Here is the full transcript of Kim Moore’s talk titled “How To Find Joy When You Love An Alcoholic” at TEDxColchester conference.
Kim Moore’s talk, “How To Find Joy When You Love An Alcoholic,” is a deeply personal and inspiring journey through the challenges of loving someone with alcoholism. She shares her story of guilt, shame, and the eventual realization that happiness is a choice, despite the adversity faced.
Moore highlights the chaotic life of dealing with an alcoholic partner, including disrupted routines and the impact on their children. She emphasizes the importance of self-care, letting down walls to let others in, and finding joy in the midst of hardship. Moore’s message is one of hope, urging others to talk openly about their experiences to foster understanding and support.
Through her talk, she advocates for breaking free from the cycle of alcoholism’s impact on families, emphasizing the power of new beginnings and personal transformation. Moore’s story is a testament to the strength found in vulnerability and the pursuit of happiness through healing and self-discovery.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Beginning of a Journey
I’ve never shared all of this with anyone before. And that really is how most stories start when you love an alcoholic. The guilt, the shame, fear of being judged, afraid to face the truth. We keep it all a secret.
In 1997, I met my love. He was the most witty, charming gentleman that I had ever met. Perhaps it was the English accent, but ten years and two beautiful children later, we were a family. Although we were a family with an illness, we just didn’t know it.
One night, my husband didn’t come home from work, which was completely out of character. I was awake all night with worry. The call came the next morning at 10am from a hospital in London. It was at that moment that I knew I had to face the truth that my husband really was an alcoholic, and I wasn’t just making it all up in my head.
A Spiral of Chaos
Life was chaotic. We had disrupted meal time and bedtime routines, disrupted sleep patterns, always late for school, an absent father who was often at home but behind a closed door, and me, a completely frazzled mother, never taking care of myself. All of the signs were there, the damage, but all unspoken, and my smile was gone.
Chris and I decided that we just really needed the weekend away, so we packed our bags and went off to Spain, just the two of us, and on the first night, we were eating in one of those beautiful Spanish town squares where you’re sitting outside and you have the umbrellas and the outside dining all the way around, everyone outside enjoying the beautiful summer weather.
We got up to leave after dinner and, as usual, Chris stood and grabbed his glass and just once I wanted him to leave something in the glass, but no, he tipped back, every drop emptied along with my hope. As he started to walk away from the table, he lost his balance and he fell, taking out three tables in one graceful swoop. Everything was on the floor, the food, the plates, cutlery, glasses, linens, everything everywhere, including Chris on the ground with blood coming from his head. I could feel the redness in my face, not here, not now.
I just wanted to run, to get as far away as I could. The waiters helped me get him onto his feet, and when he stood, his incoherence, and everyone thought it was from the fall, but I knew the truth, and I knew what they were thinking of me. Life started to rapidly spiral into chaos after that point, and the next time he fell, it was at home. I lined up all of the bottles from the weekend’s drinking on the table.
Moments of Decision
There were too many to count, and I didn’t want to count, but it was at that moment that he decided to go to rehab. Thank God he loves us, and when he came home from rehab, I made him a cup of tea. The first cup of tea that I had with my husband after 11 years of marriage, and we sat and drank that cup of tea together, we’re going to be fine, our family is going to be fine.
The third time he came home from rehab, he looked amazing. He had discovered painting, and what an incredible talent that he had. He’s going to crack this, he’s going to do this. The fourth time driving to rehab to visit him was on Christmas Eve, and I had left the children behind with friends. I can’t keep doing this, the kids can’t keep seeing me broken like this, and they can’t keep seeing him in this way.
I’ve got to leave, but it would kill him, he loves us so much. It won’t come to that, this time he’s going to do it, we’re going to be okay. I could always feel it coming, the chaos, and the next time I had the crisis team in my house. And while they were with Chris, I sat at the table with my mother-in-law and I said to her, “I know you have to do what’s best for your son to help him with his recovery, but I have to do what’s best for my children to protect them and to give them a normal life.” It was at that moment that I decided to leave, and I lost my English family.
The Aftermath and Revelation
And even after I left, I kept getting pulled into the chaos, pulled back in. I was broken, I had nothing left to give, I was so tired and I just wanted it to stop, I wanted the chaos to stop.
“It’s going to kill him one day, God I wish he was dead.” It was at that moment that I stopped talking, afraid of those voices going on in my head.
In May 2017, I got a phone call from his sister, his heart had stopped, Chris was dead. The days, the weeks, the months that followed were filled with emptiness, grief, and anger. I was all alone, I was no longer a single parent, I was a solo parent. The months rolled one into the next.
I received a phone call from a friend and she said to me, “Kim, put your crown back on, he doesn’t want you to live like this.” And it was at that moment that I realized, Chris was gone. Our marriage was gone, all of our hopes and our dreams, they were gone. Everything that we had planned was gone.
But my happiness, my unhappiness and the loss of my smile, that wasn’t caused by Chris’s alcoholism, it was caused by me. And just as I was the one that had decided to feel unhappy, I was the one that could choose to be happy again.
After 15 incredibly painful years, I finally learned a very valuable lesson and it’s one that is transforming my life today and helping me get my smile back, is that if we dare to break free, we allow ourselves to blossom. In the world today, we are so busy that it’s incredibly difficult to break free from the things that hold us back.
And it’s taken a global pandemic to get us all to slow down and to rethink our lives and to make some changes. 600,000 deaths brought the world to a stop. But there’s another silent pandemic, one that kills 2.8 million people per year, but shame and guilt keeps it swept under the carpet. Alcoholism.
2.8 million people multiply that by the number of people in the family and that’s the true impact of alcoholism and the ripple effect that it has on the family. Alcoholism is sneaky. Its impact is so mild in the beginning. For years, it’s so sneaky that you question whether or not there really is a problem.
Breaking the Silence
Maybe you’re just making it all up in your head. And the impact on the children often doesn’t get noticed until they’re adults. Sadly, my story isn’t unique. It’s far too common. Because when you love an alcoholic, you hold on to the hope that they will get better, never ever wanting to give up on them because you love them so much. Your life becomes consumed with helping them manage their drinking, helping them stop their drinking. And while the alcoholism progresses, so does the family illness. But we don’t talk about it.
As a mother, and as a wife who’s lived to tell you this story, to stand here today before you, we need to talk about it. If you have a story like mine, perhaps one that you’re too afraid to tell, I challenge you to join me. Together, we can disrupt the unhealthy behaviours and we can create new helping ones. Together, we can blossom and fill the world with colour if we do these three things.
The Path to Healing
The first thing that we can do is to let down the walls. Let people in. For years, I watched Chris’s battles and the agony of the battle with alcoholism. I saw everything, I remember everything, I felt everything. And to protect myself from it all, instead of creating healthy boundaries, I put up walls. These walls got so high with every episode, with every event, that eventually I was closing myself in, left alone in silence.
My mother-in-law gave me a note years back in the beginning of his illness, and it was one that I didn’t really understand the meaning of at the time, but it said, “Everything of beauty has crack in it, and that’s how the light gets in.” Let down the walls, let people in, and each time that you do, you’ll be letting a little bit of light in. And you don’t have to face this alone, you don’t have to go through this alone, don’t keep it a secret. Let people in, let down those walls.
The second thing that we need to do is we need to open up to joy. Look for joy. Joy is all around us every day. This painting has been in our house since 2003. For all of those years, I thought it was a beautiful painting and I enjoyed it, but I never really understood its meaning, not until after Chris died. And that’s when I discovered that the almond blossom painting means new beginnings.
I had new beginnings in front of me every single day, but I didn’t see it. Look for joy around you every day. Make a list of the things that make you happy, things that you see or things that you want to do. Do things every day to help you smile.
A Call to Action
The third action that we can take is to interrupt the silence, talk. I didn’t want to talk. For years, I stopped talking and I actually cut Chris off for many, many years because that was the only way that I could deal with the pain. But I was given the gift of the very last conversation with him.
One week before he died, we talked. Years of silence, broken in one single conversation, filled with love and understanding. Talking helps and we knew that talking helps. And I’m standing here today because of that conversation, because he said to me that no one is more open to your story than I am. Keep talking. Talking helps. So find someone to talk to. Don’t keep it all inside. Don’t keep it a secret. Talk.
Because through talking, that is how we will build an understanding, an understanding of alcoholism, breaking in all of those misconceptions that people have about what it is and the impact that it has. Talk. Share your story. Because by sharing your story, we’ll get more support. You will start to feel better. When we dare to break free, we allow ourselves to blossom.
So if you’re sitting there with a lump in your tummy or perhaps in your heart, it’s okay. It’s okay to let it go. Perhaps you have a story like mine, one that you’ve not told. I challenge you to break free, to let down those walls, to open up to joy and to interrupt the silence and blossom. Put that crown back on, find your smile and fill your life with joy once again. Thank you.