My name is MATA.

The other day I was telling someone about my blog to which they replied “what made you ever think of doing that?”

This is a question I haven’t been asked up until this point, and at the time, I didn’t have an answer. However, since then, I have thought long and hard as to why I started my blog, and why I continue to write a post nearly every day.

Let me start at the beginning:

My name is MATA. I am a Mother. I have two children. I have a full-time professional career. I have two degrees from University. I am divorced. I live in a ‘nice’ apartment in a ‘nice’ neighbourhood. I am an alcoholic. It took me just on twenty years to say that last sentence out loud.

The first time I did was four years ago, and it was both liberating and terrifying at the same time.  I had known in my mind for a long time that I was powerless over alcohol, but I also knew once I admitted this, then the ‘party’ would be over.

I would love to tell you that since that time, my life changed for the better, and I got help and continued living the ‘picket fence’ life I thought I had. However, in the four years since, I have lived in a ‘lock down’ detox facility, a women’s rehab centre, got divorced, been admitted to Emergency three times for overdoses taken during alcoholic blackouts, suffered from severe depression and literally had to come back from the ‘brink of insanity’, all while holding down my job and raising my two beautiful children.

For most of these four years, not many people knew about any of this except for my family members, closest friends and, of course, the two innocent witnesses, my children. My shame about this disease was so great that I went to any length to hide the suffering that my addiction was causing me and those around me.

Alcoholism is a disease. Unlike cancer you don’t fight it, you surrender to it. Three months ago, I finally fully surrendered to my disease, and I am now in good recovery. Part of my recovery has been taking the shame out of the disease and ‘owning’ it.

I have a specific program that I have created to aid my recovery that involves many facets but one underlying key principle: I take life one day at a time. Since applying this, I have been able to restore some peace within myself, and the chaos this insidious disease created in my house, has stopped.

So, I guess the main reason I started my blog, Mothers Addicted To Alcohol, was to take the shame away from this disease. I wanted to have a ‘voice’ where I could express my battle with this disease and discuss all the issues that I face with being an alcoholic Mother in recovery.

More importantly, I wanted to create a blog where other Mothers, or women, could read about my experiences and identify them with their own. I wanted to give other women a voice to be able to speak about their struggle with this disease.

As I have already stated, it is an incredibly selfish disease, where people who don’t suffer from it have very little understanding and very little time to hear about it.

Since starting my blog, I have, for the first time in my life, not been ashamed of who I am.

This has been paramount in my recovery. Again, for the first time, I have been able to take respite from my disease. Being honest and ‘telling it like it is’ has enabled me to string together a good start, to what I hope will be, long-term sobriety.

More than this though, I have been able to help other people voice their experiences about their addiction to alcohol, and this is what has been the most inspiring to me.

It is incredibly hard for many Mothers, or women, to say out loud, “Hi, my name is…and I’m an alcoholic”. If you think you are one of these women, try it just once. Whether to a loved one, a friend, or on a recovery blog like mine. See how you feel when you do.  I hope it’s the first step to at least one day of sobriety. If that day is not too hard, then try it again. One day at a time.

Do you have inspiring words for MATA and other mothers of the world suffering from alcoholism? Have you ever been in a similar position with an addiction? 

This is an original Guest Post to World Moms Blog by our reader, MATA, in Australia.  MATA is a recovering alcoholic mother and is raising awareness about the disease on her blog, “Mothers Addicted to Alcohol.”

Photo credit to MATA. 

World Moms Blog

World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children. World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.

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