In her book Stay Close, Libby Cataldi eloquently shared the family’s journey surrounding her eldest son’s addiction. Today you are in for a treat when Libby shares a quote from her journal! You will learn more about her outlet and healing through writing. Writing for personal use and then deciding to publish is a frightening journey. Libby shares some beautiful ‘God Winks’ along this path.
Libby and her family demonstrate the pain of this disease and hope through recovery.
Learn more about Libby and her blog on her website:
See full transcript below.
00:01
You’re listening to 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.
Margaret 00:27
Welcome back, today in Libby’s final episode, she will share the story of deciding to publish her book, Stay Close, and even reads an excerpt from her beautiful book, you won’t want to miss it.
Let’s get back to Libby.
00:45
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret 01:00
When did you make the decision to publish, because it’s a very big decision?
Libby 01:07
It was huge, just like you said, as you said before, there are people who come into our lives, and we’re not really sure why, but they come into our lives. It’s a strange story, how it came to publication. I was writing for us, for Jeremy, for Jeff and for me, really, for me is the truth, because I was just in so much pain, I needed to do something with the pain. But I didn’t want to put that out into a publication and who wants to publish, like your worst tragedy. What parent wants to put that out there, especially then, you know, mid 2005/6/7.
And so, I was actually in Italy meeting with parents and kids who had gone to my school. And one of the girls who had graduated, had become an agent in a publishing company in New York City. And so, when I took them outside back in like a cab to go back to where they were going to go, and I was going to take the train back to Florence, she turned to me and said, Dr. Cataldi, if I can ever help you publish this book, please count on me. And I thought it’d be a cold day in hell before I let a former student of mine read this horrendous story of ours. Right.
And little by little, she wrote again, and I thought, well, let me send her chapter or two, just to think is it even any good? And I sent her what I consider the best chapters. And she wrote back she’s says you have any more pages? And I said, yes, I just sent her whole damn thing. And she wrote back, and she said, I’d like to try to get this published. So that’s how it got to publication. And I asked Jeff, what he thought I asked Jer. When I finally did go to New York to meet with publishing houses with her. And somebody offered to publish it. I said, no, I was frozen with fear. I mean, I was head of school. I had a 1000s of kids who respected me. I mean, how am I going to put this out there? So, I called Jeff. And I said, I’m not I said, No. And he said, mom, he said, this is my service. This is my 12th Step. Isn’t what good is everything that we’ve gone through if we can’t help anybody else? Then I called Jer, and I said, Jeremy, I said, No. And he said, mom, it will hurt like hell. But maybe it will help someone else. And maybe it will help us. And so, because of my son’s, I said, yes.
Margaret 03:43
As a parent of daughters who have navigated a school system, one of the things that inspires me about human beings, is our resiliency, our power, our gift of vulnerability. To know that the head of one of my kids’ schools was just as human as we were, and courageous and willing to share that truth. Like, I can’t imagine the response you’ve received from former students or families. Because it is so hard for them to walk into an office of someone in your role and be real about what’s going on in their home. But to know that you’re like them. That you’ve navigated your own set of challenges, a near death experience would make you even more profoundly impactful, reachable.
I don’t know my words are lost, but I just feel like that’s a gift you gave everybody who knew you. That yes, I was professional. Yes, I can do all this stuff. But I’m also human, and I won’t judge you. You come to me; you need help. I’ll try to find you help like you’ve probably always done, but it comes from a different place when they know you’ve been through it.
Libby 04:55
Yeah. And I never realized that until the book was actually published. My former students are so supportive. And one of the best things that happened with this whole thing is that Jeremy said, we lived in this very small county, which exacerbated the whole damn thing. And he said, before the book, he hated going back into the county, because, you know, people looked at him like they knew. And he said, now when I go back, he said, everybody knows. He said, there’s no more secret. It’s out there. And he says, so nobody can look at me and say, hmm how Jeff? Or hmm what happened in the past. He said, it’s out there for everybody to read. And that is the gift of honesty, and vulnerability. That was the gift that I didn’t anticipate.
Margaret 05:52
I respect also, the way you went about doing this, Libby, that the start was, this is for me, I need an outlet. The end result was a combination of all three of yous journey with absolute power given to the boys to control what their part was in it. The fact that Jeff edits it and has read every part of it and shared his own reaction with you, but also your ability to have a conversation and navigate that reaction. I mean, it’s just. My hope for everyone I ever worked with is that adult conversations can happen with compassion, dignity, and vulnerability between family members, which is often lost in the disease, because it’s so defensive, full and shame filled, and fear filled. And I just think it’s gorgeous, how you went from being in that place, to your own journeys, to get to a different place in your relationship that started before Jeff even found recovery.
Libby 06:55
And I wish I had learned that way at the beginning.
Margaret 06:59
Do you think you could have?
Libby 07:01
I don’t know. For my own background, is the truth. I was raised in this, you know, kind of chaotic Italian family. It wasn’t one, my dad was a drill sergeant, the Marines, we weren’t one of these families who actually sat down and talk to each other. It was more like, you know, the drill sergeant came home, go to bed and you went to bed.
Although I adored him, so I wasn’t that. But I wish I had, for instance, even as Head of School, I asked Dr. McAfee one time, what help can I give other heads of school other principles when dealing with this in a school system? And he said something that was really wonderful. He says there needs to be somebody who listens without judgment, who’ll understand. He said, so there has to be someone in the school, where a friend can go to that person and say, I’m really worried about Jeff. And that person holds that information and works with him.
So instead of me saying to Jeff, just stop, what are you doing? Stop. And in my family, we stopped. I mean, when dad said, we did it, nobody listened to me. Nobody listened to me and my family, people listened to me at school, nobody listened to me, at home. And if I had sat down with him, and Dr. McAfee says this, that it would have been better to say, listen, all of us, four of us, Jeff, you’re in trouble. It’s happening. We see what’s happening. We’re in this together as a family. We’re going to address this as a family, you’re not alone, its a slippery slope, bad things are going to happen, and we’re going to pull together and get ourselves out of this. I didn’t do that Jeff felt isolated. And he says that in the video, you know, my parents told me just to stop. And then he says something really important. He says anything that shuts down communication is a bad thing. And I shut down communication. I was humiliated. I was shamed. I was head of school. What are you doing? Just stop.
Margaret 09:01
You were also a mother, who was raised in a home where stop meant stop, and you were able to and you then were introduced to a disease that didn’t run in the same circles as that type of thinking, which is beyond your control, and knowledge base.
Libby 09:20
Exactly! I was raised by my dad who had this paradigm. What’s wrong? Why is it wrong? And what are you going to do about it? So, in other words, you could fix anything. You identify it, you figure out why it is happening and son of a gun, you fix it.
Margaret 09:38
And then the universe brings addiction into your world that doesn’t work on the same paradigm.
Libby 09:43
No and it is, it is baffling. It’s baffling for the person suffering and it is baffling for us.
Margaret 09:52
And yet you found your way through and out. And as you said, Jeff is in recovery has medical consequences due to his long-term IV use, which I heard loud and clear when you started. Jeremy, how did his story go forward?
Libby 10:12
He’s great. He’s great. But the boys fell way out of touch with each other. In fact, Jer turned his back on Jeff for about two years, wouldn’t talk to him at all.
Margaret 10:24
Was that when he was using Libby?
Libby: Yeah, yeah.
Margaret: Can I just put a different term out there a different thought? Because I teach this with my families. Jeremy turned his back on Jeff’s disease.
Libby: Yeah.
Margaret: Because it was hurting him too badly.
Libby 10:39
That’s exactly right. He was in such pain; he couldn’t deal with it. So, Jer, closed down, shut down. And then when Jeff started to get better, you know, they talked, he made amends, he did all this stuff. But it’s not like when they embrace recovery, that things change. I mean, you have lots of pain and difficulty, right. But a lot of trauma, we’ve all been traumatized. Jeffs been good for 15 years, healthy for 15 years. And he and Jeremy are probably 80 to 85% back to where they used to be as kids. But they’re still damage. And I don’t know how that will ever be repaired. Jeffs, accepted it Jeff knows. When Jeremy gets angry with him, sometimes he’ll still say you’re an addict. Nothing but an addict is what we’ll say. And so, the pain obviously is still there. I can’t blame Jeremy, not that blame helps anything, but he was traumatized. He’s still in pain, he still has that piece of his heart. That’s like bleeding. And in time, I can only pray that they’ll find their way again. And if they don’t, they don’t, I can’t fix that either.
12:03
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Margaret 12:06
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12:53
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Margaret 13:05
Well, what you speak to also is the rebuilding of trust, That it takes different amounts of times for different players in the family. And Jeremy saw some of the ugliness firsthand, as is in the book. Not that you didn’t it was just some of the different types of ugly. And so, I do think that some family members need a level of protection. In case it happens again. Like to give up that little bit, because it was so terrifying. And somehow if I keep this a little bit, I’ll feel like I’ve protected myself if something bad happens, even though our experience tells us that doesn’t keep us from being hurt.
Libby 13:48
You are 100% right. In fact, Jeremy told me a story. He said that he was at Boston University with Jeff. He went there and I said, I thought you went there because you wanted to just hang out with Jeff, and he said I went there to take care of Jeff. So, he chose his college in order to be with his brother. And at one point, somebody called him and said your brother left this party, he was really messed up, we don’t know where he is. And they’re in Boston. Jeremy got two football players at that time they still had football at BU and he said two big football players and they surveyed the entire area trying to find Jeff. They couldn’t find them. They couldn’t find him. Jeremy was out of his mind with worry.
So, they sat, the three of them on the stoop of his apartment building and finally Jeff shows up blood on his jeans. He was a disaster. Jeremy took him in to his apartment, put him in bed, put cold compresses on his head because he was afraid, he was going to die. He says Mama I put cold compresses on Jeff’s head to try to keep him alive. I put a fan on him. And he says and then I sat outside the door of his bedroom so he couldn’t get out. And I stayed there all night long.
But it changed nothing. Jeff continued, continued. So yeah, Jeremy saw things that were far worse than I saw. I never saw Jeff in position like that, because I wasn’t there. You know, Jeff protected me, Jeff kept me out.
Margaret 15:20
And Jeremy.
Libby 15:21
Yes.
Margaret 15:22
Did he tell you that at the time? No, he told you that later.
Libby: Absolutely.
Jeremy: So interesting. You say Jeremy went there, not to be closer as brother but to look after his brother because he knew his brother wasn’t doing well. And he failed.
Libby: Yes.
Margaret: To do the job. He went there to do not because it’s his fault, because he can’t be the one to do it. But can you imagine as a young person who loves and adores and respects their older brother, and they can’t make it right? I think I’d keep a little protective wall too, because I’d be so scared, he’d go back.
Libby 15:53
100% Jer suffered in immense ways.
Margaret 15:57
And I appreciate you giving a voice to his suffer. Because that voice is often left out of the discussion.
Libby 16:04
Oh, 100% there are a million Jeremy’s out there. Parents, we have a million Jeremy’s, a million kids out there who are watching, who are the victims is the truth. Because they love their brothers, sisters, their dads. I mean, somebody wrote to me from one of the blogs and said, and my dad was an addict. She said, it wasn’t until I started to read some of the things you’ve written that I understand. He loved me. He was an addict. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love me. But it took her all these years and the education to understand that like Jeff said, I loved you. I tried to keep you to the side, but I’m an addict. And this man had passed, and this daughter was carrying this intense pain that he didn’t love me because he did this stuff. If he had loved me, he would have stopped. Because that’s what we think if you love me, you stop.
Margaret 17:03
That’s what every family member thinks. And I always say if it were about love, I’d be out of business. Happily. I have never met more loving, willing, resilient, tenacious human beings than family members of addicts and alcoholics.
Libby 17:21
If love were the answer, we wouldn’t have addiction. It’s not that, no.
Margaret 17:26
And also, within the person who has the disease, they love their people. And when they wake up in the morning, and they say, I will not do this today, I cannot do this today. And they look in the eyes of the people who love them. And they see the hurt that their disease has caused, their disease is like get the hell out of dodge. You can’t handle this.
Libby: Exactly.
Margaret: And then it spirals again, and again, again, but they meant it in that moment. I’m not going to do it today. I wouldn’t want to do this today.
Libby 17:51
In fact, Jeff said that. Jeff said that, he said there’s a short time period between deciding you’re not going to use and using. He said it’s just a brief moment. And he said in you have to catch that person in that moment. When they think okay, I’m not going to use, I’m not going to use. Because the drugs are so powerful. In fact, he said one of the reasons that it kept, heroin kept him out on the street so long. He says is the detox is so painful. He said it’s physically so painful. And so, people who think Buprenorphine, Suboxone, these things that will help mitigate the pain in detox. They need, they need help to get through detox because it’s just extraordinarily painful. And the reality of the research says that more people die in detox from alcohol, than drug addiction.
Margaret 18:44
Alcohol detox is one of the most fatal, but we don’t talk about that. Opiate, and um, well benzos high risk for fatality too. But opiate is the most physically painful on the person coming through it. Alcohol is the most lethal, and families don’t know that. And so, they’ll try and detox that person to get them into treatment and really dangerous things can happen. It’s a piece of the story that a lot of people don’t understand about.
Libby 19:10
Exactly. The other thing I wanted to say is that when kids get well, Dr. McAfee always used to say, addicts are saints in the making.
Margaret: That’s beautiful.
Libby: You know, and it’s true. They are saints in the making, they come back with a fervor to give back to make the world a better place. If we can keep them alive long enough. They will come back, and they will do amazing things. The other thing that is amazing I’d like to put out there that I never, ever knew. I was listening to these two Harvard University researchers. And they said if you could believe this, that the average number of relapses before a person gets well is five. The average number is five. When Jeff relapsed, I saw that is pure betrayal, pure ache, pure desperation. I mean, I just pray we get more and more research done. But that research to me was critical.
So, for parents out there for people who love someone with a substance abuse problem, McAfee used to say relapse is one step closer to recovery. But five, five, I mean, Jeff had probably 12/14, relapses. And so, some people have fewer relapses. But the average of five was amazing. To me.
Margaret 20:34
That is such a tricky one for family members. Because we want to believe we get them good help. They finally surrender to get help; we get them good help. And then it’s going to be a slow, steady rise to healthy, wonderful recovery. And the relapse feels like such a personal thing to the family, just like the disease does. When it is not. It’s evidence for the addict to say, I’m not doing something I need to do to be well. What have I got to step up differently? What do I have to add into my toolbox to get well? What services do I need?
Libby: Yes, yeah.
Margaret: And family don’t see it that way.
Libby 21:13
No, and Jeff says AA. AA was really important for him. He said, the people in AA knew his walk. So, they knew I couldn’t help him. Oftentimes as parents, we want to be the go-to guy. We’re not the go-to guy. But the people in AA for Jeff, were wonderful, but they need support. They need help. He says what keeps him sober today is his spirituality. He gets up every morning, he prays, he reads. He reads literature, he exercises, he stretches, but he exercises every day. And he prays.
Margaret 21:52
What do you do every day to take care of you?
Libby 21:55
Me I pray all the time. I would love to say that after 15 years, I don’t worry. And I’d like to tell Jeff that Oh, I don’t worry. But when we speak, like we’ll be on stage at the same time. And somebody will say, do you trust him today? You know, are you okay with it? Then he’s right next to me. And I have to tell the truth. You know, no, there’s still there’s still an ache, you know, and he knows it. You know, I still look at his eyes. What do I see there? I still listen to his enunciation. And I, I told that to Dr. McAfee, I said, when will it end. And he said, you’ve been vigilant a long time, be patient with yourself. And so, I try.
Margaret 22:43
I watched your video with your son, which I hope people will go to your website and do. The love you have for him. And the way you look at him in adoring eyes, is beautiful. And I’m so glad you got your son back from the brink of death. I am so grateful that you and your son, were courageous enough to put the words to paper, for the rest of us to read because you did a beautiful job with eloquence and gift of education, in your words and just your truth. To help other people identify with parts of their story they may have trouble doing, to have a compassion for each other that they may not have been able to do without hearing from both sides of the story.
And I’m in awe of how Stay Close has manifested and is shown in your writing. And in that video, especially.
These are our beloved children, our partners, our parents, our siblings. The disease is what creates the damage and the ugly behavior.
I would have never jeopardized my children’s well-being but in my addiction and driving, when I shouldn’t have been, I jeopardized my child’s well-being. And that’s not me as a mother ever to want to do that. And in order to heal and recover, I had to believe that I had a disease that changed my values, my morals, my core of who I am. To ever do that to someone I love. And my job in recovery is to do living amends every day to never repeat that behavior again. And that’s our job.
And as family members. When I was in that relationship, I crossed lines, I did things I was not proud of nor felt good about and my job in recovery, make amends and not repeat those behaviors. And that’s what you’ve done. Your service of being honest and open and putting pen to paper and then letting the world see it is a beautiful gift you’ve given us all.
25:04
Libby: Thank you.
Margaret 25:07
I thank you. Did you want to read anything from the book?
Libby 25:10
I’ll just read one of the journal entries, real quick.
Margaret 25:13
From your actual journal. Oh, wow.
Libby 25:17
This is from November 24 2005, 12:30am.
Margaret 25:21
So, before you read it, paint the picture. So 2005 you said
Libby 25:26
2005. Jeff got well in 2006. So, he was still very, very sick. He’s 27 years old. He got well at 28. So how do I feel? Like a failure of a mother. Everyone in the field of drug addiction says don’t blame yourself. You didn’t cause it; you can’t cure it. You didn’t make him a drug addict. But look deeply into the eyes of a mother and tell her that her child is dying. And it’s not her fault.
Sure, it makes sense if it’s not your kid, but for the mother to do nothing, to stop the pain, to alter its course. Is it possible for a mother not to feel guilt shame, intense hurt, maybe for some but I’m not there? I doubt if I ever will be.
For me. I think I’ll wear this like a skin. Maybe I’ll forget I have it on sometimes. But it will be forever part of my being, my eyes, my smile, my thoughts. Like a breath that catches me short or my heart when it misses a beat. That’s it, Jeff is my heart murmur. I have allowed his aches and traumas to damage my heart. And it is beyond repair. Maybe this isn’t the case for other parents. And maybe I’m wrong, not healthy. But this is what I feel. This is my heart.
Margaret 26:48
Thank you. So forward to 2022. Still the skin you wear?
Libby 26:54
Yeah, it’s underneath. I would love to say no, I’m so good. I’ve shed everything. No, it’s, it will always be part of who I am. It maybe you know, it’s okay. I’ve become a more compassionate woman. The truth is I was a pretty arrogant woman before. I’ve become a much more compassionate, loving, understanding person. So, I would never say I’m grateful for an addiction. But I’ve learned a whole lot. I’m a better mother today than I was then. So, addiction is a harsh teacher, but we have a lot to learn.
Margaret 27:33
We do. And I believe your book Stay Close really helps people learn from a different perspective than they may have read before. And so, I thank you for writing that for so many other people out there to learn from.
Libby: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you, Libby and Jeff for writing this powerful book. I love the evidence of her higher power in her recovery, and how the unexpected blessings came from healing through writing, and then sharing despite fears in publishing the book. I am so glad she published this book!
For any other parent out there struggling with the disease of addiction in your child, please read Stay Close by Libby Cataldi.
https://libbycataldi.com/books/
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website. https://embracefamilyrecovery.com/resources/
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you!
