Dr. Marry and Me,  Personal Writing

Two Voices of Hope: Hitting the First Bottom (3b video)

This was really hard to read out loud. It’s hard to watch. That’s good. It should be hard. These three years later, it should still be hard, and it is. I expect it always will be.

The value in the writing, the reading, the speaking and the watching of this hard time, I believe, is that this is the universal element of our story. It’s not necessary for you, the reader/viewer, to have been married to an alcoholic to find the common thread in this. All that is necessary is for you to have lived, to have gone into or watched another person’s decline of any kind and to have grappled with your own terror at gazing into the pitch dark chasm that is the unknown moments of life.

The glimmer of hope from this week’s post for me is that it’s in the past. That’s not to say we won’t face other, or even similar, moments of pitch dark in our future, but we have faced down the first great terror, and I believe we can and will do it again if and when it is required. And I believe you can and will, too.

But I also know that sometimes facing down the pitch dark means making a clean break, cutting someone loose. I don’t want anyone to read/watch this story unfolding and feel like a failure if that is the decision they make. It’s why I keep reiterating that this story is not your story, it’s ours. This is how we are dealing with it. I applaud and support whatever decisions you need to make to come out on the other side, to come through the dark and into the light.

Ultimately, you deserve to find the light. We all do.

Next: Hitting the First Bottom 3c (podcast)

Dayna Del Val is on a mission to help others (re)discover the spark they were born with through her blog and newsletter, her professional talks and the (re)Discover Your Spark retreats she leads. Dayna works with people to help them not just identify and articulate their dreams but to develop a framework to get going on the pursuit of those dreams—today, in the next few months and for the years ahead. She's at the intersection of remarkable and so, so ordinary, but she knows that pretty much everyone else is, too. She's excited to be sharing this extraordinary journey with you.

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