It's been a while since I've written here. The last time I posted, I had just lost my dog — my girl of twelve years. I wasn't in a place to write after that, and honestly, I wasn't in a place to do much of anything. But I'm here now, and I've learned more about myself in this past month than I have in a long time. So I want to share it.

This was the first time in my life that I've had to sit with grief completely sober.

Before, when something painful happened — and painful things have happened, believe me — I drank. I lost both my parents. I've been through two divorces. And every time, alcohol was the thing I reached for so I didn't have to feel it. It worked, in the way that covering your eyes works when you don't want to see something. The thing is still there. You're just pretending it isn't.

I've been sober for about six months now. I don't call myself "someone who's trying not to drink." I'm just not a drinker anymore. That's who I am now. But that means when my dog passed, I had nowhere to hide. I had to feel all of it. And what I didn't expect was just how much of "it" there was to feel.

Here's something I didn't fully understand until now: grief is not just in your head. Grief is a full-body experience. In traditional Chinese medicine, they say grief settles in the lungs, and I believe it. I came down with the flu shortly after she passed and it just wouldn't leave my chest. Weeks later, it was still sitting there. Maybe that was the virus. Maybe that was the grief. Maybe it was both. I think it was both.

But the other thing I realized — and this one hit me hard — is that loss isn't just about losing the being you loved. It's about losing everything that came with them. My entire lifestyle was built around my dog. I'm a school teacher, and my days had a rhythm. I'd wake up, walk her, feed her, eat breakfast, and head to school. At lunch, I'd come home, take another walk, maybe get a little work done, take a nap. Then back to school. Home again, another walk, dinner, one more walk, and then bed. Weekends were even more of that — long walks, exploring, just being together. That was my life, and I loved it. She loved it too.

When she was gone, it wasn't just that I missed her. It was that every single part of my day had a hole in it. I tried to fill those spaces. I went on walks alone. I did the things we used to do together. But nothing felt right. There was this cloud hanging over everything, this constant feeling that something was missing. Because something was. My body was used to a routine that no longer existed, and it didn't know what to do with itself.

That's when some older grief started to surface too. My mom used to call me every single day, especially when I was living in different countries. If not every day, at least once a week. When she passed, I lost those calls. At the time, I drank enough to push that away. But being sober now, sitting in the grief of losing my dog, those feelings came flooding back. The silence where my mom's voice used to be. The empty space where my dog used to walk beside me. It all kind of piled up together.

I think that's what happens when you stop covering things up. You finally feel what was always there waiting for you.

And I'll be honest — it was a lot. Six months of sobriety means I'm still learning how to process emotions I spent years avoiding. Grief on top of all of that? It was overwhelming. I have a tendency to push myself, to power through, to act like I'm fine when I'm not. But this time, I couldn't do that. I had to sit with it. I had to treat myself the way I would treat a friend going through the same thing — with patience, with kindness, with the understanding that this was going to take time and that was okay.

That might be the biggest thing I learned through all of this. Be your own friend. Don't push. Just sit with it.

After a few weeks, when I started to feel a little more like myself, I reached out to some people I knew to ask if there were any dogs out there that needed a home. Not to replace her — you don't replace twelve years of love. But my lifestyle needs a dog, and somewhere out there, a dog needed what I had to give.

A friend of a friend works with a dog rescue organization. She had a golden retriever, a boy — which honestly wasn't what I was picturing. But when my friend described my situation, her friend said, "They'd be perfect together."

His story is a common one with large breeds. People buy them as puppies, and once they grow into big dogs, they end up in shelters or in situations where they're not properly cared for. He'd been with the rescue for over a year before I met him, and one family had been interested, but it didn't work out because he wouldn't get along with their two huskies. Since my last dog was a large breed, my home was already set up for a big dog, so when I heard about him, I went to meet him, even though he was a good distance away.

He was perfect.

He's almost four years old. He's been with me for a couple of weeks now, and he's been a godsend. I'm still teaching him how to be a dog, really, because I think most of his life before was neglect and then a boarding situation. He's incredibly trainable, though, and every day we're figuring each other out.

The grief is still there. I don't think it ever fully goes away, and I've made peace with that. But every day it gets a little lighter. And now — this is the part that surprises me — I can look at pictures of my old girl and just feel happy. Happy that she had such a good life. Happy that we had those twelve years of walks and naps and quiet mornings together.

I'm still learning. About grief, about sobriety, about myself. But I wanted to come back here and say: if you're going through something hard and you're doing it without the thing you used to lean on — whether that's alcohol or anything else — I see you. It's harder this way. But it's real this way. And on the other side of it, you actually get to keep what you've learned.

I'll be back soon. Me and the new guy have some walks to take.