Loving Addicted Parents: A Daughter’s Honest Reflection
My heart still shatters every time I see a new mugshot of one of my parents.
And yet… I fear the day those pictures stop coming.
Because that will be the day it’s all really over—
The hoping.
The praying.
The fragile longing.
It will be the day the small, flickering chance that things could one day be different is finally darkened—
That maybe, somehow, we could be a family again.
That they’d get better.
That we could start over.
I can’t be the only fool still holding onto this hope.
Hope that one day, they’ll wake up and see how much time they’ve wasted.
How much pain they caused—
In their presence,
And their absence.
Something I don’t think addicts realize is that just because your kids grow up doesn’t mean they stop needing you.
It doesn’t matter how old we get,
How polished our lives may appear,
Or how lovingly we build our own family—
We still long for our mother and father to be in our lives.
To want to be in our lives.
Sober.
Willing.
Present.
My baby girl turned one recently,
And she's never met her American grandparents.
In fact, she doesn’t even know they exist.
And, from what it looks like, it’s as if they don’t know she exists either.
They weren’t here the day my life changed forever.
They didn’t see me become a wife.
Or a mother.
They weren’t there for the hardest moments—
Or the most beautiful ones.
But then again…
They weren’t there when I was a child either.
So why am I still surprised they’re not here now?
They didn’t care for their own babies.
So why should I expect them to care for mine?
And still—
When I hold my daughter’s tiny fingers in mine,
When I kiss her little toes and feel my eyes swell with tears from the sheer force of love—
I can’t help but wonder:
Did anyone ever look at me this way?
And if they did…
Why wasn’t that enough to make them stay?
For so many years, I was fueled by hope alone—
Hope that Mommy and Daddy would come back.
That they’d change.
That this really would be the last time.
But as the months became years,
And the years became decades,
That hope stopped feeling like a lifeline.
And started to feel like an anchor into an abyss of pain.
An open heart—vulnerable to being broken again and again.
The older I get, the harder it becomes to believe in the miracle of them changing.
But I keep praying.
Keep moving forward—
Functioning as if the ache weren’t there,
Even as it pulses quietly beneath the surface,
A silent reminder behind everything I do.
Maybe I’m striving for more.
Or maybe I’m still running.
Running from the evil that seeped in.
Running from the pain.
Running from the feelings of worthlessness etched into my soul.
Running from their story ever becoming my own.
Sometimes I imagine the devil with a firm grip on their souls—
Unwilling to let go.
And them—
Too weary, too wounded, too far gone to fight their way free.
This helps me have compassion for them.
Encourages me to stay strong in my own battles against the enemy.
But I battle in silence,
Unwilling to burden anyone with something they could never fix.
No well-meaning sentiments.
No words of wisdom.
Not even all the present good can erase the ache of what’s been lost.
And yet…
In spite of it all—
I keep loving.
I keep showing up.
I keep writing my daughter a new story.
One I never got.
Maybe that is the miracle.
Maybe that is the redemption.
Not in them coming back…
But in me moving forward.
