It Wasn’t About the Drinks! :
What a Personal Experience Taught Me About Values
I want to share a personal story with you—one that took me years to understand.
It's about sharing something that was happening internally, within my body, long before I could understand it intellectually or put it into words.
I didn’t know it in my mind.
I didn’t feel it in my heart.
But I felt it very clearly in my gut.
And it has taken me—ironically, as a counsellor—many years to realise what that feeling was trying to tell me.
Maybe by sharing this, that process can be a little quicker for you.
This happened within weeks of me getting married.
I was living at my in-laws’ house at the time, just before my husband and I were due to return to the UK. Family were coming over—either for dinner or to meet us before we left. The details aren’t that important, but the feeling is.
''I didn’t know it in my mind. I didn’t feel it in my heart.
But I felt it very clearly in my gut''.
I remember going shopping with my husband (now ex) to prepare for the evening. One thing I clearly remember buying was a 4-pack of Bacardi Breezer drinks. It was my small way of contributing—wanting the women there, including my sisters-in-law, to relax and enjoy themselves.
Looking back now, I can see that even then, some of my values were present: connection, shared enjoyment, doing things together.
I put the drinks in the fridge to chill.
Later, when I opened the fridge, they were gone.
Not just one - all 4 of them.
I doubted myself first. Maybe I hadn’t put them there. Perhaps I was mistaken. I checked again. Then I asked a couple of people in the house. No one knew anything about it.
Or at least, that’s what I was told.
To this day, I don’t know how truthful that was.
What I do know, however, is how it made me feel.
It wasn’t about the drinks.
It was about someone doing something wrong, and no one owning it.
It touched something deeper in me: you don’t take something that isn’t yours without asking.
It felt wrong. Unsettling. Disrespectful.
Hours later—or maybe the next day—I opened the fridge again. As if by magic, there was a four-pack of Breezers inside. Different flavours. Clearly not the same one I had bought.
I asked where it came from.
Again, no real answer.
That moment stayed with me.
Not because someone took a drink—but because someone did something I felt was wrong, and when I asked, no one had owned up to it. It had been hidden. Covered. Smoothed over. Swept under the carpet, as if replacing the item erased the act.
But it didn’t.
That moment set the tone for how I experienced my new family. Not consciously at the time—but in my body.
I was angry. Deeply uncomfortable. And I didn’t know why.
Years later, I finally have words for it.
The values that were violated for me were justice, accountability, and responsibility.
At the time, I had never named those values. I didn’t know I was reacting to a misalignment. But my body knew.
Fast forward almost ten years.
In the final days I spent in that same house, the same thing happened again. This time, it was energy drinks I had bought for myself. I put them in the fridge. They disappeared.
The first feeling was annoyance.
The second was disbelief.
Because here was the real lesson: when behaviour is covered up instead of addressed, nothing changes. Time passes, people grow older—but the pattern remains.
Replacing the item doesn’t heal the rupture.
Silence doesn’t create accountability.
Avoidance doesn’t equal harmony.
''Silence doesn’t create accountability. Avoidance doesn’t equal harmony''.
Values Are Not About Right or Wrong.
When we talk about values, it’s important to say this clearly: values are not about who is right and who is wrong.
They are about alignment.
Values sit so deeply within us that they often create reactions before we are even aware of them. Long before an argument, long before words, they show up as tension. As withdrawal. As resentment. As silence. There is a persistent feeling that something isn’t quite right.
When values don’t align, conflict doesn’t always show up as arguments.
Often, it shows up as tension, withdrawal, resentment, or silence.
By the time conflict becomes visible, it is often the last symptom—not the first.
What makes values particularly complex is that they are not fixed. They can change over time. Many of us are raised within families, cultures, religious or political systems where values are absorbed without question. And then, at some point—often in adulthood—we begin to think for ourselves.
We may realise that what once felt unquestionable no longer fits.