Blogging has recently given way to journaling. I can write raw there. The words can blister and ooze. Emotions, black and hot, spray from the pen. Ink saturated with fear and anxiety leave passionate dents in the paper. It sounds crinkly as I turn the page. Those entries are for me. They are my bare-all; silent screams into my pillow until there is no voice left.

It hurts. It’s hard.

Standing with your first born as they come to the painful realization that everything isn’t okay; that 6 years of substance abuse and poor mental health will not be ‘cured’ in a 21 day program; that after-care is as important, if not moreso, than detox, is hard. It’s hard because you have to let them go through it and hope beyond everything that they will come out on the other side. It feels like an impossible situation when you start hearing a diluted version of the past three years. A minimalist view of the problem. Openly questioning whether the alcohol ‘use’ was really ‘abuse.’ And then comes the oral justifications – ‘I’m going to have a drink on my birthday. It’s my birthday. I’ll be fine.’ In God’s wisdom he constricted my throat – what was going to be a harbinger onslaught came out as a raspy ‘oh?’

There have been some wonderful days. Lovely and inspiring where there’s been really awesome connection. In fact, those are more than half the days. It’s the others that cause the shadow. It’s like an awkward dance through an abandoned minefield. She’s on one side and I’m on the other. Tiptoeing and fluttering our way through. Most of the time we are artful dodgers. But when we hit one, it goes off.

It’s quite common for me to find myself in situations where I am searching for the ‘right’ thing to say to someone who is in emotional pain. I’m not a counsellor – I don’t go through the process whereby the person in front of me comes up with their own solution, or achieves their own epiphany or level of insight. I am a social worker, and more recently, an advocate for children whose rights have been trampled by the very system put in place to protect them. That means I am in contact with A LOT of children and young people, up to the age of 24, who have years of trauma and abuse and rejection and pain. And sometimes they need a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes they need me to fix it. Sometimes they need me to be behind them as the big sister while they try to fight their own battles. Sometimes they need a nudge. Sometimes they need a mom to put a bandaid on the owie and make it better.

I never feel as taxed as I do when I am in the situation with my own child. Deciding what to say, or what to do, if saying or doing anything in any given moment is the right thing, is exhausting. The mind never sleeps, it is a hamster on a wheel – whirring, whirring. Never sleeping, never stopping. Never knowing what is right or what is the best.

So sometimes I step on a landmine. Boom.

I’m exhausted and scared. She’s frustrated. I feel taken for granted. She feels restricted. My heart breaks for her. She only sees hurt in my eyes. That causes her to feel bad about herself. It causes me to feel more scared and my heart breaks all over again. I’m an all-in or all-out kinda person. And for her I’m all-in. That makes for some intensity around Palmer Manor.

In her autobiography, Michelle Obama gives a description of how her parents handled her and her brother. She writes how her mother raised them in such a way that she knew that Michelle’s life was hers to live. She writes that her mother never overmanaged and did not ride Michelle’s highs and lows in life as if they were her own.

That resonated with me. It still does. I do that. I ride the highs and lows of my kids’ lives as if they were my own. And this particular ride has consumed me.

My husband recently took a job about 3 hours away. He is going to commute. Partly because we just aren’t in a position to move financially, but wholly because I am not going anywhere without my daughter. The other day we were eating dinner, and I was in the middle of a mini-crisis in my head. It wasn’t a particularly hopeful day, and I was starting to despair that the course of the rest of my life would be bound to her fate forever. And then I said to myself, ‘Melanie, eventually you are going to have to put your stake in the ground. Eventually you are going to have to say this is where I stop. And she goes on her road, whatever that road my be.’

Dinner was over.

That night I woke up, or was woken up. I went into another room to think and pray. I wasn’t saying or thinking much. Then God spoke to me. He asked me why I weep over my children. He told me that they were not going to be devoured by the beast – surely I knew that? He reminded me that their path was lit; they were going to stumble, but their path is lit. They will not be devoured. A light in the darkness. Another promise of redemption. He is totally amazing.

I’m not saying everything is rosy and I’m not saying I’ve not had another anxiety attack since (although I’m starting to be less hard on myself when I do have them), but……

I am taking off the white hat. I’m not managing as much. I’m not asking so many questions. I’m listening, and validating, and trying to understand the view from her shoes. And it’s helping.

I think, in small steps, I’m preparing to put my stake in the ground. I’m totally not in that place yet, but I feel better than I ever have that I will get there sooner rather than later.