Answer Addiction

Tag: motherhood

  • My Daughter / Myself

    I would spend a decade trying to reconcile two feelings: complete hatred for the stranger who was living in my daughter’s body and total surrender to my love for her.

    (The following is an excerpt from a longer work.)

    The following summer, Oscar developed such serious health problems that we had to put him down. In July, Angel came over to say goodbye to him. Then Carter and I walked him to the vet and held him down while he received his injection. Annie couldn’t bear to be there. As we were sobbing over his dying body, unable to leave, the aide gently suggested that we needed to let go of him. We left the building and Carter and I held onto each other all the way home. Annie stayed in her room and I tried, unsuccessfully, to reach her.

    “Annie,” I said, knocking on her door, “please let me in. I know how you feel; we’re all sad to lose Oscar. I just want to hug you and tell you it’ll be okay. Please don’t isolate yourself like this. Come out and get something to eat with me and Carter.”

    “Mom, I couldn’t eat a thing right now. I just want to go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

    I couldn’t eat anything, either. We were both stunned by the absence of our much-beloved dog and, not surprisingly, we lost our appetites. Even bulimics can lose their appetites, at least for a while, when they’re sad.

    Another letting go served to uproot us as Angel and I sold our large house a month later. We all seemed to scatter like the four winds afterwards. Caroline had moved to California and Carter was living with a friend in D.C. I moved into a condominium near my high school, and Annie moved into a friend’s apartment.

    Her first year of living independently seemed uneventful at first. Frequently visiting her in the apartment she shared, I took her furniture from her old bedroom so she would feel at home in her new digs. But there were signs that she was changing. She had never had many boyfriends in high school. Then one Sunday morning I arrived to find a friend of hers on the sofa, clearly feeling at home. Later I learned he was a bartender at a watering hole and drug hotspot in Adams Morgan. Well, she was on her own. And by now she was twenty-one; I felt I didn’t have much leverage.

    In the spring, though two courses short of her graduation requirements at George Mason University, Annie was allowed to walk with her class, cap and gown and all.

    Angel, his wife and I all dressed up for our second child’s college graduation in the spring of 2001, and we all viewed this ceremony as a symbol of hope that Annie was willing and anxious to embrace her adulthood and take on more responsibilities, like other young people.

    “Hey, Mom, I want you to meet my friend Shelly. She got me through statistics sophomore year.”

    “Hi, Shelly, nice to meet you. Thanks for helping Annie. Is your family here today?”

    “No. They had to work. No big deal for them anyway.”

    “Oh. Well I think it’s a big deal, so congratulations from me! It was nice to meet you, Shelly, and good luck.”

    Annie’s graduation distracted us from being curious about what she was doing in the evenings. Again, she went to a lot of trouble to cover up behavior that she knew would alarm us and might threaten an intervention.

    Just like her mother.

    At the end of the summer, she asked if she could move into my basement. Her roommate was buying a condo, she said, and their lease was up anyway. Later on, when I watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded in my own house, I wondered about the truth of that. I thought maybe the roommate saw where Annie was going and asked her to leave. No matter. She was in my house now.

    The circle was about to close.

    Then a shocking discovery—a bowl of homemade methamphetamine on top of my dryer! I had been wondering about the stuff she’d left in my basement laundry room. I read the label: muriatic acid. I looked it up on my computer. So that’s what she used it for!

    I moved the bowl up to the kitchen and put it next to the sink, where recessed lighting bore down on it. She couldn’t miss it when she came in the front door. I thought I’d be ready for the confrontation.

    At 4:30 in the morning, she exploded into my bedroom while Gene and I were sleeping. I’m glad he was with me that night.

    “How dare you mess with my things downstairs! Don’t you ever touch my stuff again, you fucking bitch!” she roared. I thought I was dreaming when I saw her there, animal-like, with wild, blood-shot eyes.

    Gene held onto me as I sobbed into my pillow. “Oh God, this isn’t happening, Gene, please tell me this isn’t happening!”

    A half hour later, pulling myself together, I went downstairs to make coffee. I still had to go to work.

    Annie stomped upstairs from the basement with a garbage bag full of her clothes and brushed by me without a word or a look. After she slammed the door behind her, I ran to the kitchen window and saw her get into her car.

    My daughter went from crystal meth, to cocaine, to heroin, as though it were a smorgasbord of terrible choices. Despite four rehabs and family love, her addictive disease continued. There were periods of remission, but they were short-lived. My daughter lived in one pigsty after another, her boyfriends all drug addicts. I would spend a decade trying to reconcile two feelings: complete hatred for the stranger who was living in my daughter’s body and total surrender to my love for her.

    Because of our superficial differences, I didn’t realize right away how alike we were.

    We’ve both suffered from depression since we were young. The adults in our lives didn’t always acknowledge our screams. We turned to substance abuse for relief: food, cigarettes, and drugs. I added alcohol to my list, but I’m not aware that she ever drank alcoholically. My daughter moved on to heroin.

    At least I cleaned up well.

    Though Annie was no longer living with me at that point, I tried to continue embracing her, accepting her, so she’d know she was still loved. But I couldn’t yet distinguish between helping and enabling.

    I did unwise, misguided, things: I gave her money; I paid her debts; I shielded her from jail when she broke the law.

    “Are you sure you don’t want us to contact the authorities about this, Mrs. Rabasa?” the rep asked me when she stole my identity to get a credit card.

    “Oh no,” terrified of her going to jail, “I’ll handle it.”

    And I did, badly.

    This was enabling at its worst. Convinced her addiction came from me, that guilt crippled me and my judgment.

    Placing a safety net beneath her only served to ease my anxiety. It did nothing to teach her the consequences of her behavior. I kept getting in her way.

    It felt like I was in the twilight zone whenever I visited her. My daughter was buried somewhere deep inside, but the addict was in charge. One body, split down the middle: my daughter, Annalise; and a hard-core drug addict. A surreal nightmare.

    Her apartment smelled of incense and dirty laundry. The soles of her shoes flopped until she could get some duct tape around them. She didn’t offer me anything to eat because there was no food in the refrigerator.

    Nothing.

    Twice while I was there she ran to the bathroom to vomit.

    Heroin. Dope sick.

    Annie was hijacked by a cruel disease—cruel because it robs you of yourself while you’re still alive. While destroying your mind, it keeps your body alive long enough to do a lot of damage before it actually kills you. For many drug addicts, it’s an agonizingly slow death.

    It was like looking at a movie of my life in reverse, erasing all the good fortune that brought me to where I was, leaving only the pain and ugliness—and hopelessness—of a wasted life. How I might have ended up.

    For better or worse, my life had been unfolding as many do with addictive personalities. But to see the same disease taking over the life of my child—to see that mirror up close in front of me—was threatening to be my undoing.

    Trying to hold it together, I was imploding. Like all addicts and families of addicts, survival can be reached from many places, but often from the bottom.

    Mine was waiting for me.
    Excerpted from Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation, to be released on June 16 by She Writes Press. It is the sequel to the award-winning debut memoir, A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Maggie C. Romero), available on Amazon and where other books are sold.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Methadone Pregnancy

    My Methadone Pregnancy

    I listened to what my doctor told me. I did my research and I am at peace with my decision: getting off methadone while I was pregnant just wasn’t an option.

    The last time I stuck a needle in my arm was three whole months before I conceived my son, and I’m grateful that he’s never experienced me in active addiction. I say three whole months as if it were a lifetime, but it really is to anyone in early recovery. I was fortunate, I stopped using heroin before I found out that I was pregnant. I had just turned 29 and was in a stable relationship with my now-husband.

    For many women, getting on methadone doesn’t happen until they find out they’re pregnant. Their options are to either keep using or get into treatment. I started taking methadone five months before I stopped using and faced a bit of a learning curve. It was difficult to separate myself from the lifestyle and the people who I interacted with on a daily basis. I also had a needle addiction, and there’s no maintenance medication for that.

    When I decided to stop getting high, I immediately started trying to fix everything that I had destroyed. I was in a new relationship with someone who understood that I was broken and he took me to the methadone clinic every day. We met shortly after I got clean and he never once judged me for my past actions or made me feel bad for taking methadone during my pregnancy. Every expecting mom who takes opioids knows that if you just stop taking them, there is a high risk you will miscarry. Your baby experiences the withdrawal symptoms more strongly than you and in many cases they just aren’t strong enough to withstand it.

    Making The Best Painful Choice

    I was in a heartbreaking situation, but I needed to do what was best for the baby. I can see the comments already: How could you continue to take a medication like that while pregnant?! How could you do that to a tiny human, he’s going to withdraw! I heard this from my mother and a few other opinionated individuals who believed it was appropriate to weigh in on my treatment. I listened to what my doctor told me. I did my research and I am at peace with my decision: getting off methadone while I was pregnant just wasn’t an option.

    The doctor at the treatment facility gave me a ton of information as to what to expect with my continuing treatment. She told me that as the baby grew, I would most likely need to take more methadone to accommodate the increased blood volume. I needed to pay attention to my symptoms and try to tell the difference between normal pregnancy discomfort and methadone withdrawal. I was really grateful for her kindness and advice, especially in the beginning.

    After I had my baby, I found out that there are many online support groups for pregnant women on maintenance medication. These sites provide information on symptoms, what is normal, the rights you have as someone who has struggled with opioid addiction, and more. It’s especially important to know what your hospital’s protocols are for infants going through opioid withdrawal. I know a lot more after giving birth than I ever did in my pregnancy.

    I Would Judge Me, Too

    I was afraid that Child Protective Services would be getting involved during and after my pregnancy, but I was assured by my OB-GYN and the doctor at the methadone clinic that as long as I stayed clean, I would have nothing to worry about. Still, as someone who has worked in the medical field, I knew the stigma attached to my condition. I worried at every appointment that people would look down on me and talk negatively about me after I left. I mean, I was an ex-heroin addict who was pregnant and who was continuing to put something addictive into my body. I would judge me, too.

    My apprehension was unnecessary, my OB-GYN was very supportive. She referred me to a high risk maternal/fetal medicine doctor who I also saw regularly. I went to every appointment, took my methadone as prescribed, and continued to go to therapy.

    When I was about 10 weeks along, I told my parents I was pregnant. I wish I waited a little longer, but I was so excited to be a mom. Their reaction was concern that once my baby was born, he would go through withdrawal from the methadone. I tried not to take it as criticism and judgement, because their concerns were valid. I felt very guilty and scared that this little soul was going to suffer and it was all my fault.

    My stepmother threw me the biggest, most elaborate baby shower that I had ever been to. She invited all of her friends and they brought me nice gifts and things I didn’t know I needed. I remember eating the cherry cake she’d ordered especially for me and starting to cry. This party was thrown for me by a woman who I’d lied to and stolen from during my addiction but none of that seemed to matter to her. She invited her friends because I only had one or two left. I’d cut contact with everyone from my previous life when I stopped using.

    I chose to not go to meetings or participate in any 12-step activities because I did not want to be around other people who were struggling in the same way I was. I know that NA is a great support system and helps many people stay clean, but it wasn’t the right fit for me. Of all the resources available to me, I was the most successful with just the support of my husband, my parents, and our church.

    Induction

    At my 37-week appointment, the doctor found that I was low on amniotic fluid and decided I should be induced that day. I was ready, even though I was afraid of the pain and even more afraid that the painkillers wouldn’t work due to the methadone.

    My husband and I hustled over to the labor and delivery wing of the hospital, excited and nervous. As expected, when I got there, I was drug tested. It was mandatory since I had a recorded history of heroin use but it still made me sad.

    The induction process was incredibly painful. I remember not wanting to ask for anything to help with the pain because I didn’t want to be judged, but as soon as I felt my cervix start to stretch, I stopped caring what anyone thought. It was brutal. After 18 hours of agony, I received an epidural. I was exhausted and excited and running on encouragement from my husband.

    Before I knew it, I was 10 centimeters dilated and surrounded by doctors who were telling me to push with each contraction. A few minutes after they set up their delivery equipment, he was here! I have never cried harder than the moment they handed me this pink, messy, angry little person. He was gooey and gross and perfect. I felt so much at once; it’s hard to explain those first few moments. He was on my chest for about 45 minutes before they cleaned him up and took him to the NICU because his blood sugar was low.

    Because I had methadone in my system during my pregnancy, we had to stay for an extra five days so they could monitor my baby for withdrawal symptoms. I spent that time trying to breastfeed, learning to hold a baby properly, and getting sleep.

    My New Baby, in Opioid Withdrawal

    I would like to end this by saying that we went home after the five days and lived happily ever after, but that’s not the whole story. My husband and I went home but our little boy had to stay for an extra two weeks. He started to show signs of methadone withdrawal around day five.

    There are lots of myths about babies in withdrawal and what they look like. Yes, some are inconsolable and have tremors, but that isn’t always the case. I wasn’t able to recognize the symptoms in my baby because he didn’t match the picture in my head of a baby in withdrawal.

    He had a high-pitched cry; I held him against me and nursed him constantly. Sometimes it calmed him down, sometimes it wouldn’t.

    In the hospital, they use a chart called the Finnegan Scale to assess the severity of withdrawal and determine if the infant needs medication, and my son’s symptoms indicated that he needed to be medicated. The doctor in the NICU told us they were going to start my baby on a small amount of morphine to calm him down and make him more comfortable. I didn’t want them to give him morphine, but I felt more strongly that I didn’t want him to suffer.

    Seeing my baby for the first time after he was medicated gave me some peace. I knew that was best for him, just like taking my methadone was best for him during my pregnancy. It’s hard to convince someone unfamiliar to the world of maintenance medications and opioid addiction that I did what was right for my baby, but I know I did.

    He started getting better immediately and every day he received a little less morphine. My husband and I were lucky enough to have a private room in the NICU and be able to be with him 24-7. The most important things I did for his recovery were keeping him close to me (skin to skin contact), keeping the lights low, and the noises to a minimum. They recommended that I breastfeed as often as possible and my baby had an amazing nurse who taught me how to do this. She constantly encouraged me and kept me informed about his treatment.

    A Healthy, Happy Boy

    Per hospital protocol, my husband and I were interviewed by social services. I had to be completely transparent with them and give my doctor at the methadone clinic permission to speak with them. They even came to look at my home to make sure that it was a safe place for my baby to be. I went through a variety of emotions during this time. I felt violated, angry, insulted, and even confused. I had passed every drug test for the past year and my ability to be a good mom was being questioned. The whole process lasted about a week and then we never heard from them again. I was told that the only reason that social services (CPS or DYFS depending on your state) were contacted was because there were traces of methadone in his meconium.

    Our baby boy has been growing and thriving ever since we brought him home. I still have guilt about his first few weeks in the world, but that’s okay. I try to tell myself that he wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t get on methadone in the first place, but that might just be me justifying it. I now have a smart, healthy, beautiful two-year-old little boy who never stops smiling. When he gets older, I will have to explain to him why he got sick right after he was born. I hope he understands and forgives me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mother’s Day: Recovery, Love, and Light

    Mother’s Day: Recovery, Love, and Light

    At night, tucking my kids into bed, I would make a deal with myself: hold on just a little longer until they needed me a little less and then I could go through with my suicide plan.

    Mother’s Day is Mothering Day, isn’t it? A day that honors all of us who mother our children—loving, caretaking, nurturing, offering our time and energy, setting aside more selfish pursuits and pleasures to help support our children’s journeys. Of course, we love receiving the homemade, crayoned cards, the store-bought roses or dandelion bouquets, and the pancakes delivered in bed (even with kitchen disasters). These gifts remind us of our essential role in our children’s lives. But for me? Mother’s Day is my chance to offer my gratitude that I am now a sober and stable force of love, hope, and healing for my children.

    Almost 10 years ago, I started writing my blog, Momma May Be Mad, during a complete bipolar collapse: I was anorexic, alcoholic, in and out of psychiatric hospitals and rehabs, and determined to die. But what anchored me to this world were words; more specifically, my blog, a public journal that allowed me to wrestle openly with the lies and the truths of illness and wellness, of despair and hope, of isolation and community.

    At the time, recovery seemed an impossible and cruel promise: light and hope and love would always be just out of reach and I believed it would be better for my children if I died. In the morning, I woke up too early and at night went to bed too late because of a ruminative argument that forced this point: How could I ever be a safe and loving harbor for my children when I was the storm threatening to smash us all against the rocks? I did not believe that I could get sober and stable and well enough to mother my children into their own growing, complex, miraculous lives.Rather than feeling like a mother, a source of creative nurturing power, I felt like one of the furies, a toxic destructive cyclone.

    Do you know that “mother” also refers to the thick scummy substance in liquor, the filthy dregs? This truly was how I thought of myself. At night, tucking my kids into bed, I would make a deal with myself: hold on just a little longer until they needed me a little less and then I could go through with my suicide plan.

    My first post was a manifesto to truth. For years I’d been lying about how much I drank, how often I cut myself, how little I’d eaten, and how I was planning to die. It was a way to hold myself accountable to a deliberate, intentional, and public directive: to recover my health, my balance, and most importantly my integrity. My aim was nothing less than radical transparency:

    March 1, 2010: Truth: Here I am, Self and the Blank Page, fingers nervously typing. Time to write this down, to deal with the shame and the self-loathing, and turn it around. This is the story of IT: ‘IT’ is my abstract pronoun, the catch-all for my variety of afflictions. IT inhabits capital letters, an impassive, unfeeling monolith. In contrast, ‘I,’ (or for your sake, ‘me,’) who lives in love, in forgiveness, and in the shrieks of pleasure I hear coming from my kids right now in their playroom. I am thirty-seven years old, the Momma of two, the wife of one, and I have bipolar disorder, and eating disorder. Oh yes, and the nasty habit of cutting myself. And drinking, too much. I am in therapy, on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, and sleep meds. But what I must accept: Life on Life’s Terms. No mere 12 Step cliché, but practical truth. I’m ragged and frayed and scattered, fractured and splintered by shame. I want to be whole for my children.

    My essential sacred directive was to stay alive. Short-term goals at first. Stay alive for my son’s cookie crumb, sloppy kisses, his warm hand on my cheek, his tiny body finding mine at night, spooning up against me. He needed me in the primal way four-year-olds need their Mommas, close and tight. He is my son, and, at the time, I was his sun—the one he revolved around. When I picked him up from preschool, he would tackle me and say, “I love you Momma. Will you marry me?” A sincere proposal—live together forever.

    And to stay alive for my daughter who needed me more and differently as she navigated the intricacies of being a seven-year-old who preferred dragons, bugs, and furry creatures over Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, and boyfriend-girlfriend role playing. And then there were the rapid-fire, shifting friendships that often relegated her to third-in-line best friend. My heart broke over and over as she tearfully told me that she had “a funny feeling in her belly all day long,” and wanted to move far away. “Vermont,” she said, “or Greece.”In her Mother’s Day Card from that year, she wrote that I made yummy muffins, was, contrary to fact, good at mathematics, loved when I tickled, hugged, and kissed her, and that she “relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly” loved me.

    Twelve relly’s.

    Stay here and love us, forever: this was the sacred directive given to me by my children.

    In the years since that public declaration, I’ve done the hard work in therapy, I take my meds, respect my body (no cutting, no starving), got sober, and continue to write my way out of hell and into health. Sobriety and stability are clarifying and being a Mother in recovery means showing our children that they don’t have to stay stuck in a bad situation. By our own example one day at a time, we show them how to persevere, to stay hopeful, to recover and thrive after what seems insurmountable failure. 

    I am mostly happy these days and can hardly remember those years foundering at the bottom of the dark well, the years I believed I would never find joy again, never be the mother I wanted to be for my children again, never write another word that mattered again, never look forward to the next day and the day after that again. Now? I know that I am not (and never was) the scummy, filthy dreg at the bottom of a bottle of booze, and that while I might have been a mad Momma for a time, I have always been loved. Now? I am the safe harbor, my steady beacon blinking: Here-Here-Here-Always Here-Always Here-Always Here.

    Bipolar disorder is not curable, but it is manageable; sobriety is hard even on the easy days; and I fought to regain my life and my life with my children.

    Know this to be true: if you are where I was, please do not despair because you are worth fighting for, skinned knuckles and scraped knees, bruises and blood. Fight for your life, your joy, your own self-love. The world wants you back, the light is waiting, and your children are here.

    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

  • 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

  • Serena Williams Discusses Postpartum Depression

    Serena Williams Discusses Postpartum Depression

    “I think people need to talk about it more because it’s almost like the fourth trimester, it’s part of the pregnancy.”

    Tennis champ Serena Williams said she struggled with postpartum depression after giving birth to her daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.

    “Honestly, sometimes I still think I have to deal with it,” she said in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK. “I think people need to talk about it more because it’s almost like the fourth trimester, it’s part of the pregnancy.”

    The pressure of wanting to be a good mom, maybe to a fault, weighed on the new mother. “I remember one day, I couldn’t find Olympia’s bottle and I got so upset I started crying… because I wanted to be perfect for her,” she said.

    The tennis superstar endured a complicated birth, which began with an emergency C-section, followed by more surgery for a pulmonary embolism and a large hematoma, a swelling of clotted blood, in her abdomen.

    But now that she’s recovering—already winning matches in the French Open before she withdrew from the tournament due to a pectoral injury on Monday (June 4)—she’s putting family first, ahead of tennis, and working on being a good role model for 9-month-old Alexis Jr.

    “I hope I am, and I’m going to strive to be the best mom I can be,” she said.

    Part of what makes her a good role model is her healthy attitude toward body image—something that didn’t come easy. Williams, who started competing professionally as a teen, endured a lot of body shaming for much of her career.

    “It was hard for me. People would say I was born a guy, all because of my arms, or because I’m strong,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I was different to Venus: she was thin and tall and beautiful, and I am strong and muscular—and beautiful, but, you know, it was just totally different.”

    She said in another interview, “People are entitled to have their opinions, but what matters most is how I feel about me, because that’s what’s going to permeate the room I’m sitting in. It’s going to make you feel that I have confidence in myself whether you like me or not, or you like the way I look or not, if I do.”

    The 23-time Grand Slam champion is more focused on her daughter’s happiness. “I can show Olympia that I struggled, but now I’m happy with who I am and what I am and what I look like. Olympia was born and she had my arms, and instead of being sad and fearful about what people would say about her, I was just so happy.”

    View the original article at thefix.com