Love, Change, and Moving Forward

Memoir Excerpt:

“My Twelve-Step recovery, so far, has brought me a great deal of gratitude and serenity, mostly when I remember that voice from God telling me to let go of control and resistance. Yet there’s another part of me that hurts terribly when I witness the destruction of my daughter at the hands of Addiction. How can I be well while Angie is so sick? I’ve spent all these years searching for an answer.

Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye, in an interview discussing her own grief about losing her mother, says this: “I’m changed by it, the way a tree is changed by having to grow around an obstacle.

It’s the subliminal mother force in me. Grief and loss—they change us. I keep getting beamed onto Planet X, then back again, my molecules getting rearranged every time. Just as Angie has changed, so have I. I’ve loved my daughter as best I could for half of my life. How can losing her to this living death not change me?”

4 thoughts on “Love, Change, and Moving Forward

  1. I couldn’t stop reading, I am the mother of a child that sufferes from this disease…
    Every thing I have read here explains exactly how I am feeling….I want more.
    Is this a book ? If so how can I order one.
    Thank you, I feel there is someone out there that knows what I am going through….I’m not alone.

    Sincerely, Trini

    1. Thank you, Trini. We are SO not alone in this. Yes, this is an excerpt from my recovery memoir: A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie C. Romero (my pen name). On the Homepage of this website is a picture of the cover and the Amazon link to buy it. It healed me tremendously from my grief around Angie by writing it, and I hope it will help you some by reading my story. Blessings to you and all of us mothers on this difficult journey.

  2. “How can I be well while angie is so sick” this is exactly what I am struggling with, my daughter is only 16 and left home 2 months ago. I don’t know how to live apart from this, how not to grieve for her every day. I have begged her to come home and get help and she refuses. I am going through so many emotions its hard to get through the day without crying and God forbid someone asks me how I am doing or how she’s doing. I’m a mess of emotional garbage.

    1. Kimberly, my heart goes out to you and all mothers going through this. We feel so helpless. But we are powerless over drug addiction. It’s a very cruel disease, and only the person afflicted with it can take the steps necessary to recover from it. Becoming a member of Naranon and Alanon changed my life for the better because I picked up tools there to deal with the enormous challenges facing parents and loved ones of addicts. I learned many, many things in those rooms, but above all I learned to accept the things in life that I cannot change. And I learned to be grateful for all the other blessings in my life. This is not dropping the ball with your daughter; it’s placing the responsibility for recovery squarely on her shoulders where it belongs. And it’s re=
      claiming your life. God Bless.

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