My mother sadly passed away September 2017 after being a highly functional alcoholic for at least 30 years. I’m finding it very difficult to come to terms with my loss and think it will take a very long time to come to terms with my mother’s alcoholism. I find myself thinking I didn’t do enough, say the right things or make the most of my time with my mum, instead we spent a lot of time arguing because of the way that she was.
My counsellor has termed my grieving process as ‘complex grief’ due to the large variety of emotions that a child of an alcoholic parents experiences (anger that she is not with us and anger that she couldn’t control herself, relief that she isn’t suffering her addiction anymore, sadness of what could have been, guilt of talking so negatively about her and on the whole confusion).
By reading the ‘peoples experiences’ section of your website this is and will be so helpful – I am 20 years old and know of nobody that has or is experiencing having an alcoholic parent. I wish I had found this website sooner and perhaps things would be different today.
Many thanks for taking your time to read this,
