Welcome HopefulHMIAl, you have an amazing daughter mb4u70 who together you can be each other’s strength to deal with this heartfelt situation.
I am glad you both have found meetings and are open minded to learning and understanding how our own actions and love can become detrimental to the addict.
Here’s a poem I used to read daily and sometimes 100’s of times a day especially at the times when MY NEED to “help” was overwhelming me. I hope it helps you to.
IF YOU LOVE ME, LET ME FALL
IF you love me let me fall all by myself. Don’t try to spread a net out to catch me, don’t throw a pillow under my ass to cushion the pain so I don’t have to feel it, don’t stand in the place I am going to land so that you can break the fall, (allowing yourself to get hurt instead of me).
Let me fall as far down as my addiction is going to take me, let me walk the valley alone all by myself, let me reach the bottom of the pit….trust that there is a bottom there somewhere even if you can’t see it.
The sooner you stop saving me from myself, stop rescuing me, trying to fix my broken-ness, trying to understand me to a fault, enabling me…..The sooner you allow me to feel the loss and consequences, the burden of my addiction on my shoulders and not yours….the sooner I will arrive….and on time….just right where I need to be…me, alone all by myself in the rubble of the lifestyle I lead…resist the urge to pull me out because that will only put me back at square one.
If I am allowed to stay at the bottom and live there for a while, I am free to get sick of it on my own, free to begin to want out, free to look for a way out, and free to plan how I will climb back up to the top. In the beginning as I start to climb out….I just might slide back down, but doesn’t worry I might have to hit bottom a couple more times before I make it out safe and sound. Don’t you see?? Don’t you know?? You can’t do this for me…I have to do it for myself, but if you are always breaking the fall how am I ever supposed to feel the pain that is part of the driving force to want to get well. It is my burden to carry, not yours. I know you love me and that you mean well and a lot of what you do is because you don’t know what to do and you act from your heart and from knowledge of what is best for me….but if you truly love me, let me go my own way, make my own choices be they bad or good. Don’t clip my wings before I can learn to fly….nudge me out of your safety net….trust the process.