I consider myself a newbie as far as the process of working through dealing with an alcoholic, because although I was married to one for several years, I’ve only very recently understood what was going on, seen how distractive the situation was, and extracted myself as much as I could. So I am not an expert on any of this stuff. I don’t know if there is some official definition of being “in recovery” or not.

but I will say, it seems to me that anything you are doing to try to get yourself to a place of strength where your life is headed in the right direction is actively improving your life. I am expecting eventually to forgive the soon to be ex husband, because being angry is exhausting and while it can be motivating for a while, isn’t really a good place to live. But I feel like I’m making leaps and bounds while I am in no way working on forgiving him at the moment, or digging into the trauma of the last couple of months before it all came to a head. I’m just getting out of “ fight for my life” mode since he signed the divorce papers. I’m spending my emotional energy trying to you understand some of what the hell happened and put it in some context.

If getting to a place of acceptance without necessarily actively digging back up all the BS, or trying to force yourself to forgiveness, both of which sound pretty exhausting, is helpful for you where you are at now then you are healing. Sometimes you have a higher tolerance for the hardest stuff, and sometimes you need to just take the little steps that feel doable. It sounds like you are actively doing what you need to be doing, and doing it at an intensity you are capable of at the moment. You can pick up your sword and charge out at the hardest stuff when you have that kind of fight in you. In the meantime, it sure sounds from the outside like you are working on healing.