was the thing getting me through long days of work and long nights of kids—that’s what I told myself.
When my son said those words—they broke me. Guilt and shame filled me up because I knew, I knew, I was acting like a shit mother. I could have been a lot worse but I also could have been a lot better.
Normal adult humans don’t drink alone. When I was younger and I was setting my barometer for what was normal drinking and what was not normal drinking—drinking alone was abnormal. Drinking is supposed to be a social thing.
Then I became a mother and got handed a whole new rule book. Drinking alone (kids do not count as drinking buddies) is acceptable, encouraged and applauded—by other mothers, by the media. A wine at the end of the day is a reward for being a good Mummy, for getting things done, for keeping little people alive all day long. When I became a mother I adjusted my barometer accordingly: drinking alone became a thing.