Hi, my name is Judy &…
It was my first time at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
Walking in, I surveyed the scene before me. I deliberately hadn’t been inside a church in years; not to congregate and much less to attend an evening candlelight NA meeting. I relaxed as I recognized the gray, tweed chairs from my youth. Years of Sunday morning praise & late night Wednesday worship had familiarized my body to the touch of the worn chairs that lined the churches I’d spent hours in.
These chairs were lined up in rows of three, facing each other with a small, circular table in the center where plastic candles flickered in imitative flutters. The off-white walls raised high made the room feel bigger than it was, and as faces turned in welcoming nods, I made my way towards the back row.
Hi, my name is Judy & I am not an addict.
Not in the way most others in the room were anyway. I didn’t actually speak but as I sat there, the room now dark, illuminated only by the candles and the now dimming sunlight still lightly penetrating the stained glass windows, the tweed beneath me became more & more uncomfortable as people began to share their stories.
“We do recover”, one finished.
I squirmed.
I closed my eyes & listened to my breath. I flashbacked to the countless times my phone would ring & I’d think, “This is the call that tells me my mom is dead”, but it was usually someone - a cousin or a neighbor - alerting me to some erratic behavior of hers. I’d get in my car, drive the 10 minutes to her house, time slowing as I mentally prepared myself to find her lifeless instead, constantly forcing myself to accept the inevitable. There were many times I didn’t find her, or rather, she didn’t open the door. I’d call, honk, peer & knock on every window only to have her ignore me. That, or she was passed out. The frustration and fear would rise within me, wanting badly to kick through the door as time ticked on. Other times, I’d find her - gaunt & slurring - barely able to keep her eyes open.
How many times had I begged her to go to rehab? I had held her hand, both of us crying, pleading to a God that felt so far away from me now.
It wasn’t anger I felt, or even sadness. Years of facing my own fallibility as a human - as a woman, as a mother - had revealed within me great compassion for the mother that had buried her own pain & could not face the magnitude of her demons. I was through with the working-through. At some point, the work becomes living rather than facing. The redundancy of questioning god, the universe, the abyss - WHY - results the same answer each time, & then there’s nothing left to feel but everything.
Sitting now in the meeting, what I felt was a curiosity. What if, I wondered, she could sit next to me now & share her story? & where does her story become mine?
We become these extensions of one another; webs of experiences; a vibration along the web of humanity, slowly losing its impact as the waves lose momentum. Somewhere on that web, was I & my role in this accumulative experience involving the many mothers before me was not to halt the impossible reverberation of my ancestral pain before it reached my children, as I had thought. I had spent decades believing that the way to save my children from the impending wave of Hurt was to absorb the impact in its entirety, martyring myself for their greater good.
What I had failed to realize is that, in doing so, I’d be taking from them their mother. The hurt I had worked so hard to not pass on? Transformed into a different version of hurt. Helpless to the inevitable inheritance, I performed perfection. “IT ENDS WITH ME!!”, I screamed bitterly at the heavens. But, this too, crumbled into the heap of failed attempts I’d accumulated over the years.
Back in the church now, we’ve moved on to passing out key tags: a collection of colored tags that reflect your length of sobriety. A woman stands up to collect her 9 month tag & we applaud her as she finds her way back to her seat. “How’d you do it?”, she’s asked. Shaking her head, she says, “love for my son”. I close my eyes again.
There’s a truth I’ve learned & I’ll drag it along no longer, so here it is: we save our children by saving ourselves, and that doesn’t mean we martyr ourselves by playing perfect-mom, or avoiding or by standing in front of the line of fire to let it consume us. We transmute it. We bear witness to our inheritance & guide our spirit forward with compassion by GIVING compassion; my modeling forgiveness & authentic healing.
It is easier said than done, I know, so let’s begin simply: Hi. My name is Judy & it begins with me.
