House on Fire

The featured image this week is from my favorite photographer, Brooke Shaden. I find her work thought provoking, challenging and often inspiring. Her work also helps me process the greatest challenge I have, and hope I ever will, face, the loss of my beautiful daughter Lauren Nicole Provenzano at 22 years old to a multi-year battle with mental health and addiction. Honestly, I am not sure I could make it if I had to face a greater challenge! Brooke’s work is always birthed out of her own struggles and pain in life. This most recent creation came from a deeply painful experience in her life. You can read about it here. Brooke’s work has helped me understand what Lauren was feeling and going through as she fought to escape the world – that in some ways – she created.

The title of this image is “I Got Trapped Inside the House I Burned Down.”

If you are reading this and you have been or are an addict, you get that. In fact it SCREAMS at you. The majority of addicts understand, they are in the world they created and can’t get free. I remember one instance where I was so high I felt as if I would die. I literally could feel my body sinking into the recliner I was sprawled out on. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t escape, my arms and legs felt limp and powerless as I sat there, wondering would this ever end. My mind was racing with thoughts of not how great this was, but rather thoughts of how desperately I needed to stop this. My mind was screaming “Don’t do this any more, YOU ARE DYING!” Hours later, when the crash came, I was chasing the next high.

That is what my daughter was saying when she posted these words only weeks before she passed away.

“many people with this disease called addiction , including myself , have said at least once (for me at least i said this hundreds of times) i don’t want to do this anymore’ and may very well be tired of and disgusted of doing the drug but physically and mentally cannot stop. repeating this cycle of saying ‘i’m going to stop using’ and the very next day or even hours later doing that drug.”

The reason for this is explained in “Ambivalence” .

The truth is most addicts realize that there was a choice involved in their getting addicted, but once the drug digs into the brain and begins to change it there is a whole lot more than choice involved.

If you are an addict DO NOT believe the lie that you can not change, YOU CAN! The post “Freedom’ may help with some ideas.

In life it is true, if we are not careful, we can end up burning down the very house we built … even when we built it with all the right intentions.

As a dad that lost his daughter senselessly to a drug overdose, I often ask: “What could I have done differently?” I wonder, how did the house (atmosphere, environment, dynamic) I was a part of creating affect Lauren and could I have done something different, something better.

Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying LaLa’s addiction was my fault or your loved one’s is yours, it is not! What I am saying is that there must be things that we do or have done that aren’t helping.

For myself, one of the things I waisted a lot of time on was reacting to all that was happening rather than listening to what LaLa was saying, really, screaming at me, HELP ME. We tend to let the emotions and ego get in the way. Trust me, I know, that is not easy to avoid, but it can be done. A book that can help a lot with this and at the same time keep you sane, is “Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening “ by Robert Meyer.

Another thing I often did without realizing it was missing the tremendous amounts of guilt and shame that were beating Lauren down. Much of it put there by her, but I think, sometimes, my actions added to it. It didn’t help!

I know none of us can be perfect, but we can make progress. Don’t get trapped in the house you burned down. Make changes now that will keep adding to the arsenal your loved one has to move toward recovery.

This weeks featured image is call “I Got Trapped Inside the House I Burned Down” by Brooke Shaden