Bittersweet Memories

Meg takes a look back at her relationship with alcohol,  where she discovered a profound paradox that changed everything. She was terrified of losing precious moments—yet was drinking them away.

Meg's whole life revolved around preserving memories. She treasured photographs, constantly reminisced about childhood homes, and felt deep aches when thinking about the past. But as her drinking worsened, she began experiencing blackouts during the very moments she was desperate to remember. The irony was painful: her solution to the unbearable awareness that life keeps moving forward was causing her to miss it entirely.

When Meg randomly opened Brené Brown's "Atlas of the Heart" to a passage about bittersweet emotions, something clicked. The quote perfectly captured her experience: "The bittersweet side of appreciating life's most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing." This awareness was both why she drank and why she eventually had to stop. Meg couldn't bear another day numbing out the very experiences she feared losing.

Since becoming alcohol-free, Meg has learned to transform that bittersweet ache into presence. Now when teaching her youngest to drive or gathering with family, instead of drowning in nostalgia or numbing with alcohol, she take a breath and appreciates these fleeting moments as they happen. When difficult emotions arise, Meg sees them as signals to ask what she truly needs rather than reaching for a drink.

If you're struggling to break free from alcohol, ask yourself: what do you want the rest of your life to look like? Yes, feeling emotions fully can be hard—but numbing them is ultimately harder. Reach out if you need support; Bella and Meg are here to help you discover the clarity and freedom waiting on the other side.

MEG

Web: https://www.meganwebb.com.au/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/meganwebbcoaching/
Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
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BELLA

Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholcounsellorisabella
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Online Alcohol Self-Paced Course: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/fDzcyvWL/checkout...

Chapters

• 0:00 Confronting My Fear of Loss
• 6:45 The Paradox of Memories and Drinking
• 9:57 Bittersweet and Nostalgia Explained
• 11:25 The Exact Reason I Stopped Drinking
• 14:13 Living in the Present Moment
• 18:08 Freedom After Alcohol

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:33

Hey everyone, it's Meg here and I'm excited to be doing a solo episode. I've done a few in the past that you can scroll back and find, but today's one is something I've been thinking about and I really wasn't sure how I was going to explain what I wanted to say or how I was going to word it. But then I was presented with something from the universe that has really, really helped me, and I'll talk about that. But first I just want to start by saying the reason for this episode is that I recently got together with a friend and they asked me firstly, how I knew you know how did I stop drinking? You know what was it. And then, how have I stayed alcohol free? And obviously, if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that Bella and I have talked about many of the different ways and reasons that we stopped and ways we've stayed alcohol free. But this conversation had me sort of digging into things I hadn't spoken about and that really have been such an integral part of my journey. So I started out by talking about this really deep fear, I guess, of losing people around me, which then led to me talking about how I've always, always struggled with change, with endings, with children growing up, with all sorts of things, I've had a deep longing for the past, for childhood homes. I often think and dream about the past. I guess I ruminate, I long for it and in my mind I've kind of made it the ultimate and nothing's ever been the same.

Speaker 1: 3:38

From an early age I really love photographs and I grew up my favourite times were waiting for my dad to come home with the developed photos. He got them done at his office and all the excitement. I became a photographer. You know I just love photos so much. It became important to me. Well, it was always important to me because photographs represented memories. They represented beautiful moments, because it really wasn't often you, you took photos of the crap. So it was a very special part of my life. And memories became a special part of my life and I I really found myself, as my drinking got worse, just really caught up in the past and kind of wanting to be able to go back there. But I kind of realized along the way that my whole life was about creating memories so that I could look back at them. But what about actually being in the moment? It was interesting to recognize that it was so important for me to create the memories, but I was missing the action moment and then, as my drinking got worse, I was blacking out the important moments. Even in my early days of drinking I had blackouts. I would look forward to something so much and then most of it I didn't remember. So there was this fear that I was going to lose people, that memories were, that life was fleeting, things like that, but I was blocking out half of it. It was. It was ironic that the thing I wanted most I was drinking away.

Speaker 1: 5:09

So yesterday I had a book I had ordered arrive. It is Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown and it's a book about 90 different emotions. It's a beautiful book, it's very incredible. I haven't read it yet, but this morning I was thinking I really don't know how to put into words what I want to convey on this podcast and I opened the book randomly and what came up was the part on bittersweet and nostalgia, and it pretty much summed up exactly what I was trying to say.

Speaker 1: 5:44

My whole life up until recently had been bittersweet, letting go of things but not wanting to remembering the good. Bad things that might have ended, but I still had nostalgia around them, like marriage, breaking up friendships that were toxic. I always found it so hard to get over these things kids growing up, the looking back now my youngest is 16 and just having this ache that the younger years had gone and it went by so quickly. So there's a quote by Mark Parent in the book Atlas of the Heart and it says the bittersweet side of appreciating life's most precious moment is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing. And that's it. That is it. That's why I drank and that's why I stopped drinking. I drank because it was unbearable. It was unbearable to think that those moments were passing that children grow up, that parents die, that people die, that friendships that you treasured end, that jobs that you love end, that places where you belonged and felt like your life had meaning ended. The unbearable awareness that moments were passing was the reason I drank. I had to numb it out because it hurt.

Speaker 1: 7:15

The flip side of the coin was that it's the exact reason I stopped drinking. I could not let another moment pass by in a haze of alcohol. So I said to my friend I drank because I couldn't handle the pain of the fear of loss in different ways. My heart aches. It still aches a bit when I think of my childhood homes. It's things that have gone. I have so much emotion tied up in them. But in doing that, in being in that place, I was relying on alcohol to numb that fear and that pain, and then I was missing out. So one of the reasons a really big reason that I stopped drinking was because enough is enough.

Speaker 1: 8:10

It was time that I started living in the moment and being a part of the, the things in my life that were going to become the memories, actually enjoying them at the time, not just waiting to get the photos developed so I could look back and go. That was so great. It was hold on. Life was becoming more about the looking back than the participating. So I had to get rid of alcohol to start to participate in my own life and in doing that I had to reconnect with myself. So there's a lot of work in doing that. It's not as easy as just stopping drinking. That doesn't create a great life or a perfect life. It certainly might be more healthy on your body, but it doesn't fix the mental part. So I've really had to work hard on that and by doing that I have been able to get very clear on my reminiscing nostalgia, why all of that has been such a huge part of my life.

Speaker 1: 9:14

The thing with nostalgia and memories and the like is that for me, for example, things become a lot better than they actually were as well. So in Brené Brown's book they talk about that. Our memories aren't always the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and with doing this healing work, I've been able to see that all these things weren't the be all and end all. In fact, they're just like life is today up and down, really hard at times, really great at times. Lots of different emotions, loss of friendships, people, but also gaining people in my life, gaining friendships, feeling belonging, but there's also loneliness.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Now, these are all common themes of human beings, and if I get real, I can see that I've had all of them over my whole life, childhood included, but my brain was just going to. Everything was better when, when I was younger, when I was safer, when I was looked after. The reality was, though, that was stopping me from, from enjoying the moment and and being part of life. So, since giving up alcohol, I've been able to see why, why it mattered to me so much the past, why I couldn't walk past my old childhood homes without wanting to go back, why I dream about my childhood home so often. You know what was going on and I've really really been able to see that.

Speaker 1: 10:47

I associated childhood with a sense of safety, anxiety, free, being looked after, not having any responsibilities, having all my loved ones in one place. Now, the crazy thing about that is I was an anxious kid. I worried a crap load. I did feel that I had to look after everyone, even though that was not true. I had a hard childhood in emotionally because I had taken on all these beliefs that weren't true. So when I'm looking back, being so nostalgic, it wasn't the whole truth. So by working through everything, I can see that I'm always, always going to miss things, not really like endings, have nostalgia for places and people and things of the past, but it's starting to shift into not being something that just aches in my heart. It's starting to shift to actually really helping me to learn to appreciate the moment. And of course, we've all heard live in the moment. It's only now I'm starting to understand that and to understand that the moments I have now that I live in will become the past that I will look back on, but I'll be able to say this time that I made the most of it and really all we can do is make the most of the now.

Speaker 1: 12:10

So part of me being able to stay alcohol free is working on this, and whenever I start to feel nostalgic, sad, some discomfort, whatever it is, I look at it. It would be the time the old me would have drank. Oh, quick, numb those feelings. I don't like them, get rid of them. I probably then would have connected with a friend who was drinking and we'd cry over the past. But now I don't reach for the drink.

Speaker 1: 12:40

I look at it as a signal and I ask myself what do I need? It might be that I'm feeling lonely and I need to connect. I might need to connect by calling a friend, or I might need to organize a group gathering so I feel that belonging. It might be that I need to exercise. It might be that I need to look at a core belief and work on it a bit more, because this self-healing is ongoing. It's something that I do every day. In a way, it's not overwhelming. I find it incredibly joyful because I just have so many moments where I'm like, oh my God, aha. That's why I'm like I am, or that's how I can turn it around to something positive. That's how I can change the neural pathways in my brain and create new beliefs. So the work that I do is positive. So when I have a trigger or a signal, I look at it and I do what I ask what I need to do to help myself, what is needed in this moment.

Speaker 1: 13:44

I've also learned to really really stop, take a breath and appreciate. So, for example, one of the things in the book Brené Brown talks about is bittersweet, and that can be children growing up. She talks about her son learning to drive and at the moment, my youngest child, my 16 year old son, is learning to drive, and that has a lot of meaning to me. That did cause a bit of bittersweet feelings in me. It made me sad that my youngest child was transitioning to an adult. I started to think about the past and how I'd miss driving all the kids around and you know, soon I'll have an empty house because my kids will all be adults. There was that, but then there was pause Instead of getting in the car when I teach him to drive, and highly anxious car when I teach him to drive, and highly anxious. Instead of focusing on that, I'm now taking a deep breath and appreciating that this is one-on-one time together, that I'm not going to get back, but I'm really lucky to have.

Speaker 1: 14:42

That's the difference this has made. For me, it's when I have a family gathering. I used to catch up with my cousins all the time, and now it's not so often. When we do, I remind myself how happy I am to be in their presence. It's the same when I catch up with my brother and sister and nieces and nephews and my parents, which is a lot more often, but I still really appreciate it. I know these moments are fleeting, I know that now, but they're not dragging me down with sorrow, they're just bringing me into the present.

Speaker 1: 15:16

So the difference between when I was drinking and I was just drowning in this nostalgia and this ache for the past, the difference now is that I've got rid of the damn alcohol, because that was the main block to all of this. It was like alcohol was just wanting to make me sadder, whereas getting rid of it, oh the clarity, the whole new lease on life. And so I said to my friend what keeps me alcohol free is knowing that this life is short and it is passing and on my deathbed I want to be able to say even though it went far too quick and there were far too many endings and losses, I lived and I loved and I felt it all. So if you're struggling to have a break, ask yourself. Ask yourself what you want. What do you want the rest of your life to look like? We've all got the rest of our life left. What do you want to look like?

Speaker 1: 16:21

It just got to a point where I just couldn't accept what I was doing anymore. I couldn't accept the sadness and the regret and drinking away all the things, all the things, all the things I didn't want to lose. I was drinking them away, so I was losing them anyway. I was losing connections and moments and children growing up. I was doing that to myself. That became the thing that really woke me up and I just went no more, no more.

Speaker 1: 16:51

So have a think about what you want in your life. What do you want it to look like? Yes, yes, feeling is hard, but numbing the feelings and drinking is harder. I promise you it's harder. The freedom in your head that comes from stopping alcohol and actually looking at why you drank in the first place. Is such a weight lifted the first place? Is such a weight lifted, such a relief, no matter how hard it seems or how hard that the thought of this healing is, I promise you it's doable and it's worth it. And if you are really struggling with how to do it, please reach out to us. Bella and I are both coaches. Reach out to us. We're happy to have a chat. You know we both offer discovery calls where we just chat with you for half an hour and see where you're at and if we don't think we're a good fit, we will point you in the right direction. So please reach out, because life is better. That's just how it is. Life is better without alcohol and we are here to help you. See you next time.