Accepting Loss

In life, loss is a recurring theme. Recently someone very close to me lost her father. If we live long enough we are all going to lose someone. While the loss of our loved ones is inevitable, how we react to the loss is not.

Some of us in recovery often let grief and loss overtake our lives. While grieving is a natural and healthy process, an intense reaction that threatens our sobriety or recovery is not. Before I got sober over 20 years ago, every loss was an occasion for me to intensify my addiction. My drug use and alcoholism would escalate into another crisis. What could have been a normal healthy grieving process metamorphosed into something larger.

But since I've been sober I have found a different way to deal with this kind of loss. While I still grieve my loss, I know that the person who died would not want me to do something self-destructive in response to their passing. Were this person still alive and speaking to me, they might say something like "go on and lead a good life. Don't destroy yourself over my passing." While this kind of imaginary construct might not work for everyone, it has worked well for me over the past 20 years.

If we believe in a higher power, then we believe our loved one is in God's hands. We can imagine that if they were looking into our lives, they would be happy to know that we are doing well, that we are staying clean and sober.