I have a theory about grief and coping that I don't think gets talked about enough. We assume the hardest part of surviving something awful is the moment it happens. But in my experience, both personally and with the people I work with, the hardest part often shows up later. It shows up once the emergency is over and your body finally has room to feel what it's been holding.

This week I sat down with Colleen Clifford, and her story is one of the clearest examples of this I've ever heard.

Colleen is a commercial fisherwoman, a health coach, and the author of the upcoming book Life Beyond the Binge, A Commercial Fisherwoman's Journey Home. She spent decades working on fishing vessels, an environment she describes as high risk, physically demanding, and emotionally unforgiving. Fourteen years ago, her husband Scott died by alcohol related suicide while Colleen was out at sea.

She found out through an email, sent at the end of her workday, hinting that he would be gone by the time she read it. She was on a boat near the Russian border. She couldn't leave. She couldn't even tell her coworkers what had happened, because her captain didn't want a mass exodus if word got out. She kept working for days before anyone knew.

I share all of this not to dwell on the tragedy, but because what Colleen did with it afterward is where this story gets important.

Here's what surprised me most in our conversation. Colleen wasn't drinking when Scott died. She had quit three years earlier because she recognized her own binge drinking pattern. In the immediate aftermath of his death, she leaned into that sobriety hard. She told everyone alcohol was the villain in this story and she would never touch it again.

For about a year and a half, she held it together. She moved. She managed horses, dogs, a household, a grieving family, and a full time job on the water. She functioned.

Then, once everything settled, once the paperwork was filed and the house was sorted and there was nothing left to manage, she found herself alone with nothing to distract her. That's when she bought a six pack.

She told me she didn't fully understand why in the moment. But looking back, it makes complete sense to me from a nervous system perspective. For over a year, Colleen's body had been in a state of hypervigilance, managing crisis after crisis. The moment that crisis finally ended, her nervous system didn't celebrate. It collapsed.

This is such an important distinction. A regulated nervous system doesn't just mean calm. Sometimes the drop into stillness after prolonged activation looks and feels like depression, exhaustion, or a complete loss of motivation. Colleen described it as wanting to fall into a dark hole and not come back out. That's not weakness. That's a body that has been running on adrenaline for a year and a half finally being allowed to stop.

One phrase I keep coming back to is "creative adjustments." It's a term I use often in my own work, and it fits Colleen's story perfectly. We don't choose our coping strategies because they're healthy. We choose them because at some point they worked.

We don't choose our coping strategies because they're healthy. We choose them because at some point they worked. They got us through something. Alcohol, overworking, staying endlessly busy, people pleasing, food, scrolling, all of it usually starts as an attempt to protect ourselves from something we didn't have the tools to feel yet.

The question I find myself asking clients, and the question Colleen's story brought back to me, is not "what's wrong with me." It's "what pain have I been trying not to feel."

When you frame it that way, coping habits stop being something to be ashamed of. They become information. They tell you where your nervous system has been working overtime to protect you.

Colleen's path back wasn't dramatic. She talked about how her job on the boat, which required her to get up and show up for a twelve hour shift no matter what, actually became a lifeline. She couldn't call in sick without losing her position, so she got up, threw on a hat, and went to work in the galley where no one had to see her. Slowly, the structure and the movement helped her nervous system find its footing again.

I think this is worth sitting with. Healing didn't look like a single breakthrough moment. It looked like small, consistent acts of showing up, even when she didn't feel like it, paired with eventually getting real support and doing the internal work she had been avoiding.

One thing Colleen shared that I think everyone should know is how the CDC actually defines binge drinking. For women, it's four or more standard drinks in one sitting. For men, it's five or more. And here's the part most people don't realize: a full glass of wine is often closer to two standard drinks, not one.

That means a bottle of wine consumed over the course of one evening can technically meet the clinical definition of a binge. Colleen pointed out that our culture calls this "partying" or "unwinding," which makes it incredibly easy to overlook a pattern that might actually need attention.

She was clear that her message isn't about telling anyone to quit drinking. It's about inviting a little honest curiosity. As she put it, if you notice small red flags in your own behavior around drinking, that's usually a sign worth paying attention to.

What I loved most about this conversation with Colleen is that it never once felt like a lecture. It felt like two people being honest about how hard it is to be human, and how our bodies find a way to survive even the most unimaginable losses.

If you've ever judged yourself for a habit you picked up during a hard season, or wondered why you fell apart only after things finally calmed down, I hope this gives you a little relief. Your nervous system was doing exactly what it was built to do. And just like Colleen, you can find your way back to yourself, one small, consistent step at a time.

If any part of Colleen's story resonated with you, especially around collapse after crisis or the exhaustion that comes from holding it all together, my 8 Week Nervous System Reset for Professionals was built with exactly this in mind. It's a space to finally tend to your own regulation instead of only offering it to everyone else.

Listen to my full conversation with Colleen wherever you get your podcasts.