Saw this excellent essay by Rosalyn Warren shared by @Elizabeth Perry on Twitter. I immediately thought of all @Lisa Frederiksen's writing and education about the second-hand impacts of alcoholism which have informed me so much.
This article does a great job of capturing the varied experiences children of alcoholics have, both as young children and teenagers as well as into adulthood. It touches on the way kids suffer, gets parentified, or let down when parents can't be present, attentive, or supportive while overwhelmed by their struggles, issues, and addiction.
It discusses how difficult it often is for adult children who might have to care for a parent or cut contact with a parent long or short-term, and all the fury, grief, and sadness that come along with being unwilling to help, support, or stay connected with a parent. It also discusses the shame, fear, and complicated grief many of us feel being in a secret club we didn't decide to join and how often shame and judgment from others complicate our already complicated feelings.
One of the things I love about #ACEs is that they help give all of us a common language for early adversity. We may not share all the same #ACEs or wider circumstances that compound or buffer the impact, but we can always learn from each other though and understand the impact of ACEs knowing our friends, lovers, parents or coworkers may have (and still be) living with ACEs or their aftermath.
ACEs science helps us know our early experiences can impact us across the lifespan, and can impact our kids as well who may have little or no contact with relationships that would ideally be supportive and stress=buffering and are either absent or maybe volatile, chaotic, or ACE causing to them. Too many adults have to choose to cut off our parents to care for ourselves, partners or children instead and there are horrible choices and situations that no children of any age should have to be in.
As these people in this piece express, the weight can be heavy on mind, body, spirit, and family even after a parent passes. I always appreciate perspectives that are grounded in real-life experiences, described by people impacted and with first-hand experience using the conversational language we use when we're talking about our lives and families. Sometimes, the language can get abstract, remote, and distancing and we can forget we're talking about human beings and human experiences in the present tense as well as the past.
Here's an excerpt:
Clarke has been grappling with that day since. “I get a heaviness in my chest when I talk about this,” he says. His parents divorced when he was 13; as a teenager, Clarke would visit his father two or three times a week with his two younger brothers, and spend the rest of his time with his mother. He remembers a time his father drove them to school when Clarke was 15. “Looking back, I realize he was absolutely out of it. He was in a jovial mood, singing at the top of his lungs. And as a child, I didn’t realize it was abnormal. The smell of alcohol was normal to me. It became part of the fabric of my childhood.”
Clarke would find bottles of alcohol hidden around the house; in the cereal cupboard, or the washing basket. He became estranged from his father when he stopped coming to his rugby matches and missed his graduation from Newcastle University. “Everyone was there with their family. And I bought him a ticket and offered him a drive up, and he said he’d come, and then he went silent for a week,” he says. His father’s behavior has affected his relationships. “You put your faith in someone,” he says, “but if you’re not sure that faith is 100% well placed, you get hurt over and over again. There’s a cynic in me that thinks, well my dad lied to me, so why shouldn’t someone else?”
To read more, go here.
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