Breaking the Cycle

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. My mom did drugs and my dad was a functioning alcoholic. Of three children I’m the oldest, my sister three years behind me and my brother is a nine year difference. My dad owned a successful business when we were kids, and amidst the chaos of living in a home being raised by parents with drug and alcohol problems, there were a lot of good times and well the bad times were really bad.

We had everything we wanted as kids, we lived on a ranch, any toy we asked for we got. Sure, we had things, lots of things, but the only thing missing was our parents. My parents were physically there, but emotionally there was nothing. There’s supposedly nothing like the love of your parents, but I wouldn’t know what that feels like. CPS was always showing up at our house and my parents had us kids trained on not telling them a thing.

When I was 14 my dad lost his business due to tax problems and the day the IRS closed his doors, I packed my stuff and left home. Soon after that my parents lost everything they had. CPS took my brother and sister and I continued to live at my grandmas. I told myself I’d never want to be like my parents, but at the age of 17 I became a product of my environment. I started doing drugs at 17 and most of the relationship I got involved in revolved around drugs and alcoholism.

When I was 24, I became a mom and for the first three years of my daughter’s life I was a horrible mom. I was on drugs, her dad was in and out of jail. But it didn’t seem like anything different than what I used to. It wasn’t until my daughter was placed with my sister and her dad having a stroke for me to ask myself what the hell was I doing. I was all alone, every night, just my thoughts and I. I ended up getting clean for the first time in ten years. In the times I was by myself, I thought about how I raised and how I had all kinds of resentment toward my parents for what they did to me. It made me think, do I want my daughter to feel like that? Would I want her to grow up in a dysfunctional home like I did? It was then I realized I had a second chance to turn everything around for her since she was still young and chances are she wouldn’t remember what went on from the time she was born until she was five.

The cycle goes all the way back to my great grandparents. Everyone in my family grew up in dysfunction and the cycle just kept on with each generation until now. I’ve made it my soul purpose in life to make sure my daughter will not turn out an addict or an alcoholic because that would be all she knows. I still wonder how it feels to have parents that genuinely love me, but I do know how it feels to genuinely love my daughter, sober. My daughter might not have everything she wants as far as toys and such, but one thing is for sure, she has all the love and attention she could ever want from me and that’s truly what every child wants.