Diary of a Mad Woman Gone Sane

Hello friends! I've been doing a lot of work lately, in all the ways. Today I am 1 year without a drink! I am so very proud of myself!! And still sometimes shocked. Joe and I were craft beer drinkers and brewers. Drinking beer had become a part of my identity. Drinking beer kept Joe here, I believed. I thought if I quit drinking another piece of him would be gone. I was wrong. I still have all of our wonderful memories and I'm finding it easier to access them. Recovery has brought many changes. The fog is lifting and I can see more clearly. Drinking was a way to drown the trauma and the grief, but only temporarily. In reality, when I stopped drinking all of that was waiting for me. I felt regret and guilt and shame and fear and anger for wasting so much time drinking. Drinking completely altered who I was. It made me into someone else. Someone I didn't like. I'm becoming someone else, in a more intentional way, this time. I'm more awkward than I've ever been, an...

Hello, my friends. I hope all is well for you. Yesterday I had my 2nd session of EMDR. I had decided that I needed to work through more guilt. I'm not Catholic, but I come from a long line of them. I come by my guilt honestly. I've always felt responsible and in charge of everything and everyone. Especially for someone I'd tried to keep safe and alive. This one was about my dearly departed husband. Yes, I have guilt and shame around his death, because I was his caregiver and I was his wife and the mother of his child. Yes, I have survivors guilt also. Ultimately, I'm trying to convince myself that I did the very best I could. Which is true, absolutely, but it is difficult to convince myself, because he is not here. To me, that feels like failure. Unfortunately I couldn't have prevented his death and the most amazing thing is that I did my best to give him a life, not just keep him alive. And help him get his dreams. And give him a son, and a family. I'm trying t...