Processing Grief & Healing Without Alcohol

In this episode of The Sober Scoop, we're exploring something many of us fear but eventually have to face: how do you grieve without alcohol? If drinking was once your go-to coping mechanism, navigating loss in sobriety can feel overwhelming, unfamiliar, and sometimes impossible. Together, we'll unpack why grief can be such a powerful trigger, what the research says about substance use and bereavement, and how we can begin to move through pain without numbing it.

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Transcript

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On this episode of The Sober Scoop, we're going to be talking about grief. And this is a subject that I have avoided talking about on the podcast because I don't really have the answer. For a lot of things that I discuss on the podcast, I feel like it's from personal experience, like personal tricks, personal tips that I have because I've genuinely learned something that works for me. But with grief, I don't know how to deal with grief in sobriety because I haven't yet had to experience it, God willing, you know. I'm very grateful for that. I have been through horrible grief in the past, and I feel that I literally was avoiding working through that grief until I got sober. And we're going to talk about that later. But we so often use alcohol to basically postpone the grief. I realized that's what I was doing. And so when I got sober, I did kind of have to process that grief and actually heal from the things that I had been through during my drinking problem and like leading up to that and everything. But I don't have like all the special tricks. There really isn't a trick, right? When you're going through something horrific, there isn't a trick to make it go away. There isn't some magic pill that makes it disappear. For a lot of us, I think that's why we turn to alcohol because it can feel like the only thing that gives us some relief. But in this episode, we're going to be talking about some evidence-backed, um, not even solutions, obviously. We're not trying to get rid of the grief, but some things to help us work through the hardest times of our lives when so many of us want to just turn to alcohol to make it go away, at least even for a temporary bit of relief. But we're going to be talking through how to truly move through that grief and be okay not being okay. We are not looking for an immediate solution. We're not looking to make the grief go away. We're looking to function with the grief we have experienced and be okay with it living as a different version of ourselves, like an impacted version of ourselves. Anyway, we're gonna get into all of this and more in today's episode. Welcome to the Sober Scoop. I'm excited to dive into this. And as a reminder, my name is India Gantz, I'm your host, and we have a lot of resources in every episode description. So if you want to join our Facebook support group, if you want to connect on social media or anything like that, if you want to send me an email, whatever, you can find all that information in the show notes, show notes, and without further ado, let's get right into today's pretty heavy episode topic. So, as you may have noticed, I said that I was gonna start having guests on the show. I had literally one, and then I decided not to have guests on the show anymore because I do have, you know, my my regular work that I do, and um I didn't really have time to set up interviews. Additionally, I look at this podcast as like our one-on-one time to talk to each other. This is where I can divulge my deepest, darkest secrets. I can speak filter-free with people who just get it, and I just think this is the direction I want to take the show is these one-on-one type of episodes. Um, so I hope that's okay with you. But the reason that I am bringing this up is because one of the first guests that I was supposed to have was a grief specialist. She maybe I'll still have her on if you guys are interested. Let me know. Um, but she sadly lost two of her children, um, just in a really obviously like unexpected, just unimaginable uh way. And um a lot of people would describe that as like the worst nightmare a human could ever experience. And she experienced it twice. And she, you know, you can't ever heal from something like that, but she has turned it into something she's giving back to the community, I guess, with her experience that she's so unfortunately had to endure. And she goes around and gives talks about grief, she helps people work through their grief. She's written a couple books about grief, and I was going to have her on the podcast to talk about how to process grief without alcohol. Because so many people turn to alcohol in times of sorrow and when you're going through the hardest times of your life. I know I did, that's for sure. Um, and this is one of the most common questions I get asked from people is like, okay, you give all these amazing tips, you talk about how to stay sober, you talk about non-alcoholic beverages, great, great, great, love all of that. But it's like, how do you how do you how are you supposed to tell me that I have to get through this horrific thing that's happened to me without alcohol? Without this substance that literally makes it melt away and give me some relief for at least a minute. And I never really know how to answer those questions because I too turned to alcohol in my lowest of lowest of lows. And sometimes I think that alcohol is the only thing that got me through that time. Of course, eventually I had to actually face what I was going through and deal with it, basically. Mine was something that needed action, and I was kind of just prolonging the process, putting it off, postponing it over and over and over again until I eventually really had to deal with it. And I I don't think I was able to heal or even like understand fully what I was going through until I got sober and had to face all those emotions. I think that grief that I experienced was just with me until I got sober and actually paid attention to my feelings. So many of us, me included, drink away our feelings. I think, yeah, that's why I talk about in early sobriety, you're basically like a toddler learning how to navigate your emotions again. Because there's so many emotions that I did not even know how to experience. I didn't know how to feel nervous or feel sadness or feel excitement or feel joy. I didn't know how to really feel anything because alcohol was a part of every feeling I had, to where I was pretty numb and didn't even know what feelings truly felt like. So with my grief, with that traumatic situation that I went through in the past, sobriety kind of showed me what those feelings actually feel like in my body and in my mind. And I had to learn through books, through podcasts, through talking to people, through having this podcast, how to move through that in an actually like productive, healthy way instead of just drinking it away with alcohol. So in this episode, I am learning with you guys. This is not advice. I'm not a grief counselor, therapist, or expert on this topic at all. I am literally going to be reading and pulling from some articles and learning with you guys. This is a we episode. We're learning together. I am not advising. I myself don't know how to work through grief and sorrow without alcohol. I haven't had to do it yet on a grand scale. Of course, I've had moments of feeling really low, uh, but I haven't had to endure anything horrible since getting sober, which is such a blessing, of course, but those times are bound to come, right? And I'm nervous for that, because I I've never been sad without alcohol. You know, I've never been in that lowest of lowest of low without alcohol. So it will be interesting. So I hope that you and I both can learn a few things from this episode. Let's get into it. So let's look at what grief is in the first place. Like oftentimes it's associated with sorrow and sadness, but grief can come out in a lot of different ways: anger, numbness, guilt, confusion, anxiety, relief, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating. There are so many different ways that we can like react or feel after something bad happens in our lives. I mean, just to show the diverse experiences with grief. Have you guys read or listened to the audiobook by oh my god, what is her name? The girl she wrote a book called I'm Glad My Mom Died. Okay, it's by Jeanette McCurdy. She was the friend on iCarly, and her mom was basically like this really intense stage mom, and put her in these kind of weird situations, uh, had her dieting to the extreme, not really keeping her safe. Um, and so Jeanette McCurdy wrote this book. I'm glad my mom died. So think about that. Her mom dies when she's relatively young, and obviously that's grief for sure. You're losing a parent. There, you're so sad, it's so heavy, you no longer have your mom with you. And then, like for her, she's experiencing these feelings of relief and like freedom with her mom dying, and those are very conflicting emotions, and it's confusing, I'm sure. So, what I'm saying is that grief can look so many different ways. You can feel guilt for something bad that happened. Um, it doesn't have to always be death, but like for getting the job that your friend wanted and they selected you instead, or whatever. That's a you know, low-level grief, whatever. There are different levels and stages of grief, of course. And um, it can look a lot of different ways. It can be little mini moments of grief, it can be massive life-altering moments of grief. So, yeah, I just want to normalize the grief can look a lot of different ways, and I'm trying to fit a lot under the giant umbrella of grief. Another thing to remember is that grief has no timeline. This article says, I think one of the most harmful myths is that grief should be over by a certain point. I I definitely think that in our society, people put a lot of pressure on that. Like, you should be over it by now. Whether it's a breakup or a death, you know, anything in life that we go through, people kind of attach these timelines to it. Like, okay, you know, should be done, should be over it. And also, I think we attach a destination to our healing with grief when grief, like healing from grief is not a destination. It's oftentimes something that you work through your entire life. And you feel better at certain moments, you feel horrible at certain moments. You learn to navigate life and experience the workplace, relationships, family stuff differently because of the impact of the grief that you've been through. And there is no destination, there is no finish line. You're not trying to reach something or achieve something or become healed. It's something that's a part of you, you're always healing. So no timelines, no destination. We have to recognize that it is a process and it's a long process. I think about the thing that I went through, and it's crazy because looking back, it's almost three years since I was like in the height of that. And oh my gosh, I mean, still to this day, I I don't know if I think about that situation on the daily, but maybe like every other day it it'll hit me. And I think about it because it affects it it has affected every part of me. It's affected how I view dating, how I view myself and my body. It's affected like I think about what I am putting on in the morning as my outfit. I'm thinking about that situation when I'm driving, I'm thinking about it. I mean, it just arises at random times and unexpected times, and and it it shaped who I am today in a positive way and in a negative way. Um it'll always be a part of me, and it still weighs heavy on me anytime I think about it. So it doesn't ever go, or maybe it does for some people, but I think the what I'm trying to say is that we don't have to try to make it go away. We just have to try to live our lives with that having been a part of our story. So I am somebody who loves to do things alone in a good way and a bad way. Like I love my own company. I'll go out to eat by myself, I love to travel by myself, I love road trips by myself, I am a very individual person. Additionally, I think that's a big reason why I didn't want to do AA, because I just found that my sobriety journey was mine to have on my own. I made it a very individual journey, and I I really just focused on myself and how I was feeling, and I got in tune with my emotions, and I went with just my process, not what anybody else was doing, and hearing other people's stories or sharing my story with others in the beginning, it wasn't helpful for me. I really I didn't want to compare, I didn't want people telling me what to do because I feel like that would make me want to do the literal opposite. So I just did it alone. When I was going through that trauma, that that grief, if you will, um a few people, well, one person in particular knew generally what was going on, but I spared people the details. Like I very much went through that on my own. And although people were active in my life and offering help, of course, and would have loved to be even more involved, I didn't want to share every detail. I was embarrassed and ashamed and regretful, and I didn't want to share it with people. So generally in life, I do things alone. That is just a quality about myself. I'm an introvert and I process alone the best. I love my alone time. So, with that said, when you are going through grief, I fully believe, and the evidence backs it up, or whatever, these experts that I'm pulling from, um, they say that you should lean on other human beings when you are going through grief. That can look a lot of different ways you can get a therapist to work through your emotions. I mean, I think that's the best way because they can actually hear you out, and they they've heard so many different stories to where they can actually genuinely help you. They're professionals, they're trained. Like, I think if you are really battling something major, therapy is a great option. But I understand not everyone has access to therapy. It's expensive and a lot of times not covered by insurance. So I get that. It's not always accessible for everyone. So that could also look like talking to a friend, maybe somebody else who's also going through that with you, whether it's like a sibling, a family member, a friend, a coworker, whatever, somebody who is in it with you. I think talking about it together can provide some relief and make you feel supported on your journey, make you feel like you're not crazy for feeling the way you do. There's also things like support groups and grief groups. As I'm walking around my town here in Seattle, I actually see these posters all the time for grief walks. I don't know what they do in those meetings, but it sounds really cool. Like you go on a walk, and I don't know if you're talking to each other or if you're just kind of being body doubles as you go through this time together and you take a walk and you just know that all these other people get it because they're also going through something. I think grief groups are great, and I know that there are a lot of them, especially if you're in or near a big city. I think that online communities are a good backup if you're not able to find something in person. Like we have our sobriety Facebook group, and I know like some people connect one-on-one and message each other in there, which is cool. It's called the Scoop Troop on Facebook, and again, you can join for free and whatever, it's just on Facebook in the link uh in the description. But anyway, there are lots of online communities, and I'm sure like you can probably connect with people online who have been through like super specifically exactly what you have. I know sometimes you think that what you're experiencing, like no one else would understand. I felt like that big time with my traumatic situation that I experienced. But you go onto TikTok or something and you search up keywords, you can find people who, like, crazy enough, went through extremely similar things to you. And when I discovered that, I felt so much relief. And then you can go deeper. After you find them on TikTok, you can it, you know, the algorithm feeds you different videos similar to that, and you find a book, you find a podcast on the topic, you find all sorts of online content. You go to YouTube and search it up, and just hearing other people's stories and how they worked through it and how how they've been through something like you, it just feels whole. It feels like you're not alone in this. It feels like even if it's one other person, like there is someone out there who at least somewhat gets the weight of what you're going through, and it feels really, really good. I think about my sobriety too. I I remember like I listened to several um audiobooks, and I got like halfway through them and then stopped listening because their their experiences with alcohol were so different than mine. I remember I read this one book, I think it's called Oh yeah, it was called Drinking Games, which highly recommended. It was a great book and everything, but I felt really disconnected from that book because she drank in such a different way than I did. I remember she talked about how she was like a partier, like blackout drunk kind of girl. Like she would go really, really hard on a Saturday night and go overboard and be like throwing up and embarrassing herself and all that. And for me, like that just wasn't the goal. I was very much an isolated drinker, hiding my drinking. I wasn't known as a partier. I would say I was like a high-functioning alcoholic. Um yeah, we just drank in such different ways, and I can't remember 100%, but I think the way that she got sober too was so different than me, like doing the whole 12 steps and everything like that. I think we were just very, very different, and so I didn't super connect with it. There was another one that I read, oh, quit like a woman. I think I should have given that one a little bit longer, but after the first bit, I wasn't into that one either. I just think that if you can find people who drank in the way you did or who got sober in the way you did, you feel so connected to them. And you feel like you're not crazy. Those those other audiobooks that I listened to almost made me feel like, oh, so my dream. Drinking style was like actually insane. Like, these people don't drink like I did. I must be the only one out there who drank like I did. But then you find somebody who does drink in the way that you did, and you're like, oh my god, I'm not alone. This person gets me, and they were able to get sober. It gives you hope because you see they were in the same place you were, and look where they're at now. This woman, I always struggle to find her TikTok handle, so I apologize. Um, but I found her on TikTok pretty early in my sobriety, and I felt like, oh my god, finally somebody drank like I did. She's probably about a 45-year-old white woman, thinner. Um, and she talked about how she would like drink first thing in the morning. I'll never forget the video that I first saw of hers that was like explaining how people fall into morning drinking really easily and like accidentally, and people, normal people, can develop a reliance on alcohol and drink in the morning. And I I just I saw her in her videos. I started looking at all her different videos. Um, I discovered that she also like hid her drinking from her partner, and she'd sneak stuff around, and just video after video, I was like, oh my god, this person's kind of like me. And it just makes it made me like be able to listen to her better because I was like, this woman gets me. All the other people, it's it's just gonna be different. If you were like an intense partier, getting sober is gonna be different than if you were like somebody numbing mental health issues or like drinking all day long, maintaining that two-beer buzz all day, or hiding, or isolated drinking. You know, you're always gonna be different in how you drank and how you got sober. So if you can find little corners of the internet where somebody is similar to you, it just feels really, really comforting. So, with that said, if you can find people on the internet who have gone through something similar to you with grief, I think it's very comforting to connect with them, either meet in person or connect online. I do think that if you're going through something super heavy, in-person connection is really, really important to make you feel not alone and to make you feel supported and to help keep you accountable on your grief journey so you don't fall into drinking again, a relapse, or turning to other things. You you need an accountability buddy almost as you're going through this grief. The next thing I want to talk about is we have to lower the bar for functioning when we're going through something horrible. I think a lot of times we want to like get back to normal. We just want life to be back to normal. When am I gonna get back to how I was? And like you might never, but especially when you're healing, when you're processing and going through that grief, it's okay to not be who you were. And it's okay to not be perfect. Certain things are gonna fall by the wayside. You might have to explore some frozen meals, getting going the easy route and just getting some frozen meals from the store to be able to just heat up and eat. Because eating is a win sometimes when you're going through grief. Maybe you need to set your alarm to remind you to eat, and then you grab your frozen meal, you heat it up, and you have your meal. Maybe that is what functioning looks like. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to wake up and cook yourself something. You just you work with what you're able to. Because when you're going through the unimaginable, that's sometimes all you've got. You only have 4% to give, not 94%. So work with that 4% as best you can. Again, this is not advice. I'm I'm half talking to myself here. Like when you're going through lows, it's okay to not be okay. And just do your best. That might look like canceling some plans. Oh, you always get drinks with the girls, or not drinks, whatever. You always get coffee with the girls on Thursday afternoons. Well, you might have to skip a couple weeks. Oh, you already paid for volleyball for the entire summer, but going out and being around other people when you're going through this horrific time feels like the worst thing you could possibly do. That's okay. You can cancel. Like, we gotta give ourselves a little leeway to like feel. I I met this therapist um when I was traveling in Vietnam. I kind of had a crush on him, so hello if you're listening. Um, but he is a therapist in Luxembourg. And he was talking about how something he talks about with his clients a lot is, or patients, whatever you call them, is that like we have to feel our emotions. We can't just push them away. Feeling them is part of the process, and like sadness, nervousness, guilt, any of those feelings, they're not bad feelings to experience, and we should feel them. It almost does a disservice to the thing that happened if you try to not feel and just numb it with alcohol. You don't have to like man up, as a lot of people say, rub some dirt on it. It's like you can feel what this pain has caused you to feel. We don't have to push it away. So, anyways, frozen meals, canceling plans. You might need to rest more than you have in the past because the grief is taking a toll on your body and your nervous system, and more sleep is required. You might have to simplify your routine, make brushing your teeth as easy as possible. This isn't an isn't even an ADHD thing, but when you're going through those rough times, I mean, peeling yourself off the couch to get some water can feel like the biggest task. Or even like, I'll never forget that episode of Euphoria. Remember in the season one, when Rue like basically starts getting uh pain in her bladder, like intense pain, almost needing a doctor because she cannot get herself out of bed to use the bathroom. Because she's going through a really, really intense depression. And I feel like that's kind of what it's like with grief is like the simplest things you can't even imagine doing. I mean, forget making your bed. You're in bed for three days straight or whatever. Like, sometimes that's all we have. And so I think just simplifying things, making your personal hygiene or eating or these showering these essential things as easily accessible as possible. I mean, down to like maybe you need to take a towel and w wipe your armpits or something because that's all you've got. You can't get into the shower. You know, we we make do with what we've got. And I don't think that feeling low is like an emotion we need to escape through alcohol. A lot of us turn to alcohol to eliminate those emotions. But the only way to heal, not that that necessarily needs to even be the goal, but even just like the only way to function is to feel and experience, experience the grief as as painful as it is, it's the only way to actually process those emotions. Okay, another tip from one of these articles was to schedule your grief, which sounds crazy, but I think like giving yourself time to feel, like dedicated time to feel. For example, you carve out an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays after work or something when you get home to just like really feel. And that way it's like in that bubble. I mean, you're welcome to feel whenever you want to feel, but like dedicating time to feel grief almost like frees up the rest of your day. Because you know that you you are gonna dedicate some time to that. You're not escaping the feeling and trying to forget about it. You're just containing that emotion to a set time. And I know that's easier said than done, and uh a lot of times not even possible because grief sneaks up on us when we least expect it, for sure. Certain things can be triggering that we would have never expected. So anyway, putting things in the in a box, like dedicating time to grieve, can look like journaling. You can say you're gonna write like three pages about your feelings or something, right for 15 minutes, whatever. You can visit a meaningful place, whether that's like the the grave site or a place you used to go together or your school or um whatever. Like I think about my grief, and I visited Los Angeles and I did a whole episode about this because that was the worst thing, that was the worst experience going back to LA where I went through all that pain. It was a horrible, horrible feeling. But it was pretty crazy. Like I kind of told myself, go to these places and sit there. And I I would I would go to some spaces that were really, really heavy, and I would sit there in my car and I just cried. I cried so hard, like revisiting those places that caused me so much pain. It was so heavy and intense. And I sort of like wish I didn't do that, but maybe it was healthy for me to just like get it out. It was almost like I was closing that loop. I don't really have any intention to go back to LA because it is just it does carry just such negative emotions for me. But going to those places and like reliving those moments, reminiscing in a negative way, uh it it closed the loop a little bit for me. So anyway, that's something else you can do. Um, only if it's right for you. Again, like talk to a therapist and get a better strategy, but that's something that I didn't think would help me, but looking back, maybe it did. It was hard to do that, but I did it, and I feel like it helped a bit closing that loop. Uh, you can also listen to songs that remind you of somebody. You can write letters to that person. There are lots of different strategies to kind of connect with your grief and feel it. And like give yourself the space to feel it, but schedule it so that it doesn't take over your whole life. And again, I understand that it can take over your whole life. It should, you know, a lot it after a lot of situations, the grief should take over your whole life, you know? It's bound to happen. But I think like as we process, as we start to heal, dedicating time, it also makes it so you don't feel guilty, right? Like if somebody really, really close to you passed or something, I would feel guilty if I wasn't thinking about it all the time. I think about this influencer I follow, who unfortunately lost her son in a drowning incident. And she talks about how, like, she feels a lot of guilt for feeling happiness on occasion. Not happiness because of that situation, but like even going out to lunch and laughing with a friend when that type of thing has happened in her life. She feels guilty for any happy moments with her other son or whatever. She feels guilt for feeling happiness with the grief she's experienced. But I think that's why it's important to dedicate time to the grief, whether that is therapy, journaling, writing letters, visiting the meaningful place, listening to songs, any of that, but like dedicating that time to feel it. Now, what they say in this article is that grief lives in the body, and we really do feel it heavy on us. It's in our nervous system, it's in our hearts, it's in our minds, like it's in our bodies. And a tip that they say is to move your body. And I think that exercise can be a relief for people, kind of like alcohol. At least it's a bit of a healthier one, but just like anything, people can go off the deep end with that too and get addicted to the endorphins from working out, and they become these really, really long-distance runners and work out for three hours a day just because it takes their mind off of their grief. Again, that's like avoiding feeling the grief. But with that said, I agree with this, and this is what the article is saying: like moving your body, it doesn't fix the grief, but it's good to give yourself that relief because grief is living in the body. You're moving your body through yoga, stretching, dancing, walking, golfing, weightlifting, whatever. And it's just it's like that mind-to-body connection. And maybe it does provide a little bit of grief. I just or relief. Maybe it provides a little bit of relief, but I don't want that to be like an avoidance strategy. It doesn't fix the grief, it's just giving you a relief from that grief living in your body when we move and when we connect with our our muscles and and all of that. So I do think that moving your body can provide some relief. It's not a way out of grief, but it's to support a nervous system that's carrying a lot. So unfortunately, a lot of people relapse when they've been sober for a long time and then grief strikes. And they don't know how to process that type of emotion without alcohol because we always have. I've always turned to alcohol in moments of sorrow. So, how would I go through something horrific and feel grief? And how would I go through that without alcohol if it's the only thing I know? So I think it's important to have a relapse prevention plan in place. Who can you call? What groups can you reach out to? What do you find comfort in besides alcohol? Is it a particular movie that you watch on repeat? When I was going through the hardest time of my life, I watched Alice in Wonderland about once or twice a month. I just loved it. It took me to a different world. I would also watch it while drinking obscene amounts of alcohol, but that's another story. Um, I watched a lot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's almost like these childhood shows that bring just a little bit of joy and take you out of that place for a minute. Um, it can comfort you and it's better than using a substance. It could be, you know, a really cozy blanket or a particular person. I don't know. It can look a lot of different ways, but um, I also think we should avoid certain situations, at least temporarily, that might be triggering for us. If you're somebody who drank to get through hard times, uh don't surround yourself with alcohol, maybe, when you're going through a hard time. Do whatever you can to make sure alcohol is not in the house. Like if you live with somebody who does drink, maybe say, hey, look, you know, I'm going through something really, really heavy right now, and having this alcohol around, it's not helping my healing and it's it's making me want to drink, quite frankly. So can we remove it, at least for the time being, and get it out of here? We have to have a plan in place. Someone that you can call or talk to, a group that you can reach out to, anything like that. I think just having a relapse prevention plan in place is quite helpful. And yeah, when we've turned to alcohol to process this type of emotion, feeling that emotion can feel impossible. It can feel ten times heavier than somebody else experiencing it because we've never felt it before. It's like overwhelming. It's just, whoa, I don't know how to feel this. You can easily go off the deep end because the feelings are just so strong because we haven't had to actually feel them before without being able to numb and recognize that it's going to be hard. I think we have to also be okay with not being okay. We have to understand that okay is not the goal. Maybe the goal is just to figure out how we can survive not feeling okay. The goal is not to feel okay, it's to feel okay about just surviving and not feeling okay. Uh it's like we just can't run away from our emotions. We're not trying to get to a perfect place and feeling our feelings is okay. I talk a lot about how drinking emotions away kind of does a disservice to what has happened. Like, if somebody in your life has passed, drinking the memory of them away is really sad, and like we shouldn't do that. Um, we want to remember them in a more well positive way, or even just like honor what has happened instead of drinking it away. So um this article recommends, you know, lighting a candle in their honor, cooking their favorite meal, donating to a cause, telling stories about them, planting something in their honor, celebrating anniversaries intentionally, um, just trying to honor them. Drinking them away is not honoring their life and what has happened. I think about my grief, and it it wasn't like a positive person in my life who passed away or something like that. That's not the kind of grief I experienced. Mine was horrible manipulation, making irreversible decisions, um, just going through the darkest of times and living in fear every single day. That's kind of my grief that I've experienced. So honoring that person is not something I will be doing. But I think like in a different way, I I well, it's not, it's not honoring, okay? It's recognizing. I connect to like the telling stories one. So my one friend who is with me during that time, like she knows most everything. And when we get together, it's almost like I dedicate a little bit of time, a little chunk of our hangout to talking about that. And I feel so much relief because she knows that person, she knows what I went through, and she's like the only person I can talk to about that. So telling stories and laughing about it and just the amazing things she says to me, it's not your fault, and uh this happens to the best of people, and just all these comforting things she says to me help with the healing process, even years later. Um, so that's helpful. Uh, I also think like talking about narcissism, narcissism and uh verbal abuse and uh financial abuse and all that type of stuff on this podcast is kind of like paying it forward. It's like honoring my growth that I've had through having experienced that. Um connecting with other people who've been through similar things and trying to help them or people who are going through it now. I think that's kind of like how I honor it. It's like I pay it forward. I didn't do this yet, but I thought about volunteering at one of those places where you file restraining orders because those ladies were really, really helpful to me because that paperwork is really, really confusing and you don't know what you need, and you it has to get approved, and so you want to do it perfectly. And these ladies were so helpful, I don't know what I would do without them. And they were just volunteers there. And I thought like that would be a good way to pay it forward and be one of those people for somebody else. So, anyway, honoring the grief or whatever, honoring the person can look a lot of different ways. It can be in a positive light, or it can be like paying it forward, like my situation. Just something to keep in mind. We can pay it forward and honor them in a lot of different ways, depending on the situation, obviously. And the last thing I want to touch on, which I have touched on throughout the whole episode, is that it's not like embarrassing or bad to get help, especially from a professional. There are certain situations that are so unimaginable, nobody you talk to casually in your life is going to understand. And professionals know what they're doing. They have seen this before, they know how people work, how emotions work. And I think that like there is strong, strong value in talking to a professional about what you're going through. I wish I had, honestly, because I still feel like I am broken from that situation. I I don't know what my future relationship is going to look like. Even just my life on my own is affected by that situation. And so, like in a future relationship, I don't want to be a mess. You know, it it's okay to not be perfect and not be fully healed, but I feel like my future partner almost deserves to be with somebody who has processed that a bit better, if that makes any sense. I don't know, maybe I'm being hard on myself, but like I probably could use some professional help even to this day, three years later, to just like make sure that I'm in a good place and see if they have any like actual specific strategies to move through something that I've been through. So don't be afraid to seek professional help. I think it's the best thing we can do, even though it might be the last thing we want to do. So, with that said, thank you so much for listening to this lengthier episode. This is a topic I've been wanting to talk about for a long time, but I'm not a master myself, so it's very hard to advise, but we're learning together. This is this is something, you know, we're we're growing in our sobriety together and learning how to deal with things as we go. Luckily, I haven't had to deal with this yet, but when I do, I'll come back and listen to this episode. Hopefully, there were some good tangible tips you can take away. And if you have been through something traumatic in sobriety, maybe share in the comments of this episode or put it in the Facebook group or send me an email and share your experience because we could all use whatever advice we can get. It's hard when we turn to alcohol to get through everything, and then something arises that we have to get through in sobriety, it is hard. And I recognize that we all do. It's the hardest part about sobriety, I would say. And nobody has the 100% answer, but hearing more and more stories helps a lot. So thank you so much for listening. Sorry, this was a heavy one, but I hope you enjoyed it. And I will see you for the next episode. Bye.