Guest Post -Breaking the Habit By Christine Wright founder of Habit Breaker
GUEST POST -BREAKING THE HABIT BY CHRISTINE WRIGHT FOUNDER OF HABIT BREAKER
When I was growing up, it was tough love, tough circumstance, no money, no carpets in the house kind of environment, and eventually, my parents split up and divorced. Here was my invitation to start drinking heavily to numb the pain, guilt and the feeling of abandonment.
Not long after they split mum and I become homeless, partly because I couldn’t settle and I didn’t take too kindly to mum’s new choice of partner. We were in and out of bed and breakfasts, friends homes and homeless units, giving me an insight into a whole different world…I witnessed a world of drugs, alcohol, and prostitution, all before I was 16 years old. And unfortunately at 17 years old, I suffered a serious sexual attack, again choosing alcohol to get me through this trauma.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom,….eventually, I did go to College…University….moving to Cyprus….returning home and falling in love with the man of my dreams….Mr. Wright. ….the proof is in the pudding, I’m not called Christine Wright for no reason.
2 gorgeous boys later and what I thought was the white picket fence love story…..
I was served another curveball I found out my husband was having an affair, (or a bit of fun!), nothing prepared me for that!
I was heartbroken. This was my Mr. Right. Not only was I feeling my own pain, I was taken right back to the pain of my own parent’s bitter divorce. I felt like history was repeating itself and I had no control. Hence me hitting the bottle hard once more.
At the time I was a successful event florist and as you can imagine being vulnerable my business began to suffer.
It was also at this time, I found out I was pregnant and sadly I lost that baby.
With so many catastrophic losses in such a short period of time, I was feeling desolate, unloveable and at a total loss.
Often when people feel like this, we would encourage them to turn to a friend or friends.
The only friends I felt I had left, at that moment where Jack, Jim and Jonnie, I often describe them as the strong silent type. The type you can pour in a tumbler with some ice and a side order of paracetamol, in sure and certain hope, that it would have provided me with the escape that I desperately sought one way or another.
I’m not proud of what I did that night. And what ensued was a cycle of behaviour that so many people fall into when trying to deal with trauma or stresses.
Fortunately, the universe had other plans for me and I survived the night and I fell into a pattern of attempting to cope. Badly.
…drink….new relationship….drink….failed relationship….drink…and so on add a sprinkling of debt to that situation and I think it would be safe to say that despite my best intentions, life was not taking the upward trajectory that I had planned.
Despite this destructive cycle that I was on, again, like so many people, in other areas of my life I was still able to maintain function and to the outside world ‘normality. I was a loving and caring mum, still had the business, which now had become international, life still went on whilst living this destructive cycle. I was hurting myself through my choice of partners, my self medicating with alcohol and I knew something was lacking but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
Now what I tell you next may not be for everyone BUT I truly believe the was a degree of cosmic intervention in this next bit of the story
I met, what I refer to now, as my earth angel….yes they do exist.
He didn’t present himself to me in a bright white glow, with the most amazing set of wings and a halo.
He also wasn’t called Michael or Gabrielle.
He certainly didn’t sing.
Danny was a thirty-something-year-old young man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders…, he had a serious drinking problem, he felt like he had no purpose, he had a string of failed relationships, he had become estranged from his family after the death of his brother. I can categorically say Danny was a troubled soul.
I met Danny after I pulled him from the wrong side of the safeguard railings of a bridge overlooking a busy motorway.On our first and only meeting, I cradled him in my arms and looked deep into his tear-filled soulless eyes.
The epiphany came as I screamed internally WTH. I could see so much of myself in his pain and I was, in fact, cradling myself here. It was me I could see in his eyes… That was the most surreal 30 minutes of my life.
Once the emergency services intervened and took Danny away to safety, I went home and poured myself a very large gin or 2 and broke down.Whilst I drank that evening, it got me to thinking…I can’t carry on doing this.If I continued, it could just as easily be me up on that bridge, yet again wanting to end it all.
Reflecting on what just happened, I knew I had to change.
I had to take back control
I realized whilst wiping away the tears from his eyes and my own that I had found that lacking piece which I knew was missing from me.Whilst I saved him that night He actually saved me. I had, in fact, found my True purpose. I wanted to help not just myself but the many others I knew that were living in the same way. The same self destruct cycles, I needed to break the habit.I admitted I was a functioning alcoholic and I managed to appear normal and sober and even achieves success in business and was well respected, all while consuming unto 2 bottles of wine on an evening because the likes of Gin o’ clock and Wine o’clock had made it acceptable to put those 3 for 2 offers on the wine in the trolley, without fear of judgement.
Skip back nearly a decade I was diagnosed with Primary Bacillary Cirohosis in 2011. When I walked into my Drs for sleeping and depression pills as i’d just walked out of the family home and going through my divorce as highlighted above and yet again was using wine as my crutch. My liver function tests led to the auto-immune disease PBC where my liver attacks itself. PBC is often misdiagnosed for depression or the menopause as it is not high on the radar.
Here I was at 35, 2 children, no home of my own again a functioning alcoholic with a liver disorder and despite my diagnosis I was told that I wasn’t ‘ALLOWED” another drink, I didn’t fully commit to it for another 8 years.I had a dry spell from 2012 until 2013, but couldn’t bear the cravings, the unscrupulous watching of whatever passed my lips by my then controlling partner, which meant I craved it more to hide away from his behaviours. I wasn’t ready to QUIT.
Roll on 8 years and meeting Danny on the bridge. I was now ready to undertake the changes that were so very much needed. I developed a plan which involved a huge amount of spirituality, being outdoors, self-healing and forgiveness instead of self-loathing. Yes I even forgave my perpetrator who violated me all those years ago when I was 17.
I faced a lot of home truths and asked myself the Why’s and What if’s?
Once the Whys and What if’s had been answered, the plan could be formulated into a step by step process. I call this my REFRAMING process. And this is the code I use now in the business I created to guide others into a path exonerating unhealthy habits and gaining a positive mindset. Habit Breaker was born in 2019, 2 months after meeting Danny, 2 months after I lost a close family friend to suicide, and I knew I had outgrown my floristry business and my heart now was elsewhere due to these happenings around me.
It’s my legacy is to touch and reach over 1million disconnected souls through the world’s most supportive ‘new beginnings programs, which will lead, guide and help people in making fresh starts and regaining back control.Having spent most of my teenage years and adult life tackling depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, along with unhealthy habits namely alcohol, self loathing and people pleasing, it’s my mission to inspire and empower others who don’t even realize that they have a problem until they start to question it. Just the way Danny inspired me to question myself that day.
All the challenges, traumas and poor decisions I had faced from childhood through to adulthood had been my lessons all along. I survived and now I help and serve others. Letting them know that they too can move forward from moving away from the unhealthy habits they have formed whether that’s the booze, food, relationships, gambling you name it, shifting that mindset into one of love… self-love rather than self-sabotage can move mountains and literally save lives.
This really was the birth of Habit Breaker… A place where Freedom, Health, and Community are our core values a place of putting strategies in place enabling you to live your best life with no stigma or judgment attached.
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GUEST POST -BREAKING THE HABIT BY CHRISTINE WRIGHT FOUNDER OF HABIT BREAKER
Christine Wright is a former functioning alcoholic, an inspiring speaker, coach, behavioural change expert and the founder of Habit Breaker – a motivational membership community.
Having being an award winning International florist for nearly 2 decades, it was divine intervention which took place in 2019 which led her to change her destructive cycle and pattern of behaviours, which had governed her life since being 14 years old and helped her carve out a healthier path in mind, body and soul of which she now shares with others, in sure and certain hope that she makes a positive difference in their lives also.