Today Dianne shares more of her story. The family disease of addiction has traveled through her family and into her son’s life. She shares the familiar struggle of being powerless as a mother to change Mike’s path.
Dianne shares the power and pain of setting healthy boundaries against Mike’s disease while always loving him.
One of her courageous lines to her son:
“I can’t stop you from going down that road, be damned if I’ll sit here and watch you go.
See full transcript of episode below.
This is the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. A place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back! Today Dianne shares more of her story. The family disease of addiction has traveled through her family and into her son’s life. She shares the familiar story of powerlessness as a mother to change my Mike’s path. Let’s get back to Dianne.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: When you say marijuana maintenance, that’s what?
Dianne: So that is what and, this is literally what I told him is that so you know and he would draw a lot of parallels with me because my drinking career, we were both exactly the same like you know there are people who have a couple of drinks and they’re fun loving and having a good time and, I would have a couple of drinks and then it would push me over to be this person that I’m not at all like. I would fight almost every big guy I saw. You know because that was where it took me, he was exactly the same way. He wasn’t a fun happy drunk he got drunk and then wanted to you know try to pound everybody and didn’t work out well for either one of us.
So, when he was, when he switched to smoking marijuana, he was mellow you know and he was very laid back, like really laid back, like to the point I told him he was a bat because he would stay up all night and sleep all day. (Laughter) So he started you know he started kind of that journey, but I told him I said it doesn’t make any difference in what you did is you switch seats on the Titanic. You know the boat is still going to go down. I always used to tell ask him, name me one successful drink drinker or drug user in our family. I’ll wait and of course he couldn’t name one, but he would do the same thing for me and say name one person that you know goes to jail for fighting after getting high and of course I would phrase them in a way that of course that’s not going to happen, but he had had a couple of arrest by then. I told him all the time I can’t stop you going down that road I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and watch you go. And at that point I had very both of my brothers and with him being my only child, I couldn’t do it. After he turned 18. I just I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t watch him.
Margaret: So, you said to him I won’t watch it which is one of the hardest family member parent to make what did that mean in real terms? What did you establish as a boundary?
Dianne: So, I told him I said I can’t live with active addiction, like somebody’s addiction trashed my childhood. I didn’t have a choice about that, but I have a choice about my adult life and, I can’t do it. And then I said I can’t stop you from going down that road, but I will be damned if I’ll sit here and watch you go. I can’t do it, and then I said if you ever you know want help for this, because he didn’t think that marijuana was a problem or that anybody got addicted to marijuana. I said if you ever want to get help, I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but I can’t do anything to enable this anymore. And so, he was 19 years old, and I had to watch my only child pack up everything and walk out the door, and when he walked out the door then that’s when I held him up to the God of my understanding again and say “please, please take care of him”.
Margaret: And then? How do you survive that? What did you do?
Dianne: So, this is where, this was the period where I was like I was going to two meetings, and then working and that was pretty much it. Because it’s like all that I could process, like there was just no socializing, there was just no energy even for extended family. You know I just I couldn’t do that, and so it was really kind of about surviving for me at that point. And he is smart enough to know, our relationship was never like, never darken my doorway or screaming and yelling at each other never. Cause he’s very, very respectful, and always has been, especially with me and so he was smart enough to know. Cause he came back and forth he went out and when I told him he had to go and you know of course did some more research and he got a little more beat up by it, because he was not like the things that he kind of had set up for himself, like his own goals. He wasn’t able to achieve them and so he would come back, and he was a little bit more beat up. I want help, I want to get better and then when I knew that he was using again I said, “I can’t live with active addiction Mike”. I can’t do it and then he would leave again. But our relationship was good like we saw each other all of the time in an out of that kind of two-year period that he was moving in and out.
Margaret: So, it sounds like you did what I teach, you teach which was love your son, but hold a strong boundary against his disease.
Dianne: Because I used to say love the child hate the behavior, (laughter)love the child hate the behavior and when he was standing there, and we were kind of like moving through something of his. I would just repeat that over and over, and then it got to the point where I would start, and he would say I know mom love the child hate the behavior, so he got it.
Margaret: So, has Mike found his way into recovery?
Dianne: Not at that point. From,, he hadn’t drank since he turned 20 and so that was for him, that’s what caused the problem. I mean we see that all the time right. This kicked my butt so I’m just going to use that because you know that’s different. And so, he was just one of those you know people who kind of fell into that same thing.
Margaret: And didn’t have consequences that were serious but eventually something happened for him that helped him turn the corner?
Dianne: Yeah, and that was when he was 24 years old, he was arrested so he was in jail and was facing serious charges. He was looking at prison, the DA said you know three to five years in prison is, that’s what’s going to happen. And so, when that happened right at the time that he got arrested his wife found out she was pregnant with their first child and for him it was just like, and he had been studying language and culture through this time period not thinking it was his life’s work ’cause he was going to be a lawyer. Any kind of denial that he had was gone because for the first time I saw him cry and say what did I do to my community. Like I contributed to you know devastating people that had lifetimes of devastation and he still to this day struggles a little bit with that guilt about what he did to his community. So, and it was then that he just said that’s it I’m done, and he hasn’t picked up anything since then. That was in which is it September 2003, I think it was 2003.
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Margaret: So, what I hear in the emotion of that is not only the impact to an individual, a partner, a potential child at that stage, a mother. There is a responsibility towards the community of having gone against values done damage. potentially fueled someone else’s illness that was eating at him.
Dianne: Oh yeah and it’s I don’t know that he really felt any of that or really saw it until he wasn’t using. When he was in jail, and he was you know he was cleaning up and he spent nine months in jail going through this court process and then I think that with all of that you know awareness and just like you know. He so he’s like me, he spends a lot of time you know, kind of thinking and pondering and then seeing you know, Krysten pregnant and he there’s nothing he can do.
Margaret: There’s also something pretty incredible within Mike to have that commitment to the community at large, once he realized what had happened. And again, I know the story, so I’m kind of going ahead but he has now in unbelievable fashion and form and given back. You know, talk about amends and restitution we make in recovery. So why don’t you share with the audience with everybody listening that next piece. You know, I hear that he hit that bottom, that was a big bottom right. That awakening once sober which who hasn’t experienced that on some level when you come to and you’re no longer mood altered and you see the pain in people’s eyes you love, and you start see the ramifications. His were on a bigger scope, because of his connection to your community. What was the next chapter?
Dianne: So, he you know I mean literally, he had one foot in prison and the other on a banana peel. He told me, he said I don’t want you to come to court. I don’t want you there I did this, I’m responsible for it. I don’t want you there except for the day that I’m sentenced.
So, he was facing three to five years in prison and then two or three years of extended supervision and that’s what the DA presented because when we went, I went to his sentencing two of my sisters were there, a couple of my uncles who are older were there, and he just kind of wanted that show, that he’s got support. And so that’s what the DA recommended and when the judge sentence him for the first time in my life, ’cause I’ve been to court with, I don’t hundreds of clients over the years that I’ve been doing this, been in court hearings with them. And for the first time in my life the judge sentenced under what the DA recommended. I always seen a judge sentence what the DA recommends or even above what the DA recommends.
And he sentenced him under and, he said I’m not sending you to prison but you are going to jail. And he had you know this jail time, and then he had the three years of extended supervision. And when he was done with that, he had finished his associates degree at the tribal college, transferred to a State College and was going to, got his undergrad and then was going to apply for law school.
But when he got his undergrad, he really kind of saw his journey going somewhere and again it’s that is tide back to helping his community, and kind of doing that that paying back. And so, in nine years after he finished his legal obligations, he got his PhD in linguistics, and that is his life work is Ojibwe language revitalization.
Margaret: And to someone who doesn’t know what that means can you put words to how vital, and what that means?
Dianne: So, when he was when he graduated with his undergrad degree, he is part of he was his undergrad degree is in sociology and one of his classes he did this kind of project outside of our grocery store on the reservation. And he just would like greet people in the Ojibwe language is very kind of like not real technical kind of stuff just like “how are you doing today? How’s everything going for you?” And he was astounded at how many people “I can’t understand you, I don’t know what you just said”. And then he started to take a look at the speakers that we had on our reservation, and he realized that we had ten first born speakers left on our reservation. And first-born speakers, I mean people who were born speaking the Ojibwe language and English was their second language.
Margaret: OK
Dianne: And he knew that when those ten people were gone, our language was done. That they were gone, and so that really shifted his focus when he started working on his master’s degree was to bring back that the language and save it literally. I mean that’s, there that group of folks that he’s kind of tied into now that’s what we call them all those people who across this country are Language Warriors. And it’s not just in Ojibwe country it’s all across indigenous tribes where there’s that pocket of second language learners who are saving the language.
Margaret: So, in doing that within your tribe, there’s an actual educational component of the school correct?
Dianne: Yep. Yep, so they founded and they, when they started to take a look at doing immersion education, they kind of piloted but they got all of their information from Hawaiians, the native Hawaiians who were at risk of losing their language.
So, with the Ojibwe language they started Waadookodaading, which means we help each other, and they started an immersion school where the kids don’t speak English at all. So, you know we have 70 to 80 little l language speakers.
Margaret: That’s wonderful!
Dianne: From Pre-K to 8th grade now.
Margaret: So, a very proud mom also I’m sure humbled by witnessing your son’s journey, right? I imagine in that courtroom where he could have been sentence to as bad as it could have been with your knowledge of what that looks like. Must have been a very, very difficult day for you until you heard the outcome.
Dianne: it was I mean people there’s no rehabilitation in prison that is such a misnomer to even have rehabilitation and prison in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence. You know like any other parent just that loss of dreams and like this is not the way, this is not where I saw him going, this is not the way I saw his life moving too. So it was incredibly scary.
Outro: Mike is a miracle of recovery as is every person who survives this chronic, progressive, and potentially fatal disease. Dianne really demonstrates the pain and possibility of loving your addicted person while setting boundaries against their disease. Come back next week to hear more of Dianne’s story.
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story. Please find resources is on my website:
embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time please take care of you!
