Dear Therapist,
I am an adult child of an alcoholic mother and currently a mother myself. I have a complex relationship with my mother, as we are close but also experience difficulties at times. Despite the dysfunction and toxicity in my family, there were moments of love and support. However, my mother’s alcoholism, behavior, and mental health problems have greatly impacted my life and left scars. In my late twenties, I made the difficult decision to stop trying to fix her and instead focused on breaking free from the negative patterns of my family. Though it was heartbreaking to distance myself from my mother and family, this choice has allowed me to live a healthy, positive, and fulfilling life.
Currently, I am 43 years old, a single mother by choice, and live thousands of miles away from my family with my 3-year-old daughter. I have my own home and work full-time. Life is wonderful, with one exception – my mother’s deteriorating mental and physical health. Her living situation is terrible, as she is a hoarder, her house is in disrepair, and her drinking is affecting her health. Recently, she had a severe fall while intoxicated. She has been asking me for years to move back home, and I always made it clear that I wouldn’t. But now, I feel conflicted. I carry a tremendous guilt for not taking care of my mother, knowing that she needs me. However, I made a promise to protect my daughter from the chaos I grew up in, and I don’t want her to witness her grandmother in this condition. Yet, I worry that I’m also denying her a relationship with her flawed but loving grandmother. I don’t want any damage done to my daughter, but I don’t know what the best course of action is.
Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
Growing up with an alcoholic parent has a lasting impact on a child, affecting various aspects of their life even in adulthood. Alongside the chaos, children of alcoholic parents often experience confusion about their responsibilities compared to those of their parents. Many of them end up taking on caregiving roles, trying to maintain their parent’s safety or taking care of themselves when their parent is unable to. Establishing boundaries and determining appropriate roles can be an ongoing struggle.
Additionally, there’s the challenge of loving a parent who can be both caring and frightening, unpredictable, or unavailable. Children often feel a mix of emotions towards this parent, ranging from anger to compassion, along with guilt that leads to sacrificing their own needs for others. Overcoming these patterns can be difficult.
Considering the wide-ranging effects of a parent’s addiction, substance use disorders are often seen as family disorders. It seems you came to this realization in your late twenties, and it must have been incredibly challenging to leave that environment and build a healthy, fulfilling life of your own. Making that choice required immense courage and determination to break free from the family patterns you sought to escape.
One positive sign of your healing is your ability to acknowledge the contradictions in your family. You recognize that your family is both supportive and dysfunctional, understanding that a close relationship with your mother doesn’t erase the tumultuous aspects, and vice versa. Achieving this balanced perspective is hard work, especially for those who grew up with trauma.
Interestingly, when considering your current options, you present them as binary choices. Moving home makes you a good daughter; not moving home makes you a bad daughter. Allowing your daughter to have a close relationship with your mother damages her, while denying her that relationship protects her or damages her in a different way. Moving home models family loyalty and compassion, while not moving home models selfishness. However, what if there’s a way to take care of your mother without sacrificing your family’s stability?
Let’s address the guilt you feel about potentially abandoning your mother, as it seems to be the main reason pushing you towards moving home. It’s crucial to address this guilt because making major life decisions based solely on avoiding guilt is rarely a sound approach. Instead, focus on the reasonable and valid reasons for staying where you are – maintaining the stable, happy life you’ve built for your daughter and yourself, and avoiding a return to chaos. The part of you that broke free from the dysfunctional family is the same part that recognizes moving home isn’t the right choice for you and your daughter.
With this in mind, let’s explore how you can care for your mother without uprooting your family’s life. Recent events may have triggered your childhood worries about your intoxicated mother, causing you to believe you must prioritize one person’s needs over the other. However, once you abandon this binary mindset, you’ll realize that taking care of yourself doesn’t equate to abandoning your mother.
Why? Because even if you were to move home, it’s unlikely you could achieve the outcomes you envision. You can’t force your mother into alcoholism treatment if she denies the problem or refuses to face it. With a job and a young daughter to care for, you wouldn’t be present 24/7 to prevent her from falling down the stairs or stop her from hoarding. There are plenty of ways you can help her regardless of your location – providing information about treatment programs, addiction specialists, or local support groups (although she may reject these suggestions); hiring someone to check on her or clean the house; suggesting a safer living situation for her as she ages, such as a single-story home or communal living; maintaining regular contact with her medical team; and arranging for groceries or other necessities to be delivered. While some of these solutions may involve significant costs, moving closer to your mother wouldn’t change the reality that you’ll need to delegate much of this work if you want to keep your job while dedicating time to your daughter. As you let go of the childhood fantasy of saving your mother, you’ll realize that part of being an adult is accepting the imperfect solutions and working with what’s available.
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