GiveLove

Just hung up from one of my twice- or thrice-annual telephone conversations with my alcoholic stepmother. She is a type that many of you would recognize: Older, widow, long-time drinker, a near shut-in, only interested in discussing herself, very much an enabler/victim. Hence the couple-times-a-year thing...it's how I survive her sickness.

My younger brother, for those of you who don't know, was the most recent addiction casualty in our family. He fell into cocaine addiction, lost his house, crashed his car, ran up 100K in debt, lost his job.

Rather than "pay good money for a program for common street addicts" (her terminology for rehabilitation programs) she has allowed him to move back in with her. He stores his furniture and possessions in her living room, with is now full of junk. He drinks with her, and they get rip-roaring drunk and argue. At 65, she has just taken out a huge home equity loan -- she no longer had a mortgage -- to help pay his bills. She will not discuss any of this. She can "handle it."

I've just hung up, and I know I need to breathe.
I've got to remember Christina Baldwin's famous line: One breath to let go. One breath to get here. One breath to ask: Now what?

So, SR family.

Now what? Let it go? Nothing to be done there? Go take a hot bath and cry?
Sometimes, doing the right thing just seems so inadequate, even when you know 100% it's the right thing.

Sigh.
GL