My Mum Drank in Secret

Some truths don’t arrive all at once. They come in fragments— a smell you didn’t question at the time, a memory that doesn’t sit quite right, a bottle found in the airing cupboard years too late.

This is one of those truths.

I was a teenager when I started noticing it. The odd sherry bottle tucked behind towels. Bottles in the airing cupboard. A faint smell that lingered longer than it should have. I didn’t know what it meant then. I didn’t know what to say, or if I was even supposed to say anything at all.

Part 1: Quiet Signs

My mum was a hard worker. She had to be. Days on the farm, nights in the hospital. She never let on that it was too much. She smiled through exhaustion and hugged through pain. To me, she was unbreakable.

But sometimes she went quiet in the middle of things. She'd disappear into the kitchen for just a bit too long. Or she’d get flushed and fuzzy around the edges, like the volume had been turned down on her. I thought she was just tired. Or maybe I didn’t want to think it was anything else.

She crashed the car once. We were coming back from school, and as she turned into our driveway, she hit the wall. It wasn’t dramatic, but it left a mark—in the brick and in my memory.

The bottles were hidden. That told me she didn’t want us to know. Or maybe she didn’t want to know herself. I can’t speak for her. All I have is what I saw, and what I didn’t understand until much later.

Part 2: Teenage Silence

I never brought it up. Not once. I didn’t know how. And even if I had, what would I have said?

As a teenager, your world revolves around your own orbit. School. Friends. Escaping small-town life. I didn’t know how to carry someone else’s pain. Especially not hers.

And to be honest, there was shame. Not because of her—but because I didn’t want people to know. I was proud of my mum. Proud of her work, her strength. The idea that she might be struggling with alcohol didn’t fit the version of her I showed the world.

So I stayed quiet.

Part 3: After She Was Gone

It wasn’t until after she died that I started piecing it all together. We found bottles tucked in corners I hadn’t thought to look. I remembered the times she’d slur her words just slightly. The times she was quick to anger and then overly apologetic.

And I began to realise: she was hurting in ways I never saw.

The drinking started when she was first diagnosed with cancer. I was 16. I suppose now, looking back, it was a coping mechanism. Her way of managing the weight of what was happening.

She wasn’t an alcoholic in the way people talk about in films. She didn’t scream or disappear for days. She just drank quietly. Secretly. In the spaces between.

And I loved her all the same.

Part 4: Understanding, Not Judging

It’s taken me years to write about this. Not because I’m angry. I’m not. If anything, I’m heartbroken that she felt she had to carry so much alone.

She gave everything to everyone. Maybe drinking was how she held on to something for herself.

This post isn’t about blame. It’s not about labelling her. It’s about recognising that even the strongest people break sometimes—and they don’t always know how to ask for help.

Why I’m Writing This Now

Because someone out there might be carrying the same confusion I did. Because someone might be struggling quietly, and this might help them feel seen. Because I want my daughter to know that strength and struggle sometimes live in the same room.

And because my mum deserves to be remembered fully—not just for what she gave, but for what she carried.

Thanks for reading.