Dryuary Day 31: Mementos

“It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”

― Marie Kondō

I have a woven rug that I bought in Oaxaca, Mexico years ago. It hangs in the hallway of my house and sometimes I brush my fingers over it on my way to the bathroom or to do laundry. It makes me smile at the memories of Oaxaca city, a beautiful city, by the way. The pattern is the tree of life with dozens of birds woven in bright colors. As the tree of life, I could attach deep meaning to it. Or, I could view each bird perched in it as a symbol of some meaningful virtue that I should aspire to obtain.

But all I do is brush it with my fingers as I walk past and, so far, no life-changing magic as been bestowed.

When the Dryuary committee discussed the theme for this Dryuary we decided we wanted to portray it as an adventure, a trip to new place in which participants would have lots to explore. As you leave Dryuary 2025 to go back to your everyday lives, we hope you’ll take some mementos with you.

The quiet mornings with a cup of coffee and an uncloudy head.

Taking time to wave at your neighbors as you took your afternoon walk. Eventually realizing, as the month went on, that you became less in a hurry to get home for that glass of wine.

The welcoming feel of the pillow as you lay down your head, confident in the restful night’s sleep ahead. 

Mementos have the power to change our lives if we let them. I should take that rug off the wall and I should throw it on my living room floor and let a future puppy track muddy prints across it and curl up in their favorite spot on it in their old age, their whiskers tinged with gray. I should let great-grandchildren feed Fruit Loops to the toucan.  Barbie dolls should take flight on the wings of the parrot and a barrel of monkeys should lose themselves in the leaves of the tree. I should throw it over the back of the couch and wrap my husband in it as he naps.

I should make that rug a part of my everyday life until it becomes a well-loved piece of me.

That’s what I’m going to do.

I hope you do the same with your mementos from Dryuary 2025. Don’t leave them hanging on the wall to brush against every once in a while, instead weave them into the tapestry of your life.

by Mary Reid
Moderation Management member and former Executive Director, author of Neighbor Kary May’s Handbook to Happily Drinking Less or Not Drinking At All with the Support on Online Communities, editor/writer of Moderate Drinking Success Stories and Lessons Learned: Tales from the MM Community and Beyond and creator/writer of MM’s Kickstart Moderation Program.

P.S. When I decided to pursue moderate drinking again after years of not drinking, I brought many of the mementos, aka routines, with me into my moderate drinking life. Those routines established during my abstinent years have functioned well in helping me drink moderately. I’ve shared a lot of those routines and some new tools in the Kickstart Moderation Self-Guided Course.

If you would like to extend your abstinent period, I invite you to join our MMAbsers FB group or MMAbsers Listserv and/or attend one of MM’s abstinence focused meetings the Tuesday MM Long Term Absers Meeting or the Friday MM Abstinence Meeting . If you would like to explore moderation with the support of a community, you will find that in any of our MM communities, the MM Forum, the MM Listserv, the MM Core Groups ,the MM Facebook Group and/or at any of our many MM meetings.