Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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I am the mother of four adult children and have been blessed with my fair share of obstacles. I say “blessed” now, but that perspective took work. The gift from my latest obstacle – addiction – is that I have taken steps to find inner peace in a world that is often filled with fear and chaos. The kind of chaos you don’t discuss over coffee. The kind that you hold tightly because it’s too embarrassing or painful to share.
Addiction is a family disease, and if I expect my son to do his recovery work, it seems fair that I do mine. My work, as it turns out, is learning how not to enable, protect, control or be a martyr. In other words, retrain myself on how to be a mother.
Learning to control what I can control meant embracing recovery and the 12 Step Program. Given the research I’ve done on every other illness that has touched our family, I was genuinely surprised that after a decade of navigating my son’s addiction, I didn’t actually know the 12 Steps.
I thought the 12 Steps were his work, not mine. Frankly, I was quite offended to discover there was a workbook with my name on in. I had already learned that I was not the cause, not the cure and could not control the addiction but soon realized that was only the beginning of my recovery.
Emotionally exhausted, Step 1 was almost a relief – admit that you are powerless over addiction and that your life has become unmanageable. After years of trying to out-strategize his addiction by obsessively tracking and fixing, I finally hit a wall. Slowly, I let go of the illusion that if I tried harder or loved smarter, I could control the outcome. Step 1 was painfully, but honestly, achieved.
Step 2 proved more challenging. Believe in a power greater than yourself that can restore you to sanity. As a spiritual, stoic and slightly skeptical agnostic, I thought this might be where I tapped out. But the program, in its brilliance, leaves room for interpretation. This higher power could be anything – the interconnectivity of the universe, the collective wisdom of the 12 Step program… you name it. I didn’t need certainty, only openness. With some work, I bought in.
Then came Step 3: surrender your will and life to the care of this higher power. I could have simply agreed and moved on, but without doing the work, those were just words. So I reflected. I journaled. And yes, I even asked ChatGPT. This was where my real learning began.
My journal prompt was simple: name my greatest fear about addiction. The answer came immediately. My greatest fear was losing my son. That his addiction would kill him. Then it hit me – I had lived this paralyzing fear before, not once, but twice.
My first-born, the son who now struggles with addiction, was born with a severe diaphragmatic hernia and almost died three times in his first week. I remember visualizing his survival. I knew I was powerless over his condition. I could not perform the surgery. I could not control the outcome. I could not save him. I had already lived Step 1.
I learned to trust the wisdom of the medical team, the strength of prayer circles, the possibility of recovery – something larger than myself. That belief gave me hope. I had lived Step 2.
Finally, I surrendered his care to those who could help him. I showed up with unconditional love, knowing that I could lose him but accepting that his survival was not mine to control. He survived and flourished. I had lived Step 3.
Years later our family faced another unimaginable challenge. At 16, our second son was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At 17, he relapsed. Today, eight years after his stem-cell transplant, he is experiencing life in the most amazing way. Once again, I trusted the medical team, supported him as best I could and knew we could lose him.
I never believed I could control either of these outcomes. So why did I try so hard with addiction?
Because addiction feels different. When your child is physically ill, the world rallies around you. There is compassion. Understanding. No blame. With addiction, support is quieter. Often absent. Sometimes replaced with judgment or silence.
Yet, support does exist. I found it in the 12 Steps community. In the shared understanding that this is not something you control your way out of.
Today, I use inner peace as my barometer, recognizing when I need a course correction. It turns out that the 12 Steps weren’t just my son’s work. They were mine, too.
And somewhat unexpectedly, through all of the chaos, I found a gift. I have found resilience, courage, clarity and perhaps, even faith. More importantly, I found a better way to show up for myself and for my son.
Only nine more Steps to go.
Madeleine Myers lives in Dartmouth, N.S.