Answer Addiction

Tag: family

  • Mommy Doesn't Need Wine: The Stigma of Being a Sober Mother

    Mommy Doesn't Need Wine: The Stigma of Being a Sober Mother

    “I’ve always wanted to film the real ‘after party’ when the mom is passed out with her little kid in the background, or she gets into her car and drives drunk. It happens all the time.”

    When I made the decision to quit drinking, one morning in June 2017 when my relentless hangover was surpassed only by my anxiety and self-loathing, I didn’t think about how sobriety would affect my role as a parent beyond the obvious positives: less time nursing a glass of wine and more time to engage with my kids; a clearer morning mind during the pre-school madness; more patience, less irritability. More money.

    What I didn’t consider was my exclusion from the Mommy Needs Wine club. Although exclusion isn’t the right word – it was my choice to leave. I just hadn’t realized how significant a part of my life it was until I canceled my subscription.

    When I first became a mother in 2007, I quickly realized there was an unwritten rule, one that was never mentioned in the parenting manuals: being a mother is hard, and wine (or gin, or vodka, or whatever your particular poison is) makes it easier.

    At that point, I didn’t yet have a Facebook account, and Instagram wasn’t even a thing. Today’s pervasive social media culture gives the Mommy Needs Wine club even more power. It recruits mothers from their Facebook and Instagram feeds, via memes that declare: “The most expensive part of having kids is all the wine you have to drink” and “I can’t wait for the day when I can drink with my kids instead of because of them.” We’re encouraged to buy baby onesies emblazoned with “I’m the reason Mommy drinks” and prints saying “Motherhood. Powered by love. Fueled by coffee. Sustained by wine” (to put in a pretty frame and display on your wall, lest anyone should forget how crucial booze is to parenting).

    “The media makes a ton of money marketing alcohol to moms, playing on the difficulties of being a mom and offering alcohol as the only solution to stress,” said Rosemary O’Connor, certified life and addiction coach and author of The Sober Mom’s Guide to Recovery. “I’ve always wanted to film the real ‘after party’ when the mom is passed out with her little kid in the background, or she gets into her car and drives drunk. It happens all the time, yet it seems so harmless because wine is so much a part of our culture.”

    It’s so much a part of our culture that the Moms Who Need Wine Facebook page is liked by over 726,000 people; that the memes and baby onesies and wall prints are promoted by thousands of likes, shares and crying-with-laughter-face emojis; that even celebrity moms are in the club. Kelly Clarkson said in a January 2018 interview, “[Kids] are challenging. Wine is necessary.” And millions of mothers around the world raised a glass.

    The truth is, this alcohol-dependent culture—if you don’t drink you’re boring, judgmental, not to be trusted (Winston Churchill and his quote “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink” have a lot to answer for)—and the ensuing stigma around sobriety are far from harmless. Between 2006 and 2014, alcohol-related emergency room visits soared among women, according to a study published in January 2018 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. A study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in May 2015 found that a significant number of mothers said drinking helped them “assert their identity” as something other than that expected of a woman in early midlife. Mothers with young children told researchers the “transformative effects” of “excessive drinking” let them to revert, for a short time, to their younger, more stress-free selves.

    When I started to share my sobriety with friends and family, I received varying reactions. Many people were supportive, some stopped inviting me to parties, and the vast majority were surprised. Not just surprised that I—always the first to suggest a glass of prosecco, always the last to leave a party—was the person who had publicly declared my commitment to sobriety, but surprised that I could even contemplate being a parent without booze. How was I going to get through a challenging day with my kids without the promise of a few glasses of wine to take the edge off? How was I going to reward myself for surviving another week of homework, messy bedrooms, mini rebellions and Xbox arguments if I wasn’t going to do it with wine?

    Back then, I had no answers to those questions. I was simply concentrating on getting through one sober day at a time. That was enough of a reward. What I needed was support and encouragement, not interrogation.

    And then there was the pity. It came in various forms, from the “Oh, you must be so bored?” on one of my first sober nights out, complete with sympathetic head tilt (for the record, I wasn’t bored until I was asked that question) to the barefaced “I feel sorry for you!” at my first sober wedding. The pity was worse than the perplexity and the cross-examination, because it came with a “but.” But this is your choice. But you’re not an alcoholic, are you? (Because alcoholics have to be homeless, jobless, friendless losers.) But you won’t die if you have a drink, will you? But you could just have one, right? People didn’t feel sorry for me the way you feel sorry for someone with a broken leg. Their faux-pity made me feel guilty. It made me question my decision, not because I didn’t think it was the right decision, but because it was a decision that excluded me from so much. I didn’t fit into the drinking culture the other parents in my social circle celebrated and depended on, so where the hell did I fit in?

    O’Connor had a similar experience when she stopped drinking. “People who I thought were my ‘best friends’ stopped calling and inviting me to parties,” she said. “When I was newly sober, the feelings of not being included was one of the most difficult realities to face. Being newly sober, going through a divorce, and having people abandoning me was so painful. I found out who my real friends were and they are still my friends today.”

    Now, with over a year of sobriety under my belt, I feel differently. I’m proud of my decision and the strength it’s taken to get to this point, to stay sober at parties and weddings and nights out when everyone else is getting drunk, and, sometimes, to stay home and miss those occasions because protecting my sobriety is more important than worrying about what anyone else thinks. I’ve also realized that in most cases, how people react to my sobriety has actually nothing to do with me, and everything to do with their own issues with alcohol.

    O’Connor agrees. “I realized that when I was drinking I never wanted to hang out with non-drinkers because it made me self-conscious about my own drinking,” she said.

    It’s difficult to talk about alcohol dependency with a group of friends who’re all knocking back wine while you’re working your way through the mocktail menu. But it’s a conversation that needs to be had. How many mothers are functioning alcoholics or have alcohol dependency issues, but don’t know this because our culture tells them—repeatedly—that drinking is the answer?

    I’m no prohibitionist. (I say that so often I should have it tattooed on a prominent body part.) But I do believe that we need to question the media messages we receive about alcohol. If not for ourselves, then for our kids.

    “Parents of young children need to be aware that when they place themselves on the slippery slope to alcohol use disorder by frequently exceeding recommended drinking limits, they place their young children on that slope, too,” warned George F. Koob, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “We know that young children learn from watching what their parents do and not just from what they say. The children of parents who are heavy drinkers are more likely to become heavy drinkers themselves and develop an alcohol use disorder than the children of moderate drinkers or abstainers.”

    I see my kids benefiting from my sobriety—in countless little ways, every single day. A lengthy bedtime story because I’m not counting the minutes down to wine o’clock. A relaxed morning before school because I’m not hungover, sleep-deprived and snappy. A healthier model for how to administer self-care. A lesson on how to question cultural norms and why, sometimes, taking the road less traveled is the most rewarding journey of all.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Deeper Cleaning: How I Came to Accept My Mother’s Hoarding Disorder

    Deeper Cleaning: How I Came to Accept My Mother’s Hoarding Disorder

    About 50% of all hoarders have blocked access to their fridge, bathtub, toilet and sinks. 78% have houses littered with what could be deemed garbage. My chances of finding a spot to sleep were next to nil.

    For the second time in my life I was saying goodbye to my mother and moving to California, and this could have been a very sentimental moment if it we hadn’t found it so damn funny. With all of my worldly possessions packed up into two great Jenga towers of luggage, Mom and I were doing our best to control the fits of laughter while maneuvering these teetering carts of death toward the terminal. It was the irony that had finally gotten to us. There we were—wrestling with this stuff that could at any second escape our control and come toppling down on top of us—when for the past two months we had been living through a very similar scenario; but one that had been nowhere near as funny.

    And one where my mother’s life had been quite seriously at risk.

    My mom suffers from a clinical hoarding disorder. According to a recent survey by the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), about 5% of our entire planet’s population struggles with this condition typically characterized by the cluttering of a home with personal possessions to an often debilitating degree. A type of anxiety disorder, hoarding is still working its way into the medical books, but thanks to a steady stream of reality TV shows featuring the worst case scenarios of the condition, social awareness of hoarding has reached an all-time high.

    These were the shows that I YouTubed as I tried to better gauge the house that I had walked in on during a surprise visit to Mom’s. Compared to the episodes I watched, my mother and her hoard weren’t ready for primetime just yet—though at the rate she was going, next season was quickly becoming a strong possibility.

    Mom had turned her two bedroom, single level ranch style house of around 1,400 square feet into a storage unit, filling it up with everything from groceries on clearance to thrift store finds too good to let go. As toys, crafts, books, tools, plants, snacks, clothes, shoes, bags and boxes slowly rose to the ceiling, my mother’s home began to look like the bottom of an hourglass, only the sand was her stuff—and once filled up there’d be no easy reset.

    Once her cover was blown, so to speak, she felt the time had come to not only admit she had a serious problem but to finally accept some help dealing with it. And as fate would have it, Mom’s epiphany just happened to coincide with a major shift in my own life. After 15 years of working through my own addiction (drugs and alcohol) I was moving back to California, clean and sober. But, since there was a two-month gap between the lapse of my lease and the end of my teaching year, I just happened to need a place to live.

    So we came up with a plan.

    I would spend those final two months living at Mom’s house, helping her get the clutter under control. At the same time, we would go scouting for some professional help, agreeing that therapy to address the hoarding was in Mom’s best interest. We had a plan: by the time I left Connecticut, Mom would have regained a sturdy foothold on the road to recovery and I could move away, assured that I had done my part in helping.

    And it worked, too. Until it didn’t.

    In that previously mentioned survey by NAMI, about 50% of all hoarders have blocked access to their fridge, bathtub, toilet and sinks. 78% have houses littered with what could be deemed garbage. My chances of finding a spot to sleep were next to nil, though the toilet wasn’t too tough to get to. A garage sale seemed like the perfect solution for opening up some much needed space. Plus, instead of just throwing things out (and to be fair, a lot of Mom’s stuff did have some value) this would give my mother and me an opportunity to really start working together as a team, as opposed to simply strangling one another—which started to have its own appeal once we realized what we were up against.

    Hoarding is a disease based very much on feelings. Boston University Dean and Professor Gail Steketee LCSW, MSW, PhD, who has been studying the condition since the mid-1990’s concluded that “Hoarding may induce feelings of safety and security and may reinforce identity.”

    In other words, Mom’s things helped her feel safe.

    Her stuff was in many ways who she was.

    So emotions began to run high as we debated on what in the house could be sold. At first we were able to work for just a few hours before Mom had to quit, visibly shaken, promising better endurance for the next attempt. Sometimes a span of days would pass where no progress was made at all. Because my mother had the final say on every item’s fate, during these times of indecision there was little more for me to do than just sort through the piles. This part of the process was most challenging for me.

    Finding myself truly face to face with my mother’s disorder, I often spiraled into great bouts of anger and deep depression. Getting lost in the work for hours, I would start dissecting a section of the hoard, piece by frustrating piece, trying to make sense of it. It was during these times that I began to realize my mother was in the grips of a very serious and complex mental illness.

    Hoarding has been listed as a symptom of OCD for years. As defined by the Mayo Clinic, people who have obsessive compulsive disorder experience unwanted thoughts that incline them to perform an action repetitively—usually outside of their control—in hopes of alleviating stress, when in actuality the behavior is only compounding the discomfort.

    Did this explain the bags upon bags of clearance items and price-reduced canned goods? The gathered pile of expired and stale holiday candy? The drawers of zip ties, rubber bands and Tupperware lids. That infuriating metropolis of 7 Eleven cups always collapsing off the microwave. The balls of yarn, rolls of fabric, reams of paper, baskets of shoes. Bed sheets, power cords, energy drinks, sun catchers. Nesting shelves, cleaning fluids, shampoos and conditioners. Paper plates, napkins, condiments—bags of them. If I was disturbed while sorting them, I had to imagine what it must’ve felt like to always need more of them.

    But what I really needed was to seek out that professional help Mom had agreed to from the beginning. In addition to the increasingly alarming nature of the collected stuff, according to a report by Compulsive-Hoarding.com, “A hoarder’s problem will not be solved by someone else throwing away or organizing their possessions.”

    Another invaluable online resource, HoardingCleanup.Com, offered an impressive roster of psychiatrists and psychologists dealing specifically with the disorder. Fortunately, we found a local doctor with whom Mom felt comfortable with right off the bat.

    Then, suddenly, positive results were coming in from every front.

    Once the garage sales got started, they quickly gained momentum and we were setting up the driveway with Mom’s wares every Friday through Sunday. So by the time my departure date rolled around we had become old pros—and one hell of a team. There was nothing at the airport but sincere gratitude and a shared sense of accomplishment. We had done it! We’d beaten the monkey off of Mom’s back, shoved it in a box and sold it in front of the house for a dollar.

    No, fifty cents!

    Seventy-five!

    Okay, seventy-five, sold!

    Over the following months, as I worked on getting my own home together, I would check in with Mom to see how things were coming along. She continued with the garage sales until the weather no longer agreed. The therapy continued unabated. Her psychiatrist was big on baby steps, discouraging Mom from taking on too much at once. Instead, the piles were shrinking through consistency and perseverance, my mother showing him photos from week to week. Also, my father was visiting the house regularly so he was able to give me a report every now and again. 

    According to an article in Psychology Today, “willful ignorance” occurs when a person knows the truth, or at least fears it, but chooses to ignore it altogether. Turning a blind eye was an especially easy behavior for me to indulge in from 3,000 miles away, so I was flabbergasted when one night my father called and told me that Mom’s house had reverted to its previous state of congested disarray and that her hoarding was back with a vengeance.

    What an awful moment of deja vu. Were we really right back to where we had started, just like that?

    Though my 12-step meetings and sponsor helped calmed me down with some much needed perspective, for the first time in recovery I found myself resenting the solution that was being offered—which was, as always, acceptance. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” blah blah blah.

    No.

    I refused to accept it. I would not sit idly by while my mother sat on the one spot she had left on her sofa, watching a TV she had to crane her neck around piles of junk to see—the same piles that were slowly but surely burying her alive. Somebody had to take charge of this mess. Who was responsible? I blamed her, her doctor, my father, myself. I blamed thrift stores, dollar stores, America, God.

    What went wrong? How could Mom go back to hoarding after such encouraging progress? This had been the strongest attempt at complete recovery from her disorder so far.

    There was a night I called Mom up ranting and raving, horrendously demanding to know exactly what was the problem—and her timid response to me, plain and simple was:

    “It’s hard.”

    That was a mouthful. And it’s actually the one thing all the research and professionals in the field agree on. Recovery from hoarding is incredibly difficult. The statistics tell us it’s downright unlikely. A study conducted by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry on patients with various forms of OCD, including hoarding, found that after five years only 9.5% of hoarders achieved and maintained full recovery from their condition.

    But then this begs the bigger issue—and it’s where my eyes opened.

    When we’re looking at recovery from hoarding, are we also looking at recovery from OCD? This experience showed me that my mother isn’t just struggling against shopping and filling her house up with stuff—but she’s battling an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Unlike my substance abuse where complete abstinence from drugs and alcohol is the solution (though of course there’s lots more to it), my mother is dealing with a behavioral disorder. And when it comes to long lasting recovery, therapy continues to be the key.

    Compulsive-Hoarding.com told me that if a hoarder’s space is just cleaned out, “The clinical compulsive hoarder will simply re-hoard even faster and fill up their home again, often within a few months.” However, that NAMI survey showed that as much as 70% of hoarders responded positively to cognitive therapy.

    So Mom is on the right track.

    It’s just that the odds are not in her favor.

    But so far she’s beaten a lot of those odds, hasn’t she? My mother’s already admitted to having a problem when NAMI reports that only about 15% of all hoarders do so. And she’s in therapy where her recovery has the highest likelihood of success. How many attempts will it take before Mom finds long term recovery? Nobody knows.

    All I know is that recovery from hoarding seems to be an inside job and that’s the stuff that really needs to be worked through. Once I accepted that about my mother and her hoarding condition I knew the best thing to do was leave that work to her.

    Find info about hoarding here:

    https://namimass.org/hoarding-and-ocd-stats-characteristics-causes-treatment-and-resources

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Walk

    The Walk

    I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    I hadn’t been back in the free world a month, but I was rolling. This time I was flat, no parole, no PO to fuck with, no fines, nothing. Things were back on track and it happened quickly. I had established an entirely new set of contacts on the inside who were in need of a man with my skill set. They helped me get up and running so I made sure I made good on their initial investment. After that, I carved out a deal to set myself up. My supply was steady and demand was… Well, demand in the drug game is something you never have to worry about.

    I got a text on my phone, not the prepaid burner phone that goes off non-stop, but my actual, personal phone. Only three people have this number and two of them are my children, so of course, I opened it immediately. It was my daughter, the one person who can melt my heart with a single word, touch, or look. She is 19 and a thing of pure beauty. She is the best of her mother and very little of me (I pray).

    “Daddy, I need you.”

    I can’t describe what went through me when I saw these words on the backlit screen of my phone. I’ve spent literally thousands of sleepless nights wishing I could do something, anything, to make up for the pain I’ve caused this sweet girl. This might be my chance.

    “what wrong” “u ok” my archaic thumbs desperately trying to type the letters and press send.

    “I’m fine Daddy just need to talk to you.”

    “where are you now”

    “at home.”

    “I’ll brite there”

    “??????”

    God damned mother fucking phone. “I’ll be right there”

    “Okay Daddy cu soon”

    I look around the house and think about what I would need. I dusted off a thousand dollars and stuffed it into an envelope. That’s not enough, I thought, and got fifteen hundred more. My phone… my keys… my gun… No, not the gun. Not around my baby, at least not until I know more. I lit a cigarette and got in my car.

    The drive was over too soon. I was consumed by anticipation. I was so happy to be going to see my girl, at her request, and to be wanted by her, or at least needed if not exactly wanted. That’s almost just as good. For a moment, I came close to letting myself be happy, but before the happiness set in, the worry of why she might be needing me kicked in. Happiness is something I have never quite been able to handle. I don’t think it’s meant for me. Of all the people she could have called, she called me. Her mother always handles the emotional stuff. Her stepdad is a good man, he makes decent money, but she called me. I am not a good man. I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    When I saw her standing there in her driveway, I forgot all about that.

    I got out of my car and walked up to her. She welcomed me in with a hug. Not the sideways kind either, but with her head turned, cheek against my chest, full embrace. The sweet smell of her hair filled my nostrils and transported me back to a time almost forgotten. My God this feels good, I thought to myself.

    “When did you grow up, baby girl?”

    “It happens fast, Daddy”

    Before I could ask her what was happening, she took me by the hand and started walking. It was a late spring day that was made for being outside. Her neighborhood wasn’t fancy, a bit run down, older, filled with young couples just starting out and old couples just finishing up. It was quiet today though, or perhaps I just wasn’t hearing anything around me. I was so intently focused on her, I realized, we were long past sight of my car or even her driveway.

    Just walking.

    She talked and I listened. She gave me the short hand version of the last 13 years of her life, the years I had wasted in prison. This remarkably strong, independent, young woman was five when she watched me get beaten until I was unrecognizable, handcuffed, and dragged out of our living room. She then watched as her home was completely torn to pieces for every dollar I had tucked away.

    But here we were today, walking.

    Stories of relationships, achievements, disappointments, highs, lows and everything in between went into my ears and swirled through my brain like an F5 tornado. I had no fucking clue whatsoever to say about any of it.

    So we walked, and she talked, and I listened.

    I listened to the struggles of a young woman, desperate to make her way in a hard, unforgiving world. I could hear the desperation and determination in her voice. Still, I had nothing to offer, no advice, no words at all.

    Before I knew it, we were back at my car hugging again. We were about to part ways and I had done nothing for her. Not one damn thing!

    “Wait! I brought you something!”

    I handed her the envelope that I brought and had forgotten until just then. She opened it a little, peeked inside, closed it, and pressed it against my chest.

    “That’s not why I called, Daddy. I just needed to talk to you. Thank you so much for walking with me, I hope we can do this more. I love you.”

    I was barely able to mumble “I love you too, baby girl,” before I got into the car. I drove on autopilot for a few minutes.

    “What the fuck just happened?” I felt the guilt of my life pile on so heavily I could hardly breathe. It was like a guy I heard about who had been hit by an avalanche. He said it was like the snow was all around him, squeezing him from every possible angle, and he had to make room around his body to get any air.

    This was a feeling I could not deal with. I did not possess any knowledge or skill that would allow me to work through this. The only thing I knew for sure was that I could make it go away. It would only be a temporary fix, but gone for right now was good enough for me. I knew what I had to do and getting home to do it as quickly as possible was my only objective. I had to get high.

    When I arrived, I went straight inside. I bypassed my personal stash and took out what I needed from my supply. I prepared a larger amount than usual and loaded it into a syringe. I considered that it may be too much and that I may overdose, but the way I felt, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. I pressed the plunger of the rig until I saw a tiny drop hanging on the bevel of the needle. I tightened the belt around my bicep and with a familiar prick of the skin, the anticipation building, breath holding, a ribbon of red flashed in the barrel and .. .. .. .. gone.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Sponsoring Fellow Alcoholics Is Teaching Me How To Parent My Son

    How Sponsoring Fellow Alcoholics Is Teaching Me How To Parent My Son

    How do I, an alcoholic with a dysfunctional childhood who didn’t even begin maturing until his early 30s, go about the daunting duty of raising a son to manhood?

    Recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous has helped me build an incredible life. A restored marriage, a promising career, and a comfortable suburban home highlight the tangibles; the wisdom of the program and mentorship of its members have provided the intangibles – accountability, purpose, sanity.

    Two years ago marked the most notable blessing to date: The birth of my first and only child, Nicholas.

    This gift, however, also presents my most vexing sober challenge yet: How do I, an alcoholic with a dysfunctional childhood who didn’t even begin maturing until his early 30s, go about the daunting duty of raising a son to manhood? How do I break, as much as any parent can, the cycle of insanity Nicholas has inherited?

    As Nicholas approaches toddlerdom – where he’ll start truly developing lifelong memories – solidifying certain notions of parenthood has become increasingly urgent. “What type of dad do I want to be?” is quickly becoming “What type of dad am I?” It’s becoming clear that these child-rearing concepts aren’t going to magically manifest; I need to search for them.

    And where I keep finding answers is the only relationship in which I’m actually qualified to give guidance: my role as an AA sponsor. Here are just a few of the many parenting perspectives my experiences as a sponsor have helped formulate.

    Coddling Is Counterproductive

    The most meaningful child-rearing principle that sponsorship has instilled in me carries even more significance considering our helicopter-parenting, participation trophy-wielding times: Coddling trades short-term ease for long-term hardship.

    Many addicts, myself included, are recovering from people pleasing as well as alcohol and drugs. Our diseases demanded instant gratification and, by necessity, we were talented at telling people what they wanted to hear in order to skate by or score more.

    When we become sponsors, we must play a longer game. We learn that giving a sponsee an undeserved pat on the back when what he needs is a kick in the ass is not only counterproductive, but downright irresponsible. Enabling a sponsee’s laziness or self-denial can mean being party to his relapse.

    Sponsorship has taught me that I can’t shield someone from tough choices, uphill climbs and heavy lifting. As much as I root for a sponsee, I can’t want his recovery more than he does; as my son grows, I’ll fight similar urges to carry an oversized share of burdens he himself must bear.

    The overall message is clear: work hard for worthwhile goals. In a sponsee’s case, that goal is long-term sobriety and perpetual personal progress; in my son’s, the goal is responsible, upstanding citizenship and self-sufficient adulthood.

    Here, AA is endearingly traditional in its nose-to-the-grindstone approach to progress.

    There is a grit factor in the rooms that, these days, is sorely lacking outside of them. To both sponsees and children, “get to work” is the kind of simple but meaningful instruction that is easily understood and, when followed, results in both tangible and character-building rewards.

    I’m finding that the less I coddle my sponsees the more favorable the result. I am increasingly confident that the same will hold true for my son. Soft sponsorship yields soft recovery. Ditto for soft parenting.

    Keep Calm and Carry On

    Roll your eyes all you want, but when this starting appearing on mugs and memes everywhere, I hoped (beyond hope, it turned out) that more people would adopt a mantra that AA so effectively espouses.

    Few markers are more telling of one’s maturity than the breadth and depth of people, places and things that anger, cower or otherwise derail him. As someone who, according to men with many more years sober than me, had “smoke coming from his ears” as a newcomer, I’ve learned this lesson particularly harshly. It’s taken years of trial and error – of getting a little less angry to similar situations, then reflecting on how useless and toxic that rage was – to form a demeanor even remotely resembling even-keeled.

    Watching my sponsees struggle with this journey – with getting totally jammed up over matters of dubious-at-best significance – is Exhibit A of sponsor-sponsee symbiosis. As I talk my sponsees down off the inevitable next ledge, I remind myself to practice what I preach.

    I am committed to developing this big-picture, c’est la vie attitude in my son. And while anyone with a two-year-old understands how successful I’ve been thus far (not much, if at all), I can look to my own imperfect, ongoing transformation as proof that progress takes trial, error and – most of all – time.

    For now, this concept lives in little things. “I can see that you’re very sad about having to stop watching TV, but you’ll see Peppa Pig tomorrow,” I’ll tell a crying Nicholas, as the credits of his favorite show roll while I usher him off to bed. Or “It’s PJ time,” I tell a sobbing, splashing boy engrossed in his bathtime toys. “We’ll get all dry and get some milk, how’s that?”

    These gentle nudges, I hope, will push Nicholas toward a more bird’s-eye worldview where he realizes that the little things in life aren’t worth getting upset over. As he grows I’ll instill in him, gradually and imperfectly, that a precious few things warrant more than a brief moment’s annoyance. Here, my role as a sponsee gives me the best chance to break yet another inglorious familial cycle: rage-aholism.

    Think for Yourself

    Though AA most assuredly isn’t a cult (cue the usual troll bile in my comment thread), at times it is certainly prone to an unsophisticated, unhelpful herd mentality. There are sayings and beliefs in the rooms that I find silly, arrogant, or wildly inaccurate.

    I am upfront about this with my sponsees; they are free to disagree with me on any of my program-related peccadilloes. The overarching lesson is each of us needs to find a recovery that is workable within the construct of our authentic self. “Faking it to make it” will only take us so far; eventually, recovery through the 12 steps is a journey in self-discovery, one which, per popular program prose, demands rigorous honesty.

    First and foremost is the childish belief, held by far too many in AA, that God has saved them specifically. Simply put, this implies that God chose to let others die. I often wonder whether the person proclaiming such nonsense realizes that his belief system is based on declaring himself more special than fellow sufferers. Neither my sponsees nor my son will be weaned on such pompousness.

    Oddly, another whopper that permeates AA is the polar opposite of this holier-than-thouism. It is uttered every time a newcomer is told that his experiences, strength and hope matter as much as someone with longstanding sobriety – that each of us “only has today.”

    This well-intending white lie creates an unproductive false equivalence between those who’ve thoroughly followed recovery’s path and those just beginning to trudge the trail. Because AA – like parenthood, I’m educated-guessing – is about mentorship more than anything else. My responsibility to pay it forward isn’t as relevant if everyone has the same amount of currency.

    This all boils down to three words that I find myself repeating to sponsees and, because of this, will find myself repeating to Nicholas: “You’re still learning.”

    Sit back. Relax. Learn. Don’t overextend yourself. No, sponsee, you shouldn’t go to a bachelor party in Las Vegas at four months sober. I have enough sobriety to handle that, you don’t. Yet. And no, 17-year-old Nicholas, you aren’t driving across the country with your friends because you aren’t ready to do that. Yet.

    These are just a few examples of how the privilege of guiding recovering alcoholics through the 12 steps will help me guide my son through childhood. As my sober experiences grow in tandem with my son, there will undoubtedly be many more points where sponsorship intersects with parenting – much to Nicholas’ benefit.

    And of course, there’s this: if Nicholas comes home with his eyes pinned, I’ll know what’s up. My rocky past and recovering present will allow me to recognize the warning signs of the scourge of my son’s generation: opioids. Should that day come, my recovery may help save my son’s life, as it did my own.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • An End to the Parent-Child Role Reversal: Taking Care of Me

    An End to the Parent-Child Role Reversal: Taking Care of Me

    When my dad drank, he folded in on himself and quietly disappeared. When this happened, I’d wait patiently for his return while dreaming up myriad ways to make his life better.

    There was a little more than a week to go before my wedding day. Left on my to-do list was an array of tasks:

    • Pick up the marriage license.
    • Finalize the seating chart.
    • Tell my dad he wouldn’t be walking me down the aisle.

    I called him on a Sunday afternoon, and he responded the following Thursday. After awkwardly discussing the weather, I said, “Dad, I need to talk to you about the wedding.”

    As I waited for him to say something, I pictured him gently resting his cigarette in an ashtray on the kitchen table, leaning back in a chair and adjusting his thin-rimmed glasses away from the tip of his nose. Finally, he cleared his throat and let out a long and careful, “Okaay.”

    “Listen, I want you to know this isn’t because I’m angry.” I paused. “It’s just I’ve thought about it and…I’ve decided it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to walk me down the aisle.”

    “Mmm hmm,” he grunted.

    “I mean…I wanna hear whatever you have to say,” I told him. “Do you want to ask me anything? Do you want to talk about it?” I waited. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and I thought he’d do so with words, but instead, he chose silence.

    “Do you have anything at all to say about this?” I asked.

    “Nope,” he snapped. “I got nuthin to say.”

    *

    If you ask my mother, my father didn’t come to the hospital the day I was born. It’s not that he didn’t know my mom was in labor, or that I arrived earlier than expected, it was because he didn’t believe I was his. And, knowing my father, he probably assured my mother he’d be there, in the delivery room, and then decided not to come and didn’t think to tell her.

    But despite his absence, which I was dull to as a newborn, as a kid I possessed an untempered affinity for my father. When my parents divorced when I was four years old, they agreed he would keep the house and my mother and I would move a 30-minute drive away, back to her hometown of East Falls, Philadelphia. On the day we left, I sat on my parents’ bed with my Raggedy Ann doll and watched my mother dump her side of their dresser into a suitcase, whining to the back of her head, “I don wanna leave daddy. I wanna stay wit daddy.”

    As I was growing up, my dad was drunk more often than I realized. I watched him stumble and bump into walls, and walked in on him passed out, chin on chest at the kitchen table. I sat and listened to his drunken, swear-laced ramblings about his bastard father, the assholes at work and the overall unfairness of life, but I never considered my dad an alcoholic because he didn’t behave like the ones I knew. Unlike my mom and stepdad whose drinking guaranteed violence, when my dad drank, he folded in on himself and quietly disappeared. When this happened, I’d wait patiently for his return while dreaming up myriad ways to make his life better.

    At some point, this dysfunctional pattern led to a complete role reversal: my father regressed into the helpless child, and I became the dutiful parent.

    When he was drunk and while I still believed in Santa Claus, we slipped effortlessly into our roles, but when I became a teenager who needed more than my father could give, the cracks in our relationship began to show.

    During my junior year of high school, I got a job as a telemarketer selling frozen beef. One night after a shift, I headed outside to the parking lot, expecting my dad’s truck to be idling by the curb, but he wasn’t there.

    I waited about 10 minutes before I left the parking lot to use the payphone across the street. I called home collect at least a dozen times and each time the operator came back with the same disappointing response, “No one’s home,” she said. “Do you want me to try again?”

    After an hour of pacing in the dark, I embraced my only option and started walking. By car, the drive home would’ve taken 20 minutes, but on foot, it took me over two hours. At 11 pm, I arrived home to find I couldn’t open the front door because my father had jammed a kitchen chair under the handle. When he finally let me in, he refused to believe that I’d walked for two hours.

    “Where the fuck were you?” He screamed.

    “Where was I?” I punched back. “Where the hell were you?”

    “I was in the parking lot, and you weren’t there,” he lied.

    “What are you talking about? I waited an hour, and I called a million times,” I yelled.

    “Who were you with?” He took a long drag from his cigarette.

    “What do you mean who was I with?” I roared. “I walked home alone, two hours down Germantown Pike like a freakin’ prostitute.”

    “No, you didn’t.”

    “I didn’t?” I asked in disbelief. “Look at me: I’m soaked with sweat. Look at my feet!” I pointed at the dirt filled cuts and raw blisters my sandals left behind. Halfway through my journey, when the pain became unbearable, I ripped them off and walked the rest of the way barefoot. The black layer of grime and dried blood coating my feet was all the proof I thought my father needed. But he was drunk, and he’d already made up his mind.

    “You’re a fuckin liar.” He slurred as he looked at my feet.

    *

    My father’s greatest disappearing act occurred when I was in my freshman year of college. After months of chat room flirting, my stepmother packed up her car and drove to Florida to be with her Internet lover. On the day she left, my father called and left a message on my dorm room answering machine.

    “She left me for a guy living in a trailer park! She’s telling everyone I beat her,” he wailed. “You’re all that matters to me now; it’s just you and me, kiddo.”

    That weekend I drove home to be with my father. When I walked through the front door I found him drunk at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and staring blankly at the white wall in front of him. I sat and watched him cry, promising him that the pain he felt was temporary and that my stepmother was a complete fool for leaving him. Driving to a Friendly’s restaurant for dinner one night, I sat in the passenger seat and watched my father get lost on a route that he’d driven a thousand times before. Seeing him hurting so profoundly cut me wide open. And although I didn’t have the tools to fix it, I knew he needed me, and I was going to be there for him even if it meant losing myself along the way.

    Back at school, worrying about my father edged out my sanity. I worried about him driving drunk, I worried about him feeling alone, and I lost sleep over the fear of him taking his own life. I became so consumed with him that I barely noticed the cloud of depression that stopped me from brushing my teeth or the bursts of anxiety that stole my sleep. But still, I answered my father’s every phone call, I walked with him through the grief, and I did my best to coach him back to life.

    And then one day, he stopped calling and just disappeared.

    Fearing the worst, I stalked his phone. I called and left messages on his voice mail until the mailbox was full. After a week of torture, I reached his co-worker.

    “Oh yeah, your dad’s fine,” he told me calmly. “He’s on vacation with your stepmom in Florida.”

    *

    To my shock and surprise, my father showed up on my wedding day, and from the sidelines he watched me walk down the aisle. Since then, almost seven years have passed, and I can honestly say I don’t regret my decision because it reflected the truth about my relationship with my father: he’s always been the petulant child while I’ve played the role of the ill-prepared adult. For years, I took care of him, catering to his every emotional need while he couldn’t bother to be concerned with mine.

    On my wedding day, I retired from that role and did what was right for me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • I'm Sorry Daddy, I Won't Be at Your Funeral

    I'm Sorry Daddy, I Won't Be at Your Funeral

    I used to think my relationship with my father was unique, different: complicated on its best day and toxic, disruptive, and unbearable on its worst. I know now it’s not unique.

    I have always known—well maybe not always, but for a very long time—that I would most likely not be attending my father’s funeral. I made that choice in my mind and in my heart a long time ago. Not due to lack of love, but for personal preservation. For my own health. For my own happiness. For my sanity. For my spirit. He didn’t need to be sick for me to envision the day that he would pass; after all if I have learned anything in my 49 years of this journey, it is that we are all dying. And we should not assume it is going to be when we are old.

    My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a few months back and it had spread to various parts of his body—the prognosis wasn’t good. I really don’t know all the details; most of my family members didn’t speak to me about it, and I take responsibility for not asking. For the ones who stayed silent to protect me and my heart, I am forever grateful. And for those who didn’t whisper a word because they thought I was a self-centered, disrespectful, heartless, unkind, unforgiving, uncaring, cold-hearted, and insensitive daughter, I understand those perceptions too; that is part of my internal struggle and at times exactly how I feel about myself.

    I used to think my relationship with my father was unique, different: complicated on its best day and toxic, disruptive, and unbearable on its worst. I know now it’s not unique. There are many people who for a variety of reasons have infrequent contact (or like me, no contact at all) with one or both of their parents.

    I am what is known as an ACOA: Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

    My parents divorced when I was nine years old, and the oddest thing is I have no memory whatsoever of anything happy or any special moment with my father before that time. None.

    The only memory I have of my daddy from my childhood before age nine is the drunken fighting. The chaos, the yelling, the screaming, the violence; my little brother and me not being picked up from the babysitter’s when it closed because he was out at the bar, and other memories of having to flee the house in the middle of the night. I have no recollection of any Christmas mornings opening gifts under the tree; a birthday party or vacation; a family dinner. No memory whatsoever, although we did all of those things. I know there were happy times, I have seen pictures of our family. My beautiful mom, my little brother, me, and our daddy in slightly cracked, old, seventies pictures looking like a perfect family.

    But after years of therapy, I have learned and continue to learn so much, not only about being the child of an alcoholic but about trauma. I believe that things that terrify you—make you feel unsafe, frightened, scared—far outweigh any good.

    My permanent estrangement from my dad came much later. I am filled with many happy memories after my parents’ divorce: weekend visits, camping, fishing, four-wheel driving in his big truck, snowmobiling, and mostly big family get togethers with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Some would ask if I had forgiven my father for the past, and the honest answer is that I never looked at it in those terms. I didn’t need to forgive my father, I didn’t blame him or hate him; I felt nothing but love for him. Sure, the drinking continued throughout my teenage years, but I ignored the things that bothered me. It wasn’t that bad.

    As I grew into a young adult, got married, and had children of my own, the dynamic changed. Or maybe it was exactly the same, only I saw things through a different lens. I now had two little boys of my own who were witnessing, analyzing, and interpreting, just as I did when I was a little girl. There was no violence or anything of that nature, but wounds don’t always leave broken bones and bruises. The drama-filled drunken theatrics continued and so our relationship was off and on. Off. On.

    For me, the point of no contact with my father came when my younger brother became another alcoholic branch in our family tree. While I was trying to survive a war zone of 911 calls, hospital stays, psychiatrists, psychologists, seven rehab stays, several suicide attempts, denial, blame, and absolute destruction, the drunken late night calls from my father became too much. I never told him how they hurt me, like spraying gasoline on an inferno. I just simply hung up the phone. And eventually the calls stopped.

    That was more than 12 years ago. As in my early childhood, the bad eventually overpowered any good.

    Since I was a little girl, my perception was that alcohol was responsible for everything bad that happened in my life. And I did not come to this realization easily or lightly. Long before I was married, long before I had children of my own, there was my mom. My dad. My brother. And eventually a baby sister. The ones I loved more than anyone else in the whole world. I wish with all of my heart I could have changed some of these dynamics in my family and, God knows, I gave it my best shot. But I know now that task was not mine; it’s just my overdeveloped sense of responsibility coming from an alcoholic home.

    Sadly, my brother lost his battle with alcohol addiction and mental illness in March 2012 by taking his own life. My brother’s drinking affected all of our lives in a negative way. I would have welcomed the chance to sit face to face with my own father if he wanted to and tell him that I understood, and that he should hold no blame where my brother is concerned. We were all in way over our heads. And that I love him, and my brother did too. I wish I had done things differently back then, as I made many mistakes myself. 

    My father and I do not need to work out out differences, we are are out of time. But we could both say sorry for hurting each other, it wasn’t intentional. My brother’s death could have brought our family closer together; he would have wanted that. 

    Perhaps for my dad, the point of no return was when I did the unthinkable. I wrote a memoir of my journey with my brother in the hope of helping other families to see the effects of childhood trauma, to not make the same mistakes, to take a different path, and to change.

    But the truth is my father and I were estranged long before the mention of a book. So, it would not be fair to put our estrangement solely on my shoulders. I only take responsibility for my part.

    After a few months, Dad’s cancer had spread, and I heard that he was hospitalized. I knew he didn’t have much time so, to look after my own thoughts and feelings, I made an appointment with my therapist. I have worked very hard to be a better and healthier version of myself—I take my own recovery very seriously. And I do mean recovery; although I don’t drink, I too had to “recover.”

    As my therapist and I talked for that hour, I accepted what was to come, and what I was sure of: I wasn’t going to cry when he died. Not because there was a lack of love, but I had mourned the loss of my father a long time ago.

    Less than a week later, I woke up early on February 5th, put on my robe, poured myself a coffee, and turned on my iPhone. As I scrolled through Facebook I saw a post, something about heaven got another angel. My father had passed away.

    A whirlwind of pictures flashed though my mind.

    I had completely misjudged my reaction: my eyes instantly filled with tears. I was wrong. I did cry. And cried. And cried. I was overwhelmed with emotion: this is all so messed up; it is not how families are supposed to be. It is not what I would want and totally against who I am.

    I spent the next two evenings crying myself to sleep as I knew it was official—I wasn’t going to the funeral.

    I won’t stay away out of anger, spite, or stubbornness. Whether someone else thinks I am right or wrong, what is best for me is being steadfast and confident in my knowledge that I am the daughter, not the parent. If it had been my instinct to run to my father’s side when he was sick, I would have done that when he was healthy. In my life, I do not react anymore out of pity or guilt, misinterpreting those sentiments as love. I did that most of my life, and I lost my own identity in the process. 

    I will stay away from the funeral, not because I didn’t love my dad, but because I did. We all must live with the consequences of our choices and I am no different from him. I would never disrespect his wife, his other children, his friends, or even some of my own family by being there. I would never want to cause them pain with my presence and I am sorry for their loss.

    My father’s drinking affected my life in a negative way, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good person. He was loved by many, had lots of friends, other children who accepted him for who he was, and he continued a relationship and was married to his third wife for almost 27 years. Most likely, the funeral home will be filled with a couple hundred people. All of this is true.

    My absence just means that on this journey of life, the relationship between him and me wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t healthy and what I needed. And I am allowed to decide.

    It’s days later. While still crying, I am imagining all of those people at the funeral tomorrow wondering why I’m not there; judging and whispering that I am self-centered, disrespectful, heartless, unkind, unforgiving, uncaring, and cold-hearted.

    I have been plagued with the haunting visions of my father leaving his little farmhouse for the last time, knowing he was going to the hospital to die. Looking to the right at the garden where the children had Easter egg hunts, to the left at the creek where we used to snowmobile together in the cold Alberta winters. Perhaps as he got closer to the car, he looked to the right and the garage where we all used to sit in front of the campfire as a family that included my brother, my sister and her daughter, and my husband and me with our sons. Happy. A simpler time, years before all of this fell apart. And then I realized, maybe that isn’t what my dad saw; maybe it’s what I see.

    As I crawled into bed, my feelings of guilt had begun to subside, no more visions of my frail father lying in a hospital room hoping his daughter would arrive. I would have no reason to believe he ever thought that—and I know that is just my heart playing with my head.

    I do wish things were different, and I am sorry that I won’t be at my father’s funeral.

    What anyone thinks of that really has nothing to do with me.

    Sometimes it is hard for the outside world to understand. But for your own survival you need to think of your own needs over and above someone else’s. That is not selfish or callous (I have learned this too). It’s necessary. 

    My tears will eventually subside; they always do. But for tonight, if you don’t mind, I am going to shed tears for the little girl whose Daddy didn’t call.


    Jodee Prouse is a mom, wife, sister, friend and author of the memoir, The Sun is Gone: A Sister Lost in Secrets, Shame, and Addiction, and How I Broke Free. She is an outspoken advocate to eliminate the shame and stigma surrounding addiction and mental illness and empowering women through their journey of life and family crisis. Visit jodeeprouse.com to learn more.

    View the original article at thefix.com