The Number One Lesson That Having a Parent Struggling With Substance Abuse Taught Me
By: Emily Lane
Tags: Personal Growth, Strength, Parents, Personal Development, Lessons Learned

The Number One Lesson That Having a Parent Struggling With Substance Abuse Taught Me

Growing up, my mom was my best friend. We did everything together. Walks on the beach, singing songs into driftwood that we used as microphones, cooking, cleaning, laughing. She was my everything, and I wanted to be just like her. My favorite color was purple because hers was. I had bangs because she did. I tried to emulate her in every way I could. It was her and I against the world.

And then it became her and the world against me.

When I was about 6, my mom began to struggle with substance abuse. That continued until about two years ago. I’m in my late twenties.

As a teenager, I felt frustrated by the direction my life was heading. While my friends were having family dinners, and going on vacation, I was eating pickles and stale bread, while crying, wondering if I’d ever be happy.

Sometimes I still feel like that little girl. However, I’ve learned a lot along the way that helped give me an emotional intelligence that I don’t think I’d have otherwise. Here’s the thing I learned along the way that made this worth it.

Silence is not an option.

When everything began unraveling, I stayed quiet. Part of it was out of fear, but a lot of it was out of necessity. Simply put, I was afraid of the consequences, and for my own mental health and physical well-being if I spoke up.

But, that did nothing. My circumstances didn’t change. I didn’t gain anything from my silence, other than the inability to stand up for myself. My mental health became worse. I became a doormat, taking everything, believing everything, and doing nothing to change that.

The final straw was a night I’ll never forget. It involved a fight with my mother in front of a friend, and it immediately changed the way I viewed my situation. As I was pelted with insults, my next course of action was clear: I needed to leave. This wasn’t just impacting my life anymore. Though it took some time, a lot of fighting, and a lot of sleepless nights, I was able to move in with another family member and start to heal.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from this situation:

Photo by Amar Yashlaha on Unsplash

1. Just because you love someone, you don’t have to keep their secrets.

I did exactly no one a favor by staying quiet. I prolonged a situation that was unhealthy, and I enabled someone I love to make poor decisions that would negatively affect both of us.

2. Being strong isn’t taking someone’s bullshit. It’s standing up for yourself.

I know that some people say that those who handle their problems silently are strong. And maybe that’s true for some people. But it wasn’t for me. Because that’s what I was already doing. For me, being strong was standing up for myself, and refusing to accept the situation I was in. I became strong once I stood up for myself, and for what was right. I became strong the night I said “no more”.

3. You’re capable of doing the right thing, even if you stand alone.

When I first made the choice to leave, I had a lot of opposition from people, including those who had seen the situation up close and personal. That stuck with me. For a moment, I doubted myself. I thought it was all in my head. But then I remembered how I felt, how unhappy I was, and how I just wanted to laugh again. That was enough to keep me going. It didn’t matter if I was the David standing up to the Goliath. Something was going to change, and I wasn’t going to back down, even if it meant fighting the monster alone (so to speak).

4. Nothing is going to change until you do.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle in this entire ordeal was me. I had to change. I had to want to get out. I had to be willing to put myself first, no matter how scary or isolating that was. I will never regret the choice I made to do so. It was the single biggest moment of my life that shaped the rest of my life. I would have been stuck there, in my own personal hell forever if I had not decided to move. The night that I decided enough was enough became the start of the rest of my life. It changed every interaction I had with people moving forward. I attribute a lot of who I am to that single moment in time. For me, a moment became a milestone.

Photo by Katarzyna Grabowska on Unsplash

You have every right to live a life that makes you happy. Your personal well being should not be contingent on someone’s ability to assign an arbitrary value to your worth. If you are in a situation right now that has you feeling trapped, I promise you that you have everything you need inside of you to push through.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Laozi

The strength to move forward is in each of us, every day. We just have to open our minds and open our mouths to be able to open our doors to all of our possibilities.