Dianne shares the tools and actions she took to prioritize her self-care while her son was finding his way.
You will learn how her famous line, who’s bobber are you watching, came to be a part of her toolbox.
Thank you for your support of The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. People are finding it helpful, and that was my hope! Please share it with people who love someone with this disease of addiction.
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 to the 22nd episode of the embraced family recovery podcast. it is so humbling to realize that we’ve been at this for 22 weeks, and how much this has grown thanks to your support thank you so much for listening, for sharing, and for following us and writing reviews. And if you want to and haven’t yet, please go to the apple podcast platform and write a review for this podcast if you’re finding it helpful.
Today we’re going to learn more about Dianne’s famous line whose bobber are you watching? You will learn more about this wise woman’s walk, through recovery and she is a person who walks the talk, for sure. Let’s get back to Dianne.
The Embrace Family Podcast
Margaret: As a mother growing up with addiction in the family. Experiencing your own addiction. Were you a person in your own story, growing up who wasn’t going to use and be like other people who you’ve seen? Were you going to break the chain as we hear family members often say when there’s a generational disease?
Dianne: Oh yeah, absolutely when I like so my mother was had this substance use disorder when we were growing up. My father was a normi. My parents divorced when I was seven in 1965, and that was at a time where men almost never got custody it always was the woman and, in 1965 my father was awarded custody of all of us except our oldest sister. Then she actually did go to treatment when I was 13 or 14. But I had so much, like any other child of an alcoholic, anger, and lack of trust, and all of those you know broken promises and it’s you know your birthday is coming up and we’re going to have a circus and a pony and then you’d come home and find my mom passed out.
So, when she left and I went into those teen years, I just had this, I just had this like attitude like you aren’t there for me when I needed a mom I’m never gonna need you in my life, and so I largely was terrible to her. But my dad wouldn’t let me be like completely terrible to her like I couldn’t say anything ’cause I did one time, and I got this quick rebuke about that’s your mother you don’t ever say, talk to about her like that.
Margaret: Your dad to say that by what he had lived through as a partner or someone who was in that same behavior pattern right. ‘Cause his or her addiction was there, to stand by the coparent concept or that out of honor to her having given birth to you all. Despite whatever education he had or didn’t have about the disease. To then say to you Mm mm, that’s your mother.
Dianne: And he had none. Like no, never you know did. Never did any kind of family treatment or any family work, but he, we told this to my mom years later because she asked. She was pretty astounded too because she said your father had right, your father had every reason to talk badly about me and all of us said, I never heard him say anything
Margaret: He must have on some level, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t say this cause we don’t know but like to know that it’s a disease, like that is classically what we would teach a family member to work towards right? Love the person, not the behavior not to love the person not the disease, be mad at the disease ’cause this disease causes pain but show respect and compassion for this sick person, and he did that without any education that’s quite remarkable!
Dianne: I thought so.
Margaret: So, did you say to yourself I won’t use?
Dianne: Oh yeah, if I had a nickel for every time, I said I’m never gonna be like my mother. I am never gonna be like my mother! And then to have that and my drinking career lasted four years, from 19 to 23, and to see that like, my drinking career started when my brother who was 20 years old, he was eleven months older than I was, was killed. That’s when I started drinking and when I got sober four years later and started to take a look at the insanity of my own addiction. Like who turns to the very thing that kills somebody that they love, as a way of coping. Like I mean, if I mean, from the get-go. There was, there was the insanity and then the addiction, it was fast and furious.
Margaret: But everything you’re saying you know, for those who are struggling to understand it’s a no-fault disease like you’re giving such great information to help them internalize that. Because A – you would never choose to be out of control and like your mom was in her disease B – as you said you lost someone dear to you due to this disease and in that moment turned to the thing that took them. Like if that doesn’t speak to the powerlessness of this disease if we, we have it, nothing else does.
Dianne: Absolutely.
Margaret: So, you also I’m sure said it’ll stop with me, and with your son, were sober.
Dianne: I thought it did. because so he was two years old when I quit drinking. He was the reason that I quit drinking. I was finishing my undergrad degree and we lived in a town probably 60 miles South of where my mom lived on the reservation, and she would come periodically to pick him up and bring him up. She was running a group home for recovering native kids at the time, and he loved to go up there, he just because there were people that were there, I never physically neglected him or physically abused him, but emotionally I wasn’t there. Emotionally, I was so wrapped up in in my drug of no choice that you know it just he knew that, and so my turning point came when he was two years old, my mom came down and he saw her car coming down the driveway and he went over to the closet and he opened the closet, he was trying to get his little suitcase down so that he could leave. And I just remember like, just having that moment is like clarity with I’m supposed to be the most important person in this child’s life, and he doesn’t want to be around me. My mom came in and we talked, and she said can he come up and I said yeah. And so, I had always been kind of like a weekend warrior like I was on the Dean’s List when I was in college and every music and theater production they did and so my mom took him. For the first time in my life, I drank every single night until he came back, and that’s the only time I ever drank every single time is just I just couldn’t wrap my head around that, feel that pain and just you know have that be true, like that was true. And so I so and I didn’t quit this was in October I didn’t stop drinking until December, couple months later and I just said, I went to my mom and I said “I can’t do this anymore”. And then I realized that I’m forcing this child to grow up exactly the same way that I did, and I knew how much I hated and resented my mother for years until we worked through that stuff, and I was, I knew that the only person who could guarantee that he didn’t grow up the way that I did, was me.
Margaret: So, your disease was doing that to both of you, cause you as his mother would never.
Dianne: So, I thought you know that he doesn’t ever remember being around alcohol. He doesn’t ever remember ever seeing me drink anything. It was never in our home. We didn’t even smoke you know so there was like nothing, and the first couple of years of my recovery I really stayed away from my family during like the like the high drinking times because I just wasn’t ready for that. So ,we mostly did some of those Holidays and gatherings with my sponsor, and her family and my AA family. And so, when I was about, I think I was probably about two or three years sober, I felt a little more comfortable, and safe enough to be around my family. And so, we were at a family gathering and he started to see some of my uncles and my cousins drunk, getting drunk and he had no idea what that was. Like he was, he was looking and watching them and then he said to me, he said, “what’s wrong with them” and I thought “sweet baby Jesus my son doesn’t even know what drunk is” and I really thought, I broke that chain.
Bumper: This podcast is made possible by listeners like you. Can you relate to what you’re hearing? Never miss a show by hitting the subscribe button. Now back to the show.
Margaret: Right. So again, really powerful reflections for family members who beat themselves up. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I must have or what didn’t I or how did I parent. I should have done this. Your son had a feeling about you without ever seeing you consume alcohol when you were active. Like that speaks so profoundly to the impact of this disease whether the person is using blatantly in front of them or not. That there is a level of preoccupation that robs the family of that person. To then see some use when you’re sober. Well two things, to be exposed to all of these family, extended families who are recovering family members. Like what an imprint on your son to see that, at a young age. You know I hear a lot about will we ever recover from what this disease has done to our family and I always hope people can hold onto the hope that yes the disease is imprinted on the family but by God the recovery absolutely imprints on the family also.
Dianne: Absolutely.
Margaret: And then to see active use, to be like what’s going on? You know it really speaks to Dianne, how you don’t have to be using, but if you’re active in the disease mentally, if you’re just a dry drunk even. If you’re not using recovery tools it changes who you are and changes the impact, imprint on everyone around you.
Dianne: Absolutely, I think Mike was four years old and I was having, you know, I was in a wasn’t in a good place. And I was cooking dinner and slamming things around, and he looked at me and he said “mom I think you need a meeting, I think you need to call your sponsor” and I looked at this four year old child and said “are you taking my inventory?”
So, I mean that recovery was normal for him. He grew up around the campfires and the tables of Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s why I thought it was going to be different for him because you know, my other sibs, you know had children and were active in addiction and he didn’t, he didn’t have that.
Margaret: It just shows right there’s no, there’s no guarantee. There’s no definitive way to prevent.
Dianne: And he’d it’s really kind of kept him clear eyed because, so him and my daughter in law have four children and none of them have ever been in a home where there has been alcohol or drugs, none of them have ever seen their parents under the influence of anything.
But he’s pretty clear eyed that he knows that there could come a time where one of his kids is going to struggle but they’ve always done I think a really good job with prevention for their kids. Just to say, and Mike says all the time I can tell you what’s down that road, I can tell you what’s waiting for you.
Margaret: As a mom of a person with a substance use disorder. Speaking to other parents, partners, what would you say have been the most helpful things that you’ve engaged in or utilized to help you navigate that really stressful, difficult time?
Dianne: Well, it’s you know, certainly family recovery has saved my life literally, because I learned, heard very early on when I would still want to get in there and try to fix, manage, and control him. Because I’ve been sober this long, I know this much, you know just do what I tell you to do. I do this every day for a living, and none of that was appropriate, because he wasn’t on my case load, he was my son.
And so, my Al-Anon sponsor is the one who said to me all the time did anything that you do get your son clean and sober? No. Then maybe you wanna try doing something differently. And so that’s where you know getting into the steps and just taking a look at if I am going to let go and I am going to trust that the God of my understanding has a plan for his life, it’s not me to drag him. I tried doing that for years you know dragging him kicking and screaming to someplace that he wasn’t ready to go. And but having this education, and having recovery myself I would always kind of want to sneak in and just say… but what if I seem him do, and she would say “who’s bobber are you watching”? well what if I, can I just tell… “who’s bobber are you watching”? I would always try to end run and she always brought me back to whose bobber are you watching? and then that’s what she said my job and family recovery was to watch my own bobber. Because I was always that person with everybody, not just my son, with you know my sibs, and other people in my life. I was the one that was saying look, look, look, look, look, look and you know wanting to watch their bobber, and none of it ever worked out well.
Margaret: So, you and I have met many mothers, partners who go what do you mean don’t watch their bobber? They’re off the rails, they’re not gonna be OK. I’m supposed to just ignore.
Dianne: No. I mean just the same. I mean it’s, it’s what we, it’s what we learn in our recovery on this side of the disease, is that if I’m going to be any kind of support to him, I have to make sure I’m in the best place possible. You know it’s, it’s like you can’t pour from an empty cup. And if I’m drowning and he’s drowning, how’s that gonna turn out. And so, it’s just living those concepts and an understanding that the best way to support him, is to take care of myself and ask him. And I’ll tell you I think it’s kind of really cool is that even without saying that to him, he does that and my daughter in law does that. They do those things that kind of feed their soul, and take care of them. So that they can be everything that they are to their kids, and their kids see that. They see that this is something that’s really important to my dad, and so it’s, leave him alone this is his time to you know and it’s working out for him.
Margaret: So How, if you don’t mind sharing, how did you when you’re in grad school, and parenting, and family dynamics that they are, and in a profession that’s highly demanding, ’cause you’re dealing with people who are suffering and potentially dying from this illness. What things did you implement to fill yourself up? Your meetings and your sponsor. I heard that loud and clear. Was there other things that you started to do even if it felt stupid, for a lack of a better word, to do that, ’cause how is that going to help Mike.
Dianne: Yeah so, I mean that’s the whole concept of self-care right, for us on the family side. Like I had no idea what that meant, but if you ask me what my son needed, I could go on for days and tell you this is what he needs to be OK. This is what he needs to have things work out, for him. Cause of course I knew all of that. But if anybody would have said to me, cause I asked this of family members, what do you need and they’ll say “I just want him to”. No that’s him, what do you need? “Well, if she would just do”. No that’s her. So that whole concept of self-care I don’t even know what that means. And so just finding those things that were important to me. So, getting back involved in things like golfing with my women friends that I had given up, or getting back involved in directing community theater, so just those things that kind of feed my soul. And then reading something that I want to read, I don’t have to read. I was in, my undergraduate degree is in English, so reading is like is my thing and, journaling. And I took a yoga class that was quite the experience for me, I should have started with chair yoga for elders I think. (laughter)
Margaret: Dianne! So, when a person says to you OK, so you did those things. How did that help you?
Dianne: It gave me it’s still just that clarity to know that, he has a path that’s his, and he has a plan that is the same as his creator’s plan. So, there’s not that effort and struggle, and I had nothing to do with it! It was like getting out of his way helped him to find his way, just by stepping back and getting out of that. Cause nothing with my little fingers and you know manipulating around everything ever worked.
But just continuing to do that, to know I love him unconditionally. I can’t do things for him that 1. he doesn’t want me to or 2. aren’t my job.
Outro: Drop the mic… getting out of his way, helped him find his way. Such a challenge for any parent. Yet a true gift for any child.
If you know someone else who could benefit from learning about how to heal and grow when the disease of addiction has become a family member, please share this podcast with them.
Come back next week for my final episode with Dianne. We touch on loss, recovery, forgiveness, family healing. You won’t want to miss the continuation of Dianne’s story.
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story.
please find resources on my website embracefamilyrecovery.com This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time please take care of you!
