Portrait of a Mother in Recovery

Portrait of a Mother in Recovery

Many of you are going to read this and think I am an awful human being who doesn’t deserve the gift of children—and you might be right. I’m not a great mother. I’m not even a good mother at least half the time. I have no fucking idea what I am doing, and I carry all the guilt and shame of acknowledging my inadequacy every single day.

However, it’s also this humility that has—at the very least—spared my children the expense of watching their mother actively killing herself during their most formative years. It has given me peace of mind knowing that my boys are safe—even if it’s from me.

The first time I went to rehab was largely due to the unexpected, unplanned, and unwelcome news of my first pregnancy. I was 26 years old, a couple years into my heroin addiction at that point, and hadn’t wanted children. (If I need to explain why, you haven’t been paying attention.)

So, reluctantly, I went, and tried desperately to make light of the most terrifying situation I’d ever found myself in. I had lost my job the day I found out I was pregnant. The father of the baby was a coin toss. My life was in literal shambles, all the crumbling bits falling at my feet and no metaphorical—or literal—broom to sweep them up. All I kept thinking was: My God, what if I have a girl?? (You’ll know why shortly.) What am I going to do with a baby and no prospects for my future now that I’ve gone and destroyed it all?

I considered having an abortion—despite being conflicted about it. I believe in both the life of the child and the rights of the mother. I never thought I would find myself in a position where I had to choose for myself. I spoke with family about it, and they couldn’t help me (or wouldn’t—it was all the same to me).

Once I’d resigned myself to keeping the baby despite the immense challenges ahead, I promised myself, my unborn son, and God that I would try—and keep trying until my last breath—to break the cycle and find a way out. I swore I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes as my mother and father.

I didn’t keep that promise. At least not in some ways.

By the time my first boy turned five, his brother was on his way. I found myself yet again feeling sorry for this little human who had the misfortune of having me as a mother. I was no good at this. I couldn’t even keep myself alive half the time. It was the same basic story as my firstborn, except I knew exactly who this one’s daddy was—and so did my family.

What could have (and should have) been a beautiful and celebratory revelation ended in almost all-out war—simply because my little boy wasn’t white. Never mind that I was still struggling heavily with a raging heroin addiction that could have easily wiped us both off the planet at any given moment—no, the bigger issue here was apparently my audacity.

Now, you already know that I gave up my second little one for adoption. A family friend graciously took him in to raise, saving him from any further backlash from my mistakes.

The irony here: My mother had two daughters, four years apart. I was taken to my dad’s mother’s to live, and my sister was adopted by my great aunt at birth. Remember what I said about repeating the mistakes of my parents…

My mother did what she did to protect my sister and me from her reckless, unstable, and uninhabitable lifestyle—and it destroyed her. I got to spend every other weekend with my mom, and every other weekend, as soon as she got a buzz, she’d look at me and apologize over and over and over again between sobs. I watched her guilt chip away at her with every missed phone call, every broken promise, every apology more sorry than the last.

All I wanted was to be with her. To spend time with her. To see her. And luckily for my boys, I remembered that feeling very well.

When I gave my boys up, it happened to me, too.

I’ve had the misfortune—or opportunity, depending on how you look at it—of seeing this cycle from both ends: the child and the mother. The tipping point came after I gave up my youngest. I roamed the streets of the town I was homeless in, keeping myself as obliterated as humanly possible—more than ever before—just doing whatever I could to escape the pain.

There is no shame quite as damning as the inability to be a mother to children you bore. And layering it with regrets, the guilt and shame associated with addiction, and my all-around shitty decision-making strapped to the caboose—well, let’s just say my “will” to continue on this mortal coil was running dangerously thin.

I was nothing more than a phantom. A walking corpse—there physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually already dead. And after I gave up my second son, what was left of me died with him.

Somehow, by the grace of God, someone was around each and every time who cared just enough—whether for their own skin or mine—to bring my sorry ass back to life, again and again and again.

Something finally took hold of me and slapped me hard across the face. I hadn’t kept my promises.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking: You mean to tell us that you snapped out of a decade-long heroin stupor over a promise? Yes. I do.

In spite of my addiction and my decade or so of deceptive and disgraceful behaviors—I have never been one to lie. I’m a brutally honest person, and my word, at times, has been all I’ve had.

It runs deeper than integrity. I had shit to do. Unfinished business. The promises I’d made were like strong reinforcements to a predetermined and unspoken destiny I wasn’t even aware of. I wasn’t going to die there. I wasn’t going to die for a long, long time.

What does any of this have to do with being a mother in recovery, you ask? Everything.

To understand where I am, you have to know from whence I came—the depths of human suffering and depravity. I came back from hell in the most literal sense of the word.

I went to detox several days after my last overdose and never looked back. I got clean, got my shit together, and worked harder than I had ever worked—for myself.

My children were safe. They were healthy and thriving and cared for, and that gave me the time I needed to heal. I never could have made the incredible (albeit arduous) transformation I made if I had to do it with two small children in tow. The pressure of being a parent is immense and overbearing even to normal people—I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I took on that role even a moment too soon, we’d all suffer for it.

I took the time I needed and got myself right.

I will be indebted to the friends and family that stepped up to raise my boys into my next lifetime. They have no idea how much they contributed to saving my life. I hope someday I can repay them, even in the smallest of ways—but I know that just seeing me clean and functioning and alive, finally after so long, is probably all the payment they were ever looking for.

What about the boys, you ask? They’re right where I left them.

I see the boys on weekends—the youngest less, due to travel distance and schedule conflicts—but my boys know their mommy. Their real mommy. They know I love them and that I am here, and that’s all I have ever wanted.

Why don’t I have them back in my home? Because they’ve been with their respective caretakers longer now than they were ever with me. They’re stable, comfortable, happy, healthy, and safe. I will not uproot their lives out of a selfish desire to have them for myself.

The arrangement I have with both parties is more than enough—and more than I deserve.

Despite being clean nearly five years, moving forward in my career and life, maintaining a healthy, sane relationship with the same man nearly as long—despite doing all the things I should have been doing all along—I’m afraid.

I’m terrified that if I bite off more than I can chew and get overwhelmed, my whole world will fall apart all over again. My life is still not perfect. I struggle with sleep and time-management because of my ADHD, and a whole slew of little things tend to pile up into big things really quickly. Even though I’ve learned to manage all of that healthily through years of therapy and behavior modification—even though I can counsel other mothers in recovery and give decent advice to them when they’re struggling with their own families—that doesn’t mean I couldn’t still fuck up.

And it’s for that reason, my boys stay where they are.

When they get a little older, we might revisit the possibility of shared parenting. But what’s best for them is always and forever the route I will take—even in spite of myself and my feelings.

I guess that, in and of itself, is what it means to be a mother. In recovery or not.