Someone said to me the other day, “This needs to be a brave space.” A brave space, hmmm, I thought, what does that mean? In my work I am always careful to create a “safe space” for the clients I work with but a brave space gives me pause. Does a space need to be safe, in order for it to be brave? Wrapping my mind around this concept I land on vulnerability, and I realize that if the space is truly safe then it is not in actuality, brave. Bravery happens in spaces where our safety is not necessarily guaranteed. That is what makes it brave.
So all that being said, the idea of being brave enough to step into my own vulnerability is ever present on the edges of my thoughts. Having begun this blog as a place to share my story, what I have learned, felt, run from, come back to, cried over, felt joy, humiliation and an endless array of other experiences and emotions, I am moved to wanting to share the part of my story that finds me a mother of a child with the disease of addiction. But the nakedness of vulnerability comes up immediately threatening to engulf me in its jaws, chew me up to itty bits and spit me out for all the world to witness.
My personal search for understanding and peace has been, and continues to be, a work in progress. I suspect it will be a process that carries me through the rest of my years on this earth. I feel no resentment around this possibility, rather an acceptance of this as part of what it means to live a life based on one’s own truth.
Truth be told; the force of loving a grown child who suffers from addiction is a punch to the heart like no other. Living on a rollercoaster of emotions so intense, not able to breathe, or think, or function, in this “Mommy Hell” led me to finding a way to live fully, regardless of this pertinacious disease and my son’s fight against it.
Addiction and other mental illnesses are the only diseases where people are blamed for having them. There are no get well cards or calls of support, hot dishes or flowers when your loved one or you are admitted into rehab or hospital. The deep societal stigma around addiction keeps people from seeking help and, when the courage is mustered to reach out, the system often makes treatment inaccessible. Those lucky enough to find their way into treatment are often released back into the community, sober perhaps, but with all the primary emotional issues that created the drug/alcohol use, left untreated.
But this is not a story about any of that. This is my story. It is not my place to tell my son’s story, his dad’s or his siblings stories around loving someone with the disease of addiction. The only story that I really know intimately is my own and in telling it I know that I own it. I own the guilt, the mistakes, the learning, growing, insight, anger, fear, panic, the false sense of control as well as feeling completely out of control. I own the beliefs I once held that propelled me unwittingly, in that space in between, to choose to fix, worry, pry. I have been working on all of it. Of letting go. Of understanding that these beautiful beings that we brought into this world were ours to keep safe, to nurture, to raise until such a time that they were able to do those things for themselves. But when you have a child suffering from addiction letting go becomes complicated. Complicated for many, many reasons. I am trying to strike a balance of letting go and loving, of supporting without fixing, of reaching out without being sucked in.
In the past I used to think why us? How did this happen?
Now I think, why not us?
Now I think, what is my purpose for living this experience?
Now I think, how do we reduce the stigma around this disease and other mental illnesses?
What follows in the next few blog posts will be part of my journey written along the way in the form of poems, prose, letters that I wrote in moments of grief, anger, and when I thought that I would never feel joy again until my son was safe from this disease.
Truth be told; he will never be completely safe from this horrendous insidious disease. His life will be a process of figuring how to live and keep his disease in check. Daily I remind myself that this is his journey, I can’t, nor should I, try to take it for him. There is still life to be lived, and what I wish, is for me to live my life and he to live his, to the best of our abilities, separately, but with love. In my eyes my son is one of the most courageous people I know, and I will always have the privilege of being his mom.
Pause: The Space In-between 