I get tired of having the same conversation at times. People who are not parents of children fighting addiction will never understand. Try as I might, I will never be able to explain it to them.
We hold on while letting go.
We pray while struggling to find the words.
We don’t sleep, then walk as zombies through our day.
We function but never live.
We mourn living souls.
We lose ourselves in battles to encourage others to find themselves.
Our lives go forward but we stay in neutral, unmoving and detached.
This is parenting through addiction. We want to armor up and join a battle we are not in. We get lost in the debris of addiction as it swirls all around us.
Still, we stay. We keep ‘actively’ loving. We continue to trust God for healing even when our human minds can’t see ahead. We encourage daily, listen, and support with our presence, if nothing else.
When everyone else leaves a shadow, we still hold strong and stay.
We hold on to hope and always see the human we love and not just an ‘addict’. We always will.
We will fight for those we love. That’s being a parent to someone fighting addiction.
-Lisa
