The Mommy Wine Culture

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Abuse Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Women's alcohol usage is up. It's way up. During the pandemic, we saw an incredible rise in alcohol consumption, especially among women.

Mike: Our guest today has written an incredible book that explores that rise, the messaging to women about alcohol, her own journey, and really so much more. Celeste Yvonne is the author of It's Not About the Wine, The Loaded Truth Behind Mommy Wine Culture. Celeste is a writer, certified sober coach, with over 20 years of experience as a communications professional in corporate America.

Mike: Her essays on parenting, the mental load of motherhood, mommy wine culture, and sobriety resonates with mothers everywhere and has been featured in the Washington Post, Good Morning America, and on the Today Show. She is a contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal and Publisher's Weekly Bestseller, So God Made a Mother.

Mike: It's a pleasure and an honor to be able to have this conversation today. Welcome Celeste.

Celeste: Thanks, Mike. I'm so glad to be here.

Mike: Well, me too. And why don't we just get right to it. So, what is mommy wine culture?

Celeste: Yeah, mommy wine culture, I define it as the social narrative that playfully jokes or implies that parents need alcohol to cope with raising their children.

Mike: You know, I live in Wisconsin and you're out west, right?

Celeste: I am. I'm in Nevada.

Mike: It is prevalent, I'm sure everywhere, but really here. So when you had a baby, you came full force into the mommy wine culture.

Celeste: Oh, I was ready to be in on the joke. I had heard the joke. I knew that "mommies need wine" to cope with parenting and I was ready to understand why. (laugh)

Celeste: And I really embraced it. I embrace this concept that this is what's going to help you survive parenting. I was so influenced by it. I even wrote some of the memes, you know, I was a mommy blogger. And before I started writing about addiction and recovery, and I even created memes that kind of embraced this narrative that alcohol will help us through this. So I am part of the problem in so many ways. (laugh)

Mike: Yeah. It doesn't really help though, does it?

Celeste: No. And you know, I learned the hard way, but what I have discovered in my sober journey, I'm almost six years sober. And what I've learned is alcohol increases anxiety, it deprives us of a good night's sleep, it dysregulates our nervous system.

Celeste: I mean, all these things we really need help on in motherhood, it's depleting us up. So it really is a sham to think it is helping us in any way cope with motherhood when in so many ways it is depriving us of some of the biggest things we need to get through this time in our lives.

Mike: Well, and in your book, you talk about a condition that a lot of women go through, which is that postpartum depression. Adding a depressant drug like alcohol doesn't seem to be a cure for depression.

Celeste: No, you know, go figure. (chuckle) When I look at it now in hindsight, knowing what I now know about how alcohol works, it is very illogical for me at that time to be taking an antidepressant every day. And every evening consuming a depressant. Yet there I was for years kind of going through this rollercoaster ride, putting my body through a lot of probably confusion and (chuckle) very much frustration while thinking all this time that I'm, this is self care, that I'm doing what I need to do to take care of myself while all the while my alcohol use was really self sabotaging any efforts I was making towards my mental health.

Mike: Did you tell yourself stories while you were using it?

Mike: Like, did you, were you using it? Like "after he went to bed" or "I'm only doing it", you know, what stories did you tell yourself?

Celeste: Yeah. So now that I'm in addiction recovery I have learned that people in recovery call these "fools rules". And I had several "fools rules" that I used to justify my drinking.

Celeste: The ones I always leaned on was I never drink before 5 p. m. I I always go to bed by 10, so I can be able to cope and function the next day. I never drink alone until I started drinking alone, you know, (chuckle) like the rules start to alter to help you make sense of kind of the discord that starts happening in your life as your tolerance levels go up and as you need more alcohol to feel the same things.

Celeste: So my "fool's rules" were I was the other one that I did to justify it was I'll never drink and drive and I'll never drink alone with the children. And again these rules always felt containable and sustainable until they weren't and your standards just keep getting lower and lower and lower.

Celeste: And mine did certainly to the point where it really did take me to a place where I was like, I feel more miserable than I could possibly feel if I wasn't putting this drug in my system almost every day at that point. And I wonder if I can just give my body an opportunity to see what would life would look like if I didn't consume this substance every day.

Celeste: It really was taking a chance on something I hadn't yet tried. And it was a act of desperation because I just felt like I kept dropping lower and lower. But it was also one of hope because this is something I hadn't yet tried. And maybe, maybe this is what I've been looking for all along. And I'm grateful in that it was, and while it didn't fix all the problems that come with motherhood, it put me in a place to be able to take on those challenges as my best self.

Celeste: As my strongest self and those are things I could never have done when I was drinking the amount of alcohol I was drinking.

Mike: In your book and in your writings you talk about when your baby was first born. Mom's coming over with a gift of a bottle of wine and then wink, wink, "you're going to need this."

Celeste: Yeah.

Mike: What happened to those relationships when you decided to quit drinking?

Celeste: Not surprisingly, a lot of them kind of dropped away and it's not so much their fault. It's really nobody's fault. But I think in the beginning when I first quit drinking, I thought I need to set these boundaries. And, isolate myself from anybody and anything that was going to trigger me.

Celeste: And I did, I think I did need to do that for my own survival in those early days, but I probably could have picked those relationships back up over time. And some did, but some of them just naturally kind of shifted away, and I don't think that is for better or worse of anybody, frankly what happens in sobriety is your relationships do change.

Celeste: You do lose some friendships, but you gain friendships too. So I generally think everything kind of rebalances itself overall, and for the better, because now you are in relationships with friends that are sustainable and supportive. And you, yeah, you do lose a few of your drinking buddies but it really does.

Celeste: It's, it's the greatest friendship filter because it shows you which relationships were really defined by the alcohol and which had genuine connections beneath all that.

Mike: You know, that's such a great point. You know, we started this podcast long ago to break the stigma around mental health and substance abuse.

Mike: But as you write, sobriety has a stigma as well.

Celeste: It really does. And I was so afraid of that stigma. I was scared to death of people knowing that I'm sober, of people knowing I had a drinking problem. I kept my sobriety secret for the first year. I didn't tell anybody. I was ashamed of it. The worst thing on earth would be people knowing that I wasn't drinking anymore because then they might be able to understand that there was a drinking problem behind it.

Celeste: And I felt like that made me less of a person. It wasn't until I reached a year sober that I had this real light switch moment that the best things that have come into my mental health, my life, my well being, have been through my sobriety. And at one year, I was ready to shout that from the rooftops. The shame really disappeared and it was replaced with gratitude.

Celeste: It was replaced with kind of a fury of no more secrets. (laugh) Secrets are what got me here. And I want to shout from the rooftops because I really do connect secrets and shame with addiction. So that change in my attitude really shaped what would become my new writing in the recovery space and really writing about my experience, what I'm learning, what got me here, and where I'm going.

Mike: Well, and as you write, and this part, I, I'm gonna, I just will love this. The problem with mommy wine culture, you say, isn't the wine. What is it?

Celeste: The problem with mommy wine culture is... It puts through, I mean, there's so many things. But the first thing is it puts the weight of our struggles on our children.

Celeste: I'm a child of an alcoholic, so there's so much shame, you know, having a parent who drank and feeling so completely outta control of his drinking, to also then feel the shame of "maybe it's my fault." I mean, that I feel like is the the heaviness, the weight that we put on children when we say they are the reason moms need to drink.

Celeste: The second thing is it really distracts us from the real issues. You know, mommies aren't drinking more than ever because alcohol is more addictive now than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. Moms are drinking more than ever because we are in a space mentally, physically, emotionally, where we feel weaker. We have less control. We have less support than we've ever had. And we are in a place where, you know, when you look at it societally, more moms are returning back to work than we ever had before post-baby. Yet systems are still in place for 40 hour work weeks, in an office, with very minimal flexibility or lack of benefits for what parents would genuinely need to be able to also raise children while maintaining a full time job.

Celeste: And I look at some of these things and I realized that mothers are drinking at problems. I mean, we're, we're drinking at the frustrations that we just generally don't have with. There's no village anymore. There's a lack of support. Most people don't have families helping them raise children anymore like there has been in generations past and mothers are returning to work, the lack of affordable child care.

Celeste: I mean, there's so many spaces where mothers just feel helpless and to numb out to that at the end of the day is a survival mechanism. It's a coping mechanism when it feels like there's literally nothing else they can do. Then I look at home, you know, I look at the home front and we are seeing statistically that in household labor in a traditional home, the women are still taking on the majority of the child care and the majority of the household labor, even as they would turn back to work full time. And so this just kind of feeds into this mother's feeling weak and feeling like they have no support.

Celeste: And these impossible parenting standards we have put forth through social media, through books, through this message that moms, "You can do it all. You're super human!" You know, "You're wonder women", whatever you want to call it. As opposed to actually. Giving them the support they need. So when I say it's not about the wine, I genuinely mean it's about the lack of support, the lack of adaptation, and the lack of a village that has put mothers in this place where we are drinking at all these problems where it just feels like there's no solution.

Mike: And so it's a desperation solution.

Celeste: Yeah. I mean, it's, it really is self medicating and what mothers have been doing this for decades, right? I mean, we've seen this with "mommy's little helper". We've seen it with women have been drinking for decades, but why is this heavy increase in the past 10 to 15 years and more so than ever since the pandemic?

Celeste: And I, from my research and what I found for the book, I genuinely see this as a proliferation of all these things creating this perfect storm where we are just in this place where a perfect storm of expectations, pressures, and a lack of systemic support. And we're just drinking at it. And, there's so many things I hope we can do instead when I quit drinking it got me to this place where I was like, "Well, what can I do about it?"

Celeste: You know, I could sit here and feel like a victim or I could insist on changes in the household and work towards changes at the workplace and vote for changes at the legislative level. Those are the three different things and options that we have before us that we can make changes. But it really does start at the home and those are things we can do today.

Mike: Well, you also ask, in your book, who benefits from women's drinking and at whose expense? Well, who's benefiting?

Celeste: Frankly, the patriarchy and capitalism, (laugh) not to get too political, but when we are in a society where women take on the majority of unpaid labor, and when in these traditional homes where mothers are still carrying the brunt of the household duties and the childcare even in a relationship where they're both, the partners are working the same amount It really just continues life as is, you know, no expectations of change, no requirements of shifting of responsibilities.

Celeste: It just keeps the status quo and it keeps women down from having a more sustainable lifestyle, from having the opportunity to pursue passions or do something fun on the weekends. I mean, things that. are more expected, I think for men than women. But uh, and then capitalism is again, the status quo where the 40 hour work week is sustained.

Celeste: The expectation of no federal maternity leave in America. I mean, these are all these systems in place where they don't have to make changes to accommodate mothers returning to work because they've never had to in the past. So why start now?

Mike: So when you say things like this and write things like this, you've gotten support for those statements, but you've also gotten your share of criticism for them too, much like our culture today.

Mike: The minute you say something, you got two sides.

Celeste: Oh, I get ripped apart online. (laugh) There's no... There's no doubt about it. I have built, I mean, to say I have a thick skin is a joke because I'm probably the most sensitive person on earth. (laugh) The way I see it. But online, I have developed strong boundaries about disconnecting what people say versus what I consume.

Celeste: You know, I'll read it, but I don't let it penetrate. So I can take it, you know, I can take the criticism, but it took me years to get here. (laugh) Just to say the least.

Mike: Yeah, that's not easy to do.

Celeste: (laugh) No. And if you ever meet me in person, you'll be like, She is nothing. I'm like, I am not, I'm not in your face. I am a wallflower, but on social media, I have learned to kind of set these mental boundaries around what gets through me, what gets through and inside me versus what I will not consume.

Mike: Well, I find it interesting when I read some of your stuff and then the comments from women underneath it is, they call you, "You're so brave!" And that's an interesting comment too, isn't it? That you have to be brave and heroic to just simply notice what should seem obvious to everybody.

Celeste: I think I say things that a lot of women feel, but don't have the pieces in place in their life that they can share out loud.

Celeste: And I am in a safe place where I can be vocal about it, and I don't worry for my safety. And some women don't have that privilege. So I feel like it's in my, I owe it to anyone who has the same feelings as I do, but doesn't have the privilege of being able to speak out and be loud about it for me to be public about it because I can.

Celeste: And if it's helping someone, if it's helping anyone, it's worthwhile. You know, I have a friend who says, "If I just help one person it's enough." And I feel that way. I want to be supportive. I want to help women understand or even just to be able to express something that somebody... I think my favorite compliment is when somebody says "You put into words something I think every day, but I've never been able to...", or "I've never seen written out." You know, something like that to hear that coming from somebody else is perhaps my favorite thing to hear, because that's what I want to share.

Celeste: I want to share. I want to be able to express something that so many of us might be feeling but have never before been able to say out loud or don't feel safe to say out loud or don't know how to say out loud.

Mike: So when you first started this sobriety journey, what kind of support did you get? What was helpful for you?

Mike: And what do you think is needed for women moving forward?

Celeste: I look back on my early sobriety as a primer on what not to do, (laugh) and I say that because I quit cold turkey, I didn't talk to a doctor, I did not read anything about it. I did not listen to anything about it. I did not tell anyone about it.

Celeste: The only two people I told was my mom and my husband, and that was it. Like I just kept it under wraps purely from that shame standpoint. Just thinking this is my secret and weight to bear. And I did not start learning about sobriety and what I was doing and how many other people have done this before and what I can learn from them until, you know, several months into my journey.

Celeste: And by that time, I would call my sobriety and my recovery was white knuckling it. And it was really the hardest way to do it and the hardest approach, and I would not recommend it to anybody. But what I've learned over six years in recovery is that community is such a gift. It's a gift even for someone like me who considers myself a introvert.

Celeste: It is a way to connect with people at a level that you might not ever experience with your real, your current friends, or your current, or your family, or your loved ones. Because these are people who genuinely understand exactly what you're going through. And that for me has been... the greatest gift in my recovery is connection and community.

Celeste: So it's really the, one of the top things I tell anybody who is looking to quit or in early recovery or asking me what I would have done differently. I would have found community sooner.

Mike: How'd you find it?

Celeste: Well, it's kind of a funny story. When the pandemic hit, a friend of mine on social media, Emily Paulson reached out through her feed saying, is anyone interested in supporting women in recovery right now?

Celeste: Because it was a really scary time for everybody. And for moms, as our kids were being sent home from school it was especially confusing and scary and how are we supposed to do this? (chuckle) You know, there's so much complexities to add to it. So I, you know, kind of raised my virtual hand and said, absolutely, let me help.

Celeste: And she started the sober mom squad and I started hosting right away. And that was my first experience with community. We met every week. It was for anybody who identifies a mom and living or exploring alcohol free living. And I have been hosting meetings with sober mom squad ever since. I still host them.

Celeste: It's one of the highlights of my week, and I have formed connections with these women over the last three and a half years that are deep, that are profound, that are amazing in so many ways. And it has been such a gift, especially through motherhood to meet other moms going through what I'm going through and to understand my plights and who I can support through theirs.

Mike: You mean it's more supportive than going to a weekend soccer tournament, inhaling five youth soccer games in two days?

Celeste: Yeah, and then spiking your tumbler with alcohol to get through it. Yes. Right. I have to say, you know, motherhood and finding friendships and motherhood is really hard.

Celeste: And then when you take alcohol off the table, I was petrified that my opportunity to now make friends with other mothers was over because alcohol is so infused. In so many of our activities, but it feels like there's an added urgency or pressure when you are with a bunch of other mothers at an event there's just, it's how we connect in so, in so many ways.

Celeste: So when I took that off the table, I was really wondering if this is the end of my social life. And of course it wasn't, not at all. And in fact, for the most part, me not drinking rarely comes up. But when it does, I'm happy to own my sobriety. I'm proud of it. There's no shame. And I'm also very comfortable and willing to be around people who have zero interest in sobriety and love their, you know, their occasional or regular glass of wine and it doesn't feel like it's a direct attack on me.

Celeste: So I feel like I'm in a really good place in my recovery where I can be empowered, but also be empathetic. And it's a great balance.

Mike: Awesome. I'll let you close it out. You end your book with a, your resource library at the end is terrific.

Celeste: Thank you.

Mike: And there's a, I'll let you just send it off any way you want.

Mike: There's a lot of different ways to learn and get support.

Celeste: There is. And in my book, I really wanted it to be more than just my story. I wanted it to be fortified in research, fortified in other people's stories, fortified in science and what, as statistics and everything I say, I back up with research and reports and science and people's stories.

Celeste: And my hope is that I can show mothers how to cope with some of our biggest stressors without alcohol. That really is the goal of the book. And I want people to know that anything they've been through, the struggles they're going through now, the pressures they face, the pain they feel, that we can get through this without alcohol.

Celeste: Alcohol does not need... to be required consumption to survive motherhood. And my book, I hope, is a how to guide in some ways for just how to do that, but also a way to hold people's hands and help them understand they're not alone. This is really hard. And alcohol just makes it harder.

Mike: Wow. What a great half hour.

Mike: For those of you listening, you already know there's links to Celeste's book and other work attached to the podcast. Celeste, thanks so much for being with us today and for your incredible inspiration.

Mike: And for those of you listening please listen in next time. Until next time, stay safe and stay happy.