Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#10 - August 20, 2025 - Facing Death in Recovery
Diane and Jay explore the powerful topic of facing death in recovery, discussing how loss can either break us temporarily or help us reprioritize relationships and find deeper meaning in life. They examine how grief manifests in unexpected ways, like anniversary reactions to deaths, and share personal stories of generational addiction trauma.
• True love acknowledges mortality and makes relationships more precious because of their temporary nature
• Anniversary dates of deaths often carry emotional weight, causing illness or depression weeks before
• Unfinished business with family members creates grief, regret, and opportunities for personal growth
• Experiencing others' limitations in relationships can motivate us to create different connections with our own children
• Reframing past hurts as opportunities for growth transforms resentment into gratitude
• Different spiritual beliefs create varied experiences of grief and death
• Connection with others is essential when processing grief in recovery
If you're struggling with grief in recovery, please reach out. You don't have to face these feelings alone—connect with a program, home group, or contact us directly.
Question: What gives you strength when loved ones die, especially as a result of addictions?
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome to another episode of, just For the Day, I'm Diane and I'm codependent.
Speaker 2:And I'm Jay and I am an active addict.
Speaker 1:Active. Usually you say recovering.
Speaker 2:I should say recovering. What happened? Okay, so here's a little disclosure. What's going on, jay, I'm a recovering addict.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll talk about it later. Okay, so today's reading is August 20th. It falls on a Wednesday this year, but Jay really wants to do slogan Wednesdays, so you may get this on August 20th, or maybe it'll be August 21st when you're listening to it, but the topic was really good so we didn't want to skip it. It's called Facing Death.
Speaker 1:Facing Death was really good so we didn't want to skip it. It's called Facing Death, facing Death. The quote is often we have to face some type of crisis during our recovery, such as the death of a loved one.
Speaker 2:Every life has a beginning and an end. However, when someone we love a great deal reaches the end of their life, we may have a very hard time accepting their sudden final absence. Our grief may be so powerful that we fear it will completely overwhelm us, but it will not. Our sorrow may hurt more than anything we can remember, but it will pass.
Speaker 1:We need not run from the emotions that may arise from the death of a loved one. Death and grieving are parts of the fullness of living life on life's terms. By allowing ourselves the freedom to experience these feelings, we partake more deeply of both our recovery and our human nature.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the reality of another's death makes our own mortality that much more pronounced. We re-evaluate our priorities, appreciate the loved ones still with us all the more. Our life, and our life with them will not go on forever. We want to make the most of what's most important while it lasts.
Speaker 1:We might find that the death of someone we love helps strengthen our conscious contact with our higher power. If we remember that we can always turn to that source of strength when we are troubled, we will be able to stay focused on it, no matter what may be going on around us.
Speaker 2:Just for today, I will accept the loss of one I love and turn to my higher power for the strength to accept my feelings. I will make the most of my love for those in my life today.
Speaker 1:Okay, you were pretty excited for this reading.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got so much to say about this one.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm excited. So you start us off.
Speaker 2:This is. I once heard and I love this that love is an acknowledgement. True love is an acknowledgement that one day I will lose you. That the feelings you experience in love is actually so great because at your core, you recognize that one day you won't have it anymore. And that's what makes it so amazing, which makes perfect sense to me, because it's opposition. And what I loved about this reading is is that it's suggesting well, it's. It's playing out a very important component of what loss does to us right. Loss will either break you for a time, and then you will learn from the dysfunction, or it will help you redefine your priorities, appreciate the loved ones still with us all the more, and I think that's really important is that it can propel you to reevaluate and value those people that you love and those things that you love in your life even more, and it makes them even more precious.
Speaker 1:I like the intensity that love can create, right and how, when you have those kind of relationships where you're recognizing I only have you for so much time and you're prioritizing them and you're valuing that and you have the the blessing of having that kind of a relationship. When people lose those kind of people in their life, there it's a very common thing. I was just talking to somebody the other day the the anniversary date of someone's death.
Speaker 1:When they're close to you right that there tends to be energy tied up in the anniversary date. Have you ever heard of this before?
Speaker 2:no, that's interesting yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:I know several people have mentioned this in the years over program that, um, when, say, the date of their alcoholic parent or spouse where they died comes back each year, that they, they tend to get sick or they tend to fall into a depression a week or two before, that's interesting. Or there's something happens to them every year around the date of that anniversary. That's fascinating and it's it's, yeah, it's kind of, and maybe it comes back to. We've talked before about energy being held up, right that there's energy that is associated with that loved one and the loss of that person, especially if you have unfinished business with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a I mean, that's a really good description. Is that would indicate to me that there is unfinished business? Because one of two things would happen it's going to cause you to misstep and fall down, which is fine again, because that's there to teach. That's happening to teach you something, right? We need to, we need to work to reframe those setbacks, the same way we look at relapse, which is it's a setback there, because I'm still learning something. I haven't learned the lesson yet right.
Speaker 2:When you do learn the lesson, though, it is meant to propel you to do something. It's meant to propel you to value something important, or to reprioritize, or to it's your being saying, hey, this is really a crucial, let's not let this happen again. Let's really prioritize other relationships so that I can make sure that I'm not missing those things that I might be missing because I'm not thinking about that.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that it brought up a. Did you have any thought about that?
Speaker 1:before I go to my next thought, no, my mind wandered onto something else, but you keep going with your thought.
Speaker 2:It brought up a slogan and I think that should be maybe the slogan we pick for our slogan episode.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what is that?
Speaker 2:Life on life's terms.
Speaker 1:Love that one.
Speaker 2:Right. Death and grieving are part of the fullness of living life on life's terms. So let's table that, and I think we'll. Let's do that as a separate piece. Yeah, and we can, and we can, we'll put out the slogan episode on that one next.
Speaker 1:So stay tuned or go back and watch it if we release that one first.
Speaker 2:Depending on which order it goes in.
Speaker 1:We're not sure what we're doing. Okay, do you have any other thoughts on them? No, okay, I wanted to ask you, okay, if you have any personal experience with facing death in terms of recovery? Um, have you lost anybody in your life because of alcohol or drugs?
Speaker 2:no so you don't have that experience yeah, I have not had that experience yet. Most of the addicts in my life have pickled their insides inside, so they stay alive for super long. They actually outlive everybody, it's true so I haven't had that experience yet I have had loved ones die though okay yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm not sure what you're asking about that, but you know why just just a little bit of, I think, the idea of closure with it right. So when I was in high school there were a couple of people that I had. They weren't close friends. I had people that I knew who died from stupidity alcohol-induced stupidity right Jumping off a quarry and hitting rocks on the way down at car accidents that they shouldn't have been driving, things like that. But I this has kind of spurred this thought about my mother's generation.
Speaker 1:I've said before my mother was the daughter of an alcoholic and her family all have. They all had issues with drinking. My, my, my uncles, my great-uncles, I guess my great-uncles all were in program when I knew them. My mother had a cousin who committed suicide from depression and she had been on all kinds of different drugs and things like that. I remember my sister has a story about my grandfather getting drunk and my parents forgot to pick her up and she went to his apartment because he lived fairly close to the school and she was hoping maybe he could get her home. And when he discovered her in the apartment, because he was a superintendent, he was off doing things. When he came home and found her in the apartment, he chased her away with a baseball bat Like we had trauma at, like my parents, their, their aunts, uncles, cousins.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of trauma in that generation and so I stayed away from alcohol because I saw the damage that had been done. I saw that you know, I had a pair of grandparents that that could not get along for many, many years because he was a philandering alcoholic and she had been hurt too many times and there was a lot of anger and all these different things going on um a lot. I wouldn't necessarily say that those had to do with death so much as the living with it, right, but I think now I wish that I had understood more or I had been more involved in a program of some sort when they were alive, that I could have asked them yeah stuff, yeah right it would have so greatly increased my understanding if I could have sat down with my uncle, who we named our son after, because I loved this man.
Speaker 1:He'd been in recovery for 30 years when he died. Yeah, he was just an incredible person. He, um he just the things he could have told me to help me understand. So I feel like there are lost opportunities oh yeah I also look forward to we make jokes about our parents when our parents are going to die. Yep, um, we've been calling that my mom's gonna die anytime for the last 10 years and she does the same thing. She's like I could go any minute yeah, I've hung, I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm planning on my most recent joke about this. I'm planning on hanging a plaque in our house that says in memory, in loving memory, of blank, your mother, so that my kids get used to the fact that grandma's passed and when she shows up they're like wait, grandma's still alive.
Speaker 1:As a joke oh, that would be awful. Have you never told you that yet?
Speaker 2:no, I told her that last time when I saw her and she loved it. She loved the idea.
Speaker 1:Don't do it when my dad comes to visit because he doesn't have the same sense of humor. She would find it funny and he would be appalled. He'd be pretty upset. So but I do have thoughts about the unfinished business with my parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That there's definitely and it addresses that right the knowing that you only have so much time and I know that I do, and I know that I've had some very honest conversations with my parents. I remember sitting down with my father and telling him some of the ways that he's made me feel and some of the things that that I remember from our youth and how that's contributed to some of my issues. But whenever I have conversations with my, my parents, it feels like it kind of goes in one ear and out the other. I don't know, nothing, nothing changes.
Speaker 1:They can't hear it. They have not been able to face, no, any of the consequences. Um, they haven't been able to face their past and so they're very limited, and so what I can, I can, what I can resolve with them, is very limited, and I do worry about when they do die. They're up there in age when they do die, having carrying stuff that I wasn't able to say to them that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll carry regrets. I think there will be regrets see that's interesting and I wonder how you, why you feel that way? Because I have a hard time carrying regrets based on other people's limitations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that Makes sense Does that make sense.
Speaker 2:It totally makes sense, like I recognize that I can't get. I too think of some of the relationships I think will be better on the other side, which again goes back in that I wanted to talk about. Well, how do you? A lot of this depends on how you view death. Very much so, right, whether you're afraid of it or so for those of us who who, for those of us who believe in an afterlife.
Speaker 2:okay, uh, there are very much conversations I'm looking forward to having with greater clarity from that person, because we're limited right now to your point, because they just can't hear me and they we can't have honest discussions about it it's too much for them and but I don't feel and I'm interested, I'd be interested in why you feel. It sounds like you're feeling you feel a little bit of regret there. Uh, because there you wish there were conversations you could have. And yet I don't necessarily feel regret if I'm not, as long as I'm not limited by me.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right, like I would feel regret if I knew that I was capable and I was just I just failed to have the courage to have those conversations versus I've tried and it's not working, so maybe we can't have it here. Is that making?
Speaker 1:sense, yeah, and as you're saying that, I'm thinking maybe it's not regret, maybe it's grieving that I will grieve the intimacy that I could have had, if we could have been more vulnerable, if we could have tackled the difficult conversations, if they could have heard and validated some of the issues that I have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's probably, you're probably right, it's probably grief, and what I love about this reading, too, is is that the suggestion is that when you experience death of someone, that you are grieving the experiences you couldn't have. That itself is an important experience to have, because it will propel you to work, to have the type of relationship with your children and other people that you won't be limited that way, and when you look at it that way, it occurs to me that, well, that relationship still has meaning.
Speaker 1:It can be meaningful.
Speaker 2:Even though you were limited in that relationship. How important is it to have gratitude for that, Because that will propel you to not have it elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Right, it can be motivating. Yeah, recognizing the limitations, recognizing the shortcomings, recognizing the damage can be very motivating.
Speaker 2:And for those of us who believe in an afterlife, I think that is the feeling we'll have. We'll have nothing but gratitude because when we meet them in the next place, if you believe that, right, whatever that place looks like, you'll know that, although we were limited, you'll have sorrow for what we couldn't have here, right, and yet if we understand more there, then we'll have nothing but gratitude for what that caused, right, and I often think about that in terms of the addicts that are hurtful to me, that I'm codependent with today.
Speaker 2:I imagine, when we get to the other side, yes, there's some pain from like, okay, the damage that was wrought at their hands, and yet, at the same time, there will be gratitude because we'll both understand that I showed up more intentionally to my children because of it and I enjoyed and gave something to them, because I saw the damage and, if anything, what I'm looking at their part in the you know progeny line of you know hierarchy of family passing down generations is they were the example of what not to do so that many other people didn't enjoy the same consequences. And that's a different way to look at somebody and their behaviors.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, it actually reminds me of the book series the Little Soul that someone gave you when you were working back in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2:Oh, do you remember the Little Soul? I don't.
Speaker 1:It's, it's. We have it on our bookshelf.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you read all the books that I've been recommending to you that I don't read.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I read it, but I read it to you, I think, oh great it's. It's the little soul series and the idea is that we are all living joyfully in heaven. And then somebody heard the word forgive or something like that, and they were like, well, what does it mean to forgive? And then somebody else else offered and they said, well, when we go to earth, if you'd like I, I can give you someone to forgive, like I can help you to experience the feeling of forgiveness. But that means that I need to wrong you. Yeah, and in order for me to wrong you, you're going to need to grow into this forgiveness. And it changes. The perspective of my parents were such awful parents and they did this to me and whatever to. They have given me this gift that has allowed me to grow a new characteristic.
Speaker 2:I would never have been able to grow otherwise. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just a change of perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that you know some people would hear that and say, well, you're just making an excuse for someone else's bad behavior, and I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2:I'd like to give them a concrete example of how that's manifested in my life. Some of the interactions with my parents have been characterized by a complete lack of interest in me and that has left me feeling worthless and I've reflected on that a tremendous amount over the course of my life and I have made it and I've noticed. Interestingly enough, when you become a parent, you start doing the same things that were given to you without even knowing it. And many times I would go to do something to my children and I would feel horrified because I'm like, oh, I'm doing the thing that my mom did to me or I'm doing the thing that my dad did to me, and there have been so many times that I've caught myself dismissing the interest and feelings of my daughter specifically, and I've and catching myself turned, rather than walking away uninterested turned and sat and looked them in the eyes and acted interested and.
Speaker 2:I was as I got to, and I, and as I've gotten to know them, I've been incredibly interested in them, but I I am grateful to those people who wronged me, because I now get to enjoy the richness.
Speaker 1:You notice when you're about to blow somebody off and you're like, whoa, wait a second. I see their shoulders slumping and I'm doing to them what I don't want to have them deal with, right.
Speaker 2:I enjoy such a beautiful relationship with my kids as a consequence of that. How would I feel anything but gratitude for those things. Now, there are still other behaviors that I'm still resentful about that.
Speaker 1:I'm working through right and that's okay.
Speaker 2:You're allowed to have that as a element of progress, not perfection, anyway. So the last thing I just want to say before we go is we are speaking about this from our own perspectives, our lived experiences, knowing that we have a bit of a bias, that we have a different religious frame. You and I have a different, a slightly different religious frame from each other, but we also have a different religious frame from many people in the program and for those of you who don't necessarily believe in life after death, that's okay. But you're going to have a slightly different frame here and you're going to take away different things, and you know there is that is very hard. For those types of people, death is particular, but I but and I wish I could understand if anyone here listening to this has had that experience I would love to hear and share in your experience of what's that like for you, because I don't know what that's like.
Speaker 1:So anyway, we also have the limitation of being a what's the word? A connection or two away from immediate. We don't have siblings or parents who have died directly as a result of their drinking True where other people have. So we're a little bit more distant from that and there's definitely going to be listeners who it's a touchier subject and it's hard and we don't want to underemphasize the pain that you would be going through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we do hope that, just like it says in the reading, that it'll make our mortality more pronounced and that it'll strengthen our conscious contact with our higher power. If this is not doing that for you, then do your best to connect with God, your higher power, whatever that may be, because it is a challenging time, and remember that connection is the biggest strength that you have going for you.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you said that, because that would be my statement to them is is if you're feeling, you know those feelings can be so severe and difficult to deal with, so don't deal with them alone. There are people who have suffered through that. If you don't have a program, find one. If you don't have a home group, join one and start engaging with people because they want to share in your experiences. I want to share in your experiences if we could, and if you want to share those, put them in the comments. We'd love to to to share it that way. That's the way that we can listen and honor your experiences by paying attention to those people who reach out, but also just find people to connect with.
Speaker 1:Or send us a private text. We're here for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for joining us, everybody. See you next time.
