How do we love the person while protecting ourselves from their disease?
How do we do the right thing for us all when it feels so counterintuitive to the love we feel and the ‘I shoulds’ screaming in our head?
Detaching with Love not only saves the person detaching from living in the disease’s control, but it also affords your addicted love one a chance to feel the consequences of their disease. A painful truth of the disease of addiction for both addicts and their loved ones – none of us surrender to the work of our recovery without feeling the pain of our consequences.
I hope anyone out there listening initially feels less alone with this universal challenge of learning how to detach from the disease and love the person. Secondly, I hope through Sandy’s honest, open, vulnerability in sharing her story, you find a safe place and a way to share your story. That is when healing can begin. Connecting with others who have walked the path as a loved one of an addict, is the way we get well, it certainly lessens the isolation.
Today Sandy Swenson reads an excerpt from her book, The Joey Song. You will not want to miss it, and I hope you buy her book if you have never read it!
See full transcript of the episode below.
Intro: You’re listening to The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. A place for conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson
Margaret: Today Sandy shares more strategies of how she loves her son while he is still trapped by his disease in active use and holds boundaries against that disease.
The Embraced Family Recovery Podcast
Sandy: With Joey now, for I’m just going to say 10 years roughly now. We have not had an unpleasant conversation because I stay on my side of the tracks, I just do with him. Now when we hang up, I may go all you know whatever happens, but with him I stay on my side of the tracks and then we can have a relationship and, and it’s a nice one and when we hang up, we both have nice memory to hang on to.
I don’t drop subtle hints or try to manipulate him or side snark or any of those things I just don’t. I believe in you son this is yours, and it’s not I don’t really believe in you so I’m still going to be trying to push you subtly. No, no cause, he can feel that and that’s why we’ve been able to continue for 10 years. You know with regular communication and it’s loving. We have not had a single manipulative, argumentative thing in that long.
Margaret: This is a big assumption so please challenge me. I can almost get teary imagining the pain your son suffers in his disease.
Sandy: Oh my
Margaret: What it must be like and to know that for 10 years, when I’ve had contact with the single person who’s loved me more than anyone in the most unconditional way has been able to give me that love on every phone call, despite the hell I may be living in. What a gift. To know that my momma loves me, and my momma is giving me the dignity of finding my path and stop trying to manipulate me and even though she’s probably feeling a lot of feelings about where I am versus where she wants me to be. She’s accepting me and still saying if you ever want help, I’m here.
Sandy: Absolutely, I feel like Lord knows what some of the days and nights are like and if he knows, I just talked to her and she loves me, or I can call her tomorrow and she loves me. It’s a really dark night but she loves me. It makes me just cry. I mean it does. It just does because I mean that might just be the one thing that he’s got.
Margaret: The one kind, soft, spot, the one accepting place, the one nonjudgmental place for him and we don’t know what that thing will be that reaches someone to get them to say I give. I can’t do this anymore. But you know having just lost my mom and knowing the power of that bond and though there was definitely tough times, there’s that unconditional love that someone knows you, warts and all and still loves you.
Sandy: Absolutely and loves you enough to realize that you are an adult, and you own your life, and your choices are your choices. Those choices don’t affect my love for you. It is forever and always, and they need that person who just loves them.
Margaret: And also, doesn’t allow the disease to hurt them, walk all over them, manipulate them. Right? The disease is the puppeteer above all of us and so it’s puppeteering him fastest and most furious but it’s also pulling the strings to everyone in the family. And you’ve cut the strings and said you know what I love you, but I won’t let your disease destroy me.
Sandy: Yes, and that is that is true, and I have cut that.
Margaret: Sandy shares a time when she brought Joey home to see his grandma who was in hospice. This was a crossroads in the challenges and rewards of detaching with love.
Sandy: Brought him up so he could say goodbye and that was the first time we’ve been in person you know all together as a family. And I was a little bit afraid you know how this was going to go. And I made it very clear you know you’re here for this and if it in any way turns to be about you, you’re out of this little circle here. That’s just that. He came out he was totally fine, little something happened in the evening. Things happen, and flights missed and things like that in the morning. And tried you know calling me and telling me that he missed his flight and it’s the hotel’s fault, Uber’s fault and everybody’s fault, fault, fault. And that moment we had had years of simply the I love yous. I did not get, you know, I stayed on my side. This was a moment where I was going to either help him fix this or not. And it was really tough because if I did, I thought we end up back at the beginning.
If I didn’t, I thought he’d hate me. Right here in front of me hate me and that hurts more than far away hating me and that might be the end. I didn’t help him I just said oh dang it. Well let me know when you get there you know sort of thing and I did, and I was worried, I was really worried. How was he gonna get back? You know I mean, really how was he gonna get back and, but I tried to just you know shove that back here somewhere and a day or so later he called, and he made it back and he was fine. And we never talked about it. I mean we didn’t discuss how he got back or anything like that, that but he did, and we have carried on.
Now if I had tried to fix that for him, we would have been back to square one. I know that with every ounce of my being that would have happened. We would have been back to me butting in. Him resenting me butting in. Him resenting that I didn’t believe in him. It was tough that was a tough moment you know but it was the right thing to do.
Margaret: And you afforded him, I say the word a lot, the dignity of being the responsible adult or irresponsible adult that he is. And have an awareness of his resiliency. You know I always would say, that if we could get people who have this disease to put the half of the energy into their recovery that they put in sustaining their use, we be doing great.
Sandy: Oh my gosh yes. I mean he is 34. He’s managed to live and figure things out and get things happening for all this time. And however they’ve turned out he has a sense of I can do-itivness because he’s been doing it. Which is a whole lot different than mom’s been helping me do it. (laughter) You know he’s built some inner fortitude and he’s resourceful.
Margaret: And I think when we hit our fear buttons for those examples that you listed like the one where he was not going to get home possibly. That hit’s a fear button and you as a mom and that fear button goes, Oh, my gosh I gotta do it for them. Rather than hmm OK, this sucks. I don’t like this feeling however they are resourceful, and have abilities, and can manage. And that is the only thing that will build any sense of self-worth. Them figuring it out for themselves.
Sandy: Oh, my goodness. Yes, that’s the biggest gift. Well one of the biggest gifts besides just love is that they can believe in themselves and that we give them that dignity of owning their own life. I mean, I didn’t like it when I was you know whatever 50 and I would go home to visit my parents and it would be winter. And my dad would say don’t think you need a sweater? Or you know it’s 10:00 o’clock don’t you think you should go to bed? And I’m just thinking, I’m 50. I know if I need a sweater. I know if I need to go to bed. I just kind of cough at that, you know. Our kids. We don’t want to be told how to do our lives and that’s just simple little stuff. You know I don’t want anybody telling me. It’s my life I want to own my life. I think our children want to own their lives.
Margaret: The humor in it is the universal truth that is probably in every family system. Whenever I go home in 50s, the comments are like wow how do I live my life when I’m not at home visiting? I don’t know how I manage it, but the other side of it is I can appreciate it’s out of love. And can appreciate there’s no malintent.
Sandy: Of course.
Margaret: And who will I go to if I want some support? Those people. How different is it when we initiate the desire for help and receive it versus being told when we never asked for it?
Sandy: Oh, it’s just huge. It’s just huge. It’s an because yeah when we ask for it is totally, completely different then receiving just unwelcome advice. Just it’s that’s it’s a judgmental statement in some way, you know is that we know better than you do.
Margaret: Right.
Sandy: And maybe we do but it’s still not ours.
Margaret: Maybe we do however, what a gift to give the person to let them come to a place where they want to get the help and ask for it. Versus imposing on them that they are somehow screwed up or malfunctioning and we need to help them.
Sandy: Right.
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Margaret: So, would you like to read a little bit Miss. Sandy Swenson from one of your books I would love you to share with the audience something from The Joey Song, if you were willing to do that?
Sandy: I would, I would I was thinking I might just read the prelude.
An excerpt from The Joey Song, by Sandy Swenson
Today Joey returns to the place where his life began.
On a stretcher.
Cruising down the coastal highway in a four-door sedan at 50 mph, Joey slammed into an SUV, align of mailboxes, and a stone wall – no break marks – before bouncing into oncoming traffic. He arrived here in an ambulance, bloodied and unresponsive, with enough alcohol in his bloodstream to kill him. If his internal injuries don’t kill him first.
Twenty years, five months, and six days ago Joey tumbled into my world at this very hospital. We greeted each other, this baby and me, but we already knew each other. We were already in love. he nestled in where he belonged, close to the heart he’d hugged for nine months, and into the arms whose most important purpose was now to protect, care for, and love.
I can’t hold Joey in my arms this time. He’s too wrecked all over. Too battered, bruised, and scraped. I’m afraid of hurting him, but my longing to touch Joey is far greater than my fear. I find a small spot on his blood crusted forehead where it seems safe to place a soft kiss, and I hold on to his cold, limp hand. He is so pale. So gray. So still. The only sound is the dirge of whirs and beeps and gurgles – the sucking and trickling of life’s juices through a tangle of tubes and mechanical attachments.
And the whimpering.
I think the whimpering is me,
Joey fills the entire bed – the 6 foot length of his body sags down the elevated slope, his legs all crumpled in akimbo at the bottom. His hospital gown reveals he’s more bone than meat. Joey’s hands and feet, like a puppy’s paws don’t fit the rest of him. But Joey’s not as thin as last time I saw him, several months ago. Back when I told him it hurts more for me to hang on than to let go. Back when I told him I was done trying to help him until he was ready.
This is not what I thought “ready” would look like.
Joey doesn’t move, not the tiniest bit, other than the mechanical expansion of his chest. He doesn’t know I’m here, but still, I talk. I want to reach the part of him imprisoned for so many years. Maybe I can slip past the wily warden of addiction and touch Joey while he’s unconscious. I tell Joey I love him bigger than the moon, that I flew here as quickly as I could, and that his dad’s plane lands soon.
“Joey you were in a car accident. No one else was injured.” And then I lie. “Things will be better now.”
I cannot breathe. I pray for more time.
Sitting at his side, I pat Joeys stiff and bloodied hair. Golden locks I’ve washed 1000 times between bubbles and boats. I no longer see the addict my son is become – a person I no longer know at all. Instead, I see my little boy, snug in his innocence, transposed over this wounded, lifeless man face. I see the glow of his smooth cheeks peeping out from under rumpled covers as I stand over his small bed late at night. A sob escapes me as I remember the little boy with the sticky giggle who one long ago day asked me to sing his special song.
“Mommy, will you sing me the Joey Song?”
The Joey Song?”
As Joey wriggled onto my lap, his blue eyes looking up at me, I silently willed the song to come to mind.
Oh… the JOY Song.
My heart warmed. For countless renditions, Joey had heard my crooning as a love song – a love song about him. And so, I held my little fellow tight and sang the song that had tender, new meaning; the song that was so much more wonderful sung his way.
I’ve got that Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey down in my heart
Down in my heart
Down in my heart
I’ve got that Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey down in my heart
Down in my heart to stay.
Dusting of the old song now, I lean close to Joey’s ear and sing. A damp and croaky whisper. I sing the Joey Song hoping to reach something deep within this lost child of mine. Hoping to stir up memories of love. Real love. A love so much better than the love he has for the things that feed his addiction. I want to take Joey back to a time before all the pain. I sing softly. I don’t want the addict to hear.
I ache for Joey to believe what can’t be seen. These recent years have been a test of the strength of my heart, but the strength of my love has never wavered. Not even under pressure of the mind-bending contortions imposed by his addiction.
Sandy: So, the Joey Song. I wrote it and I live it as I keep Joey, Joey, Joey down in my heart and the joy, the joy and Joey. I keep both of them in my heart and keeping both of those things in my heart is what helps me to take that one step every day in a way that makes things better not worse.
Margaret: It’s beautiful.
I am so aware of Sandy’s gift to the universe in sharing with her written and spoken word the truth of being a mom who lives, and loves fully through her own recovery, while holding space for Joey to find his recovery when he’s ready. Come back next week when we dive into the ever-challenging topic of enabling.
Outro: I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story please find resource is on my website embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you.
