The Amazon holiday catalog came to my house a few weeks ago, as it probably did for many. The Sears catalog of Gen Alpha, I admit I immediately took a seat to peruse the pages before deciding what to do with this menu of future landfill offerings.
At first, I tossed it in the recycling. “This year will be different,” I thought to myself. No crap. No money squandering on junk no one needs. My kids can’t miss what they don’t know’s out there.
If you find value in these emails, I hope you will consider upgrading your subscription. Paid subscribers will get bonus content each week and access to all my posts (free members can only access above the paywall). If you cannot afford a subscription, please respond to this email and let me know you can’t afford it but would like full access.
But a new one popped up on the kitchen table a few days later, my husband or mom’s copy, I’m sure… and that time I caved. “Take a look and circle a few things for gift ideas we can send the aunties,” I called to my kids, each handing them a different color marker.
Taking turns, they obliterated the catalog like vultures picking at a carcass. My youngest even wrote on the cover… “I want all 600 million toys.”
It’s the “I want all” season of the year, isn’t it? The irony of going from the Thanksgiving holiday - gratitude, satisfaction, fulfilment - to the immediate shadow of Black Friday, a thousand emails in our inbox, add to cart, hungry for more, pick me energy is not lost on me.
It’s hard not to get swept up in it. And like a riptide, it feels like once I cave even just a little bit with a Amazon purchase or a Black Friday too-good-to-miss deal, my legs get swept up from out under me and I’m sea bound.
This year, I want to shift the energy from “I want all” as much as possible. I want to extend the gratitudes of Thanksgiving to fulfilment in what already is. What we already have. It’s not easy, but we can swim against the current.
wrote about a gratitude practice where she writes down 3-5 things she’s grateful for every day. The only rules are you can’t repeat a gratitude and one has to be sober related. I’m making a point of doing this every day through the holidays to keep myself grounded this season.When it comes to sobriety, gratitude plays a key role in reshaping and shifting our thought process. It helps us go from victim to protagonist in our own story. It helps us swim instead of floating adrift.
Instead of “I have to be sober at this holiday party,” try thinking… “I get to experience this party sober and present, and drive home safely.”
“I can’t drink mimosas on Christmas morning” turns to “I get to feel grounded and surrounded in the Christmas morning magic. I get to see Christmas through my children’s’ eyes this year. I won’t miss a glance, a reaction, a smile that I might have missed if I my senses were dulled or if I was navigating a hangover.”
In sober meetings we talk a lot about pivoting our addictive thoughts back to reality or our voice of reason. This is why gratitude, journaling or having a sober buddy can be so transformative in recovery.
It’s easy to go down the Amazon one-click black hole of our phones and computers this season, but you will always be just one more delivery away from satisfaction. I hope this year I can make some simple changes to shift my mindset to something more fulfilling and kinder to the bank account, while also setting this example for my kids.
I would love to make the holidays less about the stuff and more about the magic. Less about Santa and more about moments. And less about things and more about feelings. Gratitude as the string that ties it altogether.
Pssst. If you sign up as a founding subscriber, you will not only get access to all my writing, but I will send you a signed copy of my book: It’s Not About the Wine!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Sober Mom Challenge to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.