I Drowned Out The Pain of Losing My Mom

I used to think about my mom dying a lot when I was a little girl. To be honest, I am not sure if this is normal or not, but I remember having a very real fear of something happening to her. I would have nightmares about her dying all the time. I remember thinking to myself that if something did happen to her, I would automatically just go with her, because my heart believed that I wouldn't be able to physically stand that pain, and therefore God would probably take us at the same time.

 

As I grew up my close relationship with my mom became fractured and broken when she began to drink in my late twenties. Looking back, it wasn't her fault, and although I wasn't drinking to the extent that I was later in my 30's, I now know that my own drinking behaviour was also to blame for our broken relationship. If I had been clear and present when she was drinking- it would have made things easier.

 

When she did pass away in 2018 that pain that I feared when I was a little girl hit me like a ton of bricks. It was mixed with so much anger and resentment because I was blaming her for breaking our mother-daughter bond. I blamed her for choosing alcohol over me and her grandchildren. I blamed her for caring more about drinking than being present at her grandchildren's graduations and weddings. How could she do this to all of us?! 

 

The combination of the sadness and the anger was too much for me to handle, or so I thought, and so I drowned it out with cabernet and casamigos. I remember thinking to myself one day, on my way to meet a girlfriend for lunch, "I just have to get to noon, and then I can have a glass of wine and then I won't have to feel this sadness anymore."

 

Can I tell you what I learned? (And this took me a while you guys, and I learned it the hard way.) Grief, sadness, anger. Those feelings will not kill you. Your thoughts, your emotions will not kill you. It is possible to sit with those emotions, process them and move through them. It took me years to learn that, and to he honest, I am still working on it today.

 

We're sold a really big lie in our society that we are supposed to feel good all the time, and if something is niggling at us we should numb it out, drown it out. So we never learn to truly sit with our feelings. Have a bad day? Have a glass of wine! Boss pissing you off? Take a shot! Children driving you bananas? Have a cocktail! 

 

We numb and drown out every single little difficult moment and then when it gets to the big, hard, overwhelming, events in our life- the deaths, the job losses, the break-ups, we seek refuge in alcohol more than ever. I had no coping skills. I had no idea how to handle the emotions I was feeling. The answer was to drown them out. 

 

The truth is that we aren't supposed to feel good all the time. We are meant to experience our emotions and learn from them. That is how we grow. 

 

Can I just encourage you today, if you feel like it's really hard to sit with your feelings, if you're finding it really difficult to sit with those thoughts in your head- those feelings… those emotions… WILL NOT KILL YOU. I didn't evaporate the day my mom died like I thought I would when I was a little girl. Instead I spent a couple of years being super self-destructive with my drinking so I wouldn't have to feel those feelings. 

 

When I stopped drinking I learned to forgive, I learned to let go of blame, I found peace. Do I still have hard days? Heck yeah! (After all I have an almost teenager on my hands!) But I try my best to move through those hard days with patience knowing that the difficult emotion will pass. Hard days aren't forever. 

 

If you're struggling to sit with your own thoughts, trust me when I say this, I fully understand how you feel. 

 

 

It is possible to sit with your thoughts and ride the wave of your emotions and come out stronger on the other side. I'd be honoured if you'd like to chat about how that's possible, and you can do that by booking a discovery call here.