Parents, Don't "Go Dark"

"And it's a long way there, it's a long way to where I'm going" ~ Graeham George Gobel

For parents of addicts and addicts in recovery the pandemic seems like an all-too-familiar experience. Wherever our journeys have taken us, now here we are at least physically, sheltered in place, quarantined, immobile. For many of us even the dream of working from home isn't quite what we envisioned, our lives disrupted by something out of our control. We didn't ask for this. We did our best, we thought, to prevent something like this from happening. We tried to lead healthy lifestyles, most of the time. We exercised, sometimes or a lot. We led our lives as best as we knew how.

In the end, none of this mattered. The worldwide pandemic has taken control of our lives and there is very little, it seems, that we can do about it.

But we are parents of addicts. Haven't we been through something painfully, devastatingly similar before? We do have tools. We have experience that few do. We share an ability to see that hopeful light at the end of the tunnel along with cancer survivors and thrivers.

And it looks like it might be a long tunnel.

Moving along this new journey of ours where it may seem as if we have been transported to another world, another totally unfamiliar pathway, we cannot succumb to the darkness. What is happening to us on our physical plane cannot translate to our emotional, spiritual planes. We cannot Go Dark while in the grasp of the pandemic. The Addiction is going to see this as an opportunity to ramp up its hold on our sons and daughters and the tendency for our children to sometimes look on the dark side of life will be amplified. As we continue to shelter in place we all will be at our wits end with those we love dearly and with our own innermost thoughts and frailties. This is going to be a test of where we are on our journeys. Going dark doesn't simply mean we risk detaching from our lives and the lives of our loved ones. It can also mean a return to dark thoughts, passive-aggressive behavior and all those tendencies that will take us right back to the cloud forest, if we allow this.

Now more than ever is the time to remember how we moved along our pathways as we learned how to love our children while hating The Addiction, keeping our children close, in sight, not "doing for" them nor ignoring real opportunities for support.

It's all about love and patience, seeing the sunrise and beautiful vistas in the distance, being the beacon of positivity, that light in the darkness of The Addiction, now amplified by the pandemic.

We've got this. We've been through worse, something most people will never understand.

Continue to be the light against the darkness. Shine On!

. . . keep coming back

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. ~ Elizabeth Kübler-Ross