Dear Readers,
Thanks for all your heartfelt responses to my last blog, The Life I Stopped Leaving. I was surprised by how much of it resonated with so many of you.
A few readers asked specifically how estrangement had become one of the outcomes of seven years of sober living. I understand why that feels difficult to reconcile. Estrangement is not a benefit of sobriety. It hurts deeply.
For this reason, I feel it is worth sharing my thoughts on it with you today.
I could explore estrangement and the growing trend of going ‘no contact’ that seems to be discussed everywhere these days. I could try to explain why these things happen in the first place. But whenever I attempt to make sense of it all, I find myself going around in circles. There are aspects of the human experience that are simply too complex for me to explain. Besides, I can only ever speak from my own experience.
All I want to do today is show you that there is life beyond estrangement.
Even as my heart hurts and my body feels as though part of it has been severed, I believe the only way forward is acceptance.
I accept that I am no longer part of the tribe I once belonged to – the tribe I desperately wanted to support me, even if I chose to live 15,000 kilometres away from them.
For years, my drinking masked this truth. I convinced myself that it was just my imagination that I was slowly being excluded. The clarity of a sober mind allowed me to see things differently. In the early years of sobriety, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what had happened. I hoped that if I could explain myself clearly enough, perhaps things would change. Perhaps the door would reopen. It never did.
To this day, the rejection has never been spoken about openly. But the silence is loud enough for me to have no choice but to hear it and heed it.
This year I turned sixty. It marked a turning point because it forced me to stop telling myself stories about what might change one day. I heard the deafening silence of the phone that didn’t ring and felt the emptiness of messages that didn’t arrive from people I had always assumed would be there.
Painful as it was, it became a wake-up call.
Where it eventually led me was a place of acceptance. I accept what no longer is.
I’ve stopped waiting for the phone to ring or for the uplifting ping of a message. This acceptance feels like a long-awaited cooling rain after a dry, hot summer. The relief is calming.
With a calmer nervous system, I can focus more on what I do have in my life. I can see how fortunate I am to have my husband, my children, my friends and my neighbours – the people who see me, care for me, and allow me to be myself in all my colours.
I love them all and am more grateful than ever for their presence in my life.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how a painful experience like rejection can teach us to appreciate what remains. In some ways it reminds me of how death teaches us about life. Without loss, it is easy to overlook what is right in front of us.
Of course, I still grieve.
I continue to mourn the connections I once had. Because the tribe is in Ireland, my feelings about the motherland have changed too. This hurts more than I ever imagined it would. I still dream about the wild Atlantic coastline and remember happy days spent on the farm in the west. But the thing that once drew me back no longer feels emotionally safe, and so I have stopped yearning for it. Oddly enough, that has been liberating.
Instead of looking backwards, I find myself looking forwards. I am excited about exploring other countries and embracing new experiences.
I’ve also been sharing news with you about my forthcoming novel. The manuscript was born from energy that was released once I stopped waiting to be wanted. Once I accepted that I do belong – just not where I thought I did.
I still doubt myself at times. It’s hard not to when I imagine life carrying on without me at weddings, birthdays and family gatherings. But I have developed a stronger sense of self-belief.
I had little choice. It was either dare or die. Not die in the literal sense, of course. I mean allowing the part of me that dreamed to die. Allowing rejection to define me as an unworthy person. Instead, I chose to dare.
I chose to pursue the dream I’ve carried since I was seven years old.
My novel is currently with my editor. I know it still needs work, and I am willing to do that work because I want it to become the best version of itself possible. It has become an anchor when my thoughts drift towards the stormy break-up with the tribe.
That break-up has taken enough of my energy already. I remind myself that I am worthy and that I belong. I am no longer begging to be included.
I am strong enough to accept and respect people’s decisions to exclude me from their lives.
I trust that life is unfolding as it should.
I hope some of my writing resonated with you today.
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Thank you for being here.
Love,
Gill x
