I got a voice mail from my sister, who I haven’t written about before now on this blog.
Due to coming from an alcoholic family with two alcoholic parents, we’ve been a teensy bit alienated.
I dread her calls, the emotional wake that pulls me under itself after I hang up from one of them.
The feeling of wanting so much more from her than what little we have.
She is the inverse of me: blonde, arctic blue eyes, pale skin, preppie-looking, beautiful. An intelligent artist. Prodigiously talented – I spent my childhood coveting the talent she was gifted with at birth, working to copy her dancing Snoopies, trying to draw and paint like she could but coming up not even half as good. A psychic once told her that in a past life she was Leonardo da Vinci – and we all believed him because she knew how to do mirror writing with both hands at the same time, like he could, and she could draw like da Vinci. She was that talented.
I don’t know why I’m writing about her in the past tense.
We’ve been alienated probably since the day I was born (I’m the younger one, the interloper). When I was in third grade and she was in fifth, I asked if she wanted to eat lunch with me at school and she told me to go away. She was offended that I wanted to be near her, that I asked her to eat lunch with me in front of her friends. The thing is – what I couldn’t put into words as I walked back to my classroom holding my lunchbox that day, or throughout our childhood – is that my big sister was my world. I looked up to her. I loved her. For a long time, I admired her.
When I was fifteen she caught me red-handed in the school hallway wearing a sweater of hers that I had “borrowed.” She said nothing at school – just gave me the stink eye so I knew something bad was going to happen at some point in the near future. When I got home that night she had upended my dresser, pulled the clothes from my drawers, over-turned my mattress, torn my Peter Frampton poster off the wall, broken my mirror and the glass nic nacs I had collected over the years. I went into her bedroom and dragged her out of bed in her pale pink PJs and tried my best to beat the shit out of her. I had never hit anyone in my life, before that night. Or since. But that night, I hit her and hit her. I tried my best to beat her up.
You would think that my parents would have done something – admonished her for vandalizing my room, maybe, or told me to stop borrowing her clothes, or tried to stop me from kicking her kneecaps with my bare feet (I broke my toes that night) – but they did nothing. This is what it’s like growing up in an alcoholic home: when you need them, they look the other way or they’re not around. When you don’t need them – when you want them to go away – they’re right up in your face, embarrassing you, saying something unhelpful or just plain awful.
When you’re an alcoholic, you rob yourself of all spirituality. The bottle replaces whatever God you may have believed in and that bottle becomes your altar. Whether or not you can admit it, alcohol is what you worship. So over time, every single thing you love gets sacrificed at that altar: your reputation, your mind, your job, your money, your driver’s license, your dignity, your health, your potential, your ability to reason, your sanity, your relationship, your children – it all gets sacrificed on the altar at the foot of that bottle. My relationship with my sister is one of the costs of my parents’ alcoholism, one of the things they sacrificed. I have accepted it and for about eight years, when I had closed the door and bolted it shut, when we couldn’t even bring ourselves to speak to each other, I was relieved.
But then I opened the door a crack – because a person should have a relationship with their sister, right? My kids should have a relationship with her three boys, their cousins, right? Family should all be together, sometimes, right? Should-should-should.
Well, here is what I think: Shoulds are shit.
That is my mantra. I heard it in an Alanon meeting. Shoulds are shit.
The door is open a crack and I’m not sure I will ever be able to close it again because she’s my sister and I’m so very worried about her now.
When we were growing up my parents didn’t nurture any kind of friendship or kindness between us – in fact, they did just the opposite. They inadvertently fueled our enmity. Unintentionally, they honed and perfected the animosity between us. And then they poured gasoline on it and lit matches and the whole thing exploded into something we could never return from. When she got married she asked me to be her maid of honor. The night before the wedding, at the rehearsal dinner with her six bridesmaids, her groom, all the groomsmen, the priest, the musicians, our parents, the groom’s parents, and me – when the priest asked the maid of honor to please step forward and I stepped forward, feeling so proud, and her BFF stepped forward too, all she did was look at me all annoyed, as if I had done something wrong. I stepped back, shocked and humiliated. There was no explanation. That was – well, in my book – it was an extremely crappy thing to do. If you don’t want someone to be your maid of honor, fine – just let them know before they make a complete ass of themselves at the rehearsal dinner.
She and her new husband, a physician, bought my parents’ home, the house I grew up in. They also borrowed $140,000 from my parents, which my mother complained to me about over the years, and which I could give a fig about.
One day my parents wrote their will and gave a copy to me in person, but left a copy for my sister to find. The will said, “In the event of our death, your sister D. owes you the $140,000 she owed to us.” As soon as I saw it, I recognized what it was – total bullshit – and tore it up. My sister called and yelled at me, even though I told her I had torn it up. I tried to explain to her that there were people in the world who might not have torn it up, but she didn’t listen. She was furious that our parents had indebted her to me, and instead of directing her fury at them – she directed it at me, the interloper.
That’s how our relationship always was: unbalanced and brutal, with me doing things for her that I thought would make up for our parents’ alcoholism and somehow appease her immense anger at me. When our mother died, the crematorium called my sister to tell her that they had performed the cremation at seven o’clock instead of at five, as they had planned, she called me up and screamed – as if it was my fault. I had nothing to do with it, of course, but with us everything became my fault. Even a delayed cremation. I began to understand that something was permanently unfixable between us – it wasn’t just a temporary phase, or sibling rivalry, or hatred. It wasn’t mere dislike – it was something more, something I couldn’t put my finger on but that had been there my whole life, and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. So for eight years we didn’t talk.
And I was so relieved.
Fast-forward a million years into the future, to now: our alcoholic parents are gone, we are both mothers, living on opposite coasts, she is mercilessly tormented by her sociopathic ex-husband, and all we have left of our family of origin is each other. The door is open a crack – but having the door bolted shut is a lot easier than keeping it open a crack. The black and white clarity of a closed door is simple – you can grieve it, you can get over it. The cracked-open door with all its shades of gray and the intoxicating hopefulness it contains is painful and uncertain. It makes me sick to my stomach when I open in it. I know that we are alienated, and I have accepted this as one of the sad tolls of growing up in an alcoholic family, but somehow that doesn’t make it any less painful. I long for a sister. I miss mine, I love her, and most of all: I worry for her.
So she called me. It took me 24 hours to call her back because I know that whenever she calls, it is bad news that I can’t do anything about, bad news that snaps me out of the sane, normal family life I’ve worked so hard to have, smacks me upside the head, and reminds me where I’m from: that alcoholism in a family blood line never dies. Our parents may be dead and I may have had a long respite from all the crap around dealing with other people’s alcoholism but it’s ba-aaa-aack! During the years between my parents’ deaths and now, as it turns out, it wasn’t really gone, it was just out in my front yard doing pushups, jeering at me. Waiting. The family disease has got a sequel. A new and improved, far more scary sequel.
Two years ago it was my 18-year-old nephew, her oldest. He had come into an inheritance of about $100,000 (each of her children will inherit this amount on their 18th birthday – she tried to get the courts to delay it until they were older but without her ex-husband’s consent, they inherit when they turn 18). He spent some of it on a Ducati motorcycle, some of it on an apartment/drug den and the rest on the hangers-on and drug dealers who took advantage of him. It was beyond terrifying. My blonde sister, the preppie, had to go in – alone – and rescue her sweet boy from a crack house. First she had to find him, which was no small task, then she had to get him out of a drug-den and away from the seriously scary crack dealers that were there all around him.
Mothers are the bravest people on Earth, and she is one of them.
She has confronted my biggest fear – seeing alcoholism rear its ugly head again in my children – and it has her by the throat right now. And when I think of all she’s going through, including an ex-husband who is giving them money to buy alcohol, who is thumbing his nose at her attempts to get them into alcohol rehab, who intentionally misses psychiatric appointments she sets up for them, I go blind with maternal panic.
We got him into rehab, then into a sober living house, he got some medication, but that didn’t negate the fact that his father is a sociopathic alcoholic who is attempting to alienate his three sons from my sister with a systematic process sociopaths use, called parental alienation syndrome (PAS), which is kind of like Stockholm Syndrome, in which the kidnappee falls in love with their captor – only in this case, it’s the child being brainwashed to hate the alienated parent. This is happening to two of my nephews at the moment, and to my sister, and every time she calls me – her strong but vulnerable voice on the other end of the phone – it feels familiar, like someone is yanking my guts out through my throat.
It’s how I felt watching my parents drink themselves to death.
I am once again helpless, walking through life appearing normal, but I am enraged.
My sister already went through this. She already watched her parents die of alcoholism. Don’t you think that’s enough of a burden in one lifetime for one person to bear? Why pile on more?
(Pssst: God, I’m talking to you and I’m pissed.)
She called to tell me that one of her sons is in the ER.
He had called his older brother for help. He was drunk, was passing out in the local park, and he knew he was in trouble. My sister rushed to the park to get him and saw her ex-husband, did I tell you that he is a physician? – driving out of the playground. So she pulled in front of his car and asked him if he had her son. He shrugged and said, He ran off. Can’t find him. Then do you know what he did? He drove out of the park. He didn’t stop to help her find their son who had called for help and was in serious trouble. He drove off into the sunset, to watch the six-o’clock news and have a beer or something.
My sister ran around the park frantically with her older son to look for him. She finally found him lying shirtless in the brush, unconscious.
They called 911 and EMTs came and took him by ambulance to the hospital.
I am so sick of EMTs taking family members of mine by ambulance to the hospital because of alcoholism. I need it to stop. I want to get off of this frightening merry-go-round, okay?
The ER doctor told her that her son’s blood alcohol level was 0.40 (just so you know, 0.50 = death).
He said if she hadn’t found him when she did he probably would have died.
He told her that he had never in his professional experience seen such a young person with such advanced signs of alcoholism.
He said when he came out of the ER he would be put into psychiatric lock-down, but he didn’t know how long he could keep him there without her assholic ex-husband’s permission.
My nephew is 14 years old.
That’s right: he’s 14.
Years.
Old.
A child.
I can’t write any more about this right now because it just makes me want to get into the shower, close the door, sit down on the tiles, and sob. I’ll write more later. Please say a prayer for my nephew, and one for my sister. And please, if you are an alcoholic – especially an alcoholic parent: get help. It is possible to stop.
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This is heartbreaking-14 years old and his dad doesn’t give a crap-or wants him to be an alcoholic too. The words I’m sorry seem so meaningless.
I am horrified too. To me, as a parent, from what I’ve heard from my sister and nephew – it really does seem like this guy *wants* his children to be addicted. It is the sickest dynamic I have ever seen.
This is horrifying. And I hope, that somehow your nephews will be able to get help and get out of this vicious cycle.
Thanks Susi – there *is* always hope.
I am so sorry
we have spent 2012 getting my husbands brother and my brother into rehab. We worry constantly about our children when it is so prevalent on both sides. I have so many prayers for you and your family right now.
KD – very much appreciated. Thank you.
Always waiting for the other shoe to fall, is definitely not the way to go through life!
My inlaws are staying with us as a result of storm damage and so my mother in law and I were passing the time looking at a photo album of my trip to my mother’s country. As much as I laughed over fond memories I ended up breaking down crying and had to leave the room. With every good memory were so many painful ones, as one finds in a childhood marred by parental illness and family turmoils.
I understand the fear of an inheritable mental illness cropping up in one’s children. I have nightmares about it. I’m paranoid about it. I have many times said I lived through it once and that was bad enough and if I have to live through it with my child I don’t think I’d survive. But I know deep inside us scarred children who are now moms there is a fighter and a survivor. I will never give up on anybody but I do sometimes give them over to God. Even when I’m really mad at him. I was so mad I did the atheist thing before. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t believe. God finds us at the strangest times. He found me and I found my faith. I never push my faith on others but since you asked for prayers I will pray for your nephew…and mine. Fellow lost souls battling the biochemical and mental demons of addiction. Nothing we suffered in childhood was in vain if we fight to turn it into faith, experience, wisdom and a heaping dose of hope. Sigh. I hope this makes some sense. I haven’t slept much in two days in the storm’s aftermath.
Thank you so much for that comment (and your prayers). It helped. (-:
This post twisted my heart in knots. Literally. Every word, every situation. Then when I read that your nephew is only 14 that this is happening with? Oh boy…that really got me. I had not heard of parental alienation before and now after researching it, I really wish I had about 2 years ago. I so feel for you Ado, keeping the door open just a crack is painful and hard but you have such a good heart, it’s hard to close it as well. I will be keeping you in my thoughts!
Thank you so much Anna. PS: I want to hear all about what happened two years ago…
Really deep thoughts, thanks you for sharing them. “Shoulds are shit.” That must be sad but true, I am afraid. I hope you will get better with your sister soon.
No, no, no, no. This cannot be happening. 14 year olds ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ALCOHOLICS ON THE BRINK OF DEATH. No.
I’m so sorry. So sorry for what’s happening to your nephews, to your sister, to you. My thoughts and prayers are with all of you. xo
Thank you Alison (-;
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Effing arsehole alcoholism. Worn the t-shirt. Hugs Ado. Let go and live your beautiful normal life because, like me, you earned it and you deserve it. Only, only, only way to go n you know it girl. My beautiful baby brother is dead from this disease n my bastard alco father still alive n well n creating havoc. Found himself a girlfriend to nurture his disease and keep him flying. Sprained a finger at the gym yesterday bouncing a ball imagining it was his head. Had to get my wedding band cut off today! God? Don’t even go there…..let go, let go, let go……..Want a sister? Count me in! X
Oh, you made me all teary-eyed Morag. Thank you for that – and I’m so, so sorry about your brother. And your dad. And you’re right – letting go is the only way to go. Good luck with your hand, you nut! We are likely in Dublin at the end of summer, hopefully we can meet up for a coffee or something. xo
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Oh, Ado. I have a 14-year-old son of my own. I would lay down in front of a speeding truck to save my child…and his father left him in the park? No words. At least, none that are helpful and good.
I’m in recovery. I came into the rooms for my son at first, but I have stayed for myself. I have 19 months. At least once a week, I meet a young person in the rooms who started drinking or using at your nephew’s age, or even before. It was a 21-year-old heroin addict with 2 kids this past weekend. I’m starting a master’s degree in the fall to become a counselor; my goal is to work with this age group of addicts/alcoholics.
I will pray for your nephew and for your family. One thought – if the father is providing alcohol to the 14 year old, wouldn’t that constitute child abuse? Could your sister make some sort of case for custody with that?
Thank you Leslie for being so honest and sharing a little bit of your moving, amazing story. You are an inspiration. I know you are an inspiration to those young people in the rooms, too. Re. the brother-in-law, it’s a tricky story. He has a hard-ass, prominent “father’s rights” attorney (my sister pointed out that there are few “mother’s rights” attnys, because it’s usually the successful sociopaths who have the money, who are male, the mothers tend to lose out financially in a divorce so she often represents herself – he has dragged her into court numerous times to sue her for full custody). The only thing she has proof of for sure is that he is buying the 14-year-old cigarettes. He gives them $ with which they somehow buy the alcohol. The two younger ones are in the process of being alienated from her and they spend much of their time at his house – it is really beyond sad to see what is going on here. Also, from what she has told me, the family court in her town is corrupt. The mediator assigned to her case (by her husband’s attorney) for example, after hearing about the .40 blood alcohol level, said: “I had a friend who was able to drive a car with an even higher blood alcohol level. It’s not that bad.” These are the kind of people she is dealing with, and because she has used all her money to get her kids into rehab and to defend herself in court, she doesn’t have any more. It is totally screwed. Anyway thanks Leslie for commenting here.
Prayers for all of them. There’s so much wrong in those dynamics between father and children and ex-wife. The thought of driving out of a park, knowing my son was there somewhere in trouble. Oh my God, I can’t even wrap my brain cells around that. We’ve got some seriously wrong dynamic in my husband’s family right now, with alcoholism and drug use thrown into the mix, but at least I am not having to worry about my nieces drinking themselves to death. I cannot imagine…
I can’t wrap my brain cells around it, either. Especially if you met these boys – it’s a total oxymoron. They do not “look the part” – at. all. You would never, ever guess from looking at a picture of them what is going on in their young lives.
Ado, we’ve never met. We’re just getting to know each other via our writing. But I’m hugging you right now. Your writing is so brave and honest, and my heart goes out to you and your family. You have thoughts and prayers heading your way. Hopefully the literary purge helped you a small bit. xo
For me writing about it always does…thank you (-:
I’m so saddened by this post. My heart aches for your family, whom I will keep in my thoughts.
Thanks Jaime.
I drugged and drank, alcoholically, beginning at the age of 10 while growing up with divorced parents. Along the way I spent time in detoxes, psych lock downs, treatments, and jails. I eventually got clean at 19. I’m 36 now and still sober 17 years later. There’s hope for your nephews. Some advise shared with me that I share with others is to focus on doing the next right thing, put faith in the process itself, and leave the results to God. Is there a next right thing you can do in this situation that you’re not already doing?
Joel: thank you for sharing your experience. This gives me renewed hope. I have seen many young people get and stay sober like you for many years – a lifetime sometimes – and to go on and lead productive, spiritual, sober lives. The next right thing for me? I am going to first go to an Alanon meeting, and then I am going to send him a card and say a prayer. Thank you for the reminder.
I read through this slowly, taking it in and feeling your powerlessness, your deep grief. I understand the bolted door and a part of me wants to tell you to go ahead and pull the door closed, shut it tight and resume the life you’ve been living. I know you can’t. Your sister needs you and you have too great of a heart to walk away. I’m sorry you’re pulled into all of this again, something you fought so hard to overcome.
This is just so terrible – how you grew up, the cruelty of your sister and parents, and now this…all of this. Your 14 year old nephew who should never have known this.
I don’t pray often, but I’ll pray today, hold you and your family in my heart. Take care of yourself because this awfulness will eat you up. I know it’s unsolicited advice, but be careful. I hope that’s okay to say.
All of it is more than okay to say Heidi. Thank you. And you’re very right, the awfulness will easily eat me up. I’m going to an Alanon meeting. (-:
So many things here – first and foremost, I hope your nephew is OK. I hope things turn around. Sending out all of the positive vibes I can for your family. Your follow up post, with the pic of your beautiful daughter, made me smile. It made me smile that she makes you smile.
You read my last post. I know what this does to a family. I get it. I’ve closed the door on my sibling too. I open it sometimes and it is SO hard. It’s hard to keep it closed when you “should” open it and it’s hard to have it open and it’s hard to close it again even though it’s what you need to do for yourself sometimes. So damn hard.
Sending you many, many hugs.
It just helps – so much – to know that others go through this stuff too. Thank you so much Michelle. xo
so damn sad. i’m so incredibly sorry for you all, but thank you for sharing. hopefully someone will read and put down the gdamn bottle.
Thank you. (-:
this story fuels my rage at anyone who intentionally fucks up someone else’s life because of his or her own “issues.” your sister’s ex-husband needs to be smacked with a restraining order, or have his physician’s license revoked, or maybe accidentally beaten with a tire iron, or something. watching a disease you think has died re-root itself (your sister married this man at one point, your nephews, your own constant vigilance against it) … the brutality of never fully being able to relax, to say “whew, okay, we’re all out of the woods now…” I hope your nephews find very, very good doctors and therapists and priests or gurus or whatever it’s going to take to help them be well and shed themselves of their father’s toxic influence. And I hope that somehow the door between you and your sister might open further – but only if doing so happens without damaging your own hard-won happiness and equilibrium…
Thank you Deborah. xo
That is fucked up, to say the least, unbelievably frustrating. As you are so well read you’ve probably already found this book: Beautiful Boy by D. Sheff. An incredibly beautiful memoir about his son’s addiction. Which sounds wrong that a memoir about addiction is beautiful. Its beautifully written, poignant and devastatingly heartbreaking. I mention it only in he event you haven’t read it as it may be helpful to read about someone else’s rage, and much guilt in his case, though he is not an alcoholic himself. Anyway, I’m so so sorry you have to endure this -again. I wish I had pearls of wisdom to offer, but there are none that I know of. The father in the book I mention finds support in Al-Anon meetings which you are well versed in.
Thanks, you’re right, it’s beyond fucked up, and Alanon is a total Godsend.
Oh Ado, what a horrible series of events. I think you know that you are not responsible for what is happening with your sister’s family; you do what you can do, to the best of your ability. It is an awful situation, and hopefully your meeting helped you find some peace for a little while.
I am horrified, sad, and praying. I am so sorry the merry-go-round won’t stop and I know how hard a cracked door can be. All out or all in is more doable than the crack that lets it seep back in, like a fungus or a fog.
And I just went and hugged my daughter who will be 14 next week. Praying. Hoping. Ellen
Thanks, Ellen. You’re right – definitely its like a fungus or a fog. So well put.
I’m off to go hug my daughter, again! (-:
You are so brave to both write about this and find help for yourself and your family through Al-Anon. The effects of this family disease are horrifying and far-reaching – you wrote about them beautifully and honestly. I’m making my motto “shoulds are shit” for today too and sending you a hug and hope for peace.
You “should!” You “should!” (-;
Shoulds really are shit! (-:
There are lots of things that resonate for me here, and I can empathise with you and your family. You sound very strong and also kind and decent. My words don’t make any difference to your situation – but I wish you all the best for yourself and your family.
Thank you for commenting Bridgette and thank you so much for your email. I’m replying via email too. (-:
Oh, I’m so sorry, Ado. And I have to admit that this post scares me, too, because it’s one of my great fears. I hope the fact that my husband’s now sober will help prevent my kids from ever going down this path, and we already discuss with them the dangers of ever drinking because of the alcoholism that runs in their family. Thank you for sharing with such honesty.
I think the best that you can do is what you and your husband are doing now: modeling the behavior, because that’s what kids learn from way more than from what we say or how we lecture them. I lecture my kids too. I have probably brainwashed them that they likely have an allergy to alcohol that they inherited from my side of the family just like other kids in their class have peanut allergies – and never, ever to try it. Also, this might be controversial and some may not agree with it but as they are getting older I’m sharing more and more with them about the frightening reality of their cousins. Despite all of this information, and the fact that they know my parents died of it – I still have a healthy fear of them one day picking up a drink. They may not have the allergy, they may have it – whatever – just for me, as a parent – as someone who’s lost her parents to the disease, I just do not have it in me to watch another person go down that road, you know?
Ado, wow. This was so hard to read, but I hope it was at least a little therapeutic to write. I’m just so immensely sorry you and your sister have to go through this. What you wrote here was eloquent and resoundingly true: “The black and white clarity of a closed door is simple – you can grieve it, you can get over it. The cracked-open door with all its shades of gray and the intoxicating hopefulness it contains is painful and uncertain”
But hopefully that uncertainty will pay off for you. I’m sending you lots of virtual strength…
Thank you, Kim. (-:
I hope your nephew is doing better. We just spent July 4 th with my brother and sister in law. Their son was there, to our surprise. We thought he was still incarcerated. Instead he was with yet another new girlfriend with a toddler of her own. His own daughter was not around this time. He normally is very friendly but was quiet and somewhat surly this time. I met my youngest niece’s new boyfriend. He seemed very nice and also has a toddler whom I did not meet. When I got home I remarked how relieved I was this time our niece had an articulate and friendly boyfriend who seemed normal. To my horror my husband informed me the new boyfriend is just like our nephew and to top it off is violent when drunk. I just do not understand why she would go for a boy that is like her brother who is destroying the family. She has two other siblings who set a very good example. Yet she wants to go down the route of the troubled one. It hurts because when she was little she reminded me so much of my own child. I keep looking at her and seeing what could have been and what still could be. I’m trying to put it out of my mind. I’ve got my hands full raising my own. And yes she know exactly what’s going on. The ugly details were put in her face one day when I was not at the family gathering where she was tasked with fetching the liquor bottles my nephew had stolen and hidden around his grandparents house. Needless to say mama tiger roared when I got that bit of info that day and I’ve not permitted my daughter to go to a family gathering without me. If I’m sick we all stay home.
Sorry it was my brother in law and sister in law’s gathering we were at. If it had been my own family there would be a lot more I’d be saying and doing. But I’m an outsider on this.
Oh my God, I cannot fathom a father who would shrug his shoulders & drive away like that. The stark reality of that callousness – surely the police, social services, someone should see through him when he behaves like that! Though I suppose there’s no “proof,” just her word against his. How dreadful and sad. But, of course there is always hope, and she’s doing what she has to do to help her children survive. You’re right, mothers are the bravest creatures on earth (except of course when they are neglectful). Sigh sigh.
One of my brothers was “lost” to drugs and alcohol for over 10 years, but finally pulled himself out of it. I was terrified the whole time that he’d be locked up in jail, because he definitely did things that were illegal. But thank God, he survived, and is now thriving. It’s been a rocky road, but he is an amazing man now. I will hope for an easier path for your nephews.
As for the cracked door – well, honestly, it sounds to me like it’s open more than a crack. Kind of like being pregnant, it’s either open or it’s not. And I can feel your love for your sister and nephews – so it seems to me that the door of love is open. That doesn’t mean you have to DO all that much – you DO NOT have to take on their burdens or try to fix them. Sometimes just knowing someone cares enough to listen is a lot. I think that has to be “enough,” because honestly it seems like all that would be “safe” for you to give.
The half-life of alcoholism is horrible. In my family, it was my maternal grandparents. The effects, like ripples in a pond, have gotten better with each generation that got away – but those who stayed in the toxic pool (ie, in our “hometown”) – their half-life is longer. So sad.
I had a therapist once who said that we will create the same “feeling tone” or emotional energy in our lives as we experienced in childhood unless we make a very concerted and sustained effort to change it. That is what YOU are doing, and your children will be saved as a result. Whatever love you are able to show your sister and her boys will not diminish that. Keep them in your heart, but don’t take them on as a burden, that is my advice.
Lots of virtual hugs to you! Your writing and the fact that you share your life experiences is so valuable. Thank you, Ado!
I just read this one – words escape me. Your wisdom and insight – so helpful, so so so helpful.
Especially hearing about your brother’s experience. We all have hope, all of us. No matter how far down we have gone.
The thing that really scares me is how young these kids are. I just can’t fathom it. Thanks so much for your virtual hug, means a lot.
[...] She had just come from the hospital. Her 14-year-old son has been sectioned (5150′d) and is in psychiatric lock-down. He has been there since he was brought to the ER with a blood alcohol level of Near Death. [...]
My prayers are with all of you — you, your sister, her children, and my three sons.