Guilt and Redemption

“We Are All Broken. That’s How The Light Gets In.”

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“This journey of mine, this parenting journey, would involve going two steps forward sometimes and then three steps backward. It was not vertical progress I was making, but it was progress. And strangely, the more I kept the focus on myself and striving to be happy, the easier it was to let go of my child. I knew I had paid my dues, and I feared no one’s judgment, least of all God’s.

I’ve railed at God many, many times during these twenty-three years of joy and pain, this God they speak of at Twelve-Step meetings. How many times had I sinned in my life? Many, more than I want to remember. And so the child in me had been sure, earlier on, that I was being punished for all of them. It was my karmic payback. “What goes around comes around,” etc. Indeed, for all of my life, before my breakdown, I had no faith in anything or anyone other than myself. I grew up very lonely and isolated, and if there was a god, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. So I learned to be very independent and self-reliant.

But when I finally found myself on my knees, I felt broken and whole at the same time: broken because my MO for dealing with my problems hadn’t been working; and whole because I finally let myself believe in something outside of myself to strengthen me, to fill in the gaps that were missing in me, and to help me cope. I was starting to develop and cling to a faith that assured me that I was not being punished and that I would be OK in the end, no matter what happened to my daughter. And I realized that fighting her battles for her was not only a waste of time; it was also useless and of questionable value.

My energies, spent though they were, would be better directed toward reclaiming my own life, which had been sorely compromised in the fight to save my daughter. And in reclaiming my own life, I was bidding for my redemption, long overdue, but just within my reach. This was my journey now, I knew it; I sadly accepted it. I wanted us to be connected but we weren’t. I wanted her struggle to be our struggle, but it wasn’t. I wanted to save her life but I couldn’t. I could only save my own. And I’d keep working at it—or this relentless disease would claim two more victims instead of one.” ~Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie Romero, 2014

“Life Is A Box Of Chocolates…”

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From Courage to Change, March 12:

“What does another person’s mood, tone of voice, or state of inebriation have to do with my course of action? Nothing— unless I decide otherwise….

Detachment with love means that I stop depending on what others do, say, or feel to determine my own well-being or to make my decisions. When faced with other people’s destructive attitudes or behavior, I can love their best and never fear their worst.

‘Detachment is not caring less, it’s caring more for my own sanity.’”

Well, it took me a long time to get to this place, where I felt I deserved to be sane and healthy. I needed to shed a lot of baggage—things like guilt, low self-worth, and the thrill of martyrdom—in order for Al-Anon to work its magic on me. Guilt, in particular, cripples us and puts at risk when we need to set limits. Not until I did this was I able to set healthy boundaries with the people in my life. Like all card-carrying codependents, I didn’t know where I ended and the other person began. I was enmeshed in everyone’s difficulties, my daughter’s most of all, which effectively kept me from facing myself in the mirror and dealing with my own defects and resulting problems.

I’ve learned many healthy life skills in my program of recovery, and I would pass them on whenever I could. As Forest Gump’s mom would say: “Life is a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” That’s true of course. But the secret of being happy is making the best of what you get, no matter what that may be.

Getting Out Of The Way

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I’m a mother. When my kids were little, it was my job to keep them safe from harm. If they ran across the street with a car coming, I might have spanked them a little so they’d remember to look both ways the next time. Yes: pain; yes: consequences. Yes: both good teachers.

But when my daughter was twenty-one and started making terrible choices, I still thought it was my job to protect her from harm, self-inflicted or otherwise. And I still treated her like a two-year-old.

When she first stole from me early on, I went into a long period of denial and guilt, minimizing my feelings and believing her incredible explanations. My inaction only emboldened her, and she went on to steal in other ways. Several times, she stole my identity, with no explanations. So even when it was clear to me that her behavior was sociopathic, I still behaved inappropriately: I did nothing. Even when the credit card company told me to do something—that it would be a lesson for her—I still did nothing.

Where was the smack on the rear she would have gotten from running across the street? Where were the consequences that would have reminded her to be careful? I presented her with no consequences in the beginning of her illness and so she learned nothing. Her progressive illness got much worse. My guilt was crippling me as an effective parent.

Not until I started working my own program of recovery in Al-Anon was I able to release myself from the hold that was strangling us both. I needed to get out of my daughter’s way. She wasn’t two anymore.

I’ve made a lot of progress since those early days. I’ve learned to let go and leave her to the life she has chosen. Four rehabs helped her turn her life around for a while, yet she always slipped back into her substance abuse disorder and the life that goes with it. But staying out of the way has given me the freedom to take back my life and learn to live joyfully by focusing on my blessings. It has also given her the freedom to take responsibility for her own life and hopefully her own recovery. If she reaches for it again, and I pray she will, how much more rewarding it will be for her to find her own way!

Walking Through Cancer/Part 17 continued

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                                                         Healing

When I was seeing a counselor at work in Virginia, she suggested I try a 12-Step group called Al-Anon.

“Oh no, that’s not for me,” I responded, convinced that I had all the answers to Annie’s problem. Yet I was desperate for help, and was willing to try anything, so I began attending a regular Saturday morning meeting. But I was essentially paying lip service to a program I was too arrogant to believe in. I felt I had all the answers and was unable to accept her substance use disorder as a disease I had no control over.

The first three steps of all the 12-Step programs are the “God Steps.” We admit we are powerless over whatever it is that we are trying to free ourselves from; in my case, trying to control my daughter. But I needed to learn to let go of Annie. “Let go or be dragged,” they say in Al-Anon.

After six years of attending meetings, and still unable to save her with the only kind of love I could offer, I suffered the clinical depression I spoke of in the previous segment. That’s when Gene and I left Virginia and moved to New Mexico. We enjoyed a decade of living in “the land of enchantment.” But Annie was still floundering, and I stepped up my drinking. I couldn’t bear the pain of losing her.

My son and his wife had moved to Seattle for work, and they started having children.

“Mom, please think about moving up here with us so you can be closer to the children and watch them grow up.”

This was a no-brainer for me and Gene. We had spent the early years of our lives together paddling canoes all over the country, so being near water to continue that pursuit would complete us. It was the one thing that was missing in the desert of New Mexico.

I quickly sold the condo I owned in Virginia and bought a nice home on Camano Island, an hour north of Seattle. Gene wasn’t quite ready to let go of his orchard and the sunshine of New Mexico, so we went back and forth between our two homes for four years. But we eventually got tired of all the fence-sitting and made a decision to sell our little pueblo house to live full-time on Camano Island.

Life was good. I had begun publishing award-winning memoirs while still living in New Mexico, and was about to publish my second one in 2020. Having joined Story Circle Network in 2013, I used their publications to write  a number of short pieces and see them in print. Story Circle Network is an outstanding and versatile organization founded by Susan Wittig Albert back in the 1990’s, specifically as a venue to encourage women to find their voices and write.

Between that and publishing my memoirs, the catharsis I needed to open my eyes and begin the healing process had begun.

Boundaries And Self-Regard

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“If you bring me peace then you get more of my time. Simple.”

I read this online a few months ago and I’m so struck by the message, the tone, the unapologetic boundary setting. How many of us can say this to our loved one, whether it’s our child or our third cousin? This is a hard one for me. It puts my own needs first. And good self-care is something I’ve learned late in my life.

Early on in my daughter’s disease, I allowed her to be a battering ram. She was very abusive to me. Now, I know that it was the drugs talking. (“What we allow will continue.”) But I was stunned, ashamed and feeling overly responsible at the time. I thought I deserved her wish to punish me (martyrdom).

What a relief to finally reach a place where I feel worthy of some peace and joy. This has come after several years of working on myself and changing some self-defeating attitudes. Going into reverse, I’m no longer ashamed, and I know I’m not responsible. May we all reach a place where we can deal effectively and intelligently with this baffling disease. And not be destroyed by it. God Bless!

The Achilles Heel Of Parent Guilt

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“Regardless of cause, history, or contributing factors, feeling guilty about your past role in the development of a teenager’s problem behavior will risk sabotaging your parenting goals. For a more focused relationship with your teenager,

  1. Recognize guilt as negative self-talk that is normal, but that can be managed and stopped.
  2. Acknowledge that a desire for relief from guilt places you at risk for changing the rules, boundaries, and standards that you want followed.
  3. Seek professional counseling or other support to help you act more consistently and proactively, feel better about tough choices, and be less encumbered by what happened in the past.”

Feeling better about tough choices was always my Waterloo. But now I say over and over again that I did the best I could with what I knew. Now that I know better, I can do better. Repeat this mantra over and over again until you believe it.

Memoir Excerpt

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“All my children had finished college and had spread their wings. Caroline lived in San Francisco, and Carter was about to leave for Austin to get his master’s. But Annie was still living in the area, utterly transformed by the disease of substance use disorder. I bore witness, close-up, to unbelievable changes in her character, shocking new behaviors, as I experienced a mother’s bewildering sadness and grief. I felt sometimes, like going to bed and staying there.

              Exploding into my living room a year later with a pit bull and an overflowing suitcase, her eyes were blood red as she pleaded with me.

             ‘Mom, help me. I can’t do this anymore!’

              Of course I’ll help you, my darling girl. We’ll arrange for another rehab, and I know it will work this time.

             ‘Annalise,’ I told her without giving her a choice, ‘I’m taking you to Arlington Hospital. They can help you there. Where is your car? How did you get here?’

             ‘My car was stolen. I got a ride here,’ she said, looking toward the door, wild-eyed. ‘Please get me out of here. I need help.’

             ‘Honey, it’ll be okay,’ I offered. ‘I’m sure they’ll give you something to calm you in the hospital.’

            Thank God Gene was living with me then and happened to be home.

             ‘Gene,” I was trembling, ‘you need to take Dante to the animal shelter in Alexandria. I’m sure they’ll find a home for him.’ I wasn’t sure of that at all, but it helped Annie say goodbye to her dog.

             I got in the car with her and drove the short distance away, illegally parking right at the entrance. The staff checked her in to the psych ward. As I turned to leave, Annie suddenly approached me, panicked. Of course she was afraid. She was putting herself in a situation where she would have to stop abusing drugs as long as she was there.

              ‘Annie,’ warmly offering her a hug, ‘Gene and I will visit you every day. And Dad and Paula will come over from Georgetown, too. Just try to get better. We all love and miss you so much.’

              She turned away from me and followed the nurse. The door to the psych ward slammed behind her. It only opened in one direction. She was locked in.

              And I was locked out. I still couldn’t accept the fact that Annie was a runaway train—and I couldn’t stop the wreckage. It was October, 2007, my favorite time of year. But I was blind to the autumn beauty all around me. The world appeared bleak and colorless.

              After I got home, I repeated Psalm 23 over and over again: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…’

            I was praying as hard as I could. But not hard enough.

           Total Wine wasn’t far from my condo. I popped in there for an economy-size bottle of Chardonnay, not even waiting for the change. The twist-off cap let me start right there in the parking lot. Once again I felt rattled and sick with worry. Alcohol was how I was finding my courage more and more in those days. The courage to watch my daughter fall into the rabbit hole of substance use disorder and be helpless to stop her.

Mirror, mirror…I was following her down that hole.

By the time Gene returned from taking Annie’s dog to the shelter, I’d finished about half of the bottle, was terribly drunk, dizzy, and sprawled on the sofa, wailing out loud.

‘I’ll never do this again, make me promise! This is the last time!’

Gene just held my hand.”

© Marilea C. Rabasa and Gene Dunne, 2023. Excerpt from Gene and Toots: A Story of Love…and Recovery (Sidekick Press).

An Important Distinction

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A few years ago, I was reading about one of my favorites, Naomi Judd, and how she sadly died by suicide. This is what her daughter, Ashley, said about her death:

“When we’re talking about mental illness, it’s very important to be clear and to make the distinction between our loved one and the disease,” she continued. “It’s very real … it lies, it’s savage.”

Hmmm…

I believe that. We all know how substance use disorder can change our kids: change their minds, change their lifestyle, change the values we taught them. In my daughter’s case, as long as drugs were flooding her system, she ceased to be the daughter I raised. So yes, I make the distinction Ashley has called for. And I pray that someday the general public will have as much compassion for our lost children.

I remember my daughter before this disease took her away from me. And I take comfort in those memories—because I can separate her from her disease. It’s a surreal exercise, I know. But remembering our children as they were—and as they can be again—is profoundly comforting to me. It doesn’t change the present, but it puts things into perspective. Smile about the birthday parties and the piñatas. They happened. I did my best with who I was at the time.

We all did.

Expectations

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In recovery, we learn to profoundly adjust our expectations, hard as it is. We raised one child, and now we have another. We are all too aware of the change that drugs have produced in our children. A parent wrote in Sharing Experience, Strength and Hope ( the SESH book) a very revealing statement, something I could have written myself. It is a key to understanding my story, my mother and father’s stories, and my daughter’s painful struggle:

“I expected my children to be perfect, to always do the right thing. I tried to control them by giving them direction and making them do things in a way that I felt was correct! When they didn’t, I could not handle it.

I could not accept their drug use and I felt that their behavior was a reflection on me. I was embarrassed for myself and scared to death for them. I became so distrusting of my children that I showed them no respect. I would meddle and invade their privacy looking for any excuse to challenge and confront them.

When I came to Nar-Anon, I learned that my interference and my attempts at controlling them were actually standing in the way of their recovery. I learned to let go of the control I never had in the first place.”

In an earlier blog, “Redemption and Freedom,” I said, “I would finally, thank God, let go of the oppressive burden I was placing on my daughter by demanding she get well so that I could be OK.”  This is a difficult statement for some of us to make.

I’m very codependent; my daughter’s active drug addiction shook me to the core and made me decidedly unwell. Her illness had the power to ruin my day (and my life) before I got into a recovery program and started practicing the concept of detachment with love.

This concept has placed me at a healthy distance from my daughter so that I could view her situation with some objectivity and respond to her with intelligence and compassion. I’m very grateful for the education I’ve received in the rooms of recovery. I will always love her and I grieve the loss of her. But there are other people in my life, and I want to stay well for them. Thank you, Nar-Anon, for helping me reclaim my life!

Staying Out Of The Weeds

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Before I went into recovery, I was pretty lost. On the outside, my life seemed to be rolling along well. But on the inside, I was insecure and sad. I dealt with these feelings in unhealthy ways, but didn’t feel much pressure to change them. I never missed a day of work, and I appeared to be fine. But appearances can be deceiving. Nothing had yet occurred to call my choices into question. Nothing had happened yet to push me out of my complacency.

But when my middle child fell ill with substance use disorder, after I had tried and failed over and over again to save her, I broke. The carefully manicured life I had been living was a treasured glass from my cupboard, smashed onto the kitchen floor. There were many little shards, and some big ones. I cut my fingers cleaning it up.

My recovery fellowship comes with a philosophy that teaches me many different things. And one of those things is to forgive myself and others for transgressions inevitably committed in our lives. Our common humanity dovetails at every meeting I go to, where we encourage ourselves to face our defects, let them go, and move on.

For years, I held on to mine to punish myself for my part in Annie’s disease, and most importantly, for failing to “save” her. I have learned, gratefully, that my daughter suffers from substance use disorder, as do I, and I could no more save her from it than if she’d had diabetes. I simply don’t have that power.

So I try to stay away from martyrdom and self-pity, because neither of those feelings will help Annie get well, and they hurt me a great deal. That’s where the weeds are. They muddy the waters; they keep me angry and sad. When I steer clear of them, it takes some of the sting out of losing my daughter. I can more easily open my heart to what remains in my life.

Staying in the weeds—a murky place— prevents me from changing and growing. My recovery fellowship provides the tools to accomplish those two things, with gentleness and kindness. It’s hard, hard work. But when I see positive results in real time I’m encouraged to keep at it. There’s no graduation from this school of life.

The miracle of my recovery is that my eyes can see my life through another lens now, one full of gratitude, humor and love. The fruits of my recovery rest on these three things.