Tag: sober mom

Gone But Not Forgotten

My Dad passed away two months ago. It still doesn’t feel real. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him but the day he died still feels like a bad dream. I’ve tried to be really mindful of my grieving process and dealing with the loss in a healthy way…and through it all, there are two important realities of my life that I feel have been magnified during this process.

I am clean and sober and I’m finding it harder to stay that way. I’m also an autism mom, helping her special need son grieve the loss of his grandfather.

The urge to drink hasn’t been a strong one but it hits me quite often. It’s definitely been a lot more than I’ve experienced in recent years. I’m thankful for the fact that these cravings aren’t the super strong ones that cause me severe anxiety. It’s more of a nagging feeling that just follows you around just letting you know it’s constantly there!

I’m also thankful that the thoughts that I need to deter myself come pretty automatic at this point. But I still have days that for just a few seconds, I entertain the thought of just letting myself have a drink or two, one more time.

I know that this will eventually pass and I’m just trying to take it one day at a time. Trying to get through the grieving without a relapse. Trying not to let myself down.

Helping my son deal with his feelings has also been a challenge. Helping any kid through this process is challenging, let alone a child who has autism. It’s hard to get inside of his head to figure out to what extent that he’s affected.

I’m not sure what to do in some cases. Should I bring it up so he can relate his feelings or will it stress him out more if he can’t really articulate his feelings? He wants to know specifics about why grandpa died and he finds it hard to understand that it wasn’t just one thing. The fact that there were many contributing factors is a concept that is hard for him to grasp….and hard for me to explain.

I try my best to explain things the best that I can and in a way that he will be able to understand, but it can definitely be stressful for me. Feeling emotional about the topic and then having to find the right words to tell my son when sometimes, I’d much rather shut down inside.

I never would have thought that losing my dad would somehow magnify the autism part of my life, but it definitely does. I also never would have thought that I’d be doing as well as I am with the sobriety part of my life, but I definitely am. There’s no way to predict how a person will be affected by loss but I’m honestly proud of myself and how I’ve gone through it so far. I know there isn’t one right way to grieve but there are definitely bad ways to do it and I’m definitely not doing it bad!

My life depends on my sobriety

I had something specific planned out for today’s blog post but as I sit down to write it, it’s just not what’s on my heart right now.  I’ve decided I’m going to change the direction of where I planned on going with this post. I had originally planned on talking a little bit about the autism mom side of me. But in reality, what’s weighing heavy on my heart is the sober mom part of me. I have had a parent in active addiction my whole life. This does not define me, but it has definitely helped to shape me, in good ways and in bad ways.

Now, I can’t say that I’ve had it the worst. I know a lot of people have had it a lot worse than I did, but I can honestly say that I’ve had some really messed up moments and wacked out experiences in my life. There’s no doubt in my mind that these experiences have caused forks in my road that have steered me in directions that may not have been favorable. I think it’s safe to say that going down these alternate forks in my road definitely helped lead me to my own active addiction. When you combine that with a genetic predisposition to addiction on one side of my family combined with mental illness being very dominant on the other side of my family… Well, I’ve had more than one therapist tell me that I never really had a chance. LOL! 

I saw that party life when I was young and to me, it was fun, and I wanted that when I got older. It was attractive to me. And once I got older and I started to dabble in drugs and alcohol, I knew right away that I was different. I was not like “normal” people. I could tell that my brain was wired differently. I was an addict, and I knew it at a young age. Instead of these thoughts turning me in a direction that would lead me away from an obviously bad path, I continued to follow it. I was so desperate to escape from so many things that I was going through, and from things I’d been through in the past…. I latched onto it very quickly. It felt right to me.

The summer before I went away to college was all freedom and fun but once I moved away, it was the start of my adult life, which was filled with things I felt the need to self-medicate from. The loneliness I felt in college, followed by the heartache I felt at the end of the year when I realized my dancing dreams would never come true. The toxic and abusive relationships that followed, one after another. It all pulled me into my own addiction and as time went by it took control over me. Over the years, I lost control little by little, until I hit my breaking point. (That’s a story for another day) Then I was just a crazy mess and out of control until I hit rock bottom. (That’s also a story for another day)  

I’m lucky to be alive. My rock bottom was serious, and I’ve had to do some serious work to dig myself out of that hole.  

It was hard.  

I struggled.

I still struggle sometimes…but I’m in a much better place now than where I used to be. As time goes on and I get a better hold of all of this, I have still been a child with a parent in active addiction. It’s a reality that can be hard, but I accept it for what it is.  This is my reality…and through it all, I’ve learned to hold on to sobriety like my life depends on it…because it does!