When my son was in active addiction I hated holidays.

Mother’s Day was among the worst.

Walking through town I passed families with teenagers, toddlers and baby carriages.  My eye would catch a grandmother smiling beside her daughter, both women sporting painfully bright pink corsages or carrying a single, long-stemmed, red rose, or worse a full bouquet – testament to their family’s love and adoration on this day of all days.

The sight of them hurt.

Where was my carnation?  My long-stemmed blooms?

It wasn’t until I found Al-Anon that an understanding of addiction – and its effects on me – began to help.  I had to mourn the loss of so much:  my son not finishing college, starting a career, saving money to buy a house…enjoying a Mother’s Day.

I had to learn that it was all about expectations, and I had to let them – and him – go.

It was through Al-Anon that I learned the kind of mother I needed to be –  one who understood boundaries, who relinquished a control  she never had, and who would allow my son to grow up on his own.

Not until we gave Jacob the ultimatum to enter treatment or leave our home did his “growing up” begin. By then, all I cared about was that he would get well and be “drug-free.”

This understanding, hard-won, took time.

Today, Jacob is eight years into recovery.  His sobriety has brought him all the milestones that he wanted to achieve: a college degree, a career, and a beautiful young woman he will marry next year.

His mother is in recovery too, still learning how to be the mother he needs.

On Mother’s Day he calls.  We “face time” between his home in Florida and mine in Maryland, but he always remembers it.

To get my son back, I had to let him go.

And to celebrate Mother’s Day, I had to earn it.

 

*Excerpt from article for MomPower, a Hazelden-hosted website