Consumed

On the East Coast of the United States, where I live, we just had a fairly significant Nor’ Easter. In my area, it blanketed everything with about 14 inches of snow. Not the biggest we have ever had but enough to cause changes in our daily lives. It is also very pretty.

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

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 as I was remembering 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. As it brought me warmth, it also brought me sorrow. I miss her!

One of the things I would do differently in trying to help my beautiful little girl beat the demon of addiction was to have worked more consistently and intentionally at just enjoying and being with her.

Because addiction and mental health issues are so all-pervading it literally becomes the focus of all the individual faces and those close to them. It becomes their and our world. Conversations, activities, and nearly every moment. It consumes ALL of us.

That is what I am talking about, 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). By the nature of all that is happening to us, it is easy to slip into being too busy with the latest problem (there is always another one) to do this. We must resist, we must focus on who our loved one really is, not our loved one driven by the addiction or mental health issue. LaLa loved fashion, baking, and being with her family. She always wanted to be a doctor. She had dreams, but they had become cloudy because of the addiction. Lauren once said to a friend a few days before she passed away, “Once I started using heroin, nothing else mattered anymore”, but it does matter, and we must be the ones to help bring that back into view for our loved one.

I wish I had done more of that. I wish I had been sensitive enough to keep Lauren focused on the possibility of being who she really was and the possibility of life without the drugs.

We did some of that, I just wish I had understood how important it was to do more, more consistently.

On the last night, I saw Lauren I was able to share that kind of experience with LaLa, I am glad I did.

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. As I was 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 of 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 want to believe she saw it as a chance to begin to be in a fresh atmosphere as her mom and I did. And I was very direct with her and asked her to not do anything foolish. She had been working really hard and doing well. I told her that 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. She should have told us. I wish she had!

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. It is all cloudy!

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