Grief.

I hadn’t really thought about grief and sobriety until yesterday. It just never came up. Historically, grief would have seen me reaching for the bottle. “Celebrating” the memory of a person when in fact it would merely be an attempt to drown my sorrows, literally. To drink enough to stop thinking about the feelings I have spent my life running from.

Yesterday was tough. Uninvited thoughts scurried through my mind and for the first time in my sobriety, I really had to work on altering those thought patterns. Instead of remembering a hospital bed, a priest, a last breath; I acknowledged those thoughts and brought happier thoughts to mind. Childhood holidays, Christmases, football games, days out.

I still cried. Quite a bit actually. I can feel the familiar pain behind my nose now as I try to hold back tears. A huge part of recovery is about allowing yourself to feel. We run so much from our feelings that as adults, we have to learn how to manage them, often for the first time. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how I do this.

1. Give yourself permission to feel.

You are allowed to be sad or angry or frustrated. You’re allowed to feel negative emotions. We can’t always be happy, that’s not possible. Cry. Feel the pain. Acknowledge it. Cry some more.

2. Write it down.

Write down what you’re feeling and get real. Be honest. I wrote a piece this week that raged at a situation. It started off nicely while I was thinking about the qualities I want to exhibit. I was thoughtful, kind, compassionate. But as my anger and sadness flooded the page, my diplomacy went out of the window. I raged, I swore, I shouted. And then I saved the letter I will never send and will stumble upon it at some time in the future, read through it and think, “fucking hell Kiki.”

3. Why?

Think about why you feel that way. Really think about it. I went to an event last weekend that talked about leaning in to people who hurt you. Having removed multiple toxic relationships from my life over the last few years, I found this difficult to work through. I’m still thinking about it now. Why do I find this so difficult? What is this telling me about myself? How can I work through this? Challenge your thought processes.

4. Alter your thought processes.

This is the tough one. I have had to learn how to recognise toxic or negative thoughts and deliberately change those thought processes. The more I practise this, the easier it gets. For example; yesterday painful thoughts of death invaded my mind unbidden. I acknowledged these thoughts briefly before replacing them with memories of better times. Or any time my inner prick tells me that I’m not good enough, I physically laugh. “Hah! Have you met me?”

5. Channel your creativity.

Whether it’s writing, poetry, painting, singing, music making or just printing some pictures and framing them; honour your feelings creatively.

One of my heroes, Frida Kahlo, once said, “I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned to swim.” We can drown (or smother) our feelings with alcohol, drugs, food, sex but ultimately, the feelings still exist and temporary fixes only add more to the mix. More shame, more guilt, more sadness. The only way to truly heal is to work your arse off at it. Use every resource at your disposal, Google how to manage grief, read every book on the subject you can find, listen to every podcast.

Grief isn’t just an emotion centred around the death of a loved one, it can be any loss. The loss of a friendship, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a family. Grief can be centred around PTSD, childhood abuses, adult abuses. Learning how to recognise different emotions, to allow yourself to feel them, is one of the greatest tools at your disposal. Teach yourself how to use it.