You Are Not Broken

Maybe you have been living with this for six months.

Maybe it has been six years.

Maybe it has been much longer.

However long it has been, there may be a point where you simply feel worn down.

You are tired of worrying.

Tired of wondering what is going to happen next.

Tired of the phone ringing and your heart immediately jumping into your throat.

Tired of the arguments, the promises, the setbacks, the money worries, the lies, the silence, the crisis.

Tired of trying to work out what you should do.

And perhaps, underneath all of that, you are tired of being you.

You may not recognise yourself anymore.

The woman who used to enjoy things, make plans, see friends, laugh, sleep properly, think about her own future.

The woman who knew what she thought and what she wanted.

Now so much of your life seems to revolve around your child and what might happen to them.

And perhaps you have started to wonder:

Is there something wrong with me?

Why can't I cope with this better?

Why am I still so anxious?

Why can't I stop thinking about it?

Why do I keep reacting in ways I later regret?

Why can't I just let go?

If you recognise yourself here, I want you to know something before we go any further.

You are not broken.

You are not failing at being a mum.

And you are not doing this badly simply because you are struggling.

What you are experiencing makes sense.

Not because everything you have done has necessarily been helpful.

Not because every reaction has been the one you would choose now.

But because there are reasons why you have responded the way you have.

And understanding those reasons is a much kinder and more useful place to begin than blaming yourself for them.

Read a little. Stop when something speaks to you. Come back when you need to.

This isn't something else you have to get right.

Why You Feel So Worn Down

When your child is struggling with addiction, your world can become a place of constant uncertainty.

You don't know when the next crisis will come.

You don't know whether the promise will be kept.

You don't know whether they are telling you the truth.

You don't know whether they will be okay tomorrow, next week or next year.

And your mind does what minds do when something important feels uncertain.

It searches for answers.

What did I miss?

What should I have done differently?

Was I too soft?

Was I too hard?

Should I have seen this coming?

Then it jumps into the future.

What if something really bad happens?

What if they have nowhere to live?

What if they lose their job?

What if they never get better?

If I don't fix this, who will?

And somewhere in between the past and the future is the present moment, where you are simply trying to get through another day.

That is exhausting.

There is another loss here too

There is another part of this that is often difficult to talk about.

Grief.

Not necessarily grief because your child has died, but grief for what you thought your child's life might look like.

Grief for the relationship you hoped you would have.

Grief for birthdays, celebrations, family occasions and ordinary moments that have been changed by addiction.

Grief for the version of your family you thought you would have.

And sometimes grief for the woman you were before all of this became such a large part of your life.

Grief is not simply sadness.

It can show up as anger, fear, guilt, numbness, disbelief, longing, relief, resentment or deep sadness.

It doesn't move in a neat, predictable order either.

You can feel hopeful one day and devastated the next.

You can laugh at something and then feel guilty for enjoying yourself.

You can feel angry with your child and love them deeply at the same time.

None of that means you are a bad mum.

It means something important has been lost, changed or made uncertain.

Your body may be responding too

When we perceive threat or danger, our bodies automatically prepare us to respond.

You might notice yourself becoming anxious, angry, restless or ready to act.

You might want to escape or avoid what is happening.

You might find yourself appeasing, giving in or trying desperately to keep the peace.

Or sometimes you may feel completely overwhelmed and shut down.

These responses are not signs that you are weak.

They are ways your body tries to protect you when something feels threatening or uncertain.

And when the uncertainty keeps going, it can become incredibly difficult to feel settled.

This doesn't mean you are destined to stay this way.

It means there is a reason why simply telling yourself to stop worrying has probably never been very effective.

You have probably been trying to solve something that cannot be solved by you

Motherhood teaches us to solve problems.

When our children are little, we fix the scraped knee. We make the phone call. We find the answer. We stay up late. We work things out.

So when your child is in trouble, it is understandable that you try to help.

You love them.

You want them to be safe.

You want things to be different.

But addiction is not something you can solve for another person.

You can love your child.

You can support them.

You can encourage them.

You can influence the relationship you have with them.

But you cannot make their choices for them.

You cannot control whether they use substances.

You cannot control whether they seek help.

You cannot control whether they stay in recovery.

And when you are used to being someone who fixes things, that lack of control can feel unbearable.

So you try harder.

You think more.

You worry more.

You check.

You rescue.

You argue.

You give another chance.

You set a boundary and then struggle to hold it.

You tell yourself that if you could just find the right thing to say or do, perhaps everything would change.

And when it doesn't, you can end up blaming yourself.

But the problem was never that you hadn't tried hard enough.

What you are living with is hard.

The worry about your child.

The uncertainty.

The fear of what might happen next.

The grief for what you hoped their life, and perhaps your family life, would look like.

The exhaustion of never quite knowing what is around the corner.

That is the first layer.

And then, very often, we add another one.

We blame ourselves.

We replay conversations.

We wonder what we should have done differently.

We think about the signs we missed.

We regret the money we gave.

The things we said.

The things we didn't say.

The boundaries we didn't keep.

The times we lost our temper.

The times we gave in.

And then we tell ourselves we should know better.

We should be stronger.

We should be able to handle this.

We should be able to let go.

We should stop worrying.

We should be doing more.

We should be doing less.

And suddenly, we are not only living through something incredibly difficult.

We are also fighting ourselves.

The first layer is the situation.

The second layer is what we add to it.

The first layer may not be something you can change.

Your child may still be using.

You may still not know what is going to happen.

There may still be difficult conversations, disappointments and frightening moments.

But the second layer is different.

That is where what has happened becomes a judgement about you.

I should have known.

I should have stopped this.

I'm a terrible mum.

Why did I do that?

I keep getting this wrong.

I should be coping better by now.

That second layer can be incredibly painful.

Because now you are carrying what is happening and carrying the belief that you are somehow failing because it is happening.

Understanding yourself is not the same as excusing yourself

This is important.

When I say that your reactions make sense, I am not saying that every reaction has been helpful.

You may have shouted.

You may have given money when you had decided you wouldn't.

You may have said something you wish you could take back.

You may have tried to control something you couldn't control.

You may have reacted from fear and regretted it afterwards.

Understanding why you responded that way doesn't mean you have to decide it was okay.

It means you can get curious about what was happening underneath it.

Maybe you were scared.

Maybe you were exhausted.

Maybe you felt completely powerless.

Maybe you were trying to protect your child.

Maybe you were desperate to make the uncertainty stop.

Maybe you simply didn't know what else to do.

There is a reason you responded the way you did.

And once you can see that, you have something much more useful than self-blame.

You have a place to begin.

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