Consumed

Storms Come

On the East Coast of the United States we just had a fairly significant Nor’ Easter. It blanketed everything with about 14 inches of snow. Not the biggest storm we have ever had but enough to cause changes in our daily lives. The snow was also very pretty.

Lauren and I really loved the snow. She always enjoyed playing in it with her brother Evan. As she got into her middle school years she developed a passion for Snow Boarding. We would often go on day trips to local Ski Lodges. Lauren would snowboard and I would alpine ski. Those were great days producing great memories. The image to the right or below is from The last year of her life we did not get much snow, consequently, we did not go skiing much. I no longer ski, it reminds me too much of her, maybe that will change.

Addiction has a voracious appetite

Addiction like the snow we got this week, blankets everything around it. The impacted individual, their loved ones, and everything else in their lives, EVERYTHING. Their interactions, their activities, the focus of those that care about them, EVERYTHING!

The other day I remembered times I spent with LaLa (Lauren): times skiing, times baking her favorite dessert, French Macrons, times sneaking to Starbucks when she should have been at school. It brought me warmth, and also sorrow. I miss her!

I could have done more of this

One  thing I would do different in helping my beautiful little girl beat the demon of addiction was to work more at just enjoying and being with her. Substance abuse and mental health issues are all-pervading. An addiction literally becomes the focus of all the individual faces, it becomes their and our world.

That is exactly what I mean, I would work much more intentionally to make sure we: Lauren, her brother, her mom, and me, were not constantly focusing on the PROBLEM (the addiction or mental health issue). It is not easy to do, there is always another crisis. We can focus on who our loved one really is, not who they are when driven by the addiction or mental health issue. LaLa loved fashion, baking, and being with her family. Her goal was to be a doctor. She had great dreams but addiction blurred them. Just before she passed away Lauren told a friend, “Once I started using heroin, nothing else mattered anymore”,

If I had been more sensitive to keeping Lauren focused on the possibility of being who she really was and the possibility of life without drugs it may have shown  her that there were many things that did matter.

Time can run out

On the last night I saw Lauren we shared an experience like that.

Lauren had planned on visiting some friends for dinner. Her mom and I were nervous about letting her go but we felt we had to begin to allow her to live life in recovery. While giving her a ride to the restaurant, it was at a mall I told her how I was feeling. I first thanked her for challenging me to stretch my understanding and thinking about addiction and mental health. She had asked me to read the book “Chasing the Scream”. I had just about completed it and told her it helped me a lot and I appreciated her encouraging me to read it.

We talked about her plans to attend St. Vincent’s College for radiology in September. She was excited about that, so were her mom and I. I think she saw it as a chance to begin to be in a fresh atmosphere. Being rather direct I asked her to not do anything foolish. She had been working really hard and doing well. We imagined how in a year or two everything would be different, better!

What I did not know is that for a little over a week she had been fighting severe cravings. I wish she had told us!

I am grateful we had that conversation. I hope in it LaLa saw that I, we, believed in her.

Remind your loved one of who they are and who they can be without the drug because they have forgotten.

This weeks featured image is by Brooke Shaden, I am not sure of the title.