
“No, not my daughter. She’s had such a privileged life, was given so many advantages, this couldn’t be happening to her.”
This is what I told myself for a long time. I simply couldn’t believe that my daughter would throw her life away like this. “This sort of thing happens to other people’s children.” Well, I got rid of that arrogance very quickly. Her behavior was undeniably that of a full-blown substance abuser, deep in the disease. This was the child I had raised, not other people’s children.
She stole everything that wasn’t nailed down in the house. When she said we must have been robbed, I believed her and called the police. I swallowed her lies hook, line and sinker. When she stole my identity, twice, the credit card company called me and encouraged me to call the authorities. I blew them off and said I would take care of it. I did nothing, afraid of the consequences she would face. I lacked the courage to do the right thing.
Those consequences might have taught her a lesson. But by helping her to avoid them, she was emboldened to do more. This is what my denial had wrought; my daughter was a runaway train, having abandoned the moral code I taught all my kids when they were little, caught in the grip of a cruel disease that had claimed her for 23 years. Maybe if I had faced the truth early on, things would have been different. Or maybe not. I needed to accept the fact that my part in her disease was insignificant.
I don’t beat myself up with guilt anymore. I, too, have been in recovery for 23 years. And I have learned something important in the rooms: I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. I have since learned a lot and I know more, about denial, enabling, and preventing my child from facing the consequences of her actions.
Yes, this is one of my many mantras: “I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.”
No more guilt. Just love and compassion for the both of us. Amen to that.