The journey of today began many years ago

My journey raising addict children started long ago, long before my children were even born.

It began when I was born into an alcoholic family

You may wonder why I am choosing to share this part of my life with you. You might think that I am spilling family secrets and being harmful to the feelings of my parents. I have talked to mom and dad. They know that the truth is the truth, and that alcoholism is a family disease. They are not the same parents today that they were then. We’ve made our amends, and we share love and respect today that we could never have shared those many years ago.. We have all grown and changed and my hope is that one day, you all can come together with your families and find healing.

Raised in a violent home as the eldest of five, I started my life learning to be hyper-vigilant and ran with all cylinders on “Alert Mode.” I made it my job to be aware of everything at every moment, and it wasn’t long before I put myself in charge of taking care of everyone.

I was desperate for peace but, as a child, I had no clue what to do or how to make that happen. Later I came to the understanding that It wasn’t my job. It was my parent’s job to make our home safe and secure. But they didn’t have the skills.

They were wounded people raising and creating wounded children.

I believe they did the best they could with the tools they had, but none of us had appropriate tools to live life with.

Living in an unpredictable home gave me no time to be still and listen to the birds, or music or the wind chimes that clinked in the breeze on the porch outside.

I never had a safe place to go to let my mind wander in a fertile field  of possibilities. I never slipped away with a book to find freedom in reading.  Instead, I monitored my surroundings to see who was on the docket to be spanked or abused next.

I hated to read but excelled in Math. I think that might’ve been because reading was a quiet  mind creating experience. I didn’t have time for that. I needed to be quick  and Math seemed to keep my mind busy so I didn’t have time to see what was going on in my home. 

There were secrets that lived behind the front door of the beautiful little yellow house where we lived. No one knew. No one would ever know.

Until many years later when I grew up and started to recreate the life I had lived so many years before.