How my ancestral repression triggered a need for booze.
I didn’t set that as a goal…to drink everyday. I didn’t say “Starting October of 2017, I’ll have a glass of wine or do a shot every day,” it just happened.
Mom moved in to escape bed bugs in her senior living apartment. It was sweet helping her set up her room and merge our kitchens. Then I noticed how much she really worried. Worried about food, me, people taking away Christians’ right to worship, the weather, the anti-Christ, noxious gases, just about anything Fox News had for a headline she would worry about. And I felt it. I feel people’s energy.
My safe, sacred space, wherein my Buddha and Goddess statues probably got the sign of the cross everyday (she had a Catholic background), was being invaded by worry energy. It was subtle. Or should I say passive aggressive? Mom is passive aggressive. I never knew. The eggshell walking began and so I drank. I felt repressed. I didn’t feel comfortable in my house. So after work, I would stop for dinner and have a shot of tequila. Tequila because I love ceviche and there are about five Mexican restaurants near me in Irving, and there is a rule not to get red wine at those Mexican restaurants.
Being a pagan in her mind she truly believed I was going to hell, I told her I didn’t believe in a God that would burn his children. “Besides Mom, I am good, I live by the law of good, I practice most of the Buddhist philosophy–expect for ‘no harm to my body’ (the drinking and the sex). My profession is a hypnotist, I help people for the greater good not money. The earth and her health is important and I take care of my .25 acres of it, I am a law-abiding chick, have a garden, collect rain water, follow the phases of the moon, appreciate art, hike, camp and support my family and friends. So I get to burn in hell for that?” I actually wish that had been a direct quote to her, but in order not to offend her I kept that to myself; which made matters worse for me.
A mother’s opinion that projects shame on her child is powerful. It was like a virus that infected me. I checked out, soothed…not getting drunk, but getting a little buzz, one or two shots a day, one or two glasses of wine a day.
My client load began to lighten–not a good thing–my energy and my focus was going to protect myself from mom and not to helping my clients, however this was happening at an unconscious level.
I called my hypnotist Cheryl in California. My focus: to assist me in attracting more business by shifting me from lack to plenty. At this point I didn’t realize it was the worry that was affecting me. When she asked how everything else was in my life, I just told her mom was living with me and it was sweet to have her and how we sewed a little and cooked together from time to time. I felt I really didn’t have a choice, where else was she going to live, so why complain to Cheryl about it.
Things got better for a while then they got worse. It was so bad that in February I announced to my sister’s that I was not going to house mom any longer and we had to find another solution. I dropped a bomb. I called Cheryl again for another phone session. Her questioning this time connected the worry energy from my mom as the source for slowing client load. In hypnosis she helped me to separate my energy from my mom’s energy, she had me imagine a circle of light designated as “her space” and “my space” and we could be together but remain in our own space. She guided me through me cleansing and protecting my circle of energy, thus reclaiming my power. It worked. I felt strong again and the clients began to schedule again…I was back on top of my world. Then, I asked the universe to find mom a new home. I had an amazing amount of trust that would occur and I was relaxed for the first time in five months. She no longer bothered me.
Mom had met a man a few months before. She was quite fond of him and seemed like a schoolgirl, they went on picnics and the museums. Well, he asked her to marry him and she said yes. Wow, thank you universe. So, with that news, I announced that I was selling my house.
It was my out, I needed a fresh start, my home didn’t feel mine anymore and I didn’t have the energy to reclaim it. That house served its beautiful purpose, it had evolved with me each time and we were complete.
I put the house on the market in March and it sold in four days. I drank then because I was celebrating mom’s departure, then I drank because I was sad I was losing my house, and then I drank because I had a lot of packing to do.
With everything packed and moved out, including mom, I said goodbye to my home of 29 years. I didn’t have a new house to move into yet, so I stayed in Irving where things were familiar and moved in with Mark, a man whom I dated a year earlier but who was now a friend. He offered me a large room upstairs with a private bathroom. My rent? “Just buy groceries and cook the meals,” Mark offered. “Deal.”
It was great to have someone to talk to and to live in a familiar neighborhood, but he also had a full bar and every evening he loved to make drinks. I drank with him because I was celebrating the new adventure and by this time I was quite dependent on the booze, it was a habit, it was a part of my day. Then after a few weeks I drank because of his nervous energy. When I announced I didn’t want to drink with him he became uncomfortable. The next day he brought me a surprise gift…a gallon of Jack Daniels. I went upstairs and called my son, “I need to get out of here.” He answered, “Sure mom, we would love to have you stay with us.” I moved out the next weekend. And Mark was a huge help. It was July and hot as hell. During my time with Mark I bought some property and was having a custom double-wide manufactured home built. Princeton, Texas was the location and it was 10 minutes from my son and his growing family.
Princeton trailer town was cool, I was happy to be there and discover the ways of the rural life I had chosen. But two alpha male females (me and my DIL) living in the same house was an excuse to drink to calm my energy to bow to her routine and ways of running her house. Which I did gracefully after a shot or two of JD.
Delays with my house, endless rain meant I couldn’t hike, there was no date to move in, all excuses to drink, plus the TV was too loud and always on. By this time I was drinking a bottle of wine on my days off (which were four a week). It was a long, wet, tipsy summer. And it occurred to me: “I had been drinking heavily and consistently for almost a year.”
Why stop now? I’m still not in my house. So, I tried distracting myself with a boyfriend. We went on a few out of town trips and since he lived in east Texas, I spent a lot of time out there. It was a distraction, but not from drinking, we drank a lot together.
In the midst of that co-dependent relationship, I moved into my house, he was there every weekend and was a huge help. Then, something else occurred to me, “I haven’t been alone in my new house yet.” “Ryan, I really need some down time this weekend.” He didn’t understand. It was the beginning of the end. I realized I was free and had a place to create a sanctuary again, to be independent and as I expressed that to him, he just couldn’t deal with it and began looking for my replacement (although I had no idea). The relationship teetered on a few more months, each week we spent less and less time together. And then like a crash it ended.
It sounds foreign to me now as I reflect back: I was so caught up in the booze that I began to allow toxic people and situations to become the norm. I had lost my clarity I was no longer the ‘me’ I liked.
Paralleling ancestral repression and current generation repression.
The initial repression of myself came because of my response to mother’s shame and then the continued habit of repressing my feelings and the self-inflicted repression of my true self was something I was talking to my Chinese Medicine Doctor about. It reminded him of the repression of the Scots through the ages, citing that in the 17th century assembling in conventicles to rebel again the religious cleansing by the English could be punishable by death. He told me the story of a repressed society that were considered brutal, barbaric and filthy forced them to abandon their culture and themselves and in pain reached for alcohol to soothe. It is well known that the Scots are heavy drinkers. An element of that repression (pain memory) is passed onto future generations like myself. I’m half Scottish and not to use it as an excuse but to clearly see how maybe that is why I so easily slipped into the habit of drinking when I felt the essence of who I was as crumbling. It’s in my genes.
I’m happier now, feeling much more like me again, business is great and I am not drinking daily. Still drinking, but not as much and not during the day. It’s still an issue with me. But I’m not ready to stop completely. No yet. But I feel it coming. I’ve got an appointment next month with my hypnotist to help me break that final connection with booze. I’m preparing myself mentally for the inevitable. It’s good time because my new boyfriend doesn’t drink much at all. And he is so supportive of whatever I feel I need to do to be an even better me.
Read More in Valerie Grimes’ Novel Licking Honey Off A Razor Blade