This might have been my hardest post to write to date. It’s difficult to be so completely honest with yourself; your flaws, your weaknesses and short comings. There’s really no point to me doing this though if I am not.

Although I was home from the hospital and Ava was clean, things were not easy for our family. Not by a long shot. We made a lot of proverbial lemonade, but I knew nothing about what to expect with my child in early recovery. I don’t think we talk about that part as much. When people would ask how she was, I would say “She’s clean and doing well” but that wasn’t entirely true. It was half true at best.

(I stumbled onto this picture that is so powerful to me. I am in bed…my Ella, our glue, is comforting her broken sister. Our family has our problems, a lack of love is not one of them)

I was so grateful she was no longer using drugs, I almost felt guilty talking about the struggles she was having. Kind of like “I’m lucky she’s alive, how dare I complain” sort of mindset. If we were both more honest with just how hard it is, perhaps it wouldn’t have been. I don’t really know. Now I never will. But if you’re going through it, I would encourage being truthful. The depression, the loneliness, having to earn back the trust of many, guilt, just feeling all those emotions flooding back that she had been numbing for so long was painful for her, and in turn, me.

Although Ava was free from heroin and crack, this part of the journey was just fucking tough. It would have been difficult to support her had I been healthy, so not having that on our side made it even more complex. I had been very involved in all of Ava’s attempts to get clean, and now I couldn’t be there on any level really. I was reduced to a potato. I couldn’t walk more than a few feet, my speech and cognitive function were impaired. I was more needy than she was. I couldn’t even stand long enough for a shower. Having to use a shower stool has to be about the ultimate feeling of helplessness. I felt like a horrible parent. I knew in my head that it wasn’t my fault, but I had a lot of guilt about being so debilitated. And she blamed herself that my fiancé had left. We wore smiles and joked to hide the immense guilt and pain. I was barely hanging on to my own sanity. Perhaps it wasn’t there at all right then. Who knows? All I know is I was in no condition to be a strong support system, a strong ANYTHING.

(Ugh, I was so sick! Actually, seeing these has reminded me that I’m not as I was before, I’ve come a long way!)

We both had to find ways to cope with a completely different lifestyle than we were accustomed to in absolutely every way. Ava was used to hustling all day; she loved it frankly. She missed it. I missed working, someone I loved, a home and children I had been able to care for. We both sort of felt like we lost it all, I think, despite the miracle it really was that we both were still alive! And neither of us wanted to burden the other too much. I was terrified of a relapse. She was terrified of losing me. We both spent a lot of time alone crying ourselves to sleep. We had to learn new coping mechanisms for our lives that had so drastically changed. Our old ones were no longer an option. Hers were drugs. Mine were reading, working, keeping busy around the house. So just imagine for a moment what it was like for us both, to have our lives torn out from under us at almost exactly the same time.



All of my kids were having trouble understanding and adjusting to their new mother, and our new crueler life of no money. I wasn’t the same. I’m not the same. I’m not sure it’s true that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, but I do know it changes you. Some changes were good I suppose. Some were not. Some were us acting out due to the pain we were in.

We learned we are survivors. But when you have “invisible” illnesses, it’s harder for people to grasp, especially children, and we both were very broken inside.



(We still loved each other fiercely, even if we weren’t feeling strong)

I’ve gotten some answers to the questions of why I was so sick, but not all. I know my blood doesn’t coagulate properly. I know I have an unusual type of anemia, and something isn’t quite right with my endocrine system. I had lost over 30lbs in about 3 months. I’m 4’11” so that was a large percentage of my total weight! I had to take medications, Ensures and an oxygen monitor to try to help keep the symptoms of my sickness under some control. Ava took Vivitrol and an IOP to help the symptoms of hers.

They were still there though, lurking under the surface. They will always be there…it’s too much for me to think about, really. The “what if’s” are terrifying and can consume you if you allow it. Both of us have had to learn to live with our own diseases, and each other’s, with the “one day at a time” mentality. I think I always will. I hope I’m wrong; I really hate it. It gets a little easier to ignore it as time goes on, but I hope someday that little voice that chimes in the back of my mind that we could both end up right where we started, or worse goes away.

We will Always Have Each Other…