My mom's little girl

So I asked my mom to read some ACoA lit, so that we could begin to talk about the elephant in the room - our alcoholic family. My mom left my dad when I was around 13, and she did a lot of work on herself to the point where we have had a fairly good relationship, but we haven't discussed or healed from our painful past. I decided to give it a go by asking her to read some books to inform herself. I felt that was the best way to broach the subject and I was so angry at her that I didn't trust myself to give her the information in an impartial way. I wanted her to learn about alcoholic families first and make her own connections.

So, she called me Sunday and said she read the first book I suggested, Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome by Kritsberg, in one sitting. She said she went through a whole tissue box too. All those years she thought she was protecting us, she realized she wasn't. She said she saw me and my two brothers throughout the book. She apologized for getting help for herself, but for not getting us help and for not seeing how much pain I was in. When she asked how I was doing, I shrugged and said I was fine, and she regretted not probing more and taking my responses at face value. She hopes I can forgive her. I told her that I do too, but I have to feel the anger that's been coming up before I can forgive her. I said I wanted to continue talking about it because it's not the type of thing that's resolved in one conversation. She was open to that and even got online to look up Al-Anon meetings. All in all, she responded better than I could have hoped to all this. I've been trying to turn it over, but must admit I've been feeling a lot of anxiety about how our relationship will play out now that I'm in recovery. With one brother not speaking to me, I feared losing another relationship in my family. I know people have survived and recovered without the support of their loved ones, but I also knew it would be very painful for me to experience that lack of support from my mom.

She also shared with me some fascinating details about her past that I never knew. She said reading the book made her realize and remember a lot about her own childhood. She said her dad wasn't an alcoholic, but he had a very volatile temper. She remembered him throwing her and her sisters on the bed and beating them. She relayed a painful memory of her older sister going out with a boy she wasn't supposed to in high school and when she got home, her dad was waiting for her on the front porch. He beat her with a belt on the front lawn and then dragged her inside and continued to beat her. My mom said the next day at breakfast, nobody said anything or talked about what had happened. She didn't want to tell me those stories about her dad because she wanted me to love my grandpa, who died 10 years ago. She shared that two of her sisters were molested by her younger brother. Her family was totally dysfunctional. She said that she was always walking on eggshells and reading the book made her remember the constant fear she grew up in.

This conversation with my mom definitely filled in a missing piece in my story. I was wondering why my mom would have been attracted to my dad, and why she put up with him for 25 years. She grew up with the same rules Kristberg identifies in alcoholic families - denial, isolation, silence and rigidity. I wondered if my mom had become a co-de through living with my dad, or if she found my dad because of her co-dependency. It was a chicken or egg conundrum that I wanted resolved - and now it is. My mom wants to talk to some family members to find out if her paternal grandpa was an alcoholic, which would mean that my grandpa was like me, and my paternal grandpa, the adult child of an alcoholic. She also shared that one of her uncles was an alcoholic who died of liver complications. I think knowing that my mom was also once a little girl living in fear will help me to get over the anger I have towards her. My mom has an inner child too and it seems that she's never done the work that I'm doing now to heal her, so maybe this is something we can experience and share together.

I really recommend Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome. It's a great, easy read that really breaks down the dynamics of alcoholic families. I think it's a good read for adult children, co-des raising children, and recovering addicts alike since all of us probably have similar upbringings and without recovery, we re-create the rules and roles we learned as children when we start our own families. See review of the book on Guess What Normal Is.

Repressed Anger

One of the things that really hurt and surprised me as I began to go through the recovery process - well first a word on recovery. So I'm new to all this stuff and am just now embracing the word "recover" at all, and here's my understanding of it so far.

First, I was open to learning about Adult Children of Alcoholics and curious about the idea that growing up in the kind of home that I did could have had a lasting effect on me today in relationships, work, and life in general. Then, I educated myself through books, websites, and after I got the nerve up - Al-Anon meetings. As I educated myself, I began to remember things and put them into a framework of things that families of alcoholics do and feel. I was able to look at my memories in a new way and think, "That was my mom in denial." Or... "That was my dad and his alcoholism demanding perfection from me." It was really liberating to be able to understand so many interactions by thinking of them from an educated viewpoint instead of from the viewpoint of a little girl who had no idea why these people who were supposed to love and support her were always so angry.

And then I started to feel really angry and sorry for myself. Most of my anger was targeted at my mom, which was weird to me, because she wasn't the alcoholic. But, since we now have what I would have previously described as a close relationship, I had blocked out a lot of my memories of her and the hurtful way she treated me. My dad's problems were more obvious to me, as was my anger toward him. I was angry at him most of my life, but as I've gotten older, I've felt more protective and sympathetic toward him, so maybe round 2 of repressed anger will be for him. We'll see. As these memories came back to me - sometimes hazily and sometimes in razor sharp flashes, I remembered how unavailable my mom was to me and how much it hurt growing up.

My dad was an alcoholic and the younger of my 2 older brothers, "John" was a drug addict by the age of 13. Clearly, my mom had her plate full, and around the time they sent John off to Hazelden in Minnesota for rehab, my mom decided to leave my dad. My mom told me recently that she started going to Al-Anon meetings around 1990 and eventually left my dad in 1996, between the years I was in 8th and 9th grades. Needless to say, this was a tumultuous time at home for everyone.

What really angered me though, was that my mom sought help in a fellowship and got herself out of a toxic relationship, but I feel that she left me behind. I split time between my mom and dad, and after my dad got physically violent with me one day, I stayed with her for most of the time from when I was around 16 on. So, it's not that she left me behind physically. But, she got help for herself, and she got John help through counseling, expensive rehab programs, etc. and it felt like since I didn't have an urgent diagnosis, I didn't get anything. It was as though by removing herself from the situation, she solved all the problems, but that didn't do anything for me and my relationship with my father.

She never offered to get me a therapist or bought me a book about alcoholism or even really sat down to talk to me about how I felt about everything that was going on. I know she mentioned Alateen to me and asked if I wanted to go, but I was so lost inside myself that I didn't have any idea what I needed and I just told her that I didn't have a drinking problem - dad did. I know I was stubborn as a teenager and she told me so many times herself. But now looking back on it, I didn't accept things that she offered because I harbored a lot of resentment and pain. I wish she had tried more, pushed more, because now I'm 27 and I've never dealt with any of this and I'm learning now that it doesn't go away on its own. I was the scapegoat of the family - more on that later. But basically my parents blamed many little things on me instead of accepting responsibility for the elephants in the room.

As I thought more about my interactions with my mom growing up, I couldn't remember a single positive thing that she had told me from the 6th grade on. She said I dressed like an orphan (grunge was in), I was an embarassment to the family, my friends were rude, my room was dark and messy, I was irresponsible (got that one a lot), I didn't put on makeup correctly, I was selfish, etc. The same messages came from my dad too, but I had forgotten how much my mom played into the negativity. I'm not as angry now as I was when I first started having these memories, but it still brings tears to my eyes as I write this.

Intro

Where to begin? From the beginning? Oh, god, that would take far too long. Okay, let's start from the beginning of this year. I had moved in with my boyfriend of about a year and as that relationship quickly deteriorated, I found myself looking for places again by March. Looking for apartments in New York is hellish. I'm sure it sucks anywhere in the world, but New York realtors are a particular breed that magically turn hallway closets into "1/2 bedrooms".

Anyway, that's when shit really went down. On March 23rd, my dad was hospitalized for pneumonia, but then suffered multiple complications and ended up in the ICU on a ventilator and unconscious for about 2 months. I went back to California for a month to be there through this time. The doctors gave us a very grim prognosis for my dad, saying that he would probably never be able to live on his own again, if he survived at all. Thinking and preparing for the thought of my dad dying brought up a lot of issues, memories, and conflict. My dad is an alcoholic and was drinking actively to the point of his hospitalization. I was in close contact with my mom and 2 brothers who all live out West. Being around my family again and trying to work together on issues around my dad's affairs was difficult and painful.

When I returned to New York, after my dad started to recover (thankfully), I was having a very hard time living my life here because of conflicts with other members of my family and because of the pressure and concern for my dad's health. A friend mentioned that some of the issues I was having were very typical of co-dependent relationships. I flinched at the word, thinking of it in its application to couples who live in their couple bubble. But she explained it as the type of relationship people often develop with addicts and she suggested I do some reading on it. Let's call this friend Hope, because she has helped me through so many tough times, and I'm sure I'll be talking about her a lot.

So, I did some reading (and a lot of crying) and I completely identified with the feelings and experiences of co-dependents. I picked up Adult Children of Alcoholics and must have read it in one sitting. Well, the rest is not quite history because that was only a couple of months ago. I've since started attending a weekly Al-Anon meeting and I continue to unpeel the onion of recovery. I know now that I'm far from the only one who has my problems, but I've always been a writer at heart and lately I have a lot I'm thinking about that I want to share with others. I can do this in a number of ways - through connecting with friends, going to meetings, and through this blog. I'm looking forward to connecting with people like me out there, since I now realize there are a lot of you and I would love to hear from you and about your experiences.