Hi Chicory...I'll try not to make this long
My daughter remembers that I kicked her out, but I was just really clear that her behavior had to change asap if she were going to remain at home...
I was a single parent and we were very close...
we battle through her cancers together...
homeschooled...first year of highschool, she met a young man...
everything changed....he was a drug addict, alcoholic..she was in love...her behavior changed, her presence in the house was intermittent...
I was shaken to my core to see what was happening to my child...she was of age...
I drew my line in the sand...she left...
I knew that our home , the home she knew all her life, and I, must be constant.
She couched surfed for the next few years, lived on the street for a bit...and then rented a room for year....and then one day, she called...I went and got her...helped her find a little bachelor...she wasn't done using and couldn't come home if she was...
for the next few years her addiction progressed but at least she was off the street...
every once in a while I would hand her a card with the name of a really good counsellor(free) that I had found...two years later she finally went to see her...
a year after that she walked through the door of AA and hated every minute of it...went off and on
almost a year to the day later, she quit drinking...
Today she has 1 year and two months sober...she is the treasurer at her home group, chairs regularly...works with the newer young girls coming in and walks with confidence, has a spark back in her eye, and smiles and laughs a lot...
she has some health issues from her cancer days and so can't yet work full time, she talks about school, her writing, she is gifted, and what she wants to do with it...and she tells me at least once a week how good her life is, with a little surprise in her voice...and how much she appreciates her sober family(AA)
I give thanks everyday....
I suffered so much until I realized I had to let go, and let her fall and trust and pray, that her HP had her and that she would find her way...I had to remember that she had everything within her to heal her life...she was not broken, just lost...
I could not love her sober...and I needed to step out of the doorway so that she could walk through...
Tough love was key for me in helping my daughter to see that she needed to fix her life, no one else was going to do that and especially not her mom. and that was a huge learning curve for both of us......I think when she really understood that, that was when the shift in her took place towards the end of the first intermittent year at AA.
We all have our process, and I had to learn to appreciate and respect that this was hers, her journey, even when the stakes can be so high...
Chicory, this is the stripped down version...lol....please feel free to pm me if you would like to, sometime...