Day 283 : Take that Criticism With a Smile!

Yesterday I Zoomed (yes, that’s a new verb) with my PhD advisor, who gave me much awaited feedback on the final chapter of my dissertation, As many of you know, I had been struggling for months to write it, and handed in about a week ago. Whereas she loved chapter 3, she asked me to

Day 275: 9 months! No celebration after all…

I was planning on writing an uplifting and victorious 9 months post, but as usual, reality has a talent for kicking you in the ass whenever you have set expectations.  Today on the East Coast of the U.S.A. the weather is stormy. Grey and stuffy, hot, humid, irritating. I am not a fan of complaining

Day 177: Will alcoholism kill my mom?

As I approach the 6 month mark, I am faced with a difficult piece of news. Last week I found out that my mother (a heavy alcoholic since as far back as I can remember) has recently developed alcohol induced hepatitis, or as she puts it… her liver is “very tired”. This is how I

Day 105: Survived “Family of alcoholics” gathering :)

Wow. I feel almost guilty for the title of this post, but I’m not going to sugar-coat my feelings so as to not upset my introjected parental figures, that would be insane ! 🙂  (I don’t think my real parents will ever read this blog) Anyway…. I made it ! My first family event since

Day 34. Licking your wounds.

Fall is here. They’re over, the sweet summer days. HAH! Who am I kidding, there were no sweet summer days in the relationship that brutally ended a week ago. Just gross, sweaty, overheated interminable waves of frustration and bursts of anger. Never enough time to cool down between fights. The same scenario, playing over and

Day 10: The Sober Rollercoaster

I’ve been putting off writing this post because every time I feel like doing it, I know that an hour later I will probably be in a completely different state of mind, and the post will not be representative of the “Day” which, for some strange reason, I think it it meant to represent. I’ve also

Day 6: Bye bye comfort zone !

I’ve been sober for 6 days, and already I’ve done a bunch of random stuff that took me out of my comfort zone: I attended an evangelist fundraiser for kids in Zambia (that was easy cause the evangelist people don’t drink, there was no alcohol served – haha), I’ve worked as a hostess for a

Day 4: Grief?

Wow. I started meditating again after a two week long break. I usually do 1h – 1h30 a day, split into two or three sessions. This morning, I did 40 minutes, 20 of which were spent weeping. Weeping for no specific reason, it seemed at first. Then it became clearer: weeping because of the deep

Day 2: Here we go!

Yep, you heard, me: day 2, not 1.  Why, you ask? Because, my friend, for me, day 1 was spent in bed, running to the bathroom to puke bile every hour, nursing the worst hangover I have had in a very very long time.  Sigh. Let me rewind a little bit.  Two weeks ago, I

Two weeks to go – the grey zone.

Two weeks to go before I quit drinking. I mean, quit for a long time, quit for “real”. (As if the 11 last days weren’t real). Last night for the first time in 12 days, I drank alcohol. At a dinner party, with friends. There were no disasters, no embarrassing events, no regrets. A slight