233 - The Gift of Grief: When Loss Becomes the Door You Couldn't Open On Your Own w/ Joe Ryan233 - The Gift of Grief: When Loss Becomes the Door You Couldn't Open On Your Own w/ Joe Ryan
Adult Child
Trauma recovery coach Joe Ryan talks with Andrea Ashley about losing his best friend, facing his own cancer scare and choosing to sit in grief instead of numbing it. Their conversation touches on abandonment wounds, self-abandonment, family reconnection and the quiet gifts that can come from staying sober through deep loss.
1:15:00•3 Jun 2026
The Gift of Grief: Joe Ryan on Loss, Self-Abandonment and Choosing Yourself
Episode Overview
- Staying with grief rather than numbing it can surface deep abandonment wounds that might otherwise stay hidden.
- Choosing oneself reduces the desperate need to be chosen by partners or friends for a sense of worth.
- Allowing grief to move through the body – crying, feeling fear, expressing anger safely – can lessen long-term panic, shame and anxiety.
- Rebuilding contact with parents can bring up old pain but may also create unexpected moments of repair and new connection.
- Isolation used intentionally for inner work can help break patterns of self-abandonment and external validation seeking.
“When you choose yourself, you're not looking for somebody to choose you. You're looking for somebody to walk with you.”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober when life keeps throwing grief their way? This conversation between host Andrea Ashley and trauma recovery coach Joe Ryan sits right in that uncomfortable space, speaking directly to anyone dealing with addiction, codependency, childhood trauma and big, messy feelings. Joe shares how losing his best friend Seti to colon cancer, then facing a colon cancer scare himself six weeks later, pushed him into a year-long season of raw grief.
Instead of numbing out, he chose to sit in it: "It was work, gym, crying. That was it." In that space he traced his abandonment wounds back to childhood and saw how they shaped his adult relationships, especially his drive to be chosen. As he puts it, "When you choose yourself, you're not looking for somebody to choose you.
You're looking for somebody to walk with you." You’ll hear about the unglamorous reality of grief work: lying in bed for hours, feeling pain in the body, screaming into pillows, punching holes in walls, and slowly noticing that fear, panic and shame loosen their grip. Joe describes how staying sober through loss led him to see where he’d been abandoning himself for years, and how that shifted his relationships with friends, partners, his children, and even his parents.
The chat is casual, sweary, funny in places, and heartbreakingly honest in others. Andrea’s questions gently pull Joe into deeper layers—like the unfinished business with Seti, the last conversations at his bedside, and the hesitant reconnection with his mother and father. If you’ve ever turned to alcohol or compulsive behaviours to escape grief, this episode offers company rather than quick fixes.
It asks a quiet but fierce question: what might change if you stopped running and actually sat with the hurt?
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