Speaker 1 0:00
In this week's episode of midlife pay if we talk about connection and the importance of connection in living a joyful and happy, alcohol free life if you're a woman in midlife, his intuition is telling you that giving booze the elbow might be the next right move. Their midlife AF is the podcast for you. Join counselor psychotherapist this naked mind and gray area drinking alcohol coach Emma Gilmore for a weekly natter about parenting quirky teens, menopause relationships and navigating this thing called midlife alcohol free. If you're feeling that life could be so much more that you're sick and tired of doing all the things for everyone else. If your intuition is waving her arms manically at you saying it could all be so much easier if we didn't have to keep drinking. Come with me. Together we'll find our groove without booze.
Speaker 1 1:08
I lovingly acknowledge the Bruner and people of the Kulin nation as the custodians of current Baroque. I share my admiration for the Aboriginal culture, I witnessed the connection that they have for each other and the land and their community. As I swim in the waters and walk on the land, I feel the power of this place. I'm grateful for the Aboriginal peoples amazing custodianship, the power, beauty and the healing potential of this place. I wish to pay special respects to the elders of the Buena, wrong people. Their wisdom, guidance and support are exceptional, and felt well beyond the Aboriginal community. I honor that this is Aboriginal land, and that it has never been ceded. I am committed to listening to the Aboriginal community, and learning how I can be an active ally in their journey to justice. Welcome, everybody. Sorry, I'm a little bit late today. A bit of a slow morning. It's been an interesting, interesting period in our family at the moment. And it was it was quite interesting. I was reflecting. Because we'd gone through. We've gone through a bit of an interesting year in our family. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that I know a lot of people are having a lot of somewhat heavy, heavy situations. In their lives, we've been having a bit of a heavy situation. And one of the things that I found so brilliant about being alcohol free, is being able to feel in to those feelings. When things don't go right, when things aren't, how you would like them to be. And I was reflecting in a post message I did recently, how when you stopped drinking you're late lens through which you see the world changes. It changes from a world in which alcohol is taught is absolutely fundamental elixir of everything good in life. And we've been taught that, you know, things aren't fun without it. We can't have sex without it. We can't have a good meal without it. We can't celebrate without it. We can't destress without it. We can't relieve ourselves from our attention without it. I'm just gonna set to say hi in the comments here quickly, just in case anybody is there and wants to say hi and chat. Sometimes I know the it doesn't work properly unless you're actually can't knit until I've commented. So I'm just gonna do that as well just double check on Instagram as well. Hello, Chrissy, good to see you.
Unknown Speaker 4:24
And let me just check in be the lighthouse. Beautiful. There we go. So it's just talking about how we start to see the world through a different lens. When we stopped drinking,
Speaker 1 4:47
and, you know, we change everything changes really we change from being in a situation where we believe that alcohol kind of is the elixir of life, to a world where we're questioning that. Wondering if it is actually art Tony. Hello Tretter sending you certificate all? I'm so glad you're there. I'm so glad we're here together you Yeah. I'm feeling I'm feeling your presence and I sending you love Thank you, Daddy, just reflecting on how the world changes, right, the way that we see the world changes in our life in our circumstances.
Unknown Speaker 5:47
Yeah, I'm so glad you're here. It's interesting, I had a very good friend who's experienced some loss recently
Speaker 1 6:02
heartbreaking. And one of my people in my be the lighthouse group, as well as experienced a big loss recently. And it's can be so lonely content, because we are, you're all of us are traveling in our own worlds. And the lens through which we see the world is different depending on what's happening for us personally. You know, for me, and I know, Tony, you're, you're you have a similar experience, that for me, my children, finding out my children were neurodivergent. And learning how to parent them, required that I unpick the view through which I saw the world. And pretty much everything in it. So everything I've been taught to believe about the way things should be, I had to honor that, and I'm still unlearning it. I still, you know, come up against my conditioning, regards to compliance and your behavior and what's considered to be good behavior, and also what having a child who isn't behaving like that means about me, there's just so much work to be done on ourselves when we have children who are behaving in a non typical way. And actually stopping drinking, no matter how much I wish that it wasn't the way the case is a non typical course of action. Yeah, it's, it's, we, it's there's so much to learn isn't there? There's so much to learn. Like I, recently, one of my children who had been going through a really, they'd been bullied at school, and they change schools, and they're still really recovering from that trauma. Started, and this is very common, again, trigger warning of anyone who has had eating disorders and doesn't want to hear people talking about eating disorders, I am going to talk a little bit about disordered eating. Because it goes hand in hand a lot of the time with alcohol problems, and also with neuro divergence. And my eldest child stopped eating had ever had a very wide variety of food that they would eat as a young person. And that then greatly reduced what they were eating started to only want to eat foods that I would consider to be in my upbringing, unhealthy. And it's funny, isn't it? Because this actually applies to intuitive eating as well, which is the other part of my work that I'm still very much a work in progress on myself to is this whole social conditioning around? You know, what our bodies should look like? What we should age, like, what we everything is this whole idea of this control of humans that should we as humans should behave a certain way and if we don't fit the mold, then the tribe hangs up on us with like, slack off. It's really not good. And I've seen it in my kids. I've seen it in my own personal circumstances. I've seen it with friends. And I see it all the time with humans who are trying to do things differently. You know, one of those things might be parenting your children in a less behavior based compliant spaced form of parenting, with the end result being to keep them safe from harm. But my child who had been hurt, you know, his choice of foods were greatly reduced. And he was just wanting only to eat foods that were what I would consider to be unhealthy. So I went to see a nutritionist who specialized in neuro affirming care. And she basically said to me, work on your own shit. Don't bring your own set your own conditioning into the the relationship that you have with your child, it is perfectly okay for your child to eat McDonald's, if they so want, if they long as they're eating some protein, some good fats and carbohydrate. I can't remember the other things, but they're eating a balanced diet. So it might be more salty or whatever than we might want. But at least they're eating. And it reminded me so much. And this is, you know, it's like when you start working in Intuitive Eating is very much about anti diet culture and sort of picking apart this idea that you have to be in a thinner body in order for you to be healthy, because we've been brought up in the sort of 1980s You know, Jane Fonda workouts, and I mean, are a little bit older. I know then, Tony, for example. But we were brought up to believe that thin, thin was everything, right? If you can never be too thin or too rich, I remember that being something that was thrown around. And this is whole, and it's almost like the health and well being industry often is really disguised. So like Weight Watchers and SlimFast. And all these kinds of things have sort of rebranded themselves as not being about weight loss, but about being about health. And, you know, I don't know if you guys know, but the BMI which is the body mass index, which was something that was used for years, to determine whether a person was healthy or not. They've done away with it, it's been it's been scrapped as a form of assessing health because firstly, it was something that was made up by some astrologists back in I think the 1800s completely made up. And you know, the thing that people who are in diet culture and believe firmly in you know, the sin is healthy ideal. They will come gunning for you if you have a different perspective. And it's similar with you know, anything that's out of the norm, any different way of thinking. So, you know, not drinking is out of the norm. The common thing to do is to drink alcohol, and we've been conditioned to believe that drinking alcohol is you know, you can't have a good life without him. Which is not true. In fact, what is true is that are in my experience, you have a far better life without it. You have just as much fun, just as much joy but much more joy. In fact, I'd say more you get better of everything without drinking. Just about to go save Weight Watchers. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting, isn't it the way that we've rebranded all this stuff and it's the same with people when you're not drinking you know, people even my mom does it to me all the time. Because she is very, very in ingrained in this sort of thin is good everything in moderation and she like she's quite judgmental about people in bigger bodies and stuff like that. It comes from her own stuff. And I know I've spoke spoken about this before. But because trying to keep herself safe from something she sees as harmful and from being bullied and from being excluded and for being judged unacceptable. And that's one of the reasons that keeps a lot of us stuck. Not drinking and not and keeping, trying to be thin, trying to be young. trying, trying, trying try and try to get our kids to be compliant and yet, from everything thing I see is compliance based parenting that causes most of the mental health issues that we have as adults. That's not the only thing of course not this huge, you know, people have big trauma as well, but primarily suppression of self. Human beings not being allowed to have had their experience, their experience being made wrong, having to care for somebody else's needs above your own generally apparent know, their needs came first having feelings as children was inconvenient, you know, children should be seen and not heard.
Unknown Speaker 15:47
And you I see so much in the parenting that we are taught, control crying, you know, all these ways of when you look at a little baby's brain, and how they interpret the world.
Speaker 1 16:12
You can see why we end up feeling like it's not say. And you can see why we create these skins these, I don't know, what do you call it, like a protective shield or mask, so that we can be accepted in the world. And you can see why it's so important for humans to be accepted, to be connected, to feel loved, to feel like we belong. And nine times out of 10, we'll sell our soul before will stand out and risk being rejected. And I think that's the same with drinking. It's the same, it's very, very difficult for humans to do this stuff alone. And that's one of the reasons I think being in community and being in communities like this where we are now. And being able to be with other people doing the same thing stepping out of the mold, you know, doing something different challenging the accepted way of being accepted way of doing accepted work behaving and saying this isn't for me, this isn't working for me. So I hate the way my friend has. I never know how to make it just focus. There we go. Do not
Unknown Speaker 17:45
still making the noise. I'm just gonna ignore it. I've lost my train of thought now. If anyone's there, can you remind me? Tony, I think you're there maybe such a middle aged woman. That's so funny.
Speaker 1 18:16
What was I saying? Community. That's right. So we we need to connect, we need to be seen. I'm asked about dropping off. Thanks. I'm so glad it's so when we part of stopping drinking is about removing the mask and stepping out as our true selves. Because alcohol is a mask right? It's a form of camouflage keeps us safe helps us belong to the clique. But feels like it does. But it doesn't. It feels like it helps us belong to the clique. But what it actually does is keeps us away from ourself helps us abandon ourselves. What it allows us to do is it allows us to know and it allows us to ignore push away, stay stuck. There are very good reasons why we might want to do that. And that is fine. But when a person is ready to step out and start to heal, to feel to learn how to be a human being in this world without having to nomina escape in order to survive. Community is so fucking important. because when we stopped drinking, when we decide to stop fighting for our baby's safety in the world, and by that I mean you're a diversion kids and making sure that they feel safe we are putting ourselves in a very vulnerable position. And actually, vulnerability is fundamental to personal growth. But vulnerability requires authenticity. And you cannot be authentic when you're drinking. Because if you're drinking or drinking to hide, to disconnect, to run away and a million other things if anyone has got any questions, because I will always just ramble on, please feel free to ask them. I'd love to answer anything that you want to talk about today. But I was just here to say, yes. I'm so glad to see my beautiful just said, so. Kinzie. Thank you. I've got Simone and Tony. That's it. I've sorted their life's good if I've got you two. Got my back. But yeah, a sense of communities is huge. Because we will stumble, we will fall we will not get it, right, we are learning. And what we need is not someone coming around and saying, Well, I told you, you should never have gone down that extreme route of being alcohol free. You know, it's everything in moderation, you know? Isn't that right? Isn't it right? People are always like, gunning for you to agree with them. And it's like, no, it's not right. Not for me. Everything in moderation isn't, isn't a saying that I would use regards to alcohol. Because, you know, for me, it's like, if you want to moderate fine if you want to mindfully drink, no problem at all. My issue comes when we pretend that alcohol is an innocuous substance because what we then do is we keep oh no worries, see, darling, take good care. Lovely to see you. My treasure, really lovely to see you. When we, when we pretend that alcohol is an innocuous substance, that's where we keep people thinking that they're the problem. So drink or don't drink, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want to do. But don't kid yourself that alcohol is an innocuous substance it isn't. And that's the difficulty that we have is because people are trying so hard to hold on to the idea that our core is the elixir of life. And that you can control it. And if you do control it, then you will, you know, reach this amazing place where you can drink and have no consequences. And that doesn't exist. And you know, that is a big changing of worldview. For people. It's a big aha. And for a lot of people, they're not ready for that Aha, and that is totally fine. But when you are being around other people who are also experiencing the AHA of actually, I need to do some work on myself. I need to understand what it is that I'm afraid of. I need to understand what I'm running from what I'm trying to numb what I'm trying to suppress. And that might mean that I have to have the difficult conversations, I might need to put my big girl pants on I might need to change when you're in community. It's so lovely. Being surrounded by a bunch of other women who would female assigned at birth humans, which in my community is genuinely mainly because you know there is a lot to do with relationships, and often with suppression and often with a bit of they'll patriarchy and thrown in there. That's traumatize women intergenerationally and for me, that's one of the reasons why I keep my groups assigned female at birth. Humans occasionally I'll take people in I do want to one with people who are not female but and I've had a couple of groups where I've had some guys then, and then beautiful humans. But I think for women, it feels safer because another reason why we drink is because we don't feel safe and ourselves. It's not safe to be in our bodies. And so what we're trying to do in community is create a world that feels safe for us to be in to hang out in to have large expanses of time, you know, with because that's one of the most terrifying people for things for people when they stopped drinking or these large, you know, huge expanses of time. Well, what you will find is when you do the work and you are in community with other human beings who
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
