The Ice Cream and Whiskey Monologue | Sober and Unashamed

“There’s more food on the stove. Please have more dinner! I’m glad to see you like my cooking.”

One hour passes.

As you take the Tupperware from the refrigerator, you hear, “You’re eating again?”

Sometimes the judgment is so subtle, it is hard to hear. Keep listening.

“When are you going to cut your hair?”

On the surface, that is not a criticism. It is an inquiry. In depth and sentence structure, it is not unlike, “Do you think it’s going to rain?” or, “What’s your favorite color?” But that hair question has teeth.

Imagine two very different mindsets coming into those interactions. First, imagine that you’ve lost a few pounds. Your exercise routine is locked in. In fact, you recently went further, climbed higher, or increased your pace. In addition, you recently received a compliment about your hair. It wasn’t much, just a comment about waviness or highlights or curls or thickness or something inconsequential. In this scenario, you are feeling pretty good about yourself.

So when your eating habits and personal appearance are called passive-aggressively into question, the jabs are hardly noticeable glancing blows. You twirl your hair with your middle finger while you finish off the leftover pie…