By the Grace of God

Tell me a bit of your story of recovery, what life was like before and what it’s like now.

Well, I was born as an only child into a very tumultuous relationship with my parents. There is a lot of alcoholism that runs in my family. My parents divorced when I was five; I lived with my mom, and we moved about 17 times. I had a very transient lifestyle. I went to 17 different schools, so I developed the ability to become a chameleon. I was a very shy, awkward and unsettled person. I never felt like I fit in anywhere, and I remember from a very young age, always feeling “less than”. I just generally felt odd and different.

I met alcohol in high school, and I found it to be just okay. I did a lot of stupid things while drinking, so it was never really my first choice. Then I had a surgery when I was 16 and I met opiates. With opiates, I felt like I had really found my great panacea because I could take them and not make a fool of myself while still maintaining the feeling that everything was “okay”. What it boiled down to was the fact that I was simply uneasy in life. I had a lot of emotions and feelings of abandonment by my father, as well as a lot of issues with abuse from him. So, in finding this great panacea, I felt better temporarily. I had periods of casual use, just on the weekends and whenever I could get it. There wasn’t really an opiate epidemic back then (in the 80s).

I did some street drugs in college (coke, acid, ecstasy, etc.), but then I broke away from that because no one really did that in my college; so I drank like everyone else. I made some really big and bad choices drinking. I once fell down the stairs while drinking with a champagne glass in my hand. It cut my face open, and I now have a 4” scar. I really didn’t keep up with my grades in school. I remember feeling like I just wanted to escape. I kind of felt like, at that point, that I was really just destined to be an alcoholic. I thought that was simply going to be who I was.

When I left college, my opiate addiction grew. By that time, they had started prescribing more things and weren’t monitoring things as they should have. When I was 25, I went to treatment out of town, in Tennessee (in order to hide the fact that I was an addict in my home town…a futile attempt). I got sober, but relapsed very shortly after and ended up going back to the same treatment center six months later and staying sober for eight years.

While I was sober, I got married, I found a career, and I had two children. When I got married, I had these ideas of what I needed to fix my life: I wanted the right husband, the right job, the right community, the right this and that. I wanted labels to make me feel whole, like I was participating in life…that was my identity. I was very materialistic (even though I was sober); I wanted fancy cars and fancy houses, etc.

My husband and I divorced five years after we got married. I moved out and stayed sober a little longer before relapsing. I got into a relationship with a gentleman that left me for the babysitter. I hadn’t been working my program at the time. I was going to meetings, but it was kind of ancillary. I wasn’t plugged into the program at all. When he broke up with me, it shattered me because I had all these ideas that it was perfect and that we were going to get married, etc.

I ended up using, and when I did, I started using heavier stuff because opiates just weren’t doing it for me anymore. A friend of mine (whose children went to school with my children) was an IV drug user, so I started using the needle with her. Within six months of meeting the needle, I had lost my house, my condo, my six figure job, (most importantly) my children, and my standing in the community. I think the only thing I had left was my Tahoe (for which my ex-husband paid the final notes) and my dog.

I went to treatment in 2010, and I really thought I was serious that time. When I got out of treatment after 60 days, I had all of these ideas that I was going to pick my life up right where it left off…I was going to get my kids back, get my six figure job back, etc. I thought it was just a minor bump in my road, but that is not at all what happened. Things just didn’t work out that way. My kids were very messed up; they never wanted to live with their dad in the beginning, so when they were taken away from me and had to live with them, it damaged and hurt them deeply. I was also working a $10 an hour job, and my life just generally wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. Looking back, I had never really surrendered. I thought it was as simple as being removed from the drug for a little while and getting back on track right afterward. Let me just say that I had a rude awakening.

At that point, my ex-husband had temporary custody of my children, but I ended up losing complete custody in December of 2010, after getting sober. Actually, there was a court hearing without my knowledge (I wasn’t notified), so I wasn’t even there for court. When he got custody of them, it started a progression over the next two years of going to treatment, getting sober and trying to do the right thing and then my expectations of getting my kids back would get dashed and I would go back out.

I thought I was sincere when I got out of treatment after losing them. I went to 90 meetings in 90 days and I worked with a sponsor. I felt really sincere about it, but I had some more research to do. Finally, I had gotten kicked out of a halfway house and was living with a friend of mine in March of 2013, and she pinned me down and asked me if I was using. When I finally told her that I was, she gave me 24 hours to get out of her house.

So, I was very reluctant to go back to treatment, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t really want to go because I didn’t believe it was going to work. I had been to treatment seven times, I’m an intelligent person, and I know the Big Book as well as 12 steps. The days of fancy treatment centers were over. I was in a state run facility that had three showers for 36 women. I remember telling someone in a meeting while I was in treatment that it was my seventh time, and that it wasn’t going to work for me. He said, “I thought that same way; just take it one day at a time.” It was as close to prison as I ever want to get, but it was exactly what I needed.

I’m not sure why it clicked. I know that when I was ten days into detox, I didn’t think I could do it. In my mind, I just wanted to leave. Usually when I went to treatment, I was the star student and I could really tell them what I knew they wanted to hear, but this time was different. I didn’t feel like I had it in me…I was done with life. I really did not have any hope, and I had abandoned the idea that I was going to get my kids back.

I opened up my 12&12 and saw the very first line at the top that read “God is either everything, or He is nothing.” And I said to Him, “okay, you can be everything.” I prayed, and the next day I felt a little bit better. And the day after that, I felt a little bit better. And 35 days into treatment, I left and went into a three quarter house. I stayed there for 20 months and in that time I had a lot of life changes. My son talked to me pretty freely, but my daughter would not speak to me. Every time I would call, it would hurt. But I believed that when the time was right, God would bring them back into my life. I knew that focusing on that couldn’t be my sole engine for staying sober. So, I did what I was supposed to do. I got a sponsor that had 37 years in the program, I worked the steps, and I started sponsoring women.

I went through some emotional things…my son ended up with a brain tumor about which my ex-husband neglected to tell me (I found out through a friend). My best friend died the same day that my son had brain surgery. I didn’t have a lot to cling to at that point except God and the program. I used the tools that I learned…I got very centered, I did a lot of meditation, and I got through it. A year later, I finally was able to, through the courts, go and visit my kids. Two months later, I got full custody of my children.

Many people asked me if I was going to move back to Alabama where my kids lived and I would tell them no. I knew that my support system was here, my entire recovery was here (in Baton Rouge). I felt like that if God wanted them in my life, He would move them here. And He did just that; they’ve lived with me for two months now. I think what changed in me this time is that I was really destitute; my needs became my wants and my wants became my needs. I no longer was looking to “keep up with the Jones’”, I wasn’t trying to be anything I wasn’t, I just wanted to live right, do the right things and be right-sized. I didn’t want to be the best, I didn’t want to be the worst, and I just wanted to be what I was supposed to be.

And what I gained was a peace that has sustained me through all of life’s things…through my son’s surgery, through my best friend’s death, through moves and job losses. It is all unshakable because it’s inside of me. The peace that has settled within me only comes from God, it’s not something I could have manufactured.

When I talk to sponsees, I draw kind of a large kidney shaped circle and I put a concoction of all sorts of different things like shoes, men, houses, cars, jobs, and all of the ideas of “if I had this, then….if I had that, then…”. What it is meant to illustrate is that no amount of things you put in that circle will fill that circle, only God is large enough to fill that circle. When He finally settled down in me and satisfied all of my needs, then I was able to go out and help other women and be peaceful as well as maintain that serenity through some really hard trials and tribulations.

I have lived a lifetime in the last three years. I think that I had to go through all of this so that I can honestly help other women, and be able to say “job or no job, wife or no wife, kids or no kids, you can stay sober.” And I did cry a lot, but I did it relatively peacefully. All I ever wanted to begin with was a sense of peace. Everything is okay whether I have things or I don’t have things…everything is okay. It is truly only by the grace of God that I have my kids because it was a hard fought battle to even get to see them. I hadn’t even seen them in 3 ½ years, and He moved them here.

How are your relationships with your children now?

My relationships with them are definitely repairing, it’s been amazing. We’ll be doing something mundane and I’ll look down with complete gratitude because I get to see my daughter grow up now. I get to see the amazing human being that she’s becoming. I get to help instill in her a sense of right and wrong that I don’t know that I necessarily got when I was her age. Having learned all of these things over the last three years has really helped me be a better person and a better parent. My son is amazing. He’s got an unbreakable spirit. You would never know that he had brain surgery…he’s just great. Probably the worst thing that he does is play X-box. I’m blessed beyond belief.

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