- Alcohol
- Drugs
My name is Darlene, and I am a mother and grandmother of recovering addicts. My younger brother and I grew up in an alcoholic home. My mother and dad were both alcoholics. They eventually divorced. We stayed with my Dad, and he remarried. My stepmother was an alcoholic and abusive. My only reprieve was my grandmother. I loved staying at her house.
Because of my parents’ alcoholism I stepped into the role of a surrogate mom to my brother. I learned at an early age about how to be an enabler. My grandmother enabled my dad’s alcoholism for years. She paid his bills, saved his house twice and did what she could for us kids. She thought with her heart instead of her head. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but, when it comes to addiction, it is a fatal flaw. My dad and grandmother would also enable my brother with his drug addiction and alcoholism.
I met my ex-husband at school, when I was 15. On our first date he picked me up and had 2 quarts of beer in the glove compartment of his car. I should have run for the hills, but instead I married him at 17. In my head I thought I would have the fairytale marriage and the family I never had as a kid.
At 20 I lost my first child. She died six hours after birth. Thirteen months later I gave birth to my oldest daughter April. I had two more daughters after that. My husband was still drinking, but I thought life was good. I had my kids. I tried to give my kids a fairly normal childhood with oftball, gymnastics, skating parties and birthday parties.
In 1986 I lost my brother. He died two days after Christmas due to liver damage caused by years of drug and alcohol abuse. He was only 30. I loved him like a mother loves her child. I stood and watched him die, and for the first time in my life I couldn’t fix it. I was helpless. When he died, a little part of my heart died with him. I would lose my grandmother three years later.
A year later I divorced my husband of 19 years. I got tired of him coming home in the middle of the night drunk and fighting with me. He was verbally abusive. I had gained a lot of weight, and he would tell me that I was fat, ugly and no one would ever want me. My daughter April loved her dad and would blame me for years for taking him away from her. Out of guilt I allowed my kids to have parties at my house which included alcohol and eventually drugs. I wanted to be their friend and make them happy. You can’t be a mother and a friend. I learned that one the hard way.
The police knew what was going on at my house, so I decided to move and try a fresh start. A geographical change seemed to work for a few years, but I still did not give my kids any discipline. During this time my daughter April gave birth to my first grandchild, a boy. Life was pretty good for the next three years, but, after her second child was born, she started using drugs with her husband. I just couldn’t believe that she was using.
She and the kids would live with me on and off for the next few years. I hated her husband and blamed him for all of this. He introduced her to this way of life, so it had to be his fault. Her first trip to rehab came as a total shock to me. They gave my grandchildren to the other grandmother, and this felt like a knife in my heart.
My daughter would be in and out of rehabs programs, halfway houses and jail for the next ten years. Those were the only times in my life that I could breathe. She was safe and alive. My life was completely consumed with her recovery, and my other two daughters took a backseat to their sister. Every time she would come back from one of these places, I thought this would be the last time and that she would straighten up, take her kids back and life was going to be good again.
The other grandmother got full custody of four of my grandchildren. I couldn’t fix this. I felt helpless and scared. Was I going to get that horrible call in the middle of the night? I would drive through the worst drug areas of the town looking for her. The few times I actually found her she refused to come home with me. Eventually she was homeless with no car and no money. She ended up at a women’s shelter, and that is where her recovery began. This place could do for her what I couldn’t do. They made her accountable. As a mother I thought with my heart and not my head, just like my grandmother had done so many years ago.
When I got the phone call that she was at the shelter and safe once more, I cried with relief. A young man who worked there, a recovering addict himself, hugged me and said four little words that I needed to hear: “It’s not your fault.” I will always love him for saying that.
It has been over six years that my oldest daughter has been clean and sober. She got married again to a wonderful man and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. All of her children are back in her custody. Happily ever after? Not quite. By the time her oldest son came to live with her, he was drinking and using. He is my oldest grandchild, and it just broke my heart to see him headed down that horrible road of addiction. I thank God that he gave my daughter the strength to get her son the help he so desperately needed. She thought with her head and not her heart. He is now living with his dad in a recovery house and has almost eight months clean. I no longer hate my former son-in-law. In fact I almost like him. He stepped up to save his son.
I can finally step back and enjoy all of my children and grandchildren. I might even start a life for myself. I lost myself for so many years in the lives of my loved ones. Today it’s about me and what I want in life. I know now that I can’t “mother” anyone into recovery. Each person has to want it for themselves.