Answer Addiction

Tag: forgiveness

  • Forgive and Remember

    Better to face the discomfort than continue to trudge along under a false impression that it’s not dormant inside, oblivious to the ticking of the time bomb that will eventually go off.

    Weekday morning programming kept me company in the background. The crispy and cold bedspread gave me some solace. My parents had just left the apartment and I was curled up like a fetus at the foot of the bed. It had been a while since I entertained the unwelcome visitor. What the hell was he doing here? Everything was going great, or so I believed. Two days with them proved me wrong. What seemed to be progress in acceptance and personal growth was only a by-product of spending a year on the other side of the world. No wonder I wasn’t feeling good and stayed in that day. The illusion of the enlightened and perfect world I’d been living in was shattered. The mourning of this started as a slow downward spiral that quickly turned into a tailspin but felt more like a free fall. I had not wished I hadn’t been born for a couple years now. But it was as if it had never left my side felt stronger than ever. I was drowning and didn’t know which way was up. It seemed that no matter what I did, I’d always come back to this powerlessness. What was the point to keep on trying? “Forget this. Life is too hard. You wouldn’t have to deal with all this if you ended it”, he suggested.

    Awakened unresolved issues were kicking and screaming. This is a very scary place to be, especially in this dangerous company. Running in fear was actually the courageous thing to do. It was time to resort to what saved my life a couple years prior. It was time to go back to basics. I knew a lot of meeting rooms in Miami, but this one was my favorite. There were some faces I recognized and others I didn’t. Most were friendly; mine was not. There was a thick fog of negativity inside my head and it was probably clear in my blank stare. Like a good friend used to say, sometimes we go to give sometimes we go to receive. I was in dire need.

    Some say it’s magic, others call it God, to avoid charged debates most refer to a Higher Power. Whatever you choose to call it, there is Something that definitely moves through those present. I lost count of how many times I heard exactly what I needed in those circles. The first times it was unbelievable how the day’s conversation addressed exactly what was eating away at me. It’s not just me. Others share this surprise as well. Even though it’s happened too many times to keep count, I am still at awe when it happens. It makes me feel special and reminds me that I am not alone. It doesn’t surprise me like it did at the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take it for granted. I guess it has to do with worthiness and accepting that I am loved and cared for. I appreciate it deeply and it definitely keeps me coming back.

    As soon as the chairperson started the meeting it was obvious, we’d be talking about forgiveness. There were many nuggets of wisdom as each person shared their experience, strength, and hope. I had not forgiven, or rather accepted parts of my childhood. Spending a year on the Beautiful Island made me believe I was at peace with my past, but crossing the Pacific was a wake up call I needed to escape denial once again. It’s always a rude one, but an awakening, nonetheless. Better to face the discomfort than continue to trudge along under a false impression that it’s not dormant inside oblivious to the ticking of the time bomb that will eventually go off.

    The last person that shared might as well have been the first and only. Her share is the only one I remember from that day and one I will never forget. She helped me see things in a new light. She was molested at a young age by her uncle. Hard to believe but she said it was fairly easy for her to forgive him. She had finally forgiven herself after years of struggle and anguish. Her reasons for this challenge had to do with guilt, shame, and self-image. It was a very moving story. It made me uncomfortable to hear, but honored and grateful at the same time. There are details that escape me, but she closed with a line that changed it all for me and I have shared with many when discussing these issues. She said, “forgive and forget? That’s bullshit! We forgive and remember without pain”.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • On the Other Side of Addiction, Only Love Remains

    On the Other Side of Addiction, Only Love Remains

    I knew that when we divorced I had abdicated my rights to the family. But I still loved him as I had since childhood.

    In my darker moments I’d search the obituaries for his name.

    Orlando Reyes Jimenez

    Preparing to grieve my ex-husband’s death had become familiar; a routine performed in solitude. My procedure was always the same. I’d fill his favorite silver mug with chamomile tea and type his name into a search engine. I would scroll the death notices and inhale the steam; it smelled of sunlight and grass. I would wrap my hands around his mug until the tea grew cold. After four years I still hadn’t found an obituary but I knew he could be dead. I knew he had been homeless. I knew his health was spiraling downward. I suspected he still drank heavily. I was tired of the shame and silence that surrounded loving him. Alcoholism overshadowed his life. I did not want it to overshadow his death.

    My Second Family

    At the end of our ten-year marriage I had become terrified that he’d die. Almost daily I would help him to bed after whiskey binges led him to black out. He never remembered the way he crawled down the hallway and how I turned him on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his vomit. In the mornings I’d wipe his clammy forehead and smooth his black bangs. His thick hair still curled at the ends just as it had when we met. We were just kids then, only 12 years old. 

    During our teens I spent so much time at his house that his parents and brothers became my second family. His mom fed me bowls of molé with tortillas while his dad and I discussed books and music deep into the twilight. By the time we got married in our twenties, the wedding ceremony made formal what we had known all along: we were family. In our twenties we partied, but I assumed it was just a college thing. I grew out of it and into graduate school. 

    By the time I began teaching college and seeing music therapy clients his party binges had turned into daily drinking. He began punching holes in the walls of our apartment. When I confronted him, he began to hide his drinking. A drunk driving arrest led to rehab and a year of sobriety. But he relapsed and refused help. He began verbally abusing me. I contracted my world around him until the threat of physical violence became obvious. Eventually I got counseling and spiritual advising and we divorced. I no longer sat with his mom and dad at the kitchen table.

    But Orlando and I stayed in touch. After all, we had been friends since seventh grade. He’d call and tell me about his homelessness, his ejection from a halfway house for being drunk. I remarried, moved, and built a healthy life. The gap between our lives widened. After a few years he stopped calling.

    A Way to Feel Connected

    I began my search for his obituary. 

    My search began as a way to feel connected to him. All typical social contact had been severed by both the divorce and his behavior. At first, acquaintances had fallen away after his violent outbursts in public. Then friends stopped calling after he borrowed money and didn’t pay it back. Even his siblings seemed to become disillusioned after he passed out during a backyard barbecue in front of his nieces. By the time we divorced his family had taken over his care and I dropped out of contact with them. United in our love for him, yet fearing for his life, we seemed to retreat from each other as if disconnecting would help us move forward. 

    When his phone calls stopped and he dropped off social media, I was shadowed by the sense of him wandering the world alone. I would picture him drunk and in constant danger of an accident or cumulation of uncontrolled diabetes keeping him a hair’s breadth from death. I could no longer turn him on his side and wipe his forehead. My search became the only way I could care for him. 

    Each time I didn’t find an obituary, it meant there was still a chance he was alive. 

    Six years after our divorce, his family sent me an email. Orlando had died from a pulmonary embolism, just four days from what would have been our eighteenth wedding anniversary. They did not invite me to the funeral or burial and I craved a way to externalize my grief. I sent a request to the Michigan coroner for his death certificate. When it arrived a few weeks later, I went into my garden and read it repeatedly as in ritual. The cause of death was listed as accidental. I tried not to imagine what had happened. I ran my fingers along the coroner’s signature as if the letters could connect me to everyone who loved Orlando.

    I Needed a Place to Put My Pain

    Most family written death notices are quite simple, and I’m not sure why his family didn’t write one. Perhaps their grief was too heavy to share publicly. Perhaps they were ashamed of him. Or maybe it just wasn’t a meaningful part of their grieving process. It wasn’t the length of the obituary I needed, nor its ability to express the complexity of his life. It was the simple and public recognition that he had existed. That his life warranted notice. The grieving process needs two things: solitude and community. An obituary would have allowed me the feeling of sharing my loss with others. I knew that when we divorced I had abdicated my rights to the family. But I still loved him as I had since childhood. I needed a place to put my pain.

    So I once again returned to brewing chamomile tea in his favorite mug, a silver travel mug that was the only thing of his I’d kept after our divorce. I would cup my hands around its rotund shape and for a moment feel his warmth again. I opened my computer, but instead of typing his name into the search engine, I typed it across the top of a new document. I wrote all the words I had searched for. I gave him an obituary. 

    Jimenez, Orlando Reyes, 42, of Waukegan died on August 20, 2016 at a hospital in Detroit. His death was ruled accidental. Orlando will be remembered for the way he loved to make people laugh and for his engulfing hugs. He is survived by his parents, two brothers, and two nieces. He is also survived by his ex-wife, his childhood sweetheart. She continues to use his favorite silver mug in which she brews tea that smells of summer and hope. In lieu of flowers please forgive the addiction and remember the soul. On the other side of addiction only love remains. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How I Found My Mother Through Forgiveness

    How I Found My Mother Through Forgiveness

    I realized that in order to change my family’s lineage I would not only have to forgive everyone who ever hurt me, I would have to learn to forgive myself.

    It was early morning when the security guard at the cemetery came and used the weight of his shoulder to open the heavy gate. I drove in, making my way through a long tunnel of magnolias. The sun threw pillars of light through the canopy of trees while a gust of wind sent brown leaves spiraling along the roadside. Headstones and crypts were spread out like pop-tarts in rows across the lush green lawns. At the end of the road I turned left, driving all the way to the chain link fence where I parked my car.

    After I turned off the ignition, I took a deep breath. I got out and walked with my flip-flops snapping against the bottoms of my soles. When I got to the curb I counted five graves in and froze when I saw my mother’s name etched in a stone: Nancy Adamson, 1922 to 1960.

    Why is it, when you say “I will never be like my parents,” it’s almost like you’re giving the universe the exact coordinates for where you need to land?

    My mother was schizophrenic. At 38, she had a psychotic break, cut her wrists, and pulled a large shipping trunk over her in the bathtub where she drowned. I was only seven at the time.

    But, as if the universe had conspired against me, I was 38 and the mother of two young boys, 16 and 9, when I had my own drug-induced psychotic break. I shot my husband’s mistress in the arm and landed in jail on assault charges.

    I recently attended a conference on trauma and addiction where a renowned clinical psychiatrist said, “As children, our relationships with our parents are unconsciously imprinted on our psyche.” So yes, we are destined to repeat the same mistakes unless, and I’m paraphrasing here, we wake the fuck up.

    The process of waking up for me has been one eyelash at a time. It started 25 years ago when I was released from jail and went to live at a shelter for women and children. Up until then I had been extremely self-sufficient, but as I found myself leveled by the circumstances in my life, I started to ask for help. I was extremely fortunate to fall into a group of people who were kind to me when I needed it the most.

    The image of my mother drowning under a trunk stuffed with photographs of her children haunted me for years. I couldn’t even tell people what she had done, let alone write it down for the world to see as I’m doing now. I was deeply ashamed that she had chosen to leave this world and me behind. By the time I was a teenager I was filled with rage and as I turned to alcohol and drugs for relief, I turned that rage loose on myself.

    I blamed everybody for what was wrong with my life and became extremely fluent in Victimese. It was my mother’s fault, my father’s fault, and later it would be my husband’s fault. What I didn’t realize was this belief system that I had adopted was giving me the exact excuse I needed to use drugs and alcohol with abandon. All of my so-called justified resentments were the very things that were drowning me. And if I wanted to stay sober I would have to drop the rocks and swim to the surface.

    After a lot of therapy and self-reflection, I wrote down a list of the resentments I had toward all the people who I believed had harmed me. As I unspooled the jumbled thoughts from my mind onto paper, a clear pattern emerged: While I had been busy blaming everybody else, I had also been giving away my own power. I knew, instinctively, I would have to change that.

    And that’s how I found myself standing in front of my mother’s grave 45 years after she died.

    A lump formed in the back of my throat as I reached for the letter. I looked both ways to make sure no one was watching me before reading it out loud:

    Dearest Mom,

    It’s taken me a while to get here because I’ve been so angry that you left me like you did. I was resentful and those resentments defined my life, they defined who I became.

    I missed having a mother and I was profoundly sad but no one talked about you after you were gone.

    I wish you could have been there in my teenage years. I could have used some maternal guidance because dad clearly didn’t have a clue.

    I wish you could have been there at my wedding day. I wish you could have been there when I was pregnant and when I gave birth to my two boys. I wish you could have watched them grow up into the men they are today. You would be so proud of them. I certainly am.

    Every single thing in my life, large and small has echoed with the absence of not having you by my side. But I want you know Mom, I’m okay now. I want you know that I’ve finally learned how to move on with my life.

    Getting sober was the hardest, yet, the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to reconcile things I was holding on to, including my relationship with you. It seems if I wanted to be free I had to let you off the hook. And so, Mom, I’ve come here to say I’m not angry at you anymore and want you to know, I love you very, very much.

    Your Daughter Forever…

    A soft rush or air escaped my lips. I stuffed the letter in my jean pocket and turned to leave. I wasn’t struck by a lightning bolt, there was no burning bush or chariot in the sky, but I did realize that in order to change my family’s lineage I would not only have to forgive everyone who ever hurt me, I would have to learn to forgive myself.

    It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy. It took willingness combined with herculean effort, but over time, as I became more and more present for my boys, showing up for them through all their failures and successes, I eventually found the mother I had always wanted.

    She was inside of me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Recovery Journey: From Trauma and Abuse to Understanding and Forgiveness

    My Recovery Journey: From Trauma and Abuse to Understanding and Forgiveness

    It’s no surprise to me that even with seven years of therapy I still chose an abusive addict as a partner. What else had I known, growing up the way I did?

    I always wanted to be a writer. I started writing in the fifth grade and wrote many short stories. I lacked imagination (or maybe it was too vivid, I’m not sure), and so I took my inspiration from stories already written. Most of what I wrote as a child was straight out of Judy Blume books. I couldn’t have picked characters more different from my own family.

    In Blume’s books, even the most challenging issues were always solved with a hug and a huge dose of love and encouragement. I would share these stories I “wrote” with my class and not only was it obvious I’d stolen the plots from Blume’s books, but nobody was fooled that my home life resembled these Leave It To Beaver-esque families.

    The black and blues on my little body had a way of telling a different story.

    A Concerned Teacher

    After about the fourth or fifth story, trying to pass off some fictional family as my own, my teacher—who’d taught my two older brothers before me—asked me to stay after class. He asked if everything at home was okay. He knew my brothers were hellions, the products of an abusive father and a drink-at-home mom.

    Unlike my brothers, though, I was a good girl. I had never once acted out—until that day. I had learned how to stay out of the way of my father’s explosive trigger hand. I was also a master at avoiding my mother after her third glass of “candy.”

    I felt cornered. I had to get out of there.

    I looked at my teacher square in the eyes and said, “You have no fucking clue what’s going on in my home. Stay the fuck away from me!” I flipped over a few chairs and desks before I grabbed my knapsack and ran out of his classroom. I was kind of half-crying, half-raging. I had never become unglued before. I was always the one my parents could count on to be polite and obedient, no matter what.

    My oldest brother was waiting for me outside school. He noticed I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

    “What happened?” Marco* asked.

    “Mr. Brendel asked if things were okay at home. I don’t know why he thought that. I have never been anything but what everyone expects me to be. What’s happening??”

    “I’ll take care of it,” Marco told me.

    And he did. I was never in trouble over the incident, and two days later Mr. Brendel apologized and we never discussed it again. Marco told me grownups weren’t stupid, and they knew things weren’t as peachy at home as they were in my fairytale stories. And then he said something that scared me: “Adults are going to want to help you. Accept their help. At some point I won’t be able to protect you.”

    My Brother’s Advice

    “What do you mean? You’ll always be here to protect me.” I fought back tears.

    “I won’t, Sarah. One day you’ll have to make your own decisions, and all I can do is guide you to make the best ones—for you and nobody else. I’ll be here as long as I can, but the sooner you can be independent, the better. One day you’ll wake up and see how fucked up things are at home. Don’t fear that day. Welcome it and get help.”

    I continued as the dutiful little girl living in my bubble and writing stories about people who bore no resemblance to my family. But when I turned 16, I decided I didn’t want to live at home after I graduated. Both my brothers were already out of the house.

    I looked into having myself emancipated. I even talked with a lawyer. While my brothers were tired of carrying the weight of responsibility, I was ready to be an adult, living on my own.

    My godmother and aunt convinced me to defer college for a year. Instead, they recommended therapy. I was reminded of the conversation I’d had with Marco outside my elementary school years earlier, so I took their advice.

    I graduated from high school and got a job in a photocopy shop. I paid for therapy and, by working six days a week, I saved enough for first and last month’s rent and a security deposit on a future apartment.

    I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 17, but it wasn’t exactly how I’d planned. I got this bug up my ass to do an intervention on my mother, but I had no idea what I was doing. It blew up in my face with my mother kicking me out of the house. Talk about an epic fail.

    But it was the first time I realized how protective of one’s addiction someone can be.

    I was estranged from both of my brothers and my parents. It felt right. I was (and still am) eternally grateful to my oldest brother for taking care of me growing up, but he’d started drinking heavily—like our mom. And the other one had graduated to bigger and badder drugs. He discovered cocaine.

    PTSD and an Abusive Relationship

    While in therapy, I was diagnosed with PTSD and a panic disorder. As my brother promised, just because I pushed all that shit away didn’t mean it never happened. As my mom used to say all the time, “You push it down here, it comes up there,” meaning you can run from something for only so long. I had to deal with the dysfunction I grew up in, and I had to work really hard to keep myself from repeating their mistakes.

    Sometimes echoes of that dysfunction showed up in my life despite my best efforts. My boyfriend at the time started using coke and became abusive. How had I chosen someone who was a perverse combination of both my parents? I was trying to figure out a way to leave without him coming for me. With his continued coke use, he was paranoid and controlling. I hadn’t communicated to him or anyone else my intention to leave but somehow, he knew.

    I was taking a creative writing class, and the first assignment was to write an essay using five descriptions to portray a person or an event. The professor gave us just one bit of instruction: “Show, don’t tell.” The next time I was in my boyfriend’s car, leaving Manhattan for his place in Brooklyn, I paid close attention.

    The tires slicked against the wet pavement; it had rained while we were in the midtown Manhattan movie theatre. Focused on the road in front of him, his left hand was on the steering wheel. He tilted his head slightly to meet the outstretched fingers on his right hand, so he could twist his newly forming dreadlocs. He turned his still tilted head very slowly to look at me. His forehead wrinkled, and his eyes like big beads of brown glass, narrowed. He peered at me from over his wireframe glasses. He said, “Mookie, I have loved you my entire life. Even before I knew you, I loved you. The thought of you no longer being in my life scares me. I can never let that happen. Besides, nobody will ever love you like I do: not your parents and definitely not your brothers.” He didn’t look at me long enough to see my reaction. He was like a dog who sensed fear and he was prepared to act on it. Now, with his eyes back on the road, his voice lacked emotion. “Mookie, I can make life for you as sweet as honey or as bitter as unsweetened cocoa. It’s all in your power.”

    After I finished reading my essay aloud, I looked around the classroom. The instructor and other students all had very large eyes. One student said, “Um, Sarah, that scared the shit out of me. You are planning on leaving him, aren’t you?”

    I wanted to leave, but I didn’t realize just how serious he was about preventing me from going. As his coke use escalated, he became more violent and things ended very badly. A few years ago, I finally admitted to people how bad things had gotten between us. My very first published piece is a personal essay about the last violent moments we were together. Trigger warning!

    It’s no surprise to me that even with seven years of therapy I still chose an abusive addict as a partner. What else had I known growing up the way I did? Both my parents died without any reconciliation between us. My mother, who never stopped drinking and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, died suddenly of a stroke when I was 27. My father died eight years later of cancer. I never had the chance to reconcile with my mother, so I tried very hard to correct this with my father. But it takes two people, and he wasn’t willing.

    Understanding and Forgiveness

    Although I hadn’t consciously chosen an addict for a partner, I understand why I did. People have asked me whether I blame my mother, brothers, and my ex-boyfriend. Much as I want to, I can’t. There are many misconceptions about growing up in a home with an addict or an alcoholic, and while it might seem my brothers embody all those misconceptions, I also know for a fact that nobody chooses to become an addict and that many times it’s the result of trying to escape the realities of one’s surroundings. I believe my mother drank because she married a mean and abusive person who prevented her from realizing her dream of being a writer. Given the environment I grew up in and the likelihood of an inherited gene, I could easily have become an alcoholic. Because I had relatives who intervened and I started therapy early on, I believe I was spared and that I must forgive rather than blame. This includes my ex-boyfriend, who saw his father get drunk every Friday night and beat the crap out of his mother.

    As I evolved, I became better at taking care of myself and 18 years ago, I married a really wonderful man who is the antithesis of my ex-boyfriend. He’s the only person outside of my therapist who knows my entire story.

    I also tried to reconcile with both my brothers. Marco quit drinking 15 years ago, so I thought there was hope. But I quickly discovered he was white-knuckling it. I think he’s still angry about losing his childhood so he could be our full-time caregiver. My other brother quit using cocaine after he overdosed, but he still drinks heavily.

    They both know I’ll be here when they’re ready.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I am sitting at the desk in my office. I’m not at work officially yet, won’t be for another hour or so. Then the race will start. Kara had asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting this morning, to pick up my 15 year coin. I didn’t.

    She said, “The day can look however you want. I have a babysitter, so if you want to go out after work and celebrate, then we can do that…or nothing.”

    I said that I thought that this year I just wanted it to be a day, just to be a day like any other day. Sometimes I really want the celebration, but this year, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to come in here and sit and think and spend some time alone. So, I woke up early, my daughter’s warm, tiny body next to me through the night sleeping heavily after a late evening of trick-or-treating excitement, costumes, candy, and other children running wildly through the streets. Kara, still exhausted, is next to her, a new puppy sleeping soundly at her shoulder. There is a cat at her feet curled up contentedly as all cats sleep. Last night we went to bed laughing about this — the animals, our child, about the busy place that our bed has become. I pointed out that nine years ago this would have been an absolute dream come true.

    Kara said, “Nine years ago this couldn’t have even been imagined!” and we laughed together at our own amazement.

    Today is the 15th anniversary of my sobriety. It is a date that is perpetually entwined with gratitude and sorrow. This is a date that I will always celebrate and mourn. My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    Sobriety always comes at a cost. I’ve been around enough 12-step rooms and other sober support communities to know this.

    It is veritably impossible to hear a person’s recovery story without being very often stunned and amazed by the levels of grief and despair that their recovery has cost. The cost of my own sobriety was lives. I still shake my head 15 years later even as I write those words. It just doesn’t seem possible still. I can just never make it better. Not ever.

    I am Sysiphus, eternally condemned to pushing a boulder to the top of this mountain.

    But it is also great, which is an odd dissonance. It’s a perpetual mourning, but also an absolute celebration, and discovery, and adventure.

    I work with people daily in very early recovery. They sit in my office and cry and are angry and are desperate and scared. They sit across from me and I see myself. It would be impossible not to. The words they use, the language they use, is a close memory hermetically sealed forever in my mind. I listen to them and I hear myself. I feel sad for them, and grateful that for me that the chaos has ended. It has finally ended. I remember how it felt to have the heavy fog of eternal delusion lift and what it felt like to start to see for what felt like the first time ever. And I am so grateful for the utter simplicity of today’s problems.

    But again, I question the cost.

    One simple decision.

    One very simple, very wrong, decision.

    And some poor soul never gets to see their child again, their parent again, someone they love ever again, and there is no way to ever make that better. That can never be made better again.

    After taking Story trick-or-treating last night, she climbs excitedly into her car seat and asks for her bounty, her new treasures, her bucket of goods scored on a lively Hallows Eve. Kara tells her that she doesn’t want Story to eat all of that candy and make herself sick. Story insists that she won’t. We relent and let her have her reserve. On the way home we are absolutely charged. What a great night! We tell Story what a good kid she was and how much we appreciated her saying “thank-you” to all of the people that gave her candy. And because I never want her to forget it, I remind her of all of the great things we did leading up to this night. I ask her to join in with me, and we laugh about corn mazes and hot apple cider. We talk about apple picking and candy corn. We revel in her having been read the entire first Harry Potter book not once, but twice! We remember carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds.

    Occasionally, Story asks if she can turn the light on in the van so that she can carefully pick her next treat. Kara says she can do it as long as she does it quickly, and I can hear the crinkling of tiny brown wrappers behind me and I am filled to the brim with love and joy and just Life!

    And then I wonder…

    Was this what it was like for them?

    Fifteen years later this is what I have to offer not just my own victims, but the world. This is what I owe:

    My boundless gratitude.

    My eternal apologies.

    My diligence and determination.

    My thankfulness.

    My joy.

    My promise.

    My sobriety.

    Thank you to everyone, friends, and families, my victims, just everyone, who has made this incredibly magical, and far too meaningful journey possible. Thank you all. And please don’t drink and drive. Please. Just don’t.

    Peace.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kevin Hart Details Forgiving His Father For Being Absent Due To Addiction

    Kevin Hart Details Forgiving His Father For Being Absent Due To Addiction

    With the help of his older brother, Hart eventually put aside his feelings and helped his father find help in rehabilitation.

    Comic actor Kevin Hart spoke at length about the process of forgiving his father, Henry Witherspoon, for being absent during his childhood due to drug and alcohol dependency.

    The Night School star wrote about his father, Henry Witherspoon, in his 2017 memoir I Can’t Make This Up, and said that while his father’s presence while he was growing up was both sporadic and prone to tumult, he has learned to look beyond those memories and focus on their relationship today.

    “Regardless of my upbringing and the way I was raised and how often he was in my life, he’s my dad,” said Hart. “I have a positive outlook on life regardless, and I’m going to love [him] because [he’s] my father.”

    Hart also detailed the difficulties in his relationship with his father in a 2016 interview with Howard Stern, where he explained that while he was growing up in Philadelphia, Witherspoon was dependent on “heroin, coke, crack, you name it, he did it.”

    According to Hart, Witherspoon even stole $20 that his son had received as a gift.

    Thankfully, Hart had a grounding force in his mother, who worked as a computer analyst at the University of Pennsylvania while raising him and his brother.

    “The reason I am the way I am is because my mom was so strong,” he said. “[She] was such a strong woman, she said, ‘Look, regardless of whatever your father’s doing and where he is, I have a job to do raising you. You’re going to do what you’re supposed to do and you’re going to grow up to be two intelligent men, me and my brother.”

    With the help of his older brother, Hart eventually put aside his feelings about his father’s absence and helped him find help in rehabilitation.

    There, according to Hart, “he met an amazing woman who turned his life around and helped him stay clean, and right now, he’s all about clean living.”

    Hart added that he saw no value in holding on to the pain of the past. “I don’t understand people who hold grudges,” he said. “Do you know how much time and energy it takes to hold a grudge?”

    Today, Witherspoon has a presence in his sons’ lives, for which Hart is grateful.

    “I’m in a position where I’m blessed and I can provide,” he explained. “I can say, ‘Here, dad, here’s a home, here’s a car, here’s some money. Go spend time with your grandkids. Be the best grandpop. The days you missed with me are the days we missed. It’s fine. I’m okay with that.”

    View the original article at thefix.com