The Kathie Lee Gifford quote

 and express their disappointment with Kathie Lee Gifford’s comment in Sept 2012′s Family Circle magazine http://www.familycircle.com/teen/parenting/celebrity-parents/kathie-lee-gifford/ regarding those of us who did not do a good job parenting, thus raised a child that attend rehab.

I hope every person that visits my blog or facebook page will go to the Family Circle facebook page, or Kathie Lee's page

Family Circle

Q. Got a family tradition you’d like the kids to pass down?

Kathie Lee Gifford

A. We had a sunset alert at home where we stopped everything to watch it. After I’m gone, I hope my kids and their kids will keep watching the sun go down and think of me every time.

I’m not a perfect mom, but my kids haven’t been arrested, in rehab or kicked out of school, so I must be doing something right!

Does this mean that those of us with addict children were sub par parents or did something wrong?

I am not sure if your comments will be deleted but let her know that having an addict in the family is not about poor parenting!

..Her page is found at : http://www.facebook.com/kathieleegiffordspage?ref=ts

Advocate people! Fight for your child’s right! Post intelligently without personally attacking her! Educate her fans…

peace and strength

Kathie Lee Gifford's comments in Family Circle

Dear Kathie Lee,
You have started an uproar in the addiction community my friend. Do you know how many addicts believe they came from "good homes?"  Do you know how many addicts were raised  by parents who instilled morals and values in their lives? Do you know how many addicts were once atheletes, honor students, valedictorians, and had plans to attend college? Do you know how many young adults from so called "good homes" become addicted to drugs each day?  Do you know how many families have been shattered by addiction? Apparently not. Ms. Gifford, I am the parent of two children I love and adore. I dedicated my life to being the best mother I could be. My children were both raised in a two parent family by parents who were very present in their lives. My children were very involved in sports, dance and extracurricular activites and their father and I were always present. We both volunteered in their classrooms from the time they entered preschool. My children were taught values and morals, they attended church services weekly. They had a balance of love and discipline in their lives.  If you ask my children they BOTH say, "I had the best parents."
My son became addicted to drugs at a very young age. His father and I did all that we could to stop the progression of his addiction but it has taken 10 years for him to be able to celebrate a year in recovery. My daughter is a beautiful young woman raising 4 amazing children. I am very proud of both of my children and I consider myself a "good parent" even though my son HAS been to jail, and HAS gone to rehab. You came off sounding very pompous. I believe you just don't understand the nature of addiction. It certainly is not about "good parenting".

ACCEPTANCE

When she let go of the past, her heart whispered thank you

Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up writing a blog post. Just before I crawled into bed, I thought about my son.

He’s working nights now at a rehab, and things can get pretty quiet around one or two in the morning, so I decided to send him a quick text to say goodnight.

Twenty minutes later, we were still texting.

There were lots of “ha ha’s,” and the last text he sent before we both went back to our nights simply said:

“I love you. Sleep well.”

I went to bed last night with a full heart.

It felt so good because for so many years I went to bed carrying pain, fear, and worry for my son. It has been a very long time since I truly felt his love for me in this kind of simple, healthy, connected way.

Oh, I always knew he loved me — even during the times he was out “on a run.” But addiction had such a grip on him that most of the time I only existed when he needed something.

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, he sent me something someone had posted on Instagram. It said:

“The more I grow,
the more I realize
that my mom is the best
friend I ever had.
PS, I love my mom.”

Reading it brought tears to my eyes.

Last night I fell asleep thanking God for the miracle of sobriety in my son’s life and for the 12-step program that helped me become a healthier mother.

This is not the life I once planned.

But maybe it is the life God planned for me.

Today I find myself noticing miracles in ordinary moments — a late-night conversation, laughter over text messages, and the healing that comes when love finally has room to breathe again.

Walking Through Addiction and why it's the title for my book

When I came up with the title Walking Through Addiction, I chose it for several reasons.

The first is that addiction is a journey. There is no neat beginning and end. Addiction is a disease, but it is not like most illnesses where you go to the doctor, receive treatment, and eventually become cured.

In the early days of my son’s addiction, I honestly believed that was how it would work. I thought that once we finally accepted that we could not “fix” him ourselves and became willing to turn him over to the professionals, he would go to rehab for thirty days, come home healed, and we could all move on with our lives.

Today, after nearly ten years of watching my son get sober long enough to collect six-month and nine-month chips several times — only to later find himself with a needle in his arm again — I understand something very different.

There is no cure.
There is no finish line.
There is no crowd standing on the sidelines cheering him on.

The second reason I chose the title is because living with addiction often feels like trudging through thick mud. Everything becomes heavy. Messy. Exhausting.

Sometimes your feet feel so weighed down by fear, heartbreak, and disappointment that you honestly do not think you can take another step.

As you watch someone you love sink deeper into addiction, you begin to feel defeated yourself. Your legs grow tired. Your spirit grows weary. Part of you wants to simply give up.

In my early days of recovery, I learned that I could keep moving forward one step at a time, one day at a time — and sometimes one minute at a time.

No matter how heavy the burden felt, if I just kept taking small steps, I would survive.

In the beginning, that sometimes meant forcing myself to get out of bed. Some days it meant taking a short walk or calling a friend. Other days my only goal was getting myself to a meeting.

Gradually, I began learning how to LIVE again.

It was slow, but over time I realized something important: I could get THROUGH this.

A few weeks ago, my son picked up another nine-month chip.

Some days I catch myself thinking, I’m so glad all of this is finally behind us.

In AA they describe addiction as “cunning and baffling.” Sometimes I realize my own thinking can be cunning and baffling too.

I slip back into the same old mindset I had after my son came home from his very first rehab:

Great. Now we can finally get on with our lives.

I start reassuring myself:
He completed rehab.
He lived in sober living.
He has a roommate working a strong AA program.
He attends meetings.
He has a sponsor and a home group.
He even works at a rehab.

But the truth is, I know none of those things guarantee he will still be sober tomorrow.

Other days, fear creeps back in.

The “what ifs” begin circling in my mind:
What if he stops going to meetings? What if he stops calling his sponsor? What if he loses his job?

And if I am not careful, those thoughts take me right back to my worst fear of all:

What if he goes back out there and dies this time?

Those thoughts can pull me right back into the emotional paralysis I lived in during my early days of recovery.

The truth is, this disease will never fully be “behind us.”

We will all be walking THROUGH addiction for the rest of our lives.

Recovery is built one day at a time — slowly piecing together a life of sobriety, healing, and hope.

And I will continually need to practice letting go of expectations, accepting the things I cannot change, and giving my son the dignity to live his own life.

Today I understand that my son has his own path to walk.

And our family has a path to walk too.

Each day, in our own ways, we are all trying to find our way through addiction.

HOLIDAYS FOR FAMILIES AFFECTED BY A LOVED ONES SUBSTANCE ABUSE

THANKSGIVING, CHRISTMAS, EASTER, birthdays, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day were once occasions we looked forward to with joyful anticipation. They were days spent gathered with family and friends, celebrating our lives together, reminiscing about the past, and dreaming about the future.

But for families affected by substance abuse, those holidays often become something entirely different. Instead of excitement, we simply wish the day would hurry and pass. We count the hours until we can just get through it and move on.

When addiction enters a family, there is an EMPTY CHAIR in the room.

You feel it most deeply on the days that once brought celebration. Whether we have lost someone to death or to addiction, their absence fills the room even when no one speaks of it. Like the proverbial “elephant in the room,” everyone feels the loss, yet few know how to talk about it.

Friends and family want to help, but they are often afraid that mentioning the obvious pain will somehow make it worse. So instead, we pretend we are fine. We smile through the gathering, try to enjoy the celebration, and silently pray for the day to be over.

It took me many years of recovery to let go of expectations about what holidays were supposed to look like. I missed my son terribly, but after years of broken promises and disappointment, I slowly stopped clinging to what I wished our family could be and began accepting what was.

That did not mean I stopped loving him or stopped hoping.

I still prayed constantly and held tightly to the belief that someday our family might heal. But I also realized that if I stayed emotionally trapped in the desperate waiting for my son to return, I would miss the life still happening around me.

Yes, his chair was empty, but the room was still filled with people who loved me and needed me to be emotionally present in their lives.

As I began accepting this truth, I slowly found happiness again.

This past Mother’s Day, I chose not to place expectations on how the day would unfold. Instead, the day before, I joined a group of women in recovery to celebrate our lives as mothers.

Together, we reflected on the journey of motherhood — beginning the moment our babies were first placed in our arms and we felt that fierce, overwhelming love that instantly changed us forever.

We remembered pacing the floors at night with sick children, desperately trying to comfort them. We talked about the ache of sending them off to kindergarten and later watching them struggle through adolescence in a world filled with challenges.

None of us imagined motherhood would lead us here.

Sitting in that room with thirty other mothers whose lives had been affected by addiction moved me deeply. I saw incredible strength in those women. I saw mothers who continued holding on while watching their precious children disappear into the darkness of addiction.

No matter what happened, they never stopped loving them.

I felt immense gratitude for those women who stood beside me during the years when I believed I no longer had the strength to face another day.

This certainly was not the life I once imagined for our family, but it is the life we were given.

And somehow, within that reality, we learned to keep living.

This Mother’s Day was different because my son was sober. We spent the day together as a family, the way I had dreamed about during so many painful years.

It was a beautiful gift, and I felt overwhelming gratitude as I watched our family begin healing.

But what surprised me most was that I no longer needed the day to unfold perfectly in order to be happy.

Recovery taught me that I am responsible for my own peace and happiness. Letting go of expectations freed me from the prison of constant disappointment and taught me to notice the small miracles hidden inside ordinary moments.

Today is Father’s Day.

We did not make elaborate plans. Our daughter lives eight hours away, and our son — though sober — has a busy life of his own.

But as I write this, my adult son is asleep in the next room.

That is enough for me.

He chose to set aside his busy schedule to spend the weekend with his dad, and I know my husband feels the same gratitude I do.

There is no greater gift than seeing our son sober.

Last night the three of us took a train ride into town for dinner. On the ride home, my son showed us funny things on his phone, and we laughed together — really laughed — in a way we had not for a very long time.

It was one of those moments I wanted to freeze forever.

Addiction took our family to some very dark places. I do not know what the future holds or whether we will ever face those dark days again. But I do know this:

If I spend today fearing the loss of these moments, I will miss the miracle of living them.

So today, I am simply grateful.

Grateful that my son is sleeping peacefully in the next room.
Grateful that when he wakes up, he will join his father and me to celebrate Father’s Day.

Behind the Orange Curtain



CANDLELIGHT VIGIL

BEHIND THE ORANGE CURTAIN DOCUMENTARY
NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL

Last week one of my classmates and I went to see the documentary "Behind The Orange Curtain" at the Newport Beach Film Festival. I first heard about this documentary when I arrived in Orange County last summer. It's a documentary about the prescription pill epidemic in Orange County. However, this problem is not exclusive to Orange County.

 I have had a personal interest in this subject for a long time now since my own son's addiction to Opiates began with prescription pills that were prescribed by a doctor over 10 years ago. I have read many books about families who have been affected by addiction, I have attended 12 step support groups for families of Alcoholics or Addicts. I know first hand the pain that families go through when a loved one struggles with addiction. Attending this premiere was emotional for me. I have come to know and love some of the families who are featured in the documentary who have lost a child to a lethal overdose.

The evening started out with a candlelight vigil for the families who had lost a loved one. As I approached the theatre I saw the small gathering of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters listening to music as silent tears fell from their cheeks.  I felt somewhat of an intruder as I approached the small group of men and women who held lit candles in remembrance of their lost sons or daughters. I found myself drawn into the group,  the soft music and reverence of the moment lulled me in. I quickly spotted a friend, who has fought like a warrior this past year to get the word out to young people about how dangerous these drugs are. She has put her grief aside to go to schools and tell teens her story and to relive the loss of her son every time she speaks. This night, she is a grieving mom, this night, she is here to honor her son. I went to her side and put my arms around her. I was filled with emotion. How is it that my boy is still here? How is it that my boy walked in the darkness of his Addiction for the last 10 years and survived? I am constantly reminded that the line between life and death is so incredibly thin when drugs are involved. One bad hit, one too many pills, one deadly combination of drugs and alcohol and our lives are forever altered.

Then it was time for the documentary to begin. I sat next to a handsome young man and asked what brought him out to see this movie. He mentioned that he knew my friend who gives the talks at schools, he said that he was a friend of her sons. He then went on to explain that he is addicted to Heroin and that my friend is helping him get into a rehab. The next hour and a half I watched as the forlorn faces of mothers and fathers told the story of the personal hell their family experienced the night of  their child's overdose. The moment the call came that changed the course of their lives forever. My mind kept flashing between my son and the young man sitting next to me. I was reminded of my own fear everytime my son didn't come home at night and how I would jump out of my skin everytime the phone would ring. Each time I saw another parent on the screen I thought that could be me, that could be this boys mom or dad.

 It was a difficult night. Many of the faces of the parents on the screen were faces that I had seen earlier in the evening at the candlelight vigil or standing in line. They don't look much different from you or me on the outside but inside there is a hole that will never be filled. Every morning they wake up to the reality that their child is gone. They will never be able to hear the sound of their childs voice again. No more "I love you's". The bedroom at the end of the hall is filled with childhood memories and an emptiness that will never be filled. The lost love of their loved one can never be replaced.

When the movie ended and the screen turned black I I turned to the boy sitting next to me and said, "please, don't give up, please keep fighting to free yourself from this deadly disease", but I know from my experience with my son, that the pleading words of a parent or loved one are barely heard through the roar of addiction that will call this young man back into the darkness if he doesn't get help soon.