I was at the hair dresser this morning when the song ‘How to Save a Life’ by The Fray came on. As I listened to the words, it took me back to last August when our daughter was in the hospital. It wasn’t so much her time in the hospital, but the events that led up to it that made this song so relevant to me this morning.

Like so many others, Robyn got laid off when the world went into lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. She was living in a shared house, but it was getting harder and harder for her to keep afloat so she moved back home. As the world was gripped by the pandemic, and restrictions tightened, we noticed that she was utilizing Zoom and Google Hangout. At the beginning we weren’t overly concerned when she would have a drink or two with her friends over these virtual platforms. As time wore on, I couldn’t help but notice that my daughter could not go more than a day or two without drinking. I started to get slightly worried, but thought it was just the way young people were dealing with the pandemic. During this time she had found a job and an apartment but was sidelined when her new apartment flooded so moved back in. We were really pleased for her that she was starting her life again.

Then things really started to happen. Her behavior became impulsive and erratic. She would make commitments with us and break them. As the summer came and she was with her friends more, her whereabouts became more of an issue. And then it became clear – her substance use was affecting her job as well as her relationship with her family.

My overwhelming desire was to do anything EXCEPT what I actually did do. What I wanted to do was wrap her up and whisk her away and fix it and take care of it. What I did was the exact opposite. I let go.

I gave her a choice. I could take her to an assessment and treatment center or she could go and stay with a friend for the next few days until her apartment was ready. She chose the latter. Twenty minutes after our conversation, she was gone. It was July 23. I didn’t really hear from her until she turned up in hospital on August 19.

That month felt like I was in the valley of death. I’ve never been in the dark like I was during that time. It was like when I’m in our garage and I turn the light out before opening the door – it’s so dark I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.

I couldn’t see.

I can’t breathe.

Strangely, mixed with the excruciating moments, were moments of real peace. I knew I had done the right thing. I knew deep down that this was what I had to do. I had to be willing to let her go. She had to make her own decisions. These moments, though, were fleeting compared to the shadow I lived in during that time. The only thing that kept me going was a promise God made to me a few years earlier. One late night I was praying and He clearly said to me ‘I make this covenant with you – your children and your children’s children will not know death.’ As humbled and overwhelmed as I was at such a promise, I also knew that God doesn’t just go around making covenants for no reason. I knew at that moment that I would be calling back on that intimate time between Him and I. I just never knew it was going to be to this extent.

I called on that moment. A LOT. As my fatalistic imagination got away from me and anxiety stole my joy, I would speak it out. Reminding myself, and God, of that promise – His promise that He made to me. She would not know death. Some days it wasn’t enough. In my most desperate moment, through sobs, I spoke out a request to Him that I never thought would leave my lips. I knew that He knew where she was and He knew what was going on. I asked Him that if she wasn’t going to stop going down the road she was on, then to take her home. I asked Him to spare her any further hurt or pain or heartache; no more trauma or abuse. Take her home. I cried until I lost my voice.

I don’t recall the timeline from that request to when she surfaced. It may have been a few days, possibly more than a week. All I knew was that, for the time being, she was in a safe place. It didn’t last long, and we could only convince her to stay with us for a night before she was off again, but it allowed me time to reset. It gave me a glimpse into what may be her reality – she would not know death. Of course, that story was still a ways off, but it was a glimmer of hope. Looking back at that time, I’m convinced that we are where we are now partly because I chose to let go last July. I was doing her no favors by fixing everything all of the time and smothering her – all I was doing was prolonging the inevitable and driving her pain further down into hiding.

I have no anger or hard feeling towards my beautiful daughter. All I have for her is compassion and mercy and grace. Oh, and tons and heaps of unconditional love. For a time, that love meant needing to let her walk out the door and trust that she was going to come back. And she did. And I am glad.

I feel aggressive today.

I woke up that way. Aggressive and irritable. It happens sometimes, when I go to bed particularly annoyed and worried. Last night I continued my research on Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. I learned how it is not a proper medical diagnosis due to the differing opinions of medical professionals. I learned that many in the field see these symptoms as part of withdrawal, and that it could last up to six months or even a year so there is nothing ‘post’ about it.

Nausea, cramping, bloating, mood swings, irritability, restlessness, agitation, severe headaches, fatigue, insomnia……

She has had it all, and although Robyn is getting better she is not out of the woods yet. It’s tiring and draining for her and I feel terrible that I can’t just take it away.

I can’t fix this with a warm hug or a cup of hot chocolate.

I can’t fix this. I can’t control this. All I can do is listen, distract and support. Hmph.

So I’m irritated and aggressive. I think about all the people who have exploited and taken advantage of my beautiful daughter. Profited off her pain; used her to meet their own ends. I’m pretty angry.
I’m angry at the drug trade, the chemists who invent new molecular structures for synthetic substances, the dealers, the pushers, the corrupt law officers and politicians who let it all slide. I’m angry at the cannabis stores, the liquor industry, the vape industry.

The greed is insidious. The human cost is cataclysmic.

The office I work for recently released a special report on the impact the opioid crisis is having on young people. It is easier than ever to get drugs and alcohol. It is more dangerous than ever to ingest unknown toxins. The pandemic hasn’t helped.

I’ve stopped trying to pin point the exact moment when ‘it all went wrong’ for my daughter. I’m not sure there was one moment. It was more like a landslide. Slow at first and then it just built momentum. It grew arms and legs and became a creature pulling everything down.

Tonight we tell her how proud we are of her. How brave she is and how invested she’s been in her recovery. I rub her back to warm her chills and hold her hands to quiet the tremors. This is I know what to do at this moment.

She’s got this. Thinking of her determination melts the hard pieces of my heart. The hardness that anger built. It reminds me of the song Landslide, written by Stevie Nicks. Nicks explains that she wrote that song at a low point in her life. She says, “I had gotten to a point where it was like, ‘I’m not happy. I am tired. But I don’t know if I can do any better than this.’” She goes on to say that’s when she decided to right the song, to say, ‘let’s do this. Let’s get to the top.’

This is my landslide moment.

In September of last year I was at Ikea and stumbled upon one of their higher end, three seater sofas in the ‘As Is’ section. It was totally intact and really comfortable, marked down 85% to a whopping $60 Canadian (about 40 quid). The reason for the great deal was that it needed to be covered, and Ikea was totally sold out of the slipcovers for this model.

Robyn had a very small couch in her apartment that wasn’t really doing the job. She had recently been discharged from the hospital (more in a future post), and I figured a nice comfy couch in her apartment may change the atmosphere – kind of like Cognitive Behavior Therapy – looking at a distressful situation differently. I thought, in my desperate attempts to make things better, that this couch may serve as an anchor to redefine her apartment. I was aching to believe that my beautiful daughter had put ‘the things’ behind her that landed her in the hospital in August, and hoped that sprucing up her apartment would be a good start. A spruced up apartment would keep the reprobates and drug dealers away, wouldn’t it?

So I set out to not only make a slipcover, but to totally upholster this couch. I had not really done much of this kind of thing, but needed to get stuck into a project. I felt like I needed to do SOMETHING to try and change the trajectory that I sub-consciously knew my daughter was on. I created a template, and after a fair amount of cutting, sewing and taking apart, and wanting to give up, managed to upholster this couch. It looked really, really good. So good that Nigel was trying to convince me that it should stay in our house rather than Robyn’s apartment. I wasn’t having any of that. In my mind – this couch was part of the answer to a new start for Robyn. This plush black couch, complete with plush red cushions to match her tv stand and a fuzzy grey throw. This was it. She was going to turn the corner and this couch was going to be key. Um……. No.

Fast forward to yesterday. As she has already gone through in her latest blog post (which you can read here: https://robynfloraca.wordpress.com), we went back to her apartment. I had been there a few times over the past month, but only to grab a thing or two. Now, as I waited for her to get some clothes, I had a look around. Yesterday was a hard day.

At first glance the couch looked fine, but it wasn’t until you got a bit closer that you noticed things were not as they seemed. This couch, it was clear, had been through quite the ordeal. This couch had a story to tell; this couch had memories. This couch held secrets. Scanning things lying about on the table, coffee tables and floor…. it all came back to the couch.

Over the past few years I have been in very dark and desperate places. Huge anxiety attacks in the middle of the night; crying, pulling my hair, pleading and begging God to supernaturally remove my daughter from wherever she was and bring her to me. On more than one occasion I have driven to her apartment block in the night to sit in my car and wait for her to come or go. My mind would always take me to the worst scenarios I could possibly conjure, and the only way I could calm myself down was to tell myself over and over that it was just my imagination. But now, the couch was telling me all those thoughts were not just my imagination. Standing in the middle of that apartment, staring at the couch, the fact hit me – my anxiety-fuelled thoughts had passed through the fantastical veil and into reality.

I can’t breathe.

Anger has not been the emotion that has prevailed for me. Anxiety, fear, sorrow…. all in great and equal measure. Anger has only surfaced a few times since our first hospital visit five years ago, and it was mainly directed, or rather misdirected towards others. Anger showed up yesterday. Amongst the sadness and anxiety, I could feel anger crawling up to the surface. This couch was supposed to mark a new beginning and it looked like death. This apartment…… the symbol of starting something, of building something…. crumbled under the pressure of substance abuse and depression. The couch wasn’t the answer. I couldn’t fix this. Anger choked me to the point of feeling numb.

I couldn’t fix this.

By the time we got home we had decided that everything in the apartment was going to be donated or thrown out. The couch – we could sell it. By last night I was clear. The couch, along with its memories and secrets, was going in the trash too.

It was time to start fresh.

About 8 years ago I was chatting with someone I knew from work and my wider church community. We had a bit in common – we were both social workers in the child and family services field in one way or another, in two different regions. We were talking generally about issues young people face in the world with the surge of social media. My friend, who had three children under the age of 7 at the time, stated in a very matter-of-fact tone:

“As long as parents create a safe space for their children to talk, your child will never keep anything from you. It is parents who don’t create safe spaces who have children who lie and keep secrets.”

I wanted to punch them in the face.

By the time I was speaking to this person, my daughter had been cutting herself for two years. Funny thing, though – I didn’t find out because she told me. I found out from a close friend who had heard it from her own daughter. A secret and a lie. Hmmm. I guess I was one of those parents who didn’t create a safe space for my children. Bullcrap.

The creation of a ‘safe space’ in our home and family was textbook. We did not overreact (well, we tried not to) when they made mistakes, we tried hard not to over-discipline or consequence. We prayed together. We did devotionals together. We preferred to use logical consequences over corporal punishment…… we had family meetings, we encouraged open communication. We embedded a family culture. We said sorry to our children when we made mistakes. Robyn and I even had a journal that would go back and forth between us. Lots of it was funny, cute things but it was also used for her to talk about things she didn’t feel able to speak to us about. We weren’t perfect, but we gave it a good try. The space was so safe, it was like falling 30 stories into a puff of fluffy clouds.

There was one problem. It wasn’t her space. It was a safe space, but it wasn’t her brave space.

I had been exposed to self-harm. I paid my way through university as an after-hours duty worker, driving teenage girls to the hospital after swallowing pins, crushed lightbulbs ….. a bottle of Tylenol. Their forearms looked like checkerboards – some scars had healed while others were clearly fresh. I thought I knew about self-harm. It took another ten years for me to realize that all I knew about self-harm was that I didn’t know a darn thing. My exposure to self-harm as a university student crystalized certain stereotypes and scenarios by which something like that would exist. To me, self-harm was straightforward – it was people, mainly teenagers….mainly teenage girls, who would hurt themselves but cutting themselves or eating things that would cut their insides. Taking too many pills was a failed overdose. Overeating, abusing alcohol or other substances were not self-harm in my book – they didn’t even equate. No. No. Self-harm was cutting. Furthermore, those people were ones who had horrific pasts – they had endured abuse or neglect. They were in fostercare for pete’s sake. That was self-harm and those were the types of people who used it as a cry for help.

Not my daughter. Not my child. Why would my child want or feel the need to do something like that? She didn’t have that upbringing. She didn’t have those experiences. Why? Why? Why are you destroying your beautiful skin? Why are you hurting yourself? Stop it. Just stop it. I’ll put up a sticker chart – you can get a reward at the end of the month. Here, have some ice, squeeze on that……… what are you doing? Why are you doing it? You can talk to me about it. We can use a code word. You can call me anytime – I’ll drop whatever I’m doing, no matter what. Stop. Just stop.

What do the books say about it? What does Google say? What do the prominent Christian leaders say? Don’t give it attention but take care of the wounds. Provide other, less invasive forms of self-harm (ice, a hair band), hide anything sharp in the house (until they start taking apart their own pencil sharpener). Get her into therapy, counselling. Get her a mentor. It is addictive. Tell her that.

It was exhausting. The sleepless nights were endless. I would sometimes do checks on her when she was asleep, comparing scars to see how old they were. Sometimes I would trick myself into thinking newer ones were just older ones. I did that a lot. I would kiss her scars – a mother’s love is pretty powerful (I still kiss them). I pray for them to disappear. I’m not sure why I do that – maybe it’s because 8 years ago I got a distorted message that I’m a crappy parent. Maybe I still want to punch that person in the face.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a tap you could just turn off. I couldn’t comprehend why a person would not just pour out their guts and deal with whatever their issue was so the hurt would stop and they didn’t have to cry for help anymore. I had created a safe space – what was the problem?

Some things are still taboo. Mental health is one of them. Cutting is a big one. Feeling depressed, overwhelmed, abandoned and alone are all there as well. Pile on the optics – being raised in a Christian home, an active part of the youth group and have parents who are well known in the Church. Safe spaces do not exist for a person with this lived experience. The only spaces that exist are brave spaces.

The notion of brave spaces came to me only recently by a colleague of mine. She is a wonderful, courageous Indigenous woman who speaks out about the injustices of racism and discrimination. She explained to me that for her, there are no safe spaces, just brave spaces. This means that she decides when and where she puts herself out there; when she takes that step of bravery and becomes her most vulnerable – sharing her experiences growing up as an Indigenous girl. She has found that the times when she was encouraged to share in a ‘safe space’ but didn’t feel right about doing so ended up being a bad experience. It was those times when she chose to be brave, when everything felt right and she was ready, that the experience was healing and positive.

As hard as I worked to create a safe space for my daughter, it was always going to stay empty until she felt ready. Until she felt able to step out and speak out on issues that are still left in dark corners and hidden under carpets. As hard as I toiled to ‘make it better’, any safe space I created dried up. Her pain is her pain; her reality is her reality. And I’ve had to realize, although painfully, that I can’t take away her pain. I can’t take it away by hovering over her, hiding all the sharps in the house, controlling her environment to make it as less stressful as possible, taking away her phone, turning off the internet. That did nothing but drive her away and send her the message that all she needed to do was snap out of it. I can’t make her stop cutting by ostracizing people who I believed had children who may have hurt my daughter or caused her distress; or people who I had expected to be positive role models in her life but did not live up to my ridiculous ideas. All that created was her feeling she needed to lie to me and tell me she ‘wasn’t doing that anymore’. The one who needed care was now having to take care of me.

No. The only way that a brave space was going to be created was for me to start letting go. Letting go and putting my trust in the Almighty. The One who made her, planned her. The One who had her first – the One who gets to claim her before me. (I will talk about God ALOT in these posts. You have been warned)! That was a 10 year process, and I’m not totally there yet. But we’re getting there.

My daughter wasn’t a baby who walked early. In fact, she wasn’t really interested in walking at all. She was happy to crawl around on all fours, fast as lightning, to get to where she wanted to go. Once she started to furniture walk, it took her months before she finally let go to take her first independent steps. I remember it like it was yesterday. She was holding onto her grandma’s fingers, and then, with loving reassurance from the woman who had such an impact on her life – let go. I was close by, camera at the ready. I knew that if I was holding onto her she would have never let go. She, and I, would have prolonged this next crucial stage of her development. I was excited for her to get to that stage, but found it hard to face the reality of it at the same time. My baby was growing up, she would be a ‘toddler’, it was all going so fast. But I knew that I had to let go. So I did.

I had no idea how profound this moment would be over the course of not only my daughter’s life, but to the survival of my relationship with her.

Now, on the brink of turning 25, my daughter is ready to start telling her story. Her lived experience of suffering with mental health issues, undiagnosed disorders and how that led to a crippling and life altering drug and alcohol addiction. I stand with her, and I’m insanely proud of her brave decision. I have my own story too.

Parenting a child and young adult through mental illness and addictions is indescribable. Your heart is always broken; you are in a state of constant grief mixed with anger, exhaustion and unbridled worry. And most of all, you are terrified. Terrified of the phone ringing, a knock on the door, an unexpected visitor – expecting that phone call, that visitor, is the one. That one message that keeps you up at night – the message that your daughter is gone.

I can’t breathe. I’ve been saying that for the past five years. It is the only way I’ve found to describe what goes on inside me during those times.

I’ve felt unable to tell my story because it is so entwined with her story. A story that was, and is, not mine to tell. That is going to change. As she tells her story, I will follow up with a post of my own, from the mother’s perspective. We hope doing this will not only be healing and cathartic for us, but helpful to others. I have pages and pages and pages, but I will only go so far as to what she is ready to share. It is my sincere hope and prayer that she feels able to be as authentic as possible.

Stay tuned and follow her on robynfloraca.wordpress.com.