You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 147.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Hello everybody, I have to tell you something. It is almost my birthday.

Actually, by the time you hear this, my birthday will have passed, but it still hasn't happened yet.

So I will tell you that one of my ex-boyfriends used to tease me that I treated November like this was my birthday month, which really annoyed me when he told me that, but he was kind of right.

I do treat November like it is my own personal birthday extravaganza month.

And when you know a little bit more about me, you will find this a little bit funny because my sister, I have an older sister, who was also born in November, her birthday is 10 days later.

And my husband is also born in November. His birthday is 15 days after mine. And this is crazy.

When my sister first started dating her future wife, I was horrified, horrified to discover that not only was Molly born in November, she was born on the exact same day as me.

I was like, dude, you stole my birthday day. That's my day. This is my birthday month.

So listen, I'm a little crazy about my birthday and about the month of November, but I will tell you, I'm really excited for this birthday. And I will tell you, this year feels really good and really different.

And I think it might be because I have the experience of being a mom. And I can actually reflect on that experience last year when my birthday rolled around and I had a newborn.

I was still really in the fog of being a new parent to actually reflect on any of this. But now I have a little time to myself to think about it. And I'll tell you that birthdays are crazy things.

They really are. Labor is a crazy experience, at least it was for me. I also think that conception is kind of crazy and wild and magical and that idea that, yeah, in that moment, life was created.

My husband and I, we often look at my son and both of us will think, I cannot believe that we made him that this little boy is here.

And it gets even wilder when you think about the odds of anyone, any of us being here. I was looking this up on Google and I saw that scientists estimate the odds of you, you specifically being born is one in 400 trillion trillion.

And this is just astounding. I will tell you, it's not even just that, it's not even just, okay, you were conceived. I think about what it took for my parents to get together.

And what it took for my husband and I to get together, I spent a lot of time kind of an awe that our relationship even happened.

And I was really set up on a blind date and I came very, very, very close to not going on that date at all. I was in a really good place in my life. I wasn't drinking.

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