All The Way To The River

Have you ever loved an addict?

I’ve spent the weekend reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book All the Way To the River. Wow. An honest and raw reflection of co-dependency and the blistering pain of loving an addict. 

I was on that roller coaster once, too. Of loving an addict, of wishing, forcing, wanting to control, of grasping SO TIGHTLY. I didn’t have much leverage, or Earthly experience. I was a kid and she was my mom. 

My self concept was built on this belief: If I was lovable, she would get sober. 

So when she didn’t get sober (not for another ten years anyway), there was only one obvious and logical conclusion to my young, co-dependent mind. 

When I was 22, my Mom tried to get sober for the first time, and I showed up for the rehab’s family weekend, ready to dig into strategies to help her. She was finally doing it, and I was all ears, her little cheerleader, ready to sit next to her and learn how to be a better helper!

But the program was the opposite of what I expected. In fact, we weren’t even in the same room! For the first time, the attention was placed on me. I learned about boundaries, co-dependency and “detaching with love.” My brain almost broke in two. It was a space to process how I’d been devastated by this disease, what it had stolen from me. Wait, what? I’m allowed to ask that? To feel that? To think about myself?! It was the first time I had been given that permission –I’d been so focused on her!–that the outpouring of grief was almost unbearable. Almost. 

The solution had been right there all along. That my power wasn’t meant for controlling her, or helping her get sober.  In fact, my power wasn’t even capable of that. 

My power was meant to be mine. 

My power was meant to be mine. 

So, wait, you mean her getting sober has nothing to do with me? What a swell of relief–Maybe I wasn’t the unlovable POS I assumed I was!–but it also left me terrified, without any semblance of control. That was my whole shtick! 

I may have learned this at 22, but I’m sure I didn’t learn this until my 30s. It’s a lesson that often takes time, because it’s one of the most life changing lessons of all. No one else’s life, let alone course of addiction, is about you or controlled by you. 

It’s not about your unlovability or unworthiness. 

And it’s also not about your cunning game plans, strategies, or control tactics. 

And DAMN if that’s not freedom to rebuild your self concept from a place of innate worthiness. 

But DAMN if that doesn’t also require a level of surrender that’ll bring you to your knees.  

And DAMN if that’s not freedom to rebuild your self-concept from a place of innate worthiness. 
But DAMN if that doesn’t also require a level of surrender that’ll bring you to your knees.  

This is the power and the helplessness of loving an addict.

It’s not about you. 

And, you can’t control it.  

When you take back all that energy that’s been unquestionably focused on them, and you reinvest it in yourself, you get your life force back. 

Because Sweetheart? It’s your life after all. 

Thank you, Elizabeth Gilbert for the unflinchingly honest memoir and for sharing the story of you and Rayya. May we all be blessed with a dash of your courage.