- Drugs
- Mental Health
In a way this story is about my sister because it starts and ends with her. However it’s more than that. It’s a story of my journey to accepting her and loving her for who she is. It’s a story of the challenges and the frustrations that go along with living with and loving someone whose depression is so severe and whose self-worth is so low that she turns to drugs for comfort. It’s a story of our relationship and the healing process we’ve been through and that we continue to work on. It’s a story of love, respect, faith, strength and understanding. It’s a story of hope.
My sister and I were adopted at a young age. We are not biologically related but share the bonds and the burdens that only people who have been adopted can truly appreciate. Our stories and paths from birth to adoption are quite different as are the people we have become. I remember the first time my parents told us what they knew about our lives before we were adopted. I was given up for adoption by my biological mother, supposedly a college-aged woman, and lived with a foster family until my adoption was complete. My sister’s story is that a policeman found her on the train tracks and took her to an orphanage until she was adopted. Nobody knows who left her there or why, and that part of my sister’s story will haunt her for the rest of her life.
My sister grew up thinking that her biological family didn’t want her, and she didn’t have anyone at the orphanage to whom she could feel attached. We likely will never know what the first 18 months of her life were like, but I would guess it was a lonely time. When my parents adopted and received her, nobody knew the uphill battles she would face. She was undernourished, scared and sick. Over time she grew to trust my parents and go to them when she was in need, but none of us could have known just how deeply she was affected by her life before adoption.
Junior high is not an easy time for anybody, and I think my sister had it especially hard. I recall the first time I learned that she struggled with depression. I was a freshman in high school and playing varsity sports, and I thought I was on top of the world. I spent my time and energy doing those things I believed would make my parents proud of me and would protect the image I was building of myself. I felt impenetrable until my parents broke the news to me that my sister, then in junior high, was battling an eating disorder and was depressed. I knew enough about psychology at that time to know that these diseases were not going away. My heart sank for her, and selfishly my heart sank for myself. I knew that our lives were never going to be the same. I knew I was never going to be the same. At the time I hated that the world I believed I created for myself was going to be overshadowed by the struggles and challenges my sister would face. I resented the idea that she couldn’t just, “do something about it,” or, “get over it.”
I did what most selfish teenagers do: I distanced myself from the situation and from her. I don’t know that this was a conscious choice on my part, but I imagine the 14-year-old me thought that if I wasn’t around it, I couldn’t be affected by it. I could just go on with my life and leave my sister to figure out what was wrong with hers. The 29-year-old me knows just how wrong I was. I wish I could go back and do things differently. Our relationship as kids might not have been very close, but in distancing myself from her, I further distanced myself from our relationship. I know now that abandoning her and my parents did not help her face her struggles nor did it keep me from experiencing my own.
The emotional barrier I built between myself and my family remained in place throughout high school. I focused on academics, athletics and my friends while wanting to believe that if I could somehow have a perfect life outside of my sister’s mental health problems, the effects would cross over to her. I enrolled in two elective psychology courses to learn more about brain-behavior relationships, psychopathology and treatment of mental illness. I somehow convinced myself that if I could understand those things, I could fix her. I could make her right.
In some sense these beliefs persisted during my pursuit of my bachelor’s degree in psychology. I remember the moment I realized that my sister wasn’t deficient in any way because of her eating disorder and struggles with depression. I was sitting in a geology class, and the professor said, “When the light shines on the surface, the rock absorbs it. When it is dark, the rock also absorbs it.” I’m sorry Professor, I still have no idea what that meant regarding the rock you were talking about, but this statement was a wake-up call for me. I realized my sister didn’t need fixing, to be made right or to be rid of her struggles because they are a part of her. She absorbs the light we provide her, and she also absorbed the dark I had created.
I tried to project more light and to support her rather than ignore her. I tried to be available and to show her that she could count on me during those times she couldn’t count on herself. I moved to Colorado to begin a doctoral program in clinical psychology. I knew that my sister was fighting battles she would face for the rest of her life, but I was hoping I could somehow assuage her emotional pain. Some part of me wanted to take what I was learning and use it to help her, my family and myself manage and navigate the challenges she faced.
I called her one day toward the end of my first year in the program, and I immediately knew she was struggling. She was crying without tears. Her voice, weak and full of pain, let me know she was in a dark place. She told me she felt so depressed her body hurt and that she didn’t know what to do about it. I finally got a glimpse of just how much she was suffering and just how hard she tried to keep her pain from others. She begged me not to tell my parents because she didn’t want to move home and burden them with her pain. For the first time, I promised her something I had no intention of following through with. My parents had to know. I hung up the phone, called my parents and said, “You have to go get her. Now.”
My sister moved back home with my parents and continued her journey toward recovery. In many ways the therapy she has participated in throughout her life has had a “one step forward, two steps back” feel to it, and I can only imagine how frustrated and hopeless she has felt at times. When her depression improved, she enrolled in college courses again and moved into her own apartment. If you didn’t know about the challenges she faced sometimes in just convincing herself to get out of bed, you wouldn’t have known just how depressed she had been.
Throughout the next couple years, I maintained focus on my studies and learned more about mental health, treatment, recovery and the effects mental illness has on families. I dove headfirst into trying to understand how she and we were going to make it out of the vicious depressive cycle in which she lived. The more I learned, the more I comfortable I became with distancing myself from my family again. I adopted a professional role toward them, doling out unsolicited advice and informing them about the issues they lived with every day. This was how I coped with what was going on and how I made it okay to be 1,400 miles away and not a part of the everyday struggle.
At the beginning of my fourth year in my program, my sister called to tell me she was going to rehab. She said she had become addicted to pain pills and had been stealing pain medication from people including me. I thanked her for telling me, told her I hoped she succeeded in rehab and promised I would pray for her. As soon as I hung up the phone, I started crying. I cried for the fact that her emotional pain was so severe that she had chosen to numb it with drugs. I cried for the lying she had done. I cried for the shame she felt about herself. I cried for my parents who had not yet accepted that her choices were not their fault. I cried for the guilt I felt for not having known more and not having done more to prevent this from happening.
I thought to myself, “I’m in the mental health field receiving training on how to work with and support people with the exact same struggles. I’m supposed to be able to understand, to help and to heal.” I felt frustrated and angry. I was hurt. I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just use her resources and ask my parents for help. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just get herself together and trust that her family loves her even when she doesn’t think she deserves it.
I realized that she made a choice to enter rehab because she wanted to do all those things. I acknowledged the courage she possessed to seek help, to stop trying to distance herself from her pain and to commit to living in it and facing it head on. I appreciated the honesty she was giving herself and us by saying that her struggles were bigger than what she could work through on her own. I knew that if we did not honor her efforts, if we did not support her during one of the most vulnerable times in her life, we would not deserve to celebrate her.
After completing rehab she moved to Colorado to live with me and my roommate. For the first time since I moved to college in 2002, we were living under the same roof, and I was reminded that old habits die hard. I tried to get her to do things my way because it was easier for me. I wanted her to be the high-functioning person I knew was buried within her, but she only seemed interested in sleeping. Feeling like I had to take care of her (and my roommate) proved to be too much for me to handle in addition to classes, clinic work, research and having my own life. I moved out. I didn’t see her often after that, but when I look back, I can see there were signs she was regressing.
About a year after moving to Colorado, my parents called to tell me that my sister would be returning to rehab for heroin addiction. I was absolutely devastated. I had attributed her desire to sleep, her apathy and her lack of motivation to increased depression. I never thought that she was using drugs. I was angry with her for lying to me by putting up a front that everything was okay. All the old feelings came rushing back, and I was back to being the sister with the blinders on. I didn’t see how unhappy she was, and I realize now that a part of me wouldn’t have wanted to acknowledge it even if I had seen it.
I shared with my parents how angry and hurt I was and minimized the pain and suffering my sister was experiencing. I told my parents I was not going to talk to my sister until she apologized to me. I think I wanted an apology for years of this and not just for the most recent events. I told her to go get clean and then we would talk, but I convinced myself that she was no different after having participated in rehab the first time.
I am never more ashamed of myself than when I think about how I reacted to my sister entering rehab for the second time. I had a golden opportunity to use what I learned the first time and draw on the lessons that had been building throughout my life, and I had to decide to make an effort to move forward with her in my life rather than move forward despite having her in my life. I am grateful every day I chose the first.
Beginning a journey of healing and of repairing our relationship wasn’t easy. It wasn’t perfect, and it’s not over. I didn’t know how to do it or even how to start. I was scared. What if, even under the best of circumstances, she continued to struggle? What if this was the rest of her life? Then I thought, “So what if she struggles? So what if this is the rest of her life? I won’t love her less, I won’t respect her less and I won’t appreciate her struggles less if she relapses. It’s not my job to cure her or to tell her how to live her life. It is my job to be there for her, to support her and to continue believing in her when she doesn’t see a way to believe in herself.”
My sister gave birth to my nephew about four months ago, and while I have only met him twice, I see so much of her in him. She has devoted her life to him and to making changes in her life for him. While I do fear that he might one day experience the depression his mother has or battle addiction as both his parents do, I know for certain he will be loved, supported and honored as he takes his own journey. I cannot predict the future, and I can honestly say for the first time that I don’t want to know what will be. Right now I am so very proud of my sister, of who she is and of who she is striving to become. I am proud of her for embracing her past and challenging herself to have a different future. I am proud she is my sister.
I realize I have left out two of the most important people in all this: our parents. It takes a special kind of person to adopt children not knowing what their early life experiences were or how much and in what ways they will be affected by them. It’s a measured leap of faith. My sister and I are blessed beyond belief to have been adopted by two of the most loving, caring, compassionate and understanding people I have ever known. I have struggled with understanding, supporting and being patient with my sister, and I believe the same can be said for my parents. They have held it together when it felt like it was all falling apart. They have had to support each other, my sister and me during days when I imagine they could barely support themselves. Through it all they have loved each other, my sister, me and our family unconditionally. Unfailingly. It is because of them that I know my sister will never have to be alone in her emotional pain even if I can’t be strong enough to be constantly present.
Our journey toward healing has involved pain and suffering. It has had moments of hopelessness and despair, but throughout our lives our journey has been filled with the courage to face the next day, the faith that a better day is on the horizon, the perseverance to continue in the face of adversity, the respect demanded only by those people who have shared your struggles and the promise that even though this will always be a process, there is hope that we will be strong enough to not just survive but to thrive.
Over the last several years I have had the great pleasure of working with clients whose struggles include ones similar to those my sister has faced and continues to face. I have done so with a sense of compassion, patience and understanding I don’t think I would have been able to without having been in a family that dealt with similar struggles. I have worked with people whose family members have been drug addicts or depressed or tried to hurt themselves. As much as I have learned about myself and clinical psychology during training and by being a sister to someone with significant mental health problems, I have learned just as much by working with clients and family members. I am forever grateful to them for allowing me to be a part of their journey and sincerely hope that they too are able to find a place of healing.
I don’t know how many times in the last ten years I’ve wanted to say to my sister what I have written here. I have started the conversation so many times I’ve lost count, but I never had the courage to talk with her about it. Learning about Heroes in Recovery and participating in the race has given me another opportunity to share her story, our story, with others. I decided I was not going to let another chance pass to tell her that our journey is not over. She will continue to fight, and I will continue to fight for her. She is, without a doubt, my Hero in Recovery.