Episode 332: Grief, Loss, and Why I'm So Grateful I Was Alcohol-Free for All of It: Losing My Soul Dog Huxley
Euphoric Alcohol-FreeShow Notes
I recently lost one of the greatest loves of my life, my soul dog Huxley. He passed really unexpectedly on Memorial Day. He was 11 and a half. He was fine that morning. He ate breakfast, he cuddled with us, he sat in the sun while we were at the pool. By that evening, he was gone. He had massive internal bleeding and we had no idea anything was wrong until his gums went pale and we were racing across town to an emergency vet that Memorial Day night. What followed was four hours of the most tender goodbyes I've ever experienced, and then one of the hardest weeks of my life. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to grieve fully, to actually feel it instead of pushing it down and numbing it. I did that in my early 20s after a bad heartbreak, drowned myself in alcohol, and missed the whole thing. I shoved it down and it just kept showing up later as triggers and pain I hadn't processed. This time I felt all of it. The shock, the devastation, the beauty, the signs he's been sending us since. I'm also sharing something I found in my journal from February, a few months before he died, where I had written about him without knowing what was coming. And what it made me realize about presence and about what being alcohol-free actually means at the deepest level.
IN THIS EPISODE How we lost Huxley and what those four hours of goodbye looked like The three things that determine how deep grief hits, and why losing a dog child can undo you completely What I did differently this time compared to grieving through alcohol in my early 20s, and what that cost me back then The signs Huxley has been sending us since he passed, and why I'm not calling any of them coincidences What I found in my journal from February that I wrote without knowing what was coming Why being alcohol-free is really just another way of saying you are awake to your life What alcohol actually takes from you, and why you feel the bad but miss all the good when you numb
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